They Kling-on to Their Culture

The Transatlantic View of the Arabs and what that tells us about perception.

"Revenge is a dish best served cold."

Said by Khan Noonien Singh, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, who refers to this as a "Klingon proverb"

It's actually it's a Spanish proverb.

Star Trek's conception of the Klingon race holds deeply-rooted American stereotypes of Arabs and Middle-Easterners. Star Trek became famous for the way it imagined the intergalactic community of the future. They modeled their galaxy, with all its alien civilizations, after their perception of the political world in the 20th century. From the American perspective, the Middle Easterners were barbaric, warmongering civilizations deeply tied to their traditions and alienated from the ‘western’ world. By examining Star Trek, we can gain insight into how ‘the west' views Middle Eastern people, but first we need to revise our terminology, because when the terminology is inaccurate, the understanding we derive will always be false.

Before we analyze and cancel colonial misconceptions about the Middle East, we must recog…