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| Emily Watson | |
| Omar Sharif makes the following statement: "I lived in America for a long time. Only 10% of all Americans have a passport. In other words, 90% never left America," said Sharif. "They don't know anything." This remark is not only condescending, but wrong. It is not necessary to have a passport, nor to travel, to discover certain things. The greatest Foreign Minister of 19th century England, Lord Palmerston, never left England. Nor is it sufficient to have travelled. I know, I have met, I have seen on site, all kinds of Americans, from Junior-Year-Abroad Junior-Leaguers in Paris, at Reid Hall, thinking they are soaking up Paris, to the kind of professors who are on their fourteenth trip to Japan to discuss something -- Total Quality Management, Just-in-Time Delivery of Supplies, whatever is the latest HBS fad -- but who have never sunk beneath the surface of life. One has to be well-prepared. One has to be able to make sense of things. John Esposito has been to the Middle East many times. So has Robert Fisk. So what? Those who haven't used their passports may, or may not, have learned something, even quite enough, about the nature of Islam. It depends. Omar Sharif shows, in his dismissal of the knowledge that Americans possess, an unseemly condescension. Does he think that the well-traveled necessarily are more intelligent? Does he think, for example, that the peoples of Western Europe, constantly moving about within Europe and to exotic climes and resorts, have a better grasp of the Middle East, which means a better grasp of the one thing that he, Omar Sharif, does not dare to mention or to label, that is, Islam? For if people in the Middle East do not understand or support the idea of democracy, it is because the spirit and letter of Islam goes against democracy, for the Muslim is seen not as a citizen, expressing his will at election time, exercising his rights, but as a "slave of Allah" who is used to, who is encouraged in every way to, submit to the authority of Allah, and then to other authorities, those despots who, as long as they are good Muslims, must be obeyed. This is what Omar Sharif, ne Shalhoub, cannot dare to say. But he can say something that is true. And that is that Bush and others in the Administration were remarkably self-assured, though remarkably ignorant, in their messianic sentimentalism. That he's got dead right. | |