To drive or not to drive: that is not the question
The visit of Karen Hughes, under secretary for public diplomacy in the Bush administration, to three Middle Eastern countries is a long overdue attempt to improve America's image in the Islamic world. After the recent wrist-slapping trip by Condoleeza Rice to Egypt and Saudi Arabia where she emphasized democratic reform with Hosni Mubarak and then Crown Prince Abdullah (both politely ignored her overtures), Hughes' visit is more aimed at building bridges and understanding between America and the people of these countries. Her audience with Sheikh Mohamed Sayyed Tantawi, the Grand Mufti of Al Azhar, is an example of this, as is her meeting with Saudi women in Jeddah, which has been making news today because of the way it unfolded.
Junaid has already covered this in his blog, and here's another spot you can find a discussion of this. What I want to add here is this: the United States or any other nation is going about it the wrong way if they are trying to liberalize the Middle East by imposing outside pressure. Talk of human rights and democratic reform is great, but the Arab peoples, and by extension many non-Arab Muslim nations who share in a lot of the Arab-Islamic cultural mindset, are too proud to meekly embrace attempts at liberation from an outsider, even if those attempts are well-founded.
Saudi women would sooner rebuff someone like Karen Hughes before they admit they would prefer to be able to drive and vote in their country. Hughes and the American administration might find such an attitude difficult to comprehend (indeed many Western Muslims might find it strange as well), but they would be repeating the paternalistic and ultimately naïve (I won't mention racist) attitude of European colonials in the 16th-19th centuries if they think they are on some noble civilizing mission in the "Mysterious East". I will end with a quote that I recently used elsewhere but which I feel fits here:
"You must know this law of culture: two civilizations cannot really know and understand one another well. You will start going deaf and blind. You will be content in your own civilization… but signals from the other civilization will be as incomprehensible to you as if they had been sent by the inhabitants of Venus."It is no wonder then that in spite of the world having become so small and interconnected, the West and the East still seem like the two never-meeting banks of a river.– Ryszard Kapusinski, The Emperor
2 comments:
I completely agree with Ali, although I would have employed a more sarcastic approach (see Juanid's blog). I assume the man you quoted is some academic, but the divide need not always be bridged by such people. Sometimes the the wisdom of a drunken descendant of Ireland is good enough (despite the fact that I sort of criticized recreational boozing in the blog I left on Junaid's blog). I would like to quote Shane MacGowan from the Pogues:
"There was half a million people there [Galway races]
From all denominations
The Catholic the Protestant,
the Jew, the Presbyterian
Yet no anamosity
no matter what persuasion,
but failte [welcoming] hospitality,
inducing Fresh aquaintance."
Yeah I know Presbyterians are Protesants, but hey, it really seems that he tried!
Always fun to read your comments Liam.
I should mention though that what I'm trying to get at is not conducive interaction and 'failte hospitality' between civilizations and cultures, but an understanding.
The quote I used is rather florid, but the underlying question is this: It might be possible to engage in fruitful interaction and even to arrive at cross-cultural consensus, but can one culture truly understand another?
I remember in a course on epistemology earlier this year we covered this issue. Quine, the philosopher in focus, thought the answer was no.
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