Sunday, July 22, 2007

Why are Arabs/Kuwaitis so discriminating? Are Arab parents neglecting to bring up their children with proper manners and humane feeling???

Well this has been a question, which has been on my mind for so long. As an Indian who was mostly raised in Kuwait, I have seen the open disgust and discrimination that most Arabs have for other nationalities.

Thanks to God and luckily I have had to endure very few or rare such incidents as I left after my schooling. However, being back in Kuwait after many years makes me feel good coz this has always been my second motherland and I am happy to see the way the country has progressed but at the same time, I feel so desperately sad at the deterioration of moral standards and manners of the youngsters etc. They seem to have no respect for their fellow human beings.

I got the chance to go through a lot of blogs today and understood that its just not me who feels this way, and that there are also so many Arabs too who agree with my line of thought.

It is true that many of the parents are indeed bringing up their kids as brats with no respect for their fellow human beings. This is more the case as most kids seem to be growing up with maids from whom they learn a lot of bad habits and parents rarely take notice of all this and do not bother to monitor or supervise their kids.

It was shocking to read so many articles in the papers recently about Arab children openly trying to molest many Asian women in the public buses. Can you believe that fellow passengers just kept staring and that none of them bothered to respond or help? The bus driver too looked upon all this and enjoyed the whole scenario.
Here is another incident - kids in a supermarket kept going and touching a woman's butt and the father of the kids looked on and laughed in an encouraging manner when he saw the woman's helplessness and look of disgust. What has the Arab world come to now? All the money and comfort seems to have gone to their head! Is this the way children should be brought up? What will be the condition of the next generation? I do believe that we have a scary scenario in our midst.

Being expatriates, many or most of us go through some kind of bad and discriminating incidents at some point in our life in the Arab world. This can be in the supermarkets or the government offices, police station, airport, when we go to renew our residence permit, traffic, ministry, infact where not! It is not at all surprising now. And another major problem is that we cannot respond or react to these problems because we are in a foreign land and have to live by their rules which they keep changing at the drop of a hat and also because the police mainly listen only to the Arab's part of the story and its they who have the influence.

Well I would love to go on and on about so many such incidents but then the things I might say will not sit well with many people. So why create havoc?

Well atleast I am comforted by the fact that there are so many who agree with me on this as I have seen so many such related articles in both the newspapers and the blogs by Arabs, Indians, Americans etc etc.

2 comments:

Jane said...

This is shocking to hear - but don't you feel it's an unfair generalisation? Lack of respect for elders is a common ailment among the youth, from Tokyo to Toronto. Lack of respect for women is equally prevalent the world over. I don't think one can blame only Arabs for their upbringing.

yawn said...

tho i dont completely agree that ALL arabs are not well bought up, it is true that half our generation is certainly heading that way. i think its safe to say that arabs in the UAE are not strangers to courtesy good manners