Dare to Question, Dare to be Human

Lina Al-Ejeilat
(Age 23, Jordan)

I'm Jordanian. I'm Arab. I'm a Christian Jordanian Arab. I'm not a refugee. I'm not an immigrant. I don't come from a cross-cultural marriage. I can trace my ancestors in this country up to my tenth grandfather.

To some I'm a minority here because of my religion. I'm Christian by faith, but I'm Muslim by collective culture.

Collective culture… what does that mean anyway?

I guess it means that a lot of our practices, values, and consensus on what is deemed right or wrong stems from the traditions and values adopted by the dominant culture, or in this case, the dominant religion.

I live in a society where it's hard to be different, a society where the 'collective' supersedes the individual, and a society where – by choosing to be different - you don't break the norms, but break yourself against the norms.

I live in a society where immigrant workers are treated as an inferior race. You go to many households and see a 5-year-old child treat the domestic worker from a country like Sri Lanka, the Philippines, or Indonesia as if she were some family property. She is labeled as "the maid" wherever she goes, and cannot really have the same social life, freedom, and integration within the community at large like any human being living in a country deserves to.

Young people think that they are exposed to a lot of different cultures through different media; the internet, satellite stations, movies… but the truth of the matter is, it is this media specifically that is keeping them ignorant, and giving them a very superficial view of this different culture. There was one time when I took a German friend of mine downtown. She has what you might call the "typical" European looks (if there is such a thing as typical) – blond, white, and dressed a bit differently from girls in Amman. As we were walking down the street, a teenage boy yelled from his window, in English: "Hey Bitch! What's up Bitch?"

I was very embarrassed, but she took it calmly and walked on, explaining to me that it is usually only with teenage boys that she gets these exclamations. Now when you think about it, these boys live in a very conservative society that makes it clear early on what the taboos are. Then, through media, TV, and movies, they get an image of a different society where these taboos are not prohibited, and not condemned. In their minds, which are programmed and scripted dogmatically to view this different approach by other cultures and mentalities as "sin", every blond woman is coming out of a "sinful" foreign film.

They don't know that the world outside their narrow sphere is not just one big Hollywood film, they don't know that watching "friends" and "Sex and the City" is not exactly Globalization 101, where they open their minds and learn more about "the other".

So what do we do? How do we educate young people and help them embrace diversity and live in harmony in multicultural societies?

I learned the most valuable lessons in diversity and accepting those who are not like me without feeling that this threatens my values or undermines my culture, throughout the time I spent in International Youth Camps. Not all youth camps are the same though. The idea is not to bring food, music, brochures and souvenirs, and share them in one big festive atmosphere where everyone is just excited about interacting with "exotic" people.

No. The idea is to be able to sit together, and not shy away from asking questions. When we came to a point of admitting ignorance, and asking, not with the intention to judge or form opinions, but to understand and become aware. Dialogue is not easy thing, it is not a casual conversation where you ask, what do you usually have for lunch? And is it ok to wear shorts in your city or not? It also isn't an attempt to prove anything to anyone or to play Public Relations Officer of your country's tourism ministry. No, dialogue is when you agree to lay bare everything you had taken for granted, and everything that was passed on to you and that you accepted unquestionably, and to dig below the surface.

When young people learn to find the courage and venture onto this uncertain playground, where it's not about playing to win or lose, but rather walk through a maze, where players set off at different starting points, but find that their paths intersect and that underneath all the baggage they come carrying, is a simple truth, and that is their humanity… when young people get to that point, their minds will experience a liberation unknown to them before.

Our society, and our education system, is still very answer-based. I believe it should be more question-based. When we feed into the minds of children that there is only one right answer, and that is the answer in the assigned textbook, we program them to be narrow-minded, dogmatic individuals. Let's bring them together, and let's encourage them to ask, and question everything, and look for answers in places seldom trodden. Governments and Institutions should invest more in giving youth experiential learning, travel experiences, and most importantly, chances to see and hear first-hand, rather than be trapped by media scope and paradigms of conformity.

It's a challenge. It's risky. And it might involve a lot of confusion.

I still feel Jordanian… Arab… Christian.