When Progressive Humanist Liberalism Meets the Middle East

The New York Times claims that the following is the conventional, wide-spread 'wisdom' throughout the Middle East - this is not the conclusion of a scientific survey, but it is what routinely comes up in conversations around the region — in a shopping mall in Dubai, in a park in Algiers, in a cafe in Riyadh and all over Cairo.

Again and again, people said they simply did not believe that a group of Arabs — like themselves — could possibly have waged such a successful operation against a superpower like the United States...the United States and Israel were behind the attacks...

...“Maybe people who executed the operation were Arabs, but the brains? No way,” said Mohammed Ibrahim, 36, a clothing-store owner in the Bulaq neighborhood of Cairo. “It was organized by other people, the United States or the Israelis.”

The rumors...spread...First among these is that Jews did not go to work at the World Trade Center on that day. Asked how Jews might have been notified to stay home, or how they kept it a secret from co-workers, people here wave off the questions because they clash with their bedrock conviction that Jews are behind many of their troubles and that Western Jews will go to any length to protect Israel.

“Why is it that on 9/11, the Jews didn’t go to work in the building,” said Ahmed Saied, 25, who works in Cairo as a driver for a lawyer. “Everybody knows this. I saw it on TV, and a lot of people talk about this.”

And what is the reporter's conclusion?

It is easy for Americans to dismiss such thinking as bizarre. But that would miss a point...such ideas persist represents the first failure in the fight against terrorism — the inability to convince people here that the United States is, indeed, waging a campaign against terrorism, not a crusade against Muslims.

But that's what I and many others have been sounding out for years (okay, in my case, decades). There is something called a mindset. There is nothing racist in this. It is a fact. And the MiddleEast/Arab mindset is such that logic and rationality play much less a role in political education and wisdom than in other regions.

You recall the old frog and the scorpion joke, yes? If not, my version:-


A frog and a scorpion were on the bank [not the West Bank - there is no such thing] of the River Jordan. Said the scorpion. "I need to go to the other side of the river. Would you carry me across on your back, Mr. Frog?"

"Of course not," replied the frog. "If I do that, you'll sting me and I will die."

The scorpion responded, "If I stung you while we were in the river, we'd both drown. That's stupid and certainly not logical."

"Hmmm," said the frog. "You're right. OK, get on."

So, with the scorpion on the frog's back, they head out into the River Jordan. About halfway across the river the scorpion stings the frog.

"What did you do that for?" cried the frog just as they finally began to sink. "Was that a logical thing to do?"

"Logic?" gurgled the scorpion. "In the Middle East?"


The logic would be: why keep trying to kill Jews, push them into the sea, deny that there is such a thing as the Jewish national homeland, etc., etc. when you Arabs have 22 states, your yourselves are a foreign conquerer in what you call "Palestine" (638) and that it would be more beneficial to make peace?

But let's get back to the New York Times. Now that it has acknowledged the irrationality of the Arab Middle East, maybe it won't pressure Israel to yield on its security by surrendering territory and resources to people who believe that Jews and America planned 9/11?


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Read Bernard Lewis' piece in FP.