A tale of two cultures: Fear of the dark By Ali Saad Al-Musa I SPENT the bulk of the other day among the mullahs that were part of Mr. Hashimi Rafsanjani's entourage while he was on a visit to Abha and Prince Faisal Bin Khalid Bin Abdul Aziz, the region's emir. There, I had met literally dozens of delegations of all levels, nationalities and positions, but after having met that one, I can safely say I've been with one of the world's most restrained delegations I've ever come across. There are so many peoples of the world that read other peoples only through their eyes, not by touchy-feely interaction and asking questions. And therein exactly lies the whole saga of misunderstanding between the Arab and Persian cultures: each one sees the other with the eyes of mutual skepticism and mistrust, and each accuses the other of aspiring to play a dominant role in the region. Even worse, they deal with what they have in common with such extreme sensitivity that sometimes even comes right down to the names of places, a recent example of which was the name of the “Gulf” on Google Earth. While dealing with a member of the delegation, I soon figured out one of the reasons there's such poor dialogue between the two cultures. Although both of us speak fluent English, the Iranian stringently insisted on talking to me in Arabic, which he barely knew and hardly uttered the letters correctly, even going through the trouble of looking into a tiny, abridged dictionary he had, which didn't have the words he was looking for. Somehow, we ditched the easy, practical way to communicate for no other reason than the fact that language became the end rather than the means. What's even more interesting is that the ability of both nations to understand each other is so weak not only because of whatever ideological, ethnic or political reasons there might be, but also because of a culture of secretiveness and holding back that has been set in stone. It's also bizarre that just about the only Arabs living in Iran today are the diplomats on political and diplomatic missions in Iran. Likewise, except for their visits to the holy sites, Iranians hardly ever exist in Arab countries. Realizing this, you might be excused to think that Iran lies somewhere between the Indian and the Pacific oceans, rather than right next door to the east. Most of what we know about Iran today probably comes from medieval literature, just like most of what they know about us came from literature written as early as the Abbasid era. The Iranian technocrat I was talking to seemed to be shocked when I told him that the Arab culture is one of tolerance which does not deny the symbols and contributions of neighboring cultures that helped shape it. I pointed out to him that to this day, we still study in our culture and Islamic history - and even Arabic language - curricula the contributions of the likes of Khwarizmi, Farabi, Sibawaih, Itakhri, Bin Khirdathaba, the quatrains of Omar Khayyam and Naftawaih's Arabic grammar. However, when I asked him about how his culture sees us and our distinguished men, he hardly gave me anything that might constitute even a modicum of recognition. That's probably because he was completely oblivious to all of this, just like some other supremacist cultures do in ignoring the contributions of outsiders to their own shaping and development. He ignored all that while deliberately forgetting that probably two thirds of his own language - even though it has been proven to be closely related to English - can be traced to Arabic origins. The problem is that the fact that both cultures are completely opaque to each other certainly has a direct effect on political decision-making. As such, decision-makers become like someone driving a huge truck with broken headlights at night, with no map. Such opaqueness inevitably leads to a complete lack of awareness about the sensitivities and social and political patterns of neighboring nations. That, in turn, generally leads to one nation making dumb political decisions about the other. And this is exactly what's happening today between the Arab and Persian civilizations. I already know that Mr. Hashimi Rafsanjani carried a message of reassurance, just like Mohammad Khatami carried one of moderation. But both men are only cogs in a gigantic Iranian decision-making machine, a fact that sometimes causes us to get confused while we try to find a middle ground between the two men's political stands towards the Arab world on the one hand, and those of President Ahmedinejad on the other, who seems to have gone wild with how he sees us. The biggest mistake the Iranian revolution made when it came to dealing with the Arab world was the concept of exporting the revolution. That very notion, in and of itself, is the single most glaring example of political decision-making gone awry because of cultural inaccessibility. No revolution can ever spread or be exported unless the right ethnic and religious conditions were there. In this case, the ideas of the revolution were on a collision course with the convictions of the Arab Sunni majority, so the idea of exporting the revolution became a breeding ground for extremist literature that went as far as takfir (change of unbelief). Up to that point, the majorities of the two Islamic strains never were this intense in hating each other. Before the term was coined, most of us never knew the differences between the Sunni and Shiite streaks. Now, more than two decades after the revolution, Iran realized that fact, so it resorted to Plan B: instead of exporting the revolution outright, they started creating disturbances. The Iranian religious establishment never quite could stomach the fact that Shiite Arabs do exist in the heart of the Arab world. It never stopped to think and ask itself: what if we, Arabs, did the same to them in the entire Iranian southwest, where the bulk of their economy is? Problem is, however, Plan B is working. Look at Lebanon, where Iran has more influence than the Lebanese. Then there's Iraq, where Iran is actually running the show. And don't forget Houthi's movement in Yemen, the bleeding stab wound in the heart of the Arabian Peninsula. What's really unfortunate is that some Arab Sunni movements - most of which, the Muslim Brotherhood - is responding to these political skirmishes by Iran, which is in a hostile takeover of the Palestinian cause to take it away from the Arab world. The fact which Hamas's Khalid Meshaal never realized is that the literature of his newfound Iranian friends never fired a single shot at Israel during 60 years, and not a single Iranian soldier ever died for that cause, and none ever will for the next 60 years. All of this is happening because Iran is interfering and meddling in Arab affairs, like a blind man trying to sew a dress with a needle. Iran makes political decisions about Arabs when it hasn't got a single institute or faculty in any university that specializes in Arab studies. And that's a fact. – Al
