Description
• Essential reading for anyone interested in the Middle East today.
• The perfect antidote to prejudice, ignorance and racial injustice.
The level of noise about the Arab world has been steadily rising. In the pastfifteen years outsiders have twice sent armies to war in the Middle East—to liberate Kuwait from Saddam and then to overthrow him in Iraq. Chronic strife has also afflicted Algeria, Sudan, Lebanon and, by extension, Syria. Palestinians and Israelis have seen long periods of violence. The disaster of 9/11 has precipitated “The War on Terror” and scarcely an Arab country since has been free of terrorist attacks or the tension of retaliatory operations against terrorist groups.
Futurologists forecast that by 2025 the European Union will need up to a hundred and ten million new migrant workers, if European populations are to maintain today’s proportions of workers to pensioners. Many of these migrants are expected to come to Europe from Arab countries. Yet a rising level of general migration, a sub-trend of globalization, has already made immigration a hot issuein elections in European countries.
Among the consequences of all of this has been an appalling amount of ignorance, prejudice and hatred of Arab people everywhere. Sir Mark Allen’s Who is an Arab?is a passionate and highly informed attempt at an antidote. The book looks at what defines the Arab as a person, the influences and conditions which tell us what the Arab is like and, perhaps, why. The book is more concerned with the people themselves than with history, battles and dates. Also, entering into the spirit of the conviction that we can easily miss the personal dimension, the author shares much of how his own experience shapes his point of view. His knowledge of the Middle East and Arab world today is matchless
Table of Contents
Introduction
1.In Search of the Arab.
2. Blood.
3. Religion
4. Community
5. Women
6. The Problem of Power
7. Politics
8. Modernity
9. Language and Signals
10. Outlook
Bibliography
Author(s)
Mark Allen,
Mark Allen studied Arabic at Oxford and worked in the Foreign Service 1973-2004. He served in the UAE, Egypt and Jordan and his work took him all over the Arab world. He is a special advisor to BP plc and a senior associate member of St Antony’s College, Oxford. He was made CMG in 2002 and knighted in 2005.
Reviews
"Intriguing book... Allen is much better qualified than most to supply... His aim is not to criticize but to understand." Times Online, August 6, 2006
Brendan Simms,
Book discussion in Sunday Times online 06/08/2006
,
"Had this excellent little book been available to American policy makers in 2002, say, it might have provided a usefully sobering corrective to the exuberance of the neocons."
"The flood of books that followed 11 September has tended to focus on politics and terrorism. Arabs offers a much more personal view"
"thoughtful, sometimes whimsical, invariably elegant prose"
"an illuminating discourse on what it means to be an Arab"
Justin Marozzi ,
“In Arabs, Mark Allen has written a gem of a
book…. In addition to his analytical expertise, Allen’s skills as an avid and
accomplished falconer provided him a window onto Arab culture and societal
values like no other…. Using anecdote and analysis, Allen reduces much of the
confusion and misunderstanding that so frequently burden attempts by Westerners
to fathom the nuance-laced interactions between cultures and societies.”- John
Duke Anthony, Middle East Journal, Vol.
61 No. 2 Spring 2007
Middle East Journal,
"a sympathetic analysis of the forces shaping contemporary Arab society. He does not patronise or presume; simply, he tells it the way it is." John Townsend, Asain Affairs, July 2007
John Townsend,
"In Arabs, Mark Allen has written a gem of a book... Allen's skills as an avid and accomplished falconer provided him a window into Arab cultural and societal values like no other"
Middle East Journal,