[yt_dropcap type=”square” font=”” size=”14″ color=”#000″ background=”#fff” ] T [/yt_dropcap] he Egyptian liberal intellectual, ‘Amr Isma’il accuses that the main issue is Arab culture that externalizes the guilt, irresponsibility, and inability to change the culture (www.elaph.com, October 31, 2004 – MEMRI, November 19, 2004, No. 816): “Why can’t the Arabs see things as the rest of the world? Why do we always feel that someone is conspiring against us, and that he is the cause of our problems, our cultural and economic backwardness? Why are we not able to criticize ourselves? Why do we talk by means of bullets, car bombs, and violence of suicide bombing?
Why do we kill and slit throats in the name of Allah and at the same time protest angrily when others depict Muslims as terrorists? Why are we the only nation that still uses religion, Islam, and the name of Allah in everything: politics, economics, and science? We kill in the name of Allah, we blow up people in the name of Allah, and we slit throats in the name of Islam. Why we do not ask ourselves why no other religious group perpetrates these acts of atrocity? Why we do not ask ourselves what are the roots to our extremist thinking and who should be blame for? Why we always blame others of intervening in our internal affairs, and we do not look at our deeds?
Nonie Darwish, an Egyptian American intellectual, declares: ‘Arab’ means never having to say you are sorry (http://www.think-israel.com): “To expect Arab and Muslim leadership to apologize is a reflection of the West Naïve and wrong expectations of Arab culture. In the Arab world, to take responsibility and say sorry is taken as unmanly sign of weakness that means more trouble. Those who admit guilt are given no mercy and end up taking all the blame and being brutally punished. It is a norm for Arabs to deny a fact and blame others, rather than admit to the wrongdoing and apologize.
In our politically correct liberal culture, the media and academia would urge to a collective self-psychoanalysis, to uncover the root causes of how we could have caused such evil behavior. This is not the case of the Arab world. How can anyone expect them to apologize for deep-rooted cultural and religious mission to defeat or kill infidels? Most Arabs still blame Israel for 9/11.
How can we expect these countries to sincerely cooperate with the international community to end terror and its barbaric brutality? Americans should stop judging other countries with the American value system, and especially stop expecting Arab-Islamic culture to respond rationally according to Western standards. Arab media never miss an opportunity to give the masses their daily dose of fear of America. What we see out of the Arab world is anger, hatred, revenge and a culture out of control.
The Tunisian intellectual and thinker, al-‘Afif al-Akhdar, analyzes and criticizes Arab cultural values and characters (www.elaph.com: MEMRI, May 4, 2003. Nos. 439, 499): All the peoples of the world are moving forward along the course of history towards globalization, a society of knowledge, and political modernization – all but the Arabs, who race in the opposite direction. The Eastern European countries have moved peacefully with speed from murderous Stalinist totalitarianism to democracy, from economic backwardness to continuing economic growth.
The Muslims are moving with rapid steps from backwardness into sub-backwardness, and from poverty into sub-poverty. The peoples of mankind are governed by the law of progress, while the Muslims are governed by the law of regression.
The insane obsession with vengeance has robbed the Muslims minds of the ability to think reasonably. That is why they are incapable of identifying their real problems and defining their political, educational and social priorities. In contrast to almost all other societies, Arab-Muslim societies are completely closed and irrational.
Their obscurantist religious culture is a terrible obstacle hindering their transition to a society less closed, less oppressive and less hostile towards the individual, to the woman, to the non-Muslim, towards the rational and the modern. This deep-rooted culture of tribal vengeance in Arab collective consciousness is a fundamental driving force, which has transmuted this consciousness into a fixated, vengeful mentality, instead of transforming it into far-sighted thought and self-criticism.
The culture of tribal vengeance haunts not only in our relations with the outside, but also our relations with each other, between Arab countries and within each country, from honor crimes to tribal and factional strife and state wars. The hysteria of vengeance on the West and on Israel has disastrous results. The policy of vengeance that prevails especially among the influential elites has banished any rational policy from the domestic decision making, just as people afflicted with depression.
al-‘Afif al-Akhdar discusses Arab identity crisis and its education (www.elaph.com., June 15, 2003- MEMRI Special Dispatch Nos. 499 and 518): Why is it that our countries are among the wealthiest in natural resources and poorest in human resources? Why does the world’s human knowledge double every three years while with us, what multiplies several times over is illiteracy, ideological fear and mental paralysis? Why expressions of tolerance, moderation, rationalism, and appeasement horrify us, and in cries for vengeance, we all dance the war dance? Why do other people love life, while we love death and violence, slaughter and suicide, and even call it heroism and martyrdom?
Distorted thoughts lead the Muslim to think that he belongs to ‘the best nation created for human beings’ that Allah designated it to guide and lead humanity. This is the reason why the Muslims find it impossible to imitate others and learn from them. Ethnocentrism leads them to believe that since the language of the Arabs is the mother of all languages, anyone not completely fluent in it considered an animal and a barbarian, and that since its culture is the most divine, and its religion is the only true religion, then the other cultures are unworthy and other religions are mere vanity, and both deserve to disappear or to be subjugated.
Muslims still believe that Islam is the supreme religion, and the Arab nation is the most important of all nations. However, the Arabs’ repeated defeats tell them that they are the last in line among the nations. This contrast-ridden discourse is the source of the Arabs psychological and social ills, and of their grave identity crisis.
The religious media and education to this situation provide an easy answer: Since we have given up our religion, Allah has given us up. Therefore, let us set out on a campaign of return to Allah and to the Golden Age, riding on a belt of explosives. Religious education systematically produces generations of people stricken by the madness of pure religious identity, such as the racial purity madness of the Nazis. For Nazism, this meant that the ‘master’ Aryan race had to destroy the ‘inferior’ races. In Islam, it means that the only ‘true’ religion must triumph over the other religions that are ‘false,’ and their fate is Hell. This belief of Islamic identity led them to megalomania, fanaticism, self-segregation, and terrorism.
The obligation to fight the infidels has created a psychological barrier between Muslim Arabs and modern culture, and has led them to an internalization of the view that modern institutions, sciences, universal values, and technology created by the infidels are heresy too.
Why did Germany and Japan not retaliate for their wounds after World War II with responses similar to ours? The answer is, because religious narcissism was not internalized in their modern cultures and adopting secularism prevented them hallucinatory responses. They imitate the West, assimilating into it, while we fought with it, struggled against it, and became locked in on our own values. The amok-struck Islam, the Islam of ‘conflict with the infidels’ and military vengeance against them, has lost its ability to unfurl the real problems openly and search for realistic solutions. This ‘conflict with the infidels’ is the hard core of Islamic fanaticism and the main reason for the conduct of terrorism.
Arab-Muslims must give up the requirement to confront the infidels, not to use jihad until the Day of Judgment; to abandon the loyalty to the Qur’anic ‘Verses of the Sword;’ to change the attitude towards the rational, the women, and the non-Muslims; to give-up the dreams of liberating Palestine to the last grain of earth, and regaining Andalusia. Yet, the most important is the total change in educational teachings of the youth in which the Arab world remains locked.
The author and journalist, Dr. Shaker al-Nabulsi (www.rezgar.com, August 14, 2004: MEMRI, September 20, 2004. No. 786) condemned the growing support for terrorism and extremism in the Arab world, and the rejection of moderation and reason.
If the Arabs had today a well-burnished mirror in which they can see themselves, they would be stricken by fear and panic at the sight of themselves. The image is that we have become the most terrorist nation and the greatest spillers of blood in the world. The image is that we have become a nation devoid of reason.
What happened to the Arabs in Egypt, Algeria, Saudi-Arabia, Iraq, Palestine, Morocco, Yemen, and in other countries? Why have the Arabs gone crazy in such a manner? Is it a result of pervasive corruption prevalent in governmental institutions? Did this occur because of the dark religious educational system which incites to war against modernity, democracy, and permits the spilling of the blood of its supporters?
Did this occur as a result of the fact that the intellectuals have distorted the truth? Is it a result of the frightening spread of illiteracy and cultural ignorance in the Arab world that the vast majority does not read, does not know, and does not think? Is it a result of the proliferation of political totems in Arab life such as Abd al-Nasser or Saddam Hussein, or in counterfeit religious totems such as Bin Laden, al-Zarqawi, and many others?
Did this occur as a result of the fact that terrorist groups have huge incomes from charity organizations streaming in daily from good Muslims from the world? Did this occur as a result of the huge sums that the terrorists obtain by hashish and opium trade? The Islamists who hijacked Islam are now leading the flocks of Arabs towards the annihilation of human history.
Indeed, the Arabs have turned into slaves of blood-drenched religious totems. The Arabs think in a medieval fashion regarding politics, society, economy, and education. They are still living in the Middle-Ages, and they are slaves to a medieval mentality and to thinkers from the Middle-Ages. The Arabs have distanced themselves from reason, and speak to the world with the sword, the axe, the knife, and armies of masked bandits.
Journalist and former Kuwaiti communications minister Dr. Sa’d bin Tefla (Jordanian TV, June 8, 2004: MEMRI, August 24, 2004. No. 770), rejects the notion of blaming Zionism and imperialism of the Arab harsh and fanatic situation:
Zionism and imperialism have nothing to do with our culture of violence and religious extremism. Slaughter, anarchy, and bloodshed in no way resemble Jihad according to the Shari’ah. The anarchy and terrorism are indications of a culture of collective suicide. This culture of violence emanates from the spread of the extremist religious trend.
We are all responsible for this culture, and that Zionism and Imperialism have nothing to do with it. It is no less wrong to say that violence is the result of occupation, since it has cultural roots. Unfortunately, this culture of violence has existed before the Americans came to Iraq and the Gulf; before the Israeli occupation of Palestine; and before the American occupation of Afghanistan.
The number killed in Algeria surpasses the number of Palestinians killed by Israel. Before Iraq was occupied, there was violence that killed over one million Iraqis, Iranians, Kurds, and Kuwaitis. This was not done by the Zionists or America, but by Arabs and Muslims.
The reformist Arab diplomat who writes under the pseudonym Abu Ahmad Mustafa (al-Sharq Al-Awsat, September 13, 2003) quotes Saudi philosopher Abdallah al-Qassimi, who said many times that ‘the greatest distance between two points in the world is the distance between an Arab’s words and his deeds.’
We have become accustomed to not asking questions and not searching for the truth. We must examine our history, our books, and our stories with an open mind without hatred and blaming of the other. ‘Islam is the solution’, is not true. Islam is not the answer. It is hidden in sick minds brainwashed with hatred for the brethren living nearby and peoples living miles away.
How can an intelligent person state or assert that we are a nation that preaches love among people, when in our own home we carry out ugly deeds and are silent about the disgrace? What is to blame is the culture of submission comes from the clerics of past and the idols of today.
Our struggles are connected to the past, not to health, not to education, not to human rights, not to general freedoms and political reform. We live in a situation in which most of our thinking is directed towards what happens after death, to the next world and not today.
Arab Liberal Columnist, Zuheir Abdallah (al-Hayat, MEMRI, August 12, 2003. No. 551) blames Arab fascism tyranny and Islamism for failing to achieve any accomplishments for the Arab world.
The Arab world were taken over by despotic tyrannical regimes. The economic and scientific growth regressed and reached the bottom level, in comparison to the rest of the countries in the world. Arab fascism and fundamentalist Islam have nothing to offer the people, except empty slogans revolving around themes of resistance and struggle.
Let us ask ourselves what did we offer for ourselves and the rest of the world since the beginning of the industrial revolution to this day, from human sciences and inventions or any other added value to civilization? Unfortunately, the answer is: almost nothing. The Arab world is in deep backwardness.
After the Chechnya terrorists attack in Beslan, Nonie Darwish has published an article (http://www.noniedarwish.com) that she is not surprised of the Arab Islamic behavior.
Unfortunately, the world media is not doing its job in telling the Arab World about it. CNN feels that being “objective” is never to blame Arab culture, and it ends up supportive of Arab views in its delivery of news in the Middle East and around the world.
The horrible news from Chechnya, the Philippines, India, the Sudan or Pakistan, were always covered up and twisted to portray Muslim terrorists as innocent victims of terrible discrimination. These murderers were always portrayed as “freedom fighters” who needed to rise against the majority Christian or non-Muslim population. My culture of origin turns into robotic monsters with a wish to destroy life on earth in order to go to heaven. This is the basic of Arab-Islamic culture and religion.
Where are Muslim demonstrations against terror? All I’ve ever noticed following 9/11 were celebrations throughout the Arab world. I decided to make a stand against the Islamic culture of terror. It is time for the world media and the UN to take a serious stand against Islamic, yes, Islamic, terror. Oil rich Arab countries finance terrorism or teach that terrorists are heroes going to heaven. No “ifs,” “ands” or “buts” and no diluted language by the international media.
The out-of-control culture in the Middle East needs a wake-up call and a dose of reality. What is needed immediately is a united world stand against the Arabs’ stagnant and barbaric view of the world. We should demand from our media to report the truth and not stand as an obstacle in facing and fighting danger. The world cannot stand by, confused and equivocal about 9/11 and Islamic terrorism any more. Please, America and the good people of the world, save my Arab culture of origin from itself.
Nonie Darwish has ongoing criticized Arab-Islamic culture (http://www.noniedarwish.com):
Once beautiful culture has now decayed, very sick, and unable to accommodate other religions or cultures. This sickness is now contaminating the West through the terror of jihad. People who criticize the current culture of Islam are not the threat to Islam; rather, the silence and justification of 9/11 by Muslims is Islam’s true enemy. The Arab-Islamic world has lost its moral equilibrium, added to their paranoia and obsession with Israel.
Islam is cracking out from its core. This is a culture in convulsions, using anything and everything as weapons against the rest of the World. Instead of using reason to reform their religion and join the rest of the civilized world in a peaceful co-existence, they choose violence through their ancient doctrine of jihad. The end result is masses submitting to the terror of dictatorships in an oppressive social structure.
There is no tolerance in Islamic society to differing views, and freedoms are rare assets. In Islamic culture, one is accountable to everybody for one’s behavior. This is a collective culture. Paradoxically, submission is that it creates people who are extremely sensitive to criticism and with chauvinistic impulses. You thus see a loyal, submissive polite Muslim turn violently angry over the slightest differences of opinion. People explode in illogical overreaction to trivial disagreements.
The mothers of suicide bombers are speaking and living a life that is against the normal impulses of Motherhood. The religious and political indoctrination through tyranny pushed them against themselves and their child into insanity. Hate is a motivation for jihad and also helps unite the Muslims, in compliance. The use of fear and hatred is a very primitive but very effective tool. This manipulation of human beings has reached an art form in Muslim culture. The enemy of Islam becomes a very necessary part of the religion, since it contributes to the unity of Muslims and ensures compliance. This unity has to be fed, cultivated and nourished constantly at all levels of education and the media through hatred to the other.
The infidels are extremely useful in Arab-Islamic culture. There is less cohesion between Muslims as a result of love, compassion, constructive activities for the common good and working together for improving society and economy. Image and reputation is of utmost importance between Muslims and especially in front of foreigners. Their first instinct is always to lie, even in situations that do not require lying, to show only the good side and shame those who don’t go with the lie for the sake of saving face.
Oil money from Saudi Arabia got more and more influential in reviving the more extreme form of Islam among more moderate and poorer Muslim countries. That same Wahhabi sect was responsible for 9/11. It was a call of warning from Saudi extremists to Western civilization. They announced to us loud and clear ‘we are coming to Islamize you the same way we did to moderate Arab countries.’ All the Saudis want is to spread Islam and to be the Mecca of the World.
Arab columnists have published articles critical of the view that the main motivation to terrorism is poverty or despair. The main reasons and most important factors in motivating terrorism are cultural and religious. The incitement by religious and political leaders encourages conducting terror operations. Muhammad Mahfouz, a Saudi columnist claims (Saudi Gazette, December 30, 2004: MEMRI, January 26, 2005, No. 853):
The only way to end violence and terrorism is to fight a cultural and ideological battle. Terrorism is one of the most dangerous problems encountered in recent times, for it undermines the stability and security of all human societies. An external and superficial probing of the problem will not be effective until we delve deeply into its Islamic cultural and ideological roots. The relationship between the phenomenon of terrorism in Islamic society and culture is like the relationship between the cause and consequence. This may explain the reason why youths belonging to rich families and others from well position in society are implicated in terrorist crimes.
This means that financial and economic factors cannot be associated with this fanatic ideology and terrorism. It is cultural and religious factors that motivate to murder innocent people and not poverty. The only way to put an end to the wave of violence and terrorism is to fight ideological cultural battle against terrorism carried out by a group of brain-washed youth, influenced by glamorous slogans. Without fighting this fateful battle, we will never succeed in eliminating the menace on civilization. Any delay in fighting this ideological cultural battle will drag us to the abyss of instability. We need more than ever to dismantle the cultural and ideological incubators which feed this phenomenon and mold it socially and culturally.
The elimination of terrorism and violence are associated with uprooting the culture of violence which promotes killing, justifies terrorism, and provides it a legitimate cover. The security battle will not help much in putting an end to this phenomenon. On the contrary, it may give it a justification to continue. We need transparency and courage to put an end to this poisonous menace, and any laxity in this matter will cost more lives and destruction. Thus, the coming battle is the battle of culture, to fight and defeat terrorism in all its stages.
For ‘Abdallah Rashid (al-ittihad, January 10, 2005: MEMRI, January 26, 2005, No. 853) it is clear:
The greatest mistake of social and political commentators is their attributing the cause for the spreading of terrorism in the Arab and Islamic world to the lack of social justice, the situation of poverty, and the harsh social conditions in most of the Arab and Islamic countries. The socio-economic situation of most of the terrorists who participate in the criminal operations around the world is very good. They are from well-off families, with high education and good jobs, and many of them are even married with children.
Most of the volunteers who went to Iraq to join al-Qaeda terrorist groups are from Saudi-Arabia and the Gulf States [61%!]. They come from families that are not poor and from a social environment that does not suffer from economic problems and wretchedness. The simple reason is the terrifying brainwashing suffered by most of the Arab youth at the hands of ‘religious clerics,’ the media, and particularly at the hands of the extremists with backward views. They nourish the Muslim youth with various kinds of racist views, destructive extremist principles, and nurse them with hostility, hatred, and resentment towards others.
