The Region: Mideast Fantasies [Utopian And Wishful Thinking Dangerous, Recognize Cultural Differences]

2005-05-23

Barry Rubin

The Jerusalem Post

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The Middle East poses the biggest threat to world peace and stability. One element that makes matters worse is the inability of so many politicians, diplomats, academics and journalists to understand the region.

The layers of misunderstanding begin with the failure to consider the Middle East a real place with its own characteristics. The failure to recognize differences is not specific to this region, but part of a general modern intellectual reluctance to admit cultural differences even as it purports to celebrate them.

According to this mind-set, diverse foods and colorful traditional dress can be celebrated as quaint customs, while claims that culture also results in people thinking and behaving differently are a form of prejudice.

Cultural differences are not biological, and they are subject to long-term change. But they are still very important. Uncritically putting a Western template onto the contemporary Middle East leads to remarkable distortions, and a failure to understand the present or predict the future.

In my view, the Middle East today is simply repeating patterns seen elsewhere in the world. For centuries, Europe was beset by wars in which one ideology or leader thought it possible to gain power over the whole continent.

For hundreds of years there were bloody ethnic and religious conflicts. Pragmatism was rejected, superstition overwhelmed science, and so on. Better types of thinking won out only after the high costs of reactionary notions were proven time after time. The same was true with the historical experience regarding the impossibility that the total victory of any state, ideology or ethnic group would lead to peace.

A second element here is a tendency to acceptance of regional ideology as truth. Many in the West assume that if an Arab dictatorship, terrorist group, extremist movement or ideologically committed Arab intellectuals say something, it is either the truth or reflects their real beliefs. And if public opinion polls in the Arab world or Iran show the effects of decades of propaganda, this, too, reflects the masses' real sentiments.

The situation has reached the point that many students studying the Middle East in European or American colleges get largely the same messages and understanding of the region they would receive if they were attending universities in Damascus or Teheran.

Finally, the culture-denying mind-set includes a strong streak of utopian and wishful thinking.

It is not true that if people want peace or democracy, or prosperity or international fraternity they should begin by assuming these things can be quickly or easily achieved. The desirable is not necessarily possible. Underestimating difficulties is a way of ensuring failure.

What is needed instead is the most objective analysis we are capable of producing. Goals or preferences for making the world better should not be allowed to make us misread reality. What is especially dangerous here is that once people get starry-eyed about how everyone is moderate, ideology does not matter, extremism is a figment of the imagination, and evidence to the contrary is rejected.

The unsurprising outcome of these three fundamental mistakes can go beyond appeasement of the villain to reversing the roles of hero and villain entirely. For example:

believing the Palestinian movement is moderate, pragmatic and ready to make peace. This requires ignoring the movement's daily rhetoric, failure to keep commitments and continued incitement. If its chief Islamic cleric gives a sermon broadcast over the official television calling for genocide against Jews and is not consequently punished; or if its police look the other way while mortars are fired at Israeli civilians, this is not considered relevant.

considering Iran to be a responsible regime. Despite its overall record and consistent breaking of commitments on nuclear matters, Iran's denial that it is seeking nuclear weapons is accepted at face value or, worse, Iran is deemed as qualified to have these as any other state.

thinking that radical Islamist movements do not really mean what they say about revolutionizing their own societies and destroying the West, and proposing they be given rewards to induce moderation. It is assumed that once they achieve power - no doubt like the German fascists, who came to power through elections - they will be easy to get along with and transformed into pragmatists.

assuming that ideological dictatorships, those who benefit from serving them, and those shaped by decades of their propaganda speak freely and honestly. It is believed that when they blame all the region's problems on the United States and Israel, it must reflect reality.

Or, at least, it shows their perceptions, which must then be addressed to assuage their grievances.

These are the real difficulties facing a more accurate Western perception of the Middle East. Unless they are confronted and addressed, the common pattern of recent years, in which misunderstandings produce disasters and crises, will continue.

The writer is editor of the journals Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) and Turkish Studies.

Source: IMRA – Independent Media Review and Analysis