Their homes, families, friends, jobs...their LIVES are over there. The thirty Saudi men I worked with (and my husband agreed) were all basic JoeSchmoes from Kokomo.
The older ones (my boss included) were illiterate. The younger ones could read and write...and that was a major goal of the KSA, to educate their people.
They are STILL Bedouins, with their simple faith and their simple lives. Petroleum alters their culture but doesn't change it much. Please don't bash me for saying something NOT negative about those people. I did work with them for five years and got to know them as human beings, not just Muslim Arabs. They DO think differently. Their logic IS different.
Maybe you don't believe me. We lived over there five YEARS, not five months. One can learn a lot about a culture in that time. It wasn't all good or all bad. It was, basically, just like life everywhere. They worried about their children, their old age, their 18-year-old sons who didn't want to go to school, work or do anything but "cruise around" in their brand new American BIG, FAST cars.
I saw a lot of similarities with OUR own 18-year-old sons. Please don't BASH me for saying that either. It was true.
Thanks.
Thanks for the very nice post.
A whole lot of freepers seem to think all Muslims are religious fanatics and that they are all working together to subvert America and the West.
I’ve never believed that. Most are in many ways very similar to the rest of us, as you eloquently point out.
The problem is that there are a whole bunch of them who do want to kill us all, with the subsidiary problem that a great many of those who don’t will stand with their “brothers” who do in a confrontation.
I also agree that they think differently about certain things than we do. I’ve always found it odd that “progressives” always assume that the highest ambition of every person around the world is to be just like upper-class educated American or European liberals. Despite their professed belief in diversity, they don’t really believe in it.
Some people just have different value systems than we do.