An Afternoon with Al-Jazeera
Yesterday, we had a reporter from Al-Jazeera visit our apartment to ostensibly give a presentation on the Arab World after 9/11. After this guy opened with Huntington's Clash of Civilizations, a theory with so many holes in, it's not even worth addressing, I knew the presentation would go nowhere. Soon afterwards, I *found out* that the Jews had left their holy land a long time ago because they wanted to make money because that's all they cared about. After this comment left a third of the Moroccans in the room nodding their heads (admirably, not the AIESECers), I figured it was time to leave. Knowing that A: this guy's english was poor, and B: he wouldn't answer any of my questions directly, I decided to put on the Johnny Cash and lie down for about two hours, all the while hearing loud voices in the main room of the apartment.
After the session, I talked to the rest of the Americans, who came out rather frustrated because the directness of their questions was not reciprocated with direct and clear answers. As the rest went to lay down, I thought more about what this guy had been saying. And once again, I'm ot trying to be Tom Friedman...
The way I see it is this - there needs to be a paradigm shift in regards to how we communicate cross-culturally. One of the big limiters to this ideal state of open discourse is open minds and open education. Any Arab who comes into a conversation on the West and the East with such strongly preconceived notions (don't worry, I'm not only picking on Arabs, everybody needs to be more open) about the enemy, the opposition, or whatever one will term it will never come away with anything positive.
The problem with this prevalent victim mentality in the Middle East is that when you're a victim, you're owed redress. Everything else is tertiary until your the wrongs against you have been righted. The proliferation of this victim mentality on both sides, and the accompanying stereotypes and falsehoods about one another makes the necessary discourse literally impossible.
Possibly because I come from an academic background, where I believe strongly in information (I don't even want to tally how many books I've had to read as a history major), I hold this view. Whatever the reason, I don't really know how to effect change in this type of circumstance. All I can hope for is that people get a chance to talk with other people, no matter what preconceived notions there are (ie: I maybe should have stuck around for the discussion, despite the headache it would have caused...). I was going to end with that immortal, ahem, Rodney King quote, but instead, I'm just going to think about this more. I think misinformation is the greatest sin in this new age of information.
After the session, I talked to the rest of the Americans, who came out rather frustrated because the directness of their questions was not reciprocated with direct and clear answers. As the rest went to lay down, I thought more about what this guy had been saying. And once again, I'm ot trying to be Tom Friedman...
The way I see it is this - there needs to be a paradigm shift in regards to how we communicate cross-culturally. One of the big limiters to this ideal state of open discourse is open minds and open education. Any Arab who comes into a conversation on the West and the East with such strongly preconceived notions (don't worry, I'm not only picking on Arabs, everybody needs to be more open) about the enemy, the opposition, or whatever one will term it will never come away with anything positive.
The problem with this prevalent victim mentality in the Middle East is that when you're a victim, you're owed redress. Everything else is tertiary until your the wrongs against you have been righted. The proliferation of this victim mentality on both sides, and the accompanying stereotypes and falsehoods about one another makes the necessary discourse literally impossible.
Possibly because I come from an academic background, where I believe strongly in information (I don't even want to tally how many books I've had to read as a history major), I hold this view. Whatever the reason, I don't really know how to effect change in this type of circumstance. All I can hope for is that people get a chance to talk with other people, no matter what preconceived notions there are (ie: I maybe should have stuck around for the discussion, despite the headache it would have caused...). I was going to end with that immortal, ahem, Rodney King quote, but instead, I'm just going to think about this more. I think misinformation is the greatest sin in this new age of information.
posted by Isaac at 3:13 AM
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