October 14, 2006
Helping the West to Understand Arabs
Stephen Browne, a teacher and a writer and politically a Libertarian, authors a site titled "Rants and Raves". He worked for one year in Saudi Arabia, which changed his preconceptions of Arabs and led him to new observations about them. He provided these in his post appropriately titled "Observations on Arabs."
His views can be debated, but they offer a point to begin considering how we should interact with people from the Mideast and to help us minimize mistakes in our dealings with them. Stephen Browne's points are enumerated below, but his site provides expanded explanations after each one, which is worth reading. He begins with this qualifier:
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, more specifically about 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 are (ticking) off 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.
01. They don't think the same way we do.
02. When you meet them in just the right circumstances, they are a very likable people.
03. Their values are fundamentally different from ours, their self-esteem is derived from a different source.
04. Not only can they not build the infrastructure of a modern society, they can't maintain it either.
05. They do not think of obligations as running both ways.
06. In warfare, we think they are sneaky cowards, they think we are hypocrites.
07. In rhetoric, they don't mean to be taken seriously and they don't understand when we do.
08. They don't place the same value on an abstract conception of Truth as we do, they routinely believe things of breathtaking absurdity.
09. They do not have the same notion of cause and effect as we do.
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.
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.
12. Our civilization is destroying theirs. We cannot share a world in peace. They understand this; we have yet to learn it.
Interesting. Does understanding offer hope? Well, here's something else that he wrote in his introduction, which is consistent with point twelve:
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 Western Civilization.
Well, that sobers one up pretty quickly. Unfortunately, I had come to a similar, but unresearched, impression myself. I hope we're wrong.
Maybe, to help the Arabs, we can put together a list of "Observations About Westerners"...unless, that's one of the things that we're supposed to avoid. My first point would be "Westerners don't like people from the Mideast messing with them." I'm not sure that they would care or see a threat.
Is Browne's list on target? Is there any hope for understanding and peace between the Western world and the Mideast?
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Found at J-Walk Blog
Posted by Woody M. at October 14, 2006 10:50 AM | TrackBackIs there any hope for understanding and peace between the Western world and the Mideast?--Woody
Long answer --- The games not over until the last man is out; The fat lady is not yet singing; where there's life there's hope; can't we all just get along ?; etc.etc. etc.
Short answer-- No.
Posted by dougf at October 14, 2006 12:05 PM
Thank you for this post! NOW - to get the Koz kids to read it! ;-)
Posted by chrys at October 14, 2006 12:55 PM
What bothers me is that in our society we are slowly being required to understand them, yet, there is no such requirement put to them to understand us. I grow weary of trying to "understand" someone who has no such desire to reciprocate. That one-way street leads to capitulation - not understanding.
Posted by Oyster at October 15, 2006 06:53 AM
Oyster, see Point No. 5 above. Apparently, their side doesn't have the same left-wing politically correct attitude of diversity and acceptance of those who try to impose that standard on our society. Simply said, the radical Arabs don't have to play by the same rules of decency.
I don't think that the radical Arabs fear anything, as death to harm infidels, as they define them, is an honor. It's the same problem we had with Japanese kamakazi pilots, whose voluntary deaths were so foreign to our values. Of course, you know how we put a stop to the Japanese. Are the Arabs waiting for the same or just waiting until Iran and North Korea give them the bombs to that to us?
Unfortunately, other Arabs do fear something, but we can't use it as a weapon. They fear the radicals more than us, which accounts for much of their silence in condemning them.
Posted by Woody at October 15, 2006 09:04 AM
05. They do not think of obligations as running both ways.
This statement is inaccurate in a way that exposes what I see as a fundamental difference between Arab society and our own.
This difference is that Arabs reject loyalty to the nation-state as being inferior to loyalty to their clan. Arab society strongly believes in mutual obligation -- its just that obligation to the clan takes priority over obligation to outsiders, such that the obligations to outsiders are subject to cancellation at any time it comes into perceived conflict with obligations to one's clan.
This applies not only to Westerners, but even to other Arabs, even to other citizens of your country, who are not part of your clan. We've seen this demonstrated time and time again, most dramatically in massacres by Arabs against other Arabs.
In a similar fashion, obligations to fellow Muslims evidently have priority over obligations to non Muslims.
This rejection of the Western concept of nation-state is a root cause of the current conflict between Arabs and the West.
Posted by civil truth at October 15, 2006 06:30 PM
What explains why they always want to negotiate my invoice after I've done the work for them? (I've had some lawyers tell me to NEVER refer these folks to them again.)
Posted by Woody at October 15, 2006 06:35 PM
"What explains why they always want to negotiate my invoice after I've done the work for them?"
05. They do not think of obligations as running both ways.
What Civil Truth states (family-tribal loaylties outweighing nation-state) is certainly true, but simply does not address the point he failed to respond to. Arabs simply do NOT view obligations as a two-way street. Obligations always run UP the chain of command, not down. The people you've been dealing with, Woody, obviously feel you are way down on the chain of respect.
And that's a critical problem when you add the barbaric tribal customs of Arab culture to the barbaric brutality that lies at the root of Islam. Muslims view ALL non-Muslims as benath them (regardless of reality staring them in the face). They are perfectly willing to believe any contrafactual myth that supports their delusion of superiority, and that makes for a massive support for their inability to keep even wriotten contracts unless forced to--often by literal force of arms.
Is there hope for peace? With Arab Muslims? Of course there is. All that would take is for them to recognize and accept the reality that following the Butcher of Medina and adhering to their brutal, barbaric Arab culture is a poison what will either cause them to collapse from within or force the West—at last, if liberalism (the philkospohy of consolation for the west as it commits suicide, as james Burnham put it) fails to eviscorate us first—to put the Arabs down like mad dogs in simple self defense.
A few radioactive glass parking lots, strategically placed (beginning with Mecca, Medina, Riyadh, and on down the list) might, just might awaken them to their peril in time to avert utter aned complete destruction.
IF. If the West doesn't commit suicide first.
Posted by David at October 16, 2006 07:27 PM
David, I heard someone today ask, in the future, would Hispanic America stand up to Islamic Europe. The West is committing cultural suicide.
Posted by Woody at October 18, 2006 07:42 AM
