Below is an unformatted selection from draft version of a chapter on alterity
in _Conversations with urban Jordanian youth at the end of the twentieth
century_ (My dissertation, forthcomming ... I hope)
Note: replies to this shameless act of self-promotion maybe incorporated into
an appendix of the final version.
=======================================================
<p>
Another striking element in the moral mosaic of Jordan is alterity vis-a-vis
the Occident.
As a Westerner, I was no doubt both over-sensitive and&emdash;as an accessible
prolocutor or ersatz spokes-person&emdash;over exposed, to Jordan's
fascination with the
West as alter. Nevertheless, images of a decadent and materialistic West
seem to
pervade the rhetoric of Egyptian and Jordanian cultural politics,
particularly of
the neo-traditionalists
<gnote>
<p>
<cnote>primary source</cnote>
<citn>&Ayn;abd al &Ayn;&tah;ai 1977</citn>;
<citn>Al-&Ayn;anani 1990</citn>;
<citn>Al-Qardawi 1984</citn>;
<citn>Athar 1994</citn>;
<citn>Badawi n.d.</citn>;
<citn>Qu&tah;b 1985</citn>;
<cnote>ethnography</cnote>
<citn>Abu-Lughod 1986</citn>;
<citn>Abu-Lughod 1993</citn>;
<citn>Davis 1997</citn>;
<cnote>critique</cnote>
<citn>Abu-Rabi&ayn; 1996</citn>;
<citn>Ahmed 1992</citn>;
<citn>Ajami 1992</citn>;
<citn>Ajami 1998</citn>;
<citn>Chamieh 1992</citn>;
<citn>Hoffman 1985</citn>;
<citn>Mernissi 1987</citn>;
<citn>Mernissi 1992</citn>;
<citn>Sivan 1990</citn>
</p>
</gnote>. It is fair to say that Arabs have much more exposure to Western
culture than Euro-Americans have to Arab culture.
However, it does not follow that Arabs understand us significantly better
than we understand them.
Much Western media is available to Arabs, but without interpretive keys.
(This phenomena is long term.
Hourani (1954) mentions it in his essay on Syria and Lebanon.)
</p>
<p>
In Cairo I would frequently disabuse students
of the notion that American soap operas could be read
with the same critical tools one might use on an ethnographic documentary.
I also learned that Copts could not discuss the Protestant Reformation;
indeed, many were unaware that there even was a Reformation,
just as most Westerners are unaware that the Coptic Orthodox church exists.
They knew that the Western church had split into two heterodox sects,
the more orthodox Catholics and
less orthodox evangelicals. After all, the reformation is completely
exogenous, hence
irrelevant, to their religious heritage (except for those in the Coptic
Evangelical Church).
Historical 'ignorance' can have interesting side effects
that are more noticeable when observed in Others toward "ones own" history.
In Jordan a group of men needed coaching to appreciate "The Silver Blade,"
a British costume drama set in England during the restoration.
Note that the vast majority of Americans do not even know that
there was a post-Cromwell restoration, or even a Cromwell for that matter.
Nevertheless, most Americans do not need much coaching to follow British
costume
drama, despite lack of what would seem the requisite background knowledge.
Also,
well educated Americans have the same habit of asking the handy
anthropologist for
help with interpreting African art
or an article on Afghan Taliban in <xtitle>Newsweek</xtitle>.
</p>
<p>
Not all Westerners despise Arabs, nor do all Arabs despise the West
<gnote>
<p>
Almost all hate Arabs British-American regional policy,
but that is far short of loathing
Western culture and all Western international activity.
</p>
</gnote>. However, the rate of Occidentophilia in Jordan
is surely much higher than Arabophilia in North America.
Indeed, many Ammanites admire Western institutions or lifeways.
Nevertheless, alterity is still an important element, and pro-Western
discourse is often
more a critique of the home culture than true praise for the foreign culture.
Sometimes praise comes from an unexpected quarter.
<prol>Female Muslim Notes</prol>, a university student in a &ha;ijab, said she
loved English literature, and though she hated U.S. foreign policy
(especially toward
Iraq), she loved what she knew about the internal policy of the United
States. In fact,
she said some Muslim thinkers thought the polity of the United States
amounted to an
implementation of Islamic principles.
Even so, she said Islam was <strong><em>the</em></strong> answer for the
Arab world.
When she pushed me for an opinion I disagreed and gave my reasons
<gnote>
<p>
I probably said things to the effect
that the Quran and Sunna do not constitute an effective constitution,
nor can the non-state society of Prophetic Medina
serve as an effective guide for a state-level polity.
The Islamists do not have an effective policy for coping with
dissent and factionalism, both of which are politically inevitable.
Worse, the central sources are
equivocal on the problem of dissent.
In addition, Islam establishes no comprehensive theory of economics.
The truth is that Islam (in the narrow sense) informs any political
solution,
but cannot be the solution itself&emdash;except at risk
of discrediting itself like Calvinism in Geneva.
This is a personal point of view, but it is hardly unique.
Compare, for example, <citn>Nomani and Rahnema (1994)</citn>.
</p>
</gnote>. I believe I hurt her feelings.
In a more extreme case, <prol>Shoeman</prol>, the night manager for my block
of flats,
wanted to move to any well-off English speaking country
<gnote>
<p>
<prol>Shoeman</> was a Muslim Palestinian from Kuwait in his mid-twenties.
He had not finished secondary school and was under-employed.
</p>
</gnote>. In Anglophonia "no one looks over your shoulder and tells you
what to do.
"Not like in this part of the world where you feel like a shoe&emdash;not
like in the Gulf,
even if the wages are high."
</p>
<p>
<prol>Airhostess</prol> said:
</p>
<paraphrase>
<p>
The study of foreign languages made me like the idea of being an air hostess
even more.
</p>
<p>
I hate this society and keep asking why there's no equality.
It's not fair what we are facing.
The woman has no rights here.
<gnote>
<p>
Note the confluence of complaint,
utopian wishing&emdash;and in this case&emdash;a fantasy of escape.
<cnote>A common theme. Expand on the escape theme.</cnote>
</p>
</gnote>
</p>
</paraphrase>
<p>
However, criticism of the West seems more prevalent and vocal.
The gentlest critique of the West is that implied
when expatriate Arab parents send troubled teens
back to the homeland for a "geographical cure."
One meets youth living and studying in Amman because they were not succeeding
academically
or were getting in trouble back in "Denver."
Their Arab parents believe (or hope) that the value laden, and <em>boring</em>
cultural life of Amman will put the child back on track. Even religious
Westerners
sometimes believe Arab lands better suited to the well-being of children and
youth than
North America, better than even small towns in the Midwest and Great Plains.
<prol>Doug</prol>, a Mennonite Central Committee volunteer teaching English
as
a foreign language in Cairo,
said Egypt would be a great place to raise children because they would be much
less exposed to alcohol, drugs, partying, premarital sex, and corrosive
secular
ideologies&emdash;particularly the nihilist varieties
associated with various Western adolescent subcultures.
In addition, Arab children grow up in a cultural environment that stresses
the importance of religious faith and respect for elders.
<gnote>
<p>
<prol>Doug</> grew up in the acculturated Mennonite communities
of the small towns and cities of Indiana and Ohio.
Other Mennonite volunteers offered a qualified endorsement of his insight.
</p>
</gnote>
</p>
<p>
Other parents move back to the home country because they utterly condemn
Western society.
"The basic reason my <ednote><prol>Siyyasia</prol>'s</ednote> father did not
stay in Europe
is because he did not want his kids to grow up there, where there is no
religion, no manners,
nothing&emdash;they wouldn't obey him and could leave him
<gnote>
<p>
This critique of the decadent West is also an indirect endorsement of
Arab-Muslim norms.
</p>
</gnote>." The owner of my apartment block made lots of money in the
States,
but did not want his children to live there.
His son who was living in the U.S. always had girlfriends in.
(When the old man visited, he threw the
women out.) Western youth are spoiled according to this older gentleman,
they openly
sleep together in their father's houses. In short, the West is the realm of
Sodomite
debauchery. It is rich, powerful, luxurious, self-indulgent, sexually
depraved, lawless,
violent, and Godless. The West is also a unity. There may be some
appreciation for
variation between America and Europe, but there seems to be less
understanding for
the variation within Europe.
</p>
<p>
Ultimately there is a strong trend to package the essence and source of the
Godless Occident into a bundle, and attribute it to international Jewry and
the
'overarching conspiracy of the Zionist Elders.'
In the introduction to <citn><xtitle>Raising Girls</xtitle> (1985)
Mu&ha;ammad &Ayn;ali Qu&tah;b</citn> says Jews, motivated by misanthropic
hatred,
are corrupting the global ecumene with secular ideologies
designed to promote progressive moral decay and atheism.
He cites Freud, Marx, and above all Durkheim, as leading propagandists for
the 'conspiracy.'
Qu&tah;b hits the same rhetorical points as <citn>Horkheimer and Adorno
(1972)</citn>,
but extends them with an inexcusable reliance on the
<xtitle>Protocols of the Elders of Zion</xtitle>
to condemn the entire Jewish people (from the ultra-orthodox through the least
ethnic of secular Jews) as <strong>the</strong> <foreign>avant
garde</foreign>
of both Western Civilization and cosmopolitan modernity
<gnote>
<p>
One cannot convince anyone who believes in the reality of a grand Zionist
conspiracy
that the <xtitle>Protocols</xtitle> are a fraud since all evidence to the
contrary
must simply be clever Zionist propaganda and disinformation.
The same goes for denial of the Holocaust that is also very popular among
Jordanians.
Arguing that conspiracy on such a grand scale
or manufacturing massively self-consistent disinformation
is simply sociologically impossible is of no avail.
One is reminded of
<citn>Umberto Ecco's <xtitle>Foucault's Pendulum</xtitle> (1989)</citn>.
</p>
</gnote>. More chilling is <prol>Y</prol>'s claim that not only
conservative preachers,
but also professors of core history-and-civilization classes at the
University of Jordan
teach the same 'facts' about Jews, conspiracy, Western Civilization,
and the culture of the global village.
</p>
<p>
Besides alterity, there is a tendency for Jordanian neo-traditionalists to
look
to Saudi Arabia as a social model and for progressives to look at Lebanon for
a cultural
(but <strong>not</strong> a political) model.
<prol>Siyyasia</prol>'s married sister liked living in Saudi Arabia.
</p>
<paraphrase>
<p>
From a social, religious, and also material or financial
<ednote>perspective</ednote>&emdash;all these are better than here.
That means the woman is protected and preserved
more socially and emotionally.
And the financial level is very high there too.
</p>
</paraphrase>
<p>
Of course, even the Saudi state could stand further Islamic reforms.
No one is really prepared to defend the propriety of the Saudi Royal Family
itself.
(However, many appreciate their championing Wahhabi policy and causes.)
On a less <foreign>ad hominem</foreign> level,
a man who I met at a wedding wanted Saudi law to reach deeper into the home
to produce a closer approximation of "the ideal Muslim society"
(and presumably to foster, or force, development of <foreign>Homo
Islamicus</foreign>).
He also talked at length about 'greedy' versus 'true' Muslims.
Equitable distribution of wealth is a problem in Muslim theology
thanks to a bias in favor of urban merchants that goes back to the very
foundation of
the religion.
Distribution of wealth is also a major practical problem
in Saudi Arabia, especially if one happens to be a non-citizen resident
<gnote>
<p>
In the Arab world citizenship simply runs through the father's line.
For many Arabs, and Palestinians in particular, this is a major problem.
Many Palestinians are second or even
third generation residents of Arab states where they are not citizens.
It was common to meet
Kuwaiti-Palestinians who felt like they had been deprived of their homeland
in Kuwait after the Gulf War.
</p>
<p>
Sources on Gulf wealth and redistributive economics in Islam include
<citn>Abu-Rabi&ayn; (1996)</citn>;
<citn>Ajami (1992)</citn>;
<citn>Ajami (1998)</citn>;
<citn>Altorki (1986)</citn>;
<citn>Cole (1989)</citn>;
<citn>Hodgson (1974c)</citn>;
<citn>Hourani (1991)</citn>;
<citn>Qaradawi (1960)<cnote>primary source</cnote></citn>; and especially
<citn>Nomani and Rahnema (1994)</citn>.
<cnote>
Add discussion.
</cnote>
</p>
</gnote>
</p>
<p>
There is also a fair amount of concern about
the image of the Arab peoples in the Western imagination.
Unfortunately, I had little good cheer to spread on that topic.
</p>
<interview interpreter="M"
interviewer="Trent Shipley"
interviewee="Siyyasia">
<speaker role="interviewee">
<p>
Ok. Alright. Well, I think those are all the questions I have.
</p>
<p>
Is there anything you want to add?
</p>
</speaker>
<speaker role="interpreter">
<p>
She's asking you a question.
</p>
</speaker>
<speaker role="interviewer">
<p>
Yeah?
</p>
</speaker>
<speaker role="interviewee">
<p>
Uh, how do you see Arabs?
</p>
</speaker>
<speaker role="interviewer">
<p>
So,
</p>
</speaker>
<speaker role="interviewee">
<p>
Not "you," I mean, like, the foreigners&emdash;
</p>
<p>
What kind of image do Americans have?
</p>
</speaker>
<speaker role="interviewer">
<p>
Um, which Americans?
</p>
<p>
For example the Americans who live here and spend a lot of time with
Arabs and know them?
</p>
</speaker>
<speaker role="interviewee">
<p>
The ones who live there.
</p>
</speaker>
<speaker role="interviewer">
<p>
Ah, the ones who live there?
</p>
<p>
They think that a great many of you are religiously fanatical.
</p>
<p>
That many of you are terrorists.
</p>
<p>
And that, um, um, that many of you really do not like the United States at
all.
</p>
<p>
And that women have bad life here.
</p>
<p>
And that you are very wealthy with oil,
and make very bad guests&emdash;bad visitors. (nervous, embarrased giggle.)
</p>
</speaker>
<speaker role="interviewee">
<p>
Visitors to America?
</p>
</speaker>
<speaker role="interviewer">
<p>
Yeah.
</p>
<p>
But not all. They also sometimes think of Arabs as poor people who
immigrate&emdash;who have to take jobs as taxi drivers and&emdash;
</p>
</speaker>
<speaker role="interviewee">
<p>
You have seen now that all these thoughts aren't really correct.
Most of them are illusions&emdash;like terrorism.
So are you going to do anything to try to change the view.
</p>
</speaker>
<speaker role="interviewer">
<p>
Well yeah.
You know, part of what we try to do, in my branch of sociology,
is we visit other places
and try to give people a more realistic view of what's happening.
You know, we try to, um, lessen the amount of racism
and of undue stereo&emdash;you know, of wrong stereotyping, and so on,
that people have.
</p>
</speaker>
<speaker role="interviewee">
<p>
'Cause she says most of them blame our religion.
For many things, that maybe some terrorists do, they blame the religion.
And so they take a bad image of all the Arabs, that they are like this.
</p>
</speaker>
<speaker role="interviewer">
<p>
No, I um, think that this is very true.
<gnote>
<p>
Note that I did not answer directly.
This was probably due to my own prejudgement
that the hegemonic American image of religion's role in Arab culture
is partly warranted.
</p>
</gnote>
That a lot of the problems that are connected to religion.
</p>
<p>
At times when the economy in Europe was changing, thoughts were changing.
For example, Germany at the time Karl Marx was writing, and Europe.
Germany&emdash;people were moving to the cities, the economy was changing,
people didn't know what it meant to be German, didn't know what to do.
And, um, they had a problem with terrorism,
they had a problem with how to set up a good government&emdash;and
it lasted a hundred and fifty years.
From Goethe until the end of the Second World War,
the Germans had problems with how to make Germany work.
</p>
<p>
Germany was prosperous,
and part of the problem was that Germany was prosperous,
but not all <ednote>of them</ednote>. It was a problem.
</p>
<p>
And I think that a lot of it is the same way here.
A friend of mine said that Iran&emdash;which is not Arab,
but which is similar in some ways&emdash;Iran
went from being a rural country to an urban country in five years.
</p>
<p>
You know, in Germany it took thirty, fifty years to make this transition,
and in Iran, less than one generation.
So you expect people to, um, to be looking around for answers.
</p>
</speaker>
<speaker role="interviewee">
<p>
They blame the religion a lot.
</p>
</speaker>
<speaker role="interviewer">
<p>
Well, for example in Europe, another time this happened&emdash;again in
Germany,
was around 1500 and there were lots of changes.
And they fought religious wars for 100 years&emdash;almost 200 years
of religious wars, from 1500 until 1700, in Europe.
</p>
<p>
And so this is just part of what happens when things become difficult in
life and in thought. And in Europe, this caused 200 years of war.
</p>
</speaker>
<speaker role="interviewee">
<p>
Why do they try to kill our religion? To just erase it from Earth?
<gnote>
<p>
Much scholarship or propaganda by doctrinaire,
conservative Muslim elements paints
the West as bent on the destruction of Islam
(<cnote>primary source</cnote>
<citn>Al-Qardawi 1984</citn>;
<citn>Athar 1994</citn>;
<citn>Farid Esack 1999</citn>;
<citn>Qu&tah;b 1985</citn>;
<citn>Qutb 2000</citn>;
<cnote>original critique</cnote>
<citn>Esposito 1983</citn>;
<citn>Esposito and Tamimi 2000</citn>;
<citn>Fatima Mernissi 1992</citn>;
<cnote>scholarly critique</cnote>
<citn>Abu-Rabi&ayn; 1996</citn>;
<citn>Chamieh 1992</citn>;
<citn>Hoffman 1985</citn>;
<citn>Sivan 1990</citn>).
</p>
</gnote>
</p>
<p>
'Cause they're the ones who occupy.
We don't speak about Americans
<gnote>
<p>
Exclusion of Americans is diplomacy.
There is no shortage of anti-American sentiment in Jordan,
particularly in regard to the question of Palestine and among
Palestinians.
After all, the ally of one's enemy is also an enemy.
</p>
</gnote>
The British have occupied Jordan, and they tried to erase our
religion,
just like France did with other countries,
and so why do they think of us as terrorists.
They were the ones who invaded, and took land.
</p>
</speaker>
<speaker role="interviewer">
<p>
Well, it's always easy to forget about what your own people have done,
right.
Americans do not like to be reminded
about how they got their country from the Indians.
Um, but, um, when Saddam Hussein persecutes the Kurds,
they know that it's wrong&emdash;but,
they don't think about what they did to the Indians, for example. Um&emdash;
</p>
<p>
And um, and uh, it's not just the Europeans.
The Greeks are still angry at the Turks about,
about the Turks making Greece a colony of Turkey.
And Spain was a colony of the Arabs for a long time.
</p>
</speaker>
<speaker role="interviewee">
<p>
Islam wasn't seeking to occupy these places.
We were trying to call people to come to Islam to religion&emdash;and
there weren't any killings&emdash;like,
for example anyone shooting women, children, things like that.
And so that's a bad idea, when the English say Muslims are terrorists,
they kill the woman, <ednote>?</ednote>.
Because in Islam it is forbiden to kill women and children, even in war.
</p>
</speaker>
<speaker role="interviewer">
<p>
Right, no, it's true.
But the thing is that, for example, the Taliban in Afghanistan are not
terrorists,
but they have a very bad image in the West.
You know, Westerners look at the Pashtun Taliban in Afghanistan,
and think "who would want to live in that society?"
They look at Saudi, where there is no terrorism, and they think,
"who would want to live in Saudi." And then they look at&emdash;
</p>
</speaker>
<speaker role="interpreter">
<p>
Iran?
</p>
</speaker>
<speaker role="interviewer">
<p>
Well they look Iran&emdash;Iran is easier than Saudi right now,
and it is more democratic than Saudi right now.
</p>
<p>
But they look at Egypt, where people are Muslims,
but they're motivated by mistaken ideas about Muslims.
They're like the Kharijis in the time of Muawiyya and Ali ibn Talib,
and the same with the Algerians. And they are making mistakes,
but you can't call them not-Muslims, you know.
<gnote>
<p>
A common rhetorical (and theological) tactic is to simply insist
that certain objectionable groups
(for example, terrorist groups in Algeria, Egypt, and Pakistan)
are not properly Muslim; therefore,
it is wrong to treat their behavior or ideology as Islamic
or even as a secondary product of historical Islamic society.
</p>
</gnote>
</p>
</speaker>
</interview>
