There might be many political, social or cultural phenomena, which may hamper the Arab culture (and hence most Arabic speaking societies) and prevent it from catching up with human development and progress and from actively participating in its processes. The two keywords remain to be "religion" (i.e. our understanding to religion) and "education", used in their most negative, backward and hampering context of systems that are unable to neither face nor meet the challenges of this modern era and actively contribute to its practices involving human creativity. These two reasons are the main causes of the isolation of contemporary Arab culture from evolution and human modernization. I would like to emphasize here – in the conclusion – the intertwined and closely knit relationship between these two destructive factors. While on one hand the culture of (backward and enchaining) understanding of religion creates and produces a general religious climate which impairs educational levels and aids in its further deterioration, the late educational systems originating from this era, on the other hand, suspend human creativity which in turn result in more segments of the society adopting the diffident and medieval, dismal and austere interpretation of religion.
The manifestations of this methodology of polemics becomes very apparent, more so the famous Hegelian dialectic which was adopted by one of Hegel's fiercest opponents, namely Karl Marx.
The reader may wonder about the role of political tyranny, oppression, corruption and other materializations of different oligarchies in this ghastly concoction, which results in a cultural climate full of negativities and rich in deterioration and disintegration, hampering human minds from active creativity, originality and ingenuity. My answer is that all these negative phenomena are not the problem, but rather its symptoms. I do not dispute the existence of an apparent dialectic relationship between the cause and its symptoms. Tyrannical and despotic rulers definitely benefit from silencing the disapproving voices and shutting down the critical minds of their societies and communities. However, that does not repudiate the proliferation of taqleed (blind following), senseless obedience and mindless imitation (which in turn is espoused by a backward interpretation of religion), but consecutively aids it. Furthermore the rulers utterly refuse transparency and accountability.
The remaining – and more important question – becomes then: "Where do we start?" Even though my answer would require an entire book, it can be summed up in one single phrase, namely – "quality leadership".
Humankind has seen two main courses of development. The European course, which can be described as "simmering on a low flame" and which took many centuries to crystallize and the Asian course, which can be described as "cooking fast on a high flame". In the first course, the maturity and evolution of democracy played a big role in hastening development, innovation and prosperity. The Asian model, on the other hand, started with quality leadership and then democracy found its roots hand in hand with growth and development.
It is important to elaborate on what I mean by democracy here. I do not mean ballot boxes or elections. Limiting and reducing democracy in backward and retarded societies to electoral processes and ballots results in destructive choices (for example Hamas's recent win in the Palestinian elections). I do mean democracy in its comprehensive overall definition including the democratic culture, numerous parties, modern dialogue, democratic institutions, effective urban societies and democratic applications, constitutional and modern laws, an independent judiciary, low illiteracy rates and finally elections.
That way the tragedy of the isolation of modern Arab societies from human development and evolution rests on two major factors in Arab societies, namely religion (in its prevailing interpretation) and education (in its existing backwardness) which both negate and hamper any progress towards creativity, innovation and originality of the human mind.
I miss the separation between genders and the lower status of woman in your explanation.
Do you know ShrinkWrapped's series "The Arab Mind"? (link)
[Link fixed. Ruth, please don't post bare links, as it is against site rules. - David Blue]
You are right - the female status in the Arab culture is absolutely ugly. If you visit my site (link) you will find out that I wrote a great deal about that as one of the most negative and backward facets of the Arab culture. For instance, my artiles "Women & Progress". Yet, this is a reflection to the two main sources of backwardness "Islam - as it is understood by the greates majority of Muslims" and "the outdated educational systems of the Arab societies". With my thanks for your feedback, with my best regards from Istanbul, Tarek Heggy.
[Link fixed. Tarek Heggy, please don't post bare links, as it is against site rules. - David Blue]
The rules for symbolic thought are the grammar of one's first language. Perhaps the grammar of Arabic leaves open the mind to subservience and lethargy.
The Asian model, on the other hand, started with quality leadership and then democracy found its roots hand in hand with growth and development.
I wouldn't call it quality leadership exactly, really more like quality bureaucracy. Asian governments had a centuries, really millenia in some cases, long cultural tradition of dispersing autocratic government power through a bureaucratic class which is partially internally selected, but also partially meritocratic. Above all, they didn't have the least problem with the leadership class getting personally down and dirty with running businesses. Indeed it was expected.
But the real driver of democracy was the explosion of entrepreneurial activity which resulted in the rapid creation of a middle class. The asian governments didn't so much create democracy as they simply let it happen naturally (and in the Japanese case, they had it to start with (after the war) and learned to value it).
I'll note that the original top down approaches the US used in Iraq and Afghanistan failed in Iraq and seem to be failing in Afghanistan. The second try, bottom up model aka the surge is working.
If by 'quality leadership', you mean a strong man to come along and drag the Arab world by the scruff of the next and pitch them over the cliff of change into the sea of democracy, well, it ain't happening. The genius, strong leader is the antithesis of democracy when you get down to it.
If you meant 'quality leadership' you meant a government that enforces the law, doesn't tolerate corruption, and above all stays out of the way, allowing the average Arab on the street to run with things, then I'll agree.
I wonder if Arabs are not so intent upon exerting their uniqueness that it drives them away from mainstays of modernity.
As Newton pointed out in his now famous statement “If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.” it would be nearly impossible to bring something to the table of modern polemics and science that wasn’t, at least in some small way, attributable to more ancient sources of wisdom. Westerners are comfortable in this stew, though it may not be said that Western culture is the sole source of it. Philosophy and religious sensibilities as well as modern Western medicine has borrowed liberally from Eastern philosophy and science.
Trying to carve oneself out as unique, as in ‘chosen by god’, must strain ones confidence and may lead to dissembling and rationalizations. God wants us to wear millennia old costumes and observe customs from the last and final time he gave his word to his followers. This is why I think Arabs are frozen in time.
"Where do we start?" How about with introspect and humility?
It must be hard being humble when god has picked out you personally from the entire universe to be his hand and voice in this world. And a petty and pissed off god would want someone that was ruthlessly efficient and not at all introspective.
The concept of god should evoke the utmost in humility, but if you are convince that god demands that you do his bidding, humility doesn’t even enter into it.
I don’t think education in Arab lands can escape the gravitational field of Islam itself. Education is firmly in the orbit of religion and will remain in submission to it until the Arab populace values the accomplishments of civilization as much as their own contributions to it.
I think the communication and transportation technologies that facilitated the centralization of power and culture, which occurred about two hundred years ago in the Arab world, radically changed the relationship between the rustic "saints cult" and the cult of law. Radical Islamism emerged as a kind of nationalistic reaction to the loss of local identities, which had maintained a level of sectarian tolerance for centuries. However, the stage is now set for a conclusion to what has been a perpetual reformation in Islam. Takfir was the winnowing machine that separated the grain from the chaff of the western enlightenment, and kept the chaff. It is still the primary enemy of a liberal civil society in the Middle East. The irony is that it's the form of Islam that has been most influenced by these rotten ideas of Western intellectual and philosophical romantic tradition.
mark wrote in #3 above that "The rules for symbolic thought are the grammar of one's first language. Perhaps the grammar of Arabic leaves open the mind to subservience and lethargy."
I may be the only one who cares, but for the record, this is a different mark. The first statement is dubious. The 2nd more so. Given that Arabic and Hebrew are both of the same linguistic stock and their grammars more similar to each other than either is to, say, an Indo-European language (such as English, Greek, Latin or Russian), we would expect that to whatever degree grammar plays a role in thought, there would be noticeable similarities in the thought processes of Hebrew-speakers and Arabic-speakers.
I am going to guess here that content of our respective comments will be sufficient in the future to distinguish clearly between the two lower-case marks.
#7 from mark:
That never works. Name-copying causes great confusion, as well as being likely to harm the good name (online) of the person whose name got copied.
Which is why it's an automatic permanent banning offense at Winds of Change, an approach I support.
I've alerted other marshals to this. In the meantime, further comment on it doesn't need to be part of this thread. Thank you for calling attention to the offense in the first place though.
Again, I don't doubt that tyranny and corruption, as well as poor education, are critical to the current condition of the Middle East. But tyranny and corruption are direct consequences of the peculiar impact of modernity, which has allowed the centralization of power. Something like it happened in Europe and Asia, but the nature of high and low Islam imparted unique characteristics. I'm not challenging Tarek on this, I'm just hoping he can explain how his analysis converges. Moreover, for some reason the Middle East seems to have taken the worst ideas of Western civilization to its heart, and rejected the best. There is some perverse winnowing process going on. It has nothing to do with language. It may, in part, be due to poor education. But I suspect it's mainly due to forces similar to those that produced similar results elsewhere. What is it about Romantic Philosophy that is so appealing to minds and hearts emerging from a feudal past? The way western societies got over the sickness was that enclaves were established that operated as sanctuaries for liberal thought, where the mean forces unleashed by the perverse romanticism couldn't get at them. Something like that has to happen in the Middle East. I'm not sure why this isn't obvious.
Mr. Heggy is not the only one who is a bit bothered by all of this.
How can any culture evolve when a rejection of true change (i.e., honest self-evaluation, self-criticism, contrition) seems to be a built-in feature?
Sure, education is important; but it's more than that, as one can see from (even highly) educated people who insist on the "real truth" behind 9/11 or who hold that the Holocaust either never happened or has been grossly exaggerated, e.g....?
(H/T David Frum's blog)
P.S. Something else of interest, perhaps, on a similar theme
As the Arabs were exporting their pathologies to the West, we had not alternative but to strike back.
Hey David - there could be two people who foolishly misspell their first names as 'mark' (rather than the preferred 'marc' - g)...so I'm not sure this rises to the level of threats to ban...
A.L.
AL (aka MarC),
Only the French would spell Mark with a c.
(not that there's anything wrong the French)
marK
I'm willing to change my nom to El Fantastico if it will help avoid confusion (in Spanish, that translates to The Fantastico, if anyone was wondering).