What The Eff, World? Pt. II

So what do you do about a region that is referenced synonymously with bombs and terrorists, even in rap songs? As always, not much. Doesn’t stop us from incessantly talking about it though. In the Middle East we’re overcompensating years of repression and around the world, well, we’ve been a focal point for Western civilisations for centuries now. All this attention is not always a good thing however.

The reason for this is that the attention is not limited to our major political issues, it also zeroes in on erratic government behavior, human rights abuses, and what would appear as acts of fundamentalism; a term that has been twisted, misunderstood, and misused for decades. That right there, I think, is our biggest problem – misunderstandings. It applies to both actions and terms, and even more dangerously the implementation of certain concepts.

We constantly accuse Western media of not differentiating between, Islam, Islamists, and terrorists. But our media and most participants in the political discourse are essentially guilty of the same thing. This can become particularly dangerous when labels are hurled as insults. To give you an example from the Egyptian chapter, consider terms such as liberal, secular, Islamists, even democracy.

So let me take this opportunity to encourage a return to the basics. It would be redundant to cover Middle East news stories since they are practically unavoidable, but it’s important to understand the fundamentals (no pun intended) first. In this new highly politicized environment, we would all benefit from a discussion about what the terms we’re using on a daily basis truly mean.