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In our work and political spheres we have largely abandoned the search for dignity... and we know it.

That is probably why we rarely speak its name.

19 February 2011

Not So Different After All?

On more than a few occasions in the last decade, I have been the recipient of lectures—almost always by people with no discernible hands-on experience with foreign cultures in general, nor the Arab world in particular—about just how different and unlike us “those Arab people” in the Mideast really are.

“You know, for them, life is cheap…” “In those places, people will do whatever their religious leaders will tell them to do; there is no independent thought as we know it…” “Islam is fundamentally incompatible with democracy…” “The best we can hope for is to try and get them before they get us. And don’t kid yourself, they are very much out to get us!” Etc.

Though they are largely unaware of it, these people are suffering from what I have come to call Patai-Lewis Syndrome. It is named after two supposedly learned scholars of the Arab world, Rafael Patai and Bernard Lewis.