DR Mohammed Nasser Shoukany, a member of King Abdul Aziz University teaching staff and Editor-in-Chief of Saudi Gazette, has criticized the lack of “social studies on the cultures of expatriates in the Kingdom”. In his lecture at Abha Literary Club last Monday entitled “Writing trends in describing peoples and cultures”, Shoukany lamented the lack of interest in phenomena emerging from the mix of cultures and nationalities in the Kingdom. “It's amazing that we still haven't seen any serious studies on the broken Arabic of East Asian workers, for example, which has become the accepted tool of communication between them and the rest of society,” Shoukany said. “If this linguistic phenomenon existed in Western societies, for example, we would have seen by now hundreds of studies on the subject” he added. “Even our more than 20 universities have not looked into this area in a serious, academic manner,” Shoukany continued. “There are no research centers specializing in social and cultural phenomena or producing paths of cultural exchange between us and the non-Arab people working in our country.” “Where are the studies and translations of the literature and cultures of non-Arab Islamic countries like Indonesia, Pakistan, Malaysia and even India?” Shoukany asked, citing a figure of over eight million foreign workers in the Kingdom. “Only very little has been translated, and that via a third language like English. Researchers are only concerned with Western culture.” “We have not taken the initiative to study these cultures nor have we encouraged them to understand Saudi culture,” he said, recalling as an example one person who had lived in the Kingdom for 25 years and who by the time he returned to his home country had not entered a single Saudi home. Shoukany drew on his own translation of American James Clifford's “Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century” in which the writer analyzes the global attraction to Western culture and how it has become a tool of communication between peoples across the world. “It is astonishing how Arab culture has ignored the culture and literature of travel despite their being a part of Islamic culture,” he said, further lamenting the current muted cultural impact of Arab and Islamic culture and many oriental cultures. “We still neglect the culture of travel,” Shoukany said. “Western newspapers allocate weekly supplements that focus on the cultural benefits of traveling.” Shoukany laid emphasis on Clifford's focus on museums as representing “one of the most important aspects of transfer for any local culture, bringing them to international attention through a museum's ability to convey reality using a visual language comprehensible to all”. Poet Ali Al-Thawabi commented from the floor saying that Saudis were “influenced by the cultures of those working in our country more than our culture influences them”, while Dr. Abdullah Hamid described the Arab world as “not greatly interested in travel despite the existence of specialist research centers on travel literature,” criticizing views held by some that the only point to travel is to engage in “colonialism, Christianization or espionage”. Haila Fenais Al-Qahtani asked about the influence of other cultures on Saudis studying abroad. Shoukany responded to the floor by saying that “the fear of other cultures will not be dispelled except through understanding the religion of Islam and how it was revealed as a religion of tolerance and solid cultural structure”.
