Communicating Arts - Main Web SiteI have been reading Raphael Patai's controversial ethnography, The Arab Mind, while monitoring the news from the middle east and elsewhere. In most of the northern hemisphere, spring makes way for love. It is the bride's season, the time for dancing around the Maypole, the gentle slip into warm days and cool nights followed by hot days and warm nights chased with beer and the clink of ice in glasses.
In the middle east, it seems as much the season for planting bombs and crawling out of hideouts with AK-47's and shoulder-fired rocket propelled grenades (RPG's) at the ready.
In his book, published in 1973, Patai makes interpretive sense of such abominations. His sources for behavior so out of phase with the exigencies of contemporary cultures elsewhere:
- The beautiful force that is the Arabic language, and with it, the elision of past and present time that make yesterday's events as if they were bearing as meaningfully as ever on today's, such has been my impression of Patai's description of it;
- The severe public repression and correlating doctrine in law of public displays of sexual affection and being along with a Draconian Puritanism, a formidable brew for aggression, one way or the other;
- The cleaving to religious thought and code in every aspect of life, culminating, ideally, in a state of purity worthy of the ease of an afterlife in heaven, but lending itself also to a pervasive sense of moral judgment bearing down on every act.
And I have driven but half way through the pages.
Personally, I am wary of the vaunted pervasiveness of either the Arab or larger Muslim monoculture: we're at peace (without an occupying presence) with many predominantly Muslim countries (start with Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey and move on to southeast Asia). Moreover, where Arabs and others find themselves living in proximity within the bounds of a common and comparative established and recognized government, what rancor develops, if any, seems but given to a few.
I have not seen (and hope I never shall see) a global Arab or Muslim uprising despite the barrage of calls to Jihad: again, not only does Islamic warfare against the infidel seem the province of a determined few, as relentless as the guerrilla or low intensity conflict has been, the truth remains--the chief victims of Islamic militants have been Muslims.
Israel today, as it has done before, extracted about 30 personalities from the Hamas effort, which has otherwise been launching rockets, about 150 recently, at the Jewish democracy (20 percent Arab, giving Israeli Arabs a kind of one in five chance of being victimized--or involuntarily martyred, I suppose--by the same unguided anger as simmers in blood elsewhere). Of course, while Israel defends itself in its characteristically practical manner, the young men of Palestine must continue defending themselves from one another, a sort of Middle East Side Story all grown up, half way to a century old, and branded into international consciousness and politics.
To Israel's north, the Palistinian camp--really, a small city having the characteristics of a self-governing reservation--of Nahr Al-Bared near Tripoli in Lebanon has emptied of a substantial portion of its approximately 35,000 civilians while an estimated 300 to 500 combatants remaining to fight in it, and armed heavily with freebooted (from somewhere) mil-spec metal, seem to be people known to no one in the camp.
Who is fighting for whom and what?
This inquiring mind looks forward to the end of this most unpopular battle pitting the Lebanese Army against "Fateh al-Islam", which various news sources describe as Al Qaeda but, really, has anyone had a good, long talk with any of the fighters?
"Syria's ambassador to the United Nations, Bashar Ja'afari, said late yesterday his government had nothing to do with the violence and that Fatah al-Islam's leaders are members of al- Qaeda who had been jailed in Syria for terrorist activities. Members of the group include Saudi Arabians, Syrians and Afghans, Brigadier Suleiman said." ("Fighting Resumes Between Lebanese Soldiers, Militants"--Update7--Tarek Al-Issawi and Massoud A. Derhally, Bloomberg).
Whoever Fateh al-Islam turns out to be in terms of "who"--distinct personalities with names, histories, beliefs, and heartaches--rather than ideology, this, according to today's The Middle East Times ("Lebanon Vows to Crush "Terror" as Refugees Flee") describes how worthwhile the fighting and mayhem have been for the resident Palestinians, who literally don't know Fateh al-Islam from Adam:
"Relief agencies are hoping to get more aid to those still inside the once densely populated shantytown, battered by army shelling into a war zone of shrapnel-scarred houses, rubble-strewn streets, and burned out shells of cars."
I don't know what Allah thinks of it, but for me, the description has become too familiar: everywhere AQ and other militia and militants have been with arms, "rubble-strewn streets, and burned out shells of cars" have formed the dominant impression.
From the looks of it, the ritual of warfare, the summons to it and timeless intergenerational identity imparted by it, would seem to count for far more than any good political result or religious state of being or grace apart from the divide, mystery, and release from life that is death itself.
To get into detail on what the people look like, outside and in, after days, months, or years of so much violence may wait here to draw more from the province of fiction than journalism.
Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim
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