When the Memories of Peoples Transform!
The text addresses the crisis of popular memory and historical falsification, emphasizing the necessity of historians' integrity and the independence of critical thinking to understand facts free from biases and interests.
Translated by Qiyas from الجريدة — Original source
History bears the responsibility of preserving its integrity in shaping an accurate narrative by producing and safeguarding historical knowledge against distortion and reduction. This knowledge production relies on tools that contribute to crafting effective historical material through: documenting and critiquing events, writing biographies, prioritizing the preservation of information, ensuring thorough documentation, and ultimately analyzing the historical narrative, which is grounded in a clear question: where does the historical document end and its accompanying interpretation begin?
When popular memory becomes a tool of selection, we enter a phase of constructing a foundational base upon which this material is built. This process follows a sequential approach that begins with the logic of collecting events and news, through which the journalistic questions associated with them are re-examined and their narratives deconstructed. This reveals the power relations, interests, and transformations hidden behind the events, leading to a historical account governed by the integrity of evidence, which presents us with an independent history.
The independence of history begins with the independence of the historian’s mind. There is no value in a history that does not critique its sources, nor in a discipline that replaces truth with what groups impose on historical interpretations to suit their whims. Therefore, history transcends the dialectics of classification between science, literature, and art. Consequently, an important question arises: how is this historical knowledge produced, what are the capabilities and integrity of the practitioner in this field, and does the recipient play a conscious role in receiving this knowledge production? History is the decree written by God Almighty; thus, its custodian is required to demonstrate integrity, which proves that the most essential attribute of history—historian’s integrity—is a fundamental prerequisite before any other, out of respect for the sanctity of the divine decree.
Today, we face a crisis that has reflected on our way of thinking, leading us to perspectives rejected by reason, particularly in interpreting many contemporary events that have shaped our minds toward a mistaken understanding of many historical issues.
Therefore, it is imperative to interpret our present reality in connection with the interpretation of our history. History is a way of life; it is greater than classifying it as a method under a specific science, a branch of literature, or a subfield of logic.
