A Flood of Political Opinions

2.23.07

Someone much wiser than me recently convinced me forcing someone to listen to your ideas, much less changing them, is impossible, but the best way to come close to achieving understanding is to listen. Historically, this has not been my forte, but since my main goal for coming to this place is to learn the culture, listening is mandatory, akeed.

So I listen. I flinch to hear some of these radical political opinions that you and I would automatically recognize as propaganda and conspiracy theories. These are some of the opinions that I have heard since arriving in Jordan sixteen days ago to study Arabic at Yarmouk University:

“I like the American people, but I don’t like American politics. I liked Clinton.”
“Jews are the cause of all the problems in the Middle East.”
“America is only interested in Iraq for economic reasons.”
“America has no right to be the World’s Policeman.”
“The most important thing is to examine the cause of the war in Iraq, the reasons for entering the country.”
“Those are American soldiers being killed, don’t you see?”
“I like Saddam Hussein, don’t you? At least he was powerful.”
“Try to IMAGINE. This is only 2% of the actual dead.”
“All Jews are liars and thieves.”
“Americans are terrorists. Do you see what they’re doing in Iraq?”
“More people have died since the start of the war in Iraq than ever died during Saddam’s regime. Therefore Saddam was better for the country than the forced ‘democracy’.”
“American doesn’t understand the Middle East, and never will.”
“I’m trying to prove to her that Saddam Hussein is a good guy.”
“Democracy can’t exist in the Muslim world.”
“If Allah told me to go and be a terrorist, I would have to submit. That’s what Islam means, “submission.” The terrorists that think like this aren’t not far from the truth.”
“Jordan First.”
“President Bush is just trying to finish what his father started.”
“Americans don’t know the truth of what’s going on in Iraq on a daily basis.”
“Jesus Christ was a terrorist.”
“Americans are the cause of all the problems in the Middle East.”
[They showed me a clip of the World Trade Center attacks on a cell phone, laughing]
“All Jews are terrorists.”
“Israel’s flag signifies the Jordan river to the Euphrates river in Iraq. They’re trying to expand it, until it is the largest power in the world, bigger even than America.”
“All Arabs are terrorists.”
“The CIA has files in their basement detailing the United State’s Government’s plan on how they are going to help Israel expand its borders to the westernmost side of Iraq.”
“Don’t talk about politics.”
“They don’t show this kind of stuff to you on American television, right?”
“The Hadith say that you can’t kill men, women, children in another country, that you don’t strike someone from behind their back, so obviously what the terrorists did in New York City was haram, was a sin, it wasn’t true Islam.”
“She’s a ‘48 Arab. She’s really strong.”
“You can’t know the truth. Everyone is liars.”
“The problem with Iraq isn’t that it had an oppressive dictator, or that it can’t be a democratic country – it’s the Iraqi people themselves. They are all two-faced liars.”
“Just kill them all. I don’t care.”
“I don’t like American politics, just Clinton.”