Setting: "Contemporary Arab World"
Time: 3:35 PM-4:40 PM
Topic: Orientalism
On Friday, my Arab World professor, who is a female Palestinian with an Israeli citizenship, was teaching us about Western ways of analyzing the Arab World and how they are biased and even racist. Orientalism, she told us, is a Western method of studying the Arab World that "others" the Arab people, forms stereotypes based on the assumed superiority of the white man over the Arab, and is generally based on racism and misconceptions.
"A girl in my earlier class asked a question about why it is illegal for women to drive in Saudi Arabia," my professor said. "Surely the West is superior to the Arab World if the West allows women to drive and some Arabs don't?" There were a few nods from the class. "However, we cannot make this conclusion," she said. "Arab culture is different from Western culture. Maybe Saudi women don't want to drive. maybe they are happy to be driven around everywhere."
I sat, aghast. "Anyway," she continued, "some women in Saudi Arabia do drive, don't they, Faruz?" She turned to the Saudi Arabian guy, who was sat between me and an Egyptian. His response? "There are criminals all over the world."
Let that sink in for a second -- I had to. I sat in my seat, unable to think or move or do anything because what was I was gathering from my senses seemed too surreal. A post-doctorate woman in a university was defending a law that prevented women from driving a car. Utterly brain-melting.
I don't care if not a single woman in the entire kingdom of Saudi Arabia has even the slightest desire to drive a car. The fact is that such a prohibitive law is irrational and indefensible without citing a patently untrue claim such as "women are inferior" and should therefore not exist on the law books in any civilized country. Correct me if I'm wrong, please.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
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3 comments:
Holy shit!!!
What does it say about a society that declares a woman driving a criminal?
Sometimes stereotypes have a grain of truth behind them. In the case of the West's perspective of muslim nations, I'd say its more than a grain..its a freekin mountain.
Clearly anything one would raise in opposition to muslim culture would simply be dismissed as racist stereotyping.
Imagine asking why muslims represent some 30% of the world's population but have only been awarded 0.01% of Nobel prises; while Jews represent <1.0% of the worlds population but have been awarded over 20% of the Nobel prizes since 1901.
The response will likely be that the nobel committee is racist, and then launch into a lecture about 10th century Islam's contributions to math, archetecture, and literature. They have to go back some 800-1000 years. Why is that?
I'm sensing that there isn't going to be alot of open debate and challenging of this professor's biased perspective in this class. And if you do, watch out for a fatwah. ;)
PS: Then there's that crazy and racist perspective the West has about Islam killing apostates being an act of barbarism.
Damn racist westerners!!!
Whenever you hear someone invoke moral relativism - "Oh, their culture promotes this belief, so this injustice is okay there" - you should challenge it.
Did you challenge it? I would have. I would have stopped the whole class to argue the point.
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