[Rhodes22-list] Interesting observations on Arabs

[Hank]

I am forwarding an e-mail from my Uncle Neil, who has lived extensively
overseas.  In it, he forwards a column by Stephen Browne.  I believe it
succinctly sums up why we have some many problems dealing with the Arab
world.  This is not a George Bush issue, it is an American issue as every
president has tried to deal with Arabs using our logic and way of thinking
and it just does not work.


Hank

I have lived in Iran and Muslim/Arab dominated Eritrea (Ethiopia at the
time) and can state that this guy is right on. The only thing he did not
cover adequately is the overwhelming inferiority complex most Arabs and Arab
governments have. By the way everything he says applies to Iran as well even
though they are not Arabs.



Neil F. Shearman

Dhimmitude is the status that Islamic law, the Sharia, mandates for
non-Muslims, primarily Jews and Christians. Dhimmis, "protected people," are
free to practice their religion in a Sharia regime, but are made subject to
a number of humiliating regulations designed to enforce the Qur'an's command
that they "feel themselves subdued" (Sura 9:29). This denial of equality of
rights and dignity remains part of the Sharia, and, as such, are part of the
law that global jihadists are laboring to impose everywhere, ultimately on
the entire human race.

9/11/2001 - We Must NEVER Forget!




 ------------------------------

Observations on Arabs

Column   by Stephen Browne - *Sep 29, 2006*

**

Journalist Jill Carroll is back home now, and
*detailing*<http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0814/p01s01-woiq.html>her
experiences as a captive of the jihadists in Iraq in the
*Christian Science Monitor*.

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.

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 basically Americans in funny costumes. In this respect, George
Bush and Michael Moore are equally clueless, as Jill Carroll apparently was
as well.

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.

I went to the Kingdom with a certain sympathy for Arab grievances and a
belief that America had earned a lot of hostility from "blowback" from our
ham-handed interventionist foreign policy and support for Israel.

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 us.

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, particularly 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 angering the rest of them. I suspect that many
of these also apply to Iranian Islamists, but I have never been there and
note that Iranians are not Arabs and have a different cultural history.

*1) They don't think the same way we do.*

No, I mean THEY REALLY DON'T THINK THE SAME WAY WE DO. Yes, yes, I know we
are all human and share the same human nature (perhaps the most disastrous
mistake of Marxism was the denial of this elementary fact). But within the
scope of that shared human nature, there are a lot of different ways to be
human.

We Americans have a basically open attitude to our fellow human beings and
sometimes forget this. Combined with the fact that most Americans are
linguistic idiots, we tend to assume that anyone who learns to speak English
learns to think like us.

*2) When you meet them in just the right circumstances, they are a very
likable people.*

Arabs are often easy to like, but difficult to respect — as opposed to
Israelis, who are often difficult to like but impossible not to respect.
>From their nomadic heritage they have a tradition of generosity and
hospitality to guests that warms the heart.

Arab shopkeepers have a talent for making you feel guilty that you didn't
buy anything (once you get past a dislike of having them lay hands on you).
Haggling is a social grace with them and when you ask the price, and agree
to the first one quoted, they will often come down on the price just out of
pity for your social ineptness.

This does not in the least affect the fact that no friendship with you is
ever going to remotely equal the obligations they have for their family,
tribe, or the community of the Believers.

*3) Their values are fundamentally different from ours; their self-esteem is
derived from a different source. *

And you know what? Theirs is PHONY. Yes I know, I'm making a cultural value
judgment, the cardinal sin when I was a grad student in Anthropology. With
us, the most important sources of self-esteem are useful work and the love
of a good woman. We value being good at something that requires skill (even
a hobby) and being of primary importance to somebody just because you are
who you are.

Work for them is something to be avoided. The basic forms of work: making
stuff, growing stuff, and moving stuff around, is taken care of by a class
of indentured servants, usually non-Arab Muslims from the Third World, and,
even today, by outright slaves. The Kingdom is a modern country that
abolished slavery in 1967, but old expats have reported seeing slave
auctions as late as 1981.

On one occasion a student of mine asked me, "Teacher, what do you call a man
who can be sold?" (Excellent use of the passive voice, I was proud of him.)
I explained, "He is called a slave, the condition is called slavery, the
verb is to enslave."

Later I had occasion to ask them about the headsman, the fellow who cuts
heads and hands off in the chop-chop square in front of the mosque on
Fridays. The reason I asked was that from my studies I knew that in tribal
societies converting from a tribal or feudal system into a system of common
laws, a man condemned to death by a court of law must often be executed by a
member of his own tribe or a complete outsider so that the execution does
not spark a blood feud.

In the Kingdom, the headsman is usually a Sudanese. My students explained,
"Yes teacher, he's a slave." i.e. he's a person of no importance and
therefore outside the web of obligations of vengeance.

The point being, in a slave society, work is not honorable (as De
Tocqueville pointed out) and cannot be a source of self-worth.

"Of conjugal love they know nothing." (Thomas Jefferson on the French
aristocracy.) In a land of arranged marriages, where the whole society is
geared towards a strict segregation of the sexes and women are at least
semi-chattels, romantic love is rare — and greatly desired.

In the Kingdom I found a few students with a consuming interest in romantic
poetry, whom I had to teach very discretely. Most of them were just obsessed
with sex, however. And interestingly, when visiting the West or the
fleshpots of Bahrain, they are said to have a tendency to fall in love with
the prostitutes they patronize.

Without honorable work, romantic love, or any accomplishments not
overshadowed by those the West, their sense of self-worth comes from being
the possessors of the One True Religion. And Allah doesn't seem to be
delivering on his promises of being exalted above the unbelievers these
days.

On the plus side, they are willing to spare you and absorb you into their
community as a respected member if you convert to the One True Religion. The
Brotherhood of Believers is a reality in the lands of Islam, and while it
sometimes falls short of the ideal (as does our democratic ideal) it is a
reality, and in its way admirable.

*4) They do not think of obligations as running both ways.*

With us, contractual and moral obligations tend to be equal and reciprocal.
They don't see it that way. The obligations of the superior to the inferior
do not equal those of the inferior to the superior. Obligations within a
family or clan outweigh all others.

That is why we had to take care not to sit members of the same clan near
each other during exams. If one asks another for help, he has to give it, in
spite of promises to the school, even when the clansman is a total stranger.


Obligations to other believers outweigh all obligations to unbelievers and
especially when the believers are fellow-Arabs. And in contracts with
unbelievers, the obligations of the Believer to the kaffir are not equal to
the obligations of the kaffir to the Believer.

Consider that Muslims in England have quite un-self-consciously demanded
that a pub near a mosque be shut down as offensive to their religion — in
spite of the fact that the pub had precedence by six hundred years! Or that
they demand the right to broadcast the prayer call on loudspeakers in London
while it is illegal to have a church at all in the Kingdom.

*5) Not only can they not build the infrastructure of a modern society, they
can't maintain it either. *

The very concept of "maintenance" is foreign to them. This is what drives
the foreign instructors in the Gulf absolutely mad. The per-capita richest
countries in the world resemble Eastern Europe or Latin America in the
tackiness and run-down appearance of the buildings and streets.

An electronics technician new to the Kingdom once told me how his first job
was to inspect a junction box in the desert. He had to pry it open with a
crowbar as it had evidently not been opened since it had been installed
several years earlier.

This is expressed in the inshallah philosophy, "If God wills it." A
Palestinian friend of mine explained to me that even the weather forecaster
will qualify his prediction, "It will rain tomorrow. Inshallah." Or, "I will
meet you tomorrow, inshallah." (But God understands that I am a very
unreliable person.)

I remember giving a pep talk to my students before a crucial exam, "You are
all going to pass the exam, right?" "Inshallah teacher." "No, no!" I
shouted, "No inshallah. Study!"



*6) In warfare, we think they are sneaky cowards and they think we are
hypocrites. *

In our civilization, when two men get ready to fight, either seriously or
just "woofing," what do they say? Some variation of "I'm going to kick your
butt."

Here's what I heard in the Kingdom, "Hey, don't mess with me, or someday
you'll get a knife in the back." I'm not saying that wouldn't happen to you
in the west, but most men would be ashamed to make a threat of that nature.

We don't understand that direct shock battle is not necessarily the law of
nature. When overwhelming force is brought to bear on them, they become
cringing and obsequious. To put it bluntly, they lie their heads off to get
you to turn your back on them.

Try to see it from their point of view — how else do you expect them to act
when you have the overwhelming force? You expect them to meet you on equal
terms when the situation is so unequal? What other tactics are available but
prevarication and delay, followed by a sneak attack?

Folks, what we call "terrorism" is quite close to the historically normal
way of warfare among these people.

*7) In rhetoric, they don't mean to be taken seriously and they don't
understand when we do. *

Thus, an ultimatum is often not taken seriously and reality comes as a
shock. Like many other Mediterranean peoples, Arabs don't seem to mind
making a scene in public and have a high blown sense of drama.

Paul Harvey once described how he had spent the Suez Crisis hiding under the
bed in his hotel room because of the blood-curdling radio broadcasts, before
he learned that Arabs talk like that when they're arguing over a taxi. "This
is my taxi and I will defend it to the death!" "You lie, it's mine and
rivers of blood will flow in the street before I give up my taxi!"

An Arab will scream at you, get into your personal space and sometimes kick
dirt on your shoe — and then react with utter surprise when an American
comes up and decks him. "What did I do?" To say the least, this makes
negotiations difficult.

*8) They don't place the same value on an abstract conception of Truth as we
do; they routinely believe things of breathtaking absurdity. *

I cannot begin to tell you some of the things I've heard from Gulf Arabs or
read in the English language press in the Kingdom. "The Jews want Medina
back." (Medina was a Jewish city in the time of the Prophet.) *The Protocols
of the Elders of Zion *has been turned into an immensely popular miniseries
on Egyptian TV.

The 'Blood Libel' (the medieval myth that Jews need the blood of non-Jewish
babies to celebrate Passover) is widely reported in the Arab press, and
widely believed. Allah will, of course, replenish the oil beneath Arabia
when it runs out.

I've been assured, by well-educated and otherwise sensible people, that
Winston Churchill was Jewish and that Anthony Quinn had been blacklisted and
would never work again after making *Lion of the Desert* (just before he
made that turkey with Kevin Costner).

*9) They do not have the same notion of cause and effect as we do. *

This involves some seriously weird implications about other people being
responsible for their misery because they ill-wished them. I've read in the
English-language press of the Kingdom serious admonitions against using
Black Magic to win an advantage in a dispute with a neighbor. The columnist
did not deny the efficacy of Black Magic, he just said it's forbidden to use
it.

On one occasion I was trying to explain the concept of "myth" to them and I
used the example of the djinn. I wasn't getting through to them at all and
was concerned that I had mangled the pronunciation of the word when it
dawned on me that the reason they didn't understand what I was getting at,
was that they had no doubt that the djinn were real.

*10) We take for granted that we are a dominant civilization still on the
way up. They are acutely aware that they are a civilization on the skids. *

Anyone who looks at the surviving architecture of Moorish Spain can tell
that Islamic civilization has seen better days. There was a time when
cultural transmission between Islam and the west went overwhelmingly from
them to us. (Note the recent discoveries of Sufi symbols engraved on the
structural members of European cathedrals.)

Now the situation is reversed, and it is humiliating for them.

*11) We think that everybody has a right to their own point of view; they
think that that idea is not only self-evidently absurd, but evil. *

In the west, and America more than anyplace else, we have internalized the
notion that everyone has a right to their own opinion, and that said opinion
is perfectly valid for them. When we meet a people who think that that idea
is insane and evil, we are sometimes left in the absurd position of
defending their stance as "perfectly valid for them."

It doesn't work that way for Arabs. God's Truth is laid out in some detail
in the Koran, and not to believe it is a sin. Yes, in America you can find
lots of Christian Fundamentalists who believe that God will cast you into
hell for holding the wrong opinions about Him, but even those who would make
their religion into an established church seldom desire the level of
detailed enforcement as the Kingdom does or the Taliban did.

*12) Our civilization is destroying theirs. We cannot share a world in
peace. They understand this; we have yet to learn it. *

Another culturally-imposed blindness we have is the notion that everybody
can get along with enough good will. There is absolutely no evidence to
support this and a great deal to oppose it.

Can the subjugation of women coexist with western civilization and western
media ubiquitous throughout the world? Can a pluralistic and tolerant
society be governed by Islamic law? Can a modern economy exist where
interest is forbidden and many forms of business risk-taking are considered
gambling, and thus forbidden?

Can a society that educates its young men by a process of rote recitation
produce critically thinking, technically educated men to build and operate a
modern economy? Can you even teach elementary concepts of maintenance to a
people who believe that anything that happens is *inshalla *(As God wills
it)?

To compete, or even just survive in the world they must become more like us
and less like themselves — and they know this.


*Stephen Browne <http://www.theatlasphere.com/directory/profile.php?id=2487>
** is a writer, editor, and teacher of English as a Second Language and
martial arts. He has been living and working in Eastern Europe since 1991,
though currently he is at the University of Oklahoma pursuing advanced
course work in journalism. He is the founder of the Liberty English Camp,
held annually in Lithuania, which brings students from all over Eastern
Europe for intensive English study using texts important to the history of
political liberty and free markets. He also keeps an up-to-date
**blog<http://rantsand.blogspot.com/>
**.*


On 10/25/06, Brad Haslett <flybrad at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Here's something you didn't read in the mainstream media.   Quds Day
> in Iran, is a holiday started by the Ayatollah Khomeini, the  guy who
> was in power when our hostages were taken a quarter of a century ago.
> Remember, the crisis that was led by the current Iranian 'leader'.
> Here is what he had to say leading up to the 'holiday'. - Brad
>
> President Ahmadinejad gave a series of speeches leading up to and on
> Quds Day. At an Iftar address on October 14, he discussed his
> "connection with God" and said: "The president of America is like us.
> That is, he too is inspired ... but [his] inspiration is of the
> satanic kind. Satan gives inspiration to the president of America."
>
> Mr. Ahmadinejad delivered his Quds Day speech under a banner that
> read, "Israel must be wiped off the face of the world." He described
> the holiday as "a day for confrontation between the Islamic faith with
> the global arrogance."
>
> In another speech, he said Israel was "doomed" and promised that the
> Israeli "regime will be gone, definitely."
>
> The words "the Zionist regime is a cancerous gland that needs to be
> uprooted" were written in a communiqué from the Iranian Foreign
> Ministry in honor of the holiday. Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki
> held a meeting for other Islamic countries' ambassadors to Iran and
> told them that Israel's existence would be shattered and that death
> bells were tolling for the Zionists. At the meeting, the Palestinian
> Arab ambassador to Tehran, Salah Zawawi, said, "The day for the
> liberation of Quds Day is close at hand."
> __________________________________________________
> Use Rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org, Help? www.rhodes22.org/list
>
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