Even though it's a couple weeks old, I thought I'd pass along this insightful and interesting article by Lawrence Wright from The New Yorker , on his experiences early last year in Saudi Arabia. He spent several weeks working with young Saudi reporters in a regime that places the approval of newspaper editors under the same Interior Ministry that supervises the secret police. He works with bright, talented young people, trying to teach journalistic principles in a climate of fear, depression and gender apartheid. We learn how a society that is publicly corrupt, sexually repressed, and policed by religious fanatics is almost as likely to produce suicidal martyrs as it is productive citizens. Wright suggests that the appearance of a budding democracy next door in Iraq may eventually help to bring about increased personal freedom or some semblance of state accountability, but on balance the article doesn't leave the reader with a very optimistic outlook. Wright described what he found as "quiet despair, an ominous emotional flatness".
If "emotional flatness" was all we had to worry about, that would be one thing. Unfortunately, some of the boredom, frustration and anger that Saudi society breeds, especially in young men, seeks an outlet. When that manifests itself in religious fanaticism and martyrdom against a perceived "enemy" in the West, their societal disease becomes our problem too. I strongly recommend this article.
John Derbyshire read the Wright piece and uses it as a jumping off point for this article in which he calls Arabs "The Irish of the World".
And this Steven Den Beste post responds in turn to both Derbyshire and Wright with some thoughts of his own on the pathologies of Arab culture.
Posted by dan at January 23, 2004 12:35 AM