I am Open Minded

I don't really like when a person says,"I am open minded" especially if the person is describing himself. I believe "Open minded" is the word to be used by others (not by himself) when they describe a person who can listen to others without prejudice and accept differences.

I always wonder why a person has to use the term "open minded" to describe himself. I have met many people from various countries in my life and here is my observation. I am not exaggerating but from my experience Arab men are the ones who say "I am an open minded person" more than anyone else. Since my husband is Arab, I have a lot of opportunities to meet Arab people and in fact many of them have said "I am open mined" during conversation. Every time I hear an Arab man say this, I feel like asking him "What is the meaning of "open minded" for you? but of course, I don't want to be rude and mean, so I just continue talking until the end, when I often end up thinking "You are not an open minded person."

This is just my opinion and I'm going to write what I felt from my own experience, so I could be very wrong but let me tell you what I think. I think many Arab Muslim men interpret "open minded" as "not fanatic" or "not religious" as well as "casual". I think they should avoid using the term "open minded". No other people use the word of "open minded" as much as Arab people in describing about themselves. When someone from Arab says "I am open minded", I always feel he means to say "I am not religious". I observed many Arab people and have reached this conclusion; they use the term"open minded" for those (including themselves) who are very casual and not that religious. For me "open minded" and "religious" have totally different meanings. I may be wrong but I always feel Arab men want to tell that they are not religious by saying "I am open minded". I feel they are afraid of being taken as fanatic men and it seems a little ironic to me that the Arabs who are very much proud of their religion and gives the impression to the world that their religion is solid want to look less religious.

In my country when we say "Oh, that man is religious", there is no negative meaning included. Rather, we use the word "religious" as compliment for a person who can listen to others well and accept differences by gaining an insight in life through the religion.When my mother says "He is religious", what she means is that he is a man with definite principles who is respected as a person of high moral character. However, when Arab people say "That man is very religious", I can feel full of negative sense from it. Maybe it is just a matter of language but I always want to say "What is wrong with being religious? Isn't it something that a person should be proud of?"

I want to say if a person is truly open minded, he doesn't need to mention it for himself because others surly know about it automatically without being told by anyone. For me, "open minded" mentioned by Arab people seems like a tool to make them look less religious and more casual. I have never found a real open minded person among those who said to me "I am an open minded person" to describe himself, while I have met some wonderful Arabs who are religious and at the same time very open minded but they never said to me "I'm open minded". If I am asked, I need more than a few seconds to figure out how to say "open minded" in my language because I have never used the term to describe myself and also we don't use it as often as Arab people do. This is because it doesn't happen so often that we meet a person who deserves to be called "Open minded".