War of the Worlds??

Undoubtedly, international experience is also about challenging one's worldview and breaking stereotypes and prejudices. You have different opinion on certain things in comparison how you perceived them before.

As we all know in today's world there is this concept of the conflict between Western and Arab world. There is supposed to be a lot of tensions especially after 2001 terrorists attacks. There is always a lot of breaking news about war in Iraq, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iran nuclear programme and new terrorist attacks... It is said that Muslims perceive Westerners as infidel and they want to convert them into Islam.

First of all, I would like to point that there is no more misleading expression than "the Arab World". The only thing in common that all the countries (spread all over the globe between Morocco and Indonesia) have is the religion. They are all so different from each other that it's hard for them to fall under one definition. Secondly, sometimes I believe that there is more tensions between Arab countries themselves than between some Western countries and some Arab countries. I heard many times how e.g. some Moroccans don't like Algerians, how some Tunisians don't like Libyans or how some Egyptians don't like Arabs from the Gulf etc. Even if it's not about hating each other it's just telling silly jokes offending other Arabs. I can give you more examples.

What shocked me the most recently is the fact that Moroccans (I bet it's very similar in other Muslim countries) often show more respect to Westerners than to other Arabs. And at this moment when you compare the statement in the previous sentence with alleged Arab-Western conflict you have two totally opposite opinions and points of view. For me this is unbelievable and I only think that the notion of this "two worlds" conflict mostly exists in some minds of a SMALL bunch of crazy extremists-terrorists and in the minds of MOST of the Westerners. Should I risk saying the opinion that a few terrorists (that constitute to a very small per cent of the total population of the Muslim countries) made most of us, Westerners believe that Arabs hate us? I more and more think how wrong we are in perception of Arab-Western relations. It's not the first time that I realize that the news coming from the TV really show only the dark side of today's world.

I'll tell you a shocking example. Last week, two of my friends (of Egyptian and Moroccan nationality) were coming back from a pub at night by taxi. The taxi was stopped by an apparently drunk Moroccan policeman. He asked for documents but none of them had anything. When the Egyptian girl told him that she didn't have the passport at first he didn't want to believe that she was not Moroccan and he was pissed of that she was speaking French and not Darija (the Moroccan dialect of Arabic). Later, when he realized this he started offending her, swearing and saying really nasty stuff about Egypt. I was supposed to be with them but at the last minute I decided not to go for the party. Later, I was said that probably if I had been there, the policeman might have been nicer seeing a foreigner (a Westerner).

This story and all my thoughts seem only to make me realize how wrong we are in the Western countries and how much we don't understand the people and the reality here.

Once a few years ago, I heard a really unjust statement saying that not all the Muslims are terrorists but all the terrorists are Muslims. At first I almost agreed but later I started to think about it. What about the terrorists fighting in the Northern Ireland? What about guerrillas in Colombia? What about terrorists in Basque region in Spain? The base of the terrorism does not necessarily have to be the religion. In XIX century when Poland was divided by the three empires (Russian, German and Austrian) one Polish man assassinated the Russian Emperor Aleksander II. Of course he was perceived by many as a hero. But to be honest - what distinguishes him from a terrorist of the presence?

I'm still impressed and it's so unbelievable to me how hard your worldview may be challenged when you live abroad. We always say that it often happens but only when it does we start feeling that really deeply and then we realize the power of international experience.