...Title: In Jordan, the Hip Speak ‘Arabizi’ Submitted to: Neslihan Bilikozen Submitted by: Hakam Abdulqader, 49431 Date of Submission: May 6, 2013 Spring, 2013 American University of Sharjah In Jordan the Hip Speak ‘Arabizi’ Summary In the article, “In Jordan,. The Hip Speak ‘Arabizi,’” by Ibon Villelabeitia, Villelabeitia (2012) discusses how Arabic and English language is being mixed into one language called Arabizi, which became a social symbol to define the upper class in Jordan that causes the Arabic language to slowly fade away. This article interprets the reasoning behind why the young generation is using this language that helps them to express their opinions easier about unmannered topics spoken in the public by using English rather than Arabic, as it can be imposed differently in Arabic. However, linguists think that English language is destroying Arabic language from the American pop culture. The author points out in his article that Arabizi is being widely used by well-educated Jordanians class, which is drawing away the native language and exposing a social and economic gap in the country.. Finally, the author then concludes his piece by giving a brief about a documentary called “Arabizi” directed by Dalia Alkury and providing a quote from the director that brief states that even though the director speaks Arabizi, she is still close to her culture. Word Count: 185 Reference Villelabeitia, I. (2012). In Jordan, the...
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...I recommend that we prepare our delegates for the cultural norms of doing business in the Middle East and assign our representatives with this in mind. Summarily, this is because the prevalence of Islam in the region has resulted in different values assuming primacy and neglecting to educate our team on the cultural norms may result in an impression of ethnocentrism. Moreover, to avoid the appearance of paternalism I recommend that we also provide translators rather than rely on our customer’s English. At the meeting we discussed the successful bid for the contract and our flight to the initial meeting onsite. This raised a number of interesting questions regarding how we should conduct ourselves to minimise misunderstandings. If the negotiating team does not account for cultural differences in conducting business in the region the firm runs the risk of losing the contract to a competitor. Considerations must be given to the host’s religious sensibilities. Islam has implications for the systemic treatment of the business process, including what operational activities are permissible. The delegates must also be prepared for the following main differences to Australian culture as illustrated in the diagram below (Hofstede, 2012): context sensitivity in communication, autocratic leadership, the prevalence of collectivism and ‘face’, long term orientation compared to western cultures at circa 50 (Baron, 2008), and high levels of uncertainty avoidance, yet curiously a relatively elastic...
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...Outline of Article Arabs and the West (Failure of West to understand Arabs) - Main focus is the bad perceptions gained by Europeans on Arabs Perception of Western Attitude on Arabs - Ideas developed from past - Divided into 3 strands 1. Battle between Christian Europe and Islam - 7th century - 18 century - Fears, animosities and suspicions reflected in European Education - Normally Western deny but subconscious is another story (prejudice) - Oriental is defined with adjectives: duplicity, cruelty, servility, despotism. - Another possibility is the misunderstanding of Islam 2. European Expansion - 17th century - End of First World War. - Euopean Imperialism (destruction of literacy) - British Global Supremacy (lead non-europeans to civilization) - sincerity from British was due to belief that non-european are not modern - Heightening European Power and ideals over non-european - British Outlook in Arab Territories was based on British Ideals (not looking at arab culture) 3. Struggle between Imperialistic Power versu Growing National Movements - After World War I and still existing today - Attempt of Nationalists to remove foreign power yield: - Rebellion and repression - Loss of life - Bitterness of opinion - British handicaped due to 2 reasons a. Failure to realize impact of superior strength on weaker nations - Weaker nation feels suffocated when under superior power - Believes they are stopping their aspirations b. National liberation...
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...Culture is the collection of values, beliefs, behaviors, customs, and attitudes that distinguish a society. Culture is important to companies because it determines the rules within which businesses operate. Culture is a learned behavior that may be transmitted intergenerational or intragenerationally. Culture’s elements are interrelated, and may change to adapt to external forces. Culture is shared by members of a society. ELEMENTS OF CULTURE The basic elements of culture are social structure, language, communication, religion, and values and attitudes. The way in which the elements interact affects the local environment in which international businesses operate Islamic Law (known as Shariah) forbids charging interest. Instead, lenders under Islamic Law may charge “fees” or “rent” to borrowers. Shariah scholars say there is no prohibition against using an interest rate as a benchmark to calculate appropriate fees or rents. Several U.S. lenders (including Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae) are now offering “Islamic home mortgages.” Such mortgages are described in detail in the textbook. The price of the Islamic mortgages tends to be very comparable to the price of traditional mortgages. Values and Attitudes * Values are the principles and standards accepted by members of a society; attitudes encompass the actions, feelings, and thoughts that result from those values. Attitudes about time, authority, education, and rewards reflect an individual’s deep-seated values...
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...UN Simulation Information History: (Retrieved from ‘’ The World Since 1945’’ Second Edition by Daniel R. Brower. New Jersey, 2005) * By 1960’s military dictatorship had taken power in most middle Eastern countries they justified their rule by promoting social reform and often by claiming to be defenders of the Muslim faith Jewish Problem: * Jewish settlers living among Arab-speaking peoples in Palestine achieved the Zionist dream of a Jewish nation-state shortly after ww2 * the inflexible opposition of Arab states to the very existence of Israel led to four separate wars between Israel and its Arab neighbors * Pan- Arab Nationalism To unite Arab peoples under one nation * Zionism- Jewish movement * Later, Palestinians entered into the struggle against the Jewish state in an effort to forge their own nation-state nationalism was at the heart of the Middle East turmoil in the last half of the century Oil Conflict/issue * Oil fields concentrated in the area around the Persian Golf contained greater petroleum reserves of higher quality than anywhere else in the world * The dependence of industrial countries on this vital resoourse brought the preasures of the cold war to bear on the oil-rich countries * SOVIETS AND U.S KEPT CLOSE WATCH ON THE UNSTABLE GOVERNMENTS THERE * Governments of land with large oil reserves nationalized their petroleum industry to get direct access to a share of the profits created an international...
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...Gender and Social Change in the Middle East: The Islam and Women Phenomenon Written By: Amelia Ramraj Arguably the most heated, widely discussed and controversial topic in gender and social change with respect to a cultural context is the state of women in the Middle East and the role that religion plays as a primary source for further derived influences of politics, economics, legal and family affairs to the social situation as a whole. This social stratosphere of revolving and intricate subjects of change and progression represent a multitude of conflicting ideologies, theories and realities. The media serves as an informational anchor, particularly in its portrayal of social situations and change, primarily divided into Western and Eastern media. The broader subject at hand is gender and social change in the Middle East, but specifically, how women, as the primary subject of the gender discussion, and Islam, as the foremost engine to drive the social scene across the Middle Eastern peninsula co-exist to create an unprecedented dynamic in the Middle East. This research paper will attempt to progressively reveal and discuss related subjects in order to create a transitional framework for a relevant understanding of the gender and social dynamic of the Middle East. As an outline, this paper will begin by briefly discussing the global role of women from a gender and sexuality perspective. It will then analyze how such roles are portrayed and what movements exist in order...
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...// In a crowded corner of southern Beirut, tucked behind a row of street stalls where traders hawk DVDs, shoes and clothes, lies an unremarkable patch of land, empty except for a collection of placards and posters. Related ■ Sabra and Shatila: defenceless victims were butchered by militiamen ■ A warning from history: how a massacre is remembered Topic Middle East unrest Lebanon Middle East One shows a woman standing over a pile of bloated, twisted bodies, an arm raised to the sky and a look of bewilderment on her face. Others have images of dead bodies and a man wailing as he holds up the bloodied corpse of a baby. One placard reads: "We will never forget." And here, indeed, they cannot forget. For this nondescript patch of land in Ghobeiry is a mass grave containing the unidentified bodies of scores, perhaps hundreds, of hastily buried men, women and children massacred 30 years ago in the nearby Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. For three days, Lebanese Christian militia scoured the camps and systematically slaughtered refugees trapped inside by an Israeli military cordon. The massacre, against the backdrop of the country's 15-year civil war and Israel's invasion the same year, shocked Lebanon and Israel, and appalled a wider world that had thought itself inured to senseless bloodshed in what it saw as an inherently fratricidal corner of the Middle East. Three decades later, there has been no accountability and no historical reckoning:...
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...No Place Like Home Edward Said's States is an excerpt from his book After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives. It's a story about Palestine, once a country, but now spread out into a million pieces of the people that once called it home. The pieces being more of memories of a time when Palestinians could be who they are, not a scattered and forgotten people. They all face a new struggle, a struggle to find their identity. "Identity- who we are, where we come from, what we are- is difficult to maintain in exile. Most other people take their identity for granted. Not the Palestinian, who is required to show proofs of identity more or less constantly." (Page 546) Said, being Palestinian himself, tells us this story in what was called a "hybrid" type of writing. He does this by letting the pictures take precedence in telling his story but then describes each picture by going back and forth from a history point of view, to his own recollections of his childhood. The way he describes each picture makes you feel as if you were at one time in that picture and can feel an emotional connection to it. Through each photo, we get a really sense of what it is like to be Palestinian, to have it all taken away and how they started new. The way Said puts the story together without any time frame, is an example of why his writing style was described as a hybrid. He will start with describing a picture by telling us facts about his country and then interrupt himself, like he's actually have...
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...Location and geography Jordan has an area of about 35,475 square miles (91,900 square kilometers). It lies in the center of the Middle East, sharing its northern border with Syria, eastern border with Iraq, it's southern and eastern borders with Saudi Arabia, and western border with the Jordan River, the Dead Sea, and Israel. Its only seaport is the port of Aqaba. Jordan has barren deserts, fertile valleys, and colorful rock and sand mountains. It contains the lowest point on earth, the Dead Sea, and the Great Rift Valley, which was created twenty million years ago when tectonic plates shifted, stretching from Lake Tiberius south through Jordan and into eastern Africa. Population of Jordan In July 2000 the population of Jordan was estimated to be 4,998,564, increasing on average by 3.1 percent a year. The country has a very young population, of which 41 percent are under the age of 20. Only 3 percent of Jordanians are over the age of 65. In 2000 the birth rate stood at 26.24 births per 1,000 while the death rate stood at 2.63 per 1,000. With a projected annual population growth rate of 3 percent, the population is expected to reach approximately 7.5 million by the year 2015. Religions Islam is the state religion, although all are guaranteed religious freedom. Most Jordanians (about 95%) are Sunni Muslims. Of the racial minorities, the Turkomans and Circassians are Sunni Muslims, but the Druzes are a heterodox Muslim sect. Christians constitute about 4% of the population...
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...been the Hala Salaam Clovis Maksoud Assistant Professory of Arab Studies at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Dr. Adely received her Ph.D. in Comparative Education and Anthropology from Columbia University. She is interested in education in the Middle East and Africa, especially areas that pertain to women, gender and culture. In this paper, Adely furthers her research on Jordanian schoolgirls. The abstract clearly states the purpose, the setting, the research design as well as the study’s conclusions and recommendations. The abstract outlines Dr. Adely’s intent to explore the importance of extracurricular activities, more specifically music, in the education of patriotism, faith and femininity in a female high school in Jordan Her qualitative study based on first-hand experience as well as conversation analysis is aimed at both the academic community and the general population interested in socio-cultural perspectives on education in the Middle East. Analysis Throughout her study, Adely builds primarily on her previous work from 2004, however she does cite literature from Kandiyoti (1991) and Ahmed (1992) among others. This literature is cited in the conclusion and little reference is made to the exact content of the cited authors work. Dr. Adely chose these authors in order to show the reader that many others have also explored the field of female roles in nation building, authenticity and modernity in the Middle East, North Africa, and beyond. Although...
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...Throughout the past years racism in the Middle East has increased dramatically, especially religious racism. Religious racism in the Middle East is more than gender or race (1). Religious racism can be found more in country like Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon (1).However some other form of racism likes ethnic can be found in many Middle Eastern countries. Religious racism has started to occur in most of the Middle Eastern country, since the invasion of Muslims people to country like Egypt and Lebanon in the seventh century. When Muslims invaded these country all the people who lived at these country were Christian, so Muslims started to collect taxes from Christian and treat them like slaves. Muslim enforced Christian to change their religious to Islam if they didn’t pay these taxes or don’t like Muslims is treatment and rule. Now day, Christian in the Middle East doesn’t pay tax to Muslim but they get less job opportunity, face a lot of difficulty if they want built churches or make some renewal to a church. For example, in Egypt, Christian need to get permission from the president of the country to built churches and after getting this permission they face a lot of trouble from the city is government. On the other hand Muslim built their praying house Mosques without facing any problem; these Mosques is build by the government and all future expenses gets funded it by the government. Also the constitution...
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...The social behavior and roles of women in the Middle can vary according to tribe, custom, religion, and national law. There are also various regional factors, influenced by geography, social class, and economic development. In most Middle Eastern countries, the Shari'a, or Islamic law, defines the rules of traditional social behavior. Under the law, women are accorded a role inferior to that of men, and are therefore discriminated against with regard to personal rights and freedoms. Islamic law is enforced through the media, education and through community leaders collectively, Islamic views on female sexuality is one of the main determining factors for strict adherence of Islamic laws, and many perceive that it is the government's job to enforce this morality. Islamic female sexuality is thought of as being so powerful that it constitutes a real danger to society therefore, unrestrained females constitute the most dangerous challenge facing males trying to carry out God's commands. In combination, it is believed that a females desires and their irresistible attractiveness give women a power over men. Differing from other religions such as Christianity and Judaism, Islam does not see desire as a force that must be eliminated or systematically regulated. Rather, one must employ it in a way that coincides with what religious law dictates. For example, sexual desire, exercised according to Muslim beliefs, ensures the continuation of the human race. Sexual desires exerted...
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...The conflict between Palestine and Israel is a deep rooted one which is about religion, there have been many killings, bombings and bloodshed over this wholly land. Which both are fighting over to have as their own. The United States is in the middle trying to come up with a solution to come up with to help the two sides come up with terms to be able to help each other stop the killing that has been going out for this long. The United States has seen a rise in a pro democratic movement. With all the instability that has been going on in the region the idea could be that the United States helps them come up with a solution to have to states, that both can be safe and peaceful without all the issues that are going on. The conflict is on a broad scale; both side completely and utterly do not like each other at all. The only way to be able to bring peace to both sides is to have a mediator. The United States has stepped forward as the mediator, with the chance of putting both sides at peace. It isn’t as easy as just telling both to stay on one side and the other on their own side. These are two groups of people who have been fighting killing and pillaging each other, for many years. “Genuine peace is more than the suppression of open conflict, more than a fragile, superficial calm. Peace is the outcome of a creatively managed conflict.”[Per course reading]. The reading makes a great point that since this is so deep rooted, that there needs to...
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...ECPSC- 2013 CURRENT AFFAIRS HANDOUT - 11 SYRIAN CIVIL WAR Gen 1. The Syrian civil war also commonly known as the Syrian uprising is an ongoing armed conflict in Syria between forces loyal to the Syrian Baath Party government and those seeking to oust it. The conflict began on 15 March 2011, with popular demonstrations that grew nationwide by April 2011. These demonstrations were part of the wider Middle Eastern protest movement known as the Arab Spring. Protesters demanded the resignation of President Bashar al-Assad, whose family has held the presidency in Syria since 1971, as well as the end to over four decades of Baath Party rule. In April 2011, the Syrian Army was deployed to quell the uprising. After months of military sieges, the protests evolved into an armed rebellion. Background 2. The Ba'ath Party government came to power in 1964 after a coup on 1966, another coup overthrew the traditional leaders of the party, Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar. In 1970, the Defence Minister Hafez al-Assad seized power and declared himself President, a position he would hold until his death in 2000. 3. In 1982, at the height of a six-year Islamist armed insurgency throughout the country, Hafez al-Assad conducted a scorched earth policy against Islamist-held quarters inside the town of Hama to quell an uprising by the Sunni Islamist community, including the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafists and others. This ruthless crackdown became known as the Hama massacre, which left tens of...
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...1. Arab Culture is one that is high-context, and very poly-chronic. The culture is tied very closely with Islam. Shared culture, religion, and language underlie behavioral similarities throughout the Middle East. The culture is so influenced by the religion that Allah is always present, controls everything, and is frequently referred to in conversation. Arab culture focuses on close familial ties and is often far more personal than the West. At the root of Arab culture is a religious, highly masculine, high context, polychronic atmosphere that affects all things from what is done on a daily basis to what is watched in movies and listened to on the radio. MTV Arabia will experience the following issues with Arab culture: - MTVs own international culture is one that is quite western. Arabs do not simply classify western as American—Western is west of Arabia, including Europe in addition to America. For this reason MTV will need to reshape its cultural appeal and, as it has already done, include a vast majority of strictly Arab shows rather than European or American shows. - MTV Arabia will need to match the Arab culture in its personal approach and need to reach the people where they are. They will not simply flock to the channel. Going to schools and shopping centers to raise awareness is huge. Due to the level of personal focus of the Arab people, MTV will also need to include itself in social programs and focusing on social problems. 2. The strategy is very well put together—partner...
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