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12 the happier they are. The Index of happiness rises as more people are able to get what they want. Traditional society is passing from the Middle East because relatively few Middle Easterners want to still live by its rules. As the patriarchal family loses command, other ancient behavioral routines are opened to question. As men move out of the lifeways of rural subsistance, agriculture, the women are no longer counted as essential units of the family’s total labour force. The housewife often remains a conservative influence but the daughter takes advantage of her new opportunities for education, adventure, and excitement. As the boy is no longer his father’s shadow, the girl is no longer her mother’s replica Thus mobility liberates the newer generations of both sexes and the foundations of traditional society are undermined. Transition customs and institutions have proved utterly defenceless against the inroads of the mass-media, especially the cinema. Where the impact of the cinema has been massive and sustained as in modern Lebanon, the results are highly visible. Says Albert Hourani, a prominent Lebanese scholar: * The process of change is being speeded by one manifestation of western civilization above all-the film which expresses a conception of the relationships between men and women which are far from those prevalent in the Islamic world.

(pp. 398-400) ¹

What are the chief attractions of Western culture for the modernizing youth in non-European lands? One sad young girl, her eyes red from crying at the start of the interview, had been educated in Beirut but was living with her wealthy family in the only decent house of an impoverished village. Despite her own relatively comfortable life, she was deeply disappointed> she was bitter against the life of women in the Near East where women is not respected but treated like an animal with no feeling ²