Longtime Joshua's Army member Zeb Gardner earns a commendation and a mention in dispatches for unearthing another prime bit o' writing for your edification...Hoo-ah!
Stephen Brown at Rant's and Raves is an anthropology major who spent a great deal of time in Saudi Arabia and the Arab world. Here, he reflects on the cultural differences between them and westerners...and lays out why in his words, he feels `Our civilization is destroying theirs. We cannot share a world in peace. They understand this; we have yet to learn it.'
Here's a sample:
"Journalist Jill Carroll is back home now, and detailing her experiences as a captive of the jihadists in Iraq in the Christian Science Monitor.
( http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0814/p01s01-woiq.html ) I'm sure the details will prove fascinating, but the upshot of what she has learned is that the Islamists are - gasp! - different from us! Furthermore, I believe that she's beginning to suspect that they are really not very nice people. Oh whatever will this poor old world be FORCED to endure next?
Since the beginning of the Iraq phase of this conflict of civilizations, I've experienced the teeth-grinding frustration of watching both pro- and anti- Iraq sides make the exact same mistake - that of supposing that these people are bascially Americans in funny costumes. In this respect, George Bush and Michael Moore are equally clueless, as was Jill Carroll apparently.
I went to live and work in Saudi Arabia in 1998, and I "made my year" as expats there put it. That phrase means that I actually stuck out the whole year, instead of "running" from my contract, an occurrence so common that you only have to say "he did a runner" to explain why someone isn't showing up for work anymore. And while my experience wasn't nearly as unpleasant as Jill Carroll's, I could have told her a thing or two before she went to Iraq armed with her overflowing good will.
In Eastern Europe and the South Balkans, whenever I have gone to live in a place which I had formed opinions about, the actual experience of living there has always radically changed those opinions, sometimes into a completely contradictory ones. Most often, my academic research led me to form a beautifully coherent model which experience turned into a semi-coherent collection of observations and tentative conclusions.
In the case of the Kingdom, I went there with a certain sympathy for Arab grievances, a belief that America had earned a lot of hostility from "blowback" from our ham-handed interventionist foreign policy and support for Israel etc.
I came back with the gloomy opinion that over the long run we are going to have to hammer these people hard to get them to quit messing with Western Civilization. And by the way, among "rational, fair-minded" non-interventionist libertarians, not a damn one of them has asked me, "What in your experience caused you to change your mind?" Instead what I get are gratuitous insults followed by insufferably condescending lectures about how wrong I am.
So, with the caveat that one of the first things I learned was that the term “Arab” covers a lot of territory, here are some observations and some tentative conclusions about Arabs, more specifically about Arabs from the oil states about why we have misunderstood each other to the point that we are fighting a war with some of them and are pissing off the rest of them.
They think differently than we do."
This is a must read...and you can find it here: Rants and Raves: Observations on Arabs
5 comments:
This one really goes over the edge. I'm as pissed off at what some Muslims are doing as anyone, but this guy is saying that all Arabs are the same, that they are all anti-West. Certainly some of them are, perhaps most Arabs are, but that's not even the point. This guy is making them out to be as "the others" and when you think like that, it's very easy to commit atrocities.
Furthermore, that doesn't explain why people from the mid east can come here and live a normal, peaceful life. Don't get me wrong, it's plain to see that there is a very serious problem within Islam, but to say that they are all different, that they are all terrorists, is ignorance in its deepest form.
this guy comes very very close to hitting the nail on the head.
during my first two years of my engineering degree i was at a junior college that at the time heavily recruited m/e students. during this time i was the minority student in most of my classes. in my differential equations class it was myself & eighteen(18) iranians.
now i'm not going to make some absolut statement like "1 plus 1 equals 2". for the sake of discussion that does not matter. what does matter and what i saw first hand was that "if" the iranians got 2 out of that equation, that the manner of reasoning and the logic necessary to get to that were totally different. they actually "think" differently. this is the first time in the last 40 years that i have thought this, that i have heard another person say this.
after getting my degree, i worked with and finally the last ten(10) years for, this guy.
day in and day out i saw first hand just how differently the reasoning is.
an example: i got bids for some components we were going to use to build some equipment. i took the bids to PK. who then called the vendors himself. he got each of them to lower their respective prices. who did we place the order with? the vendor that lowered his price the biggest increment. the thing is, this vendor was still not the lowest price. we spent more money than we should have to buy something that someone lowered their price for the most.
there is a gap and/or leap in the reasoning, logic, and value of life that "these people" have.
nothing will convince me otherwise.
Hi Louie, Nazar.
Having something of a first hand familiarity with Islamic culture myself,I think that many of this man's remarks on the GENERAL mindset of Arabs were quite accurate.
That doesn't mean that there aren't exceptions..especially since many of them (but not all) came to the west to get away from that culture.
Remember also that the author is talking about his experience with MUSLIM culture,,and at least 50% of the immigrants from the Arab world to the west are Christian,who left for obvious reasons.
That doesn't mean that many muslim Arabs aren't nice people , as the author pointed out,merely that the cultural differences are so acute in general as to prohibit peaceful coexistence.
I think the remark he made about Arabs generally being easy to like but difficult to respect, while Israelis can frequently be difficult to like but much easier to respect is more acurate than not...since he is talking about first impressions.
With familiarity, many Arabs become much less likeable and many Israelis more so, while the respect quotient only remains the same.
Islam, of course, is the wild card, but you should be aware that it was created for a desert people with few accomplishments, a harsh environment and a MAJOR inferiority complex. Why else would the Qu'ran repeatedly ensure the adherants that the Arabs were `the best of all peoples'?
One of my correspondants, a PHD who lived in the Middle East for over half a century has theorized that one of the differences with the Arab/Muslim mindset is an astonishing tolerance for cruelty, brought on by their upbringing. - which explains honor killings, female circumcision which usuallyhappens around 5 years old or so, circumcision of males in their teenage years instead of in infancy, and rites like flagellation and Ashura, as shown above.
He may very well be on to something.
So this guy had a bad time in Saudi Arabia, what else is new? Is the muslim culture much different from ours? Yes. Is it inferior in every regard except possibly the degree of self-confidence? Without a doubt. I take exception at how this guy seems to generalize every Arab and for that matter, every Israeli in categories.
Hi Nazar,
The author does not SAY he had a bad time in Saudi Arabia - quite the reverse, in fact.
There ARE generalities one can make about a nation or culture, and there's also a common understanding that it IS a generality and thus not 100% applicable.
If that weren't so, disciplines like Anthropology and sociology would be impossible.
Actually, I disagree about the `self-confidence ' part, as I wrote.
In truth, Islamic culture could only have been designed fo rpeople with a deep inferiority complex..which is why they constantly need to bluster.
I think if you ever spent time in the Middle East, you might see some of the same things the author raised in his piece.
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