Saudi official: Arab culture 'immersed in hatred'

Member of Saudi Arabian legislative council calls on Arab world to take responsibility for violent and xenophobic culture.

By Tova Dvorin

First Publish: 12/18/2015, 8:15 AM

Violence pervades Arab culture, a Saudi Arabian politician declared earlier this month, and blamed that culture for encouraging terror attacks in Europe and around the world. 

Ibrahim Al-Buleihi, a member of Riyadh's Shura Council - the formal advisory body to Saudi Arabia's absolute monarchy, affirmed that Arab culture's "hatred of the other" is to blame for the Islamic State (ISIS) attacks in Paris, in a December 5 Al-Arabiya television broadcast. His remarks were translated by the Middle Eastern Research Media Institute (MEMRI). 

"We are immersed in this violence, because we are immersed in the hatred of the other, and we believe we are always in the right, and that the falsehood of the other is absolute," Al-Buleihi began. "This perspective makes us hate whoever does not agree with our thinking and our way of life." 

"We still delude ourselves into believing that we are better than the others, and that therefore, we must not embrace anything from the experience of others," he continued. 

Al-Buleihi rejected the host's argument that the Arab world "is being oppressed," noting that they "oppress others." 

When asked whether the Arab world "should be held accountable" for the Islamic State (ISIS) attacks in Paris or the September 11, 2001 attacks, he declared that the Arab world should be held responsible not for the specific attacks, but for the culture behind them. 

"We produce this kind of people [who carried out the Paris attacks and 9/11], this kind of hostility," he stressed. "The people in Paris or in America, for example, are innocent people who have nothing to do with politics."