This piece by Roger Cohen, The Captive Arab Mind, was pointless. If it was to highlight what he thinks about Arab conspiracy theories, then thanks to Wikileaks his timing couldn’t be more off. It’s too hard to hone in on which part of the Cohen piece was most offensive since in the first few paragraphs alone he manages to mock Arabs, tell an anecdote about how NYT correspondent Robert Worth likes to imitate Arabs in role playing games, and says that the Arab world is dumb. He’s talking about 358 million people.
I don’t know what Cohen’s political affiliations are but some have applauded what they felt were courageous pieces written by him on Iran and Israel. It’s unreal that this is the best that Arabs and Iranians have to contend with from the left in the U.S. Basically, yes let’s observe how stupid these people are but it’s not necessary to kill them and oppress them. Excerpt:
“This mocking “analysis” is often deployed deadpan by my colleague, Robert Worth, the New York Times correspondent in Beirut. After three years living in Lebanon and crisscrossing the Arab world, he uses this “theory” to express his frustration with the epidemic of cui bono thinking in the region. I say “thinking,” but that’s generous. What we are dealing with here is the paltry harvest of captive minds.”
I thought As’ad Abukhalil’s response echoed very well the sentiments I have been hearing from other Arabs about Cohen’s piecce:
The racism of Roger Cohen: a new low for the New York Times on Arabs
Just a few days ago I wrote that Roger Cohen is the least unreasonable among those who write on the Middle East in the New York Times. How wrong I was. Look at this utter racist trash by someone who stopped for a few days in Beirut (and visited Al-Akhbar’s offices and received a good lecture about Zionist media)… Can you imagine if this was said about Jewish people or Africans? Can you imagine the uproar? All those who write in the New York Times should write under the headline: Proud to be Racist (and ignorant). In fact, you can easily dissect his words: you can easily see that what is referring to as irrational thinking among Lebanese is very rational indeed: that the US exploits the Hariri tribunal and all UN agencies; that Israel has penetrated all communications systems in Lebanon, and now even the Mubarak regime (a friend of Israel) has accused Israel of recruiting spies in Syria and Lebanon to penetrate the telecommunications systems; that Hariri himself was a tool of Syrian mukhabrat and not a foe of the Syrian regime. In fact, the stupidity is in the analysis of Cohen and not in the thinking of those Lebanese he thought he was mocking. Spare me your few days visits to the Middle East and your chats with cab drivers. I would rather read the phone book and get more insights on the Middle East.
