Learning from Saudi Arabia

Most people with a passing acquaintance with scholarship are familiar with Marshall McLuhan’s well-known assertion that “medium is the message,” but fewer are familiar with the work of another American technology critic, Jerry Mander (yes, his real name), who wrote, in the 1970s, a book called Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television.
Among those arguments is the fact that television simplifies concepts. It has to, for maximum efficacy. Complex, multifaceted ideas are reduced radically to sound bites and iconic images, and, individually and collectively, they take up the space in our minds that should be reserved for deeper knowledge. We can know everything about the world but very little of it.
It is questionable whether our current media du jour is an improvement on that state of affairs, or indeed a step backward. Certainly, one could argue, there is more information out there to be uncovered, with varying viewpoints — that is, if we take the time to ferret out that information and evaluate it. Most of us, most of the time, don’t. We keep doing what the media of our formative years trained us to do — namely, to accept what is served up. Nowadays, it is less likely to be served by major TV networks and more likely the result of the fickle vacillations of social media trends. But nevertheless, by and large, we swallow the simple ideas we are offered. That is why, it comes as such a surprise to many westerners that Saudi Arabia has borne the brunt of more terrorist events at the hands of Islamic fundamentalists than has almost any other nation.
It is very easy to think in black and white, or the cultural equivalent of such. The truth is more complex. There is as little homogeneity among Muslims as there is among Christians.
Some fundamentalist Muslims — resentful of Saudi Arabia’s longstanding policy of openness and friendship toward the West — have subjected the country to numerous attacks in the past four or five decades. Sometimes these were directed at westerners living in Saudi, but oftentimes they targeted Saudi citizens themselves. The attacks may have not been on the scale of 9/11, but they have been violent, demoralizing, deadly and traumatizing to our country, for many years now.
Because Saudi Arabia was dealing with terrorist attacks at the hands of radicalized Muslims before such attacks were common knowledge in the West, we have also had longer to try and understand the phenomenon and to deal with it proactively, constructively and effectively. Our own culture and religion, of course, provide some insight, but we have also looked into the cultural and psychological causes of terrorism and have established programs of rehabilitation.
The idea of a Muslim country being the frontrunner in combating terrorism, as well as being the earliest and most consistent victim of such terrorism, is challenging or counterintuitive to many in the West. That, unfortunately, seems to be the result of the same simplistic thinking that so many of us are subject to, well trained as we are by the simplistic, black and white notions propagated by media.
Much depends on our being able and willing to get beyond that. The information is out there — if this article has piqued your interest, take it upon yourself to find out the facts. Saudi Arabia has an important role to play as a leader of the global fight against terrorism. And as such, we are in a position to cooperate with and help western countries as they negotiate their own, similar battle.