Arabic in Baltimore

Maya and I are trying to organize people to get together in Baltimore and practice our Arabic together, but it's been a frusterating process. Every time we plan on having people over we're thwarted. Mister McFate getting to us again. It seems like that's been the theme over the past few months.

~Z~ sent me some intermediate level listening and writing exercises and they arrived today. I've flipped through it and it just serves to remind me of how much I need to learn. Ha! I keep thinking I'm doing well, and then I go on Al-Jazeera or VOA and realize that there are a hundred million three year olds with better Arabic skills than me. Keeps me humble....

I got into an interesting conversation this afternoon about Saudi Arabia. An acquaintance of mine suggested that the impinging oil crisis is precipitating a conflict with Saudi Arabia and that the Saudis are active in supporting Al Qaeda as a preemptive offensive. He drew a parallel between the Saudi-Al Qaeda relationship today and the Iranian/Syrian-Hezbollah relationship in the '70's, prior to when everyone knew that Hezbollah was acting with the political support of the two regimes. He inferred that Al Qaeda is the state sponsored non-state actor working on behalf of and in the interests of the Saudi government; basically, it's not just the Saudi on the street that is trying to harm America but it's the government as well. Needless to say, he is not a fan of the Saudi government. Reminds me of Robert Baer's Sleeping with the Devil.

I don't agree with his analysis. Although I don't think that the Saudi regime is our best friend, I do think that they have a vested interest in having a stable American economy, especially since we have been the primary driving force for theirs for the past fifty years. Why would a regime want to destabilize their primary supporter in the world economy? There aren't that many in the royal family who are so gung-ho that they would prefer to go back to the Beduin days of camel's milk and dates and give up partying on the Riviera, and the Chinese appetite for oil hasn't yet gotten to the levels that they could solely float the Saudi economy without our help. We do have friends in Saudi Arabia, but it's not the kind of ideological friendship that we have with Japan or England. It's enlightened self interest, pure and simple (and maybe not particularly enlightened at that).

I think Baer was right when he pointed out that we have something to be very afraid of in Saudi Arabia; however, I think it's the people who agree with the Muslim Brotherhood that should scare us and not the royal family. Fahd had cut a deal with the Wahabbis in letting them foster and ideology of hatred in the local populace and it was made even worse when the Brotherhood were driven out of Egypt by Mubarak and right into Saudi Arabia. Why would you make the claim that Al Qaeda is the secret arm of the house of Saud when Usama has publically painted the royals as apostates? When Al Qaeda has repeatedly attacked Saudi interests? I think that the Saudi royal family is being held hostage by Al Qaeda, or more to the point, by the tide of Wahabbi fundamentalist clerics that preach the same message as Al Qaeda. I think that the Saudi royal family is the one who has made the deal with the devil.