Jessica's Islam, Media, and The West Blog

After reading through everyone’s blogs (something I wish I had done sooner by the way!) I get the feeling we have all finished out this class in an incredibly positive way. For me personally, writing my last paper was almost therapeutic. It provided me with the perfect opportunity to reflect on what I had learned throughout the semester and where my evolution in thought had taken me. I can honestly say that in my time here at NYU, I have never taken a class that has taught me more about myself and the world than this one. Looking through the other blogs, I can tell that I’m not alone in feeling this way.

I can’t say much about the evolution of thought that took place on our blogs, because many of us didn’t start the actual writing until late October. However, I can see the careful thought that everyone put into each blog post. I think something that we all did really well was taking outside sources such as movies and news articles and applying what we had learned in class to flesh them out. I can remember the first week of class when Helga gave us maps to fill out and surveys to take about the Middle East; we were all so clueless! I also feel like we were embarrassed about our lack of knowledge, which I think was a great way to launch a class like this. When reading everyone’s posts, I could see how much more knowledgeable we have all become in these four months.

Not only have we learned so much about the Middle East, we have also all started to think about it in a completely new way. Our eyes have opened to the way our media and our politicians treat and represent the people from that part of the world. I think this is such a great thing, because now we won’t fall into the trap of Orientialism as easily as we might have before this class. Most people expressed this sentiment on their blogs. While this class had a lot to do with examining and interpreting media, I think it did a great job of going beyond that. We will also be able to see through what people say and act towards the Arabs and Muslims that live in our country. Hopefully we can spread this knowledge to the people around us because I have certainly started to notice the things that people I know do and say. But I don’t blame them, because I can look back at my own transformation and understand.

I just hope that we can hold on to what we’ve learned and not forget about it once we’re not in class twice a week. But after reading what everyone has written, and how differently they think now, I really believe that this is something we’ll always carry with us now. This class has completely changed the way that we think. Thanks Helga! ☺

Abstract/Executive Summary
This report has been drafted to present a description and analysis of the characteristics and functions of television from the Arab world. Its purpose is to provide insight into a system that has often been understood and represented solely through Al Jazeera, the Arab news network. As you will come to see through these observations, the breadth of Arab television is quite large and it isn’t simply a machine for anti-American propaganda like many people believe. In fact, it is incredibly similar to our own television system in terms of structure and programming.

History and Structure of Arab Television
In order to understand the structure of television in the Middle East, it is necessary to know a little bit about the history of broadcast in that part of the world.
• Before the 1990’s
When colonialism ended in the Middle East, control of the broadcast systems was turned over to the national governments. This old and no longer intact system is what most Americans think of when they say that Arab television is nothing but a mouthpiece for anti-Western governments Until the 1990’s, all Middle Eastern governments owned their broadcast media as monopolies, with the intention of preserving the control of nation unity. Most of these media-government relationships fit into two different models.

Strict-Control System- the government has a total monopoly over all media and they control everything that is produced (in other words, all programming on television)
Loyalist System- the media is loyal to the monarchies and it always toes the party line
There were two exceptions to this rule- Israel and Lebanon have had free media systems from the very beginning.

Obviously, in this system, commercially driven media didn’t exist. Many of the Middle Eastern countries used their programming to mobilize and educate their citizens. The reasoning behind this was that the government was in charge of what the public needed to know. But this structure changed in the 1990’s to become what it is today.

• The 1990’s Until Now
Many things changed after 1990. For one, all countries in the Middle East were going through various forms of economic upheaval. Another very interesting thing that happened was that CNN became increasingly important- it was the only way to obtain extensive coverage of the Gulf War. This made the Middle East realize that they should be doing something similar for their own people. Lastly, technology changed in a huge way. Satellite became widely available at a cheap price.

Satellite television is very important to the structure of Arab television. It is one huge way in which their system differs from America’s system. While satellite is available here, it is not nearly as popular as it is in the Middle East. It is the primary way that Arabs enjoy television. It is also a vehicle for connecting that many countries of the Middle East- most satellite channels can be received anywhere in the Arab world. So while many local and state-specific channels exist, many other channels are considered “pan-Arab”. For example, in 1991 the Middle Eastern Broadcasting Company (MBC) launched from London. After this, there was an explosion of satellite channels, with every country wanting to launch their own. In this way, the Arab world is very connected to each other through satellite television.

As of now there are more than 350 free-to-air satellite channels that are available with the singular purchase of a dish. These channels are not only in Arabic- only about 270 are Arabic-language while the rest are broadcasted in a number of different languages, including English. This really shows the globalization effect on Arab television, since American TV is only broadcasted in either English or Spanish. Arab television has a more global reach. It is important to mention that commercialization is the general model for Arab satellite television now that these privately owned stations have far surpassed terrestrial stations in popularity and usage.

Programming

•Ramadan TV
This month-long Islamic holiday of fasting and cleansing is also the most popular month for TV consumption in the Arab world. It can be compared to sweeps week in the United States where the absolute best programming is shown. Ramadan is a good opportunity for this to happen since families spend most of their time together relaxing, especially after sundown when they can all eat. This Ramadan TV is primarily composed of serials that air every night only for that month; they are a cross between a soap opera and a drama series. These series are made and produced by many countries throughout the Arab world and are played on both satellite and terrestrial television.

One might expect that television aired during a holy month would be very religious, but these programs actually stay very far away from Islam. For example, Egyptian Ramadan serials rarely discuss religion and some have said that they are anti-religious. This is actually because the political party in Egypt does not include Islam as part of its platform.

In fact, Ramadan TV has recently garnered some controversy for its risqué and immoral content. There have even been some Fatwas (a decree given by religious scholars saying that something is technically “banned”) against these serials.

• Reality TV
Reality television is a worldwide phenomenon. It started in the Netherlands with the show “Big Brother”. The way that reality TV becomes successful all over the world is through the use of formats- different countries buy the general idea for a show and then it is adapted for the local audience (hence why Big Brother has been successful worldwide). Arab television is no exception to this rule. For example, the format of American Idol (a pop music singing competition) has spread all over the world. Arab television has taken the format of “Star Academy,” and “Super Star” which is just like American Idol, and made it incredibly popular in that region. These formats are a great example of globalization and how media is using desires and values that are common to the whole world. The Middle East fits into this perfectly, using the desire of many people to become a pop star.

• News
It is impossible to not discuss Al Jazeera in this section, however not in the way it usually is. Al Jazeera is the most popular source of news in the Middle East. After September 11th, when the network broadcast videos of Osama Bin Laden, our country became outraged and accused them of spreading terrorist propaganda. However, if you take a look at some more of Al Jazeera’s programming, you would understand that it actually just fits into their model of making all information available. This channel is incredibly professional- it is modeled after the BBC and looks very similar to our news networks. They strive to provide a fair and balanced point of view and they achieve this by inviting all sorts of guests onto their programs. They have even invited guests who have criticized Islam or the way fundamentalist Muslims act.

Al Jazeera needs to be known for more than just airing videos of Osama Bin Laden. In fact, it is little known in the US that Al Jazeera English was launched in 2006, following in the style of CNN around the world. It meets the needs of English speakers who live throughout the world, not just in the United States. This is an incredibly modern thing, something very new.

• Religious Programming
Religious programming is another sort of television programming that needs to be looked at in a new way. In the Arab world, it is not used as propaganda or way to try and take over the world with Islam. The religious programming can be compared to Christian televangelist programming in the United States except a lot calmer and a lot less exciting. Amr Khaled is considered the world’s most famous and influential Muslim televangelist and his program brings in huge numbers all throughout the Middle East. He is a very positive person who rejects Islamic extremism and any conflict with the West. He preaches that the most important thing for Muslims to focus on is community development and becoming closer to God.

Religion is also important in music and the music videos that air on Arab television, especially the work of Sami Yusuf, one of the Middle East’s biggest pop stars. He has made Islam popular with youth, very similar to what Christian music has done. This concept leads into my conclusion.

Conclusion
As this report has attempted to show, Arab television is not what the U.S. has previously thought it was. While it may have been in the distant past, it is not used as a mouthpiece for Anti-Western governments. The Arab people use it as an entertainment medium, just like anyone else in the world does. It is also important to realize that broadcasting religious Islamic sentiments on TV isn’t necessarily something to fear. Using pop culture in the religion has modernized it and made it something completely new. In fact, the Islamic West has become increasingly important in the Middle East. For example, Sami Yusuf, who I mentioned before, is one of the most popular Middle Eastern pop stars, but he is actually from London and doesn’t speak Arabic at all.

The Middle East has taken these things that we think of as inherently Western (such as music videos) and made it their own by adding an Islamic tinge to it, which makes it not all that unfamiliar to us. It is definitely not a threatening thing. In this way, the division between the East and West falls apart. Modernity is no longer just something that can be applied to the West- this report has found that Arab television is very modern , just in their own way.

After discovering this, I conclude that our involvement with Arab television on the basis of countering anti-Western propaganda is completely unfounded and recommend that this strategy need not continue. If we want to get involved it should be because Arab TV is becoming hugely popular all across the world.

Note to Helga: I didn't include the title page and table of contents because I didn't think it was necessary with the blog. Let me know if you would like me to include these.

So Islam, Media, and the West is officially over so it's time for me to have some final thoughts. I feel like this class has ended on a similar note as a class I took last semester, Mass Media, Global Communication and The Future. The name of the class is a little misleading because the purpose of the class was to explore globalization and the way in which cultures all over the world interact and come together. We studied multiple theories including the Clash and American Domination. But at the end of the class, we left off in a very open ended way, deciding that cultures all over the world had become too complex and it was impossible to say that any one theory was correct. The way the world works nowadays is almost indescribable- it is a completely new thing.

I think our study of Islam and The West has ended in a very similar way. We started with The Clash, moved on to Orientalism, and after studying the media systems of the Middle East we ended with Modernism. Modernism is a way of describing things that are completely new- they're not Western or Eastern, just simply new. I think my entry on Afghanistan's first gym is a perfect example of this modernism. Afghanistan women going to gyms (perhaps even clad in jihabs) is not wierd or Western- it is their own thing. I find it a really hard thing to describe, but the point is that all of these old theories for the way globalization works just don't work anymore. All of the Middle East isn't backwards or stuck in the past- they play video games, watch music videos and put on fashion shows (harkening back to my very first entry). But all this isn't a way to imitate the West or become Westernized- they are doing it in their very own way.

I thought one of the music videos we watched in class yesterday perfectly represented this concept- the music video by DAM, a Palestinian rap group.

This is rap, a style of music that came from the West, but this is definitely not Western. It's something completely unique- their own style. This is modernism- a blending of cultures to produce something new and exciting. I think this is a better way to look at the world, instead of looking to the Middle East and thinking how different they are.

Last night, the two-hour prequel to this upcoming season of Fox's 24 aired. It was a big event because the show hasn't been on since before the writer's strike happened. I have always been a big fan, and I was particularly excited for this season to start because I had no idea what the plot would be (either they didn't release the information or I wasn't looking in the right places).

My boyfriend made a joke halfway into the premiere about how this season they actually weren't focusing on Middle Eastern terrorists and I realized he was right. On 24, the plot always focuses on some sort of threat to the United States that Jack Bauer has to destroy so that he can save the country. This season the plot seems to focus on some sort of coup d'tat happening in a random part of Africa. But many of the other seasons were about Jack saving the United States from terrorists from the Middle East.

24 has often been criticized as a conservative/right wing show but all different people in the country love it and become obsessed with it. The whole point of the show is to champion the American people which I think is incredibly interesting since the show started in November of 2001, only 2 months after September 11th. Maybe this is a reason why the show became so popular- the American people needed a show that portrayed them as being the good guys that won. Since the Middle Eastern terrorist plot has been used so many times in this shows 7 seasons, I was curious why this wouldn't have been the first plot they used. I think it was just too soon to use something so fresh in the conscious of the American people. But they still needed to see themselves reign victorious over another part of the world so the show ended up using people from the Balkans as the bad guys.

Eventually, the show became very heavy on using Middle Eastern terrorists as the bad guys. In Season 4, Jack must save the lives of his boss (the secretary of state) and his daughter who have been kidnapped by terrorists. In Season 5, terrorists with connections to the U.S. government attempt to steal nerve gas. Jack often uses some controversial methods to stop these people (AKA, torture) but the viewer is so involved in his cause that they cheer on what he is doing. I think this was an interesting way of getting the American people to support, or be OK with, what the government has been doing with terrorists. In this way, by rallying the American people through a TV show, I think 24 has served an interesting purpose, albeit intentionally or by accident.

Since 24 often starts in a different direction than it ends, I'm curious to see who ends up being the "bad guys".

After reading about the Iraqi reality TV show "Terrorism in the Hands of Justice" and talking about it in class, I decided to watch a YouTube video clip of the show since we didn't get to in class. I was really interested in learning more about the show because it was like nothing I had ever heard of before. Here is the clip I watched:

I also read an article about the show that ran in The Washington Post on April 5, 2005.

America has some very racy reality TV shows- Tila Tequila anyone?- but this show is a different kind of racy. It takes suspected terrorists and puts them and their crimes on display for everyone to see. This is shocking, since terrorism is such a sensitive subject in that area of the world. And how could it not be when the rest of the world thinks everyone from that part of the world is involved with terrorism? I thought it was an interesting decision to make a show like this, but then I thought about the motives behind it and it made sense to me. Some parts of the Washington Post article confirmed my thoughts as well.

Terrorism in the Hands of Justice is aired on al-Iraqiya, a state run station that was set up by the United States. The motives that I had been thinking about for creating the show was that it was a way for Iraq to show the world that it does NOT tolerate terrorists and to show them exactly how they take care of them. In the Washington Post article, it says that Terrorism in the Hands of Justice "has become one of most effective arrows in the government's counterinsurgency propaganda quiver". It was created because the Iraqis didn't believe that insurgents were being arrested. So in a sense I was right- the show was created to make a point. In their eyes it was a point made for the Iraqi people but I'm sure that it is also a way of showing the world that Iraq is not a nation of terrorists.

The clip that I posted above seems very tame. The suspected insurgent doesn't seem too stressed or upset and he doesn't have to be prompted much to tell his story. He also doesn't look that worse for the wear. But according to other sources, there are other episodes where it is a lot more harsh- the prisoners look like they have been tortured, and they are forced to say their words. So are these accurate portrayals and truthful stories that come from these capture terrorists? I don't think it really matters for anyone, because the show serves the purpose it was made for.

For some reason, this show reminds me of the United State's "To Catch a Predator", where suspected child molesters are tricked into appearing at a house where they think they'll be meeting a a young person they met online but instead come face to face with a camera crew. These people are forced to bare their souls to the world- they are not good people but it is almost embarrassing to see what is inside their minds.

It's funny how this class has made me look at things in a completely new way. Last night I finally got to see the movie Iron Man. Before watching it, all that I knew about it was that it was an action movie about some guy who builds an iron suit and becomes a superhero. But within the first fifteen minutes of the movie, I was already thinking about Orientalism and Shaheen's article/study "Reel Bad Arabs". If Shaheen's study had been conducted earlier than 2008 (it was written in 2003), I'm sure he would have included this movie in his tally.

The story begins with Tony Stark, a genius and wealthy inventor of military weapons, being captured by a terrorist group while he is on a visit to the Middle East for his business. He is kidnapped because of who he is and what he does, and while he is in captivity he is forced to build one of the most powerful missiles in the world for his captors. Instead of building what he is supposed to, Tony builds an incredibly technological and powerful iron suit which he uses to escape from his prison.

This plot itself is an example of Orientalism. The Arabs in this movie are immediately portrayed as the bad guys who Tony must defeat to gain his freedom. They were the racial group chosen to play this role, as they so often are. Tony himself is not a particularly admirable man- his business makes its millions through building weapons and selling them throughout the world, and they often end up in the wrong hands. But the viewer is encouraged to cheer for Tony and his accomplishments, mostly because the us vs. them dichotomy has been set up. Tony almost represents America itself, and the terrorists are of course the enemies that we have been fighting for years.

The representation of the Arabs themselves is not the "classical, oriental" picture that has been used so many times before, but they are still portrayed as evil, greedy, money/power hungry, and uncaring about human lives.

The movie DOES make some political statements about America's involvement in the world through the sales of military weapons, but that is about it. The rest of the movie's plot is about the terrorists building their own missile, and Tony having to stop them with his iron suit. The same theme continues throughout the movie. I just thought it was perfect support for what Shaheen wrote about in his article, and this is the first time I came across a movie like this since we read it.

Here is the Iron Man trailer, pulled from YouTube. It gives you a slight sense of how the Arabs are portrayed.

After my recent post about the article in Marie Claire about honor killings, I decided to comment on the other article I mentioned at the end. When I was searching around Marie Claire.com, I came across an article about Afghanistan's first full service gym for women only. While short, it made me think about how we in the west characterize the activities and interests of people in the Middle East. Here is the article:

When you think of Afghanistan, images of rock-hard abs and Stairmasters aren’t the first things that leap to mind. But when Freshta Farah, a 35-year-old Afghan, heard that her government was offering small-business loans to people willing to set up shop in Kabul, she decided to open her country’s only full-service gym for women. “Originally, I was going to start a driving school or an Internet cafe,” Farah says. “But my friends here all wanted a gym, so I decided to do that instead.” Women in Afghanistan are no strangers to exercise, according to Farah. But until she unveiled the Afghan Sisters Sport Association in 2006, they worked out at home, alone, with no access to proper equipment or training. Of course, operating a women-only gym in a country where many women still wear burkas is not without its challenges. “The gym isn’t popular with the public,” she admits. “Sometimes I worry that someone will damage the gym or attack me.” Recently, after one of her trainers was injured in an attack that killed the trainer’s husband, a number of clients stopped showing up. Despite the danger, Farah looks forward to opening more gyms, either in Kabul or out in the more conservative provinces. “It is more dangerous there,” she says. “But maybe things will be easier in the future.”

The first sentence immediately made me stop and think because it seemed really ignorant and derisive to me. While the writer is probably right, (too many other things have gone on in Afghanistan recently, and she is writing to an American audience) the way she phrased it made it sound like Afghanis just don't do that "type of thing", like they're too busy being terrorists or something. It rubbed me the wrong way, because who are we to judge a people who we rarely interact with? For all we know, Afghanis could be very interested in health and exercise. I think this is a perfect example of how Americans (but not just us) are too quick to categorize foreign things in a certain way.

The rest of the article isn't so bad, because it is mostly the words of Freshta Fara telling how she got the gym started. If anything, maybe the rest of the article showed the readers that Afghanis aren't all that foreign and separated from the ideas of rock-hard abs and Stairmasters. While the article started off a little badly, I think that overall Marie Claire accomplished something good with this anecdote. It showed its readers, who probably think more like the first sentence, that women all over the world do the same things that they do.

I wish more people understood this. Too often people are talked about by their culture or race and the DIFFERENCES between them instead of the similarities.

Yes, I am once again getting my material from my latest issue of Marie Claire. At least this magazine actually tries to update its readers on the world unlike Cosmopolitan (which I am also addicted to). The Bulletin section is actually a commendable place to get short updates on the world around us...or is it?

This month there is a blurb on how honor killings within the Muslim faith have "come stateside". The article is made up of a few short anecdotes about American Muslim women who have recently been killed by their fathers for doing things such as filing for divorce, having boyfriends, and going clubbing. They treat honor killings (murdering a female relative to protect the family's honor) as some sort of invasion that is coming in from the Arab world. I felt that this article was written from a very Orientalist perspective.

It uses words like brutish, which is appropriate for such a crime, but in the context of this type of article it applies the word to all Muslims. As I said before, they treat honor killings as some sort of new trend coming to the country from the east. For example within the first paragraph it says "this honor killing didn't occur in an Islamic republic in South Asia....it happened in the bedroom community of Jonesboro, GA." This automatically gives the impression that familial murders never happen in the US, only in places like the Middle East.

One part of the article also claims that the reason why this "problem" gets little mention in the news is "as a result of misplaced cultural sensitivity on the part of Americans". I find this slight unnerving.

I'd be very interested to find out the actual numbers of honor killings that happen in the United States. I'm curious to find out if this is an actual problem or if it just makes for an interesting story. The article doesn't provide any numbers besides that there are 5000 committed around the world each year. I think that Marie Claire was mostly interested in this story because of the women's rights and liberation issues surrounding it.

If anyone is interested, on the Marie Claire website under the "Eye on the World" section, there are many little blurbs like these. A lot of them have to do with the Middle East too- right now there is one about a Women Only Hotel in Saudi Arabia and one on Afghanistan's first women's gym. They might not always be from the greatest of perspectives (like this one) but they do make you think.

Jessica, before you started taking this course, if someone had asked you to describe the image that entered your mind when you heard the word Arab, what would you have said?
Let me start off by saying that I like to consider myself a very educated person. I believe that attending college in one of the biggest and most diverse cities in the world has given me a real world education that could be considered even more valuable than my academic education. I would never call my parents unintelligent but because of the opportunities I’ve been given, I am worldlier than they are. Despite this, whenever I heard the word Arab, I would picture a short, heavy man wearing a turban and a white garment, sporting thick facial hair and sometimes a sneer. It’s incredibly frustrating and embarrassing for me to admit this because I know this isn’t correct. My Uncle Magdy was born and raised in Egypt and he looks absolutely nothing like that. Yet for some reason, I completely failed at the word association game because I couldn’t stop this negative image from popping into my head.

Where do you think this image came from?
I know where this image came from and it’s pretty obvious- the media. Like most Americans, I’ve never been to the Middle East before. This means that understandably, most of my conceptions of what Arabs are like have come from movies, TV shows, and the news. Growing up, Aladdin was one of my favorite movies. Every image on the news of the Middle East is related to war and violence, considering the current state of foreign affairs. Taking into consideration Jack Shaheen’s “Reel Bad Arabs” article, it’s not surprising that that sort of image became ingrained in my subconscious.

You keep using the past tense. What has started to change this reflex representation of Arab people?
I have immensely enjoyed the graphic novels and first hand accounts that we’ve been reading in class. It is so refreshing to read something about the Middle East and Islam that isn’t coming from a scholarly or academic perspective. I feel like I’ve learned so much more by hearing from people that have lived their life in that area and can offer a different angle to see it from apart from the American news media. Even though I already knew these people existed, they are making that subconscious image of an Arab in my head much less defined (and to me that is a great thing).

Whenever ANY sort of media is focused around Islam and the Arab world, it is important to consider Orientalism. Do you feel these texts are Orientalist?
Orientalism is an incredibly important concept and I am a perfect example of its implications. It is hard to deny its existence in America and the West when you look at Arab representations in any form of media. We definitely see the Arab world through a certain lens. But at the same time, I think there is an accompanying risk of seeing every media text as Orientalist or rotating it to make it seem that way. When this happens, where can truth be found? Where do we look to if we want a true Arab perspective? I really don’t think that the graphic novels and first hand accounts that we have been reading are Orientalist. They don’t come from the West and they do a really excellent job of giving many different faces and personalities to the Arab people; faces and personalities that you would rarely ever see in American media. I also feel like there is something to be said about the format in which these perspectives are presented. They are graphic novels, blogs, and prose-like accounts. They are by pretty ordinary people that have the desire to express their feelings and their lives through art. Their motives are incredibly different from someone like Bernard Lewis, whose government position gave him an inherent agenda.

Can you give an example of one of the readings that you really felt wasn’t Orientalist?
While I was reading both of the Persepolis books, I knew I was getting something completely new. First of all, instead of reading a scholarly article written by someone in the West, I was reading the life story of a Iranian girl being raised during the revolution. Marjane’s family was very liberal for an Iranian Islamic family, yet they were still proud of and true to their roots. This at once defies the very concept that Orientalists have of the Middle East. The books also provide a huge cast of characters who really show the diversity of people living in Iran. There were liberal people like Marjane and her family, the Islamic extremists in the government, and in the middle were her friends who wanted to dress in modern clothing but still couldn’t let go of their traditional Muslim values. Marjane had a desire to live in the Western World but she still eventually came back to Iran because it held a piece of her. She reconciled these two halves of herself to achieve her self-actualization. She was anything but an Orientalist stereotype.

You say that these first hand Arab perspectives are a good way to overcome Orientalist representations but did you find any exceptions to this in your readings?
Yes, I actually did. While I really enjoyed Joe Sacco’s Palestine because it took me on a tour of a part of the world I really didn’t know much about, it did seem a little Orientalist to me. I think this is because it was only a first hand account in terms of location. Although he traveled to Palestine, he was still an outsider visiting from the West. Not only that, but as a journalist he had somewhat of an agenda. He looked at Palestine in terms of it being a good read. He even admits in the book that when he traveled to different cities, he was looking for specific people with specific stores (and they were often gruesome and fantastical). All of the Arabs in his book also had a very similar look to them. However, I think he did do a great job in giving a voice to the Palestinian people that might not be heard otherwise.

What about the other major theory of the Clash of Civilizations? Does that play into these graphic novels at all?
One of the major things that the Clash of Civilizations theory does is generalize and almost dehumanizes huge groups of people that are actually incredibly diverse. It pits broad groups in the world against each other and says that they are fundamentally at odds. It completely forgets about the differences within HUMANS, no matter what culture they come from. These graphic novels and other points of view pretty much do the opposite. We hear the voices of real people from the Middle East, not just the politicians that are presented on the American news. They emphasize the common people’s voice.

Do you think that you can extrapolate from these individual stories to a larger understanding of Iran, Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, and Islam?
I feel like they are very useful in understanding the people of these regions, and what they and their country have gone through. If we can’t believe them, and we can’t believe the American media and Western scholars, then where should we get our information? I do however think that you should read them with a critical eye, just like you would read anything else. You need to take into account that they are just one person among thousands and they have their own personal story. It would be the same for any part of the world. There are probably thousands of other personal and individual stories. But we can’t discount them because they tell us some very important things about countries and situations that we may never get to visit.

I live in a medium-sized suburban town (technically called a village) in Bergen County, New Jersey called Ridgewood. There is an east side and a west side of town (which has a lot to do with school districts) but the two parts are united in the middle with the "center of town". The center of town is a big long street called E. Ridgewood Ave which is physically wider than the other streets of town, similar to how Broadway was in the city. This is where all the cute boutique shops and all sorts of gorgeous restaurants are. There is also a large, open park and a train station at the top of the street. This is where all of Ridgewood's couples and families go at night on the weekends, and where teenagers hang out after school. A large volume of out-of-towners also flock to the restaurants for a nice night out.

I don't know much about the history of Ridgewood, but I assume that E. Ridgewood Ave. has always been the same. Ridgewood is a very family-oriented and community-oriented town so I think that Ridgewood is set up with this center of town to provide a communal spot for everyone to "meet up" and convene. It is a great way for the residents of Ridgewood to identify themselves and their town.