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 couldn’t count how many Arab taxi drivers have explained to me that the Americans themselves orchestrated the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Hussein’s 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 "Allah’s 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 one’s 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 one’s 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 society’s 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.
I keep seeing subtle evidence that the so-called "Arab oppression of women" is not what it seems.