Some thoughts on Islam
I did not write this, but I find it important insight for people like me.
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Rants and Raves
Saturday, September 09, 2006
Observations on Arabs
Journalist Jill Carroll is back home now, and detailing her
experiences as a captive of the jihadists in Iraq in the Christian
Science Monitor.
( http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0814/p01s01-woiq.html ) I'm sure the
details will prove fascinating, but the upshot of what she has learned
is that the Islamists are - gasp! - different from us! Furthermore, I
believe that she's beginning to suspect that they are really not very
nice people. Oh whatever will this poor old world be FORCED to endure
next?
Since the beginning of the Iraq phase of this conflict of
civilizations, I've experienced the teeth-grinding frustration of
watching both pro- and anti- Iraq sides make the exact same mistake -
that of supposing that these people are bascially Americans in funny
costumes. In this respect, George Bush and Michael Moore are equally
clueless, as was Jill Carroll apparently.
I went to live and work in Saudi Arabia in 1998, and I "made my year"
as expats there put it. That phrase means that I actually stuck out
the whole year, instead of "running" from my contract, an occurrence
so common that you only have to say "he did a runner" to explain why
someone isn't showing up for work anymore. And while my experience
wasn't nearly as unpleasant as Jill Carroll's, I could have told her a
thing or two before she went to Iraq armed with her overflowing good
will.
In Eastern Europe and the South Balkans, whenever I have gone to live
in a place which I had formed opinions about, the actual experience of
living there has always radically changed those opinions, sometimes
into a completely contradictory ones. Most often, my academic research
led me to form a beautifully coherent model which experience turned
into a semi-coherent collection of observations and tentative
conclusions.
In the case of the Kingdom, I went there with a certain sympathy for
Arab grievances, a belief that America had earned a lot of hostility
from "blowback" from our ham-handed interventionist foreign policy and
support for Israel etc.
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. And by the way, among "rational,
fair-minded" non-interventionist libertarians, not a damn one of them
has asked me, "What in your experience caused you to change your
mind?" Instead what I get are gratuitous insults followed by
insufferably condescending lectures about how wrong I am.
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
pissing 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.
1) They don't think the same way we do.
No, I mean THEY REALLY DON'T THINK THE SAME WAY WE DO. Yes, yes, I
know we are all human and share the same human nature (perhaps the
most disastrous mistake of Marxism was the denial of this elementary
fact). But within the scope of that shared human nature, there are a
lot of different ways to be human. We Americans have a basically open
attitude to our fellow human beings and sometimes forget this.
Combined with the fact that most Americans are linguistic idiots, we
tend to assume that anyone who learns to speak English learns to think
like us.
2) When you meet them in just the right circumstances, they are a very
likable people.
Arabs are often easy to like, but difficult to respect - as opposed to
Israelis, who are often difficult to like but impossible not to
respect. From their nomadic heritage they have a tradition of
generosity and hospitality to guests that warms the heart. Arab
shopkeepers have a talent for making you feel guilty that you didn't
buy anything (once you get past a dislike of having them lay hands on
you). Haggling is a social grace with them and when you ask the price,
and agree to the first one quoted, they will often come down on the
price just out of pity for your social ineptness. This does not in the
least affect the fact that no friendship with you is ever going to
remotely equal the obligations they have for their family, tribe or
the community of the Believers.
3) Their values are fundamentally different from ours, their
self-esteem is derived from a different source.
And you know what? Theirs is PHONY. Yes I know, I'm making a cultural
value judgment, the cardinal sin when I was a grad student in
Anthropology. With us, the most important sources of self-esteem are
useful work and the love of a good woman. Being good at something that
requires skill (even a hobby) and being of primary importance to
somebody just because you are who you are. Work for them, is something
to be avoided. The basic forms of work: making stuff, growing stuff
and moving stuff around, is taken care of by a class of indentured
servants, usually non-Arab Muslims from the Third World, and even
today, by outright slaves. The Kingdom is a modern country, they
abolished slavery in 1967, but old expats have reported seeing slave
auctions as late as 1981.
On one occasion a student of mine asked me, "Teacher, what do you call
a man who can be sold?" (Excellent use of the passive voice, I was
proud of him.) I explained, "He is called a slave, the condition is
called slavery, the verb is to enslave." Later I had occasion to ask
them about the headsman, the fellow who cuts heads and hands off in
chop-chop square in front of the mosque on Fridays. The reason I asked
was that from my studies I knew that in tribal societies converting
from a tribal or feudal system into a system of common laws, a man
condemned to death by a court of law must often be executed by a
member of his own tribe, or a complete outsider so that the execution
does not spark a blood feud. In the Kingdom the headsman is usually a
Sudanese. My students explained, "Yes teacher, he's a slave." i.e.
he's a person of no importance and therefore outside the web of
obligations of vengeance.
The point being, in a slave society, work is not honorable (as De
Tocqueville pointed out) and cannot be a source of self-worth.
In Tunisia I saw a population doing their own work and I have worked
with a fair number of Jordanians engaged in skilled labor and the
professions. Note that neither is an oil state and I believe their
contribution to the ranks of terrorists is far less than the oil-rich
countries. It is difficult to argue that poverty is the driving cause
of terrorism.
"Of conjugal love they know nothing." (Thomas Jefferson on the French
aristocracy.) In a land of arranged marriages, where the whole society
is geared towards a strict segregation of the sexes and women are at
least semi-chattels, romantic love is rare – and greatly desired. In
the Kingdom I found a few students with a consuming interest in
romantic poetry, whom I had to teach very discretely. Most of them
were just obsessed with sex however. And interestingly, when visiting
the West or the fleshpots of Bahrain, they are said to have a tendency
to fall in love with the prostitutes they patronize.
Without honorable work, romantic love or any accomplishments not
overshadowed by those the West, their sense of self-worth comes from
being the possessors of the One True Religion. And Allah doesn't seem
to be delivering on his promises of being exalted above the
unbelievers these days.
On the plus side, they are willing to spare you and absorb you into
their community as a respected member if you convert to the One True
Religion. The Brotherhood of Believers is a reality in the lands of
Islam, and while it sometimes falls short of the ideal (as does our
democratic ideal) it is a reality, and in its way admirable.
4) Not only can they not build the infrastructure of a modern society,
they can't maintain it either.
The very concept of "maintenance" is foreign to them. This is what
drives the foreign instructors in the Gulf absolutely mad. The per
capita richest countries in the world resemble Eastern Europe or Latin
America in the tackiness and run-down appearance of the buildings and
streets. An electronics technician new to the Kingdom once told me how
his first job was to inspect a junction box in the desert. He had to
pry it open with a crowbar as it had evidently not been opened since
it had been installed several years earlier.
This is expressed in the inshallah philosophy, "If God wills it." A
Palestinian friend of mine explained to me that even the weather
forecaster will qualify his prediction, "It will rain tomorrow.
Inshallah." Or, "I will meet you tomorrow, inshallah." (But God
understands that I am a very unreliable person.)
I remember giving a pep talk to my students before a crucial exam,
"You are all going to pass the exam, right?" "Inshallah teacher." "No,
no!" I shouted, "No inshallah. Study!"
This was once also characteristic of the former communist countries.
Work was indifferently performed and maintenance was a real problem. A
factory owner in Poland told me that machines he bought from Sweden
lasted only half as long in Poland as they did in Sweden because of
poor maintenance. However as soon as people were assured that they
could keep a reasonable amount of what they worked for, people
reverted to their true cultural patterns, worked plenty hard and
started to take care of their tools and the public spaces.
5) They do not think of obligations as running both ways.
With us, contractual and moral obligations tend to be equal and
reciprocal. They don't see it that way. The obligations of the
superior to the inferior do not equal those of the inferior to the
superior. Obligations within a family or clan outweigh all others.
That is why we had to take care not to sit members of the same clan
near each other during exams. If one asks another for help, he has to
give it. In spite of promises to the school and even when the clansman
is a total stranger. Obligations to other believers outweigh all
obligations to unbelievers and especially when the believers are
fellow-Arabs. And in contracts with unbelievers, the obligations of
the Believer to the kaffir are not equal to the obligations of the
kaffir to the Believer.
Consider that Muslims in England have quite un-selfconsciously
demanded that a pub near a Mosque be shut down as offensive to their
religion – in spite of the fact that the pub had precedence by six
hundred years! Or that they demanded the right to broadcast the prayer
call on loudspeakers in London while it is illegal to have a church at
all in the Kingdom.
6) In warfare, we think they are sneaky cowards, they think we are hypocrites.
In our civilization, when two men get down, either seriously or just
"woofing", what do they say? Some variation of "I'm going to kick your
ass." Am I right? Here's what I heard in the Kingdom, "Hey, don't f**k
with me, or someday you get a knife in the back." I'm not saying that
wouldn't happen to you in the West, but most men would be ashamed to
make a threat of that nature. We don't understand that direct shock
battle is not necessarily the law of nature. When overwhelming force
is brought to bear on them, they become cringing and obsequious. To
put it bluntly, they lie their heads off to get you to turn your back
on them. Try to see it from their point of view – how else do you
expect them to act when you have the overwhelming force? You expect
them to meet you on equal terms when the situation is so unequal? What
other tactics are available but prevarication and delay followed by a
sneak attack?
Folks, what we call "terrorism" is quite close to the historically
normal way of warfare among these people.
7) In rhetoric, they don't mean to be taken seriously and they don't
understand when we do.
Thus an ultimatum is often not taken seriously and the reality comes
as a surprise. Remember the "Mother of all Battles"? Like many other
Mediterranean peoples, Arabs don't seem to mind making a scene in
public and have a high blown sense of drama. Paul Harvey once
described how he had spent the Suez Crisis hiding under the bed in his
hotel room because of the blood-curdling radio broadcasts, before he
learned that Arabs talk like that when they're arguing over a taxi.
"This is my taxi and I will defend it to the death!" "You lie, it's
mine and rivers of blood will flow in the street before I give up my
taxi!"
An Arab will scream at you, get into your personal space and sometimes
kick dirt on your shoe – and they react with utter surprise when an
American up and decks him. "What did I do?" To say the least, this
makes negotiations difficult.
8) They don't place the same value on an abstract conception of Truth
as we do, they routinely believe things of breathtaking absurdity.
I cannot begin to tell you of some of the things I've heard from Gulf
Arabs or read in the English language press in the Kingdom. "The Jews
want Medina back." (Medina was a Jewish city in the time of the
Prophet.) The Protocols of the Elders of Zion has been turned into an
immensely popular miniseries on Egyptian TV. The Blood Libel (the
medieval myth that Jews need the blood of non-Jewish babies to
celebrate Passover) is widely reported in the Arab press, and widely
believed. Allah will replenish the oil beneath Arabia when it runs
out.
I've been assured, by well-educated and otherwise sensible people that
Winston Churchill was Jewish and that Anthony Quinn had been
blacklisted and would never work again after making Lion of the Desert
(just before he made that turkey with Kevin Costner).
9) They do not have the same notion of cause and effect as we do.
This involves some seriously weird stuff about other people being
responsible for their misery because they ill-wished them. I've read
in the English-language press of the Kingdom serious admonitions
against using Black Magic to win an advantage in a dispute with a
neighbor. The columnist did not deny the efficacy of Black Magic, he
just said it's forbidden to use it. On one occasion I was trying to
explain the concept of "myth" to them and I used the example of the
djinn. I wasn't getting through to them at all and was concerned that
I had mangled the pronunciation of the word when it dawned on me that
the reason they didn't understand what I was getting at, was that they
had no doubt that the djinn were real.
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.
Anyone who looks at the surviving architecture of Moorish Spain can
tell that Islamic civilization has seen better days. There was a time
when cultural transmission between Islam and the West went
overwhelmingly from them to us. (Note the recent discoveries of Sufi
symbols engraved on the structural members of European cathedrals.)
Now the situation is reversed, and it is humiliating for them.
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.
In the West, and America more than anyplace else, we have internalized
the notion that everyone has a right to their own opinion, and that
said opinion is perfectly valid for them. When we meet a people who
think that that idea is insane and evil, we are sometimes left in the
absurd position of defending their idea as "perfectly valid for them".
Doesn't work that way for them, God's Truth is laid out in some detail
in the Koran, and not to believe it is a sin. I know I know, in
America you can find lots of Christian Fundamentalists who believe
that God will cast you into hell for holding the wrong opinions about
Him, but even those who would make their religion into an established
church seldom desire the level of enforcement in such detail as the
Kingdom does or the Taliban did.
12) Our civilization is destroying theirs. We cannot share a world in
peace. They understand this; we have yet to learn it.
Another culturally-imposed blindness we have is the notion that
everybody can get along with enough good will. There is absolutely no
evidence to support this and a great deal to oppose it. Can the
subjugation of women coexist with Western Civilization with Western
media ubiquitous throughout the world? Can a pluralistic and tolerant
society be governed by Islamic law? Can a modern economy exist where
interest is forbidden and many forms of business risk-taking are
considered gambling, and thus forbidden? Can a society that educates
its young men by a process of rote recitation produce critically
thinking, technically educated men to build and operate a modern
economy? Can you even teach elementary concepts of maintenance to a
people who believe that anything that happens is inshalla (As God will
it)? To compete, or even just survive in the world they must become
more like us and less like themselves – and they know this.
posted by Will Von Wizzlepig @ 1:11 PM
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