It took me a long time to figure this out, why these Arab groups would kill someone based on their nationality, which after all is an accident of birth. But I believe it has to do with the different cultural perspectives on individuality. Westerners are individuals, first and always, and often crave solitude. Arabs are part of their tribe, their family, and cant stand to be alone. One day I criticized something about Arab men, and the Arab man I was talking to said, Are all the fingers of the hand the same? And an instant later I got it, an individual is not a separate being, but merely a finger, an extension of a larger entity that controls all their thoughts and actions. I once talked to a Jordanian who, even though he had an American wife (or maybe ex-wife), and a job in California, and was told to come back to Jordan. He went. I asked what would happen if he did not go, and he said that all opportunity would be cut off from him. Without his tribal/clan group he would not be able to get a job, get married or survive. So he had no choice but obedience to the family or clan leader. They simply can not imagine individuals who can be independent, or make decisions on their own. All of which is very difficult to sort out in the context of one American journalist. Anyhow that is my current hypothesis. And their journalists are not exactly independent either; there is a party line. But dont ask me about executions in Saudi Arabia; Im not ready to even start thinking about what I heard there.
Posted on: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 04:52:47 +0000
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