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Thinking Like an Arab
If it hasn’t occurred to most Americans by now, Arabs don’t think like us. They see the world in very different terms. Rationality, logic, and common sense do not rate high among their priorities. Not long ago, I had the opportunity to briefly work with Edward V. Badolato, a retired U.S. Marine Colonel with a distinguished career in government and private enterprise. Col. Badolato is a graduate of the U.S. Naval War College with several tours of duty in the Middle East, beginning in 1967 shortly after the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War. His tours took him to nearly every country in the Middle East. Following his retirement, he served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy in both the Reagan and Bush administrations (1984-89). As such, he was the principal architect of the government’s readiness and response to terrorist threats to our energy infrastructure. In 1980, he wrote a white paper, "Learning to Think like an Arab Muslim: a Short Guide to Understanding the Arab Mentality". I am going to provide a brief introduction to it. At only 14 pages, it is not a long document, but it succinctly explains why Americans and others in the West are encountering such difficulty understanding why Arab Muslims appear, by our standards, to be completely insane.
Badolato begins by describing Arabs as "a proud and sensitive people whose culture is mainly derived from three key factors: family, language, and religion." The Arab cultural system has existed for centuries and predates the introduction of Islam around 610 AD and its rapid spread after the death of Muhammad in 632 AD. "An Arab’s commonly accepted view of the world (is) basically threatening and harsh." Arab Muslims and presumably others because Islam has more than a billion adherents, divide the world between themselves and what they call Dar al Harb, literally, "the world of war." So, you are either a Muslim or you are an infidel and, by definition, a threat to Islam until you convert or are killed. This may seem harsh, but true believers in Islam hold all other religions in contempt. The view of Judaism is psychopathic. Christians do not fare much better. The contempt for Hindus and Buddhists, religions deemed not to have "a book", completes the utter certitude of Muslims that they alone are truly religious. You might feel that way, too, if you were compelled to pray five times a day, at dawn, midday, late afternoon, sunset, and nightfall. There are five prescribed prayers and all are in Arabic, a language Arabs will tell you is superior to all others. Verbal grandiosity is greatly applauded by Arabs. When facts are trumped by "ideas", however, you have entered Alice’s bizarre Wonderland. Badolato writes that, "An Arab’s concept of the world has occasionally been described as a series of seven concentric circles with the individual Arab at the center. Thus, he has his family, an extended family or tribe, an immediate geographic region, and then his country. It is within the family that the psychology of the Muslim Arab is formed and observers have noted that, "the fluctuation between a loving mother and stern disciplinarian father can add to the complexity of growing up and often fosters schizoid personality traits." To put it another way, Arabs can go from hot to cold and back again so fast that it is bewildering. Arabs live in a black and white world with no shadings of grey. Why do Arabs seem to be so violent? Conflict can be found in a family culture of competitiveness that is instilled at an early age. An old Arab saying aptly describes this. "I against my brother, my brother and I against our cousins, my brother, my cousins and I against the world." Add to this the way Arab history has been dominated "by warfare, domestic upheaval, and struggles against invasions from outside the Arab world" and you begin to grasp a mindset that will resist anything that is not Arab. As Badolato describes it, it is an "almost visceral mistrust of any outside group or more specifically any Western state whose true ultimate intentions cannot readily be determined." For Arabs, their wars such as the conflict between Iraq and Iran in the 1980s really began at the battle of Qaddisiya over a thousand years ago! The Islamic wars following the death of Mohammad led to the Sunni and Shiite divisions within Islam. It is a history of tension and conflict that literally dates back to the earliest years of Islam. Westerners might dismiss this by saying, "Get over it!" but the Arab mentality is totally rooted in the past. And why not? Not one single word of the 114 surahs (chapters) of the Quran has been changed in fourteen centuries and they describe in detail the conduct of every hour of every day of an Arab Muslim’s life. As Badolato describes it, "It is as if one single document contained our Constitution, our legal code, national education policy, business practices, inter-personal etiquette, and the Bible." Welcome to the seventh century AD! What America and the West are up against are Islamic fundamentalists and countless sympathizers who would destroy us in a desperate effort to retain their Arab identity. Thus, when Palestinians elect Hamas, a terrorist organization, as their government, the West recoils, but the same is true throughout the Middle East and across northern Africa. In any election, Islamic fundamentalists would take control of the politics of these nations. Their very identity as Arabs and/or Muslims is at stake. The validity of Islam as the one, true faith is at stake. "Huge segments of the population simply cannot cope with modernity and the social and political changes taking place." What we see as an improvement in the lives of millions of Arabs, changes in their educational system, women’s rights and their inclusion in the work force, improved literacy rates, better nutritional standards, advanced health and hygiene, all things that Westerners embrace, threaten Arabs. This explains why the Middle East has remained the most backward region of the world for centuries and why it now constitutes the greatest threat to the modern world. Arab Muslims are not like us. They do not want to be like us. If they become more like us they will have to let go of a culture that both stunts their humanity and provides an odd, brutal security blanket at the same time. For the West that leaves us with the same demand we made of Japan and Germany in the last century, unconditional surrender. The complete text of Badolato’s essay can be read at http://www.blackwaterusa.com/btw2004/articles/0503arabs.html In a politically charged election year, Republicans are watching with horror and fascination as Bush’s popularity poll numbers continue to tank. The public’s reaction to a deal to hand over operation of six key ports to the United Arab Emirates seems to have never occurred in the West Wing. These days the White House reeks of hubris, over-weaning pride and arrogance. Most of the people who held cabinet level positions and disagreed with this President are gone. After six years of being surrounded by people who confirm your own sense of being right all the time, it is easy to begin making mistakes.
By now, George W. Bush has gotten accustomed to waking up every day and being briefed on these various disasters, large and small. "Good morning, Mr. President, the Muslims are still rioting here, here and here over a bunch of stupid cartoons. Hugo Chavez of Venezuela says you’re a moron. The Russians are working closely with Iran to facilitate their nuclear ambitions and the Chinese too because they need Iranian oil. The United Nations is going to make a botch of reforming its Human Rights Commission because a lot of its members don’t really believe in human rights and…." And that’s just foreign affairs. Here at home no one seems much interested in reforming Social Security despite the fact it’s going broke. Health care costs just keep rising and so will the cost of energy, oil and natural gas. A lot of people have concluded that "No Child Left Behind" is not an answer to a nationwide educational system that is more interested in drugging children than teaching them. Illegal immigration is of increasing importance, politically, but the White House doesn’t appear to be seriously concerned about it. Like all Presidents one would think Bush is concerned about his "legacy." Or maybe not? So far it seems to be summed up in two words, Afghanistan and Iraq. Initially seen as a major success, the on-going problems of the Middle East that have resisted a solution from the West for centuries, are just, well, on-going. Bush has rolled the dice in the hope or belief that the Iraqis, once freed of Saddam Hussein, can cobble together a unified government. This is a major gamble given that all the other Arab governments are authoritarian and always have been. Being President while a major American city is practically wiped off the map and other States suffer Nature’s wrath is just a matter of bad luck made worse by the revelation that the all-knowing Federal government is not very good in terms of responding to such disasters. And a new hurricane season is due, starting in June. Then add in the fact that Bush has never seen a spending bill, education, transportation, energy, whatever, that he hasn’t hesitated to sign, and you begin to see why his popularity is slipping and, more importantly, his ability to lead is in trouble. Part of this is the well-known "lame duck" status that any President going into the last years of his second term experiences. However, another part is the result of a big federal government that has only grown larger under Bush’s leadership. Far from its glory days in 1994, the Republican Party has simply abandoned its principles of fiscal prudence and small government. Leadership is the main job description of a President. Second terms are often quite unforgiving. Let us give thanks to the Founding Fathers who mandated a four-year term and to the post-FDR Amendment that limits those terms to two. America has been in a transitional period ever since 9-11 and transitions, new answers to new problems, are always messy. They are filled with uncertainties. Americans look to their President to provide answers. At this point in his tenure, Bush is flogging whatever answers he can, but the public seems increasingly disinterested. A good, nasty, mid-term election will surely energize voters and determine how the remaining two years in office will be for the President. He is fortunate that the Democrat Party is represented by some of the most loathsome people ever elected to high office. Now, after reviewing all the negatives, consider this: despite all the bad news and events, the American economy has grown 3.5% since 9-11. Talk about resiliency! The unemployment level is at an astonishing low of only 4%. People vote their pocketbook. Yes, party affiliation and political preferences for a liberal or conservative approach are a factor, but if people feel confident about their own economic viability and, for example, are buying new homes as fast as they come on the market, then all the concerns about Bush’s state of mind this morning fade into the background. The voters rejected Albert Gore and then they rejected John F. Kerry. In many ways I think Bush was elected as much because of whom he ran against as opposed to any great enthusiasm for him personally. The popularity he enjoyed from his first term is now disappearing as his second continues to disappoint his core constituency. And there isn’t much they can do about it. He is the President and he knows it. Did you learn something new today? Has the world become a bit more comprehensible to you? That is the purpose of the Center and that is why your donation is essential to our continued ability to educate visitors to our website. If you prefer to send a check, please make it payable to The Caruba Organization, 28 West Third Street, Suite 1321, South Orange, NJ 07079. Thank you!
©
2006 Alan Caruba. |
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Why, for example, would people who believe they have the one, true religion, not hesitate to blow up mosques and other holy places? Why would they attack weddings and funerals? Why is beheading so popular among terrorists? Why would a few cartoons set off rioting and killing? And what does all this mean to us in terms of the threat it represents?
Either Bush has developed a tin ear for politics or there are other factors at work that can only be guessed at. No doubt his staff from the first four years has changed and no doubt it is difficult to be President in an era of an Iraq insurgency that fills the newspapers with headlines of mindless, senseless murder every day. The belligerency of Iran, Iraq’s next-door neighbor, only adds to heightened world tensions. If you’re keeping score, you can throw in troubles in Nigeria, a major oil exporter. Europe has barely awakened to Islamic threats within its own population.