I read last week a scathing critique by the American journalist Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker magazine of a book called The Arab Mind by Raphael Patai.
Dr. Patai, who had two doctorates and spoke fluent Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic published the book in 1976 (he died in 1996). The eminent doctor was so fluent in Arabic that he taught it for a number of years. Therefore ignorance of Arabic cannot explain the errors in his book.
Patai says that because every noun in Arabic is either masculine or feminine “there are no words for ‘child’, ‘baby’, ‘infant’, ‘toddler’ and so on.” Patai argues that because of this linguistic structure, there are no child-rearing practices in Arab culture, only boy-rearing or girl-rearing. Therefore the Arabs imprint their children with unusually sexist attitudes from the day they are born.
It is incredible for someone who knows Arabic like Patai to make such statements of total mendacity in innocence.
He goes on to say, “Comforting and soothing of the baby boy often takes the form of handling his genitals. Mother, grandmother, other female relatives and visitors as well as his older siblings, will play with the penis of the boy, not only to soothe him but simply to make him smile.”
Say what?
But wait! There is more.
He later says, “For the Arab mind it is of relatively little concern whether two past actions, events or situations recalled were simultaneous or whether one of them preceded the other. It is almost as if the past were one huge undifferentiated entity.”
He goes on in this vein to the end of his book concentrating on the Arabs alleged unique obsession with sex.
Patai claimed “incurable romanticism” about the Arabs and a “lifelong attachment to Araby.”
Think what he would have written if he had not liked us.
What is alarming about this book is that it is being taught as a set text in all US military schools and academies. The Pentagon distributes this book to military officers stationed in the Arab world as a manual to help them understand and deal with the people in this region. In addition, the US government uses the book to train CIA and FBI officers and State Department personnel.
And we thought that it was natural American stupidity, when all along the poor lambs were being misled by this so-called expert and many others like him.
