I guess it’s time for another update on what’s going on here in Jordan, because the Middle East continues to be in turmoil. This time, I feel compelled to include a number of other things, such as what’s going on in other countries and some commentary on things being said in the U.S.

But first, to set the tone, I’d like to recount a story that, for me, had a lesson. A few days ago I walked to my car from the University, with my girlfriend. It was parked in a big, open parking lot where a number of students (= $) park. There was a young boy there selling packets of gum, speaking an odd, rural Arabic that I had difficulty understanding. My girlfriend, being the very generous person she is, bought a pack of gum and hoped he'd go away; of course, it simply had the opposite effect because he started to hassle me more. No problem though, I just repeated “No, I don’t want any.”

The next day I returned to the parking lot and my new friend was waiting to very generously help guide me in to a parking spot. He then continued to hassle me as I collected my things to get out of the car. When I told him I still didn’t want any he promptly bent over, picked up a rock and told me in very clear Arabic that if I don’t buy any, he would scratch up the side of my car when I was gone. At that point I was a little surprised and felt a little put on. The temptation would be to throw up my hands and say: “Ah! The third world,” or even worse, “Ah! Arabs.” Having spent time with a number of different groups of people, I expect those would be the two most common reactions from foreigners. But then I realized I had a number of options and that similar things happen everywhere in the world, from the Middle East, to Asia, to Europe and the U.S.

Of course, like most people, I’m not a fan of being coerced by threats, so I decided not to play his game. I told him to wait just a second as I fiddled in my bag, pulling out my camera (now I’m going to get in trouble because I’m admitting that my camera does travel, but I promise, it was a complete accident and I rarely remember to bring it anywhere…). So I quickly turned, snapped a quick picture of his surprised face, and told him in clear Arabic that if I came back and my car was scratched, then the policeman just up the hill would get a nice clear picture of the perpetrator. The poor kid didn’t really know what to do, but his brother came over and assured me he would take care of my car. So now, I really do have a new friend. The lesson I took away was that problems like that happen everywhere, people will try to get away with what they can, and the process for preventing it here is not so different from home.

So, politics. To begin, I’m bursting to shoot some holes in some fears being expressed and disseminated by some popular TV personalities. I will try my best to be relatively neutral and not condescending. I have to admit that I’m something of an intellectual snob sometimes, which doesn’t help when I hear someone with a camera discuss and analyze something they obviously know nothing about. It makes it even worse when absolutely faulty logic is used alongside those poor analyses to make unsound predictions. So to the point: it would be extremely unlikely, reaching towards the point of impossibility, that any one organization or person is directing the unrest in the Middle East. There is no plot to create a new age Caliphate, uniting the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of Europe. Demonstrations in Ireland and the United Kingdom do not mean that they are on fire, or in any way seriously unstable, and that Russia is going to conquer Europe as a result. In addition, the Egyptian Revolution was not led by Islamists in the background (I do have a number of Egyptian friends, many of them college students or young professionals and many of them lawyers, in fact, as I have twice taken part in legal competitions at the American University in Cairo).

I’m not sure where to begin on supporting my refutations of the popular fears above. Easiest and simplest, namely, citing facts? Or addressing the more complex fears derived from faulty deductions?

Ultimately the most important thing to address is the fear of Islam and “the Muslims.” It is essentially impossible to say there is a monolithic “Muslim” identity. There are too many different types of Islam (as I've noted in a previous post) to even claim there is one "Mulsim Identity." Just as a side note, this is why Bernard Lewis is incorrect in his histories and analyses of "Muslim World" politics (see "The Roots of Muslim Rage"). Even if there were, the tendency at this point in history is for people to identify more with their nationality and heritage than to the religion. Syria, for example, has a rich multi-religious history of which many Syrians are proud. Islam is also not a violent religion, any more than any other religion can be such. For an example, one can look at the Amman Message or the Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights (which isn’t always followed, just as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from the UN is also not always followed). Acts of violence are perpetrated by members of any and every religion.

Showing film clips of a lady wearing a hijab (not a requirement in Islam) yelling about how “WE hate America” and “WE hate Israel” is a great way to fear-monger. The important thing to remember when watching those clips, whether they are on CNN, Fox, or a talk show, is that they are consciously making a choice of what to show out of a plethora of different clips and one person in the middle of the millions in the Cairo protests does not define the sentiments of the entirety. That particular lady was using “We” very loosely. The circumstances might be comparable to a reporter going to the protests against the mosque in Murfreesboro and taping one person in the crowd saying, “We hate Muslims,” and then that same reporter claiming that all Americans hate Muslims.

Just to conclude: I promise I’m not going to get emotional and teary to tell you I think these issues are important. I think people need to be informed; and while analyses of information are necessary, pandering them as fact is deceitful. If anyone reading has any particular questions, would like me to explicitly support my claims above, or would even like to start a dialogue and challenge my views, I welcome the contact at my email brennanroorda@yahoo.com. And I promise I am much less combative in actual dialogue than I am when I’m on a soapbox… which I feel like this blog has become.

Thank you for your interest!

Brennan Roorda