Wow. That's the first time I've ever read anyone <b>correctly</b> explain the key differences between Western and Arab Muslim culture. Every singal portrayal I've ever seen of Muslim Arabs (both terrorists and innocents) in American TV shows and movies, is a complete misrepresentation. Americans really don't get it, but somehow the author of this essay does. Thanks! Honestly though, it's not because I'm smart, but because I have the <b>life experience</b> to understand the key differences between Western vs. Muslim Arab culture. If you were to take a guy with an IQ of 90, and throw him into a steel cage with thousands of Muslim Arabs and then leave him there to rot for three years (Like was done to me), he'd reach the exact same conclusions as I did. _________ And now to repeat this for the fifth time... Muslim Arab mindset 101: Two key words: HONOR & PRIDE above everything else. This is how the religious zealots (Hamas, Jihad) and the secular nationalists (Fatah, PFLP) are identical. Money, possessions, comfort, blood...even human life are all secondary, relatively unimportant values compared to the Muslim Arab man's all important sense of personal and family pride. This is why when an Arab Muslim's sister/daughter has premarital sex, the 'honorable' thing to do is to publicly kill her, in order to restore the family honor. Not all suicide bombers are devout Muslims. Take away the religious brainwashing nonsense, and there is still a massive sense of pride, accomplishment, and family honor when he blows himself up killing a few hated Zionists. Becoming a Shahid (martyr) is the highest honor in his society- much more dignified than becoming a successful businessman, athlete or entertainer. Point the sole of your shoe in his direction, and he'll be whipped into such an insulted frenzy, the Western observer would think you've just shot his dog or something. Compromise is never an option to him, only absolute unquestionable victory. Anything else would be an unbearable insult to his pride.
This article has such vast educational value, I need to bump this thread. Unless you've lived in a Muslim Arab society for a few years, you need to read it.
<img src=http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=975291> While this sounds identical to my own writing, I didn't write it: A guilt culture (i.e., the West) is typically and primarily concerned with truth, justice, and the preservation of individual rights. As noted earlier, the emotion of guilt is what keeps a person from behavior that goes against his/her own code of conduct as well as the cultureâs. Excessive guilt can, of course, be pathological. In contrast, in a typical shame culture (i.e., Arab/Islamic culture) what other people believe has a far more powerful impact on behavior than even what the individual believes. The desire to <b>preserve honor and avoid shame</b> to the exclusion of all else is one of the primary foundations of the culture. This desire has several side-effects, including granting the individual carte blanche to (1)engage in wrong-doing as long as no-one knows about it, or knows he is involved; and (2) <b>engage in any necessary behavior, including wrong-doing (i.e., murder, beheading, etc.) in order to avoid shame and/or recover honor.</b> Although it is hard for someone in a guilt culture to appreciate, it may be impossible for an individual in a shame culture to even admit to himself that he is guilty (even when he is)--particularly when everyone else considers him to be guilty-- because of the shame involved. As long as others remain convinced he is innocent, the individuals does not experience either guilt or shame. A great deal of effort therefore goes into making sure that others are convinced of your innocence, even if you are guilty.<b> Remember maintaining honor is what is important--not truth, not justice, and not tolerance or restraint.</b> One of the ways that those who fear shame protect their fragile self is to subjugate those who he perceives as weaker. By doing so, he can rationalize that he is superior to the subjugated individual. In fact, this is the only way he can maximize his honor. In Arab/Islamic culture, women are one of the primary instruments of achieving honor. Hence the bizarre and distorted attitude that the culture has toward women and the exaggerated means by which "honor" must be maintained. So strong is the cultural pressure, even women buy into the delusion. ... There is no shame involved in insulting or denigrating other cultures for Muslims. Therefore such insults are acceptable. That is why there is a disconnect between the disgusting cartoons that are incredibly offensive to Jews and Christians and/or the West (see here), yet at the same time, they angrily DEMAND on threat of violence that even the most mildly offensive cartoons (i.e., the Danish ones here) be immediately repudiated. <b>SHAME MUST BE AVOIDED AT ALL COSTS. Everything else is secondary. Contradictions are irrelevant; logic and reason unimportant. HONOR MUST BE RESTORED, and this can only be done at the expense of those who originated the "insult".</b>
Very insightful article. I have seen similar commentaries from State Department sources. Our leaders certainly understand the psychological dimension to this issue, but understanding it and actually being able to deal with it are different problems. Witness the debacle of Iraq. When push comes to shove, most people making critical decisions will give the greatest weight to their own experience and expect others to react as they would.
First they came for Israel, then they came for America... Feb 7, 2006 by Dennis Prager In 1945, the anti-Nazi German pastor Martin Niemoller wrote the following: "First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me." This famous statement can be updated for Europeans: First they came for Israel, and we didn't speak up because we weren't Jews. Then they came for Lebanon's Christians, and we didn't speak up because we weren't Maronites. Then they came for America, and we didn't speak up because we weren't Americans. Then they came for Sudan's blacks, and we didn't speak up because we weren't Sudanese blacks. Then they came for us, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for us. As long as Muslim demonstrators only shouted "Death to America" and "Death to Israel," Europe (and the rest of the world's Left) found reasons either to ignore the Nazi-like evil inherent in those chants (and the homicidal actions that flowed from them) or to blame America and Israel for the hatred. But like the earlier Nazis, our generation's fascists hate anything good, not merely Jews and Americans. And now the Damascus embassy of Norway, a leading anti-Israel "peace at any price" country, has been torched. And more and more Norwegians, and Brits, and French, and Dutch, and Swedes, and the rest of the European appeasers who blamed America for 9-11 and blamed Israel for Palestinian suicide bombings, are beginning to wonder whether there just might be something morally troubling within the Islamic world. Some on the Left here and in Europe are beginning to reassess whether America and Israel or their Islamic enemies are at fault. The fact that major newspapers in most Western European countries published some or all of the cartoons that triggered the riots against Denmark, the country in which the offending cartoons of Muhammad first appeared, was a statement that at least some in Europe have had it with appeasement of Islamic violence. And here in America, a left-of-center columnist for the Los Angeles Times, Tim Rutten, just wrote: "It's no longer possible to overlook the culture of intolerance, hatred and xenophobia that permeates the Islamic world." As it happens, I have sympathy with the notion that newspapers and others need to be sensitive to religious, including Muslim, sensibilities. However, when Muslim governments and religious spokesmen attack the West for its insensitivity to Muslims and its anti-Muslim prejudice, one has entered the Twilight Zone. Because nowhere in the world is there anywhere near the religious bigotry and sheer hatred of other religions that exists in the Muslim world. Christians nearly everywhere in the Arab and Muslim worlds are usually second-class citizens at best and terribly treated at worst. The Taliban Islamic regime in Afghanistan blew up the unique Buddhist sculptures in their country because they didn't want even a trace of a non-monotheistic faith to survive in an Islamic country. About a million non-Arab and non-Muslim men, women and children have been slaughtered by the Islamic regime in Sudan. Nigerian Christians are periodically murdered by Islamic mobs. And regarding Jews, Andrew Sullivan writes in this week's Time: "The Arab media run cartoons depicting Jews and the symbols of the Jewish faith with imagery indistinguishable from that used in the Third Reich." As for the riots and Islamic government protests, one question needs to be posed to these people: Which casts Islam in a worse light -- political cartoons depicting Muhammad, or Muslims who murder innocents around the world in the name Allah and Islam? Did any Jews riot when the Los Angeles Times published a cartoon of the holiest site in Judaism, the Western Wall, with its stones reconfigured to spell "hate"? Did any Christians riot when museums displayed "Piss Christ," a crucifix submerged in artist Andres Serrano's urine? What we have is a culture largely based on saving face and honor juxtaposed with a Judeo-Christian Western culture largely based on saving liberty and innocent life. All of us, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, should pray that the better one wins.
"Did any Christians riot when museums displayed "Piss Christ," a crucifix submerged in artist Andres Serrano's urine? " Yes, they did. Didnt you know? They didnt do the molotov cocktail arrangement, nor burn anything in particular if my memory serves me correctly though-but I'm sure if the legal conventions in the countries concerned were a little more lax, they may well have, for example, shot ak-47's into the air and or simply got away with massive willfull destruction of property, given the pissant response from the alleged "authorities" in said, possibly fictional, countries.