Last week I spent an hour or two staring at the car wreck of the New York Times' article "Young Saudis, Vexed and Entranced by Love's Rules," and the online comments it inspired. The article follows two young Saudi men for a couple days, quizzing them on how courtship, marriage, and love function in Saudi society. The reader comments started to fall into some themes.
Readers expressed outrage at Saudi society and the men's behavior, often coupled with notes about how, as a nation, it's a shame that we're so economically connected to such a repressive society. Some had criticism of the article for its inaccuracies, often from those who were personally familiar with Saudi Arabia, often expressing anger at the Times' propagation of stereotypes. There were some who promoted a kind of cultural relativism, suggesting it's not our job to judge, including (and this is my personal favorite) some single New Yorkers lamenting that their dating scene doesn't really offer much in the way of romance, either.
Comments of the outraged and bewildered variety were often frighteningly racist and intolerant, making incredibly sweeping statements about Arabs and Islam. Of course, such ignorance and hatred is often construed as an act of righteous feminist rage. My favorite, for its imagery, from a woman who describes herself as "shaking with fury" at the men's treatment of one woman they see in a restaurant:
"Would that the internal combustion engine had never been invented, would that not a drop of oil rested under that god forsaken desert, then these swine would be on the backs of camels in the Sahara, where they belong."
The scary part is that this kind of comment frequently goes uncontested- maybe even a majority of commenters on the article would AGREE, at least in some way, with this commenter. She deplores that we have to interact with Saudi society but recognizes it as an economic necessity, displays an almost comical lack of geographical understanding (the Sahara is in North Africa, not the peninsula where Saudi lies), and says that the men in the story are less than human.
I'm starting to think that a sense of entitlement- to oil, of course- coupled with deep racism and distrust towards Arabs and Muslims has a much stronger hold on the general American psyche than I ever imagined.
And, personally, while I'm somehow fascinated and compelled to interact with this dialogue, I find that it wears on my psyche, too. I'm so busy trying to make sense of it all- how can I respond to such comments? Is there REALLY something "ingrained" in Islam that subjugates women? How can I ask people to have a more nuanced view of Arab cultures while not falling into a cultural relativism that flies in the face of my commitment to justice and human rights? How can I decry the subjugation of women wherever it exists while still maintaining that the lives of many Arab women are rich and complex? How can I strongly agree with those who note repression in Saudi Arabia when to side with them seems to mean siding with imperialist projects and Islamophobia?
I want so badly to find a comprehensive, honest, intellectual response that I sometimes forget to allow the lived experiences of others speak for themselves, to rest for a moment in the knowledge that the truth of real faces, real personalities, and real relationships exists despite news reports and analyses.
Not surprisingly (my incarnational religious tradition shows) my liberation lies in taking the hands of others. It was like waking up from a bad dream in the days following my reading of that article, to spend time with Arab friends, and to enjoy their company and their stories. Faced with that reality, faced with forging friendships and communication, all the inaccuracy and violence of those news reports lost some of its grip on me.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Bassam Haddad on Lebanon
Last night I went to a lecture in a small room in the basement of one of UPenn's ivory-tower-looking buildings. The audience was small and I recognized most of the people in the room from similar events. Nonetheless, Bassam Haddad, Director of George Mason's Middle East Studies program and member of the editorial board of a publication I adore, the Middle East Report, presented an interesting and well-versed talk titled "Lebanon and Syria in the Context of the Bush Administration's 'New Middle East.'"
The thing is that learning about Lebanese politics gets me all excited. I'm not really sure why, because they're very complicated so I could really only confidently tell you approximately three things about them. Perhaps it's a romantic attachment to a country I know is small, beautiful, and struggling. Perhaps it's the complication itself, so little understood or acknowledged here; maybe reaching for understanding of Arab societies is like my white-girl post-orientalist treasure hunt. Whatever forces tug at me so viscerally- the same ones I sometimes feel studying Arabic- let's, in their honor and for their purification, record a few notes on Lebanon from Haddad's talk. (And, admittedly, this is going to focus on Hezbollah, not really doing justice to Lebanese politics.)
1. One of the three things I CAN tell you about Lebanese politics is that they use a confessional system. Government positions are split up according to religious and political sects, so that power is shared among groups. Haddad emphasized that while this system was created in deference to existing groups in Lebanese society, it actually produces sects. The continued strength and even splintering of sects within Lebanon is not due to a "Lebanese mentality" or a general Middle Eastern/Arab allergy to democracy and pluralism, but to the necessity of creating new groups in order to influence policy.
2. This is the setting where Hezbollah exists, of course. Haddad was clear in stating that Hezbollah is primarily a social movement. Even if Hezbollah's military branch disbanded, its social programs and institutions would continue. The weakness of Lebanon's central government and the strength of groups, including Hezbollah, who run social services are proven by the continuity of life in Lebanon despite the current lack of a president and the continued postponement of elections.
3. I asked Haddad, who had mentioned Hamas as well, to clarify if he would also define Hamas as primarily a social movement. He said that yes, ultimately he would, but that Hezbollah was much better organized and clear in their mission. He also differentiated between the groups- which I think are described quite similarly in American media- by reminding us that Hezbollah was a grassroots Lebanese movement supported by Iran, while Hamas was a Palestinian group encouraged and propped up by Israel in order to take power away from Arafat and the PLO. In this, he said, Hamas better parallels the Muslim Brotherhood. Both are Islamic groups sometimes operating in the government, sometimes outside of it, who have had various levels of popular support and who have used violence. (Though violence is not their raison d'etre, as the U.S. government classification "terrorist" presumes.) In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, when it was smaller, was supported by then-president Anwar Sadat to take power away from- hmm, I think it was the socialists who were threatening his liberal economic policies. At any rate, both of these groups were supported by governments who didn't really want them to get real power, and are today two of the biggest political forces in their respective locales.
4. On the U.S. foreign policy front, Haddad insisted that the problem with U.S. policy in Iraq and the Middle East is not in method or strategy but in substance. The Iraq failure, he said, is not that the U.S. has poor tactics, but that the U.S. displayed an incredible arrogance in invading in the first place. For this reason, he said, American liberals and moderates scare him more than neo-cons. They use less aggressive language and may create more nuanced policy, but their substance still consists of the assumption that the U.S. has some right to interfere in the Middle East, and they will continue to act not in favor of "democracy" generally, but according to U.S. strategic interests, and will support whichever regimes happen to support those interests at the moment.
I wonder what Haddad thinks about the potential of McCain, Clinton, or Obama leading U.S. Mid-East policy.
The thing is that learning about Lebanese politics gets me all excited. I'm not really sure why, because they're very complicated so I could really only confidently tell you approximately three things about them. Perhaps it's a romantic attachment to a country I know is small, beautiful, and struggling. Perhaps it's the complication itself, so little understood or acknowledged here; maybe reaching for understanding of Arab societies is like my white-girl post-orientalist treasure hunt. Whatever forces tug at me so viscerally- the same ones I sometimes feel studying Arabic- let's, in their honor and for their purification, record a few notes on Lebanon from Haddad's talk. (And, admittedly, this is going to focus on Hezbollah, not really doing justice to Lebanese politics.)
1. One of the three things I CAN tell you about Lebanese politics is that they use a confessional system. Government positions are split up according to religious and political sects, so that power is shared among groups. Haddad emphasized that while this system was created in deference to existing groups in Lebanese society, it actually produces sects. The continued strength and even splintering of sects within Lebanon is not due to a "Lebanese mentality" or a general Middle Eastern/Arab allergy to democracy and pluralism, but to the necessity of creating new groups in order to influence policy.
2. This is the setting where Hezbollah exists, of course. Haddad was clear in stating that Hezbollah is primarily a social movement. Even if Hezbollah's military branch disbanded, its social programs and institutions would continue. The weakness of Lebanon's central government and the strength of groups, including Hezbollah, who run social services are proven by the continuity of life in Lebanon despite the current lack of a president and the continued postponement of elections.
3. I asked Haddad, who had mentioned Hamas as well, to clarify if he would also define Hamas as primarily a social movement. He said that yes, ultimately he would, but that Hezbollah was much better organized and clear in their mission. He also differentiated between the groups- which I think are described quite similarly in American media- by reminding us that Hezbollah was a grassroots Lebanese movement supported by Iran, while Hamas was a Palestinian group encouraged and propped up by Israel in order to take power away from Arafat and the PLO. In this, he said, Hamas better parallels the Muslim Brotherhood. Both are Islamic groups sometimes operating in the government, sometimes outside of it, who have had various levels of popular support and who have used violence. (Though violence is not their raison d'etre, as the U.S. government classification "terrorist" presumes.) In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, when it was smaller, was supported by then-president Anwar Sadat to take power away from- hmm, I think it was the socialists who were threatening his liberal economic policies. At any rate, both of these groups were supported by governments who didn't really want them to get real power, and are today two of the biggest political forces in their respective locales.
4. On the U.S. foreign policy front, Haddad insisted that the problem with U.S. policy in Iraq and the Middle East is not in method or strategy but in substance. The Iraq failure, he said, is not that the U.S. has poor tactics, but that the U.S. displayed an incredible arrogance in invading in the first place. For this reason, he said, American liberals and moderates scare him more than neo-cons. They use less aggressive language and may create more nuanced policy, but their substance still consists of the assumption that the U.S. has some right to interfere in the Middle East, and they will continue to act not in favor of "democracy" generally, but according to U.S. strategic interests, and will support whichever regimes happen to support those interests at the moment.
I wonder what Haddad thinks about the potential of McCain, Clinton, or Obama leading U.S. Mid-East policy.
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