When Westerners visit Arab and Muslim countries, they usually stay in Western hotels, visit national museums and historical sites, eat in local restaurants, shop in local stores, but rarely interact with the men and women, who truly represent the people of the land.
Last month Ms. Karen Hughes, US undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, visited Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. It was her first visit to Muslim countries and her first venture into one of the most volatile regions in the world. She had a chance to meet and listen to veiled and unveiled Muslim women, and Muslim women had an opportunity to air their thoughts and feelings and express their complaints and views on a number of hot, thorny issues to the senior American official entrusted with the task of promoting the values and improving the image of her country in the world.
The level of honesty, assertiveness and self-confidence demonstrated by Saudi women must have impressed Mrs. Hughes and the views and the criticism of the Turkish women activists must have surprised her.
She must have been impressed to see for herself that Saudi women were intelligent, outspoken, articulate, honest, socially active, politically aware, happy in their skins and proud of their cultural identity.
For example, after Ms. Hughes had expressed her hope that Saudi women would be able to drive and “fully participate in society” as much as they do in America, a woman in the audience replied that the fact that women in Saudi Arabia did not vote and did not drive did not mean that they were treated unfairly or imprisoned in their homes.
When a woman challenged her views saying, “The general image of the Arab woman is that she isn’t happy. Well, we are all pretty happy”, the hall resounded with the applause of the female audience.
Ms. Hughes must have been taken aback when in Turkey, a secular state with a large Muslim population, women expressed their anger at the invasion of Iraq and their sharp criticism of US policy in the Middle East. One Turkish woman said, “This war is really, really bringing your positive efforts to the level of zero”. Another added,” war makes the rights of women completely erased and poverty comes after war — and women pay the price.”
Unlike Ms. Hughes, Western media and Western press rarely meet people who represent the silent majority in Arab and Muslim countries. On the contrary, when Western journalists and reporters try to assess the feelings and know the views of Arabs and Muslims on particular social or political issues, or on American policies in the Middle East they often focus on the exception and ignore the rule. Thus instead of interviewing and quoting men and women who express the feelings, mood and attitude prevalent in their societies, they interview individuals, whose way of life deviates from the norm and whose political and social views are embraced by a tiny, vocal, unpopular minority.
The failure or the lack of interest Western press and media have often demonstrated in meeting men and women who truly represent the Arab people and the Muslim community, has led to a misunderstanding of Islam, Muslims and Arabs in America and the West.
In fact, certain sections of the print and electronic media, known for their hostility to Islam, Muslims and Arabs deliberately present the readers and the audience with odd examples and distorted facts. They fuel Islamophobia and promote prejudices. They propagate and underscore the false idea that Islam teaches terrorism and Arabs and Muslims hate America and the West. They hamper or destroy the genuine, well-meaning efforts that promote dialogue and friendship between the West and the Muslim world.
They describe Arabs and Muslims as staunch enemies of freedom, democracy and Western civilization. They portray Arab and Muslim men as uncouth and Arab and Muslim women as second-class citizens. They often photograph ugly, cross-eyed men with bushy beards and a harsh, threatening look, or a veiled Muslim woman walking a mile behind her husband and project them as the rule, not the exception.
They portray the majority of Muslim women as illiterate, miserable creatures, leading a life of servitude and yearning for Western-style freedom. They spare no effort to prove that the veil is a political symbol, not a religious duty. They photograph women in clothes that show more than they hide and describe them as “happy, liberated Muslims” and good role models for Muslim girls. They interview men and women, who have severed contact with their root, their motherland and their faith. They give them the floor to level criticism at Islam, Arabs and Muslims. They present Islam as a system, like fascism or communism that the West must fight and defeat. .
Worse still, a number of expatriates who spend a few years working in Arab or Muslin countries, live in compounds, mingle with non-Arabs and non-Muslims, acquire a reputation for being specialists on Arab, Islamic or Middle East Affairs after they return to their home countries. They make a fortune by writing and publishing books full of savory, cogent, imaginary stories, but lacking in meat and truth.
Books and articles on Saudi women are particularly popular. They usually portray the Saudi fair sex as helpless, miserable creatures, battered by their husbands, mistreated by the men in their families, anxious to drop the veil, ready to fly in the face of Muslim traditions, eager to dump Islamic values, cannot wait to vote, to run for elections and to get behind the wheel of their cars.
No wonder many in the West underestimate the important role of Islam in the life of its followers. No wonder many believe that Muslims women are slaves, Arab men barbarians, and Muslims terrorists or potential terrorists and a threat to be eliminated.
No wonder many fail to realize that the anger in the hearts of Arabs and Muslims is not promoted by a hatred for America, a lack of respect for the Western culture or by a desire to change the Western and the American way of life, but by the daily death and slaughter of their brothers and sisters in Iraq and Palestine, the instability and injustice in the Middle East, the attempts to create artificial divisions among Muslims, the endeavors to change the Muslim and Arab way of life, and the numerous plans to erase the Arab culture and weaken the Muslim identity.
The words of the Muslim women in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey were a reflection of a truth that the Western press and the media often ignore, distort or conceal. They may have not been music to some ears, but surely they were appreciated by Ms. Hughes.
