That it anecdotally speaks to a few anonymous persons who engaged with a small subset of Arabs in particular parts of the ME is hardly impressive, but if you want to hold it up, so be it. My immediate family and much of our circle of friends (conservative South Asians) were settled there for decades. Some are still there. The descriptions Patai uses do not jibe with our experiences, at least not in the aggregate. It also doesn't jibe with some other reviewers who've lived in the ME. I wonder why you discount their experience. Also, if you want to regard 'racist' as a conversation ender, you should be just as wary of throwing around 'politically (in)correct'.

Maybe so. I only glanced at the reviews, I haven't read the thing.

As a 1st generation Chinese-American who has seen more than his fair share of cooky, isolated, romantic and ill-informed Western expats living in East Asia, I'm not sure I'd trust their opinions on the societies they live in, especially if they did so only "on and off for four years".