What’s Really Wrong with the Middle East

"What Brian Whitaker did with this book is very interesting. It’s considered a controversial book. Critics see it as a Westerner criticising Arab culture and the Arab world. The sort of criticisms we have seen from Western scholars and journalists tend to be tinged with racism and not properly contextualised. But Brian Whitaker is someone who is known as being sympathetic to Arabs. So for him to write this book, giving this critical take on a region that he had been working in for years, was quite original. He argues that the real problem is not terrorism, but rather the lack of personal freedom in the Arab world. He writes about this culture of paternalism, of people feeling that they can police other people’s behaviour. “He argues that the real problem is not terrorism, but rather the lack of personal freedom in the Arab world.” I reviewed the book about two years ago when it came out and I myself was critical of parts of the book. But I like the book because it asks hard questions, and does it through Arab eyes by profiling a number of activists who speak about their experience, raising issues such as gay rights, sexual harassment of women and the family as oppressors. I agree that these are important issues to raise. But in the Arab world there are many conservatives and we have to work out how to argue for these rights, which are taken for granted in Europe, within the context of the dominant conservative culture of the region. It will certainly be interesting to see what happens regarding those issues as these countries come out of the Arab Spring. And the book is a very good starting point to think about these things."