How does Arab culture and values differ from western culture and values?

For instance, the Egyptian government organizes a market known as Ahlan Ramadan

Alright, that’s it for this answer

Culture is shaped by many factors (Arab television culture being the product of religion + economics)

My boyfriend won’t tell me his past and it hurts me so I broke up with him what do I do?

Al Jazeera published a scathing critique of the event and saw it as not an isolated incident but a disturbing pattern.

Mohamed Ramadan - BUM BUM [ Official Music Video ] / محمد رمضان - رايحين نسهر

Arab societies are monoculturalist, nationalist, religious and statist.

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Western societies value multiculturalism and the establishment of inclusive safe spaces. This sees the stigmatization of racism and other forms of bigotry.

The series will be familiar and most can probably think of a domestic alternative to it.

For Ramadan shapes how Arabs treat TV

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Finally you have the child celebrity who makes family-friendly content and then reveals a dark past later such as Hala al-Turk who ironically published a song titled I love you mama only to later reveal her mother had stolen a portion of her earnings and so she cut off ties.

Lamis Kan - Mesaytara (Official Music Video)| لميس كان - مسيطرة #lamiskan #mesaytara #مسيطرة

Arabs also have the same crop of celebrities that Westerners have. Using music quickly:

Hi everybody! I have been looking at posts on narcs and narc abuse on here and if has really helped me out a lot. I am currently struggling with my situation and need some advice/support. I met a narc last year, everything seemed to good to be true. Love bombing, always texting calling and taking me on dates. Everything changed when someone warned me about him out in public in front of him and who he is. This caused a conflict with us and the love bombing seized. he would tell me that everything is okay and i can come and talk. He would set a time limit on me and kick me out after that. he would then text me like everything was fine and we hung out again and after that he completely ghosted me for one week. He came back and texted me a week later laughing about the ghosting and acting like nothing had happened. he continued to text me ( not like in the beginning) make plans with me, then on the day of the plans he would just ghost me. One day he would act interested the next silence. i contacted him a month later and he acted like nothing happened. He was on a vacation and sent me a picture of another woman ( someone he allegedly met on the trip) to strike a reaction but i never gave him one. After the trip he came to my place and was extremely rude, accusing me of going on dates with a bunch of men. The next day he accused me of being an alcoholic and that he wanted nothing to do with me but said well maybe we can be "friends" then ghosted me i assumed at this point it was over and i would never hear from him again. He contacted me on the holiday a month later acting like everything was great. We ended up hanging out a month or so later and when we hung out it went well, i thought things were going in the right direction. after we hung out.. silence. I would try to text him and if he replied it would be very short then he just stopped replying. He ghosted me for almost three months. I thought he was done this time and of course he popped up again like nothing happened. At this point i was getting sick of if so i questioned him as to why he dissapeared and always does this. Of course he had some sob story about a injury and family member dying of cancer. I felt pity for him and he gave me an apology.. so i took him back stupidly. things seemed to be going smooth for a couple months, of course until his family member died and his injury got better he never contacted me and was distant. Menawhile, i was there for him during the difficult time for him. He lied to me about the funeral and never wanted to chat. I was chasing him and he would always claim nothing was wrong but when i said i thought he used me when he was down he could not handle it and would always tell me he didnt care and to go away. I would get so upset i would try texting him to work it out he would barelt respond and if he did he would not be nice about it. we did hang out a couple times after that, he would ignore me after. One day i was like hey i think you are seeing someone else, and i was like well ixam seeing someone so no problem if you are he said " buy bye good luck with your new guy stop contacting me" i was devastated and tried to get into contact with him for weeks then i just gave up and accepted it was over. He ended up contacting me a month later acting like everything was fine. He wanted to go out and have drinks i told him i would. He and i both seemed to have a great time. He ends up ignoring me again. I kept texting him trying to figure out what was wrong. He kept saying everything was fine and i said ok can we hang out again? He said maybe i was like why? He just kept saying maybe … our last conversation we had… i said what is wrong ? He said nothing is wrong everything is fine. I asked him why he keeps saying maybe. He said " maybe but i dont want to see you right now" i said why? He saix " im just not feeling it, if i wanted to date i would" i said why did you contact me less then a week ago wanting to go out? He said i didnt.. even though he did. So i said should i just move on or what? He said whatever you want to do. So i said that he was really confusing me and asked him if he had anything more to say before i move on? My messages were turning green so i panicked he blocked me and reacted irrationally. I said " omg did you block me? My messages are not going through. Even texted him on my work phone asking what was up. And called him twice ( please dont judge me i know it is pathetic i never was this type of girl before him) so he replied and said " Ok I'll block you now" then immedietly blocked me. He has never blocked me before since I have met him he will just ghost. Is this ths final discard aka " grand finale? Did i just push him too far? this has upset me so much its hard to even function.

For 30 days, Arabs reduce the time they spend working due to the fasting

I) Ramadan 2018: the blackface incident

In 2003, the Americans invaded Iraq and established a Federal Republic which just celebrated its 21st birthday. The Republic strongly discourages the entertainment industry from referencing the Baathists. Now this could have been forgiven but there is a character named Mahdi and this angered conservatives as his name resembles the messiah in Islam, also named Mahdi. So in a twist, the television drama spurred national drama with one set of Iraqis angry to see Baathists on their television set and another set angry to see a character named Mahdi on their television set as well.

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In 2024, a Lebanese-Kuwait series, One Wife is not enough was released. While some series (like Block Ghashmarah respect social mores, or lack of taboos), sometimes series seek to provoke debates and that’s what the series did.

حلا الترك و مشاعل بنيتي الحبوبة | Hala Alturk & Mashael - Bnayty ElHabooba

Stock image of Arab family watching television

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So through television, we can see differences in societies

During the same Ramadan, an Iraqi series The World of Miss Wahiba also entered hot water. The series is about an Iraqi nurse navigating life in the country in the 1990s during sanctions and the aftermath of two wars. The first season was released for Ramadan 1997 but banned by the Baathist Party for not making it look good so it wasn’t until Ramadan 2024 that a second season was released and now it’s in hot water for even including the Baathist Party.

Growing up in the United States, I grew accustomed to the American television culture where TV studios would produce programs and release them at “prime time”, typically a weekend night. This was pretty different from the television culture my parents grew up with in Morocco as Arabs don’t have “prime time” television but rather “prime month” television.

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Yes. We’d need a whole book for it so let’s focus on just three controversies in two parts.

Ok, so right off the bat, we do see some differences.

However the Federal Republic was less aggressive than Kuwait. As the series doesn’t glorify Baathists, it’ll forgive it for including them but Parliament did ask the showrunners to re-release their series and remove every scene that had Mahdi. The studio agreed.

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Henceforth, Mahdi (a main character by the way) has been written out of the show and all scenes including him have been removed.

Since Ramadan is the “prime month”, every year Arabs excitedly wait for the listings to be revealed and decide what series to watch for the month. There are websites that even compile lists for this purpose like Vogue Arabia which released an English language article telling readers the must watch series of Ramadan 2024.

Obviously this isn’t the case for every Arab or Westerner. While the West frowns upon bigotry, there are users on Quora whose answers are just a series of white supremacy. While the Arab World doesn’t care about bigotry, there are Arabs who call it out and urge other Arabs to stigmatize those who hold bigoted views and refuse to reform.

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Another set of price rollbacks, also pushed by Meselhy “to ease the burden on citizens,” were advertised on rice, oil and imported Sudanese meat on February 29. The price of unprocessed rice went down from LE31 to LE29 for a kilo, a liter of oil from LE98 to LE70 and fresh Sudanese meat dropped to LE320 from LE480.

Days after I visited the Talaat Harb branch, Supply Minister Ali Meselhy announced that the price of an 800 ml bottle of mixed oil, a cheaper option than pure cooking oils, had been reduced to LE65 from LE70 in all Ahlan Ramadan exhibitions and outlets across the country.

The Mist scene, Mrs Carmody (center) denouncing other survivors

Wow! The changeover from President Biden to VP Kamala Harris as candidate could not have been more successful in just 2 days! It was as if they had been planning it. Could they have planned it? Are you excited by the positive Democratic response?

But ok fine, Arabs have a female John Wick, but can television also show us some differences in culture and values?

Character dealing with party officials in the original 1997 season

The two actors in blackface

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The Arab entertainment industry has said it is willing to be more inclusive in the future but unlike its Western counterpart, it isn’t going to pull any films or episodes either. So headlines like this will not be popping up in the Arab World anytime soon.

The story is about an upper class woman who runs a school with her wealthy husband only to discover he has been leading a double life, allowing the series to provide comedy, drama and a sense of mystery using sensitive topics such as polygamy which provoked certain sectors of Kuwaiti society who pushed for the government to take action which it did. Just before Ramadan ended, the state banned the series from airing and informed the Kuwaiti actors that they would never again be allowed to work in the Emirate (they could abroad though).

Western societies are individualist, irreligious, and multiculturalist.

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A scene from the series, one critique was that it depicted Kuwaiti women as vapid and spoiled

This may sound strange as the image of Arabs is that of backwards stupid fanatics and so many would be wondering why Lamia Kan hasn’t been stoned to death yet or why Hala al-Turk and her co-singer aren’t wearing hijabs or even niqabs. It may be surprising but Arabs are human beings and so like other human societies, have similarities and tastes that are understandable, they are a different society.

Western entertainment has had religious characters before and portraying them negatively is the norm. An example that springs to mind is the American film The Mist (2007) where an experiment goes haywire and monsters overrun a town. Survivors hide out in a supermarket where a devout Christian woman, Mrs. Carmody, whips up a religious fervor arguing God is punishing the town while a group of naysayers led by the main character, David, plot their escape. While this is a Western staple, outside of Egypt, this is unacceptable in Arab media.

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For instance if you like action then you have 2020 and 2024

So an Arab family that typically spends $300 on necessities every month, gets to spend only $250 in Ramadan which means that for once, they have a spare $50. This has spurred Arab television studios to plan their entire year around Ramadan and also shapes how Arab series are structured. Unlike Americans who have a weekly format (“Tune in next Friday at 8PM to find out what happens next!”) Arabs instead commonly have a daily format with some series have 30 episodes for every day of Ramadan.

II) Ramadan 2024: the social taboos and the state

The Arab World may be home to 400 million people but the population is poor and so often don’t have time to sit idle making television viewership quite low but even if it wasn’t low, they lack the disposable income for purchases so the Arab advertising market is small. Now Arabs do have television year-round, but it’s incredibly hard to make a profit except for one month: Ramadan. Why?

I bring this up because as I often write on Quora, the world isn’t a vacuum. Societies are shaped by many factors as one can now see with Arab television culture which is influenced by religion + economic factors.

Like I said, this is complicated but by just talking about television we’ve learned several things

In Ramadan 2021, the show 2020 Arab viewers were treated to 31 episodes of Lebanese police captain Sama and her hunt for a notorious drug lord in the country. Arabs watched as actress Nadine Nassib Njeim engaged in gun battles with drug traffickers and ultimately killed the bad guys.

For decades, Black Iraqis like the man above have been excluded from the entertainment industry with roles going to lighter-skinned actors in blackface instead

Arabs are more statist. If the American or French government banned a television show and then forbade the actors from ever working again, this would see unified uproar and opposition.

This is also why you tend to see Arab societies be more open to generalization and collective punishment. Moroccan women are negatively stereotyped as promiscuous and so frequently you’ll see a Saudi campaign to deport all the “prostitutes” from the kingdom.

Unlike the US, the Arab World doesn’t have a history of anti-racism activism and so there has rarely been criticism of how other ethnicities are depicted on the big screen in the past. Arab societies are nationalistic (yes, tribalism is a myth) and even xenophobic to a degree and so those perceived as outsiders are often portrayed negatively. The 2018 episode is unique because for the first time, an actor apologized.

For Ramadan 2018, a Kuwaiti studio released a sketch comedy series name Block Ghashmarah and one episode was dedicated to stereotypical jokes on Black Arabs/Sudanese. As Arab is a cultural identity, not racial, Arabs have a variety of ethnic backgrounds which spurs stereotypes and the Sudanese, who are Black, are…. Depicted as lazy, feeble-minded and superstitious. So for an entire episode, several Kuwaiti actors donned blackface and mocked the Sudanese.

The series was a hit and Njeim would reprise the role in Ramadan 2024 with a second series/season named 2024. This time however, the studio cut the season to 15 episodes.

The captain

You have the empty party songs from musicians like Mohammed Ramadan.

Arab societies value monoculturalism and reject the concept of inclusivity which means that unlike in the West, one will have minimal reputational damage for being a racist or a bigot.

In the Ramadan spirit, states and companies offer discounts meaning that it’s possible to have money left over

Egypt, has seen an importation of the Western staple though and so nowadays, its Ramadan season will see several Carmody-like characters. However, Egypt is not at the point yet where it would be open to a depiction of God or a prophet, another common feature in Western media.

Arab societies are more sensitive to religious depictions.

Arab societies, however, not only expect the state to enforce social mores but actively encourage it too. It was the Kuwaiti public that demanded the Emir take action, not the other way around. This may be due to the collectivism in Arab societies and the individualism of Western societies.

You have the taboo such as the singer Lamia Kan who published a song titled Dominant that was about an overbearing girlfriend