Morocco Time

I have a class every T-Th, “Arab World.” (Plus some subtitle that I can’t think of, but it doesn’t matter.) The interesting part is the mix of people in the class, we have a Christian Lebanese Arab-American, an American who grew up in Saudi Arabia, a half-Syrian Air Force guy, an American career military officer, a Comparative Religions major, a guy who studied in Saudi Arabia, an older OSU staff member, and…er, me.

Sometimes the conversation is boring, but today it was all over the map (literally), talking about Lebanese politics, Arabs in the U.S., the creation of Jordan, and a bunch of other stuff. The most interesting to me was the older staff member, who asked why the “youth,” Arab or otherwise, don’t try to educate people about their misconceptions. That is, misconceptions about Islam and/or Arab culture.

What I said was this : I know that H gets tired of being the “token Muslim” that people ask all sorts of ridiculous things. You want to answer, hoping they’ll learn, but you already know most of them could care less. I get the same thing in Morocco, when people treat me like the spokesperson for American policy and culture. I always got the “Did you know that all the Jews escaped the World Trade Center?” Most people are ignorant, and don’t care to learn, they just want to talk and impress you with their “knowledge.”

The staff member asked, “So you just give up, then?” Well, no, of course not. You just have to choose your battles. Most of the time, you can tell when someone is interested in the open exchange of ideas, and when they’re just talking out their ass. It’s not just the uneducated, either - one of the people in the class said that every Arab government is a facist dictatorship. Wha? I was going to ask him to back that up, but I realized I’d have to camp out there for the next week or so.

October 12th, 2007 | Category: Islam, Politics, Personal | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL