Job Discussion Forums

[scot47]

Kindle..? Bah ......like the internal combustion engine, a passing fad ! It won't last.

[johnslat]

Dear Vancouver Girl,

"He takes an extremely complicated history and makes it quite readable."

Yes, he is a great simplifier, as is Samuel Huntington:


"The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future."

Most of the argument in the pages that followed relied on a vague notion of something Huntington called "civilization identity" and "the interactions among seven or eight [sic] major civilizations," of which the conflict between two of them, Islam and the West, gets the lion's share of his attention. In this belligerent kind of thought, he relies heavily on a 1990 article by the veteran Orientalist Bernard Lewis, whose ideological colors are manifest in its title, "The Roots of Muslim Rage." In both articles, the personification of enormous entities called "the West" and "Islam" is recklessly affirmed, as if hugely complicated matters like identity and culture existed in a cartoonlike world where Popeye and Bluto bash each other mercilessly, with one always more virtuous pugilist getting the upper hand over his adversary. Certainly neither Huntington nor Lewis has much time to spare for the internal dynamics and plurality of every civilization, or for the fact that the major contest in most modern cultures concerns the definition or interpretation of each culture, or for the unattractive possibility that a great deal of demagogy and downright ignorance is involved in presuming to speak for a whole religion or civilization. No, the West is the West, and Islam Islam."

http://www.thenation.com/article/clash-ignorance

'Nuff Said?

Regards,
John

[Mia Xanthi]

Inside the Kingdom by Robert Lacey. Ok, go ahead and start bashing me, but I enjoyed reading it.

Also, there was something recently written on the Kingdom by Robert Baer...Sleeping with the Devil, I think.

One book that I really enjoyed pre-KSA was Extreme Islam by Adam Parfrey. It's a collection of anti-American, pro-Jihadist articles written by everyone you can imagine. Very interesting to read the original stuff rather than someone's analysis of the stuff.

Currently I am reading Thicker than Oil by Rachel Bronson. Written like someone's boring dissertation, but full of information.

You don't have to agree with the perspective of everything you read in order for it to provide helpful knowledge pre-KSA.

[Never Ceased To Be Amazed]

[johnslat]

Dear Mia,

If you think YOU'RE going to get bashed . . . .

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Saudi Arabia by Colin Wells

I liked it so much, I even wrote a review for it on Amazon:

"I began reading it with skepticism, looking for mistakes, misinterpretations, prejudices, spin, etc. Gradually, however, I realized that this author knew exactly what he was writing about. Moreover, his style makes reading about the Kingdom exceptionally enjoyable,
I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to be fully informed about Saudi Arabia, and I would call it required reading for anyone who plans to go there."


http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Idiots-Guide-Understanding-Arabia/dp/1592571131

Regards,
John

[veiledsentiments]

[Cleopatra]

[Sheikh N Bake]

[Cleopatra]

[Sheikh N Bake]

We can agree to disagree. Duly wheeled out and duly noted!

As I said in my amended comments, I didn't make up this sorry phenomenon of genuine antisemitism that I've seen over and over in the Gulf...perhaps starting at Dubai Women's College when both the local press and some students accused us of being Jews (as if that were self-evidently a crime against humanity). I mentioned other examples. It is pervasive, no question.

[Cleopatra]

[Sheikh N Bake]

Oh, it's a rational debate. "Most people" doesn't necessarily invoke your username here as having been tarred. Yes, I've seen the bigotry on both sides and in fact have seen pervasive bigotry of all kinds in every country I've lived. Experiences perceived, not hystrionics. Since I'm living here and since I have never seen anyone acknowledge on these boards that individuals from a certain country/culture can be good and human, but are only demonized, an occasional reality check is hardly hysterical, whether you like it or not.

[Cleopatra]

[Sheikh N Bake]

Well..they are extremely sensitive about the "question" of our topic in Germany, and they make it a crime to deny certain events, as you know. In the Emirates it's a crime to say it happened. Either way the censorship is perhaps a bit extreme.

As an aside, though, I still wonder (and this might be of more interest to VS) how NYU can have a campus in Abu Dhabi and teach a modern history course with all the restrictions. Maybe they're in a Censor-free Zone.

[7atetan]

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