Losing Hearts and Minds

I just finished reading Michael Saba’s “Losing the Hearts and Minds” (Dec. 23) and I can tell you that it made me want to cry. I can understand children throwing away their toys. But I cannot understand decent average people of any race or nationality allowing their governments to tear us apart. I am a Christian southern woman, and I believe that I am an average one. I don’t harbor any feelings of resentment toward any people. And I am not happy with the shape of things in America either.

However, I must say that what Saba has failed to communicate to his friends and others in the Kingdom is the powerlessness of the American people in general to change any of this. I know that any average family in Saudi Arabia or Iraq does not support Bin Laden or Zarqawi any more than I support George W. Bush. We, the families of this world, do not have one single gripe about one another. Yet, how is it that we do not have a say in bringing peace to our lives when that is what we all want? Things are messed up for sure. But it seems that, instead of promoting harmony, Saba is promoting separation. I don’t get that. I truly do not understand why average people in our world put up with this. I see what the solution is — tolerance. We all need it.

Then children will not be throwing away toys. Tolerance is a decision made in the heart to accept things that cannot be changed. Why does it appear to be hard for Muslims? Every single one of us needs to learn tolerance — myself included.

Liz Shepherd • South Carolina, published 16 December 2004

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While appreciating that increased security measures in the US mean unpleasant and sometimes humiliating experiences for Saudis applying for visas or entering the US, I must say that a very important thing has been forgotten. For many years, it has been the experience of visitors to Saudi Arabia that they have had to undergo similar checks before they were granted a visa. Single women or women traveling alone have been refused visas for no reason except that they were not with a husband or male guardian.

On arrival at customs, foreigners are routinely put through a humiliating examination of personal possessions in full view of the public. Items selected for closer inspection are usually entirely legal, but travelers have to experience the degradation of having their small items of clothing and other intimate and private items being touched and examined by officials.

On arrival to take up a job, there is the routine humiliation of having one’s passport confiscated and held by one’s employer — which is, as I understand it, contrary to international law. Movement around the country is severely restricted by security personnel who often ignore directives from the government and send travelers back to their place of residence. Once inside the country, foreigners are treated as virtual prisoners because they have to obtain an exit visa before they can leave. They can’t even make the application themselves but are totally dependent on their sponsors to make sure the application is made.

I am not for a moment claiming that Michael Saba does not have a worthwhile point to make. However, many Saudis may be unaware of the way foreigners are routinely humiliated when visiting Saudi Arabia. After several years there, I now live in the UAE where there are virtually none of the above procedures to be endured, and visitors are given a much more positive welcome.

Greg Hancock • UAE, published 16 December 2004

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Did Michael Saba mention to his Saudi friend that George Bush is a war criminal who continues to rely on the ignorance embedded in American culture? Or that Americans get most of their impressions from television and have no clue about global realities? Or that most politicians in America are self-serving bureaucrats? Or that Iraq is a diversion? Or that America is in lock-down because of the incompetence and malfeasance of Bush Inc? If he has not, he is doing his Saudi friend a disservice and is offering nothing to the battle for hearts and minds.

Otis G. Barlow • Newark, NJ, US, published 16 December 2004

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“Trust and respect” is a two-way street. Do these Saudi youth that Michael Saba was referring to realize that a majority of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis? Do they realize that all of them were Arab Muslims? Do they realize that all of the terror attacks and potential terror attacks against innocent American civilians originate in the Arab Muslim world? Do they also realize that Americans are just as angry at the Muslim world as they are with us? When 3,000 innocent people are murdered on American soil in the name of Islam, don’t we have a right to be angry, to be looking over our shoulders?

It is unfortunate that innocent Saudis are being treated the way they are here in the United States. But in order for us to understand the persecution they’re going through, they must also understand the basis for our mistrust of the Muslim world. We Americans have a right to protect ourselves, and it means close scrutiny of any person coming into our country. If that is persecution, so be it. Until Muslims from the Arab world and elsewhere make an honest effort to understand our fears of them and until they stop blaming the events of 9-11 on the “Zionist connection,” we will never come to common ground.

John Blaesel • Huntsville, Alabama, published 16 December 2004

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I am truly sorry that it has come to this. Having spent quite a bit of time in the Kingdom, I value my Saudi friends a great deal. I have heard the same thing from some of them. I hope that the situation and feelings will change; but I fear it will not be soon. However let me relate an incident that seems to illustrate the true dichotomy between people and government. It was a situation my youngest son was involved in. A couple of children at his school were insulting a boy whose family was from Syria. I am proud to say that my son and his friends stood between the boy and his antagonists, stated that he had just as much right to be in the US as they and dared them to say anything else. Let me add that I am not a “liberal”, but one who shares, with most Americans, a respect and interest in the rest of the world that our government sometimes lacks.

Brian Edwards, published 16 December 2004

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Isn’t it amazing? What I learned after reading the article was that Arabs hate Americans for only one reason — because they have to go through a lot of formalities, have to fill in a lot of forms and that they may not be as welcome as they once were. My personal reaction to all their complaints is to ask: How do you feel when tasting the same medicine you have been prescribing for others? Have you forgotten how badly you treat foreigners, Muslims and non-Muslims, in your own country? Now you know why we hate Saudis.

Abdul Majeed • Pakistan, published 16 December 2004

Visas to India and Pakistan

It is really a pleasure to see that relations between Pakistan and India are improving and, hopefully, all the disputes between the two nuclear powers, including the core issue of Kashmir, will be settled through negotiations. This will minimize human suffering for the divided families living across the borders. I understood from newspapers that this was already happening. Members of such families have started visiting each other. This means that the visa procedures have been made easier by the embassies of Pakistan and India in New Delhi and Islamabad.

While that is welcome, it is unfortunate that the same simplification has not been introduced into their embassies in the Kingdom. For Indian and Pakistani nationals who live here and wish to visit their relatives in either of the two countries, obtaining a visa seems to have become more difficult than ever. I do not know how long it takes the Pakistani Embassy in Riyadh to process a visa for an Indian but I do know that the Indian Embassy takes a year or more to process visit visas for Pakistanis. That is a longer wait than at any time in the past. I request India’s Ministry of External Affairs and its ambassador to Saudi Arabia to look into the matter and take the initiative in reducing the visa processing period to the minimum possible on humanitarian grounds.

Ismael Ahmad • Jeddah, published 16 December 2004

Strange Bedfellows

They say politics makes strange bedfellows. It certainly does. In Sri Lanka, the opposition leader Ranil Wickramasinghe is proving the truth of it with his desperate attempts to free S.B. Dissanayake, MP, who is serving a two-year jail sentence for contempt of court.

What makes his sudden concern for Dissanayake strange is the history of their relationship. The minutes of Parliament proceedings dated March 3, 2000 have on record the speech Wickramasinghe made from the opposition benches, referring to the contempt of court allegations against Dissanayake, then a minister, reprimanding the government for keeping him in the Cabinet. He said, “In Malaysia, MPs have been jailed for lesser offenses against the judiciary and, in Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s time, a minister had to resign his post following defamatory remarks about the attorney general of Scotland.”

Of course, politics being politics, politicians have to be politicians. That means the ability not to remember what they had for dinner if you ask them the next morning. Let us not hold against Ranil what he said four years ago.

S.H. Moulana • Riyadh, published 16 December 2004

Elections in Iraq

All the talk about the Iraqi election coming from Washington is nothing but deceit and lies to fool the world. The US is painting the elections as a political achievement in order to pull the wool over the eyes of the international community and hide the horror that the illegal invasion has brought to the Iraqis.

The whole world knows that the election will be exclusively for those who maintain strong ties with the US and will not be free and democratic. Can the elected leaders tell all foreign troops to get out? Never. Can the new Iraqi leaders write into the constitution that Islamic law is the principal basis of the law? Never. Therefore, even after the election, decisions will be made in the US Embassy and the elected government will be there to carry out those decisions. The main purpose of the election farce is to put in place a government that subservient to the US, one which will have the right to exercise its “sovereignty” to serve America’s geopolitical interests such as allowing US forces to remain in Iraq and securing and promoting the interests of Israel. As it was in Afghanistan, the election in Iraq is an exercise to give legitimacy to a puppet government.

Mohamed Saeed • South Africa, published 16 December 2004