Terrorists and cowboys
The images that Arabs and Americans have of each other hamper their mutual understanding, Abdel-Moneim Said* argues
One reason the Arabs have failed to understand the current Bush administration is that they thought it would be a repetition of his father's. While their negative attitude towards the US, in general, results from their distorted image of its history and geography, one of the most serious misperceptions the Arabs have regarding the US emanates from the image they have of the American people.
Perhaps the US political scientist, Robert Graves, is foremost among those who drew attention to the question of image and perception in international relations. People do not form judgments on issues based on the relevant facts as much as they do on the impressions and perceptions they have formed on those issues, he observes. A colour-blind person will formulate an opinion on a work of art, not on the basis of the colours that are there, but on the colours he thinks should be there. For someone wearing tinted lenses, anything he sees is shaded by the colour of those lenses. One of the most widespread forms of distorted vision is the stereotypes that people form on other peoples and nations and that tend to govern attitudes and behaviour towards those peoples and nations.
The most common perception we have of the US is that it is an immense land of plenty, inhabited by lawless cowboys firing their 'six-shooters' in all directions. The image, propagated by American films of the 1930s and 1940s, has remained fixed in the Arab mind -- even though the US has long since stopped producing Westerns, Italian cinema having taken up the slack. Simultaneously, tales of American abundance, daring and violence in the acquisition of wealth, the cold-bloodedness of slave traders and the "robber barons", such as Vanderbilt, Dillon and Rand, have reinforced the image of ruthlessness. American capitalism, it is believed, was built on the land plundered from the Indians and on the backs of slaves subjected to the utmost cruelty, all in the interests of accumulating vast wealth, which they do not deserve.
Of course, there is an element of truth to this image, which, indeed, has been supported by and disseminated through American literature and arts. Yet, no matter how great the temptation to cling to this image, it will not help us much to understand the US today, unless we place it in a comparative framework and restrain our tendencies to exaggerate. The American tendency to violence was coeval with the pioneering of a new and hostile world, both in terms of its natural environment and inhabitants. Nevertheless, we cannot compare the violence of those pioneers to the violence in the creed of the samurai in Japan. Whereas violence in the US was directed at the discovery of a continent and building a nation, in Japan, it formed part of a social ethos.
If Arab lore has immortalised the "cowboy", it has entirely overlooked the violence of the samurai, which was unleashed with its greatest force during World War II -- 300,000 people in Ninkyang, China, were killed during the aerial bombardment of that city alone.
It is surprising, in such a context, that we rarely examine the history of violence in our countries and culture -- especially that perpetrated during the Islamic conquests. Of course, that violence had a noble purpose, which was to spread the true religion. However, in the framework of this comparative analysis, it is only possible to understand our image of an aggressive America against the scene of that Arab Muslim commander who dammed the Euphrates because he wanted to create a river of blood instead of water. It was only when that commander discovered that he had spilled so much blood, and that the edifice was preventing it from flowing, that he ordered the dam destroyed. The blood continued to float on the surface of the released waters of the Euphrates for days.
Examples of such extravagant violence abound across the world and throughout history. The point of citing the examples above is to remind us to put the case of American violence in perspective. Such violence was borne of an entire historical epoch that accorded unlimited rights, including the right to life and death, to the mighty and victorious.
The mighty and victorious had no need for the American culture of self-serving pragmatism to justify their brutality against the indigenous inhabitants of the lands they rampaged. How often they acted the way they did in the name of religion and, perhaps, just as frequently, in the name of no principle or faith whatsoever, but simply to exercise the rights conquest had bestowed on Arab knights or Spanish cavaliers. The difference between the American "cowboy" and those knights was that the former acknowledged, condemned and derided the violence in his history whereas the latter demonstrated no such ethic of introspection and remorse. In addition, whereas the former built an entire wealthy nation using new and innovative methods of production the latter thrived on the gold and silver plundered from the countries they conquered without contributing much towards production.
The framework for our comparative analysis, then, must be contextualised within the history and the evolution of cultural mores, which determine what is and what is not acceptable from the perspective of each side. Until the 20th century, the notion of condemning genocide, war crimes and violations of human rights was simply not an issue in international relations or in the relations between nations and peoples. Mankind had to wait until the mid-19th century until practical action was taken to abolish slavery. Indeed, it required a civil war in the US for that odious institution to be abolished.
To be fair, Arab perceptions of the US and the Americans had always been countered by American perceptions of the Arabs and the Arab world that were no less negative. Bahgat Korany, professor of political science at the American University in Cairo, lists five common stereotypes that the Americans have of the Arabs. They all begin with B.
The "Bedouin" -- although not necessarily negative, since he is generally known for his attributes of generosity, helpfulness and ability to survive in the harshest environments -- is generally portrayed as treacherous, a lecherous womaniser and kidnapper, forever disposed to warring with other tribes, raiding and looting, and violating the sanctities of others.
Similarly, the "Belly Dancer", the practitioner of an art passed down through the ages, is portrayed as the licentious seductress, the symbol of degeneracy, prostitution and crime. The "Bazaar Man", although existing in all societies as the living repository of the traditional arts and crafts, has, in the Western media, come to represent the oily haggler and wily rip-off artist. Then there is the "Billionaire", a relatively new character in the Western media, who made his appearance following the Arab oil boycott in the 1970s. The "Billionaire", of course, represents those filthy rich Arabs, bloated by a wealth they do not deserve and who inevitably squander their fortunes, ostentatiously and recklessly, on debauchery and gambling.
A yet more recent stereotype is the "Bomber", to which is added the prefix "Arab-" or "Muslim-". This stereotype is unique. Never, for example, were the members of the Bader Meinhoff group called "German" terrorists or the members of the Red Brigade referred to as "Catholic" terrorists. "Bomber", thus, denotes more than just abhorrent criminal behaviour, it has come to connote a society and a religion. To these, we could add a sixth "B-word": "Backward". The term was used by both Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi and US Attorney- General Ashcroft to differentiate between structurally and morally "advanced" religions and "backward" religions.
These stereotypes "tint" the vision of the Western media when looking at the Arabs and create static in the ears of politicians when contemplating events in the Middle East. It is surprising that the stereotypes of the "Cowboy" and the "Arab terrorist" have persisted so long, and, perhaps, have become more entrenched in the post-11 September period. Indeed, the Arab image of the ruthless American "cowboy", guns blazing regardless of right and wrong, and the American image of the "Arab terrorist" -- driven by a relentless frenzy and always ready to blow something up or blow himself up, if he gets the urge to kill someone -- have collided head on over the past year. And, the collision of these images has generated heightened mutual suspicion, mistrust and tensions in Arab-American relations, as has been evidenced in the Rand report on Saudi Arabia and in periods of sharply strained relations between Cairo and Washington over a lengthy list of issues.
To a degree, the two sides' stereotypes of the other existed before 11 September. However, those events aggravated them considerably. In the US, Egypt and Saudi Arabia plummeted in the ratings of opinion polls on Americans' favourite countries. Whereas once Egypt beat out Israel in those polls, it now rates lower, and whereas Saudi Arabia had once evinced positive responses in those polls, it has now slipped to the negative side of the scale. Meanwhile, in the Arab world, the US and its media have become the most incendiary issues to inflame the press and fuel popular demonstrations. As a result, the road before Arab-US relations is far from smooth, and the US has become impossible to deal with -- whether with regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iraq or the occupied territories. This reality requires a much closer inspection.
* The writer is director of the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 23 - 29 January 2003 (Issue No. 622)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/622/op172.htm