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Arab world sees flags differently
Ahmed Tharwat
© Copyright 2005 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.
Published June 15, 2005
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Ahmed Tharwat |
Growing up in Egypt, we saw pictures of our presidents -- Gamal
Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat and now Hosni Mubarak -- posted everywhere, on
every building, every public or business office, every public square.
The president's face, with its confident look, staring at us wherever we
went -- you can still see it on all the cover pages of the mainstream
media (owned by the government), thereby providing us with our daily
patriotic fix.
The only places devoid of this presidential invasion are our private homes
and mosques, private spaces where the presidents' pictures are replaced by
verses of the Qur'an.
Do you get the picture? This goes on in all Arab countries and with all
Arab leaders as evidence of national insecurity. A friend of mine told me
that in Syria the picture of President Assad was so prominent that he grew
up having never seen a picture of a bird or any form of arts.
Pictures of human faces are not encouraged in Islam, so only our leaders
can break this religious taboo with such fervor. Americans experienced
this phenomenon firsthand when they invaded Iraq and saw Saddam Hussein's
pictures posted everywhere. When the Iraqis felt secure enough, these
pictures were quickly attacked and torn by the Iraqi people -- no longer
to be seen.
Arab leaders may own the public spaces, they may own the power and
governments, media, banks, police and authorities, and they can impose
their will on anything, everywhere. Our private spaces, however, remain
our own, and while those leaders may own the public conversation they can
never touch the private conversation. Freedom of expression is a private
affair.
Here in the United States it is another story. As you travel around the
States or walk down the street in your neighborhood, you hardly ever see
any picture of a president, dead or alive; what you do see, however, is
the American flag waving everywhere, including in people's front yards, on
their cars and in their own private places. Americans show their
patriotism through flag posting. They also seem to show their affection
for the flag regardless of their political or religious affiliation. This
was so before the 9/11 tragedy.
The American flag will rise and the national anthem will be sung before
every national or local sporting event. The flag has become our patriotic
polygraph test and is now becoming the Republican Party logo.
This sense of flagrant public patriotism is absent in the Arab and Muslim
world.
Flags don't mean much to most Arabs -- they represent the past and serve
as symbols of disgrace and disappointment in their leaders and
nationalism. What brings most Arabs together now is their religion. The
Qur'an is not just a holy book but the symbol of unity and pride. It is
their Constitution.
The interrogators at Guantanamo Bay may have desecrated the Islamic holy
book to force a confession; they would never have considered desecrating a
national flag.
On the other hand, when Arabs are protesting against Americans, they burn
the flag and not the Constitution.
For Americans, the flag is the larger symbol of unity and of an
overzealous belief that we are all Americans at least under the flag --
even in a society of moral relativism, where nothing is sacred, where most
of what we use is disposable.
The American flag stands tall everywhere, and unlike the Qur'an, it is
illegal to treat it with anything but absolute respect.
Have you hugged your flag today?
Ahmed Tharwat, Minnetonka, is host of "Belahdan," an Arab-American show
that airs on public TV (Ch. 17) Sundays at 10:30 p.m.
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