Saturday, December 1, 2007

Thinking Like an Arab Muslim

Col. Badolato is a graduate of the U.S. Naval War College with several tours of duty in the Middle East…Following his retirement, he served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy in both the Reagan and Bush administrations (1984-89)…In 1980, he wrote a white paper, "Learning to Think like an Arab Muslim: a Short Guide to Understanding the Arab Mentality." At only 14 pages, it is not a long document, but it succinctly explains why Americans and others in the West are encountering such difficulty understanding why Arab Muslims appear, by our standards, to be completely insane. Why, for example, would people who believe they have the one, true religion, not hesitate to blow up mosques and other holy places? Why would they attack weddings and funerals? Why is beheading so popular among terrorists? Why would a few cartoons set off rioting and killing? And what does all this mean to us in terms of the threat it represents?…Arab Muslims and presumably others because Islam has more than a billion adherents, divide the world between themselves and what they call Dar al Harb, literally, "the world of war." So, you are either a Muslim or you are an infidel and, by definition, a threat to Islam until you convert or are killed…Why do Arabs seem to be so violent? Conflict can be found in a family culture of competitiveness that is instilled at an early age. An old Arab saying aptly describes this. "I against my brother, my brother and I against our cousins, my brother, my cousins and I against the world." Add to this the way Arab history has been dominated "by warfare, domestic upheaval, and struggles against invasions from outside the Arab world" and you begin to grasp a mindset that will resist anything that is not Arab…What America and the West are up against are Islamic fundamentalists and countless sympathizers who would destroy us in a desperate effort to retain their Arab identity. Thus, when Palestinians elect Hamas, a terrorist organization, as their government, the West recoils, but the same is true throughout the Middle East and across northern Africa. In any election, Islamic fundamentalists would take control of the politics of these nations. Their very identity as Arabs and/or Muslims is at stake. The validity of Islam as the one, true faith is at stake. "Huge segments of the population simply cannot cope with modernity and the social and political changes taking place." What we see as an improvement in the lives of millions of Arabs, changes in their educational system, women's rights and their inclusion in the work force, improved literacy rates, better nutritional standards, advanced health and hygiene, all things that Westerners embrace, threaten Arabs. This explains why the Middle East has remained the most backward region of the world for centuries and why it now constitutes the greatest threat to the modern world…

From National Anxiety Center columnist Alan Caruba at Cybercast News Service News (dated March 6, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 7, 2006 (ME/RE/WT)

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The Peter Answers

How to Use Peter Answers

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit
Peter answers is a fun little website in which "Peter" appears to read your mind. Use it to prank your friends or to just have a little fun.

Steps

Visit http://www.peteranswers.com where there are two text boxes: "Insert Petition" and "Insert Question."
Ask your audience for a question. If it's a question you know the answer to, proceed to the next step. If it's a question you don't know the answer to, you can ask them for the answer, telling them that if they say the question and answer out loud, Peter will hear them with his psychic powers. If you don't know the answer, you won't be able to follow the next step, and Peter will answer with a very generic statement like "You shall not doubt of me at all, keep trusting on me and soon I'll answer." In other words, the trick won't work!
Enter text into the petition box. The directions tell you to type in either "Peter, please answer the following question:" or "Peter, please answer:" in the petition box. What your audience doesn't know is that you're telling Peter the answer...
- Note the colon ":" at the end of each of these queries. This is essential because without it, you will not be able to proceed to the question box. Once you type the phrase and enter the colon, your cursor will automatically move to the question box.
- Instead of typing "Peter, please answer the following question:" or "Peter, please answer:" start off your petition with a period followed by the answer you're looking for. For example, if you intend to ask "Why is wikiHow the best how-to manual ever?" then in the petition box you would type.Because it's a group effort
- As you type the answer you're looking for, that's not what you will see showing up in the text box. You will see the standard petition being typed, even though you're typing something completely different. Your audience, however, will have their eyes on the screen and will never suspect that you're giving Peter the answer.
- Your answer should be shorter than one of the standard petitions. When you finish typing the answer, the standard petition will still need to be finished on the screen. In the following screenshot, all that has been typed is ".Because it's a group effort."
- So, after you type the answer, end it with a period. The period will show up as another character of the petition. After the period, however, anything you type will show up on the screen as you type it. Finish whatever is left of the query and send it off with a colon. In this screenshot, the actual typing was ".Because it's a group effort.owing:"
Type in the question. Be sure to end it with a question mark "?". As soon as you enter the question mark, a box will appear with some warnings about privacy. For Peter to answer the question, you'll need to click the "I Accept" button.
Watch as Peter thinks for a second and then displays the answer that you typed. If your audience doesn't know that you typed in the answer, they will be flabbergasted. You can probably keep them amazed for quite a while as long as they don't start paying close attention to what your fingers are actually typing.

Tips

When you're typing in the petition box, it helps to NOT look at the screen, because it can throw you off and make you forget what you're typing. Instead, look down as you type the answer. Only look up after you've typed the period to check how much of the query is finished.
Peter is only as accurate as you are, so if you enter a typo, Peter will answer with a typo, and people will get suspicious pretty quickly. If you think you made a mistake, you can backspace and start again at any point. If you delete all of what you entered, remember to enter a period again to signal to Peter that you're entering the answer. But, deleting everything you entered is not a good idea because people will wonder why you're erasing a perfectly good petition.
If you're typing a short answer, you can save time by completing only the shorter petition phrase (Peter, please answer:)
You can also tell your viewers to stare at the screen so that they can correct any spelling errors that you might make.

Warnings

Peter will accept and display answers that are longer than the petition phrase, but it will be pretty obvious something is up if you continue to type after the screen displays the entire petition phrase. Nothing more will show up once you've reached the end of the phrase. Once in a while, at the bottom instead of the repeating "Peter answers:..." it will say "Emily answers" or another name. No one knows for sure what happens at that point.
As soon as you type a colon ":" the cursor will automatically jump to the question box, even if you haven't finished typing out the petition. This will likely ruin the illusion, so don't accidentally type that colon too soon.

Sources and Citations

PeterAnswers.com

Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Use Peter Answers. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

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