[1] I begin with an admission of my personal vulnerability
related to this essay. Having spent most of my life on college and
university campuses and knowing how critical an audience of
scholarly experts can be, I undertake a topic related to ethics
with genuine trepidation. I am a non-professional addressing
readers who are likely to be mostly professionals. What I have done
to enable myself to proceed is to analyze the situation as follows:
I think of an ethicist as a person who thinks, talks, and writes
about ethics professionally. However, all persons are required to
act ethically, and since no one should act without thinking, all
persons are, therefore, required to think about ethics. While one
may consult an ethicist occasionally or read ethical discussion by
professional ethicists, the daily activity of acting ethically
demands that each of us develop a facility of ethical thinking. I
would compare this assertion with the ideology of Protestantism
related to biblical interpretation. My wife happens to be a
professional biblical scholar. I may and do discuss biblical texts
with her and, of course, each Sunday I hear my pastor interpret the
assigned readings. But as a Christian I see myself as being
required to read, think about, and apply biblical texts for myself.
I need no intermediary between myself and the text.
[2] I have assuaged my sense of vulnerability by analyzing
terminology and arguing that I have every right to think about
ethics, indeed a responsibility to do so. If I choose to do so in a
public forum, that is also my right. I recognize that my definition
of the word "ethicist" may differ from that of many of my
readers-or at least from how some of you use it when you speak of
what you do for a living-but it is nevertheless a valid
definition.
[3] Similarly, while issues of security are about serious
material matters like life and death, the use of language in how we
approach it is critically important. Consider how one very
important player in the current national security discussion spoke
about the matter. In an article in Atlantic Monthly, James
Fallows asserts that President Bush's speech on September 20, 2001
was an outstanding presidential address.
But it introduced a destructive concept that Bush used more and
more insistently through 2002. 'Why do they hate us?' he asked
about the terrorists. He answered that they hate what is best in
us:…'They hate our freedoms.' As he boiled down this
thought…it became 'They hate us for who we are' and 'They
hate use because we are free.' There may be people who have
studied, fought against, or tried to infiltrate al-Qaeda and who
agree with Bush's statement, but I have never met any. The
soldiers, spies, academics, and diplomats I have interviewed are
unanimous in saying that 'They hate us for who we are' is dangerous
claptrap. Dangerous because it is so lazily self-justifying and
self-deluding: the only thing we could possibly be doing wrong is
being so excellent. Claptrap, because it reflects so little
knowledge of how Islamic extremism has evolved.1
[4] A nation seeking to enhance national security must respond
as well as possible to the true motivation of those who seek to do
the nation harm. If their motivation for harming us is simply that
"they hate who we are," then we could only mitigate that by
becoming different (which some analysts suggest has happened since
9/11). If, however, as Fallows and others (including me) contend,
they hate some of the things the United States does, then our
approach to enhancing security could involve changing some of what
we do. For example, the report of the 9/11 commission notes about
the motivation of Khaled Sheikh Muhammad, whom it identifies as the
"mastermind of the 9/11 attacks": "KSM's animus toward the United
States stemmed not from his experience there as a student, but
rather from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy
favoring Israel."2 Hence, the government could
examine altering its foreign policy as a possibly appropriate
technique for defusing terrorism by diminishing terrorists'
motivation to attack us.
[5] "The distinction between who we are and what we do matters,"
argues Fallows, "because it bears on the largest question about the
Iraq War: Will it bring less or more Islamic terrorism? If violent
extremism is purely vengeful and irrational, there is no hope
except to crush it. Any brutality along the way is an unavoidable
cost. But if it is based on logic of any sort, a clear
understanding of its principles could help us to weaken its
appeal-and to choose tactics that are not
self-defeating."3
[6] This point is relevant not only to the matter of national
security but to my own feeling of insecurity about being part of a
group of essays by professional ethicists. Much of my insecurity
comes from thinking that the motivation for my being invited to
prepare this essay was that I would deal with ethics. Indeed, it is
more likely that I was invited because my experience has equipped
me to contribute information related to the Arab Middle East.
[7] Having made a reasoned apologia to a group of rational
readers, I feel secure enough to make an assertion about what
qualifies as ethical, an assertion which will underlie the
remainder of my discussion. What I plan to discuss in this essay is
not, as I noted, ethics but matters of vulnerability and security
in the context of the Arab, Muslim Middle East. The issue is not
related primarily to personal or individual ethics at all but to
the actions of governments. At this time any discussion of
Vulnerability and Security is colored by and must be
related to the fall-out of the attacks on the United States in
September, 2001, and the resulting actions of our government and
others to deal with the threat to national security from so-called
terrorism. While individuals, of course, have a responsibility for
their own security and, even more, for their feeling of security,
my concern is ethical consideration of governmental actions aimed
at promoting the security of the nation.
[8] I wish to assert that the guiding force of governments is
self-interest: nation-states properly act to achieve what they
think will promote the well-being of their citizens, not, as
individuals can do, out of a principle like love of God and
neighbor. Hence, there is properly an element of utilitarianism in
determining when a government has acted properly. In the case of
security, is the citizenry safer because of what the government has
done? If so, then it was a good choice. But, of course, one must
use more than utilitarianism in determining the proper actions of
governments. Governments usually have a number of choices about
which actions to take in a particular case to accomplish the goal
of making their citizens safer. In judging among such alternatives,
a government should determine which action will work best and will
also have the fewest negative effects. The algorithm for such
calculations is complex, of course. In the case of the security of
citizens, the government must consider the utility and the negative
effects on its citizenry, on its enemies, and on the innocent
citizens of states determined to be enemy states (sometimes
referred to as "collateral damage") of such solutions as weapons
development, infringement of citizens' rights (as in the Patriot
Act), preemptive war, and incarceration. In order to be deemed
ethical, governmental actions with serious negative effects, like
engaging in war, must be shown to be significantly more effective
than less damaging alternatives, or must be employed after less
damaging alternatives have been shown to have failed.
[9] This background discussion is necessary to explain why I
will spend the bulk of my essay discussing information which I
think elucidates how one best judges whether an action taken in
response to a perceived threat to our national security from
persons or nations of Arab, Muslim Middle Eastern origin will be
effective in increasing security.
[10] Vulnerability and Security: Current Challenges in
Security Policy from an Ethical and Theological Perspective,
prepared by the Commission on International Affairs in the Church
of Norway Council on Ecumenical and International Relations, has as
its underlying premise a belief that the key to these matters lies
in the way in which human beings think about and relate to one
another. As Martin Buber famously said, "All real living is
meeting," making it clear that in order truly to meet the other we
must seek to have an understanding of the true self of the other.
Hence I will concentrate on elucidating the self of the Arab Other
who lives in a Muslim, Middle Eastern context, understanding that
in so generalizing I must falsify what can be true about any single
Arab person. Further, I understand and admit my limitations. I am
neither a Muslim nor someone who is native to the Middle East,
though I am an Arab-American who has lived in and traveled often
throughout the Middle East, and I have studied Islam and developed
close personal and working relationships with Arab Muslims in the
United States and in the Middle East.
[11] I would like to cast my further discussion in metaphorical
terms initially: The behaviors of American travelers shopping in
the suq or traditional market of Arab countries offer
valuable insight into our government's ineptitude in dealing with
Arab Middle Easterners. As one who travels often to the Middle
East, I have conducted my own amateur research into tourist
responses to the Arab custom of negotiating sales prices. This
practice represents the most commonly described observation of
travelers reporting on their experiences. The categories of their
responses and reactive behaviors reflect almost exactly the
American administration's methods of dealing with the Arab world at
both the government and street levels.
[12] The most prevalent and insidious response is that market
sellers are being duplicitous. Reflecting the orientalist
stereotype of Arabs as cunning double-dealers, most American
tourist-shoppers hear an initial quoted price as an exorbitant
attempt to cheat them by demanding more than the item is worth. A
common response is walking away. I have observed such a reaction
even when the asking price is perhaps a quarter of what one would
pay for the same item in the U.S. A fear of being played for a fool
leads to a failure to recognize a beneficial deal. In such cases no
negotiation of price takes place and no potential agreement can be
reached. Similarly the current American government profiles Arabs
and Muslims generally as terrorists or prospective terrorists. On
principle the administration says it will not negotiate with
terrorists. Hence, no deal, no matter how potentially beneficial to
American interests, can be worked out.
[13] For other tourists, the failure of Arab sellers to fix
prices and the potential that almost every price demands
negotiation is threatening. The approach to the buyer-seller
relationship-usually considerably more distant, if not
non-existent, in the United Sates-places tourists in the position
of outsider, a position of weakness which Americans do not like.
They find themselves in an unfamiliar environment engaging in a
perceived contest for which they lack experience and even a
knowledge of the rules of play. Commonly in such situations,
tourists react either defensively or counter-offensively. Defensive
travelers avert their eyes from approaching sellers and quickly
walk past-one hand protectively on their fanny pack and the other
on their camera. In this way they avoid being caught up in a match
they might lose. Those on the offensive take the "I refuse to play
your game" approach. They firmly and finally set their own price at
the outset and refuse to engage in any exchange lest they be taken
advantage of. Their assumption is that one cannot lose in a
negotiation one never enters. Of course, walking away without that
souvenir one badly wanted can truly be a loss.
[14] The third common response, and from the perspective of the
seller the most quintessentially American, comes from the tourists
who buy their way out of the unpleasant prospect of negotiating.
Faced with the option of not getting what they want or engaging in
what is to them a tedious or threatening process, they pay the
first asking price. Thus they are able to keep the connection in
familiar territory-the fixed price interaction where money says all
that needs saying-and get the product they desire. Ironically such
a tourist is most likely to be regarded by the seller with disdain
as one who has no sense of the value of money or how business is
properly conducted.
[15] Underlying all of these failed responses of tourists to the
alien practice of negotiating in the Middle Eastern suq is
the belief that the process, quaint as it might be, is simply a
waste of time. Since the seller knows what the ultimate price will
be, the traveler concludes, why not just do it the American way and
save all this time and discomfort. What the unengaged tourist fails
to recognize is that negotiation is neither a time-wasting
entertainment nor an effort to soak the buyer. Rather it represents
an effort to build a relationship whose objective is to establish a
fair exchange while preserving the dignity of the parties involved.
Sellers know they will not sell a product for a price lower than
they can afford. They assume, therefore, that buyers will not agree
to pay a price higher than they can afford. Negotiation is the
process of arriving at the point where both sides feel comfortable
with the price, if not totally happy with it. Each can leave the
process with dignity, knowing they made choices, governed their own
position, built a relationship, were treated with honor and were
not taken advantage of. Government officials will not discover such
an approach until they come to believe that their potential partner
in negotiation is deserving of honor and dignity. I believe this is
the key issue to enhancing security when dealing with Middle East
Arabs.
[16] In the so-called "War on Terrorism," Western culture tends
to look at the hit and counter-hit of an exchange of violence as
essentially the same thing. It is talked of as a "round of
violence" or "cycle of violence." But though they look the same, I
suggest we consider how they are viewed by the perpetrators. For
one side it may be saving face or gaining honor. Onlookers in the
West may view it as some irrational attempt to gain a solution to a
problem (like Israeli occupation) and shake their heads over how
ineffective it is. Those responding to an attack may see their
counter attack as an attempt to punish the perpetrators severely in
order to discourage this kind of attack-if I hurt you enough you
will stop. But operating only from one's own interpretation of what
is happening without considering the other's interpretation is
counterproductive. Over-responding shames the perpetrators on the
other side who, let us posit, acted out of a desire to regain lost
honor. For example, in two weeks of early October, 2004,
Palestinians in Gaza killed 3 Israeli settlers and the Israeli army
retaliated by killing 99 Palestinians.4 A reaction which states that
one Israeli life is worth 33 Palestinian lives demands that honor
lost by this new action be recaptured by a response. Hence, this
reaction lays the groundwork for response, working at cross
purposes and not moving closer to security for either side.
[17] One who sees honor as a very high or even the highest good
may be viewed as ethical doing what is necessary to protect or
secure that good. For some people honor is more important than
life. In protecting it, one's security is promoted. Thus it may
make ethical sense to such a person that so-called terrorism is a
valid tool to gain security if a successful attack on the other is
viewed as promoting or reclaiming one's honor. (The story of
Shakespeare's Hamlet reveals that the use of revenge to
maintain honor is not an idea alien to the West.) From the
so-called terrorist's side, the inflicting of pain is not intended
so much to hurt the other as to aggrandize oneself. On the other
side, the inflicting of pain in retaliation is a means to get the
perpetrator to see the action as too expensive. But if the
terrorists' action has given them honor by showing their ability to
act in their own interest, it has been successful whatever the cost
in life.
[18] Honor is a critically important value in the lives of Arab
Muslims and, as such, is an important motivation for personal and
communal activities. While most Americans are familiar with
religious cultures based on fear or guilt, Islam is better
understood as related to shame/honor cultures. The Arabian culture
in which Islam arose was a pastoral culture, and most pastoral
cultures reflect an honor-based set of values.5 The Quran and Islam also
place a high worth on honor and dignity. People in Islamic cultures
see God as the one who can never be humiliated, an attribute which
extends to God's prophets. Even those who know little about Islam,
recognize that one of the most common phrases on the lips of
Muslims, especially in prayer, is "Allahu akbar." It echoes
throughout cities around the world when Muslims are called to
prayer. The often-used translation, "God is great," loses the
effect of the original which declares that "God is Greater than all
else" or "God is Greatest." Like God's other attributes in Islam,
this one is superlative. Being above all else that exists, God can
never be brought low.
[19] This aspect of Islam provides an area of significant
theological difference with Christianity whose scripture presents
Jesus as having suffered a humiliating crucifixion, thus a God who
is able to suffer for the sake of God's creatures. In Islam, God's
invulnerability and honor extends to the prophets and messengers.
As a messenger of God, the Jesus of the Quran could not have been
humiliated at the hands of human beings; the Quran says it only
appeared as if he had been crucified. For Muslims, this belief
about God and its continuous presence in the culture provides a
model of dignity. All are humbled before God; but, created to
follow in the way of God and to be God's vicegerents on earth,
human beings deserve never to be humiliated by another human
person. For Muslims to reject humiliation and be highly concerned
about their honor, then, is not only an act of psychological
protection or a historical-cultural value, but an act of religious
significance.
[20] It can be argued that honor is the most important value in
Arab life and culture, indeed a value more important than life
itself. David Bukay explains:
A man without honor is
considered dead. Hence the saying, 'It is better to die with honor
than live with humiliation.' A man's place in the tribe, as well as
the tribe's place among the tribes, was according to the measure of
his and its honor. When honor was harmed, shame was caused which
originated in public exposure, overt to everyone, a phenomenon
which severely humiliated a man. Indeed, the Arab individual is
caught up throughout his whole life in intensive activity to avoid
shame and advance his honor.6
As in all shame/honor cultures, a man's lost honor can be
redeemed by public vengeance.
[21] In addition, however, there is a positive means to promote
one's honor: extending food, protection, and shelter to a
stranger-a basis, no doubt, of the much vaunted "Arab hospitality."
My own experience traveling in the Arab world elucidates the
reality of this practice. In small, poor villages I have visited,
perhaps to see some isolated ancient ruin, it has been a common
experience to have family groups vie over at whose house we will
choose to accept the offer of lunch. Because honor is so
significant a value and motivator, it becomes clear why terrorist
groups and leaders choose to emphasize issues of Arab dishonor or
humiliation at the hands of Westerners, especially America. In
fact, the word "humiliation" has now become a major part of the
vocabulary used by many Arabs, not just so-called terrorists, in
discussing current politics. The failure of the United States and
Israel to dialogue with the Other ("There is no partner for peace."
"We will not dialogue with terrorists.") is to exacerbate the
problem of loss of honor by making the other a non-person. Rather
than calling upon the Arabs' penchant for hospitality and desire to
meet as equals, the United States is rejecting the very idea of a
meeting with them.
[22] Current media commentary and stories which quote Arabs,
whether on the street or among the ranks of the powerful and
well-known, contain numerous references to Arabs' feelings of
humiliation. Most often the quotations refer to a sense of the
humiliation of the Arab/Islamic world in the face of the West. In
December, 2004 I was a guest at the annual awards ceremony of the
prestigious Arab Gulf Fund for the United Nations Development
Programme (AGFUND) in Tunis to receive an award for exemplary
development program on behalf of the Near East Foundation. Of the
numerous prominent speakers, including Saudi Prince Talal bin Abdul
Azziz, representatives of the government of Tunisia, and heads of
international Arab organizations, no fewer than three of them
decried the current times as an environment which humiliates Arabs.
Prince Talal observed that today Arabs feel humiliation and long
for the "days of our glory" while noting that the humiliation comes
both from those occupying Arab lands and from "those of our own
people who resort to evil means to achieve political ends." Part of
the sense of humiliation goes as far back as the Crusades, part
goes back to loss of the great Muslim empire, but most of the
current feeling is much more recent7 It derives from the
experience of being excluded from the table where the real
decisions about the shape of today's political world are made and
from a sense of being used and controlled rather than treated with
seriousness as equals.
[23] Based on the foregoing observations, I would posit the
following thesis: Increasing the sense of honor of the Arab "enemy"
(a very small group) and those who assent to their actions (a force
which helps promote their militant measures) will increase our
security; increasing their sense of humiliation and isolation will
increase the motivation of terrorists to use terror as a means of
enhancing honor. This position is, I think, more difficult for
Westerners to accept than for Arabs, who understand better the
value and usefulness of allowing the other to maintain honor. This
observation can be elucidated by a comparison of the way in which
the Crusaders took Jerusalem from the Muslims in 1099 with horrific
devastation and "ruthless extermination" and the way in which
Salah-ad-Din recaptured it in 1187.8 Following the ideals laid out
in the Quran and his perspicacity as a military leader, he chose
not to exact revenge for the massacre of 1099.9
[24] Americans by and large fail to accord validity to Arab
Muslim observations that the United States holds a position which
humiliates or is inimical to Islam and to Arabs. From the Arab
Muslim view, on the other hand, there is ample evidence of such a
reality. In brief list form, which I will not enlarge upon here,
the following demonstrate the kinds of realities which engender
feelings of being attacked, humiliated or, at best, of being
dismissed:
[25] Of U.S. President George Bush's list of countries composing
the axis of evil and/or the sources of terrorism-Iran, Iraq, and
North Korea with occasional extensions to include Libya, Syria and
the Palestinians-all, with the exception of North Korea, are
Muslim, and those, with the exception of Iran, are Arab
countries.
[26] The last three wars fought by the United States have been
against Muslim countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq.
[27] They see incontrovertible evidence for the United States'
unilateral support of Israel despite its being the colonialist
occupier of the Palestinian territories, having for 50 years denied
the rights of Palestinians, and being out of proportion the most
militarily powerful nation in the area. More than anything else,
however, they point to the scores of UN resolutions going back
fifty years demanding Israeli action which that country has ignored
while the Bush administration used Iraq's failure to comply with a
single UN resolution as one of the premises to justify its war
against the country.
[28] They perceive that the U.S. government supports Arab or
Muslim regimes which are undemocratic or which oppress their
people, going back to the Shah's Iran, Saddam Hussein's regime when
the U.S. supported him in his war against Iran, and currently
including the Egyptian and Saudi regimes.
[29] They observe a tendency to blame all of Islam for the evils
of the few but not to do the same for Christianity or Judaism. Arab
analysts point out, for example, the 1982 Sabra and Shatila
massacres in Beirut were encouraged and made possible by Israel and
carried out by Christians.
[30] I have found Amin Maalouf's small book In the Name
of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong very helpful
in gaining an intellectual understanding of these
issues.10
Underlying my arguments on the matter of security lies the
assumption that the realities of threat and the feeling of being
threatened often become inseparable and indistinguishable. Hence,
properly dealing with security must involve dealing with the threat
from the external enemy and the internal enemy: the psychology of
fear. Analyzing contemporary realities, Maalouf makes a similar
case: "The emotions of fear or insecurity don't always obey
rational considerations. They may be exaggerated or even paranoid;
but once a whole population is afraid, we are dealing with the
reality of the fear rather than the reality of the
threat."11
Recognizing the emotional-psychological nature of this insecurity
and its potential for moving far beyond the reality of the threat
suggests further considerations. First, creating a sense of
security cannot deal only with introducing methods for removing
physical threats such as walls, border control systems,
imprisonment of suspected terrorists, or conducting a war. Keeping
the Other who threatens us on the outside offers some comfort, but
psychological insecurity imagines the threat bypassing every
barrier, like the bogeyman who can find his way under our bed or
behind our closet door. Maalouf's observation that we must deal
with the reality of the fear argues for the value of coming face to
face with the imagined enemy who, in such a meeting, is likely to
become much less threatening.
[31] Second, we should consider the role, inadvertent or
unscrupulous, which government or other interests may have in
stoking the psychological threat, whose irrational nature makes it
unlikely to be questioned. The Bush administration's
much-criticized use of the color-coded terrorism threat level
system in the months before the 2004 presidential election is an
example which invites scrutiny. Third, we should be reminded of the
historical tendency of religions to use the psychology of fear and
the Other to promote its own agendas. In the years following the
Dark Ages, for example, Europe was a dangerous place beset by
warfare. As Karen Armstrong argues in Holy War, the Church
of the time used people's feelings of fear and insecurity to
position itself as the source of security. Monasteries and churches
became literally places of sanctuary, uniting the people in their
sense of being part of a united Christianity, an objective of the
Cluniac reform.12 But we should not forget the
reciprocal relationship between religion and the culture in which
it inheres. Maalouf contends that "the influence of religion on
people is often exaggerated, while the influence of people on
religion is neglected…If Christianity shaped Europe,
European societies also shaped Christianity. Christianity today is
what European societies have made it…How often has the
Catholic Church felt harassed, betrayed, ill-used! How often has it
dug in its heels, trying to put off changes it believed to be
contrary to faith, morals, and the will of God!…The Church
has always begun by resisting, and then gone on to accommodate
itself and adapt…Western society has invented the Church and
the religion it needed."13
[32] The value of remembering this history of the West is
gaining the ability to more fairly and rationally assess the nature
of Islam as we perceive it compared to the way it really is.
Maalouf argues that the Islamic world likewise "has always produced
a religion in its own image…When the Arabs were triumphant
and felt the world was theirs for the taking, they interpreted
their faith in a spirit of tolerance and openness…Societies
that are sure of themselves are mirrored by a religion that is
confident, serene and open; uncertain societies are reflected in a
religion that is hypersensitive, sanctimonious and
aloof."14
[33] This argument supports my thesis that we have reason to
make the Other feel confident, serene and open by meeting them in a
way which accords them and their faith honor and dignity. Such
meeting and the creation of such a sense of reassurance will not be
easy to accomplish, of course. For beyond the immediate aggressive
actions engendered by a response to the realities of international
terrorism stands a background reality which reinforces in the Arab
Muslim world, indeed in most of the non-Western world, a sense of
being demeaned. And while this background offers an important
insight into the realities under consideration, it is less amenable
to correction than those discussed previously.
[34] Standing behind every meeting of the West and non-Western
cultures is the powerful force of modernization. To modernize
anywhere in today's world, whether in the form of technology, media
or commerce, is, to some extent, to westernize. The impact of such
adaptation is:
experienced differently by those born in the dominant
civilization and those born outside it. The former can change,
advance in life, adapt without ceasing to be themselves. One might
even say that the more Westerners modernize themselves the more
completely in harmony they feel with their culture…For the
rest of the world's inhabitants-all those born in the failed
cultures-openness to change and modernity presents itself
differently. For [them] modernization has constantly meant the
abandoning of part of themselves. Even though it has sometimes been
embraced with enthusiasm, it has never been adopted without a
certain bitterness, without a feeling of humiliation and defection.
Without a piercing doubt about the dangers of assimilation. Without
a profound identity crisis.15
[35] Americans can perhaps find sympathy for those living with
this reality of the forced impingement upon their lives of outside
cultural forces by considering the warnings following the terrorist
attacks of September 11, 2001. Analysts from many points on the
political spectrum warned that Americans should not let the
terrorists' actions make them change their lifestyle because
"that's what they're trying to do" and "if we change, they win."
From this position some argued against the tendency to curtail the
spending of money and some against the willingness to relinquish
rights through such means as the Patriot Act. Deep down, however,
Americans realize that they have been forced to change and, like
the non-Westerners forced to Westernize when they answer their
mobile telephone or visit an internet café, they resent it.
My security grows as I believe I can be who I am. In New York and
Tel Aviv, people go about their routine, while realizing that they
are more likely targets of potential terrorists than their fellow
countrymen in other places.
[36] So, security is a feeling as much as a reality. My argument
is that we can enhance both our feeling of security and the reality
of security if we meet the Other and can make the Other feel less
vulnerable. Only the strong can afford to look vulnerable. But I
would posit that the right word is not "vulnerability." A nation
does not gain security by showing itself to be vulnerable. Rather,
and especially with what I know about Arab culture, a sense of
humility as opposed to "tough guy" superiority (the "Bring 'em on!"
approach of George W. Bush) would go a long way to building
positive relationships and breaking the back of local support for
perpetrators of terrorism among grassroots populations. At the very
least, such a position would create the ground where productive
meeting can take place.
[37] In many cultures, but certainly in the Arab Middle Eastern
mentality, persons being attacked must close ranks and defend those
on their side. One can see this by considering the difference in
how Arabs spoke about Arafat to those outside the community before
and after his death or by imagining why Saddam Hussein would
continue to encourage the West to think he had so-called weapons of
mass destruction when he had apparently already disposed of them.
This cultural "mandate" also helps explain why Americans do not
hear the very vocal denunciation by Muslims of Islamists and
"jihadists" which Americans keep demanding. If the United States is
seen as attacking Arabs and Muslims generally, then they must
create a common front of resistance. It is the dominant, powerful
side which can more easily show itself to be open, just, and
willing to consider compromise. A studied humility in the tradition
of Socrates which recognizes how much we do not know about the
Other and the offer of dignity through meeting can indeed be the
road to security in this new world in which we live.
© May 2005
Journal of Lutheran Ethics (JLE)
Volume 5, Issue 5
1 "Bush's Lost Year," Atlantic Monthly (October, 2004),
82.
2 "Bush's Lost Year," 82.
3 "Bush's Lost Year," 84. A similar argument is used by
Michael Scheuer in Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War
on Terror (Potomac Books, 2004) and by Rashid Khalidi in
Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and
America&=javascript:goNote(39s Perilous Path in the Middle East
(Beacon Press, 2004).
4 The Economist, (October 16, 2004), p 41.
5 See J. G. Peristiany, Ed., Honour and Shame: The Values
of Mediterranean Society. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1965.
An exhaustive collection of references by Jerome H. Neyrey of the
University of Notre Dame, "Toward of Bibliography on 'Honor and
Shame' (1997) is available on the internet at http://www.nd.edu/~jneyrey1/honor.htm
6 David Bukay, Arab-Islamic Political Culture: A Key
Source to Understanding Arab Politics and the Arab-Israeli
Conflict, ACPR Publishers, 2003. Significant portions of the text
are available online at www.acpr.org.il/publications/bukay-pol-cul-2003.html
7 Karen Armstrong in Holy War: The Crusades and Their
Impact on Today's World (New York: Anchor/Random House, 2001)
offers a detailed exploration of the continuing impact of the
Crusades.
8 Karen Armstrong, p 178.
9 Karen Armstrong, p. 258.
10 Tr. Barbara Bray, (New York: Arcade Publishing,
2000.)
11 Amin Maalouf, p. 28.
12 Karen Armstrong, pp. 54ff.
13 Pp. 60-62.
14 Pp. 62-64.
15 Amin Maalouf, pp. 71-72. Such resentment of forced
culture change is present not only among non-Westerners. The French
disdain for McDonald's and EuroDisney shows how even a developed
county with a respected Western culture perceives globalization as
Americanization and a Trojan Horse. The Economist reported in its
November 13, 2004 issue about Mexican resistance to the opening of
a new Bodega Aurerá (the Mexican name for Wal-Mart) near the
famous pyramids at Teotihuacán. "To them having a Wal-Mart
next door is abhorrent. In the words of Homero Aridjis, a writer
and one of the leading opponents, 'it is like driving the stake of
globalization into the heart of old Mexico'" (p. 42).