Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Gopher]

[Gopher]

[Big_Bird]

I spend a lot of time talking with muslims (usually arab, but not always) and they can be very critical of their own countries and culture.

Sadly, I've noticed their respect for the West decline in the past several years due to our meddling in the Middle East (with its horrific consequences for the people living there), and I do not feel I have a right to criticise their countries/culture while mine is clearly so disgracefully flawed. As DD points out, it's up to them to do this. And it's up to us to try and clean up our mess.

One only has to spend a short time surfing the web to find many dissenters from the Arab world and Iran.

Here is just a sample:

One of my favourite bloggers, Big Pharoah, writes:

[Gopher]

[Gopher]

Next claim: Both Ddeubel and Big_Bird have asserted that what does or does not go on within the Middle East is none of our business; we should mind our own business and stick to our own culture's problems.

First, this is one-sided and therefore invalid (or at least unfarily applied). Everytime someone in the West tells a joke Arabs or Iranians or some other Middle Easterners do not like, they throw a temper tantrum. Same thing for newspaper stories and cartoons. Indeed, Apple, Inc., has apparently felt this wrath, not for any "imperial" activities in the Middle East mind you, but for its own marketing device inside the United States...

Second, this is obsolete thinking and therefore invalid. We live in an increasingly interdependent world, a world of dialog and interaction, across all cultural lines and space.

If we in the West need to learn to better interact with the various peoples and cultures of the Middle East, then they, too would be well-advised to learn to better interact with the various peoples and cultures of the West.

It is our place to tell them this, whether they want to hear it or not. Because, as I said, ultimately, there is one world, we all inhabit it, and we all need to deal with each other and our differences responsibly and, I might add, as adults.

That means talking with them and to them -- again, whether they want to hear it or not -- in addition to listening to them.

We are all at the same table, then, and it does not or at least should not matter who constructed the table or how we came to be here. We should all be talking (and listening). That includes not only the United States and "the West," but the Arab Middle East and others, like the Iranians, as well.

[Manner of Speaking]

[Nambucaveman]

Given the fact some of the comments in this thread can be construed as racists against Muslims, I'm locking it. Some of the flaming has gotten out of control as well. If those that participate in the CE forum are not willing to abide by the rules, it will result in threads being locked.

NC