"In September 2017 a YouGov poll commissioned by the Arab News and the Council for the Advancement of Arab British Understanding illustrated worrying attitudes and misunderstandings of Arabs and Muslims in Britain. Of the 2142 British voters polled in the survey, 63% stated that they believe Arabs have failed to integrate themselves into British Society, and 41% believed that their presence has not been beneficial. Despite these strong opinions, 81% admitted that they knew little or nothing about the region." (The British Arab Centre)
Is it surprising?
To my life experience in Britain, it is not. The sheer level of prejudice and lack of knowledge is horrifying. One begins with "oh, you don't look Arab!" Arabs are only brown-skinned people she thought. Another was when an educated person who told me in 2010, when I mentioned Edward Said and Orientalist views, "that was long time ago." Presumably because she felt we were living in a triumphing liberal age that put Orientalist views of Arabs and Muslims, and the Other in general, in the dusbin of history.
What is prevalent was and still is what a teacher told me: "human rights" or in the words of Justin Rosenberg "the empire of civil society". But they would never question their complicity in supporting authoritarian regimes, repression, torture, etc while they are cherishing Fly Emirates and lifting no finger when their "leaders" dine and wine with dictators and monarchs in their Western cities (that is reserved mostly for the Chinese and Russian regimes), and when their governments sell arms to protect those autocratic regimes and to engineer and fuel more violence in the region.
This is not restricted to Britain of course. In some European countries the situation is worse. After all, I have been living in a very multi-ethnic city, arguably the mos mixed city in the world, not in Budapest or Warsaw.
Then came the violent attacks carried out by Muslims in Western cities and Orientalist views got even worse, revealing even more ignorance, more racism, more Islamophobia. It was not shocking for me that 5 students from two different London universities studying Gender and Middle Eastern studies none of them was able to name a single Arab feminist, that a Dutch student approached me just after Charlie Hebdo attacks, saying, "what shall we do with Muslims?", that a History student burst in frustration upon encountering the variety of Arabic pronunciation, "now I understand why there are many conflicts in the Arab world. It is because there are many dialects," that a British woman said, upon hearing the word Guantanamo, "it is where they keep the terrorists," that two Germans and an English at the same time declared that "a benevolent dictator would be a good thing," that an Italian PhD student commented, "I cannot see life without neoliberalism," that another History student, an English who I met several times, asked me "why Afghan soldiers were killing dogs," not how may times Britain invaded Afghanistan, why Afghanistan is one of the poorest country on earth, why some Muslims carried out violent attackes in London, Paris amd Berlin, for example, or what I thought about the destruction of Iraq and the British role in it....
A German PhD student wanted to "empower women in the Middle East and Africa." She wasn't a revolutionary speaking about helping others overthrow repressive regimes and fighting for social justice, etc No. But what is implied, naively or intentionally, is that Middle Eastern and African women are unfit to empower themselves; they need an educated white Westerner from an elite institution with a middle class outlook. That was how German women were "empowered" in the twentieth century; women from "higher, more civilised" countries went to Germany to empower German women.
That is a glimpse of how the dominant ideology is embedded in the education system. That is also what is reinforced in most of the middle class students or students with middle class way of thinking who are privileged or lucky to study in Western universities.
"Most wars in the Arab world are religiously based" is almost a common statement. When you mention the Arab uprisings, very few people have ever heard of them or even if they have they are unable to state any basic aspects of the uprisings. And all what is needed in this turbulent context is an Islamic scholar of the calibre of Boris Johnson, to demonstrate the relationship between "Islam" and "backwardness", with a profound analysis of capitalist development, nature of authoritarian regimes, the origins of Western capitalism, "liberal democracy", the history of violence, power relations, technological factors, and, in short, "why we developed and they have not."
If teachers themselves have built up such pile of prejudices and Euro-centric views and if students, who are supposed to acquire scientific knowledge of historical processes and scientific tools to analyse social phenomena, think in this way, what about the rest?
Knowledge about the Middle East and North Africa based on reading history, sociology and power relations is almost zero, confined to a minuscule minorty such as those in academia or some of those who got immersed in an Arab country and combined that with a good sociological and historical account of society.
Is it surprising?
To my life experience in Britain, it is not. The sheer level of prejudice and lack of knowledge is horrifying. One begins with "oh, you don't look Arab!" Arabs are only brown-skinned people she thought. Another was when an educated person who told me in 2010, when I mentioned Edward Said and Orientalist views, "that was long time ago." Presumably because she felt we were living in a triumphing liberal age that put Orientalist views of Arabs and Muslims, and the Other in general, in the dusbin of history.
What is prevalent was and still is what a teacher told me: "human rights" or in the words of Justin Rosenberg "the empire of civil society". But they would never question their complicity in supporting authoritarian regimes, repression, torture, etc while they are cherishing Fly Emirates and lifting no finger when their "leaders" dine and wine with dictators and monarchs in their Western cities (that is reserved mostly for the Chinese and Russian regimes), and when their governments sell arms to protect those autocratic regimes and to engineer and fuel more violence in the region.
This is not restricted to Britain of course. In some European countries the situation is worse. After all, I have been living in a very multi-ethnic city, arguably the mos mixed city in the world, not in Budapest or Warsaw.
Then came the violent attacks carried out by Muslims in Western cities and Orientalist views got even worse, revealing even more ignorance, more racism, more Islamophobia. It was not shocking for me that 5 students from two different London universities studying Gender and Middle Eastern studies none of them was able to name a single Arab feminist, that a Dutch student approached me just after Charlie Hebdo attacks, saying, "what shall we do with Muslims?", that a History student burst in frustration upon encountering the variety of Arabic pronunciation, "now I understand why there are many conflicts in the Arab world. It is because there are many dialects," that a British woman said, upon hearing the word Guantanamo, "it is where they keep the terrorists," that two Germans and an English at the same time declared that "a benevolent dictator would be a good thing," that an Italian PhD student commented, "I cannot see life without neoliberalism," that another History student, an English who I met several times, asked me "why Afghan soldiers were killing dogs," not how may times Britain invaded Afghanistan, why Afghanistan is one of the poorest country on earth, why some Muslims carried out violent attackes in London, Paris amd Berlin, for example, or what I thought about the destruction of Iraq and the British role in it....
A German PhD student wanted to "empower women in the Middle East and Africa." She wasn't a revolutionary speaking about helping others overthrow repressive regimes and fighting for social justice, etc No. But what is implied, naively or intentionally, is that Middle Eastern and African women are unfit to empower themselves; they need an educated white Westerner from an elite institution with a middle class outlook. That was how German women were "empowered" in the twentieth century; women from "higher, more civilised" countries went to Germany to empower German women.
That is a glimpse of how the dominant ideology is embedded in the education system. That is also what is reinforced in most of the middle class students or students with middle class way of thinking who are privileged or lucky to study in Western universities.
"Most wars in the Arab world are religiously based" is almost a common statement. When you mention the Arab uprisings, very few people have ever heard of them or even if they have they are unable to state any basic aspects of the uprisings. And all what is needed in this turbulent context is an Islamic scholar of the calibre of Boris Johnson, to demonstrate the relationship between "Islam" and "backwardness", with a profound analysis of capitalist development, nature of authoritarian regimes, the origins of Western capitalism, "liberal democracy", the history of violence, power relations, technological factors, and, in short, "why we developed and they have not."
If teachers themselves have built up such pile of prejudices and Euro-centric views and if students, who are supposed to acquire scientific knowledge of historical processes and scientific tools to analyse social phenomena, think in this way, what about the rest?
Knowledge about the Middle East and North Africa based on reading history, sociology and power relations is almost zero, confined to a minuscule minorty such as those in academia or some of those who got immersed in an Arab country and combined that with a good sociological and historical account of society.
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