Sunday, January 22, 2006
Justin Martin writes in the Hartford Courant, Believing The Worst About Us:
...The discussion took a retrospective turn toward 9/11. The sisters first claimed that the attacks of September 2001 were a ruse and the work of Hollywood, while adding that, if in fact the attacks were real, it was not Arabs but Jews who carried them out...
...I was caught completely off guard by their statements because the four women are among the educated elite in one of the most progressive countries in the Middle East. Ninety percent of Jordanians are literate and the country has a strong network of universities as well as one of the freest media systems in the Middle East. I would expect to find denial of American pain in Saudi Arabia, Syria and Egypt, but not among the upper class in Jordan's capital...
I should like to know, before such people were, say, invited to come teach at universities here, or become naturalized citizens, whether anyone has such a conversation with them so that we could head off such opinions working their way into the mainstream here. I do not think that is unreasonable.
I should like to know...whether anyone has such a conversation with them so that we could head off such opinions
I did that about 10 years ago. The answer was, "We are true Arabs, this is our religion, and we can do with it what we want."