Too Hard to Understand? Then simplify it!

Arab national consciousness consists of three central tenets, including the struggle for independence and the movement of people in and between Arab countries (Reilly 009).

The rise of Islam and the subsequent recognition of Arabs as major world actors occurred in the seventh century A.

Images such as these portray evil, evoke hatred, and justify prejudice. From this less general but sufficiently vast category the image of Arabs if further reduced, to an issue of independence. From that complex subject the proud journalist emerges, victorious, with a sensationalistic piece on the devilish designs of a “fundamentalist” suicide bomber, the man eager to fulfill his wicked destiny, anxious to cross over to the afterlife to greet the 70 black-eyed virgins that await him at heaven’s gates. It is the results of this last factor and the conflicts of the early 20th century that most significantly impact the images of Arabs today. While the lack of a standard written language among tribal Arabs cause many to write off the pre-Islamic period as one of “Jahiliyya,” or ignorance, Bedouins actually possessed, as demonstrated in the oral transmission of their stories and poetry, a remarkable artistic flair for eloquence and enunciation (Green 24). Though Islamic fundamentalist movements have criticized nationalism for placing loyalty to the nation before loyalty to the Islamic community, the festering wounds that resulted from direct European colonization made Arab consciousness more popular than ever (Reilly 009). At that time, Arabs populated only the Arabian Peninsula and parts of the Fertile Crescent. By the ninth century, however, Arabic had become the

language of a cosmopolitan Islamic civilization that combined the intellectual and artistic traditions of the Persians, Romans, and Greeks. In the fight for the former, select strategies executed by a miserably small group of radicals has had a remarkable impact on educated but media-dependent and thus vulnerable societies.