The Need for Truth
I got this essay in an email from one of the ME editors I work with who does groups mailings now and then. Its a brutally critical assesment of the Arab mentality by Youssef M. Ibrahim:
Outside View: Fear dominant in Arab psyche
Published 10/26/2004 7:29 AM
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Oct. 26 (UPI) — Fear is deeply ingrained
in the Arab psyche, a gene implanted in the Arab mind no matter where
it lives. There is a fear to speak, write, read or even hear truth.
It is so contagious in fact that it affects Arab immigrants who carry
this home-grown fear with them to new domiciles wherever they go,
hiding behind it to avoid melting into the societies they took refuge
in. There and here fear hangs in the air, blocking oxygen to the Arab
mind, dominating thinking processes, surfacing in a self-censored
media, nervous jokes, absurd commentary that wastes hours describing
black as white. It even affects expatriates and visitors who come and go, so much that many of the foreigners who live among us in this Arab world become a version of “Lawrence of Arabia,” striving to be more Arab than the Arabs.
No one is born this way, of course. Fear is an environmentally acquired
characteristic. At home it is the product of unilateral rule,
hereditary power in republics as well as monarchial systems, rejection
of democratic culture, dominance of the male persona which eliminates women as equal partners and a demeaning embrace of hand-kissing instead of merit as a way to climb the social ladder.
For the immigrant Arab community, these fears have been more
complicated ever since the al-Qaida attacks on New York and Washington on Sept. 11 2001, by the Western adoption of systematic persecution and singling out of Arabs and Muslims as potential terrorists, deepening racism and the treatment of others as second-class citizens. The sum total of it is that Arab children are growing up thinking the eminently absurd is normal. In America today, an Arab-American community of some 3 to 4 million people has no voice because it is afraid. Having a voice means attracting attention, perhaps trouble, most Arabs will tell you, which is a total failure in understanding of how democracies function.
In Europe, where some 35 million Arabs live, most have crawled back
into cultural caves – speaking Arabic, wearing the hijab, eating
Arabic and thinking Arabic instead of opening up to the societies that
embraced them.
But fear of change is not a way of life, nor is it convenient nowadays.
The Arab and Muslim worlds are undergoing massive transformations that
demand massive adjustments. Hordes of enemies are poised at the gates,
and huge internal pressure for change lies within. Our governments, our
schools, our social systems, our economies and our very sense of
ethical conduct are all failed models whose shelf life is over.
If Arab writers and pundits cannot say this, document it, analyze it
and focus on it without fear, we cannot even begin to reform. And if we
cannot reform, what is left of Arab civilization will evaporate making
place for a new agenda set by someone else. This is happening in Iraq,
and it will happen to every society that blocks the oxygen to its
people.
Even when they digest news, Arab media filter it through the prism of fear, disguised as political correctness, politeness and information
ministry rules, so much so that facts become fairly tales.
The whole world, for example, has heard about an ongoing intense
political crisis in Lebanon and the United Nations Security Council
pressures on Syria to get out of there. But the official Arab media,
very anxious not to offend “Arab brothers,” will tell you there is no
crisis there, that both Lebanon and Syria are blessed with “fraternal” relations, and the whole thing is manufactured by both France and the United States who are “meddling” in internal Lebanese-Syrian relations.
Never mind that the Lebanese constitution has been altered to allow for
the first time a Lebanese president to stay in office beyond his term,
joining the broad ranks of Arab presidents-for-life, or that a very
prominent Lebanese prime minister, none less than Rafik Al-Hariri, has
resigned in protest.
The French have an expression “langue de bois,” or wooden tongue, to
describe this condition. It accurately profiles Arab-speak.
How many times did you read about “honor killing,” which is meant to
describe harrowing acts of bloody mayhem by emotionally deformed males
who take a knife to cut the throat of their wives, sisters or distant
female relatives often on the whim of a rumor about misbehaving or not
marrying someone the family designated? One fails to see the origin of
the word “honor” where cowardice is more appropriate. How many times
did you read about presidents who keep winning new terms with 99
percent majorities as having undergone an “election”? Elections are not
won with 99 percent majorities. We say of countries where women are not
allowed to vote, choose their future partners in life, drive, travel,
or run for office, that they are preserving “Arab and Islamic
tradition” when they are flagrantly violating the human rights of half
their population.
Arab media has been very good in dishing out criticism of American
double standards, which are many. We talk of bias for Israel and
against Muslims, and all that is correct. But let us not loose
perspective here. America is a robust democracy with a bad president on
top, and a poor candidate challenging him. But this very same America
and its pundits have described both Bush and Kerry as liars, failures,
flip-flops, double-dealers and elitists. Bush has no magical powers. He
is here today but will be gone this year or in four years. Criticizing
him is ordinary. Nobody goes to jail for it. There will be no midnight
visitors. Can we say as much for the Arab order?
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This essay first appeared in Gulf News.
