Ayoon wa Azan (Arabs are out of the picture)

There is a story I told 30 years ago and I will tell it again today, because it is appropriate for the topic of this column. In 1982, after the Sabra and Shatlia massacre and the deployment of international troops, including French and Americans, Lebanese news was a basic part of the daily news conference by the State Department spokesman in Washington, where I was living at the time. The Marine Barracks in Beirut in 1983 was bombed, killing 241 Americans and 58 Frenchmen; the international forces pulled out and Lebanese news gradually retreated at the spokesman's news conferences, until a day came where there was no mention of Lebanon and news there. Three or four of us Arab journalists stood at the exit and asked the spokesman about Lebanon. He responded, "Lebanon? Who's she?" It is not only the Lebanese, but in fact all Arabs, who believe that it is a blessing from God to the world when the peoples of the east and the west wake up to mention Lebanon, then go to sleep. I have some shocking news for the Arabs, as shocking as Lebanon was in America. I read figures from Wikipedia in 2012 showing how Arabs are out of the picture. They are the last ones people search for, and the figures show that there are millions of entries in Wikipedia without any question about the Arabs, who are the vain rooster who believes the sun rises in order to hear its cry. English dominates the Wikipedia top searches; number 10 is the book "The Hunger Games," which is about the very poor in a future America, with 18,431,626 searches. This is much more than the total top ten searches in Arabic. On the English list, which is one of the world's biggest languages, we find searches for other websites, such as Google, Facebook and Youtube, and films and television programs. The Arabs do not figure in the English searches on Wikipedia, or in other languages. They have found more important things, such as One Direction, the British boy band that was fourth place in English, and in other languages, such as the film 50 Shades of Grey and other movies. They were interested in the Mayans and their prediction that the world would end on 21 December 2012, and neglected us. I checked all of the top ten Wikipedia searches in all languages, and the first 100 in Arabic. I did not understand the Japanese, Chinese and Hebrew, but I read enough to be shocked again by western narcissism. The biggest Muslim country in the world, Indonesia, chose social media and local films. In Turkey, where Islamist rule is a fine model that has not been picked up sufficiently by Arab Islamist regimes, they chose Ataturk and films, and the football player Cristiano Ronaldo, and forgot their neighbors the Arabs. The above is better than the top ten Iranian searches. The Iranians are under a blockade and sanctions; their list begins with Tehran, Iran, Nawruz and then four sex sites that I will not try to explain, out of fear of making a mistake, and then sites with some foul language that is usually not published in the Arab media. The Italians were interested in football's Lionel Messi, and Juventus, and Norway had the teen singer Justin Bieber in seventh place, while Denmark had him in sixth. The British were interested in One Direction, which helped Sony in the US. I found a general interest with the Olympic Games and the Euro Cup. The top 100 Arabic searches contained everything. There was religion and more worldly affairs, historical figures such as the Caliph Omar, television soap operas, Dr. Mohammad Morsi and his rivals in the elections, the singer Kazem al-Saher and the poet Ahmad Shawqi, and the Bermuda Triangle. Love was number 88 and sex 95, meaning that we are less concerned with such things than the frustrated Iranians. However, the most important thing, in all languages except Arabic, was that there were a thousand important things, but the Arabs were not among them. --- The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent or reflect the editorial policy of Arabstoday.