Posted by
Curt on Thursday, August 17, 2006 3:42:15 PM
During the early seventies, I had the opportunity to live in Turkey as a foreign exchange student. I spent the better part of a year living with a Muslim family. and was immersed in the culture as intimately as is possible for an outsider. I would like to impart to you by impressions of that experience.
The Muslim world that I entered consisted of essentially two classes. The Middle class that we take for granted here was for all intents and purposes absent in Turkish society. The family I lived with was wealthy, but the vast majority of the people I encountered were anything but. The poor were seriously destitute, had no education whatsoever, and were usually really ignorant, stupid and angry. At everything.
Truly, one of my strongest recollections was how hateful everybody seemed to be. Wealthy or poor, it didn't seem to matter.
Not on a personal level, mind you. I was always treated respectfully and cordially. But on a level of "generalizations", these people hated everybody. I don't mean disliked, peeved, irked, etc. Hate was the prevalent emotion.
I'd never seen anything like it. Someone would start talking about America, or Europe, or other Arab countries, and this angry passion would engulf them. An ugly blazing cauldron of vindictive hatefulness. Scared the crap out of me. Seemed the only people that they liked were themselves, sort of.
I lived in the city of Antalya, on the Mediterranean. The family were the Tankuts. They were extraordinarily loving and caring towards me. I was an American, but that was okay. However, if they got into the subject of America, i.e. the government, watch out. The fireworks would erupt.
All the predictable diatribes would be in full swing. We were a great evil, never to be trusted. While they were our allies, they would never be our friends. America is the Alpha and the Omega of all that is wrong with the world. No debate or discussion was really tolerated, much less engaged in. Forget reason. Like trying to talk to a moonbat.
Still, they were (and are) obsessed with the West, materially speaking. But that's about it as far as I could tell. Their attitude was "Yeah, we enjoy the clothes, the music, the cars, whatever. Fine. As for the rest, stay the hell away from us".
Another very strong impression was how different life and death were perceived and experienced. I would not say that life was cheaper per se, but I would say that death was more personally interwoven into a person's experience there than it is here. The doling out of death seemed considerably more taken for granted there somehow. I don't know if I''m saying this right. Perhaps more condoned or expected? Yeah, that's closer.
A couple of examples stick in my mind. I went to the season opener of the town's football (soccer) team. Surrounding the field was a huge barbed-wire fence. Tunnels came up out on the field for the team members and the officials. I asked a friend there why the fence? He said that the previous year, some officials had performed very poorly and the crowd had come out onto the field and ripped them to pieces. I was shocked, and told him so. His response was that the ref's calls were really very bad.
Another time, a trio of tourists from Europe were killed in a town next to ours because their clothing (bathing suits) were offensive to the locals. It was just reported as one of the day's incidents. No biggie.
On Friday the loudspeakers would commence calling the worshippers to prayer. As far as I could tell, attendance was comparable to our church numbers. Decent participation, but not all encompassing. It seemed to me that the majority of participants were the poor, but I can't say that with certainty. The Islamic religion was the dominating religious force, but I only saw one religious zealot, who was the family grandmother. She had become one after her husband died, prayed constantly, and the rest of the family thought she was, well, odd.
As I watch the events continue to unfold in this never ending and ever increasing battle between Arab fascists and the West, I am more inclined to believe that this has less to do with Islam and much more to do with inferiority and jealousy nurtured by a culture of hate. While the current take is that it is a religious war, I think it has more to do with a bunch of perennial losers on the world stage who are trying to make a bid to "be" something.