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What has been little discussed in the media, either here or abroad, is the way Muslims in the United States benefited greatly from the support of non-Muslims because of the Sept. 11 attacks — and as a consequence are now more integrated and understood in that country than ever before. Well, that's surely true "here" (i.e. in Saudi Arabia) where the coverage claimed a general persecution of Muslims in the US after 9/11. As we all know, that only happened to a small extent and largely has died down since. In fact, most Muslims and Arabs in the US feared a backlash and instead found themselves on the receiving end of massive support and kindness by their neighbors -- but the people in Saudi Arabia never heard about that. Until now. And in fact, in the last couple of weeks the press in Saudi Arabia has noticeably changed its attitude towards the US, and instead of depicting us as horrible monsters has started a political rehabilitation. Another rather odd statement: The fact that many Christians in the United States are Unitarians — a denomination that does not believe in the Trinity, and stresses individual freedom of belief, a united world community and liberal social action — creates “a great bond between them and the Muslims,” he continued. There are indeed Unitarians here, but they represent a relatively small proportion of Church goers. (And while there was a time when the Unitarians were considered Christian, I don't think many think of them that way now.) What this really shows is that the government is trying to deemphasize the impression of the US as a "christian" nation, to remove the stigma of Christian-versus-Islam conflict. Then there's this article about the situation in Israel, and it is surprisingly even handed. So I think we're beginning to get the answer on how Saudi Arabia is going to deal with the situation: it looks like they're going to be pragmatic and try to go with the flow. (discuss) Of course, they also reprinted this by the omnipresent Robert Fisk. |
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