In Modernizing the Mideast, Michael Blowhard (yeah, that’s a pseudonym) presents his reaction to the Saudi Grand Mufti’s recent statement that “allowing women to mix with men is the root of every evil and catastrophe”:
It seems to me that way too little is made of how, er, nonmodern these people are. Many Westerners seem to be under the impression that mideasterners can be talked to and bargained with as though, under the robes and behind the dark spectacles, they’re just like us.My impression is different. It’s based on very little experience, admittedly. Still, a zillion years ago I spent a month with friends in Morocco; one of us was Moroccan, so we saw more of the real Morocco than most tourists at the time did. What most impressed me about our adventures was how really primitive the country was. Most of the population seemed to be living in the Dark Ages; I found it terrifying that they had access to any modern technology at all.
(Hey, did you ever read about New Zealand’s Maori people? Ferocious inter-tribal fighters who, for centuries before Euros arrived, inflicted and survived feuds and raids on each other. But when the Euros arrived and the Maori suddenly had access to guns? Well, they just about wiped themselves out.)
I found it terrifying not just that some of these Moroccans had guns; I found it terrifying that so many of them had transistor radios. Who knew what they were making of what they were listening to? I was a kid at the time, but I still remember thinking: “It’s going to take generations, and not decades, for these people to enter the modern world.”
From the FT’s story about the anti-woman Mufti, it sounds like progress is being made at about the rate I guessed it would be.