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‘America wants war with all of us’
Level 1 |
Elementary
1
1 Key words
2 Prefixes
Match the words with their meanings:
1
•
nationalism
2
•
colonialism
3
•
fundamentalism
4
•
unity
5
•
democracy
Match the prefixes with their meanings:
1
•
pan-
a
•
for/in favour of
2
•
neo-
b
•
against
3
•
pro-
c
•
all
4
•
anti-
d
•
earth
5
•
geo-
e
•
new
a
•
a
situation in which people, groups or countries join together
b
•
a system in which people vote to choose their government
c
•
a situation in which one country rules another country
d
•
the wish for political independence for a group of people with the same
language, history
and culture
e
•
the belief that religious laws should be followed very strictly
I
f you want to know what Arab
people think, Cairo is the perfect
place. The former Egyptian leader,
President Nasser, was
the founder of
pan-Arab nationalism and Cairo was
also the birthplace of “political Islam”.
Today everyone in Cairo is talking
about two things: the conflict between
the Isaraelis and the Palestinians, and
the possibility
of a war between the
United States and Iraq.
Dia Rashwan, an expert on Islamic
fundamentalism, believes that Bin Laden
is not as popular now as he was last
year. “But that doesn’t mean that
people don’t
hate the US,” he says.
“Now they hate the US even more than
before.” After the attacks of September
11th, things seemed very bad for the
Arabs, but now they seem even worse.
After September 11th, the US began
its “war on terror”. Many Arabs think
that this is a war on all Arabs. They
think that in George Bush’s
simple
world of good and evil, the Arab
countries and Iran are the evil ones.
Most Arab countries were under
foreign rule for hundreds of years and
their people wanted independence and
the unity of the greater Arab “nation”.
Now there is a danger that these
dreams will be destroyed again. They
have
many social, economic and
cultural problems and this means that
it is very difficult for them to defend
themselves against attacks from
outside. The Americans say that these
problems were
the cause of the attacks
on the US last year and many Arabs
agree that this is true. They say that
their countries need to change in order
to have democracy and human rights.
‘America
wants war
with all of us’
