Images and realities in intercultural communication: The image of Arab Muslim women in postmodern occident

Once upon a time, there was and still is a communication between the cultures of the occident and the Arab Orient. It appeared in form of ebbs and flows in the past, and continues to unfold developing into streams full of motion, creating history through out time, moving from the past to the present into the future.

Intercultural communication swung between Islamic expansions and the crusades in the past, between imperialism, colonialism and resistance in modernity, landing into the phenomenon of globalisation, with all what it carries into postmodernity. 

This means that intercultural communication evolved into axioms, that were a survival necessity in the beginnings of humanity, but they changed into narcissism and greed, that build on the passionate obsession of power, absolutisms and geopolitical monopoly today.

The diverse nature of reality has been artificialized into cliches and prejudices, and the normality of plurality has become abnormal by worldwide right-wing policies and extremisms. Humans have forgotten that they all derive from the same common nature, spreading wings of egoism, aiming to possess their surroundings by conflict instead of sharing, having the goal to achieve totalitarian mighty, instead of togetherness.  This attitude has led to the outspread of materialism, superficiality, arrogance and ignorance, by which the ethics of love, peace and humanity have become neglected and exchanged with hatred, wars, brutality, inhumanity and the destruction of home nature.

This appearance of the worldwide development shows that societies went wrong somewhere on the path of their evolution. They may have taken thoughtless decisions towards themselves, their public opinion leaders and others in regards to their societies.  Here emerges the vital question about the range of visibility and awareness of the miscalculations on the present global scale, and as well as the nature of miscommunication that is misleading societies, causing them to reach the highest peaks of misunderstanding today!

Here, observations can see that history has been narrated from the view of the mighty to the detriment of the powerless, which gives the worldwide public opinion the duty to search for objectivity using their reflections on reality and in their interactions with their environments. This duty is optimistically fulfilled by a huge, not to be underestimated worldwide minority, that offers a fertile ground for peace and an ambitious base for dialogue in cultures and between them around the world.

In reference to women as main element mirroring their societies, cultures experience a confusing dilemma of communication between the reality of the Arab Muslim women and the many depictions of facts that form, building on constellations of power. 

The occidental mass media coverage of the Arab and Muslim women leads their public opinions to experience the feeling and action of pity, fear, reserve, confusion, misunderstanding and misinterpretation.  

Mass media try to mediate factualities in the form of ‘truths’, but they get articulated and conveyed in an orientalist context as Edward Said elaborates in Orientalism (1995). Most occidental mass media systems repeatedly address intercultural themes, without integration or openness to the Other, and they see intercultural matters from an absolute occidental perspective, that is shaped in different truisms and beliefs than in the many other existent cultures.  They then compare their perspectives with the others insisting on the one of many worldviews, leading here to the typical constant misunderstanding between cultures. With this state of mind, every society compares itself with the others, forgetting the given fact that every culture has its own developmental trajectory, according to its natural and social environment, where the intercultural exposure also plays an important role in the cultural process of growth of all societies.

Another aspect of intercultural misunderstanding is the nebulous image of the Orient in the spheres of the occidental mass media, failing intentionally or unintentionally in distinguishing between three major parameters: a) the religion of Islam, b) the patriarchal Arabic socio-political systems, and c) the instrumentalization and politicization of belief within the Arab world. 

In all cases, the occidental mass media systems assume the obligation of a Ptolemaic descriptive when shaping public opinion, confirming their truisms, thinking that they have fulfilled the cognitive informational needs of their communities by that. In doing so, they cover huge areas of information and multi-dimensional themes about the Orient in a shallow and superficial way, lacking in critical thinking, forgetting about the inner essence of humans, as well as the fundamental basics for creating meaning when interpreting symbols or information.

An example of that is the symbol of the vail, which regularly occupies the minds of the occidental audiences.

More particularly, the occidental cultural consciousness links the veil to an intercultural barrier, related to a perceived inequality, pressure, oppression and subjugation of women, especially presented in this way by mass media, which represents a mainstream source of information. Importantly, the value and status of women in Islam is missing in this occidental understanding. Similarly, religion is being presented as closely linked with fundamentalism, connoting extremism in confusion, and it is continuously bound to politicization, brutality and terrorism.  And so goes the cycle without interruption, by the occidental mass media insisting to view Islam as an oppositional element, defined by hostility and extremism. And women continue to be seen as a passive element, within this stereotyped and distorted point of view and interpretation.

In contrast, a four-dimensional reality argues against this perplex Occidental illustration of the Arab world, in which women are a main part: tradition, religion, politics and international expansion of power, are fundamentally different systems that have shaped the Arab societies in various ways over time. This means that cultural and intercultural interactions have constantly changed the worldviews and engagements of the Arab societies in their environment over time, according to their natural and social circumstances. This development continues to this day, similarly to all other cultural systems around the world, adding complexity and nuance in their interpretation.

Consequently, the image of the Arab societies and Muslim women presented in the occidental mass media, cannot be evaluated as credible or ethical, because of the absence of objectivity from the occidental mainstream mass media systems. They create a fabulous imaginary reality, which in turn becomes widely believable among the majority of the public. In other words, occidental audiences give up their cognitive powers and adopt these simplistic and illusionary interpretations, automatically detaching themselves from the Arab world, out of arising fear, racism and hostility; Othering the Arab Muslim. The reflections to this illusion lead to isolation, gaps, misunderstandings, and conflict, involving the world in a confrontation with a postmodern kind of third world war.

In order to overcome the current intercultural gap between images and reality, the worldwide huge dialogic minority should activate its efforts to reawaken perspectives of harmony, peace, integration, equality, togetherness and humanity. The revival of those hidden perspectives requires the global public opinion to look deeper into reality, where there is a lot to be discovered, which would surely lead to the end of racism, hostility, hatred, arrogance and ignorance between cultures.

Away from the dreamy image of One Thousand and One Nights, and far from the terroristic extremist illustration of the Orient, the Arab Muslim woman is a natural being in reality; a primary productive element in her social structure.

 An example of this approach can be seen in the documentary film-essay by the Austrian filmmaker Ruth Beckermann Ein Flüchtiger Zug nach dem Orient/A Fleeting Passage to the Orient (1999), in which the diversity of the women’s society can be observed within traditional, conservative and moderate lifestyles. The documentary’s realistic intercultural angle reflects the society of the Arab Muslim women on different levels: the older the women, the more conservative and vailed they appear. The younger the women, the more open, flexible and modern they are on the generational level. Yet the generation difference does not eliminate the heterogeneity of thought and lifestyles. On the contrary, it shows the rich variety of the women’s society on the social level, and it shows a lively progressive activeness in the public realm and workplace. In other words, however different Arab women may be, they all carry shared attributes of self-confidence, beauty, pride, responsibility, humbleness, hospitality and openness.

This film-essay is one example of a media approach attempting to provide alternative perspectives to the mainstream ones, informing European public opinion on the intercultural oriental/occidental communication. The film’s objective is to bring cultures nearer to each other, by presenting a reflexive analogy between the trip of Empress Elisabeth of Austria to the Orient in the 19th century and the visit of the filmmaker Ruth Beckermann to Egypt a hundred years later. The film shows a multidimensional worldview of freedom, and delights in a historical dynamism between places and cultures. A hundred years earlier or later, seen from a classic, modern or postmodern point of view, reflects a diverse reality of the Oriental culture. More particularly, the film depicts a pluralistic presence of the Arab Muslim women in their society and an occidental feeling of liberty and enchantment are to be observed in the Austrian imperial experience during Sisi’s visits to Cairo in the nineteenth century. Ruth Beckermann reflects on this exposure in her documentary film-essay a hundred years later, mirroring these imperial interactions and impressions.

This film essay opens horizons for the approach of the earlier mentioned, widely spread minority, that plays a vital role in creating hope, reaching balance and wisdom in the intercultural communication. In this way, it becomes possible to communicate images of realities far from political instrumentalization, social manipulation, cultural absolutisms, and in objectivity. And this view should awaken the intercultural blindness, it should change ignorance into tolerance and arrogance into respect. Yet the situation in the Arab world and the state of the occidental mass media leads the intercultural communication to be nebulous, full of clichés and prejudice captured interactions. And here appear the paradoxes of reality and a conscious and unconscious informational irritation, when picturing facts of the happenings and beings around the world.   

The reality of the Arab world contains continuous confrontations between ideology and belief, individualism and collectivism, idealistic authentic guidelines of Islam and politicized socially instrumentalized interpretations, and the clash between extremist conservativity, extravagant secularization and moderation; as in Fehmi Jadaane’s explanation (2007, About the Final Salvation). This social and political confrontation becomes apparent within a postmodern, imperialistic, absolutist, globalized, and complex cultural environment. Across from the paradoxical Arab Muslim realities, stand the occidental mass media, captured in their illusions, blocked in their circumstances, that lack flexibility and multidimensionality.

In times when theories of globalization and constructive interculturality are being explored and announced to be adopted, most occidental mass media continue to hold on to the old ideas of imperialism, orientalism, biased one-sidedness and narrowness of opinion. They view the Orient as a historical object for research and monopoly, and never as an interactive communication partner. Mass media work in turmoil between commerciality and politically manipulated informational coverage, which causes the loss of objectivity and ethics. At the same time, humanity has verified its highly qualified intelligence throughout history, being able to build prospering cultures and long-lasting eras of civilization through communication and mutual interactions. This means that humans are capable of continuing to generate dialogue based on equitability, freedom, equality, openness and wisdom.

Here, this writing would allow itself to take the initiative, to remind the worldwide societies of the simple fertile bases of intercultural communication, to keep the doors open to authentic ethical dialogue in today’s difficult reality. This initiative would clarify that religion is not tradition. This distinction may be easy to understand, but neither the majority of the Arabic societies, nor most of the occidental public opinion have achieved the differentiation between those two variables of culture.

In order to reach an objectivity in the intercultural communication, the nature of mindfulness should be revived in societies.  The reawakening of this nature would lead to a more flexible and less axiomatic viewpoint, it would encourage critical thinking towards societies’ own convictions, it would help understand the perspective of Others and question it in a respectful way. Mindfulness would allow a creative innovation of thought, seen through the perception of the Other; as in Mohammed Abed Al-Jabri’s elaboration (2009, The Construction of the Arab Mind: Critic of the Arab Mind). In reaching this point, societies would elevate above their own cognitions, and enrich themselves by understanding and observing reality in the context of the different Other. This horizon reflects the suggestion of mutuality, developing an encounter containing partnership, equality and cooperation between cultures, allowing the revitalization of worldviews, and the realization of the fact of perspective difference in reality.

Another essential base for a constructive communication is to realize the common shared natural background among humans.  All human beings have the same instinctive actions, reactions and interactions with their natural environment, and they have been part of their core before the creation of symbolisms and the development of cultural systems started.  This means that societies could build stable floors for intercultural dialogue on those mutual common grounds of nature, when they take the factual scape of equality and organic consensus of humanity into consideration.As result, shared common nature and balanced social interaction of symbolisms between reality and its images are clearly constructions of a successful cultural and intercultural communication.  

The wonderful thing about that, is that all human beings, hence societies have the attributes of symmetry and consensus in them, which only needs to be re-energized by bringing cultural authenticity back to life, through the efforts of the public opinion leaders and the exertions of mass media systems, in order to form the objectivity of perspectives and handle the intercultural reality as wise as possible.

One last observation concerning the current cultural and intercultural dynamic around the globe, is the ambivalence of the Arab societies in reference to their historical civilizational relation to the occident, regarding the gender constellations there. It is being observed, that since the imperialistic and colonialist times of history, the characteristic development of Arab women and men has been going through a lost social turbulence. Arab societies are facing a three-dimensional conflictual crisis since the occidental modernity: they live a missing authenticity between an obtrusive enforced modernity, extremely closed cultural concepts that are used as tools of resistance against constant occupation of geographies, cultures and identities, and the conscious and unconscious cultural distractive chaos!

Postmodern Arab societies are confronted with the lack of knowledge about their own cultures, because of the locally enforced backwardness and the international invasive exploitive interference, leading to their current crisis of identity, language, self-consciousness and confidence.  And this leads to the present misery of the Arab cultures, dignity and stability.

In the end, has the human civilization reached its downfall of evolution in the current cultural and intercultural communication; as explained in the theoretical concepts of Spengler and Ibn Khaldun (Oswald Spengler,2014: By Hamid Reza Yousefi, Interkulturelle Kommunikation, Eine Praxis Orientierte Einfühlung./ Abd  Ar-Rahman Ibn Khaldun,1984: The Introduction/ مقدمة ابن خلدون)? Or is it still possible to reconstruct fertile grounds for productive elevations and prosperous horizons around the globe?

Orient, occident, reality and images in the postmodern communication…

Where is the path taking the lead?