So Michael Jackson is innocent. I will take that at face value and move on to celebrate the triumph of law over rumor, scandal, personal vendettas, and even a prosecutor with an agenda. One of the jurors said on CNN that Jackson was probably not all too innocent in having children share his bed, but on force of the evidence presented, there was not enough to convict. That, my dear Arab reader, is the system in a nutshell.
The law has nothing to do with our personal feelings or inclinations. It has nothing to do with our moods and agendas. It certainly does not bow to power or celebrity. The law is based on evidence and nothing else.
Regardless of the applicable law in any given country, the mechanism the world watched through this trial holds the lesson and the technique that should be celebrated. A streak of doubt, thinner probably than a strand of hair, produced this verdict. Better to err on that side than to send someone to jail on 99 percent of the evidence.
In our world, alas, the electorate somehow produces a 99 percent “yea” vote every time they do not go to the polls. Our system is geared to accept this percentage as the penultimate in everything, including evidence. Mr. Jackson would be languishing in a jail cell had he been subjected to the 99 percent syndrome. Luckily for him, he was tried under a system that gives weight to the unclear or dissenting 1 percent.
Instead of contemplating this process as it unfolded, our writers in the Arabic press have taken up sword and pen and lashed out at Western decadence — as exemplified by the Jackson trial. First of all, Michael Jackson does not represent Western anything. Indeed, he hardly represents humanity as we know it. That aside, the press here wrote and re-wrote as Jackson was being tried and before a verdict was given.
In other words, they convicted Jackson without hearing the evidence. Moving from this detail to the wider world of argumentation and discussion, this is indicative of the way we think and the reason for failing to convince anyone when we argue any case. We declare and hardly present any evidence. No one believes us.
It is also highly hypocritical of us to take the artistic community of America as representing the whole nation or the whole civilization. If we are to do that, we should accept that our own artists represent us. And they are just as bad as any on the face of this earth. Our artists, however, are close to the people in power and are protected from everything, including the law.
We argue vehemently that Al-Qaeda is not representative of Islam or the Arabs. And we get very angry when told otherwise. Yet we do not hesitate to generalize to suit our own purposes. In the world of adulthood, if not the international stage itself, this behavior is considered infantile if not outright demented. It is time to grow up, I think.
As for the writers themselves, it is time they realized that there are others now who read what they write and they are not the same teachers who taught them or the professors who passed them. They are the real world and they are not inclined to put up with illiterate argumentation.
