Morocco Time

I didn’t hear about this until yesterday.

“Are You Ready for ‘Islamo-Fascism Week’?“

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.

“…there was a reasonable case against inviting him, just as there were good arguments in favor of the invitation. Similarly, it would have been possible for Bollinger to begin the Q&A session with tough questions without being uncivil. But to invite a foreign head of state and then subject him to such indignity breached all norms and courtesies of etiquette and highlighted Ahmadinejad’s calmness and dignity in the face of offensive provocation. Absent such behavior, all attention would have focused on some of his bizarre statements. Instead, the event reminded much of the world of American hubris in believing it is entitled to set and define standards of civilization.”

Article in Boston Globe.

Hear, hear.

So I’m in my Arabic class this morning, and there happens to be a guy in there whose family came from Iraq to the States in ‘95. Many of the other students have some kind of grandiose plan to work in “security” or “foreign service” - so they ask all kinds of irritating questions about if the Iraqi dialect is similar to MSA. Before class this morning, one of these security geeks asked the Iraqi, “So, what do you think about what Bush has done in Iraq so far?” The poor man was a little stunned, but managed to get something out along the lines of “Um, that’s a huge topic - but my family left Iraq because of Saddam, so obviously we were happy when he was removed from power” or something like that. The security dumbass said “Oh, well, I like to ask people about it. Get different opinions.”

Look, idiot. It is EIGHT IN THE MORNING. Stop pretending like you want to have some kind of open dialogue and shut the fuck up.

First, I’d like to state that the president of Columbia is an absolute twat. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life. His remarks prior to Ahmadinejad’s speech included:

“Mr President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator.”

“”When you come to a place like this, this makes you quite simply ridiculous. You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated.”

It was ten minutes of that shit, by the leader of the university that invited him. Yes, I get that people don’t agree with a lot of what the Iranian president believes (and I share some of that feeling), but there is no excuse for regressing to personal attacks and/or treating an invited guest so poorly. I think Bollinger’s been secretly watching a little too much WWF.

In happier news, I surprised Hamou with tickets to the Genesis show on Saturday. It pretty much blew his mind, since he’s always liked Phil Collins, and he’s never seen a concert before. I asked him what he thought of Nationwide Arena (where the concert was held), and he yelled out “They could fit all of Tizgui in here, people, houses, everything!” Yes, his little home village of Tizgui, about 2000 people. Earlier, when I asked him how much he’d like to see the concert, and if he really liked the group, his response was “Who doesn’t like Phil Collins?’ Well, OK, not much I can say to that! I suppose that would be like asking a Moroccan if he liked “Hotel California” or “No Woman No Cry.” Or “Father and Son.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard those songs in Morocco, and in all kinds of places.