Posted on 11/28/2001 3:38:10 AM PST by Mr. Mulliner
Because of the Americans
FrontPageMagazine.com | November 28, 2001
MANY OF MY CONVERSATIONS with Arab acquaintances about the recent war in Afghanistan have forced me to revisit an issue that has always mystified me.
There is a consistent theme that I tend to hear from many Arabs: that Americans are behind most if not all of the problems in the Middle East. Americans are even behind the problems that hurt their own interests.
I couldnt count how many Arab taxi drivers have explained to me that the Americans themselves orchestrated the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Husseins invasion of Kuwait, and so on and so forth. The argument is always that the Americans control everything and that they create enemies and their own misfortunes to legitimize their imperialism and military build-up.
In my latest conversation with an Arab friend, it was explained to me that the Americans were themselves behind the Sept. 11 tragedy.
As we have lately become aware, this mysterious fantasy has a large-scale popularity in the Arab world. Why?
There are a few phenomena that we might want to consider in searching for some answers to this enigma.
While there is obviously diversity in the Arab world, Arabs do accept a certain general feeling about themselves. They see the world through the perspective of all Arabs being brothers children of one single nation. And this is why Arabs strongly believe that there is such a thing as an Arab personality, which they call shakhsiyya.
In The Arab Mind, scholar Raphael Patai demonstrates how the Arab language is much more based on its poetic and musical quality than on the valid use of past and present tenses which are often mixed up. In the Arab culture, therefore, there is a great appreciation of gesture, but not necessarily an emphasis on logic, or on the relationship between cause and effect. When learning to speak, Arab children quickly adopt the specific and popular stylistic devices known as mubalagha (exaggeration) and tawkid (overassertion). There is often confusion in Arab society over the difference between words and action. Saying that you are going to do something can often become much more significant than actually doing it. Words serve as substitutes for acts.
Muslim fatalism blends with this cultural trait. It stresses that it does not make much sense for the Muslim to act in certain situations, since much is in "Allahs will" anyway. As a result, there is often little motivation for Arabs to take action for change or to evaluate critically their own circumstances.
In addition to this, there is a general aversion to manual labor in the Arab world, particularly to the kind that involves dirtying ones hands. While the Protestant work ethic sees work as a good thing, the Middle Eastern ethic sees work as a curse and something that should be avoided. The Arabian Nights, for instance, includes many examples of this belief system.
The result is that many Arabs often do not end up feeling a sense of responsibility for their own failures. To admit that a problem is ones own fault brings humiliation upon one's self and also shames the group's honor. Thus, the obsession with avoiding shame cancels out the possibility of truthful self-reflection and examination.
When a problem is confronted in the Arab world, a hidden enemy is often imagined. Consequently the inability of Arab countries to create democracies, let alone functional economic and social societies, are read by many Arabs as personal humiliations that are caused by enemies.
Many Arabs simply grow up believing that success in their societies is simply just supposed to materialize, even if no one is actually taking any individual initiative to bring it about. If problems develop (i.e. economic backwardness, dictatorship etc.), they are believed to be caused by enemies (i.e. the evil Americans). If there is a solution to these problems, it lies in destroying those causing the problems (i.e. the evil Americans). The idea that problems can be solved by Arab individuals themselves, and that the citizens must actually participate in solving their own societys problems, is an idea that is incomprehensible to significant portions of the Arab population.
It becomes understandable why anti-Bin Laden demonstrations are virtually non-existent in the Arab world today. Bin Laden is simply getting America back for all of the shame and humiliation that Arabs must live with everyday in despotic and impotent societies that have emerged not because of anything that Arabs have done, but because of what they view the Americans and obviously the Jews as having perpetrated.
The Koran in it's original Arabic is the only true Koran. All translations are merely commentary. That is why an arab can contradict what is written in the book.
No one who does not skilfully read the original is deemed capable of knowing what it says. When Westerners quote the murderous
passages, a Moslem denies them and says that the translation from which those passages were taken is false, that the translation
is wrong and that the Westerner is misreading the translation.
Actually, they do- among themselves. They are very big on theater, too, in their conflicts with the West.
Works for me and it sounds like a plan that will work for them.
They are not generally immoral. They are amoral. Immorality presupposes a belief in right conduct and thought. Amorality is nonrecognition of a concept of "right" other than immediate personal pleasure.
As an example, conservative Muslim societies seclude women so men will not see them and be tempted to engage in lustful thoughts or deeds. Liberal Western societies allow women to go about uncovered so men have personal responsibility to resist temptation.
Not to quibble too much, but I have to defer to C.S. Lewis on this point, and disagree. As men may disagree whether you should have one wife or four, they all seem to agree you shouldn't have any woman you want. The people in question are still filled with indignation when a breech of moral tenets is to their detriment. Not aggression, or anger at the inconvenience: indignation. Thus, they still accept the rules. That's what makes their tactics work. Both sides subscribe to same general set of rules (natural law), but only one side feels bound by them.
In short, they want you to play by the rules when it benefits them, while they concoct a plausible (to them, and that's all that matters) exception when it hinders them.
Is there a psyco-babble term appropriate to describe the shabby remnants of American culture? The refusal to admit to ourselves that cause and effect may have played even the tiniest role in the September 11th disaster? The continued shouting at the top of our lungs (similar to early forest dwellers who shouted and beat on their shields to drown out their terror at seeing the full moon) that they hate us because we are so free--even as that chimeral freedom is erased by a Congress that doesn't even bother to read the documents that make it official; preferring instead to give them horribly Orwellian names like "The Patriot Act of 2001".
Is it worse--or more dangerous--to live in a somnolent metaphoric reality, going nowhere and blaming others?
Or, to crash around the world bombing, destroying, calling it humanitarianism and freedom-building; setting up permanent military installations; engaging in massive "reconstruction" projects of countires and cultures of which we know little or nothing--even as our own culture withers and dies in fast motion right before our eyes--a death encouraged and supported by our Power Elite? An Elite in whom we obsessively invest more power and money in spite of their manifest loathing of everything we are and our ancestors were?
No. Let's talk about the mind of the Ayrab and all it's shortcomings. And can we look forward to an article by Mr Glazov called "The mind of the Jew" anytime soon? Anything to keep us from the contemplation of that terrifying abyss know as "the Mind of the American.....
Animals don't possess the capability for self-reflection, nor do they change behavior unless they are forced to.
But animals are animals.
Kit.
Why don't you descend from that ivory tower you occupy and ask Afghan women about "the Mind of the American?"
Or the Jews who were liberated from Nazi concentration camps?
You don't even attempt to disguise your contempt for your fellow citizens.
It must irritate you to no end that your lame arguments that America is responsible for the 9/11 attacks is meeting with scorn by all but the looney left and the even loonier libertarians. Lurking behind comments like yours is some kind of perverse satisfaction that cretins flying planes into buildings gave Americans what they deserve.
Is it worse--or more dangerous--to live in a somnolent metaphoric reality, going nowhere and blaming others?
Even as you spit on the "metaphoric reality" of terrorism inflicted on this country, young men are about to die defending you against that which you deride.
I don't know why they bother.
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