Arab hysteria can be hysterical
Reader comment on item: [Hamid Dabashi:] Columbia University's Hysterical Professor

Submitted by Ken Besig (Israel), Dec 1, 2004 at 07:58

As you are well aware, the psychological neurosis of hysteria is widespread throughout the Arab world, among both men and women. Sometimes this hysteria manifests itself with simple verbal exaggerations, or unexpected and unexplainable emotional excitability regarding trivial events, sometimes with fantastic, incredible, and yet finely detailed first person accounts of events which never occurred, sometimes, and more importantly, with physical acts such as fainting, urination, or apparent convulsions. I have personally seen these phony and sometimes really well, hysterically funny, acting out of these hysterical physical symptoms by Arabs in response to a perceived threat or just to get attention.

That this professor makes bizarre and incredible statements and reacts to them as scientific facts is perfectly normal and indeed expected in the Arab culture from which he came. But you and the various other Westerners present react to this fantasy and hysteria just as would any normal and rational person, that is, with incredulity, a deep and abiding scepticism, and even a revulsion at what you rightly perceive as this professor's crass attempts at deceit and manipulation.

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