Dubai International Airport this morning
Writing today in the Gulf News, Tanvir Ahmad Khan, a former diplomat and Chairman of the Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad, takes issue with a recent article about the Muslim world by Christopher Hitchens in Vanity Fair. He argues that perceptions of the Arab world are often coloured by polemical pieces written by people who rely on a few incidents as if they represented the views, practices and culture of this huge region.
The article drew me, because I've become extremely interested in how, in a globalised world, it's easy to think our statements are received the same way wherever they are read. The opposite is the case.
In her excellent book "Understanding Arabs" Margaret Nydell says that language alone is one of the biggest barriers to common understanding but overlaid is the misunderstanding that comes from differing perception of concepts, discourtesies and relationships. And that works both ways. She quotes a political scientist who went to Eqypt to study the press. "They are all just emotions", she said, "there is no data in these newspapers". They are being produced for a different world and different culture.
But it reminded me that our media statements, especially in a crisis, will be interpreted very different in Cairo or Beijing.
People are not the same the world over.
And in the age of globalisation, it's becoming urgent that we study and understand these differences. Not wrong. Not bad. Just different.
(Posted from Dubai, United Arab Emirates)
No comments:
Post a Comment