Arabs and Democracy Just Don't Mix - Who Knew?

Found this interesting little piece on Fox News on the 'net: it seems that, according to the Egyptian actor Omar Sharif, who starred in blockbuster Hollywood productions such as Lawrence of Arabia and Dr. Zhivago--Arabs and democracy are not great bedfellows. The story, based on information on the MEMRI website, states that Mr. Sharif told President Bush that democracy will never take hold in the Arab countries, because they are made up of sects, and prefer to go to their sheik to handle disputes:

"I said to Bush, even before he entered Iraq: Forget about all that. We, the Arabs... We are not like [regular countries]," said Sharif. "You will drown there."

By gosh, if we only had known this before our president got us into the war in Iraq - I mean, who knew - about Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds ("-oh my!")? And who knew that people with no concept of and not prepared culturally for democracy - when Mr. Prez praised the "democratic" elections in Gaza - would elect the very un-democratic terrorist Hamas as their leaders (would somebody please enlighten him)?

Mr. Sharif didn't stop there. He went on to say that most Americans are stupid, 90% don't have passports, have never left the U.S. and don't know anything about the world at large (I found some dated information on Americans and passports, here. I could find no information on the total number of passports issued to Americans on the State Department site, but I did find an article-published only a little over a year old-in USA Today, indicating that the number of passports issued to Americans has increased.)
Truth be told, living in the US of A is not quite the same thing as living in Europe, where hopping on a train can get you to five different countries, and where many (if not most) Europeans are multi-lingual.

I guess in the future, our new Prez - be he Mr. McCain or Mr. Obama - will have to surround himself with real advisors: Hollywood actors...oh, wait a minute...the presidents are already surrounded by a buncha actors. Just goes to show ya.
To see the video clip of Mr. Sharif's interview directly from the MEMRI site, click here.

Comments

Avi said…
The Arabs are barbarians? Shocker!
Lady-Light said…
bar kochba: Yeah, wouldn't you know it!
Norma said…
Yes, I heard all that "Americans are so ignorant because they don't travel abroad" from Europeans Living IN the USA in the 1950s. It puzzled me even at 19 that if it was so great abroad, what were they doing here getting education, jobs, wives, (yes, most were men), etc. Everywhere we've been in Europe we've heard good old USA English. Many do try the local language, but I just pointed. And just which dialect would they wish us to learn? I sat down on the curb in Florence because I was exhausted next to a woman who grew up 5 miles from our summer home.

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