Now I "Get" Arabs

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Lately I “got” something about Arabs. I used to wonder why older Arabs hadn’t matured, as I had. I’ve left childhood behind.

As a teenage soldier, a minor, I understood my regiment was divided into far flung battalions. I knew my battalion was the very best; I knew the next best battalion in the whole armed forces was our sister battalion, a battalion I had never seen, off in another province. That battalion almost as good as mine, but not quite… You don’t have to tell me I sound like that Boston bomber in his 20’s who thought Muslim nations overseas are better and more important than all other nations in the whole world, better than even his own nation, the U.S. The difference between us two is my own youthful beliefs didn’t have grave consequences…

As a young soldier I was knew that if, say, I left my army cap on the counter and someone from a different regiment spit on our special regimental cap badge, well, I was supposed to just yell and charge, swinging my fists. You don’t have to tell me I sound like an Arab being super-sensitive about insults to symbols. The difference is that even as an eager recruit I didn’t believe in committing murder over a symbol…

Did you know that in my province, Alberta, old and young veterans are allowed special vehicle license plates to proclaim our service? The plates show a red poppy, the memorial flower of Flanders Fields of the Great War. (Great as in Great depression, Humpty’s Great fall, and the Great flood of ‘13) If you go a small town cafe, where some of the cars outside show a poppy, you may see some middle aged men like me, with our chests too large to fit into our old uniforms. Down in the warmer U.S. we might be out on the porch of the general store, whittling wood and helping ourselves to the cracker barrel. In our autumn years, on both sides of the border, no longer active in NATO and NORAD, we are mature and deliberate citizens.

If, at the café table or cracker barrel, I were to “put down” and disparage other parts of the armed forces, such as the navy or a certain rival east coast regiment, then from the other mature men I would receive puzzled looks. In the eyes of good citizens, all of our armed forces are valued as tools at our disposal. In other words, cannons and navy SEALS are not “more better” than tanks and telephone linemen. From the other older men, if I offered to fist fight for the honour of symbols, I would receive looks of contempt. So, then, what’s wrong with older Arabs?

I know now. I found out from the various June 2009 postings of Steven Pressfield (link) where he interpreted Afghanistan, saying the Arabs are tribal. Pressfield is clear and emphatic: The tribal mindset does exist, it’s not going away, and we need to deal with it. In other words, let’s not blindly impose our western values on Afghanistan, not if we expect the little tribes to fight a bigger tribe called the Taliban. Unfortunately, even with a war on, it is hard for we at home, inheriting our culture of the Greek democracies where everyone is equal, where the individual is more important than the state, to grasp at our gut level that tribal culture is different. Actually, even the Greeks, before they invented democracy, were tribal: Such is the default for every early human culture.

It’s hard for us to grasp that not all nations are equally the same. Probably if we ever do “get it,” it’s only when we are motivated to learn because of war or business. For example, at the risk of being culturist or sexist, a businessperson who hopes to make a profit must accept that wives in Asia like their shampoo black, as they think it makes their hair glossier, and that wives in America like their dish soap—er, I mean detergent—to have bubbles. When detergent first came out, housewives stood at the sink and said, “There’s no foam, there’s no suds—how can it clean?” And so bubbles were artificially added. I remember this whenever I see a little creek with little bubbles floating by.

And what of wives in Arabia? Specifically, the smart, rich educated class of wives? After 9/11 I was standing in the store reading a book by a U.S. lady who married into the Bin Laden family. One day she phoned other Arab wives, one at a time, trying to arrange a birthday party for a child. Each one turned her down, with the last one saying something like, “Isn’t that (birthdays) a Christian thing? Isn’t Christmas the birthday of Christ?” My impression is that none of the wives had any gut feeling for science: So they didn’t open-mindedly, sincerely, ask whether birthdays were Christian. They did not have empirical bones, not enough to feel: Get the facts, don’t blindly assume, and be open to new facts. My empirical sister once replied to someone’s opinion, “In God we trust, all others must supply data.”

What are the implications of a whole country, including the rulers, being without science? Here is my thought experiment: If I am at a public campsite, next to a creek with floating suds, and the camper in the next tent is a nurse, and I jab a finger at my first aide kit and I loudly say to her, “This red cross is religious!” she will reply, “What the—?”and give me a funny look. But she won't tell me I'm wrong. But if I scientifically ask, humbly seeking data, “Is this religious?” then she will relax, say “no” and not feel a need to abruptly leave and go look at the creek. The sad thing, of course, is that in Arabia they don’t have the Red Cross: They have the Red Crescent. I guess nobody asked.

Here in North America I used to always read syndicated columnists like Dear Abby and Ann Landers. One day Ms. Landers had to reply to a common question, “If B.C. means before Christ, and A.D. means after death, what happens to the missing 33 years?” And Ms. Landers explained that A.D. means Anno Domini, “year of our Lord.” If many people don’t know what A.D. is short for, then the reason is our calendar terms have no religious significance. None. Saturday belongs not to the Roman god Saturn; Thursday belongs not to the Norse god Thor; July belongs not to the divine emperor Julius Caesar. As for the Arabs: You guessed it, they failed to ask. I don’t know what they think about July, but I know some say we should switch to saying B.C.E. and A.C.E. As in before and after the Common Era. You might think the idea is too crazy to contemplate, but get this: The Australians, for their school history textbooks, are making the switch.

When I was a boy, I noticed every school history textbook started out with pictures of the six or seven (they couldn’t decide) races. From the “Mongolian” race came our old word “Mongoloid,” now replaced, thank God, by “Down Syndrome.” I don’t believe in the seven races myself, but you may call me White. If you live down in the States and you learn I work in the human service, you may think I surely have a bleeding heart. (Actually, that reasoning doesn’t apply in up in Canada) It's up to you. If you are “anti-elitist,” whatever that term means to you, you might assume anyone with a blog about citizenship must be a liberal. And, finally, you might think: If the Arabs are upset from thinking that B.C. and A.D. is religious, then as a “White bleeding heart liberal” I really “should” be inclined to cry, “Let’s follow the lead of Australia!” You would be wrong.

I don’t believe in enabling laziness. Here in North America, if immigrants from Arabia can’t be bothered to ask, then that is their problem, not mine. In an age when every small town has a public library—even if it’s open on alternate weekends with some of the shelves in a caboose—there is just no excuse for not researching, or at the very least asking your co-workers, your neighbors and yes, your librarian.

A recent federal Supreme Court case is instructive. In Canada, three individual men had their cases heard at once. They were all long-term residents or landed immigrants. The issue? They each wanted, due to their conscience, religious or otherwise, to participate in the solemn swearing-in process to become Canadian citizens without swearing allegiance to the queen. The findings? The learned judges ruled the men should have found out—even by simply asking around, let alone doing library research—that the queen does not rule Canada. The verdict? To become citizens, the three men had to swear to the queen like everybody else.

To me, science means that if someone says Martians secretly rule the world, or, as the Egyptian ambassador said, that Islam is under attack worldwide—Like how in the Highlanders, there were always angry rumors (false, I realize now, in middle age) that the government wanted to take away our kilts—then the scientific response, as science fiction writer James Hogan taught his little girls, is to ask three questions: Who said so? Who’s he? How does he know?

If you are a young college student and your tribal aunts and uncles “won’t let you” ask the three questions, then you have a responsibility to “give yourself permission” to ask, to walk away from their don't-ask beliefs. You don’t have to be on campus to do this, although university is the time and place where it’s easiest. Huckleberry Finn figuratively walked away from his community’s belief that “my tribe is superior,” back when he was far too young for university, back when he couldn’t even read.

It feels queer, thinking a lot of grown men and women lack the responsibility of that boy.

Sean Crawford

Calgary

September

2014

Footnotes:

~ “Alternate weekends” is when two small towns share the same library staff.

~Personal growth, walking away from your old internal culture, is something Steven Pressfield and I have done. His blog page yesterday (link) concerns internal culture.

~I definitely won’t be posting next week because I will be concentrating for a fortnight on composing poetry. Meanwhile, a commenter, Anonymous, has asked me, What one thing would you do if you knew you could not fail? The latest (August 19) blog posting of Scott Berkun (link) covers that, so maybe next week you could read him instead of me….
Are there any essays of mine you especially like? I ask, partly because if my essay output decreases, as my poetry and fiction increases, then maybe I could do a similar essay, or post a re-run.