After reading Mona Abaza’s sharply argued response to my article, 'Fear and Loathing, Arab Cultures Need a Strategy of Resistance', I feel the need to clarify three points in my text: Firstly, I do not regard Hetata & Mernissi as belonging to one group and Soueif & Said as belonging to the other. On the contrary, I think they exemplify four very different trajectories. Indeed, they might almost stand as ideal types, all of which I regard as pure Arab intellectuals – not in exile, not in between and not “out of place”. In other words, I would argue in favour of breaking up the artificial dichotomy between, for example, Hetata’s literature (local) and Soueif’s (translocal) writing. Furthermore, I regard Mernissi’s call “Why I will not go to the West” as a courageous, exemplary proposal for a strategy of resistance against Westernized globalization. I did not in the least mean to say that it was isolationist, far from it – I just worded this badly. Secondly, if there is a double standard, it is not, in my view, the "simplistic dichotomy of the North-South divide" as Mona Abaza put it. It is rather the gap between the radical, critical position Hetata takes against the processes of globalization on the one hand and the personal use to which he puts these same processes on the other. Far from admitting this, he even criticises others for profiting from the same thing. Thirdly: Yes, I agree with Mona Abaza that we all need strategies of resistance but a) we need to know what we want to defend (and I personally think that Arab literature published by French publishing houses is worth defending and should not be defamed) and b) this is done in the West, as I tried to argue with my example on French radio stations. So, I personally do not need to stand up for Western cultural products. My intention was to show that Arab voices have become authoritative even in times of the expanding hegemon and its racist propaganda. Here and there Arab cultural production has become a benchmark. One latest development: the energetic combination of Raï and Salsa by Raï-X. Another example on the political level: the freeing of the Moroccan Journalist Ali Lmrabet which would not have been possible without swift action on the part of the international community. In short, even on the level of human rights, Arab societies gain from processes which are at the heart of globalization, as Sherif Hetata experienced himself. In short, I could have called my article 'Let us be proud of cultural and political successes, the Arab world would not have achieved with appropriating processes of political and cultural globalization.' Sonja Hegasy