Understanding The Muslim World

I remember the first time I made a couple of really close Muslim friends. One was Egyptian; the other was Algerian. Both were educated and lived in America; both were totally, totally Muslim/Arab/Near Eastern in outlook.
In many ways we found we viewed life in similar fashion—which they found surprising in an American. One day I remember them looking at me and asking, puzzled, “HOW ARE YOU SO LIKE US?” They manifestly did not feel this about the vast majority of Americans.
Why DID I so easily and naturally understand them? It still happens—not so long ago I spotted some Near Eastern families on a beach at Lake Michigan. Effortlessly I engaged them in a conversation that went on for hours. Men from Syria, Jordan and Egypt—paranoid about how other Americans might react to them, at ease with me.
I still remember how I was almost sick to my stomach after I listened to Bush and Cheney talk about going into Iraq in 2003—realizing utterly that they had zero/zip/zed knowledge of the people or situation they were about to deal with. (I’m not necessarily saying we should not have gone in; I’m just suggesting we might have taken the trouble to know what we were doing. I’m afraid we still haven’t done that.)
Do I have some magic trick that Bush/Cheny didn’t have—or our government now doesn’t possess? No, nothing “magic”—but, yes, there is something I have that most people in Washington do not have. It’s a religious background—a specific kind of religious background.
I was raised on the Jewish Bible—the Christian Old Testament. I mean I was really raised on it—I was perfectly familiar with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob before I ever learned who Snow White or Cinderella were.
My father would read those stories to me—and then he would ask me questions about what kind of men they were, what was going on inside of their heads. I learned to look at (study, if you will) the great bandit warrior who became King David.
Study how he killed. Understand his view of loyalty—you wouldn’t want to work for the man! Get inside his head. Look at what Abraham feared—and look at what he did not fear. Read the sometimes appalling stories you find in Judges. A man’s girl friend is raped and killed. He cuts her in twelve parts and sends them out as a mute call for an army to avenge his loss. It works—who ARE these people?
Jacob’s daughter is raped. Her brothers demand that the entire village of the man that raped her circumcise themselves (no anesthesia) and then have the rapist marry her. While everyone is too sore to walk, the boys kill everyone in the village, man, woman and child.
Study Joshua’s military campaigns—the utter ruthlessness with which they are carried out. These are interesting people. They weep, they sing songs, they feast, they worship, they accumulate wives, they write poetry and they wage war with cold blooded ferocity.
Without realizing it, I got inside their heads. They haven’t changed in millennia, (rewatch “Lawrence of Arabia” just to check that out—Anthony Quinn comes as close to depicting Abraham as anyone ever has. No change in 4,000 years).
Do you really want to understand the people that blew up the World Trade Center and are now killing our boys in Afghanistan? You couldn’t do better than to immerse yourself in chapters 12-25 of Genesis. Scan the rest of the Pentateuch. Read Joshua, Judges, Ruth and the first half of Samuel. (Even a savant like David Petraeus might benefit.) Watch Lawrence of Arabia again. Maybe twice.
When you have understood Abraham (as well as Joshua and David), you will be a long way toward understanding all of Araby. When you have learned their roots you will, as accidentally as I did, become enough like them to understand them.