Arabs and Americans

I had lunch with a close friend today who had a long conversation last week with an American who was in Saudi Arabia teaching English to Saudi military on 9/11. I have no reason to doubt my friend’s account in the least.

This teacher said that his students simply hate Americans and don’t understand us. For example, in the days immediately after the al-Quaeda attacks, his students drew pictures of planes crashing into buildings, showing them to the other students, and laughing. This meshes with other accounts I’ve read. The teacher pointed to two examples that help explain their hatred:

The American military forces stationed in Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia, of course include women. The American women go out in public dressed in military clothing, shop and drive, and in other ways do things that Muslim women simply are not allowed to do. The Saudi (and other Arabic) men think of women as objects, to be treated and to act in certain specific ways, and nothing else. The Taliban give an extreme example of this way of thinking of and regulating women but do not doubt that women face similar strictures in most countries where Islam is dominant. Americans think of women as people, same as men, and will not allow them to be treated otherwise regardless of local custom. This is just to great a disconnect for Arab men to handle; when talking about women with this teacher they generally giggled and acted the way American teenage boys do since their minds have no other context for it.

The Saudis and other nationalities of the Arabian Peninsula think of themselves as warriors. Notice the scimitar on the Saudi flag (the other element on the flag is a shahada, profession of faith meaning “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his Prophet”). Yet they needed American and other western nations to protect and liberate them from Saddam Hussein 10 years ago, even though it was less than 100 years ago that the Saudi’s Bedouin great-grandfathers were the scourge of Arabia and finally conquered the area that established the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932. This is a source of shame and self-loathing and since we put them in position to feel such emotions, not surprisingly they are thrown back at us. How does the old saying go, don’t expect thanks for a favor? No good deed goes unpunished is another spin on the same sentiment.

I’m listening to Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s amazing concert on HBO as I write this and I can’t help but think that this is one more thing such people probably hate. Springsteen, since the name sounds Jewish even though it’s Dutch; the music, which is raucus and free and all too often about love and sex and even society’s ills (how many Arab nations have freedom of speech and protest?); and even HBO itself, which is constantly broadcasting images and messages that violate taboos. To go deeper into why Springsteen is a good representation of the target of this hate, consider Cornel Bonca’s essay published in July of this year, in the wake of the HBO concert, in which he describes Springsteen’s oeuvre as “dramatic enactments pitting a Dionysian spirit desperate for release against an equal and opposite force desperate for moral containment.”

In Badlands, Springsteen sings “You got to live it every day, let the broken hearts stand as the price you’ve gotta pay, we’ll keep pushin’ till it’s understood and these badlands start treating us good.” We’re in the Badlands now.