何事も本質です、忘れちゃいけないのは。

The history of the Arabic-speaking peoples
A political lesson
Nov 12th 2009
From The Economist print edition

With skill and imagination, Eugene Rogan sets the Arab story in a modern context

Mr Rogan’s treatment of the Arab-Israeli conflict is likely to prompt some ire from Israel’s more uncritical backers. But he is well-supported by evidence, much of it supplied by Israeli historians. What makes his book particularly useful is the way it situates this ongoing core conflict within the wider context of the Arabs’ long, and still unsuccessful, struggle to come to more equal terms with the West. Europeans in particular, and also Americans, need their memories jogged about just how arrogant, duplicitous and frequently stupid their governments have been in dealing with the Middle East.

Mr Rogan by no means absolves Arabs of responsibility for their travails. By his persuasive account, leaders such as the Sherif Hussein, who ruled what is now western Saudi Arabia at the time of the first world war, or Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt’s president from 1956 until 1970, were remarkably reckless men. But this exemplary history also makes it strikingly clear that the Arabs’ more powerful neighbours have tended to complicate, rather than ease, the Arabs’ entry into the modern world.

This is the point of view that the Japanese academe on Middle Eastern studies needs.

Education in the Arab world
Laggards trying to catch up
Oct 15th 2009 | CAIRO
From The Economist print edition

One reason that too many Arabs are poor is rotten education

Such choices carry a cost that goes beyond ignorance of Darwin. Arab countries now spend as much or more on education, as a share of GDP, than the world average. They have made great strides in eradicating illiteracy, boosting university enrolment and reducing gaps in education between the sexes.

But the gap in the quality of education between Arabs and other people at a similar level of development is still frightening. It is one reason why Arab countries suffer unusually high rates of youth unemployment. According to a recent study by a team of Egyptian economists, the lack of skills in the workforce largely explains why a decade of fast economic growth has failed to lift more people out of poverty.

The most rigorous comparative study of education systems, a survey called Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) that comes out every four years, revealed in its latest report, in 2007, that out of 48 countries tested, all 12 participating Arab countries fell below the average. More disturbingly, less than 1% of students aged 12-13 in ten Arab countries reached an advanced benchmark in science, compared with 32% in Singapore and 10% in the United States. Only one Arab country, Jordan, scored above the international average, with 5% of its 13-year-olds reaching the advanced category.

Other comparative measures are equally alarming. A listing of the world’s top 500 universities, compiled annually by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, includes three South African and six Israeli universities, but not a single Arab one. The Swiss-based World Economic Forum ranks Egypt a modest 70th out of 133 countries in competitiveness, but in terms of the quality of its primary education system and its mathematics-and-science teaching, it slumps to 124th. Libya, despite an income of $16,000 a head, ranks an even more dismal 128th in the quality of its higher education, lower than dirt-poor Burkina Faso, with an average income of $577.

Well aware that their school systems are doing badly, Arab governments have been scrambling to improve. In an attempt to leapfrog the slow process of curriculum reform and teacher training, many have taken the easy route of encouraging private schools. In Qatar, for instance, the share of students in private education leapt from 30% to more than 60% between 1999 and 2006, according to the UN’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). Syria has licensed some 20 private universities since 2001; 14 are up and running. Yet their total enrolment is dwarfed by the 200,000 at state-run Damascus University alone. Oil-rich monarchies in the Gulf have spent lavishly to lure Western academies to their shores, but these branch universities are struggling to find qualified students to fill their splendidly equipped classrooms.

Even if Darwinism and its correlation with the current status of education in Arab countries are set aside and apart from their political system, I believe, this matter is closely related to their coming of thought to a standstill (an inability to think) based on their rote-memorization educational system. It is great to memorize ayaat from Qur'an and their splendid historical poems and literatures (I really admire them), but everything stops when they bring the method even to other fields without consideration. Indeed, it was all my surprise to know how they take exams at schools and colleges.

Scores of comments from readers celebrated this news as a blow to Western materialism and a triumph for Islam.

I also would like to criticize this kind of their attitude. When they are criticized, they try to justify, ask for the bases of its justification to Islam, even when the issue is not related to Islam itself at all(!). When they find advantage of a momentary chance, they cry out the credit that they are sure to have taken in the name of Islam. It is better for them not to use Islam in a very convenient way as they want to.

Islam and the West
Those pesky cartoons
Oct 29th 2009
From The Economist print edition

The Cartoons That Shook the World. By Jytte Klausen. Yale University Press; 240 pages; $35. To be published in Britain in November. Buy from Amazon.com

and a number of Muslim activists saw the row as a wonderful pretext for promoting themselves and discrediting the West’s Muslim allies.

I can agree with the latter point not the former one.


Egypt and the veil
No shame in showing your face
Oct 15th 2009 | CAIRO
From The Economist print edition

An argument that never ends

I am a mere bystander, but from the view of Arabic-learner as a foreigner, it was hard to talk with women in Niqaab, since I could not see their faces and expressions and I was perplexed if I should laugh or nod or make my face seem sad at those moments. For all foreign language learners, facial expressions are so important that they understand what native speakers say and keep up to the conversation. Cannot be helped about this matter in the Gulf states, since it is their traditional culture besides Islam, but it makes me feel uneasy to see all-face-covered women (even eyes) even in Sham countries, in spite of the fact that they had not been doing that in those days and that the Holy Qur'an does not order them to cover all the face.