Welcome to The Half-Baked Bloggers Consortium‘s (HBBC) third post. Meet the members here.
This week’s topic is 3o2det al Khawaga عقده الخواجه, chosen by Me. Please take the time to view the members’ blogs just as you viewed mine in order to get different perspectives about the same topic.
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slang expression
A psychological disorder that results in a total diminishing of the Arab identity and glorifying anything that comes from the west.
Symptoms:
- The person holding that virus don’t eat their traditional food because it’s “local aka yay” and cheap. But they find burger, Chinese, and cheese cake cooler to fill their bellies with.
- When going in a vacation they’d rather visit Paris, London or NYC but never begin to know more about the amazing places they got in their own country or region. In fact they think they don’t worth the visit.
- They judge those who can’t speak English, they make fun of those who can’t manage to write properly or if they mistakenly miss the punctuation or use shortcutted English. Yaaay for you for not being able to distinguish the difference between إ / أ / ئ or even know how to spell ق. You definitely know better.
- They wear anything English-labeled, preferably made in Italy, Turkey, England. But never trust talented Arab designers. I mean what do they know!
- They try to get rid of any of old traditions, their Arabic/Islamic identity and blindly following anything that speaks foreigner. They take movie stars as role models and go mimicking. Because duh, everything they do is right, and based on a civilized concepts.
- Men want to marry non Arab girls. Girls want to marry non Arab guys.
- As employers or customers they tend to hire foreign companies/employees to get their jobs done “perfectly”. Because the hell with experience, quality, with million talents who can’t find a job. What’s important is ‘all English all the time’ =/
I LOVE. bass khalas.
Thank you babe =)
I totally misunderstood the word!!
Now i really wanna write about it!
Inspire on babe~
Aywa ya3ni you could have asked, bas am curious to know how you understood it?
i was going to write something similar. I think i still will if i got the chance to post about the topic. It will be a kind of confession post, faday7 3al mala2.
way to go with stating the facts
Yes yala efda7y xD Looking forward to it!
As always amazing posts
some true in that.. this perception does exist and unfortunately many people run to foreign cultures away from their own authentic local one especially the young people..Mmm, im not against embracing what’s good in other cultures but one must never abandon their own. ya3ne be able to augment what is good in each culture into one.. Can I say “glocalization”? thinking globally but keeping your local identity.. I hope I see that more often
I totally support that glocalization idea you mentioned but with a base, with a min or two to think if it fits our culture, our traditions. We are all americanized one way or another and I can’t argue about it, excuse me ya3ni we’re writing in English and speaking about 3o2det l khawaga xD, doesn’t mean I’m not guilty. I think we all arabs are lil asaf.
Least we can do is reminding ourselves every now and then, to never fall for the traps and to learn more.
I LOL’ed at ‘local aka yay’.
Very solid points, I think you really summed it all up. And I agree, we’re all a bit guilty of it. I feel sorry for myself sometimes, for my Arabic and culture and stuff, but I do try. And I don’t think it’s cool which makes a difference I think, or I hope that it does.
Yes, I guess we should try, act upon it and notice whenever we drift.
amazing, but i have to say something on the issue of foreigner vs. arabic designers, there are many arabic designers i’d just love to buy their stuff but they make them extremely expensive just because they’re “unique” and have an “arabic/Islamic” identity, the end result is that they make it had for ppl who want to buy their things its not just mere “3o2det 7`awaga”
Yes I agree, but those exceptions are severely rare. Also there are those people who think that everything that is not expensive is fake or non genuine!