President of Arab American Institute speaks on Middle East

By: Jonathan Simmons / Contributing Writer

Dr. James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute and member of the Council on Foreign Relations, has made a career out of informing Americans about one of the world’s most strategically important – and, he says, most misunderstood – regions: the Middle East.

Dr. Zogby addressed an audience of students, faculty and community members at the Frost Art Museum at Florida International University on Monday, January 31, and spoke of the common misperceptions that pervade Americans’ understanding of the Middle East and its peoples, and the impact that American ignorance of the region has had on U.S. government policy.

Zogby’s speech was titled after his recent book, “Arab Voices: What They are Saying to Us and Why It Matters,” and was followed by a book signing.

Early in his lecture, Dr. Zogby spoke of the question that was printed in headlines across America in the days following the attacks of September 11, 2001.  The “Why do they hate us?” question, Zogby said, was fundamentally flawed, and symptomatic of Americans’ skewed understanding of the Arab world.

Zogby felt the Arab world and people had been represented in the American media for decades through crude stereotypes.  Following the attacks, the Arab world had been personified in the minds of many Americans in the faces of 19 hijackers.

But the question, and the American perception of a widespread Arab hatred of America and American values which underlie it, is in fact based on a fallacy – polling across the Arab world, Zogby said, indicated that “65%, across the board, like American values.”

This general sympathy with American values and culture is evidenced consistently in polling but can also be seen in massive Arab consumption of American cultural products – particularly television and film.  People in the Middle East, Zogby said, get our Seinfeld jokes.

Americans don’t know this because, according to Zogby Institute polling, the country remains oblivious to the realities of the Arab world.

“We’re in a deeper hole, knowledge-wise, than we were back then,” said Zogby, “and it’s become a partisan hole; a deep, partisan divide has come to characterize this lack of awareness…”  Zogby cited statistics that 73% of Democrats polled desired greater information about the Arab world, while 82% of Republicans were uninterested in learning more.

Zogby spoke about his perception that this kind of American ignorance – in some cases, what he referred to as ”willful ignorance,” of the Arab world has contributed to policy debacles in the Middle East and led to actions on the part of the U.S. government that have eroded American credibility in the region.

Zogby points out that the neoconservative movement suffered from “a mindset that all these natives understand is force.”  In Iraq, he said “… their wrongness cost us four thousand lives.”