{"id":31150,"date":"2016-12-06T09:14:55","date_gmt":"2016-12-06T13:14:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/?p=31150"},"modified":"2016-12-06T09:14:55","modified_gmt":"2016-12-06T13:14:55","slug":"trading-in-stereotypes-about-the-middle-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/12\/trading-in-stereotypes-about-the-middle-east.html","title":{"rendered":"Trading in Stereotypes about the Middle East"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Take a look at\u00a0this exchange I came upon\u00a0on twitter:<\/p>\n

\"Syria\"<\/p>\n

In other words, CBS News posted an article about a Syrian girl, Bana, who has been using twitter to tweet about life in Aleppo, with a picture of the girl holding a handwritten sign begging Assad and Putin to stop the bombing, and a twitter user from Illinois responded with \u201cwait so there\u2019s bombing happening all around and someone has time to create floral display and to tweet in non traditional clothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve blocked out the\u00a0twitter user\u2019s name and profile picture in the image above because this post isn\u2019t just about one person. I\u2019m not writing this post to pick on someone\u00a0who almost certainly\u00a0has a far smaller platform than I do.\u00a0Rather,\u00a0when I saw this tweet, it felt\u00a0emblematic of how little I\u2019ve found many\u00a0Americans know about the Middle East. Too many Americans\u00a0trade in stereotypes and have little in-depth knowledge about the Middle East in general and individual countries specifically. This is a problem.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with the most basic point\u2014that floral display was almost certainly there long before the bombing started. Before the war, Aleppo was a thriving city with a population larger than that of Chicago. It has shopping malls and hotels and hospitals and universities. There is no \u201cthou shalt not have floral arrangements during a bombing\u201d rule because people aren\u2019t going to just throw out their nice things, their furnishings, and so forth, when the bombing starts.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not as though Aleppo was a post-apocalyptic war zone before the war.<\/em><\/p>\n

Second, in contrast to the assumption made in the tweet showcased above, Bana\u00a0is dressed the way\u00a0most children in Syria dress. This is how Syrian children dress:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Children around the world wear \u201cwestern\u201d clothing for the same reason Americans began buying their clothing instead of making it themselves\u2014it\u2019s mass produced and inexpensive. Anyone who thinks the world\u2019s children dress in the same clothing their ancestors wore before the advent of mass production hasn\u2019t been paying attention.<\/p>\n

Third and finally, it makes sense<\/em> that wars are now tweeted. All you have to have to access twitter is a smartphone and an internet connection. What with solar chargers and satellite phones, that\u2019s possible from virtually anywhere. Lots\u00a0of people in Syria (and other war zones) had plenty of money before the war started, and technology prices are dropping anyway. The idea of tweeting from a war zone is not so far fetched at all\u2014and would certainly have happened during WWII had twitter been around at the time. Tweeting from a war zone is a way for people to get the word out.<\/p>\n

According to the CIA World Facebook<\/a>, Syria is home to 17 million people and 14 million cell phones. No, that was not a typo, they really have that many cell phones.<\/p>\n

As for Bana, her father is a lawyer and her mother is a teacher who studied English for three years at a language institute,\u00a0according to the BBC<\/a>. It\u2019s not as though people living in the Middle East are all beduins, or unskilled workers\u00a0without formal education. Many areas of the world, including the Middle East, have thriving cities with advanced economies, high rises, and everything you\u2019d expect to see in a modern city. We\u2019re not talking about something frozen in a century-old past.<\/p>\n

While I was in college, I took a class in the history of the Middle East. I will always be glad I took that opportunity. There is a lot Americans have to learn by studying the world around them more broadly. Many Americans have little more than a cursory knowledge of the world outside of the U.S. I would argue that we Americans have an added duty to learn about the world outside our borders, given the impact U.S. policy frequently has on other countries.<\/p>\n

Today, at this sad moment in its history, we perhaps ought to start with Syria.<\/p>\n

I have a <\/b>Patreon<\/b><\/a>! Please support my writing!<\/b><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I saw this tweet, it felt emblematic of how little I’ve found many Americans know about the Middle East. Too many Americans trade in stereotypes and have little in-depth knowledge about the Middle East in general and individual countries specifically. This is a problem. <\/p>\n

Click through to read more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":31156,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[610,609],"class_list":["post-31150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-geography","tag-middle-east"],"yoast_head":"\nTrading in Stereotypes about the Middle East<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Too many Americans trade in stereotypes and have little in-depth knowledge about the Middle East.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/12\/trading-in-stereotypes-about-the-middle-east.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trading in Stereotypes about the Middle East\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Too many Americans trade in stereotypes and have little in-depth knowledge about the Middle East.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/12\/trading-in-stereotypes-about-the-middle-east.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Love, Joy, Feminism\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-12-06T13:14:55+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/166\/2016\/12\/Syria-1.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"638\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"706\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Libby Anne\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Libby Anne\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/12\/trading-in-stereotypes-about-the-middle-east.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/12\/trading-in-stereotypes-about-the-middle-east.html\",\"name\":\"Trading in Stereotypes about the Middle East\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2016-12-06T13:14:55+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-12-06T13:14:55+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#\/schema\/person\/fae465c1bbb5cbdf26c9e73bfd1b73d2\"},\"description\":\"Too many Americans trade in stereotypes and have little in-depth knowledge about the Middle East.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/12\/trading-in-stereotypes-about-the-middle-east.html#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/12\/trading-in-stereotypes-about-the-middle-east.html\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/12\/trading-in-stereotypes-about-the-middle-east.html#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Trading in Stereotypes about the Middle East\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/\",\"name\":\"Love, Joy, Feminism\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#\/schema\/person\/fae465c1bbb5cbdf26c9e73bfd1b73d2\",\"name\":\"Libby Anne\",\"description\":\"Libby Anne grew up in a large evangelical homeschool family highly involved in the Christian Right. 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