By Abdulillah - With some much going on in the West and Eastern Europe, the Middle-East has again been subjected to the rear pages of newspapers, and to idiot orientalist who have nothing good to say, where Western peoples largely are again put into the darkness like mushrooms kept in the dark and fed manure, only in this case manure laced with sleeping pills.
Why? Well as in most countries of the West especially those of the Americas, the Middle-East has been immortalized now and forever as led by barbarous, uncivilized peoples, not unlike the American Indians of the Americas, needing radical changes in behavior and ideology, as well as in our case religious fervor.
It would be almost laughable, if it wasn’t so true. Western peoples have been indoctrinated to believe that “all” not just a few of the Arab countries comprising the Middle-East today are incapable of modernization, westernization (whatever that means) and moderation.
If fact; if one was to take a pole today in any western nation, they would find that most people there have been inculcated to believe that the Middle-East can never be peaceful with the West or be able to coexist with the West, without force, or absent forceful change, cannot be made friendly and should be looked at with suspicion, if not subjugation.
Many articles and scholarly works noting the many inconsistencies in the knowledge passed to the peoples of these nations have had little effect on the attitudes of those living there. Few if little of any of these scholarly works ever get to see the light of day in any front pages of newspapers or even textbooks taught in school.
Wondering why this occurs? Well I can tell you it is because few of the oligarchs, elites and leaders of these nations really want people to know too much about the Middle-East outside of its wars, and conflicts with the West. Couple this with religious fervor in these nations by evangelical Christians who see only conflict with Islam as its core issue, and the continuation of Zionist and Oriental expansionism we get the demonization of the rest of the Arab Islamic nations that comprise the Middle-East.
The theory goes if you say it more than three times no matter what it is, keeping any rebuttal away from people, it becomes to a large extent the truth.
How can we in the Middle-East change this behavior? Well for one we need to be more open and more welcoming to foreign exchanges between our peoples. We can instead of bringing in NGO’s who only are there to promote their style of democracy, or missionaries looking to covert, and who promote ideological or identity changes in the Middle-East as they have been doing in Egypt and many other Middle-East nations prior to its Mubarak and later Morsi’s revolutions, and Ukraine prior to and even during its upheavals; we can promote those who merely want to learn about who we really are. But exactly with what mechanisms can we promote these exchanges.
We can offer free university education in Arab history, archeology, language and Islamic studies to those who want them from foreign nations. We can try to match them up with some accepting families as exchange students. We can also send out emissaries to colleges and other universities, both to promote these exchanges, as well as speaking to the young and the future leaders of these nations. We can not only them who we really are, but teach them as well of the generous and actual peaceful nature of all our people. The costs of these exchanges are little in reality, while the benefits are so great. These classes already exist and a few more students will not be onerous or costly to our university system.
We can promote and make it even cheaper for those who want to the visit our heritage sites. We should not make it more costly nor should we attempt to fleece or gouge them out of their last dollar or euro, as they enter or leave the country. We have to behave as we always have to our guests, not view them with suspicion or ignorance but with tolerance and acceptance, regardless of how their countries have behaved towards us in the past.
We need to have these exchanges and dialogues face to face. We need to invite their scholars to speak even if their messages are inaccurate, both so we can rebut them if necessary face to face without rancor or animosity, but to also learn what is being said about us and where.
We have never really been insular or fearful of this in our past history until recently, but always open. We were the ones who translated the Greek and many other scholarly works and exceled at adding to them. We were the ones that traveled to foreign lands to seek their knowledge and education and we were never deterred from this until in our recent history. We were never afraid of scholarly debate nor of change or new ideas when we felt it in our interest, so why be this way now?
I tell you all if we do this low budget technique it will work. We cannot rely on newspapers as they only seek sensationalism or bad news, nor can we rely only on a few obscure programs at western universities to teach who and what we are. They need our help so let’s help them. The next time we ask for aid let’s not ask it for military equipment or other poor ways to communicate. Let’s ask for aide for these exchanges and lift some of our restrictions and travel costs moreover lets be prepared for the onslaught of the people who will come.
Remember however with any exchange lets be prepared for some heated dialogue and in some cases even agreement to disagree, especially if these exchanges come with attempts at proselytization or political indoctrination. But we should never fear any exchange as we will always win when we are on our own turf and because of who we are.
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