The last man on the
moon: Gene Cernan, Apollo 17, 1972.
Le Quotidien
d’Oran, Algeria
'Don't Ask for the Moon!'
With the clash of religious radicals of all kinds apparently accelerating, this article by Mohammed Abbou of Algeria's Le Quotidien d'Oran offers a ray of light from the Muslim world. With his account of the day human beings landed on the moon, Abbou illustrates how the backward views of the ignorant faithful continue to blind people to the truth of the world they live in.
By Mohammed Abbou
Translated By Mary Kenney, Sandrine Agoerges and Nicolas Dagher
As usual during Ramadan, in the late afternoon he read his newspaper. His daily reading after returning from work and waiting
for the breaking of the fast makes the waiting easier.
He reads diligently and neglects
practically no article, contrary to his usual practice during other times of
year, when he contents himself with skimming most pages, paying little interest
except to the features that he enjoys and from which he expects more dishy commentary
and beautiful turns-of-phrase than that which he has other means of reading
quicker and earlier. He has almost completed his review of the daily press when
his attention is captured by a paragraph devoted to the moon.
It reports that according to
NASA, earth's
satellite is shrinking due to internal cooling, so its circumference has
recently contracted by about a hundred meters. Having scarcely arrived at the end
of the article, his mind is already elsewhere. His thoughts turn to the epic
event experienced by mankind on July 21, 1969.
In this scientific conquest, Neil Armstrong made one
giant leap for mankind - and with Buzz Aldrin, planted the
American flag on lunar soil. Mankind had been able to physically reach the
moon, transforming the Soviet test of 1959, when the first vehicle Luna 2 crashed there.
That day he returned home from the
big city, where he had just enrolled at the university. He was returning to
his the home of his parents, which was in a slum dating from the colonial period where local
peasants gathered, driven by the daily harassment of government aircraft. The family home stood at the center of a
shapeless collection of structures built with miscellaneous materials, packed
tightly together around narrow, dusty paths that offered no conveniences.
The neighborhood hid all the
misery of a country scarcely out of colonial darkness, in which the well-to-do of
faith incubated a dense ignorance that they had long exploited to inexhaustible benefit to themselves.
In
that year he was a rare graduate of the town, and the only one in
this great slum. He knew he was privileged and secretly pitied the slum's inhabitants,
who could only question the happiness that knowledge brings, even in its
infancy.
All the neighbors greatly respected
and admired him. He repaid them well by aiding them in their administrative duties
and gracefully lending them his pen for any personal or official letters. His views
on practically everything were solicited, even on certain remedies, and he got
through these tasks with great patience and tact. He tried in all situations to
adhere to the rules of common sense and rationality which he had taken in
so deeply during his studies.
His advice was generally
appreciated and many people, after having consulted with him, showed him how
satisfied they were - sometimes ostentatiously. His biggest fan was an old trader from
south Algeria, who occupied a room of their house that was open to outsiders
and made available for a modest rent by his father.
The old trader, whose natural
curiosity had been strongly whetted by his profession, loved to talk to him -
and posed questions at every occasion about the progress of mankind in science
and technology.
That day, as he did each time
he came home, he stopped to greet the trader and surprised him in the midst of
a discussion with three clients. He recognized among them the local Taleb
[student of the faith], who with eyes bulging, gesticulated and drooled as if he
were defending himself against an assault by the devil. Upon his arrival, the
merchant's face lit up with a big smile and he addressed his fellows, suggesting
that they listen to the opinion of the young scholar who had just entered the university
on the subject at hand.
Apparently, the question was
about the moon landing, or to use a more academic phrase, the landing of a manned spacecraft on lunar
soil. Only the merchant supported the reality of the
event, confronted with three naysayers led by the Taleb, who was imbued
with the certitude of his convictions that such a feat could not be in the
human order of things. Only by the will of God could celestial creatures inhabit
the heavens and move about there.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
Men, according to him, having
stood on the earth's highest summit, in their immense naivety, now believe they
have reached the moon. This is how the religious man tries to put the actions
of humanity in competition with the divine power. He does so in order to rally the
naive and gullible faithful, who believe with all sincerity that they are
defending their attacked faith. The maneuver succeeded and the debate moved
from its proper sphere to one no longer among men, but among "blasphemers"
and the courageous defenders of the faith. Under these conditions, the battle was
lost long before it began.
But this attitude, which might
have been explainable back then, amid ignorance and poverty, is disarming when it
occurs today, at the start of the third millennium.
On the occasion of the 40th anniversary
of the lunar landing on July 21 2009, the Daily
Telegraph published the results
of an opinion poll on Apollo 11: one Briton in four thinks it was a hoax and
that humans never set foot on the moon.
Already in 1969, detractors
didn't fail to cast doubt on the event, and based on flaws in TV broadcast images
and the movement of the flag that seemed to be agitated by an improbable breeze
on the moon, concluded it was staged. The scientific
responses explaining the anomalies of light reflected off the surface of
the moon and the waving of the flag by the force of inertia during its
deployment did nothing to dissuade them.
With great sadness, Daily
Telegraph editor-in-chief Dickon Ross commented
on the situation: "The Apollo moon landing is mankind's most
outstanding engineering event so it's deeply worrying that such a large number
of people should think the first moon walk never happened and that the public's
belief in the legitimacy of science and technology seems to be declining over
time."
On that historic day of July
21, 1969, faced with the credulity of the eyes trained on him, he knew even
before he began that no argument would survive the trap that the Taleb had
laid. It wasn't a day for reason, so he contented himself by reminding his
audience that God has endowed man with intelligence and that the real blasphemy
would be to decline to take advantage of it - and he hurried home.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
That night, suffocating in
the little nook allotted him in the family home, he took the traditional thin
mattress he used as a bed and settled down in the courtyard under the stars.
Having seen him do this, his
mother called aloud to discourage him from sleeping under the moon. A moon that
just then, men were trodding upon. The next day, on the way downtown, he heard
music coming from a corner record shop. A Raï singer [Algerian folk singer]
lamented that her beloved was slow to come back, even as Apollo had quickly returned
from the moon. So the singer accepted scientific achievement, which just
goes to show that love doesn't always make one blind.
