Stephen Browne graduated with an anthropology degree, lived in eastern Europe for a while, and did a year in “the Kingdom” — Saudi Arabia. He “went there with a certain sympathy for Arab grievances,” and came back with some Observations on Arabs:
- They don’t think the same way we do.
- When you meet them in just the right circumstances, they are a very likable people.
- Their values are fundamentally different from ours, their self-esteem is derived from a different source.
- Not only can they not build the infrastructure of a modern society, they can’t maintain it either.
- They do not think of obligations as running both ways.
- In warfare, we think they are sneaky cowards, they think we are hypocrites.
- In rhetoric, they don’t mean to be taken seriously and they don’t understand when we do.
- They don’t place the same value on an abstract conception of Truth as we do, they routinely believe things of breathtaking absurdity.
- They do not have the same notion of cause and effect as we do.
- We take for granted that we are a dominant civilization still on the way up. They are acutely aware that they are a civilization on the skids.
- We think that everybody has a right to their own point of view, they think that that idea is not only self-evidently absurd, but evil.
- Our civilization is destroying theirs. We cannot share a world in peace. They understand this; we have yet to learn it.
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