Thursday, February 24, 2011

So did Chicago (not only Gene Sharp) influence the Arabs?

"Asad AbuKhalil, a Lebanese-born professor at Cal State Stanislaus, said that trying to look for Western influences in dramatically indigenous revolts misses the point.  "I understand it's very difficult for the white man to look at the natives acting in a way that is inspiring and causing so much attention without hoping to take credit," said AbuKhalil, who writes the Angry Arab blog.  "When the Muslims or Arabs protest in ways that are violent, in ways that the West doesn't like, they are blamed, I would say wrongly, on Islam or some peculiar, weird aspect of Arab culture," he said. "But when Arabs protest in a way that is inspiring, in a way that is causing even people in Wisconsin to see them as a model, then the West believes that they couldn't have done it themselves, there must have been some Westerner who must have inspired them.""