Thinking Like an Arab

[Bonnie]

By Alan Caruba

If it hasn't occurred to most Americans by now, Arabs don't think like us. They see the world in very different terms. Rationality, logic, and common sense do not rate high among their priorities.

Not long ago, I had the opportunity to briefly work with Edward V. Badolato, a retired U.S. Marine Colonel with a distinguished career in government and private enterprise. Col. Badolato is a graduate of the U.S. Naval War College with several tours of duty in the Middle East, beginning in 1967 shortly after the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War. His tours took him to nearly every country in the Middle East. Following his retirement, he served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy in both the Reagan and Bush administrations (1984-89). As such, he was the principal architect of the government's readiness and response to terrorist threats to our energy infrastructure.

In 1980, he wrote a white paper, "Learning to Think like an Arab Muslim: a Short Guide to Understanding the Arab Mentality". I am going to provide a brief introduction to it. At only 14 pages, it is not a long document, but it succinctly explains why Americans and others in the West are encountering such difficulty understanding why Arab Muslims appear, by our standards, to be completely insane.

Why, for example, would people who believe they have the one, true religion, not hesitate to blow up mosques and other holy places? Why would they attack weddings and funerals? Why is beheading so popular among terrorists? Why would a few cartoons set off rioting and killing? And what does all this mean to us in terms of the threat it represents?

Badolato begins by describing Arabs as "a proud and sensitive people whose culture is mainly derived from three key factors: family, language, and religion." The Arab cultural system has existed for centuries and predates the introduction of Islam around 610 AD and its rapid spread after the death of Muhammad in 632 AD. "An Arab's commonly accepted view of the world (is) basically threatening and harsh."

Arab Muslims and presumably others because Islam has more than a billion adherents, divide the world between themselves and what they call Dar al Harb, literally, "the world of war." So, you are either a Muslim or you are an infidel and, by definition, a threat to Islam until you convert or are killed.

This may seem harsh, but true believers in Islam hold all other religions in contempt. The view of Judaism is psychopathic. Christians do not fare much better. The contempt for Hindus and Buddhists, religions deemed not to have "a book", completes the utter certitude of Muslims that they alone are truly religious.

You might feel that way, too, if you were compelled to pray five times a day, at dawn, midday, late afternoon, sunset, and nightfall. There are five prescribed prayers and all are in Arabic, a language Arabs will tell you is superior to all others. Verbal grandiosity is greatly applauded by Arabs. When facts are trumped by "ideas", however, you have entered Alice's bizarre Wonderland.

Badolato writes that, "An Arab's concept of the world has occasionally been described as a series of seven concentric circles with the individual Arab at the center. Thus, he has his family, an extended family or tribe, an immediate geographic region, and then his country. It is within the family that the psychology of the Muslim Arab is formed and observers have noted that, "the fluctuation between a loving mother and stern disciplinarian father can add to the complexity of growing up and often fosters schizoid personality traits." To put it another way, Arabs can go from hot to cold and back again so fast that it is bewildering. Arabs live in a black and white world with no shadings of grey.

Why do Arabs seem to be so violent? Conflict can be found in a family culture of competitiveness that is instilled at an early age. An old Arab saying aptly describes this. "I against my brother, my brother and I against our cousins, my brother, my cousins and I against the world." Add to this the way Arab history has been dominated "by warfare, domestic upheaval, and struggles against invasions from outside the Arab world" and you begin to grasp a mindset that will resist anything that is not Arab.

As Badolato describes it, it is an "almost visceral mistrust of any outside group or more specifically any Western state whose true ultimate intentions cannot readily be determined." For Arabs, their wars such as the conflict between Iraq and Iran in the 1980s really began at the battle of Qaddisiya over a thousand years ago!

The Islamic wars following the death of Mohammad led to the Sunni and Shiite divisions within Islam. It is a history of tension and conflict that literally dates back to the earliest years of Islam. Westerners might dismiss this by saying, "Get over it!" but the Arab mentality is totally rooted in the past.

And why not? Not one single word of the 114 surahs (chapters) of the Quran has been changed in fourteen centuries and they describe in detail the conduct of every hour of every day of an Arab Muslim's life. As Badolato describes it, "It is as if one single document contained our Constitution, our legal code, national education policy, business practices, inter-personal etiquette, and the Bible." Welcome to the seventh century AD!

What America and the West are up against are Islamic fundamentalists and countless sympathizers who would destroy us in a desperate effort to retain their Arab identity. Thus, when Palestinians elect Hamas, a terrorist organization, as their government, the West recoils, but the same is true throughout the Middle East and across northern Africa. In any election, Islamic fundamentalists would take control of the politics of these nations.

Their very identity as Arabs and/or Muslims is at stake. The validity of Islam as the one, true faith is at stake. "Huge segments of the population simply cannot cope with modernity and the social and political changes taking place."

What we see as an improvement in the lives of millions of Arabs, changes in their educational system, women's rights and their inclusion in the work force, improved literacy rates, better nutritional standards, advanced health and hygiene, all things that Westerners embrace, threaten Arabs. This explains why the Middle East has remained the most backward region of the world for centuries and why it now constitutes the greatest threat to the modern world.

Arab Muslims are not like us. They do not want to be like us. If they become more like us they will have to let go of a culture that both stunts their humanity and provides an odd, brutal security blanket at the same time.

For the West that leaves us with the same demand we made of Japan and Germany in the last century, unconditional surrender.

http://www.thisrepublic.net/newarticles/Thinking_Like_an_Arab.php

 

[William Joyce]

Ah, yes, but while we're plumbing the minds of Arabs, why not Jews, too? If we're going to understand the crazies who try killing us, shouldn't we also understand the crazies who cause it all behind the scenes?

The West and Arabs are not squarely at odds. It's a triangle, and Jews are the unmentioned angle.

 

[Gunny]

Thinking Like an Arab

I can't resist ....."Why?"

 

[Nienna]

Very interesting, Bonnie.

 

[Nuc]

This is one of the biggest problems we face. Guys like Bush and Blair continue to proceed as though the Muslims are rational human beings who will be reasonable and act in their own best interest. They are not.

 

[Bonnie]

This is one of the biggest problems we face. Guys like Bush and Blair continue to proceed as though the Muslims are rational human beings who will be reasonable and act in their own best interest. They are not.

Im inclined to agree however, with freedom, education, and prosperity usually comes some sense of rationality or intelligence. To keep Muslims in the stone age as Hussein the Taliban, and others were and are doing does the rest of the world no good either.

 

[Nuc]

Im inclined to agree however, with freedom, education, and prosperity usually comes some sense of rationality or intelligence. To keep Muslims in the stone age as Hussein the Taliban, and others were and are doing does the rest of the world no good either.

Muslims were of course civilized and advanced culturally when Europeans were living in huts. They had running water, beautiful architecture, poetry, blah blah blah. But now they have fallen into a primitive mindset which is dangerous to themselves (which is OK) and the rest of the world (not OK).

They blame a lot of their problems on poverty, which they see as being caused by the West. Sorry Abdul, anybody who has three wives, each of whom have eight kids, is going to be poor. Their rampant breeding is unbalancing the world population in a dangerous way at the same time as it is dooming the Arabs and Muslims to poverty and ignorance.

Unfortunately this trend is unlikely to reverse itself before it destroys the planet.

I have some Arab and Muslim friends and they are good people. But they better get a handle on the ugly side of their lifestyle before it's too late.

 

[Bonnie]

Muslims were of course civilized and advanced culturally when Europeans were living in huts. They had running water, beautiful architecture, poetry, blah blah blah. But now they have fallen into a primitive mindset which is dangerous to themselves (which is OK) and the rest of the world (not OK).

They blame a lot of their problems on poverty, which they see as being caused by the West. Sorry Abdul, anybody who has three wives, each of whom have eight kids, is going to be poor. Their rampant breeding is unbalancing the world population in a dangerous way at the same time as it is dooming the Arabs and Muslims to poverty and ignorance.

Unfortunately this trend is unlikely to reverse itself before it destroys the planet.

I have some Arab and Muslim friends and they are good people. But they better get a handle on the ugly side of their lifestyle before it's too late.

Okay assuming your right, what do we do about it??

 

[Nuc]

Okay assuming your right, what do we do about it??

Honestly, I don't think it can be controlled from the outside. The only hope is that they figure it out for themselves, kind of like how the Germans and Japanese figured it out for themselves.

Before anyone says, "Yeah that's because we kicked the Krauts and Japs asses, and we need to do that to the Moslems." Bad analogy because the Muslim threat is not emanating from one or two particular countries. It's many countries and cancerous minorities within plenty of other non-Muslim countries. It's going to be difficult or probably impossible to kick the asses of the Muslim world. They have the numbers.

The only thing we can really control is our border. Obviously a really lousy job is being done there, just look at how easily the 9/11 highjackers operated.

I think we need to stop the threat at home before fantasizing that we are going to convince 1.3 billion lunatics to convert to peace, justice and the American way. It ain't gonna happen.

And of course we have to get off our economic reliance upon that region. Which does not mean drilling the hell out of Alaska. It means real leadership from our President and the government in the field of new and alternative forms of energy.

 

[CSM]

Honestly, I don't think it can be controlled from the outside. The only hope is that they figure it out for themselves, kind of like how the Germans and Japanese figured it out for themselves.

Before anyone says, "Yeah that's because we kicked the Krauts and Japs asses, and we need to do that to the Moslems." Bad analogy because the Muslim threat is not emanating from one or two particular countries. It's many countries and cancerous minorities within plenty of other non-Muslim countries. It's going to be difficult or probably impossible to kick the asses of the Muslim world. They have the numbers.

The only thing we can really control is our border. Obviously a really lousy job is being done there, just look at how easily the 9/11 highjackers operated.

I think we need to stop the threat at home before fantasizing that we are going to convince 1.3 billion lunatics to convert to peace, justice and the American way. It ain't gonna happen.

And of course we have to get off our economic reliance upon that region. Which does not mean drilling the hell out of Alaska. It means real leadership from our President and the government in the field of new and alternative forms of energy.

Good points but you have to admit that the Germans and the Japanese had some 'motivation' and just a teensy bit of help figuring it out for themselves. Having a few gunboats in Tokyo Harbor just might have influenced the Japanese in some small way. Crushing the German war machine and firebombing a few of their cities just might have altered German thinking in a small way.

Perhaps if Mecca was a glowing, radioactive fireball the Muslims might just get a hint about rethinking their views of the world. Doesn't matter if there are 3 or 3 billion, something like that is bound to have an impact.

 

[Bonnie]

Nuc..Honestly, I don't think it can be controlled from the outside. The only hope is that they figure it out for themselves, kind of like how the Germans and Japanese figured it out for themselves.

Okay again suppose that's correct...Why do you think other Muslim countries are so frightened of Democracy spreading to their own backyards? It's more then them losing superficial control over the masses... no??

 

[Nuc]

Good points but you have to admit that the Germans and the Japanese had some 'motivation' and just a teensy bit of help figuring it out for themselves. Having a few gunboats in Tokyo Harbor just might have influenced the Japanese in some small way. Crushing the German war machine and firebombing a few of their cities just might have altered German thinking in a small way.

Perhaps if Mecca was a glowing, radioactive fireball the Muslims might just get a hint about rethinking their views of the world. Doesn't matter if there are 3 or 3 billion, something like that is bound to have an impact.

Well......if we drop a nuke on Mecca we do the following:

Kill a lot of innocent people.

Turn it irrefutably into a religious war.

Have to face the response from the rest of the surviving Muslims in places as far away from Mecca as India, Indonesia, North America, etc.

 

[Nuc]

Okay again suppose that's correct...Why do you think other Muslim countries are so frightened of Democracy spreading to their own backyards? It's more then them losing superficial control over the masses... no??

I don't think they understand or want democracy. If there is Democracy in the Arab world, Bin Laden is elected.

Democracy, although good in principle, is not always good in reality. Democracy depends entirely upon the intelligence of the electorate.

I think their imperialistic quasi religion is more important to them than any political construct. Actually it is inseparable from their politics.

 

[dilloduck]

I don't think they understand or want democracy. If there is Democracy in the Arab world, Bin Laden is elected.

Democracy, although good in principle, is not always good in reality. Democracy depends entirely upon the intelligence of the electorate.

I think their imperialistic quasi religion is more important to them than any political construct. Actually it is inseparable from their politics.

Freedom is what threatens them

 

[Nuc]

Freedom is what threatens them

That's obvious. Not only the freedom of other people in the world (the Danish press for example). Also their own freedom. I doubt most of them want or would know what to do with freedom. A part of the world where dictatorship and theocracy is the norm does not speak favorably about the inhabitants love of freedom.

 

[CSM]

Well......if we drop a nuke on Mecca we do the following:

Kill a lot of innocent people.

Turn it irrefutably into a religious war.

Have to face the response from the rest of the surviving Muslims in places as far away from Mecca as India, Indonesia, North America, etc.

If only the islamofascists were as worried about the death of innocents as the West is. I am convinced that it already IS irrefutably a religious war (as well as cultural, etc). So far, the global response of Muslims seems to be whole hearted support for the jihadists; the fact that nuking Mecca may make them more active is not a bad thing in my opinion...once they show themselves they make better targets. (sarcasm).

Do not forget that not all citizens of the Axis powers were located in their own countries...there were millions of Germans, Italians, and Japanese spread around the world during WW II. That fact alone did not result in defeat for the Allies.

 

[dilloduck]

That's obvious. Not only the freedom of other people in the world (the Danish press for example). Also their own freedom. I doubt most of them want or would know what to do with freedom. A part of the world where dictatorship and theocracy is the norm does not speak favorably about the inhabitants love of freedom.

It's happening as we speak. With Saddam no longer there to kill anyone who messes up his paradise, they are using thier freedom to try to subjugate other muslim sects. They have no concept whatsoever of what it means to be an Iraqi. Sort of like the kind of immigrants that come to America these days.

 

[Nuc]

If only the islamofascists were as worried about the death of innocents as the West is. I am convinced that it already IS irrefutably a religious war (as well as cultural, etc). So far, the global response of Muslims seems to be whole hearted support for the jihadists; the fact that nuking Mecca may make them more active is not a bad thing in my opinion...once they show themselves they make better targets. (sarcasm).

Do not forget that not all citizens of the Axis powers were located in their own countries...there were millions of Germans, Italians, and Japanese spread around the world during WW II. That fact alone did not result in defeat for the Allies.

OK if it's a religious war what are the sides?

Islam vs. Christianity?

Islam vs. Judeo/Christianity?

Islam vs. all other religions?

If the latter do you think we are allied with all other religions?

I am not a Christian or a Jew (or obviously a Muslim) so I don't really want to go down in flames because of a war between the "people of the book".

 

[CSM]

OK if it's a religious war what are the sides?

Islam vs. Christianity?

Islam vs. Judeo/Christianity?

Islam vs. all other religions?

If the latter do you think we are allied with all other religions?

I am not a Christian or a Jew (or obviously a Muslim) so I don't really want to go down in flames because of a war between the "people of the book".

Obviously it is not that simple. There is little doubt in my mind that it is Islam vs. all other religions. It is also Islam vs. any other culture, society, or even freedom of thought.

The leaders of Islam are at war with anything and everything that is a threat to their power; their control of every aspect of their follower's lives (from what they eat, wear, live and even how they think) for every minute of every day is what is at risk.

 

[dilloduck]

OK if it's a religious war what are the sides?

Islam vs. Christianity?

Islam vs. Judeo/Christianity?

Islam vs. all other religions?

If the latter do you think we are allied with all other religions?

I am not a Christian or a Jew (or obviously a Muslim) so I don't really want to go down in flames because of a war between the "people of the book".

Peaceful co-existence vs Islam