Surfing al-Jazeera

Al-Jazeera reports that Kuwait has appointed its first woman minister roughly a month after women were granted the ability to vote and run for office.

I think this is fantastic. Hardcore conservative Muslims will regard this latest step in modernization (read: Westernization) as yet another outrage in the long, slow decline of their way of life.

While on al-Jazeera's English-language website, I ran across an article by an American journalist named Sandy Shanks, who is one of a number of Westerners whose writings appear on al-Jazeera. When Googling him I came across a followup to an email exchange he had with a conservative blogger in which his patriotism was called into question because of his relationship with al-Jazeera. Shanks was being called on the carpet for his statement that, "The vast majority of Americans are clueless regarding the past of faraway lands, as well as their own." In this post, the literacy rates of Middle Eastern countries and the United States were compared to support the blogger's position that a higher literacy rate equates with less ignorance (ignorance in this case meaning a lack of understanding of one's own cultural history). I don't neccessarily think this true; just because one can read doesn't make one well-versed in history, and it certainly doesn't endow oneself with cultural understanding, either. I knew plenty of ignorant but well-educated Americans in my years growing up overseas. And I myself stand as an example of this: I have went to college and graduated with honors, but until I started reading about it recently I had no clue about Islamic culture and history.

As for Shanks being bashed for his writing appearing in the Middle Eastern media, I have no problem with his doing so; it's his right. I don't think we should close ourselves off from that culture. Should Fox News never have any Middle Eastern guests appear on their shows? Now, I do think al-Jazeera is every bit as biased as Fox News—and I take umbrage with their frequent airing of the "beheading du jour"—but at least al-Jazeera doesn't wrap itself in a flag and call itself "fair and balanced."