What Every American Should Know About the Middle East

By Daniel Miessler on March 30th, 2008: Tagged as America | Civilization | Education | Politics

Most in the United States don’t know much about the Middle East or the people that live there. This lack of knowledge hurts our ability to understand world events and, consequently, our ability to hold intelligent opinions about those events.

For example, frighteningly few know the difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims, and most think the words “Arab” and “Muslim” are pretty much interchangeable. They aren’t. So here’s a very brief primer aimed at raising the level of knowledge about the region to an absolute minimum.

Basics

1. Arabs are part of an ethnic group, not a religion. Arabs were around long before Islam, and there have been (and still are) Arab Christians and Arab Jews. In general, you’re an Arab if you 1) are of Arab descent (blood), or 2) speak the main Arab language (Arabic).

2. Not all Arabs are Muslim. There are significant populations of Arab Christians throughout the world, including in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Northern Africa and Palestine/Israel.

3. Islam is a religion. A Muslim (roughly pronounced MOOSE-lihm) is someone who follows the religion. So you wouldn’t say someone follows Muslim or is an Islam, just as you wouldn’t say someone follows Christian or is a Christianity.

4. Shia Muslims are similar to Roman Catholics in Christianity. They have a strong clerical presence via Imams and promote the idea of going through them to practice the religion correctly. Sunni Muslims are more like Protestant Christians. They don’t really focus on Imams and believe in maintaining a more direct line to God than the Shia.

5. People from Iran are also known as Persians, and they are not Arabs.

6. Arabs are Semites. We’ve all heard the term anti-Semitism being used — often to describe Arabs. While antisemitism does specifically indicate hatred for Jews, the word “Semite” comes from the Bible and referred originally to anyone who spoke one of the Semitic Languages.

7. According to the Bible, Jews and Arabs are related [Genesis 25]. Jews descended from Abraham’s son Isaac, and Arabs descended from Abraham’s son Ishmael. So not only are both groups Semitic, but they’re also family.

8. Sunni Muslims make up most of the Muslim world (roughly 90%). ¹

9. The country with the world’s largest Muslim population is Indonesia. ²

10. The rift between the Shia and Sunni started right after Muhammad’s death and originally reduced to a power struggle regarding who was going to become the authoritative group for continuing the faith.
    
    The Shia believed Muhammad’s second cousin Ali should have taken over (the family/cleric model). The Sunni believed that the best person for the job should be chosen by the followers (the merit model) and that’s how the first Caliph, Abu Bakr, was appointed.
    
    Although the conflict began as a political struggle it now mostly considered a religious and class conflict, with political conflict emanating from those rifts.

Sunni vs. Shia | Arab vs. Non-Arab

Here’s how the various Middle Eastern countries break down in terms of Sunni vs. Shia and whether or not they are predominantly Arab. Keep in mind that these are generalizations; significant diversity exists in many of the countries listed.

• Iraq Mostly Shia (roughly 60%), but under Saddam the Shia were oppressed and the Sunni were in power despite being only 20% of the population. Arab.

• Iran Shia. NOT Arab.

• Palestine Sunni. Arab.

• Egypt Sunni. Arab.

• Saudi Arabia Sunni. Arab.

• Syria Sunni. Arab.

• Jordan Sunni. Arab.

• Gulf States Sunni. Arab.

Conclusion

What’s depressing is the fact that this only took me 30 minutes to write, and you 2 minutes to read. Yet most people in the United States, including those in the media, the house of representatives, and probably even the Pentagon, lack even this cursory level of knowledge about the region.:

References

¹The CIA World Fact Book | Field Listing - Religions

²The CIA World Fact Book | Field Listing - Indonesia

Wikipedia | Sunni Muslims

Wikipedia | Shia Muslims

Wikipedia | Arabs

from

"What Every American Should Know About the Middle East | dmiessler.com." 12 Oct. 2008 .

Arab American comedy matures

By Khalil AlHajal - The Arab American News
Friday, 07.04.2008, 11:40pm

Mizna Arab American Comedy Festival co-producers Mike Mosallam (R), Sonny Mandouh and short film director Mike Eshaq observe as locals audition for roles in theatrical sketches to be performed at the festival in August.

DEARBORN — Arab American comedy is still going strong. And it's not just about post-9/11 anymore.

Young people keep discovering jokes in their struggles, or appeal in their goofiness.

Actor Mike Mosallam, director of an upcoming Dearborn comedy festival, said he and other performers have moved past airport security humor, drawing on culture and everyday life for material.

"I'm done with talking about those things," he said about discrimination fodder from the aftermath of the September 11 attacks.

"It's no longer time to talk about, to make excuses for, to try to make sense of those events… It's now time to humanize the Arab experience. It's really about the community."

Writers and comedians are focusing more on jokes about idiosyncrasies and everyday cultural struggles — the fears, mannerisms and wails of Arab mothers, the vulnerable stubbornness of Arab fathers, the accents that even those that are born in the U.S. seem to develop…

Characteristic Arab impatience, facial hair, racism — both being subjected to it and dishing it out — the tense closeness of Arab families and the awkwardness of young people trying to fit themselves into some sort of identity are all increasingly being put to use in standup routines and comedic sketches.

The humor has meant the world to many young Arab Americans as they cope during the worst of times as children of Middle Eastern immigrants in this country. They say it has helped them raise their heads high, take pride in their struggle, laugh at absurdity, and smile at the laughter of others — a sign of mutual recognition of the same absurdities, struggles and triumph.

"It teaches people about our culture, helps them see things in a different light," said Mosallam, 28.

The second annual Mizna Arab American Comedy Festival, inspired by the five year-old New York Arab American Comedy Festival, is scheduled for August 15 at Dearborn's Ford Community and Performing Arts Center in Dearborn.

The event is set to feature four live theatrical sketches and two short films, with New York standup comic Meena Dimian as MC.

Auditions for various parts in the sketches were held last week in west Dearborn.

Steven Saleh, a Dearborn schoolteacher with some acting experience, read for the part of Doug, a white man married into an Arab family in one of the sketches.

When he first auditioned last year, he was taken aback by frequent use of stereotypes in the scripts.

"At first I felt offended by it," he said.

But he later warmed up to the idea of satirizing, overdoing the stereotypes to disarm them.

"If you're laughing at your own self, there's nothing. It's gone," said Saleh, 33.

He said it takes away the ability of others to use the stereotypes negatively.

"Say what you want, but we're laughing with you," he said.

Mosallam said the routines also serve to show Arabs "doing the things that everybody does."

"People in this community are not used to this method as an outlet of expression," he said about feelings of uncertainty that many have had when first exposed to Arab American comedy.

James Moussa Stevick, a drama student from Ann Arbor whose father is Palestinian, auditioned for the role of a self-centered Arab satellite newscaster.

He said the rise of Arab American comedy has helped unite a diverse community and create a true, distinct Arab American culture.

"It's kind of like theatrical pan-Arabism," he said.

"A lot of Arab comedy, when it started out, was about post-9-11 stuff. It's more reflective of the community… If you can make a joke about something, you can analyze it a lot better. When you parody it, you can examine it a lot better."

Another aspiring comedic actor, Ali Bulldog Abdallah, 25, of Dearborn, auditioned for the role of Samia, an impatient store clerk.

He said he could draw on his aunt Mariam to prepare for the role.

"That's exactly why we appeal to a community that's not used to this kind of thing," said director Mosallam.

He said last year's show got an overwhelming response from non-Arabs too.

"They laugh at the delivery," he said. "Even if they don't understand a certain reference, they understand what the reference is trying to do. They come along for the ride.

"They loved it. It was something so new and fun… You make more friends with honey than with vinegar."

The most popular part of last year's festival was a short film by local director Mike Eshaq. The film, a spoof of MTV cribs — Arab American style — won awards for best comedy and audience favorite last month at a Hamtramck film festival.

Eshaq has two more spoofs of MTV reality shows in production for this year's festival.

"We want to build excitement for this kind of event happening yearly," said Mosallam.

from: http://www.arabamericannews.com/news/index.php?mod=article&cat=Artamp;Culture&article=1239&page_order=1&act=print

Students Study the Middle East, But on Their Own

By Margaret Ernst

Talking to Dina Rubey ‘09 is like talking to a textbook on recent Middle Eastern history, but that wasn’t always the case. “I grew up in New York City, and I probably couldn’t have told you where the Middle East was on the map,” she said. “But then 9/11 happened. It’s so easy to be totally oblivious about what’s going on around you, let alone across the ocean.” As a freshman, Rubey took Introduction to Peace and Conflict Studies, which included an online-facilitated discussion between Arab students and American students called “Soliya”; since then she says she hasn’t looked back.

Rubey has focused on the Middle East as a political science major, complemented by her own version of an independent major in Mideast Studies—a concentration in comparative politics, minors in Peace and Conflict Studies and developmental economics, and a semester abroad at the American University in Cairo. “I thought I would study abroad in Paris, major in English,” she said. “I never would have expected I would go to Cairo.”

There is currently no Middle East Studies major at Bryn Mawr, nor is there a minor, concentration, nor a department, but there is an initiative. The Middle East Studies Initiative was so named five years ago, according to Professor Deborah Harrold, who teaches many of the Initiative’s classes, and its goal is to bring more classes on the Middle East into the Bryn Mawr curriculum. But as more students enter the College with an interest in the region, their lives shaped by 9/11 and the events that followed it, the current Middle East Studies Initiative may be forced to assume greater clout than its name implies.

“Bryn Mawr has been hiring more professors who teach about the region, offering more classes, and especially considering our new president is a Qur’an scholar, it seems like a good time to do it,” said Jesse Solomon ’11, referring to her plans to design an independent major in Mideast Studies. Unlike many students who study the Middle East in the context of a specific discipline, Solomon feels that she will learn the most about the region by getting as much background as possible—background that is inherently interdisciplinary.

“I’m not sure exactly what the major will look like, except that I like being able to get so many perspectives,” she said. When she entered in the fall Solomon assumed she would major in political science, but as she explored the curriculum within the Tri-Co and Penn, she started to consider how her interest in the Middle East could turn into a major. “Between the Tri-Co and Penn, there will be enough classes for me to take,” said Solomon. “But the only problem is that they tend to be very similar.”

For Rubey, the requirements of a political science major have allowed her to view her specialty in the context of a larger and highly connected world. “Right now I’m taking a modern Latin American history class, and it’s infuriating how similar it is,” she said. This summer she will travel to Nicaragua for an internship, where she sees blatant parallels to current events in the Middle East. “Twenty years ago, the whole world was falling down in Nicaragua, with America playing the same role—with some of the same last names as the people who are making the same mistakes now.”

To avoid mistakes when it comes to the Middle East, be they in diplomacy or literature, one of the first steps to understanding the region is understanding Arabic; currently at Bryn Mawr, however, many feel there is a disconnect between the two. Though as of last year Bryn Mawr and Haverford students have finally been able to take Arabic classes on their own campuses, the Arabic program is still based out of the modern languages department at Swarthmore and students have experienced the problems inherent in participating in a program from forty minutes away.

Solomon says that although her Arabic professors and drill instructors are brilliant, the program at Swarthmore restricts how they are able to teach. “We learn from a very old book that relies on wrote memorization,” she said. “Swat’s program drills in this idea, and it’s hard for professors who want to bring culture into it.” Solomon thinks Bryn Mawr could do much better by overseeing its own professors and in general, running its own program.

“This is the first year of the tri-co program, and it’s still going through growing pains,” said Professor Kim, who teaches Arabic at Bryn Mawr and Haverford. He sees that many of his students want to supplement their language study with other courses about the region, and he hopes that the Arabic program can be more integrated with the Middle East Studies Initiative in the future. “If there is a concentration in Middle East Studies there would be better integration between language and the content classes,” he said. “Right now, in many ways, the Arabic program is a separate entity.”

He says that problems associated with teaching Arabic are not just unique unto the Tri-Co, however. “Recently there has been a lot of student interest in the country, but there are just not enough qualified teachers out there,” he said, explaining why Bryn Mawr and Haverford have had to piggyback onto Swarthmore’s program.

There is also a challenge that has to do with the language itself; in the Tri-Co and wherever Arabic is taught, one learns Modern Standard Arabic, the strict, formal dialect that is rarely actually spoken in the Middle East. Though newscasters broadcast in Modern Standard, only colloquial dialects are heard in the streets; in other words, though Professor Kim thinks language training is essential to non-western studies, studying Arabic at Bryn Mawr and then in the Middle East is very different from studying French in Paris.

Rubey admits that taking Arabic in the U.S. would not have necessarily helped her get by on a day to day basis in Egypt. “It’s very rare that people use Modern Standard in their daily life. It’s like if someone addressed you using Shakespearean English.” Regardless, she wishes that she had had some background before she left. “I wish I had taken Arabic before, and I wish that Bryn Mawr and Haverford made it easier for people to take Arabic.”

Mawrtyrs interested in Middle East Studies currently have to be creative with their curriculum, but from a westward angle, creativity is often essential when talking about the Middle East. “If you want to know what’s going on, it doesn’t mean just reading the New York Times,” said Rubey. “It means reading Al-Jazeera, and it means actually talking to people from there.”

Whether motivated by current events or simple curiosity, student interest is forcing the Arabic program at Bryn Mawr to find its roots in the bi-college community. “So many people ask me how Arabic is and say they want to take it next year,” said Solomon. At the same time, the Middle East Studies Initiative will have to turn the mirror on itself to see how it can be a home for those who want to know exactly “what’s going on over there.”

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