Hekima Review No. 15 (June 1996)

History has many lessons to teach us. Unfortunately, it offers us a pedagogical method with which we are not very familiar. We tend either to glibly refer to what has been as though it has no relevance for the present, or we seek "information" that may prove useful for predicting the future. But history is really an art, a skillful dialogue with what has dipped slightly below the horizon of remembrance. In the process of that dialogue, the blemished visage of the past reveals the simplicity and anguish of our fragile and sometimes brutish humanity. But history also unfurls future possibilities that the present may tend to obfuscate.