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Commentary on Mr. Sindi's article and Nabila's comments
By: Hammad Hammad
At a point when the Arab people and culture are under tremendous attacks, it is important
to encourage acts of defense
that few people undertake rather than find "faults", especially if most of them
are baseless.
I do not know Mr. Sindi and this happens to be the first time I have heard of him.
However, I find that he had rare courage
in his article for which hemay suffer greatly. The fact that Mr. Sindi spoke of the
"Taboo" subject of Jewish control in Hollywood,
and the US media in general, could cause him not only to lose his position (that is if he
does live in the US), but also to lose him
any credibility within the American soceity should the Zionist "dogs" launch an
attack against him in the name of "anti-semitism."
I have read the article and did not see Mr. Sindi express any shame of the bedouin
culture. The criticism of Hollywood's portrayal
of "typically uncultured nomads who live in desert tents" does not necessarily
stem from shame of the bedouin culture. Rather, he
qualified he words by using "uncultured nomads" from which bedouins are far. No
one would object (and I don't think Mr. Sindi
would) had Hollywood shown the TRUE culture of the bedouins.
Furthermore, what is needed is honesty in represenation. The fact is: most Arabs today are
not nomadic Bedouins. That does not
constitute a disgrace for we are proud of our heritage. Yet, we evolved throughout the
centuries and built a large unique civilization
when the West was in the darkness of the Middle Ages. Just as the Bedouin heritage is
nothing to be ashamed of, we should not be
ashamed of progress. However, when the Arab world is portrayed, none of that progress is
evident. For example, Beirut is typically
shown as a desert town with mud houses (see Delta Force) which is clearly not true for a
city which has been an urban center for
centuries.
The image of desert nomad is so ingrained in the mind of the American public that when I
first came to the US in the late eighties,
people used to honestly ask me how I came to the US, if we ride camels, and naturally
assumed that I came from a wealthy oil
exporting country. Now, there is nothing in camels to be ashamed of. However, Arabs do not
live in the 15th century either.
Mr. Sindi also refers that Arabs in Hollywood are usually portrayed "oddly dressed
(often in a red-checkered kuffiyyah headdress,
or in ungainly gowns or robes) Anyone who sees the "Arab clothing" in Hollywood
realizes that it is ungainly and has nothing to do
with the traditional Arab dress. Hollywood's kuffiyyah is nothing like real one (it DOES
resemble a table cloth or a towel in reference
to the "towel head" slur) and is always worn improperly. Clothing is usually
filthy (remember that Islam stresses cleanliness) and women
are usually dressed in a black "abaya" which covers them completely (It seems
producers just use a black bed sheet and throw it
on the actress' head.) Even the men's "abayas" are nothing like the real ones
and typically made of some "ungainly" color and materials.
Mr. Sindi was right when he called the Arab clothing of Hollywood ungainly.
As for the issue of "terrorism", it is clear the Mr. Sindi put the word between
quotation marks the meaning of which is well
known. I cannot see where anyone could infer a certain political idea behind that. On the
contrary, the fact that he used
quotation marks indicates that he disagrees with definition of the term.
Let's not be against anything and everything for we become vulnerable to reading between
the lines that which the
writer did not mean.
Hammad M. Hammad
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