Rumsfeld correct on Gulf Arab mentality

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1. David says:

   November 8, 2007 at 6:36 am

   doesn’t lumping all of a people together fall under a particular “ism” which makes those that do a particular “ist”?

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2. Elder of Ziyon says:

   November 8, 2007 at 6:45 am

   No. It is not racist to notice that different groups of people behave in different ways. One must be careful not to cross that line, but on the other hand it is naive in the extreme to assume that everyone thinks the same way.

   See this posting where I get into this topic in a little more detail.

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3. Shy Guy says:

   November 8, 2007 at 1:43 pm

   David Says:
   November 8th, 2007 at 6:36 am

   doesn’t lumping all of a people together fall under a particular “ism” which makes those that do a particular “ist”?

   Not the word you had in mind: Generalism. Here’s a rebuttal to your post:

   Pride and prejudice
   By HILLEL HALKIN

   Perhaps it’s naive to think that the Arab society I’m embroiled with in a century-old conflict is going to function any better because I’m nice to it.

   I was called a racist the other night. I’ve been thinking about it.

   I was sitting at a table at a dinner in Jerusalem of the board of governors of the American Jewish Committee, which was to be followed by a panel discussion in which I had been asked to participate. On my left was a rabbi, originally English, who lives in Israel, and next to him, a board member of liberal views.

   The rabbi, whom I knew, has been active for years in interfaith dialoguing with Christian and Muslim clergy. Engaged in conversation with the woman on my right, I wasn’t listening to what he and the board member were talking about – not, that is, until, during a lull with the woman, my left ear heard him say that Islam and the Arab world were being blamed these days for so many of the world’s problems.

   “With justification,” I said, turning in his direction. It’s a bad habit of mine: I sometimes find it hard to keep my mouth shut.

   It wasn’t a lengthy comment, but it was enough. The rabbi said something about the foolishness of generalizing about subjects as diverse as Arabs and Islam. I said that, diverse or not, they were depressing subjects. He asked what I meant. I said it was obvious what I meant: Wherever one looked at Arab and Muslim countries, one saw backwardness, fanaticism, and the inability to modernize and democratize.

   “You’re generalizing,” the rabbi repeated.

   “Of course I am,” I said. “It can’t be an accident that nearly all the Arab world is a sink of human misery. Its whole culture is screwed up.” ik

   “You’re a racist!” the board member exclaimed.

   The rabbi nodded. At last he had heard a generalization he agreed with.

   Am I?

   It would be easy to be indignant. Who, me? Me, wholived for a year in a black neighborhood in the American South and marched in Selma and went to jail with Martin Luther King? Racist?

   Too easy. In the first place, that was 40 years ago. And secondly, Arabs and Muslims aren’t Afro-Americans. And I really have been having, lately, some not-very-nice thoughts about them. Not about Arabs and Muslims as individuals – I honestly don’t think I have a problem there. I’ve never thought, and don’t think today, that, on an individual basis, the Arabs I’ve known have been any less dependable, intelligent, or honest than Jews, or that Jews are less likely to be scoundrels or idiots.

   When it comes to my feelings about someone, his being Arab has nothing to do with it. I’ve liked and trusted, and disliked and distrusted, Arabs and Jews pretty much equally. I’ve felt as comfortable in Arab homes as in Jewish ones, and I’ve been enraged when I’ve heard Jews say stupid things like “All Arabs are liars,” or “Every Arab will stab you in the back.” As if we lacked Jewish liars and back-stabbers!

   But that’s individually. Get a lot of Arabs together, in a crowd or in a country, and something happens to them, something not good. That’s my perception, as it is that of many Israelis.

   It’s also that of many non-Israelis. There is by now a vast literature, much of it written in recent years, about whether Arab and Islamic culture (the two things, of course, are not identical but neither are they easily differentiable) are intrinsically responsible for the authoritarianism, poverty, anger, self-pity, paranoia, lack of freedom, intellectual stagnation, religious fanaticism, repression of women, conformism, mob psychology, and near total absence of self-criticism that characterize most Arab countries today or whether these things are the product of political and economic circumstances and can change as they do.

   The issues are complex and weighted with implications – the possible outcome of the American intervention in Iraq being one of them – and it’s silly to pretend that there are simple answers.

   BUT WE in Israel have had our own special experience, and it has predisposed us to answers of our own. Many of us, despairing over the behavior of the Palestinians, as well as of their Arab supporters elsewhere, have given up all hope of our two societies being able to coexist – and when you give up hope, it’s natural to justify it by deciding that the other side is congenitally incorrigible and constitutionally incapable of changing. That, really, is what support for the security fence is all about. Many Israelis who once thought it was possible to get along with Arabs as a polity, rather than merely as individuals, have lost faith in this. I’m afraid to say I’m on the verge of becoming one of them.

   Does this make me prejudiced against Arabs? Perhaps it does. It’s certainly a convenient way of telling myself that I don’t have to change because, no matter what I do, I’ll still never be accepted by them. Prejudice is the cheapest form of self-satisfaction. If someone else is worse, you’re automatically better.

   But on the other hand, it may not be a question of prejudice at all. It may be simple realism. Perhaps Arab and Muslim societies, whatever their past glories and achievements, are maladapted to the modern world. Perhaps it’s laughably na ve to think that the Arab society I’m embroiled with in a century-old conflict is going to function any better because I’m nice to it.

   My ecumenical rabbi and my liberal board member, after all, are also prejudiced – against thinking. It’s not as if they’re saying, “Well, we’d like to believe that you’re wrong about Arabs and Muslims, but it’s not our beliefs that matter; it’s what history, sociology, and political science can tell us, so let’s look at them carefully before drawing any conclusions.” What they’re saying when they cry “racism” is “Stop! You can’t be right about Muslims and Arabs because .well, because you can’t be. If you are, we’ll have to re-examine our basic multicultural assumptions, and that’s something we’re not prepared to do.” There is no small amount of self-satisfaction in such political correctness, too.

   The rabbi was correct. Glib generalizations are dangerous. Iraq is not Palestine, and Tunisia is not Yemen, and Islamic Indonesia, Malaysia, and Turkey are not Arab. Each of these countries has its own features that may make it more or less successful in coping. Yet each also shares common traditions and a common faith – and not to generalize at all about these is equally absurd. It precludes the very possibility of rational thought, and rational is what we need to be right now.

   We shouldn’t be afraid to consider the possibility that if Jews adopt friendlier policies toward Arabs and Muslims, then Arabs and Muslims will adopt friendlier policies toward Jews, and we shouldn’t be afraid to consider the possibility that this is nonsense. There’s nothing racist about having an open mind.

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4. Global Voices Online » Israel: Rumsfeld Correct on Lazy Arabs says:

   November 10, 2007 at 12:31 am

   [...] blogger Aussie Dave shares his views with Rumsfeld on how lazy oil rich Gulf Arabs are. Share [...]

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