My friends often say that I am not a fanatic, not an extremist and not liberal. I take it as a complement though, to be honest, I do not have a clue what they mean. I have consulted several dictionaries and found no helpful definitions for any of the three popular terms. Since I do not carry any deterrent label and I have not been relegated to any little respected category, my non-Arab friends feel comfortable asking me questions about my culture and my religion, or seeking my perspective on piping hot issues related to my part of the world.
Thought I welcome their curiosity and appreciate their interest in my culture, I politely decline to answer questions with a political flavor and I avoid discussing or commenting on politically controversial issues. Politics is an art that I do not master, a game, whose rules I cannot understand and a field full of landmines. There is nothing I dread more than stepping into dangerous zones.
Like most people, I follow the news and I keep track of the latest developments in my part of the world. I am deeply distressed at the many regrettable events that daily unfold on our lands and I do not like the increasing discrimination against Third World citizens in developed societies. I am sad at the mounting injustice around the globe, the messy political situation in the Middle East, the “selective” immigration policies that enrich the developed world, impoverish the developing societies, deprive poor countries of their human resources and widen the gap between the haves and have-nots. But by no means am I an authority on hard, entangled world policies.
Experience has taught me to keep silent whenever my views on a particular issue goes against the popular trend, or when I realize that my interpretation of a certain situation would win me more enemies than friends.
If you wish to follow my example, here are my recommendations:
— Do not confess that you take with “a ton” of salt many of the reports from the Middle East or about the Middle East and be careful not to shower with praise honest reporters who risk their lives to provide the international community with a true picture of the dangers, the cruelty and the carnage in war-ravished countries and in occupied lands.
— Never criticize the media and the press when they embellish the truth, distort facts, overlook or gloss over significant events or present the world with a distorted picture of reality.
— Never say that you suspect that many politicians take a firm oath to conceal the truth, the whole truth and to tell the public anything, except the truth.
— Never mention that you believe a few media people accumulate great wealth by skillfully falsifying facts and dressing lies in the mantel of absolute truth.
— Keep quiet if you think that the fake intellectuals who hurl unfair criticism at their societies and indulge in strong condemnation of their own cultures have been bribed, or hope to be bribed.
— Never admit that you share the popular view in the Muslim world that a campaign has been launched to tarnish the image of Islam, promote fear of its teachings, encourage its followers to renounce it, to change their cultural skins and to give up their deeply cherished traditions.
— If you suspect that a devilish force is working hard to set the Muslim world and the West on a course of fast collision, pray to God Almighty that we all be saved.
— Since the turn of the century, the Western media and the Western press have focused on Arab and Muslim women and shown unprecedented sympathy for their plight. Their dress, their lifestyle, their habits, their upbringing, their education and their participation or lack of it in the social and political life of their societies have been closely scrutinized and regularly monitored.
If you are surprised at the sudden, sustained interest in the Muslim fair sex, or if you suspect that the sympathy is a Trojan horse, hide your feelings and refrain from describing the inexplicable interest “an obsession”; otherwise you would be labeled narrow-minded, old-fashioned or an enemy of progress and modernization.
— It is a truth universally acknowledged (to borrow Jane Austen’s famous words) that our outlook on life, our aspirations and our dreams are formed by our upbringing and our life experiences. It is also an undisputed fact that no two persons hold identical views or have identical wishes. Yet every now and then a “liberated” Muslim man or woman takes center stage, claims to represent the silent intelligent Muslim majority around the globe and wins hearts and minds by bashing at Islam and Muslims. Whenever this happens, keep quiet and stay calm.
— We usually object to “representation without consultation” and we hate it when a person speaks on our behalf without permission. However, wisdom dictates that Arab and Muslim women remain silent when a member of their fair sex appoints herself their spokesperson, expresses views that they vehemently oppose and asks for rights, which they may not necessarily want. Women, who dare show signs of disapproval or discontent, will be exposed to the wrath of “the media darling” and subjected to vicious attacks from her male and female supporters.
The other day two of my friends sought my opinion of Ms. H., a Muslim woman who was interviewed in a popular TV program not long ago and by whom they were totally charmed. They described her as “bright”, “young”, “articulate”, “attractive” “open-minded”, “liberated”, and “Westernized”. They praised her courage, commended her eloquence and admired her determination to wage war on the discrimination against Muslim women in the uncivilized Muslim world.
I had watched the program in question and I had read much of what was written about Ms. H in the Western press; yet I pretended never to have heard her name. How could I say that I doubted the truth of her stories (and of similar stories by a number of “bright”, “young”, “articulate”, “attractive” “open-minded”, “liberated”, and “Westernized” Muslim women)? I could not even describe the account of her narrow escape from her country and the endless threats on her life before she found refuge in the West as a figment of her imagination.
It was my turn to put a question to my friends. I asked for an explanation as to why Muslim women, who sever all links with their culture, give up their traditions, criticize their faith and have little compassion for their country of origin are keen to embrace the cause of women in distant lands, yet turn a blind eye to the discrimination that is often practiced against Arab and Muslim women in their adopted societies?
It is much easier to ask questions than to answer them and much wiser to remain silent when you are short of a convincing reply.
Todate my simple question remains unanswered.
