Last week Michael Slackman of the New York Times wrote about how conspiracy theories about 9/11 dominated Arab political thought. He wrote:
It is easy for Americans to dismiss such thinking as bizarre. But that would miss a point that people in this part of the world think Western leaders, especially in Washington, need to understand: That such ideas persist represents the first failure in the fight against terrorism — the inability to convince people here that the United States is, indeed, waging a campaign against terrorism, not a crusade against Muslims.
We’ve got to come to terms with these crazy conspiracies, is Slackman’s view. However Barry Rubin rejects this kind of thinking:
The only solution is to set different goals and interpretations of the world through rethinking, reform, and education. Western glorifications of the Middle East’s status quo-these are customs which must be preserved, how dare you criticize people’s beliefs and offend their sensibilities?-will merely ensure another century of bloodshed, dictatorship, and poverty.
And in fact Rubin argues that the willingness to accept these conspiracy theories speaks of the dysfunction of the societies that promulgate them, not the West.
Wild conspiracy theories were spread precisely because to confront the tragedy’s implications would require examining real problems “which Arab societies have been so assiduously avoiding.” The more Middle Eastern terrorism spread globally, “the greater was the rush to look the other way.” Five years later, that statement is all the more true.
We hear endlessly that the problem is the West doesn’t understand the Middle East. The truth is the exact opposite: the Middle East doesn’t understand the West and, by the same token, doesn’t understand what it needs to do to get out of the hole it has dug for itself.
The more the Arab/Muslim world lives in a state of denial the worse off it will be.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
