[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 14 (Thursday, February 14, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E158]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                ARABS AND AMERICA: EDUCATION IS THE KEY

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, February 13, 2002

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, it is well known that the Middle East is a 
land of proud heritage and strong traditions, but recent world events 
have focused the world's attention on the region, casting shadows of 
doubt and fear. These concerns are not unfounded and they are the 
result of several factors. In an opinion article entitled ``Arabs and 
America: Education is the Key,'' published in the Washington Post on 
February 12, the eminent Middle East historian Roy Mottahedeh of 
Harvard University discusses one of the most important causes of this 
problem.
  Dr. Mottahedeh focuses on one of the greatest tragedies of today's 
Middle East, the decline of liberal education. He begins his piece with 
a heart-breaking but telling image: boxes of catalogue cards 
negligently scattered on the floors of the library of Cairo University. 
This, by the way, is the same university that produced the Nobel Prize 
winning novelist Naguib Mahfouz and so many other eminent Egyptian 
intellectuals. He makes the provocative point that it is in our 
interest to do all in our power to support liberal education in Egypt 
and the wider Middle East. Rather than try to educate an English 
speaking elite here in the U.S., we need to help build a culturally 
acceptable educational system of liberal values over there.
  The decline of liberal education in the Middle East, particularly in 
the Arab world's cultural and intellectual center, Egypt, is a tragic 
fact. I am reminded of Dr. Fouad Ajami's article a few years ago, where 
he pointed out, shockingly, that Egypt produces merely 375 new books 
per year, whereas Israel, with less than one-tenth population, produces 
4,000. Indeed, the sad state of education is one of the primary reasons 
for the poverty and political backwardness of our key Arab ally and, 
indirectly, for an environment that produces, and exports, violence and 
extremism.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to read Roy Mottahedeh's excellent 
and thought provoking article, and I ask that the text be placed in the 
Record.

         [From the Washington Post, Tuesday, February 12, 2002]

                Arabs and America: Education Is the Key

                          (By Roy Mottahedeh)

       Anyone who has seen the card catalogue of Cairo University 
     Library will understand how tragically far Egypt and many 
     poorer Muslim nations are from achieving the goal that 
     President Bush rightly said in his State of the Union address 
     is the object of parents ``in all societies''--namely, ``to 
     have their children educated.'' The boxes of catalogue cards 
     scattered on the floor are emblematic of the way that poverty 
     has caused higher education to unravel in the once proud 
     universities in most parts of the Muslim world.
       Americans can and should do something about it. There is a 
     real longing--both on the American and the Muslim side--for 
     dialogue; and education is the obvious prerequisite for 
     dialogue. It was President Mohammad Khatami of Iran who first 
     called for a ``dialogue of civilizations,'' which the United 
     Nations adopted as a theme for the last year.
       Americans have long been committed to education in the 
     Muslim world. The venerable American Universities of Beirut 
     and Cairo, as well as our outstanding Fulbright programs, 
     have produced scholars who have had the personal depth of 
     experience to interpret cultures to each other.
       But the results have been on a small scale. Now is the time 
     to have the vision to create a plan that will, through 
     education, create the conditions for true and extensive 
     dialogue and also create the human capital that is essential 
     for poorer Muslim societies such as Egypt's to advance.
       It is a solid but minor contribution to the dialogue of 
     cultures if an American historian teaches for a year in Egypt 
     or an Egyptian mathematician comes to MIT for two years and 
     completes an advanced degree. But it would be a major 
     contribution to such dialogue if well-funded liberal arts 
     institutions teaching in Arabic in Cairo offered BA's to a 
     significant number of college-age students. For good liberal 
     arts education in the vernacular--Urdu, Tajik, Arabic or 
     whatever--is far too rare in the poorer countries of the 
     Muslim world.
       No one wants to ``Americanize'' others through education, 
     but all of us want to see more educated populations whose 
     education does not isolate them into an elite associated with 
     knowledge of a European language. The unfortunate association 
     of many of the educated elite with foreign language education 
     only widens the gulf between them and their fellow countrymen 
     and makes them seem unnecessarily ``alien.''
       The graduates of such an expanded liberal arts education 
     system would be forces for economic development not only 
     because of their skills but also because of their ability to 
     speak authentically within their cultures as native voices, 
     impossible to label ``agents'' of an outside culture. The 
     Egyptian Nobel prize laureate novelist Naguib Mahfouz was a 
     graduate of Cairo University at a time when it was such an 
     institution. And he was a man of the people, not raised 
     speaking English, and therefore would probably never have won 
     a place at an expensive English-speaking university.
       Why favor undergraduate education when the needs in these 
     societies are so great? Because the enormous bulge of 
     populations under 21 in these countries are hungry for 
     education and understanding, and they are the future 
     interpreters of their cultures.
       Why favor education in the vernacular? Because it will 
     reach the underprivileged, will create the textbooks and even 
     the language of discourse, and will allow a discourse that 
     draws on the indigenous cultures of these countries, some of 
     which, such as Egypt, can claim a tradition of a thousand 
     years of higher education in their languages.
       Why a ``liberal'' education? Because the tradition that a 
     ``liberal'' education teaches us to think critically and 
     write intelligently about both the human and scientific 
     spheres is a value that the Muslim and Western cultures have 
     shared for more than a thousand years.
       As President Bush also said in his speech: ``Let skeptics 
     look to Islam's own rich history, with its centuries of 
     learning and tolerance and progress.''
       Cairo was once the place where Maimonides, the Jewish 
     philosopher, studied the ideas of Avicenna the Muslim 
     philosopher and read Aristotle as translated into Arabic by, 
     among others, Christian Arab philosophers. But its ancient 
     madrassas and European-style institutions of learning have 
     fallen on very hard times (not to mention the miserable neo-
     orthodox madrassas springing up everywhere in the Muslim 
     world). A new Fulbright plan that would rescue them or 
     establish parallel institutions in Cairo, Karachi and kindred 
     places would create forums where the dialogue of civilization 
     would truly flourish.

     

                          ____________________