Jandt, An Introduction to Intercultural Communication 9e
SAGE Publications, 2018
8-1: Describe the world’s major religions.
8-3: Identify nation-states considered to be the Arab states.
8-5: Describe what distinguishes Saudi Arabia.
8-7: Identify some of the difficulties in intercultural communication between Arab and
Western cultures.
I. Hinduism
A. Hinduism is at least 3,500 Years old with over one billion believers
B. Discovering one’s dharma or duty will bring happiness and fulfillment
1. Enables people to cope with life
2. All souls are potentially diving and destined to become perfect
C. Yoga is the ritual for uniting one’s soul with God through meditation.
1. Silence is central to Hindu philosophy
2. Speech directs us outward; silence helps us turn inward.
II. Buddhism
A. Siddhartha Gautama founded Buddhism as a spiritual tradition based on person
attainment of enlightenment.
B. Buddhism divided into two main streams in the 3rd-century BCE
1. Theravada (Southern Buddhism) is conservative and preserves the earliest
teachings
2. Mahayana (Eastern Buddhism) Buddha is treated as a Divine Being
C. Four Noble Truths
1. Inevitability of suffering and adversity: Nothing is satisfying
2. The source of suffering: Our desires cause our suffering
3. Cessation to suffering: These feeling can be eradicated
4. Paths to Nirvana: Follow the eight right ways to achieve enlightenment
D. Mahayana Buddhist six teachings to improve oneself
1. Charity
2. Five Basic Moral Precepts
3. Inclusiveness, forbearance, and the capacity to receive and bear insults and
suffering
4. Diligence or patience
5. Meditation and concentration
6. Profound wisdom and perfection of understanding
E. Japan
1. Many Japanese practice Buddhism and Shinto
Jandt, An Introduction to Intercultural Communication 9e
SAGE Publications, 2018
a. Types of Shinto
i. Popular Shinto has its strength in the home
ii. Sect Shinto believes in reincarnation and service to humanity
iii. State Shinto taught Japanese were separate from other races was
abolished by order of the Allies in 1945
b. The population is 66.8% Buddhist and 79.2% Shinto
c. Over 200 sects of Buddhism exist in Japan
2. Jesuit missionaries brought Christianity to Japan in 1549
a. Less than 2% are Christian
b. Christian lifestyles, moral codes, and ethics have become part of Japanese
life
III. Christianity
A. World’s largest religion
B. Began in Palestine and the eastern Mediterranean Sea
C. Roman emperor Constantine converted to Christianity and ceased persecution
D. Christianity spread through the western worlds as well as grow in influence and
power
E. German Monk Martin Luther openly opposed the Roman Catholic Church’s
practice of selling indulgences in 1517.
1. Luther’s ideas spread throughout Germany, England, and Switzerland
2. Protestant nationalists wanted religious and political freedom
F. Presently there may be thousands of Christian denominations differing in doctrine
and practice
IV. Islam
A. World’s second largest religion
B. Sunni and Shiite are two branches
1. Sunni, believe that Muslim leadership in the early years passed to a series of
caliphs
2. Shiite Muslims believe that leadership should stay within the family of the
Prophet
C. Salafism is an ultraconservative version of Islamic fundamentalism
1. Salafis are Sunni Muslims
2. Seek to follow the practices and beliefs as it was originally founded
3. Some are prepared to use violence to convert all to Islam
D. Muhammad, the Prophet
1. Wrote the Qur’an in the 7th century.
2. Intertwined religious and political functions.
3. Caliphate is the geographical area ruled by the civil and religious leader
known as the caliph.
4. In 1924, the founder of modern Turkey, Kamal Ataturk, abolished the office.
E. The Qur’an
1. It is a Spiritual guide, a system of law, a code of ethics, and a way of life.
2. The Sunnah together with the Qur’an are the basis of sharia, or canonic law.
F. Religious Practices
1. Five religious obligations of Muslims
a. Shahadah; public witness
Jandt, An Introduction to Intercultural Communication 9e
SAGE Publications, 2018
b. Salah; short prayers recited five times a day
c. Zakat; giving or sharing with the poor
d. Sawm; fasting
e. Hajj; pilgrimage to Mecca
2. Ramadan commemorates Muhammad receiving words of the Qur’an from the
angel Gabriel
V. The Arab States
A. Arab culture and diversity
1. Arabs are now a minority in Islam
2. Muslims include more than Arabs and not all Arabs are Muslim
B. Today the Arab world is composed of 22 countries with a total population of 372
million.
1. The population per country in 2016 ranged from 780,971 in Comoros to 88
million in Egypt.
2. Annual per capita gross domestic product (GDP) ranges from $400 in Somalia
to more than $132,000 in Qatar.
C. Saudi Arabia
1. Geography
a. Occupies nearly 90% of the Arabian Peninsula and is 13th largest country
in the world, or one-fifth the size of the United States
b. 98% of land is desert
c. With a lack of water resources Saudi Arabia developed seawater
desalinization facilities
2. Discovery of Oil
a. Before the discovery of oil, the economy was on a subsistence level
b. In 1933, the California Arabian Standard Oil Company was launched and
later became the Arabian-American Oil Company (ARAMCO)
c. The monarchy used its oil wealth to provide free education, healthcare and
cheap energy to its people.
d. Oil accounted for roughly 90% of government revenue by 2015.
e. The United States increased oil production, the Saudi government in 2015
began raising prices of water, electricity, fuel, and imposing new taxes.
3. Ruling Saud Family and Conservative Wahhabism
a. The current Saudi Arabia is the third state created by the House of Saud.
i. Disputes over leadership succession is partly the cause of the earlier
two kingdoms, dating back to 1745, to collapse.
ii. The three states have been based on and alliance between the Saud
family and Wahhabism, an ultraconservative brand of Islam.
b. The Qur’an is part of Saudi Arabia’s constitution.
i. As part of its commitment to Islam is the implementation of sharia
law.
ii. Public Morality committees called matawain ensure strict
compliance with religious requirements.
iii. Saudi Arabia has parallel legal systems; on civil and the other sharia
system
c. The monarchy in Saudi Arabia
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i. Practices majlis, which provides any citizen access to the king and
local governors.
ii. Diwaniyahs are political meetings where men discuss community
issues and debate politics
iii. After the Gulf war in 1992, King Fahd created a national consultative
council
iv. King Abdallah introduced several social and economic initiatives to
modernize the kingdom between 2005 and 2015
v. In 2009, King Abdallah appointed the first woman as the deputy
minister of women’s education
vi. King Abdulla announced women would be able to participate in
municipal elections in 2015.
vii. Nearly 80% of eligible woman cast ballots and 21 women were
elected
4. Media
a. Saudi Arabia’s basic law states, the role of media is to educate and inspire
national unity
b. The government licenses all bookshops, printing presses, and public
relation agencies
c. The royal family introduced television in 1960 as a propaganda tool.
d. State-controlled broadcast media emphasize religious programming
e. Social media is a major force, including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube
i. Facebook added the Arabic-language interface in 2009 and in 2017
had over 14 million user in the country
ii. Twitter has more than 2.4 million active users
iii. More than 90 million YouTube videos are watched daily in Saudi
Arabia
f. The imam of Mecca’s Grand Mosque called Twitter a threat to “national
unity”
g. In 2013, the founder of the website Free Saudi Liberals, Raif Badawi, was
sentenced to 7 years in prison and 600 lashes.
h. In order to regulate the Internet, in 2006, the government established the
Communications and Information Technology Commission
5. Regional Instability
a. President Franklin Roosevelt met with King Saud aboard a U.S. ship and
formed a relationship that has continued
b. President Harry S. Truman signed the first Security agreement with Saudi
Arabia in 1947
c. The war in the Persian Gulf in 1991 brought the two cultures together.
i. Saudi Arabia provided water, food, shelter, and fuel for coalition
forces and made monetary payments to some coalition partners.
ii. Some businessmen, government officials, and academics used the
1991 war as an opportunity for reform.
iii. Conservatives used it to make Saudi Arabia even more
fundamentalist.
d. In 1999, the al-Qaeda splinter group ISIS originated.
i. Proclaimed itself a worldwide caliphate
ii. In 2014 claimed religious, political, and military authority or Muslims
worldwide.
iii. It has been designated a terrorist organization by the United Nations
iv. The United Nations and mainstream Muslim groups reject its claim of
statehood.
e. Recently the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia has
weakened.
f. The two most powerful nation states in the Middle East are Iran and Saudi
Arabia.
i. Each sees itself as the center of the Islamic world.
ii. Saudi Arabia is mostly Sunni
iii. Iran is mostly Shiite
iv. Saudi Arabia’s former northern ally Syria, is now drawn under Iran’s
influence
v. Saudi Arabia led an Arab coalition in Yemen to fight the Iran
supported Shiite rebels.
VI. Dominant Cultural Patterns
A. Human Being-Nature Orientation
1. The Arab worldview is derived from Islam and expressed in its language.
a. Draws no distinction between religion and temporal aspect of life.
b. Physical world has no choice but to obedience to God.
2. Every Muslim should seek knowledge
B. Activity Orientation
1. Earning a living through labor is a duty and a virtue
2. Encourages practicality
C. Time Orientation
1. Saudi Arabia uses the traditional Hijrah (or Hegirian) calendar, based on the
cycles of the moon
2. A traditional day is tied to the rising and setting of the sun
3. International communication has forced them to adopt Greenwich Mean Time.
4. Being a polychromic culture, Arabs can interact with several people at once
D. Human Nature Orientation
1. Muslims believe that every person is born free of sin.
2. Human nature is more good than evil
3. Muslims believe the purpose of human life is to worship God by knowing,
loving, and obeying him.
E. Relational Orientation
1. Arab culture is more group oriented
2. Loyalties are to family, clan, tribe, and government.
3. Many Saudis live in large extended families.
4. In contrast to Western culture, the concept of individuality is absent; all family
members suffer from a dishonorable act performed by any one of them.
5. Islam unifies humanity on the basis of equality; there are no bounds of race,
country, or wealth.
6. Generous hospitality is a matter of honor and a sacred duty.
Jandt, An Introduction to Intercultural Communication 9e
SAGE Publications, 2018
7. A man is usually considered to be a descendant only of his father and his
paternal grandfather; a man’s honor resides in the number of sons he sires;
decisions are made by the family patriarch, not by the individual.
F. Role of Women
1. Most Muslims would say that women in Arab cultures are equal to men.
2. The rights and responsibilities of women are equal to those of men but not
identical with them.
a. Arab women are equal: as independent human beings; in the pursuit of
knowledge and in the freedom of expression
b. An Arab woman who is a wife and mother may work and own property
but is also entitled to be completely supported by her husband.
c. Saudi woman needs a male relative’s permission to attend university, get
married, or travel abroad.
d. Public area’s like McDonalds are segregated by sex.
3. The abaya and veil is an old tradition to safeguard women strangers
a. The abaya and veil represent honor, dignity, chastity, purity, and integrity
b. Most Saudi women accept this position for the guarantee of security
VII. Communication Barriers
A. Intercultural communication between Christians, Muslims, and others in the United
States is a challenge.
B. The term radical Islam is too general.
1. There is not a clear distinction between the religion Islam and the extremists
who carry out violent acts.
2. According to President Obama in a February 2015 speech “We are not at war
with Islam . . .They’re terrorists”
C. According to communication scholar Martin Medhurst the barrier to intercultural
communication between United States and Arab peoples appears to be the
stereotypes each holds of the other.
D. A 2014 Pew Research Center survey asked people in the United States to rate eight
different religious groups on a “feeling thermometer”. 0 represented cold negative
feelings and 100 represented warm positive feelings.
1. Muslims rated the lowest at 40 below atheists at 41
2. Others rated more warmly
E. In 2016, a Pew Research Center conducted another survey among adults in the
United States. About half of the adults surveyed thought at least some U.S. Muslims
are anti-American.
F. In another survey in 2011 by Pew Research Center conducted Muslim majority
view westerners as selfish (68%), violent (66%), greedy (64%), immoral (61%),
respectful of women (44%), honest (33%), and tolerant (31%).