Spence Green

Not much news to report this week. I ran an awful half-marathon Friday morning; thankfully I still have a few weeks before Dubai.

Bradford made some excellent comments in a recent email:

As of now (your Nov 3 post) your deepest shared observations have been about your experience in a new place, but that new place is undefined. Like any analytical problem solver, you have reduced UAE to the lowest common denominator of a foreign environment in order to discuss the psychology of being there. When you are comfortable with those adjustments, allow yourself to move quickly to asking how the specific nature of this Arabian experience will affect you, not as a foreign place for conversation fodder, but as a specific place where you are immersed.

In response, I’ve started a short piece about the intersection between Islam and politics. Certainly shelves upon shelves in the library contain critical work on this subject. Instead, I intend to write from a local perspective. My observations will come from conversations, the newspapers, and the general nature of my daily life here. Hopefully I can find a balance between my Western education and the Arab perspective. I thought of waiting to post the entire thing, but I’d like some commentary as I go along.

The Economist has printed a related article this week.