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Margaret K. NydellMargaret K. Nydell
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Understanding Arabs: A Guide for Modern Times Kindle Edition
by Margaret K. Nydell (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
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For nearly three decades, diplomats, students, business people and governments have relied on Dr. Margaret Nydell's seminal work as the essential guide to comprehending an immensely varied culture. Covering all aspects of Arab life, from religion and society to social norms and communication styles, this all-encompassing guide reveals what the often misunderstood Arab culture is really like. Each chapter, including the examples, all statistics and charts, and each country overview has been extensively updated to reflect current events. This candid and readable guide for non-specialists promotes understanding between modern-day Arabs and Westerners without pushing a political agenda. It beautifully captures the contrasts and characteristics of a great, largely misunderstood civilization and brings them vividly to life.
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429 pages
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26 July 2018
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For fifteen years, Margaret Nydell's Understanding Arabs has been used by countless Americans preparing to work or live in the Arab world. It is a unique source; there is nothing like it. Written with wit as well as seriousness, it provides a sound cultural appreciation and basic data on the region... Her personal message of the tragic events of September 11 should be required reading by all who make decisions or write commentary on the Arab world. - Max L. Gross, Joint Military Intelligence College
For her understanding of the Arab mind, her expertise in teaching, and her skill in crafting this book, Dr. Nydell is truly a national treasure. Understanding Arabs should be required reading for any professional or policy maker who is involved in any way with working with Arabs or on matters impacting the Middle East. - F.L. Rusty Capps, former FBI Supervisory Special Agent, and President of Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence Training Partners, LLC.
Margaret Nydell blends her informed understanding of Arab history and contemporary politics with deep and thoughtful insight into Arab culture and psychology. Many authors know much about the former, and a few know much about the latter, but only Understanding Arabs conveys a deep understanding of the synergies of both. This is essential reading for those working in - or with - Arab countries, or seeking to understand Arab society. - Lawrence R. Velte Associate Professor of Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, National Defense University, and Associate, Washington Center for Protocol, Inc.
Middle East specialists have long relied on their worn copies of Understanding Arabs for insights about Arab social behaviour.. A whole generation of U.S. diplomats were introduced to the subject by Dr. Nydell in the 1970s and 1980s. In this concise and practical guide, she shares her wealth of scholarly and real-world experience, and she does so without the psycho-babble that too often dominates the other surveys of the subject. - Ambassador David L. Mack, Vice President, Middle East Institute --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
About the Author
Dr. Margaret Nydell is a widely respected scholar and professor of Modern Standard Arabic, Arabic dialectology, and many Arabic regional dialects. She was an Arabic linguist for the Foreign Service Institute and the U.S. Department of State, and has directed the latter s School of Advanced Arabic Training in Tunisia. The author of ten books, she currently lectures on Arab cultural orientation for numerous government and private organizations. Dr. Nydell holds a master s degree in Arabic and a PhD in applied linguistics, both from Georgetown University. She has lived and worked in Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Cairo. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
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Product details
ASIN : B07B4F2NFT
Publisher : Intercultural Press; 6th ed. edition (26 July 2018)
Language : English
File size : 1480 KB
Text-to-Speech : Enabled
Screen Reader : Supported
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
X-Ray : Not Enabled
Word Wise : Enabled
Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
Print length : 429 pagesBest Sellers Rank: 496,399 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)9 in History of the United Arab Emirates
154 in Social Customs & Traditions
422 in Study of Customs & Traditions (Books)Customer Reviews:
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 143 ratings
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Mohammad A. Elbadry
5.0 out of 5 stars InterestingReviewed in the United States on 4 August 2023
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Interesting book to understand arab culture
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C. Derick Varn
4.0 out of 5 stars Helpful if basic introductionReviewed in the United States on 28 March 2016
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Professor Nydell does a good job introducing arabic culture to the Americans and Western Europeans, although sometimes she does give more rosy an impression than I have personally experienced after as tolerance goes. This should be taken as well-intentioned counter-balance to a lot of conflation of Arab culture to Islam and a oversimplification of Islam itself. Professor Nydell does, however, often have to be caveats about the nature of Saudi Arabian culture and society in the book where a more austere form of Sunni Islam and a very conservative monarchy play to the most conservative elements in Arab society.
Living in Egypt myself, I found this book most helpful when discussing possible points of miscommunication and mutual misunderstanding of relationships. While Professor Nydell does not talk about honor or shame cultures--to be fair, these cultural archetypes are a bit too broad to be useful--the focus on public and private will be hard for many Anglo-North Americans and Western Europeans to completely understand. Dr. Nydell does not go into how this will be perceived by "Westerner," as it is often see as irrational and nepotistic, and indeed, it often is the latter. That said, understanding the intensity that both social bonds and hospitality play in Arab culture--Christian and Muslim--is vital to understanding some anti-Americanism and mutual miscommunication.
By and large, which a few overly positive generalizations aside, my experience of the slice of the Arab world which I currently live is aided by this book. Although the country profiles in the final chapters due help with breaking some kind traits down, the political information is already out of date only two or three years after the fact due the current breakneck speed of change in the Arab world. Furthermore, the chapters on Islam and Islamism are too basic to be helpful to those who know anything about the subject but probably won't help those who are negatively oriented towards learning about it.
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Isabeau
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent explanation of Arab Values and BehaviorsReviewed in the United States on 15 December 2017
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I teach a course in Intercultural Communication and am always on the lookout for books that I can use in class. I especially look for books that focus on specific cultures since most of my students have not travelled in the U.S., much less abroad. Nydell's book does an excellent job of explaining Arab culture from an Arab perspective. Her first edition was very much focused on western (particularly American) business men who would be traveling to, or working in, the Middle East. She has broadened that out a bit and included updated content in each edition. Her goals include helping westerners understand Arab values and behaviors as well as helping westerners understand the logic of the values and behaviors. The information is written for a general audience, contains specific examples throughout, is easy to understand, and covers key topics. For someone who teaches a course on cultural values, it provides concrete examples for the theories we cover in class - but is equally valuable to someone who just wants to increase their understanding of Arab cultures. Note: before I travelled to the Middle East, I had 3 Arabs from different countries read the book to give me their opinion of the content. Each found it to be excellent. Later when I travelled to the Middle East, I found the information quite useful and accurate. I offer the highest recommendation possible for this book.
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Meera
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book for Understanding Arabic CultureReviewed in the United States on 25 July 2015
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I needed this for a class and I have to say this book is GREAT. It explains the culture of the Middle East very well. The book is written clearly and is simple to read. The book keeps your interest. The author goes into great detail and touches on things like the role of women,manors, Islam, proverbs, a brief history of the Arab world, Arab body language, she explains a little of the Arabic language and my favorite part is at the end she gives a background of each Arabic speaking country and highlights the differences between each one. I have read many books on the Middle East, and many of times they are simple stereotypes and often over sensationalize things that are very rare or extreme examples (For example the Princess Series). This book does not do that, it tells about real life and how Arabs live their lives day to day. I recommend this book for anyone. It is probably the best book I have read on the subject. It is a short and simple read, but you will have a better understanding of the Arab world after reading this.
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Boot
3.0 out of 5 stars ... mixed bag - on the upside it's accessible and easy to read and covers a lot of groundReviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 August 2014
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A mixed bag - on the upside it's accessible and easy to read and covers a lot of ground, giving the lay reader a decent grounding in lots of the interesting cultural traits and differences in the region.
However, on the downside, those qualities can make parts of the book feel shallow or over-generalised. And some sections are little more than a few pages of quotations from third parties on eg Anti-Americanism.
One specific quibble is the contention that in the UK the War of American Independence is known as the War of American Rebellion, which is a completely new one on me and anyone else I've asked (all under 40 so perhaps it's historic....). It doesn't matter very much in context but it did make me ponder the quality of fact checking elsewhere.
Overall, a decent starting point for the first time reader - but don't let this be your one and only book on the subject.
2 people found this helpfulReport
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Jason Pettus
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July 31, 2012
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)
This is one of those books about foreign culture that I like the best, where someone will both detail the various things that everyday people in another area of the world might do that might seem strange to us Americans, and explain why they do them; and it's especially fascinating in this case, because of covering the "Arab World," which like the "Islamic World" is a term mostly made up by Westerners to try to easily explain something that doesn't have an easy explanation. (Think for example of mashing together Irish, Latin and African Catholics, in order to explain in a single short statement the "Christian World.") And indeed, that's one of the first things that scholar Margaret K. Nydell makes clear, that there's a difference between Arab society and Islamic society, with there being a lot of overlap for sure but some very specific differences too; and that's basically the start of a long and informing look at all the normal parts of Arab life that might seem weird to us, from the routine overuse of both praise and damnation to the sometimes draconian dress codes of some nations, why straight men hold hands in public but not men and women, and a lot more. Now in its fifth edition, this is a lively anecdotal guide that will help clueless Americans like me to better understand and appreciate their Arab neighbors, and comes strongly recommended to those even with just a passing interest.
Out of 10: 8.8
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Charles Haywood
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August 10, 2015
This is an awful book. It (the fifth edition, from 2012) contains a tiny bit of apparently useful information, which may or may not be true or generally applicable, combined with heaps of mendacious propaganda and annoying hectoring, padded out with material yanked from the likes of Wikipedia. If you’re relying on it to help you, say, understand Arabs, I doubt very much if it will do that. If you are looking for accurate historical information or informed commentary on Islam, a major focus of the book, you should run away as fast as you can.
I read this book because I was simultaneously reading Muhammad Asad’s The Road To Mecca, an outstanding conversion memoir/travelogue, and I hoped Nydell’s book might complement it. My hopes were grossly misplaced. The target audience for this book, according the back blurb, is “diplomats, scholars, business people, travelers and all those who wish to understand the complex events playing out on the world stage.” If you’re one of those people, you’d be better off reading nothing.
Nydell has two fundamental goals, as far as I can tell, in this book. The prime one is to defend Arab/Muslim culture against what she views as Western ignorance and slurs. Unfortunately, what she defends is not the rich and textured cultural and theological history of Islam; it is the worst aspects of revivalist traditional Islam, along with various pernicious religio-cultural practices of Arabs. Nydell’s second goal is to persuade the reader that Arab societies should be viewed optimistically, and therefore any (minor, in her view) defects overlooked. Somewhere after those goals is, perhaps, a minor goal to actually inform the reader about how to understand Arabs. But even there, Nydell’s goal, by her own admission, is not to help the reader understand all Arabs—merely a tiny slice of educated Arabs (“businessmen and women, bureaucrats, managers, scientists, professors, military officers, lawyers, banking officials and intellectuals”). Even if Nydell did help us understand this slice of Arabs, we’d be a long, long way from “understanding Arabs.”
Nydell begins the book with a long and tendentious “Message From The Author.” By the very second sentence, she gives her game away—“Since [I wrote the first edition], the world has been bombarded with conflicting images of Arab culture, from planes flying into the World Trade Center to Arabs crying in grief over the actions of their extremist counterparts . . . .” If there are lots of images of Arabs crying in grief over September 11, I and everyone else have somehow missed them, even though if there actually were a single one it would be played on a continuous loop by the media to provide balance and try to prevent “Islamophobia,” at the same time actual images of Americans dying on September 11 would continue to be suppressed, as they are, also to prevent “Islamophobia.”
One of Nydell’s failures is that despite constantly talking about Islam, she utterly fails to even lay the basic groundwork for understanding Islam, not explaining that the Qur’an is only a small part of theological guidance for Muslims, most of which is actually based on the voluminous Sunnah, the practices and sayings recorded about Muhammad and his companions. (She mentions hadith once or twice, without explanation of their role.) She instead pulls the mendacious Karen Armstrong trick of falsely analogizing the role of the Bible in Christianity to that of the Qur’an in Islam, and stating that if something isn’t in the Qur’an, it’s not Islamic but cultural, when in fact it’s the Sunnah that’s relevant and controlling of Muslim behavior. Nydell uses this trick to explain away the less pleasant parts of Islam, so it’s pretty clear that her failure to explain the basics of Islam is deliberate, not just another example of sloppy writing.
Nydell then spends several pages praising the so-called Arab Spring and events in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. “The Arab Spring has been effective, as the people aspire to create more representative governments.” Unfortunately, of course, the time since Nydell wrote this has shown what a disaster the Arab Spring was for all the countries concerned, which strongly suggests that representative government is not something that has any role, now or ever, in the Arab world. And in the same paragraph, Nydell contradicts herself, admitting openly that what most Arabs want is not representative government, but Islamism—i.e.., a totalitarian Islamic theocracy. Which, of course, we are well on our way to getting everywhere but Egypt, preceded by the dogs of war, accompanied by the extermination of Jewish and Christian communities thousands of years old, and doubtless followed by new decades or centuries of darkness. Nydell, however, failed to see any of this, because her view is that Arabs are poor, misunderstood people Just Like Us Except Not (whom she doesn’t try very hard to help us understand).
Nydell’s book is filled with unintentionally hilarious howlers, all designed to defend not actual, demonstrable Muslim contributions to global culture and theology, of which there are plenty, but instead to pretend Muslims are more virtuous than Westerners (i.e., Americans). “Muslims have no historical grievance against Jews and did not engage in periodic persecutions as happened repeatedly in Europe.” Apparently Nydell has missed most of Muslim history, such as Muhammad slaughtering the captured-in-battle Jewish Banu Qurayza tribe in 627 and the Muslim extermination of the Jewish kingdoms of the Yemen, along with continuous Ottoman and Mamluk pogroms, and is not aware of the many proscriptions against Jews in the Qur’an and the Sunnah. “I have never heard an Arab or a Muslim say anything negative about the Jewish faith, or Jews as a people, except in the context of Israel and its policies.” This seems highly unlikely, unless Nydell spends all her time in Arab countries in a Four Seasons. “Both [Christianity and Islam] have a concept of Holy War—Crusade and Jihad.” This is just a dumb lie to confuse the ignorant—jihad, in the form of warfare against enemies of Islam (sometimes confined to self-defense, defined extremely broadly) is an absolutely central part of Islam; the Crusades were a brief efflorescence of warfare for 100 years, highly controversial among Christians even at the time, and having nothing to do with Christian doctrine at all. The howlers go on and on.
Nydell, of course, refuses to ever consider that any Arab behavior she identifies might be bad (although, of course, she is not shy about identifying many non-Arab behaviors as bad). So, she says, “Arabs consciously reserve the right to look at the world in a subjective way, particularly if a more objective assessment of a situation would bring to mind a too-painful truth.” Another way of saying this would be “Arabs are fabulists, who create and repeat lies so they can ignore reality.” If that’s the way your culture is, that’s the way your culture is, but let’s not pretend that’s anything but a bad way to live, and a way that’s likely to ensure your culture remains undeveloped and ignorant.
Or, “Arabs like to talk politics with Westerners, and they will readily bring up controversial topics like the Palestine issue, the Iraq wars, and the legacies of colonialism and imperialism. Yet they are not prepared for frank statements of disagreement with their positions on these questions or even inadvertent comments that sound negative toward their point of view or supportive of the opposing side of the argument.” In other words, Arabs don’t like to talk politics at all with Westerners—they like to hector Westerners (read: Americans) with their (illogical, irrational and fabulist) political views, and the Westerner BETTER NOT dare to say anything at all that any person, no matter how irrational, could EVER interpret as anything but TOTAL AGREEMENT. Sure, this is one way to live. But it’s a stupid way to live.
This is such a target rich environment I’m going to have to cut myself off. But one last example. Nydell claims there is a groundswell in the Arab world in favor of “modern concepts on issues such as slavery and women’s rights,” and that there is no support in the Qur’an for slavery and denial of rights to women. She simultaneously contradicts herself by defensively (and heretically, to a Muslim) claiming that the Qur’an “is a product of its times” and “obscure and unclear” (although the Qur’an and Sunnah are actually very clear that slavery is just fine and always will be, and the women’s rights are severely limited and immutable). Nydell than claims that things are changing because “There is a project to retranslate the Qur’an in light of modern academic scholarship, which is yielding interpretations in keeping with ‘the ethics of the modern age’ and fighting against culture practices that are justified as religious.” (She does not explain the contradiction of how it can be that if the practices are changed by a retranslation of the Qur’an, they could be merely cultural, rather than religious, in foundation.) Her evidence is a cite to a 2007 New York Times article profiling the decision by Laleh Bakhtiar, in her translation of the Qur’an, to translate Qur’an 4:34, the verse authorizing beating of wives by their husbands, universally translated to mean beat or strike, as “make go away.” As they say, wishing doesn’t make it so, and there is exactly zero evidence of any real “projects to retranslate the Qur’an.” In fact, what little critical exegesis and historical analysis of the Qur’an is done has to be done under psuedonyms, because death is a real risk for anyone daring to approach the Qur’an as the Bible has been approached since the 19th century. Plenty of people (including Muhammad Asad) have made tentative steps toward modernizing Islam, which is difficult to do for structural reasons. But none of these have made any relevant headway, and Nydell is merely claiming they have to make Americans like Arabs more.
In fact, things are generally heading the other way with Islam. Nydell repeatedly notes the that Arabs over past decades have moved rapidly to adopt more traditional forms of Islam, away from any attempt at modernity. She never attempts to explain this move, or how it squares with her other claims of modernizing.
Nydell repeatedly celebrates the supposed Arab contrast with the West, in that Arabs supposedly are not obsessed with “getting ahead” like Westerners (by which she means, again, Americans), but instead are traditional, family focused, and fatalistic. This may be a superior way to live and plenty of Westerners have mourned the loss of community in the West and our many, many pathologies, some of which the Arab world has so far successfully avoided. But Nydell pretends you can have it both ways—have an advanced Western economy, but not adopt Western habits of striving. It’s a commonplace that most Arab countries, except those with oil, are underdeveloped and on the wrong side of the “Great Divergence” among rich and poor countries. What Nydell ignores is that within living memory, all Arabs lived in abject poverty. Oil/gas, combined with huge handouts from the United State to countries like Egypt with little oil, are the only reason there’s been any economic advancement at all. This suggests the traditional culture is not amenable to advancement.
The middle third of the book is (finally) devoted to the specifics of Arab culture, with an eye to understanding. This covers general topics in extremely short chapters such as “Arab values,” friendship, emotion, male/female relationships, social structure and formalities, and so forth. Most of this will come as no surprise to all to anyone who is reasonably well read in newspapers and books, and there is little depth, but it’s nice to have collected in one place (although, of course, by the author’s own admission much of this applies only to a tiny slice of Arabs). And, of course, even this section is shot through with apologetics for bad behavior and customs that Westerners generally find abhorrent, while the author simultaneously finds frequent occasion to criticize non-Arabs.
Even Nydell’s explanations of Arab customs which may be helpful to a Western visitor are bowdlerized. For example, she notes in several places the custom of eating with the right hand, the left hand being considered unclean in Arab societies. This is well known, but Nydell never notes why this is (it is because the left hand is frequently used instead of toilet paper, and more generally Islam tends to view the left hand as the one to be used for any “less honorable” activity). Presumably Nydell doesn’t note this because most Americans would find it unpleasant and therefore find it confirms their prejudices, and Nydell is desperate to prevent any confirmation of prejudice, even if wholly justified by the facts. Similarly, Nydell whitewashes that in the Arab world divorce of women by men is common and socially unexceptional, and in fact frequently men serially marry wives and divorce them, and that women essentially cannot divorce men, both in Islam and because of cultural rules. She simply pretends that really women are essentially equal to men in the matter of divorce.
There are many lesser problems with the book. Nydell is addicted to constantly using italics, which quickly gets very irritating. And so on—but enough piling on.
Having quickly disposed of the task of skimming actual Arab culture, Nydell proceeds to hector us some more with long sections on “Anti-Americanism,” by which she means how Arabs aren’t anti-American, except when they are, and then it’s our fault, and by the way Americans are terrible bigots who need to be educated by those nice Arabs. Then a set of chapters on “Muslims in the West,” wherein Western bigotry is again excoriated and Muslims are claimed to be model citizens in Europe (never mind the sky-high crime rates, with more than half of the criminals in jail in France being Muslim, and the hundreds of thousands of girls subjected to genital mutilation, none of which, or anything else that might take away from Nydell’s vision of happy Arab multiculturalism opposed by Western bigots, is mentioned).
Nydell finally ends her offenses to the reader by padding out the rest of the book, having the final third of the book be a country-by-country description of each of 18 Arab countries, with basic factually information, liberally cribbed from Wikipedia (which is repeatedly cited), Encarta and various blog and newspaper articles. And, finally, Nydell concludes with an injunction that for Westerners, “All that is necessary is to be nonjudgmental and to avoid any actions that are insulting or shocking,” (because, apparently, Arabs don’t have to be nonjudgmental), and that Westerners must not be “open and upfront with beliefs and feelings,” because this “needs to be tempered when operating in the tradition-bound culture of the Middle East.” In other words, stupid American, keep your mouth shut and your mind closed to the possibility that retrograde behavior is retrograde, and the Arabs won’t hurt you.
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Dan
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January 8, 2010
The title of this book made me hesitant to read it, despite the great reviews by prominent Middle East scholars. I finally decided to read it after hearing Ms. Nydell talk about her extensive research on colloquial Arabic. I realized she was the real deal.
She gives an excellent overview of Arab and Muslim cultural norms and mindsets in the Arab world. This isn't your run of the mill, antiquated, presumptive, fearmongering, Islamophobic manifestation of the beloved War on Terror that we are so used to seeing in bookstores. Margaret Nydell knows her stuff. If you really want to understand the Arab world, start by reading this book.
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Lauren
381 reviews
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March 17, 2016
Upon completion of this book, I am now more qualified to handle foreign policy than Trump.
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Ashur
255 reviews
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October 11, 2011
While this book isn't about "Islam" per se, it does have chapters about Islam and makes a point of not conflating the word "Arab" with "Muslim" (hence why it's on my "Islam" shelf). This text is primarily aimed at people from from a U.S. cultural background who work with Arabs or will be working in the Arab world. It is intended to educate the reader about general and specific Arab social and cultural practices in the interest of promoting cultural understanding.
It also attempts to educate readers about attitudes in the Arab world regarding U.S. popular culture, Americans themselves, foreign policy and military action. Notice the plural; special care is taken to specify that these attitudes are not monolithic (nor are they anywhere, of course) and explain the sources of them.
Given it is an introductory text, there are sections on Islam and Islamism. These will be of varying value to you, depending on how well-versed you are on these topics to begin with. However, they are essential, given Islam and militant Islam are so poorly understood (and in the case of the latter, overrepresented) in the United States.
The final chapter features brief country-by-country profiles (divided by geographical grouping) that I found quite interesting, as they provided information that I was not aware of about the history and ethnic make-up of each location. This information is quite relevant, especially as it segued into the Appendix regarding Arabic dialects and the influences of local and colonial languages.
Frankly, I think this book would be valuable for most people in the U.S. to read. My job does involve me working with many Arabs, though I would have read it regardless. However, negative reviews I've seen on Amazon have cited it as "tries too hard to understand Arabs" or "negative towards to America". I guess the people who need it the most would be negatively predisposed anyway. Understanding and education are key to getting along with one another.
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Hamza Ghandorh
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July 11, 2019
I was looking for an answer for a question: Are there any books that would explain Arabs to Non-Arabic audience without any stereotypes? I think this book did a pretty well to give simple ideas and a balance representation of what the Arabs actually are. Unfortunately, many current books about Arabs would talk only about spiritual, historical or political sides of Arabs’ life. I think the readers needs to gain a shed of light on Arabs’ social life, as well.
I like the author’s views about some different aspects of Arabs’ life that I was not aware of. For example, the author understood the idea of friendship between Arabs. You scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours, anytime no apologies accepted !
However, it seems the author had some non-objective view against Saudi Arabia's social life, which is understandable. Probably she has not been there, and she did not encounter Saudis. I encourage the author to give a visit to the Gulf countries and to include an updated version for the her book.
I would recommed this book for reading. This book is very relevant today due to the current loaded social media hate wave and xenophobia and islamophobia.
I hope the author would produce an audible version of the book. I think more readers may enjoy such books in different platforms.
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Ron Milligan
103 reviews
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August 10, 2021
This book is a "must-read" if you are ever going to spend time interacting with people in the Arab world. Its an extensive exploration of general Arab customs and mind set. You will discover that they have a very different way of interacting with people that the average Westerner. If you read this book you will gain an understanding how to interact with Arabs without insulting them, and you will also get insight into how they behave in social and business situations and how you should react. There is also discussion of Islamic extremest and how they do not represent the average Arab person.
There is an interesting appendix on the Arabic language and the various dialects.
I read the 4th edition, published in 2006, so things may be a bit out of date.
2021
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Brittany
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September 18, 2020
A rather outdated, but still helpful guide to the often misunderstood Arab culture, language, history, and customs.
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Joost Nixon
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June 6, 2022
Quite helpful to get one oriented.
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Ayo
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December 12, 2019
Great reading. Information is both surprising and solid. Second time reading it. Discovered lots more than anticipated.
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