Emirati professor: Arab world is "a big prison"

[qatarperegrine]

A political science professor from the UAE made some scathing comments about the Arab world at a conference on democracy and development held here yesterday. "We have a surplus of violence," he said, citing the (somewhat perplexing) statistic that Arab world contains 4% of the world's population but 36% of its violence.

He also said, in the words of the newspaper, that "the region is full of tyrants and notorious for large-scale violation of human rights" and likened the Arab world to "a big prison." Meanwhile, a former Bahraini minister said that "We have corrupt political and financial systems and weak and backward societies."

Gosh.

Coincidentally, we're learning about the Arab world in Arabic class this week, too. On Sunday we learned that the Arab world has tharawaat kathira wa quwwa kabira, much wealth and great strength. The next lesson explains that the Arab civilization is responsible for the spread of science and literature, and that its libraries 'aghnat al'alam kullah, enriched the whole world.

Somehow, these things are all true.

Comments

[qatar.livejournal.com]

Oops, I just realized I never responded to this!

"What kinda of prisons (when compaired to my current country, the USoA) do they have?"

I've never visited a Qatari prison. I hear they're rather dismal and cramped. I don't think prison is often where people go for crimes, though. Often people are just fined, or flogged, or deported. Occasionally people are executed, but it's uncommon.

Ooh, I did just find some stats, though, here . Of the 110514 sentences passed in 2004, only 1595 resulted in imprisonment, while 108,076 led to fines (those are almost all traffic tickets!), 463 led to floggings, and 156 led to deportations. The bulk of imprisonments are for "Crimes against Public Trust," whatever that means.

"And what kind of treatment programs do they have for 'social' crimes?"

Er... more flogging?

"Do they label all forms of dissent as criminal?"

No. There is freedom of the press here, although there is a great deal of self-censorship. I have not heard of people being imprisoned here for speaking out against the government, as various bloggers have been recently in Egypt and Bahrain.

"Are their degrees of crime, liken to a misdemeanor or felony?"

I don't know. One notable feature of the justice system here is that there are two types of courts: shari'ah (Muslim) courts and civil (secular) courts. Different kinds of crimes will fall under different legal systems, therefore. And, of course, the religion of the defendant makes a difference: Muslims can be executed for adultery, while non-Muslims aren't, for example.

"the Moorish society has provided a huge advancment towards what is considered scientific method"

Indeed, and we do well to remember this. On the other hand, I just finished a book yesterday (Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Infidel; I recommend it) which asks the painful question, "But what has our civilization done in the last 1200 years?" The Muslim world used to be the bastion of intellectual progress, but that is sadly no longer the case. A man from the American University in Sharjah told me last year, for example, that the entire Arabic-speaking world publishes fewer books a year than the state of Belgium.

"American history revolves around the use of Power to Oppress the Weak (Meak)."

ALL history revolves around the use of power to oppress the weak. :-) I am the last person on the planet to get all patriotic, but I think American history has been certainly no worse than average in this regard. Our government is less corrupt than most, and we do more to ensure the rights of the vulnerable than most countries do.

If you have been following what I write about workers' rights here in Qatar, you know that they are practically nonexistent. Workers get something like 41 cents an hour; they live in dismal conditions; they have no right to change jobs, no right to strike, no right to leave the country. If they go to the police to protest their situation, the police will probably not help them (complaints must be filed in Arabic) and may in fact hurt them. In sum, the vast majority of people living in Qatar are in a situation that is hardly distinguishable from slavery. There is a lot that is unforgivably wrong with America, but not on this scale.