For the most part, the findings of the survey might trigger a feeling that varies between anger and boredom. However, the scholars who took part in developing the index, trigger something much bigger in us: disgust. Does everything have a price? Suffice it to know that scientific integrity, or the lack of it for that matter, could not explain to us why Qatar, the UAE and Bahrain were excluded from the survey. What kind of statistical analysis gives equal weight to Kuwait, Egypt and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? What kind of science is that and what kind of scientists are they? The list of names and consultants working at the “Arab Center” with that “Arab Thinker” is not to be undermined or dismissed. Qatar has managed to gather all those professionals and to employ their skills and knowledge to come up with an utterly shameful index. Has the time yet not come for Arab intellectuals to hold their ground and refuse to have their reason and integrity manipulated by any ruler, be it in Qatar, Damascus or any other country or city of the world?

According to Ibn Al-Furat, “the power of the Sultan is a joke that can only become politics when straightened out in writing”. Ibn Khaldoun also cited writing as being the tool of the Sultan. Hereby thinkers are in need of a ruler and he, reciprocally, is in need of them. Has the time yet not come for thinkers to strip the Sultan of his tool and lay bare the truth of his power, i.e. a joke?

An Arab index? An index for the freedom of the Emirs and the democracy of Sultans? Or an index of the astounding intellectual superiority of the Gulf over the Fertile Crescent and the Nile Valley? Or even an index of Qatar’s superiority over the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? From vast soccer fields to fancy ski resorts, and from prominent golf courses to towers craved by every new ruler, what are they trying to tell us? An Emir has stepped down! What will future historians have to say? That you have amassed the manuscripts and artifacts of Mesopotamia, the Levant and Egypt after their demise? Or that you have summoned western universities and Arab brains to your affluent mansions and castles? That you replied “The statistical weight of Qatar cannot be measured”, when asked why Qatar was not surveyed? History will wonder where you were when Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo were torn to shreds. Perhaps in Qatar chanting democracy? What will history speak of you? It will probably quote Napoleon’s words to his jail-keeper: “Your name will go down in history as being Napoleon’s jail-keeper.”

And now with the purchase of Paul Cézanne’s The Card Players at USD 250 million,  the tiny oil-rich country Doha has officially become the Arab capital of culture. To hell with Damascus, Baghdad and Cairo, and let all the Arab thinkers stroll in the meadows of Qatar.

The “Arab Thinker” has an index now… He has become one of those “neo-indexers”… To Qatar they dragged him... To its rich soil... Long live the “Arab index”… Long live the “neo-indexers.”

Jawad N. Adra

The last passage is inspired from Nizar Qabbani’s poem, “I Have a Gun Now”, which was set to music by Mohammad Abdul Wahhab and sung by Um Kolthum.

“A gun... I want...

To Palestine take me with you now

To the sad hillocks like Maria Magdalena’s face...

To the green domes...

And the brown stones...”