More Funny Muslims, Please

After 9/11, there were two kinds of Americans—media nebbishes who would agonize, “Why do they hate us?” and the rest of us, who would just shake our heads and ask, “What the f*ck is wrong with those people?” I’ve been a member of the latter group since oh, mid-August of 1990, when I visited the Middle East for the first and last time until someone deploys or abducts me. Sure I love world travel, but I’m no masochist. I’m not afraid to express these thoughtcrimes because the Muslim world has done such an astounding job of sewing itself into a body bag for the last 50 years. It has externalized blame for all its failings even as other lands, far less blessed with resources, have escaped their miseries through hard work and self-searching. Remember what a basket case Latin America seemed to be 20 years ago? Anything is possible if you’re willing to work for it. While I agree that this country can benefit from plenty of self-searching of its own, there’s no shortage of that in any election year. In fact, I often wonder if that’s all we do anymore.

I knew my visit to a small Palestinian village would be a real awakening when my hosts asked me to lay down on the floorboards of the car as we drove from the Jerusalem bus terminal to their house. Although technically in East Jerusalem, the village was in a rural area of rocky hills and olive groves that for all practical purposes was a part of the West Bank. Not having heard of Hamas at that time, it didn’t concern me when I learned that they owned the village where I would be spending the next few days.

First, I should say that the people with whom I stayed were “nice” people. They were polite, affable, and as hospitable as any I’ve seen anywhere on earth. They were a real contrast to the Israelis, who have the manners of Korean fishwives. But “nice” is a pretty superficial thing when you’re talking about people who think that bus bombings are just peachy. Maybe three days isn’t enough to make you a Middle East expert, but I can’t claim to understand the thinking in a part of the world where entire towns, cities, and markets seem to accept the most ridiculous conspiracy theories with instant unanimity. At that particular time, for example, Saddam Hussein had just invaded Kuwait, and George H.W. Bush was sending part of the 101st Airborne to be the only speed bump between the Republican Guards and the Saudi oil fields. He was also threatening to lob SCUD-Bs into my immediate vicinity at the time. To the Palestinians, it was universally accepted that these beginnings of Desert Shield were the realization of an Israeli plot through its wholly-owned subsidiary—the entire U.S. government—to occupy Mecca and destroy Islam. No, I’m not making this up. And then, Saddam was going to win the war, liberate Palestine, and kill all the Jews. You know the rest by now.

I wish everyone on the entire planet could see video–OK, hear audio–of my conversations with my hosts during those days, over plates of flat bread, scalding glasses of chewy cardamom coffee, mounds of fragrant chicken and rice eaten with slimy bare right hands, and bowls of yummy little greasy green olives. This would add great understanding to public opinion in the U.S., where we are supposed to consider and vote on complex foreign policy issues despite our crippling tendency to do what all bumbling, well-meaning folks do, which is something the sophisticates in my new home town call “mirror imaging. What this means in smaller words is that we tend to assume that everyone sees the world as we see it. But when you’re in the Middle East, it doesn’t work that way. The one thing that I did see pretty clearly when I left–even before I told the nice men at Lod Airport why I had twelve different African visa stamps in my passport and then went straight to a Hamas-controlled village in the West Bank during a war (believe me, it sounds a lot worse than it is, and the body search eventually proved it), is that they don’t think like us. At all. When we look at how the Middle East perceives us and reacts to our policies, we have to remember that.

Now, I suppose you will expect me to explain it. Keep looking, ’cause I still am. Not being an adherent of P.C. or sacred cows, any logical theory deserving of my consideration will get it, even if it might bring fatwas upon me (not that I’m stating my agreement with this, mind you, just my willingness to consider it, in case this ends up on Sistani’s desk). But so why is all of this on my mind today? Because of this story, which contains a huge revelation between the lines of faddish Islamic self-pity that the BBC so loves: when’s the last time you saw Muslims laugh? Exclude the maniacal beheading video kind, and the I’m-dancing-on-the-infidel-aid-workers’-charred-SUV laughter. I mean laughter at humor, the kind of laughter that’s inextricably linked to sanity, the kind that helps us accept contradiction rather than shoehorn it into improbably contorted explanations. Oh, and are you listening, North Korea? This is the first step toward self-questiong, toward resolving life’s contradictions, towards (dare I say it?) sanity. So let these guys bash John Ashcroft. If they can get help teach the Muslim world to laugh in a ha-ha-funny way and nobody puts a fatwa on them, I’m all for it.