From: ahmed@dsg.cs.tcd.ie (Ahmed El-Habbash)
Subject: Re: Arab intelletuals and the binary mind
Keywords: Bulbul, serious, sarcasm, Usenet Storm
Organization: DSG, Dept. of Computer Science, Trinity College Dublin
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 15:50:46 GMT

In <1993Jan25.064347.22161@cs.umb.edu> ahmad@ra.cs.umb.edu (Ahmad Hashem) writes:

>In article <C1DEB6.Dn5@newsflash.concordia.ca> ilyess@ECE.Concordia.CA (Ilyess Bdira) writes:
>>
>>One problem I see with Arab intellectual is the fact they have  a binary mind,
>>this of course is not specific to Arabs, but I know my people more than others
>>and I can only talk about them. What I mean by a binary mind is a mind that
>>most of the time makes binary decisions: I like you or I hate you, It is bad
>>or it is good, I adopt everything that author says, I do not recommend 
>>anything that author says, etc...

>Agree 100%.  I do think that we Arabs in general don't have shades of gray:
>we see the world in black and white (with many exceptions, of course).  This 
>does reflect intolerance and extremism, I'm afraid.  Even when we get 
>educated, many of us show traces of the "binary mind" in some way or the
>other.  (Note for example how Joachim Martillo Ajami on this net takes
>the "black" extreme in his attacking Islam.)

I thought the opposite was true about the Arabs untill I have read these
two postings. My ex idea about the Arabs was that they are always in the
grey area. They are not decisive, and they are not precise, or in
another word they don't know what they want. I never expected them to be
so precise; binary or black and white.

The first time to encounter such examples of binary mentality was in the
article about Albany, and the difference between Muhaddith and Faqeeh.
It was explained that Albany is Muhaddith, and that he is not Faqeeh.
Of course this is a binary judgement. This is as saying that an electrical 
engineer who has a PhD. in computer science does not know any thing
about a TV. Both mohaddith and faqeeh have the same background of
religeous education, and both of them have common knowledge of Quran,
Hadeeth, Seerah, Arabic, Fiqh, ..etc.

To say that Muhaddith is like a RAM/ROM without a cpu is another binary
judgement about the understanding of the word Muhaddith. Albany does not
necessarily know every Hadeeth (RAM), but he has a set of rules and
inference mechanism to classify Hadeeth, so he must have a cpu, as well.
WHile doing his classifications, he refers to hadeeth, to Quran, to
history, to the arabic language, to the style of the persons involved in
a chain of narration, ..etc.

Without reference to the original article which was about the Fatwa of
Albany, nor to the different follow up messages, I think arabs in
general lack the objectivity. They don't have an end target. I noticed
many wars (arguments) going on on sca, but I didn't notice that the
binary mentality was a problem, I noticed that every party was blocked
in one state and persisting in that state. They never thought what is 
the objective, so they couldn't think of other possible states to reach
to the target.
 

>Did you notice that the "double negative" is not used in the Arabic langauge?
>In English, for example, one could say:

>1. It is likely that....
>2. It is unlikely that....
>3. It is not unlikely that....

>This third form, which denotes a shade between the first two, is not used 
>in Arabic.

I think, in Arabic, we have more developed forms to do more expressive
statements.  Did you consider the words la'alla, Assa, Quad, Rubbama,
Mumkin, Ja`iz, ..etc.

>As to Sheikh Albany, I agree with you that most (if not all) scholars 
>think he is a great MuHaddith but not a Faqih.  

It could be more appropriate to say that he is a great Muhaddith but not
a GREAT Faqih.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
But who is a great Faqeeh, and if there are some, who is absolute ?
Isn't there a gray area?

>Knowing him and many of his 
>followers personally, I think Sheikh Albany is the best example for the
>binary mind you are talking about.  

Surprisingly, I noticed that Albany is relatively flexible when compared
with other scholars. A clear example is his book Hijab Al-Mar`ah. He was
not binary at all, but he was moderate.

>I am really not saying this to discredit
>such a great scholar, but only to acknowledge something that is unfortunately
>present in many of our scholars and that we should all guard against in our
>lives.

Is that something present only in our scholars ? not in us? 
>Salaam, Ahmad

Sorry, I didn't mean to debate with any one, but also I didn't like to
see the arabs doing the same thing that they are criticizing. I don't
also like to see the arabs so reactionary, but I hope to see them
objective. 
-- 
Ahmed I. El-Habbash, 
Department of Computer Science, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland.
Tel: office: +353-1-7021524,  Home: +353-1-937402.
	
Newsgroups: soc.culture.arabic