As Ken Dorph illustrates, the US media present an image of Europe and Israel as beacons of pluralism and democracy with the Arab world narrowly summarized as ISIS. Ken has spent a good deal of his life in the Arab world, from Morocco to Iraq, and has lived the breathtaking diversity of the region. Ken will explore the surprising historical tolerance of the Arabs, which has been deeply and negatively impacted by Western intervention, the rise of the oil economy, and the conflicts with Israel. Ken will first ask the question: What is an Arab? And will then look at the diversity of the people called Arabs, with a focus on the evolving views on religious minorities and gender. Guests are left to ponder the fragility of a cosmopolitan society, how acceptance of diversity is undermined, and how we can help build a more caring and cosmopolitan world.
Thursday April 20, at 7 p.m.:
Hidden Cosmopolitanism of the Arab World: Part 1
The focus will be on the position of religious minorities in the Arab world, the ‘people of the book,’ and the overall greater tolerance in Muslim Arab societies compared with Christian European. Ken is particularly interested in the experience of Jewish Arabs. He celebrated Passover in Morocco in 1972, taught at the Jewish school in Tunis in 1975, swam each Saturday with Jewish friends in Damascus in 1979, and his closest friends in Cairo were a Christian-Jewish couple, the wife among the few remaining Jews in Cairo. Ken was honored to introduce Sag Harbor friend and neighbor Lucette Lagnado, author of The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit, to the extraordinary Jewish community of Tunisia.