I started this thread, because there are some issues that gandalfh presented in the anti-American thread that are worthy of their own discussion.

The context of this post was a discussion about what causes people from the Middle East to be anti-American and what causes Americans to be anti-Middle Eastern. Obviously, given my posting in the anti-American thread, I believe that these terms are incredibly subjective, and I use them very loosely. I would, however, like to discuss this issue further, and respond to Gandalfh's statements.



Fair enough. I will be the first to admit that media from the Middle East characterizes America in a very negative manner, but this is a double sided coin. Given the very limited and incredibly biased amount of information that the average American is provided by the media about the people from the Middle East, I could say the same thing about the U.S. Since we are mostly shown images of Middle Eastern people in the form of terrorists and suicide bombers, it is very difficult to overlook those prejudices that are naturally formed and realize that not all people from the Middle East have the desire to push Islam on the Western world, and not all of them are American haters or lovers of the sword.

Each of the countries in the Middle East has a rich and unique culture and history, but how much does the average American really know about the Middle East, and what should we be doing to further educate our own people? What should we be doing to improve our own image in the Middle East, and how do we bridge the gap between two vastly different cultures that inhabit the same planet without compromising the integrity of one or the other?

How do you reach someone in a cult? There is a direct link between the religious practices of the Middle East, and their hatred of the west. The more “devout” towards Islam the government of a country, the more anti-west that country is. I don’t think they are inflamed by the ‘lack of opposing information’. Far from it, many of these people of very educated (even if the information is completely skewed towards anti Americanism). They see our entire society and its value system as a taint. IOW they know us, and don't like what they see.

Turkey, Jordan, and Egypt, which have more religious freedom and democracy aren’t nearly as anti-american. Places like Iraq use them as a direct example of the pollution of Muslim culture by western ideals. If freedom of speech and expression are considered evil, there isn’t really anywhere to go. That IS what we promote. Subjugation of woman, a class structure based entirely on birth, and lack of freedoms and security we consider fundamental are ideals of merit there. This isn’t an American ‘spin’, it has been demonstrated again and again through documented historical events, eyewitness testimony, and photographs. There isn’t anyway to ‘bridge the gap without compromising their integrity’ if contact with the west is poison to them (by ‘them’, I am assuming we’re talking about the most radical Islamic societies).

We would like to believe that everyone places the same value on the same things as we. They don’t. Concepts of freedom, liberty, and just treatment don’t apply to a society where the individual has no authority. How do you reach an 'understanding' with people who condone the dressing of a baby as a terrorist suicide bomber for a party (if you don’t believe this, go to www.truthorfiction.com)?

On the other hand, there are thousands of Muslims in OUR workforce. They occupy our schools of higher learning (especially nuclear engineering, suspiciously?). They are a part of the vast melting pot that makes up our country. I am assuming that most choose to be here. Maybe the answer to ‘bridging the gap’ is there.

This is a touchy issue. I have to agree that any form of government which bases itself on any religion (or on any offical denial of any religion) is a recipe for fanaticism. Religious faith (regardless if its source is within the human mind or from some supernatural entity) tends to defeat all other forms of persuasion.

What can be done? Be as open a society as possible, and hope that other nations will see the advantages of a secular form of government. Welcome persons of any faith who accept the secular government. Be willing to learn about their faith.

Well, it seems like our leaders have decided that the fix to this situation through the use of force and nation-building. Just how the nation-building turns out is yet to be seen. I hope it works, but I have serious doubts that it will.

Personally, I have nothing against ME people other than some tend to be overly arrogant in the US. It's a cultural thing. Back in the 1980s, I rented a place from an ME couple, and they figured that I was their peasant, vassal or something like that. No, no, no, this is the US! We peasants have rights, you know.

Fundamentalist Islam is certainly a problem. I think it is like a wildfire--you can remove fuel in its path (stop meddling in the ME) or pour water on it (bomb the dickens out of ME countries). Except in this case, pouring water ends up like pouring kerosene.

So we are left with getting our butts out of there and letting them all live like the way they want. If this were to happen, I bet that it'd take just a couple of generations before the US was no longer seen as some great satin. Maybe this effort to move the ME toward democracy will work. Hope so.

One of the basic beliefs of Islamic sects is that the government is inseperable from the church.

In effect, the Muslim world sees us as "Christian" because they associate government with religion, even if we embrace all religions. They then spin this into a Christian vs. Muslim conflict and the "infidels" must be defeated and subjugated.

What we need to hope for is a new tolerance for tolerance out of these countries. Somthing that is quite unlikely, in my opinion, any time soon.

No, I'm not only referring to the most radical Islamic societies. I'm talking about Islamic society in general. There is a gap between the east and west even within the most democratic of societies.



Indeed, they do, because we have a much larger pool of knowledge that they can draw from. No one denies the American ability to acquire knowledge and technology.

Regarding your suspicion... Could it perhaps be that nuclear engineering is the key to solving the energy problems that many of these countries are facing? Is it not natural for a country to want to research better energy technologies?

I'm not trying to pick on you Ms.Pigpen, but thoughts like these are what I want to address in this thread, because it is these underlying prejudices and preconceptions that, IMO, prevent us from bridging the gap.

Today, Americans awoke to the long-promised images of Iraqi civilians greeting U.S. troops as liberators, and to the equally powerful image of U.S. marines helping Iraqis pull down a statue of Saddam Hussein. Even Americans who opposed this war--including this writer--had to be moved by these images. The question inevitably arose: would the reactions of the Iraqis we were watching on our televisions vindicate the actions of U.S. and British forces--morally, if not legally?

If people anywhere might have been expected to be moved by the spectacle of those cheering Iraqis, one might have expected that it would have been people in the Arab world. After all, voices in the region have denounced this war above all because of the suffering of the Iraqi people.

Indeed, this was the reaction of throngs of Kuwaitis, and of many Arab Americans, who joined Iraqis in celebration.

However, this is not the reaction being heard in the broader Arab world--at least not yet.

I think that Americans need to pause and think about the opinions we're hearing from Iraq's neighbors, right now. Some examples taken from the Web, today:

"Do those crowds who are saluting the Americans believe that the United States will let them live better?" Fakhoury said. Americans "will loot their oil and control their resources, leaving them nothing."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/04/09/...ain548587.shtml

"I spit on them [the cheering Iraqis] ... It is only the thieves and the looters who are celebrating," said one Islamist lawyer in Cairo. "The Americans have gobbled up an Arab country before our very eyes," he said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2932833.stm

"Whatever I'm seeing is very painful because although Saddam Hussein was a dictator, he represented some kind of Arab national resistance to the foreign invaders - the Americans and the British," Fakhro said.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/04/09/...ain548587.shtml

Many similar examples can be found at the cited pages.

With the U.S. about to take on obligations that will keep our troops in Iraq for months or years, these are words and perceptions we'd be well-advised to take seriously.

I don't feel picked on, Cyan. I expected a lot of flack.
I really don't know quite how to respond to your post. I don't think it's prejudiced to recognize that someone hates us. The Arab world, by and large, hates us. I'm sure you looked at the post 'Fall of Baghdad Thru Arab, Muslim Eyes', although it's closed. There are governments in the Muslim world which sponsor state terrorism.

Now, they might have very compelling reasons to hate us. I could understand why they hate us, but that wouldn't really bridge the gap.

On an individual level, middle easterners are great (even the ones I'm met from some of the more 'devout' countries). My pediatrician is Lebanese. If I didn't trust a Muslim, I wouldn't let her near my kids, would I? Not much else I can say...

I don't think that it's prejudiced to recognize that the Arab world, generally, hates us, but I do think that it is prejudiced to look at an individual Arabic person who is studying in a certain field and respond with suspicion. I have had my fair share of discourse with people from the Middle East, and being an engineer, electrical, nuclear, chemical....it's like being a doctor or a lawyer here. Parents push their children into those fields, and it may or may not have roots in the hatred of the U.S. or a country's desire to produce nuclear and bio-chemical technology, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the individual is persuing it for that reason.

I make such a large point about this, because it is my feeling that individuals are the key to bridging the gap, particularly, dialogue among individuals with the intent of breaking down some of the preconceptions.

As you say Cyan, recognition of the individual is essential to any effort to bridge the rift of mistrust and prejudice that exists between Islam and the West. People and governments on both sides have a marked tendency to use societal trends and cultural generalisations as weapons on the ongoing propoganda war.

I really do believe that we all need to stop thinking about how much the 'Arab World' hates us, or about how 'Islam' preaches death to the infidel, and start looking at the attitudes of individual people. And the first individuals to look at are, of course, Muslims living in the West and Westerners living in the Middle East.

We need to stop assigning extremist viewpoints to the silent majority on both sides simply because they fit with our partisan world-views, and look to individuals who really do have experience of the 'other side' for the real story.

I personally don't want to kill all Muslims, and so i have a very hard time believeing that they all want to kill me, simply because I come from a 'Christian' nation. That would be the view of an extremist, and is therefore by definition not the view of the majority.

But before any attempt to bridge the gap can be made at all, America needs to stop conquering chunks of the Middle East for its own ends, and stop supporting the Israeli military occupation of territory outside of its 1967 borders.

I sometimes wonder which is more dangerous: the militant minorities--for example, American "neo-Reaganites," al Qaeda-style jihadis, and hardline Israeli settlers; or the stereotypical brush with which these groups tar both their enemies and their peers. For all the damage that the militants themselves do, the black-and-white thinking they promote tends to suck others in to the cycle of violence. Our whole experience since 9/11 suggests this.

For precisely this reason, however, I think that it's also a mistake to simply dismiss Arab reactions like those I cited above as "extremist." For example, most of these voices called on Arabs to resist the U.S. invasion of Iraq; they did not, like Osama bin Laden, rationalize attacks on U.S. (or other) civilians.

Moreover, I wouldn't assume that the "silient majorities" in the Western and Arabic worlds do now or will soon see eye-to-eye on issues like the fall of Baghdad or the ethics of unconventional warfare. Certainly, one of the few things that media based in the Arab states (see recent stories at: Arabic News), the U.S., and U.K. (see my above post), all seem to agree upon is that majorities in Damascus and Cairo are reacting to recent events in Iraq in sharply different ways than are majorities in Detroit or Kuwait City. (I don't think that anyone can intelligently speculate about how the majority of Iraqis feel, at this juncture ...)

I guess that the general point I'm trying to make is that we shouldn't expect people living in different political, economic, and cultural circumstances to spontaneously come to an understanding--even after the zealots are marginalized. If people in Damascus or Cairo react to events in sharply different ways than people other capitals, I think that we need to pay attention to the specifics of what they say and why. We may learn things from one another; at other times, we may simply have to find ways to (one hopes, peacefully) agree to disagree.

To judge by recent events, people in the West and in the Arab world still have a long ways to go before we can really make progress toward bridging those differences ...