Living with Terrorism

Arabian Culture

   Throughout modern Arab history, the collective Arab imagination has needed a healthy and inspirational founding myth beyond simple hatred of the West. Their imagination has suffered defeats disproving the Arabs self deceiving notions about themselves as the best nation that has been delivered to mankind, as reflected in the Quran. And they have endured an impossible obsession with avenging each of their defeats, from the days of the Mamluk defeat at the hands of Napoleon Bonaparte in the late 1700s to the defeat of Yasser Arafat at the hands of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the beginning of the 21st century. All of this is in addition to two centuries of defeat by Western imperialism that left open, festering wounds.

   It all goes back to a deep-rooted culture of tribal vengefulness in the Arab collective consciousness.  This is the fundamental driving force and it goes back for thousands of years.  “Arab society is tribal- nomadic, with its outstanding trait being clan loyalty and the anarchy of the desert. Most of its values were shaped in the jahiliyah age before Islam.  The important values in the Arab conceptions and behavior reflect the pre-Islamic ideals.  In the jahiliyah age, the Arabs did not know Allah and his Messenger and the rules of the religion.” (This quotation comes from David Bukay in his Internet paper entitled ‘In the First Cultural Flaw in Thinking: The Arab Personality’. I will be quoting extensively from that paper in the rest of this chapter.

   “Therefore, it is defined as ‘the period of ignorance’.  It was a period of wildness, tribal fanaticism, and idol worship.  The tribe made up the exclusive social-cultural unit.  It was in constant conflict with other tribes who were sources of subsistence.  The political struggle principally embodied the scarcity of resources against the many demands to obtain them.  This was a society of, ‘his hand shall be against all men’, as God said of Ishmael.  The head of the tribe was the sayid, who was chosen by the elders, and was first among equals and status. The inner social structure included the clan and the extended family.  Among the tribes was a haram area, a place of agreed upon neutral holiness.  It was a place for clarifications and intertribal agreements.  From this, the Arabs accumulated immense experience in conducting negotiations.  Thus, structures developed for obtaining mediation and compromise that were institutionalized.  These were called mechanisms of wustah or wasat.”  

   “Despite their desert character, the city was the Arabs’ focus of change and political activity.  Mecca was a center of trade and pilgrimage, since it was on the caravan routes.  Religion had secondary importance in jahili society. Religious customs were observed out of tradition and feelings of respect for forefathers, but religion was fetishist, and values were fatalistic, out of absolute faith in the decrees of fate.  Secular values took a central place, and were expressed in the manliness, which meant the whole set of traits of a perfect Bedouin.  The most important framework was   preserving tribal solidarity.  The tribe was the foundation for personal and group existence.”

   “The critical phenomenon in its importance to Arab-Islamic society is honor. A man's honor is sharaf. It is flexible, dynamic, and subject to change in accord with his deeds.  A woman's honor is

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