yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy P r efac e U nderstanding Arabs: A Contemporary Guide to Arab Society is a handbook, intended to be read, easily and quickly, by people who are not specialists in the Middle East. The purpose of this book is to assist ordinary people, especially Westerners in America and Europe, to under- stand modern-day Arabs. This includes looking at the thought patterns, social relationships, and ways of life of urban Arabs in the t went y-first century. The majority of today's Arabs, the people we are likely to encoun- ter in the media or in person, are mostly middle class (or slightly above or below), not exotic Bedouins from the desert. It is time to get away from "the Bedouin ethos." When you picture an Arab in your mind, think of a computer programmer who lives in a high-rise building. It is essential that we look at Arabs realistically as they are today, and not attempt to describe and explain them in terms of Middle East history that goes back centuries. Ancient and medieval histor y cannot be used to provide reasons for the present-day nature of Arab societ y--there have been too many changes, especially in the last one hundred years, approxi- mately since the end of World War I. I think we have heard quite enough about pre-Islamic Arabia, the Muslim conquests, the eleventh-centur y Assassins, the t welf th- and thirteenth-centur y Golden Age, the harems, the House of War, the dragomans in Ottoman times, and the like. This information comes from outdated and sometimes discredited sources. Most of us are aware of the degree to which different national and cultural groups stereotype each other, at a distance or in person-to-person The Bedouin ethos is the basis for the code of chiva lr y brought to Europe in Crusader and post-Crusader times. It is no more relevant to the lives of modern A rabs than the Christian code of chiva lr y is to the lives of modern Westerners. Modern A rab societ y is not tied to the Bedouin ethos. xxiii