What’s Wrong with the Arab World? - Are the Arabs really this stupid?

National Review ^ | March 31, 2003 | Jonah Goldberg

[Ga Rob]

Gotcha!! Couldn't have said it better myself. That's why I don't care if I have to work 3 jobs and sleep only 4 hours in 24 for the rest of my life, my son will never step foot in one of these indoctrination centers!!

[happygrl]

The reality is that the Arab world is under the spiritual subjugation of a slavish cult. It's sacrement is murder and they will gladly sacrifice thier own children to it at any oportunity. The Arab hates the infidel more than he loves his own flesh and blood.

There are cults and there are cults.

This cult is more along the lines of the worship of Moloch and Baal, who required the sacrifice of children, and whose spiritual source was Satanic.

Quite honestly, there should be a quaratine of this evil; at minimum I don't want it in my country.

[lepton]

bookmark bump

[Ditto]

"For decades, Arab governments and the newspapers they control have been pouring gasoline on the fire of Arab resentment toward Israel as a way to deflect attention from their own corrupt and impoverished regimes."

That one simple sentence says all you really need to know about the Mideast.

[Ga Rob]

Yep...in a nut shell that is all you need to know.

"You are free to form your own opinions, but not your own facts"....Awesome quote, I try and say this all the time and never get the words togther without sounding like an a$$.

[happygrl]

Condaleeza Rice is not the problem with respect to advisors, although I emphatically endorse Daniel Pipes as an addition. The problem with advisors is that President Bush was initially being influenced by his father and the Arabist oilmen like James Baker, as evidenced by that sad spectacle of the Saudi Prince with his "Peace Plan" descending on the Crawford Ranch.

I think that Bush has better instincts than any previous president with regard to the Middle East; he refuses to meet with Arafat and has taken an enormous gamble with his vision for Iraq as the poster child for a democratic Arab country.

Whether it suceeds or not, Bush has broken from the mold of the past of endless negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis. He is attempting to sweep the proverbial rug out from under the Arabs and remodel the Middle East in a way that hasn't been attempted in 100 years.

This is what will either suceed or fail; not more aid, but the choice for democracy. If the Arabs take the bait, investment, not aid will follow.

If it fails, then Fortress Israel will be necessary and a kind of quarantine of the Arab world.

[Consort]

The Arab world view is a selective collective. They live from berm to berm.

[CaptainJustice]

Quite honestly, there should be a quaratine of this evil; at minimum I don't want it in my country.

As much as I cherish freedom of religion, I tend to agree. I say you are free to worship as long as your worship doesnt consist of innocent people dying. And unfortunately, it looks like the Islamikazes have won the day in Islamic culture.

Save an innocent, close the mosques.

[samtheman]

Logically I agree with your choice of terminology but on a gut level I can't help calling them stupid!

[samtheman]

You're right about shock therapy. But it has to be followed up by good information. Once we shock Iraq awake with freedom and liberation we've got to go over the heads of the state-run-media in the Arab countries and get the word out that what we did is good. Perhaps that means a big leaflet dropping campaign all across the Arab world. (While we're at it, we should drop some leaflets on US universities.)

[Ga Rob]

I hear ya!!

"Stupid is as Stupid does"

[Publius6961]

I'm no bean counter, but if our intent is to "massacre" Arabs, our tax dollars are being woefully misspent.

Dead on!

Every time I see thousands of sandmaggots "protesting", spittle flying everywhere, my first thought invariably is... what a great target!.

Yes, arab muslims are this stupid!

[Publius6961]

I think the author makes the mistake of assuming that all citizens of Arab nations are free, educated and a able to articulate their position.

Nice try but I can't buy that.
Those thousands in rabid crowds that organize daily are articulating their position just fine, and clearly enough for me.
I don't see any guns to their heads.

Ignorance of history and denial of reality are poor tools for argumentation.

[FITZ]

Haven't Arab-Muslims been breeding cousin-to-cousin for some time now? Close inbreeding doesn't help intelligence.

[samtheman]

And this is part of the problem. They act stupid, look stupid, are smart enough to realize that they appear stupid, which drives them into a frenzy of increasingly stupid activity.

[this_ol_patriot]

The thing I always wondered about is who are the Arab police in their respective countries? How come these guys are banging heads instead of protesting? What incentive do these guys have that separates them from the rabble

[this_ol_patriot]

..oops cut off the rest..

I have the Jordanian police in mind in particular. They seem to be very much into their jobs. If other Arabs are so incensed why aren't these guys? What is their price?

[nicollo]

In Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.E. Lawrence ("...of Arabia") describes the Arab character with enduring insight. Principally, Lawrence recognized the split Arab mind, one capable of holding opposing thoughts without tripping the mental circuit breaker. The same process applies to the Arab's faith, which he practices with promiscuity.

I think you will recognize in Lawrence the personalities and cultural traits of the modern Arab:

This people was black and white, not only in vision, but by inmost furnishing: black and white not merely in clarity, but in apposition. Their thoughts were at ease only in extremes. They inhabited superlatives by choice. Sometimes inconsistents seemed to possess them at once in joint sway; but they never compromised: they pursued the logic of several incompatible opinions to absurd ends, without perceiving the incongruity. With cool head and tranquil judgement, imperturbably unconscious of the flight, they oscillated from asymptote to asymptote. *

[* asymptote is from the Greek geometry term for lines that approach but never meet]

......

The Beduin could not look for God within him: he was too sure that he was within God. He could not conceive anything which was or was not God, Who alone was great; yet there was a homeliness, an everyday-ness of this climatic Arab God, who was their eating and their fighting and their lusting, the commonest of their thoughts, their familiar resource and companion, in a way impossible to those whose God is so wistfully veiled from them by despair of their carnal unworthiness of Him and by the decorum of formal worship. Arabs felt no incongruity in bringing God into the weaknesses and appetites of their least creditable causes. He was the most familiar of their words; and indeed we lost much eloquence when making Him the shortest and ugliest of our monosyllables.

......

Arabs could be swung on an idea as on a cord; for the unpledged allegiance of their minds made them obedient servants. ... Without a creed they could be taken to the four corners of the world (but not to heaven) by being shown the riches of earth and the pleasures of it; but if on the road, led in this fashion, they met the prophet of an idea, who had nowhere to lay his head and who depended for his food on charity or birds, then they would all leave their wealth for his inspiration. They were incorrigibly children of the idea, feckless and colour-blind, to whom body and spirit were for ever and inevitably opposed. Their mind was strange and dark, full of depressions and exaltations, lacking in rule, but with more of ardour and more fertile in belief than any other in the world. They were a people of starts, for whom the abstract was the strongest motive, the process of infinite courage and variety, and the end nothing.

......

...To most of them the word was never given; for those societies were pro-Arab only, willing to fight for nothing but Arab independence; and they could see no advantage in supporting the Allies rather than the Turks, since they did not believe our assurances that we would leave them free. Indeed, many of them preferred an Arabia united by Turkey in miserable subjection, to an Arabia divided up and slothful under the easier control of several European powers in spheres of influence.

Italics and typos mine.

[dreamerintexas]

sometimes it is really tough to be a conservative, republican, american, born in texas, from lebanese parents, when i read some of this stuff.

god bless the troops, the president and the usa....from a towel head in texas.....

[nicollo]

So you think Lawrence was wrong?

There is an over-riding cultural trait in Arab lands to maintain contradictary beliefs. Reminds one of American liberals, in fact.

You see it in the duplicity of Arafat, the House of Saud, and the Arab press, in general. You see it in the prevalent use of a religion to define all things good and bad, excusing its own bad while damning the good of others. You see it in the devestation of your old Beiruit, formerly one of the greatest cities and cultures of the world.

Get beyond reaction and tell me how Lawrence was wrong. He may well have described many other peoples and cultures, but we're talking about Arabs here.