“I’m from the Middle East, so I’m not used to this sort of thing, but I’ve been in similar situations,” Jamal Albarghouti told CNN news agency.
The “sort of thing” he is referring to is the shooting at Virginia Tech on April 16. Student Cho Seung-Hui gunned down 33 students and faculty, including himself.
This was an off-handed comment by Albarghouti, who taped footage on his cell phone of police closing in on the building where Cho was firing.
Does he mean that being from the Middle East, he is not used to violent situations, or this sort of violent situation?
Of course there are violent situations in the Middle East, we hear about them daily on the news. Ask almost any American on the street, and they are likely to tell you that the Middle East is the most dangerous region on the planet. This view is based on the reports we get from the media.
Much like we form our opinions of other countries based on news coverage, they are likely to form theirs under the same conditions. If school shootings seem awfully common to an American, then they must seem doubly so to a viewer, who is only seeing the highlights of American daily news during the international segment of their own media outlet.
In the way that some feel that every mosque in the Middle East is a likely candidate for a staging place for holy war, other countries must get the impression that our schools are breeding grounds for brooding mass murderers.
There are school shootings in other countries, and there are school shootings in the Middle East. The most recent one took place at the Beirut Arab University in Beirut, Lebanon. The difference is that this shooting was a result of a clash between pro- and anti-government protesters.
School tragedies in these countries are a result of clashing ideologies, rather than the clash of one person against his or her surroundings. They resemble Kent State rather than Columbine.
Nearly every attack on an American campus since the 1990s through to the present has been caused by an insider, a student.
These students are often ostracized by their peers, which is dangerous at a school because of the formative and essentially vulnerable environment. Schools are emotional breeding grounds for these situations.
What this says to the outside world is that America’s schools are populated by insular children.
These children are not just the ones who are doing the shooting, but the ones who are raised to pay attention to only their own problems, dealing with others’ indirectly (often through gossip or mockery.)
Maybe there is something to be learned from the countries we’re supposed to be the protector and example for. We tend to shake our heads at the news of market bombings and videotaped beheadings. We tsk-tsk and talk about how dangerous it is over there, with all the bombs and guns that are everywhere. But somehow, with all these bombs and guns, and in between all the market bombings and videotaped beheadings, there is little news of children killing one another.
We can easily get caught up in a superior mindset by thinking about how their grown-ups don’t know how to behave, but from their perspective, it is our kids who have the same problem.