I’m sorry Kadath but you couldn’t be more wrong. We all saw the people dancing in the streets of Egypt and in Palestinian areas after 9/11, that is before their governments/police got them to stop for fear of those images reaching the United States. Arab culture teaches hate, period. This is where you find your ‘ignorance and prejudice’, not in my eyes. I don’t care what the Qur’an SAYS its what people DO that matters. Until the Arab world gets itself out of the 15th century, and has some tolerance and understanding for other cultures they can not expect us to be tolerant and understanding of theirs.
I am not alone in this feeling, and many Arab scholars have the same concerns. Even the UN reports state that the Arab world has fallen behind and is in danger of becoming even more backward. I give you a synopsis of the Arab Human Development Report. This was written by Arabs for the UN, its not some Western think tank, or the like.
Quote:
AHDR 2002 challenged the Arab world to overcome three cardinal obstacles to human development posed by widening gaps in freedom, women’s empowerment and knowledge across the region.
Looking at international, regional and local developments affecting Arab countries since the report was issued confirms that those challenges remain critically pertinent and may have become even graver, especially in the area of freedom. Nowhere is this more apparent than the status of Arab knowledge at the beginning of the 21st century, the theme of this second report. Despite the presence of significant human capital in the region, AHDR 2003 concludes that disabling constraints hamper the acquisition, diffusion and production of knowledge in Arab societies. This human capital, under more promising conditions, could offer a substantial base for an Arab knowledge renaissance.
The Report affirms that knowledge can help the region to expand the scope of human freedoms, enhance the capacity to guarantee those freedoms through good governance and achieve the higher moral human goals of justice and human dignity. It also underlines the importance of knowledge to Arab countries as a powerful driver of economic growth through higher productivity.
Its closing section puts forward a strategic vision for creating knowledge societies in the Arab world based on five pillars: Guaranteeing key freedoms; Disseminating quality education; Embedding science; Shifting towards knowledge based production; and Developing an enlightened Arab knowledge model.
AHDR 2003 makes it clear that, in the Arab civilization, the pursuit of knowledge is prompted by religion, culture, history and the human will to achieve success. Obstructions to this quest are the defective structures created by human beings- social, economic and above all political. Arabs must remove or reform these structures in order to take the place they deserve in the world of knowledge at the beginning of the knowledge millennium."
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When you think of who wrote this, and for what body, its message is quite apparent behind the political language.
Now for some quotes from the full report.
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Limitations imposed by the state
“In most Arab countries,” the Report states, “the media operate in an environment that sharply restricts freedom of
the press and freedom of expression and opinion. Journalists face illegal harassment, intimidation and even physical
threats; censorship is rife and newspapers and television channels are sometimes arbitrarily closed down. Most media institutions are state-owned, particularly
radio and television.”
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Quote:
In short, the AHDR 2003 maintains, most Arab countries “place the media under the dominant political authorities
and institutions, and employ media channels for political propaganda and entertainment, at the expense of other
functions and services.”
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Quote:
Among the paradoxes of Arab censorship is that the novels
of the author who won the first prize at the largest Arab book
fair in 2000 were banned. In another case, the Report notes,
the novel that won the 2000 prize for excellence, in the
capital of Arab culture for that year, was prevented by the
censor from being distributed in that same capital.
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It goes on and on and on, and I’m sure would be very good reading for you, it might help you see past your ignorance and prejudice and understand the problems faced by the Arab world.
Edit:
LINK