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Selection of some books written by dr Ron Haleber:

1989 -oct.- *** (Ron als auteur en eindredacteur) Rushdie-effecten: Nederlandse afwijzing van moslimidentiteit? Amsterdam: Socialistische Uitgeverij Amsterdam. [The Effects of the Rushdie-Affair: Dutch rejection of muslim-identity…?]

With contributions of Ron Haleber among others:

- Etniciteit, anti-racisme en moslimidentiteit: versluierde ideologie in de Nederlandse discussie.

- Islam geconfronteerd met de moderne natie-staat'.

1990 *** Landeninformatie MAROKKO. Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen (KIT) & NOVIB (Le Maroc: Documentation de l'Institut Royale Néerlandais des Pays Tropiques). Amsterdam & La Haye.

1990 *** Marokko en de Sahara.: Deconstructie van een moderniseringsconflict. Middle East Research Associates: MERA-essai nr. 2. Amsterdam.

1992- *** Islam en humanisme: De wereld van Mohammed Arkoun. (with a contribution of prof. dr P.S. van Koningsveld - University of Leiden), VU-uitgeverij Amsterdam, 2001.

A new revised and enlarged edition of my study about Islam and Humanism - has been published in arabic language - in Damascus by editor 'al-Ahali':

2001 ***. Al `Aqlu al-Islami Amâma Turâth asri al-Anuwâri fi al-Maghrebi: Al-Juhûdu al-Falsafiya ainda Muhammad Arkoun. [ = "Islamic Reason confronted with the Heritage of Western Enlightenment. The Philosophical Effort of Mohammed Arkoun".]

Traduction of my text written in french by: ... professor at the university of Damascus - He ... was a national prizewinner in France as traductor of french books in arabic language.

For a short Introduction about this book: see the Frontpage of this study.

Note:
This book is available for euro 6.- in the bookshops in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. Ron ordered some copies (euro 6 extra for the transport to Amsterdam) Price: euro 12.50 - If you are interested to obtain this study: So sent me a message in my guestbook...! Not included are the costs to send the book from Amsterdam to your adress.

Bij Ron te koop voor de kostprijs: euro 12.50 (exclusief eventuele portokosten naar uw adres) - Geef mij uw gegevens in mijn gastenboek...! Ook te koop bij Al Hizra - boekhandel op het Singel in Amsterdam. En bij Ahmed Mesri in Buurthuis "De Meevaart", Balistraat Zeeburg. To buy this book: mention your adress in my guestbook.


2001- *** Ron Haleber's Ph.D. - La révolte mondiale contre l'Occident : la jeune élite marocaine face au choix entre tradition et modernité. Interviews quantifiées dans le Maroc méridional. Accepted as Ph.D. thesis at the State University of Amsterdam.: Promotor Dr. C.J. Hamelink - hoogleraar aan beide universiteiten van Amsterdam en medewerker aan VN-commissies.

De studie betreft een gekwantificeerd interview van 250 in de Arabische taal gestelde vragen aan ongeveer 140 jongeren van baccalaureaatsklassen omtrent hun socio-culturele houding en praktijk.

Doel van dit onderzoek was om voor een eerste maal een beeld te verkrijgen van de attitude, de verbeeldingswereld en de leefwijze van jonge Marokkanen in Marokko. Dit zowel ten aanzien van hun eigen culturele traditie die hoofdzakelijk bepaald wordt door de islam, als ten aanzien van vormen van met het Westen geassocieerde moderniteit.

Uit Halebers onderzoek blijkt dat de identiteit van jonge Marokkanen flexibel is zodat deze identiteit op genoemde terreinen kan verschuiven of versmelten, al naar gelang de politieke en sociale situatie dit vereist.

De promovendus beschouwt dit door hem aan het licht gebrachte beeld als relevanter dan de gebruikelijke enkelvoudige identiteit zoals die o.m. door onderzoekers van de universiteit van Rabat werd geconstateerd. Haleber sluit zijn onderzoek af met een met een analyse van het sociale en affectieve gedrag. In de meeste gevallen blijken mannen op dit terrein een progressiever standpunt in te nemen dan vrouwen. Ook blijkt er verschil te bestaan tussen privé-meningen van de respondenten en dat wat de islam hen voorschrijft.

De conclusie van de studie is dat de jonge ‘fundamentalistische' generatie een culturele opstand tegen het Westen belichaamt: op basis van een herinterpretatie van de morele waarden van een - van het Westen verschillend - religieus wereldbeeld willen jonge Marokkanen het moderniseringsproces authentiek vorm geven.

N.B. DEZE STUDIE STAAT ONLINE OP DEZE WEBSITE - Zie de Voorpagina.

Biography (Curriculum Vitae) of dr Ron Haleber with some amusing anecdotes:

1989 -oct.- Study: The author Ron Haleber was educated at the Canisius College of the Jesuit fathers in Nijmegen. He continued his studies with the supervision of cardinal mgr. Jo Willebrands in Warmond, who dismissed him for his un-orthodox ideas and advised him to join philosophers as Bernard Delfgaauw and Jan Hollak.

So I finished my master degree in philosophy at the faculty of theology at the University of Amsterdam. My main interests were French and German philosophy: Enlightenment: Hegel, Rousseau, Spinoza, Schleiermacher, Feuerbach and Marx.

For that reason I became a member of (and published studies for) "The International Hegel Union of my friends Heinz Kimmerle of Rotterdam and the student-leader Wolfgang Levefre of Berlin (Germany).

So for some years I have been studying to get a master degree in social science, especially in sociology and the economics of development countries. But my teachers were only interested in my critics on their new manuscripts without answering my questions or bothering about my examinations. So I decided to publish for myself and leave the degrees for what they were.

During my studies I became president of the theological students in Holland and Belgium (VSTF). In that function I was able to invite the famous Jewish philosopher Karl Löwith to come and hold discussions with students and with colleagues as Jan Hollak & , Bassam Tibi and Edward Schillebeecks about humanist forms of religions. Islam had always my special interest. During the nineties I executed a survey-research in Morocco among muslim Arab students. So finally in 2001 I obtained my degree of doctor in social science at the University of Amsterdam. My thesis: “The revolt of the young Moroccan elite against the West: A survey research in the South of Morocco”.

My professional occupations:

1. I published: scientific books and articles about the sociology and philosophy of Islam, about migration especially of Muslim migrants, about Morocco, about modern marxism and post-marxism.

2. Researcher and teacher at university (survey-research in Morocco) and secondary schools. Participated in university-exchanges between the Netherlands and Arab countries (Morocco and Egypt). I have been teaching at Islamic Universities in Indonesia (Jakarta, Jokjakarta), also in India (Nehru-university in Delhi) and in Egypt.

3. Participant in organizations and actions for and of mainly Muslim migrants in the Netherlands.

Ron Haleber was appointed in the early seventies as a research-fellow of the 'COWO', the office for the research of scientific education at the University of Amsterdam. For some years I was assistant at the department of Philosophy at the same university. I participated there in series of lectures about migration and the sociology of Arab countries. Also I gave lectures at the Free (protestant) University of Amsterdam and also at the Royal Institute for Tropic Countries (KIT) in Amsterdam (together with anthropologist Douwe Jongmans).

In 1985 Haleber (on his request) was asked by the university to organize a three-day conference on: "Culture and development: Islam in North Africa". For that reason I visited Morocco (known to me from my earlier yearly visits) to invite friends from universities - , as Mohammed Guessous, Fatima Mernissi and Mohammed Tozy. Since 1962 I assisted every year at an unique international conference center in Tioumliline, Morocco. There organizing meetings fully independent of state-control between European and Moroccan students, researchers and lecturers; till this famous center of open discussion was finally closed by the authorities in 1969.

In 1963 I organized in Holland a congress with Indonesian students - just after our imperialist foreign secretary Joseph Luns (later NATO-boss) was forced by US-president Kennedy to give up Irian Barat, his last colonial base of counter insurgency.

So now the way was open to establish for the first time renewed public contacts with the independent Republic Indonesia. To my surprise the conference became by that reason a political fact of great importance. Indonesians from whole Europe took part.

SOME ANECDOTES: The Parti Kommunis Indonesia (PKI) = the Indonesian Communist Party - intervened and refused these renewed contacts with Holland by boycotting our congress.

But thanks to my friend Kwik Gian Gie (an Indonesian who studied in Amsterdam and became later Indonesian minister of finance and economics) we were able to break the resistance of the Communist Party: so my guests as the famous scholars Wim Wertheim, Jef Last and Verkuyl (a teacher at the VU = protestant university) could start their speeches and discussions.

Verkuyl - leader of the protestant missions in Indonesia, but sympathic to president Sukarno - accused me of having invited - in my function of president of the organizing Christian Students Union (NCSV) - the for him 'ugly communist' Wim Wertheim... The famous Wertheim was an international known scholar about Indonesia...
But the personal enmity of fanatic anti-communist Verkuyl towards dr. wertheim proved to be a theater. Because in the conference center, at three o'clock at night - while everybody slept - I found the christian Verkuyl - still vividly in discussion with his so-called communist enemy Wertheim about their interesting colonial experiences and their common shared intellectual Indonesian dissident friends. So I had to shut down the light to force them to go to bed...

(view on Fès medina)

Another amusing and relevant anecdote happened during my activities as a volunteer of the Anne Frank Foundation (AFF). The AFF-organization was founded in Amsterdam in the house where the jewish girl Anne Frank was hiding during the German occupation of Holland (1940-45). The young Anne Frank wrote there her world-famous diary....

I was there during the sixties a volunteer at the AFF... But remember Nasser's defeat happened in 1968: so after Nasser's defeat, a Dutch king in publishing affairs, G.B.J. Hilterman accused an important left-wing daily-paper of anti-semitism. So to put things right I proposed my boss and close friend Henri van Praag, the president of the Anne Frank Foundation, to organize an academic discussion about the affair, under the title: "Is anti-sionism the same as anti-semitism". President Van Praag agreed fully, so I prepared and distributed the program and affiches . Henri van Praag was a universal genius and I believe him - as he said - to be also one of the few Jewish Tsaddikim sent by the Unspeakeble to earth... Later a false pretention was ascribed to Van Praag under pressure of Jewish journalists of the dutch journal Vrij Nederland: to be "the reincarnation of the King of the Spirits, king Solomon", (= the muslim Prophet Suleiman).

So I invited to have an interesting discussion, not only Van Praag but also academics and specialists in anti-semitism-affairs as Van Arkel (university of Leiden) and activist student-leaders as Bertus Hendriks of the Dutch 'Palestine Committee' supporting the struggle of the Palestinians...
But a naughty very famous Jewish journalist, Ischa Meier smelled an interesting scandal...! In his on saturday morning fixed radio-program, 'the fox' invited another member of the AFF, rabbi Jacow Soetendorp (I was at the time a close study-friend of his son Avrahaam, who became later his successor as rabbi and his national spokesman for – not only the "liberal" - Jews in Holland). Rabbi Jacow was enormously angry and insulted his fellow members of the AFF administration.

Immediatly in panic a reunion of the AFF-administration was called for the same saturday evening...
Insults were exchanged and the AFF-director Hans van Houten (a former protestant pastor and television-VPRO-director) got in panic. What to do...? How to reconcile rabbi Jacow and also mr. Frank - the father of Anne Frank - with AFF-president Van Praag...?
Director Van Houten presided the AFF-reunion and told me later that he was extremely surprised looking out of the window - just after the AFF-meeting about 'the scandal', to see the two sworn ennemies - just after their exchange of brutal insults - walking arm in arm on the Prinsengracht...! The hot oriental mind is different from cool Dutch enmity...!

Nevertheless all this fuss, the conference, presided by myself, took place at the AFF foundation in the very house of Anne Frank – so right in the AFF-den of the lion! - be The evening passed in a very tumultuous atmosphere - and with rabbi Jacow added as a surplus security-guard to my panel...! I presided full of stoicism - as 'a wise philosopher' - the AFF-discussions and quarrels between the ennemies...

I learned from these AFF-experiences for instance: it is the best to engage the help somebody from the migrant side to prevent anti-semitism... Later I engaged the wise Afief Safieh - a christian who was also an ambassador of Palestine in Holland:

Lesson: Never give space to let polarize fanaticism from outside, - be it Sionism, anti-semitism or maoism - but be patient and make the people from inside conscious of the impossibility to realize their absurd “ideals”, in this way make them ripe for new and creative rational views from within... For implementing this technique the cheap slogans of politics are not sufficient, you have to become a real and intelligent participant above both parties in the conflict…

Simple journalists - always alert for sensation, always looking for scandals and then condemning them - as Henk Hofland (NRC) who judged me in this case of 1968 by condemning my intelligent attitude as "indecent."...
In that time I worked as a student at night at the newspaper of Hofland: the NRC)

Remembering these AFF-events, I myself judge to have acted rightfull to the peacefull memory of Anne Frank in her own spirit. She became an outstanding symbol of Peace between conflicting nations and fanatic persons! - The professional jobs next to my scientific research were:
University-activities as a teacher of sociology and philosophy. Also I teached part-time at secondary schools in Amsterdam.

Another anecdote about my experiences as a schoolteacher: One of my targets was to make the students conscious of their “unconscious” racism (by means of little discussion groups helped by members of thirld world committees). So the students reacted: “but at home my father told me that by accepting black people living in our street, the value of our house will diminish…!”. We explained that this is a racist attitude. So many parents got very angry and phoned my director to dismiss me immediately from the school. But my director realised what happened: I was the only teacher who effectuated the Christian character of his, in name Christian school. Going pensioned, he offered me to become his successor…!

One of my pupils was the later famous soccer-player Ruud Gullit but he was always busy in training soccer and never showed up. So I gave him a very bad grade. His father complained to me and asked me to do something about it… So I gave Ruud a choice: either a bad grade or you will work. And if you don't have any time at all, sincr er have nor a serie of lessons about racism, you may tell in front of your fellow-students a story about your personal experiences as a black boy in Amsterdam. He accepted….

His fellow-students told me later that they had never seen Ruud as a black boy because he was one of them and very popular… But of course my intended result was achieved: the boys and girls accepted now also unknown black boys and girls as normal friends. Some years later Ruud told exactly the same story he told before the class on Dutch television…! So when now I see him in discussing with Nelson Mandela, I remember my first push in that direction…

Next to my professional activities I dedicated most of my time in assisting and organizing Muslim migrants in the Netherlands. After my presidency of a society for Moroccan labourers, I was in at the start of independent organisations of Muslims by themselves, such as the Committee of Moroccan Labourers in Holland (Kman) and the Amazigh-society.

With Turkish volunteers I organized social activities around the Turkish mosque Ulu Cami in East-Amsterdam (till 1995 when the mosque felt in the hands of the fascist Grey Wolves).

As a volunteer of the Moroccan Council of East-Amsterdam I developed courses about culture, language, health-education and politics for Dutch and foreign participants.

With friends, lawyers, social assistents I founded a Foundation for "Aid for Moroccan Youngsters" and I participated in its social activities. I was an active member in anti-racism committees, a member - also in demonstrations - of the Palestine committee - and of the Morocco Committee for human rights. As an author I contributed articles in the newsletters of these committees and in many papers especially of political movements and minority-groups.

During the Gulfwar I organized with friends discussion-evenings and public demonstrations against the war.

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