Camus versus Qamis

Wearing a qamis in the intimacy of one’s spiritual life is a respectable, almost poetic gesture: a simple, white garment, serene, like a spiritual skin one puts on to pray, meditate, or find oneself again. But when it becomes an identity costume in societies where it holds no cultural meaning, it ceases to be a personal expression and becomes a symbol of alignment. It turns into a sign of belonging, sometimes of defiance, or even a refuge from the anxiety of inner emptiness. That is where the shadow of inexistentialism begins — no longer choosing to exist for oneself, but surrendering to a movement that thinks on one’s behalf.

Albert Camus would likely have seen in this attitude the very opposite of inner freedom. He, who wrote that “the only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion” (Notebooks), would have perceived in the ostentatious wearing of the qamis — when it is a sign of ideology and not of intimate faith — a form of flight from freedom, an abdication before the absurd.

For inexistentialism is precisely that: dissolving oneself into a dogmatic framework that offers an identity crutch, a ready-made meaning, instead of facing the responsibility of building one’s own. Camus, in The Myth of Sisyphus, describes the absurd man as one who, refusing metaphysical illusions, nonetheless chooses to live fully. The one who wears the qamis to give himself an essence, to fill a void, falls into the opposite trap: he lets dogma dictate what he is, instead of feeding it from within.

This is not a critique of religion, but of its instrumentalization. Dogma, when it stays in its rightful place — that of a moral and spiritual framework freely chosen — can enrich existence. It soothes, structures, inspires. But when its artifices turn into uniforms of conformity, it betrays its essence. Camus would have said it differently: “To misname things is to add to the misfortune of the world.” Here, to misname religion is to make it a spectacle, a flag, when it should remain a silent dialogue between man and his mystery.

The analysis must therefore go beyond simplistic discourses about “non-integration” or “civilizational conflict.” It is not clothing that threatens cohesion, but the thought that hides behind it. The qamis can be a spiritual garment, or a symbol of alienation — it all depends on the consciousness that wears it.

Likewise, terrorism is not the expression of faith but the pathology of broken souls, of minds consumed by injustice and hatred. To see it as a war of civilizations is to fall into the trap of simplification — the very thing Camus rejected. In The Rebel, he wrote: “I rebel, therefore we exist.” Rebellion, for Camus, is never hatred; it is a lucid awakening against the absurd, not a destruction. Terrorism, on the contrary, is not revolt but nihilism.

Thus, Camus versus Qamis does not oppose the West to the East, but freedom to submission, lucidity to resignation. To wear a qamis by spiritual choice is an act of inner identity. To wear it as a banner is to surrender to a collective thought that suffocates the self.

Camus would likely have invited each person to rediscover the essential nakedness of the free human being — that which comes before uniforms and symbols. “I do not believe in God and I am not an atheist,” he said. This seemingly paradoxical phrase says it all: to reject narrow frameworks in order to remain faithful to the human experience — fragile, but true.