Driven by Curiosity…

I was watching Rotana Music yesterday, and this song caught my attention. It was about a university graduation ceremony… and even though everyone was an Arab including the Dean and the students, the ceremony looked exactly like a ceremony you would find in the heart of the USA! and not at all the graduation ceremony you would find in any Arab country.

I am not going to go into the song or video clip… I wondered yesterday why do we try too hard to be Americanized or westernized in everything even in our Arabic songs? This lead me to another question, maybe the reason is rooted much deeper inside us, historically and ideologically… were we always Arabs? and if not when did we become Arabs?

Well, honestly searching this whole Arab identity, made me feel how ignorant I am! I have always thought we were always Arabs and that Arabs and Muslims are synonyms! But that is very inaccurate. So forgive the shallowness of what I will write, I am not intending to give a lesson in history here, and obviously there is much much more to how we became Arabs. Even though these are random, isolated facts, for me they gave me a direction of where to start if I am interested to know more.

Basically, the idea of an Arab identity is fresh of the over, it is that new!! it started among the French educated intellectuals of Syria in the late nineteenth century, in an effort to mobilize both Christians and Muslims to throw off the domination of the Ottoman Empire which was doing really badly. Before that Arab had referred to the Bedouins and the inhabitants of Arabia. And we were known in different names.

During World War 1 the idea of Arab nationalism emerged again as an important idea, this time it took the form of the Arab revolt, with the help of the English. England played a major role afterwards in promoting Arabism in the Middle East, obviously to serve their own interests and so the area gradually became Arab! In 1941, Anthony Eden, the British Foreign Minister proposed the creation of an Arab league, which became a reality in 1945.

The Millions of inhabitants of this area, resisted the idea for a long time, because of their doubts of why they changed from Asians or Africans or whatever other identities we had to Arabs, but this was changed drastically with Gamal Abd Al Nasser, who became a national hero by nationalizing the Suez Canal and leading a war against Israel in 1956… After that the masses embraced the idea lovingly.

If you are curious to know morw, get on the internet to find out more

Comments(27)

I have been in Poland for the last ten days, if you are expecting an account about the Polish culture and architecture, you are looking in the wrong place; this is an account of the scandalous gossip that took place in a youth exchange in a small city called Lublin in Poland, where as a matter of fact Jordan was participating.

As few of you would know, one of the things I enjoy most in life is organizing youth exchange programs, to get young people from Jordan to travel and learn something new. I work with people who are over 18 years old, convincing myself that they are adults and legally, culturally and religiously responsible for their acts. Those last two weeks proved that actually they are children, and socially if anything happens I am the one to bear all the responsibility!

My team was very mixed, I am not going to give any names, but we had the conservative, the hypocrite, the ultra liberal and the unexposed, and of course the responsible and open minded. I am so grateful to have 2 young people in my team, a great young lady whose open-mindedness and responsibility will forever leave a mark on my heart, and a guy who would be most probably considered a social outcast in Amman and who the only words that would express my feelings towards him are love and pride a little bit like am other maybe! Together we were the best team; we impressed the hell out of everyone with our language skills and intellect, and all the gorgeous leaflets and posters and presentations the team prepared… and of course the little items of food we brought with us.. JORDAN RULES!

When it came to the social aspect, and individually I thought few of my team members needed kafen 3ala il dayer in several occasions! To start with, few are not more than spoiled brats, who live in a world of their own, honestly the way some girls in Amman talk and behave is sickening and repulsive and completely unimpressive… yuck!!! I was ashamed and disappointed of the dala3,constant stream of naghasheh, silly feminin games and the extreme obsession with makeup and hair and high heals, even when we were in a farm in the middle of nowhere! But this is no where as shameful as the fact that these super intelligent twenty something girls are so dependent on their dadies’ pockets, that they are clueless to the fact that they are adults and have to solve their problems on their own. They actually think that their dads would help them whever they are, it makes me wonder how would they ever survive without papa?! As for the guys… yeee don’t even start me with the double standards and the hypocrisy.

It made me wonder whose fault is that we are a third world, the hypocrisy of men of the air-headedness of women… No wonder, men think we are less than they are… we do our best, actually we go out of our way to let them think act like that.

One of the things that happened, was that we usually try to mix the girls from all countries together in the rooms, and we do the same with the boys boys/girls are strictly forbidden to the disappointment of some of you! so what happens is an Italian girl connected with a French guy, and to my chagrin went back to the room to hang out with her, where two of my most flirty, spoiled girls stay. I wish this happened with the other two girls who were more conservative and would have definitely carried themselves and handles the situation better
We had this huge hysterical, dramatic reation, where my girls tried to get the boy outprobably not very nicely and when he did not want to leave because he thought they were rude. She came to me threatening me with her dad’s influence.

Obviously the boy left the room and obviously it was a cultural misunderstanding and difference and obviously it is expected to face things like that when people leave their safe environment and obviously they could have solved the problem smartly if they were experience and obviously with dad or no dad the problem would have been solved anyway, because actually no one there knows who dad is and no one cares… as a matter of fact this became a point that was taken against Jordanians not having personality of our own, and being so corrupt!! and obviously I was so damn irritated that I had to be not so nice the girl!

What was really funny is that when dad’s position was mentioned, one of the Egyptian guys said “ eh ya3ni, 7adritik bint afandem wi i7na wlad kalbi ya3ni?!!” and an ironic game started about who dad is, when one of the guys in my team said the most intelligent thing ever “abouy insan” which means my dad is a human being! Which awarded us a massive cheering from all the other teams! and closed the door for good.

The project was fun, it was interesting, and it was definitely very educational. But most of all, I learnt we would be better off, when we use our intelligent brains instead of daddy's postions. So if you happen to be in one of my teams, and your dad is important dont tell me, because that would not impress me at all!! actually i would think you are silly and without personality!

Comments(12)