Sara El-Husseini | Staff Writer
It goes without question that Middle Eastern culture widely differs from Western culture: while we have our own traditions, values, and beliefs, they also have their own.
It’s fascinating to see how people outside the Middle East perceive the region and its people, especially considering the way Western media represents us and how they confuse Arab culture and beliefs with those of the Islamic religion.
You’ve definitely had a conversation with a foreigner, either in your home country or during a trip abroad. When you tell them you’re Arab, their response is almost always peculiar: ‘Do you guys speak Muslim?’, ‘Is it true that men marry four wives?’ or, even my personal favorite – ‘Do you guys go to school on camels?’
On social media, many Westerners who moved to Arab countries have joked about the astounding cultural discrepancies. I myself have seen many TikToks with captions like “things I’ve learned since I moved to Jordan ” or “things you didn’t know were wrong in the Middle East ”. For instance, in our Arab culture, it is considered disrespectful for a fellow Arab to visit someone’s house without getting a gift, and it is also disrespectful to send back a Tupperware empty. These traditions are so deeply rooted in our brains that we think of them as the norm when in reality, they are alien to people who have not been raised that way. So the shock and confusion people from the West tend to experience when they visit the region are understandable: the human being doesn’t grow up knowing about other people’s cultures or religions (we barely have time to learn our own nowadays). However, this does not excuse the widespread misrepresentation of Arabs, their culture, and their region on Western media platforms.
Western media should work on representing Arabs in a more favorable and realistic way, instead of continuing with the blatant stereotyping that we always see; such as portraying Arab men as filthy rich, always wearing white thobes and driving Bugattis, when many Arab countries (like Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Lebanon, etc.) are actually under the poverty line and have the lowest GDP per capita due to the economic and financial crises that they are facing.
Western media treats the Arab and Middle Eastern region as a hotspot of abuse, terrorism, and gender inequality, rarely acknowledging the fact that these problems transcend the region’s borders and are unfortunately prevalent everywhere, regardless of a group of people’s religion or origin.
Finally, it is crucial not to associate any religion with any kind of poor or evil behavior. No religion teaches violence or inequality. Islam is usually the culprit Western media chooses when it comes to such representations. Rarely do they depict, for example, how Islam values women: “The best of you are those who are best to their women”, “Fear Allah in respect of women” – Prophet Muhammad.