Why are Middle Easterners shown backwards and less progressive?
When thinking about the Middle East, an image of a desert with retarded looking camels and a person wandering comes to mind, but why?
As a person who lives in a post-colonial state, I would since my younger days always ask myself a variety of questions, such as;
- Why is there a big gap between us Easterners specifically “Muslims” and the westerners specifically “White skinned folks” ?
- Why is there an underlying tension between us and Europeans?
I mean, I do understand that we just got freedom after the second world war but still man, why is there a tension coupled with inferiority complex between us and them. Moreover, why does it feel like they are “more” of humans than us.
Whenever I watch their movies, broadcasts and TV shows, we “Eastern Muslims” are portrayed as exotic beings used for either comedic purposes or as villains and never as just normal people.
I was going to write the title of the article as “Why do Middle Easterners feel so backwards and less progressive?” to hit that mark of xenophobia which is self evident from the conception of Asians and Middle Easterners from TV shows, movies and literature. Lets dive deep into the psychology of “Xenophobia”.
Being “More Human” than others
The differences between people belonging to different identifications are more than just semantics and superficialities, although I do believe that everybody is the same and no one is more human than others, I also think there’s a psychological factor to it which you cannot escape.
Have you ever felt a strange “otherness” when interacting with people who you don’t really know, specially people who belong to other areas of the world whether its a forum on the internet or in a video game or else.
They have this mysterious aura surrounding them, when you compare that with someone who is a lot similar to you, you would have this feeling at home and the aura of mysteriousness would not be as intense as it would be for the prior case.
Edward Said, A Palestinian-American academic and literary critic in his famous work “Orientalism” writes on this very xenophobia with regards to West’s Conception of the Orient A.K.A The East. He highlights the tendency of humans to consider the mysteriousness of others as something hostile to their existence. This very spark of hostility comes into being in a rather more dynamic sense.
Consider its early Medieval era and imagine East as a mysterious part of the world which you don’t really have any contact with, neither do you know much about it. You probably have not even met any Easterner ever in your life, all you have heard about them is through books or stories.
All of a sudden you get to know that the people belonging to the near East are in war with you and there’s certain crusades and conquests are going on with them, you can easily picture them as the “adversary” or as someone who is less of a human and more of a “scary boogeyman” who you don’t really know much about who you’re in war with.
This “boogeyman” factor is what creates this tension and is one of the reasons for the underlying psychological tension between them.
One of the interesting parts about it in my opinion is that although in those early ages, the clashes between Muslims and Christians were rampant, but peace was always a more reachable option as there is not really that much of a theological difference between both religions if you put both into perspective.
Both claim to be monotheistic, have a “Messiah” figure like Jesus (Peace Be Upon Him) and The Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) and share quite similar sentiments and events with regards to the religious lore, Islam goes one hand further in considering Jesus (P.b.u.h) to be a powerful messenger, even with a few differences in their creed, similar sentiments towards their worldview are echoed in their books.
Edward Said argues that the reason for taking the stance of rivalry and doubling down on the differences rather than having peace talks is because of this very factor of “Boogeymannes” (a new word in my dictionary) as we saw Islam spread like a wildfire in the East in a very short amount of time.
Their early clashes with the Roman Empire are to be taken into consideration as well, such a spread and eruption of mysterious people from a mysterious part of the world does seem to be more alarming than usual for a person residing in other parts of the world.
Such cases are one of the main reasons for the early Orientalist discourses where when they wrote about the East and Arabs in Medieval times, sourness and contempt echoed in their sentiments which is coupled with their religious rivalry towards the East.
As surprising as it might sound, these very sour beginnings between the near East and the West trickled down throughout the centuries as Edward Said points out in his book through the systematic writing and repeating of the same prejudices into encyclopedic forms and turning the East from a mysterious land with mysterious people into an exotic museum and a living breathing “Human Zoo” full of wonders and less than intelligent humans who’s only interesting parts are their distinct way of conduct and their culture which is less human and more exotic.
Wait a minute, A Human Zoo?
The question you might have in your mind after reading the last paragraph would be “what do you even mean by a human zoo?”.
If you’re a European or an American, think of a cartoon based on Middle east, let me guess, you’re probably thinking of Aladdin and his genie and the flying magical carpet in the middle of a desert. Ask the Arabs if any of this is real, even the fashion shown in the cartoon or its new Disney reboot, none of it matches the culture of the Arabs.
I don’t really want to disappoint you but those belly dancing women who a random rich guy with a big fat stomach owns hosting the protagonist in the movies or cartoons who claps and the half naked women start doing that weird exotic belly dance while the protagonist downs glasses after glasses of wine are not real, none of it is.
Edward Said discusses in his several interviews on how when he read several major books on Arabs and the near East, none of it was how Edward Said, as an Arab could relate to. It wasn’t based on the true ground realities of the boring, less exotic life among the Orient.
Now lets get back to the Psychology of it, it is in human nature to focus more on the aspects of characteristics different from the ones which they themselves possess, while substituting what’s same between them and others.
This very factor is the reason why when talking about East, the orientalists would rather write about what they found extraordinary, new or disagreeable and wrote rather their opinions and their conceptions on them with all their prejudices and biases than writing about the boring, dry ground reality of how the everyday life is.
In this pursuit of exoticism, interesting and cool things, they forgot to add in one massive characteristic when discussing the East, their “Humanness”.
The portrayal of the Middle East and the Arabs throughout the history went through multiple evolutions and saw several changes till the recent times where due to all the political reasons, the Middle East is shown as the land of backwardness, inferiority and semi-human breeds.
The recent portrayal of the Middle Easterners as inferior, illiterate masses has a lot of trickle down effects from the early orientalist’s conceptions of the east, but it would be very inaccurate to describe it as the only reason for this conception.
The shift in the American foreign affairs in the Early 1900’s has a lot to do with it which Edward Said talks in great detail in his book about, but I would not really prefer getting into it as I’m not really fond of politics (I would rather entertain a discussion on political philosophy).
I will not act as if the West is the only villain of the story but due to their Systematic study of the east which a lot of times proved to be quite extra ordinary and massively detailed, can be traced and all these effects can be seen in these works throughout the centuries, whereas we cannot really find such traceable systematic encyclopedic studies in the East.
Nevertheless, this human nature of making the “other” as villain exists in everyone and I cannot really say East is not blameworthy of it either.
