Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Saving Arabs From Themselves

http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=19107
Saving Arabs From Themselves
By David Gutmann
FrontPageMagazine.com | August 12, 2005
A heated debate rages over the instigators of murderous jihad. Hawks 
often portray Islam as essentially violent—a creed for Holy 
Warriors—while doves usually make a distinction between the Koranic text 
and the murderous practices of its extreme adherents. Doves argue that 
Islam is one of the Great Religions, a "religion of Peace," whose Koran 
has been hijacked to serve the purpose of jihad.
Maybe it is. But in 1948, my Hagana officers told us grunts to kill 
ourselves rather than face capture by jihadists: "Always keep a bullet 
or a grenade for yourself" was their considered advice. I doubt that 
they would have given the same warning were we facing Unitarians or 
Anglicans.
Nevertheless, I do not agree with many hawks that Islam by itself is the 
prime mover of Arab violence. When I consider the obsessions, the 
language and the actions of the extremists, it becomes evident that, 
perhaps even more than religion, overlooked aspects of national 
character contribute to the fevers of jihad. As a Jew who owns a Koran 
(Oh Imams, is this permitted?) it appears to me that the more lurid 
stanzas of that generally inflammatory text are being used, by Islamic 
extremists, to rationalize their fury over perceived insults that have 
nothing to do with Islam per se.
That fury is not a product of the Koran. Rather, it has to do with a 
prior, psychological cause: the vulnerabilities of Arab national 
character, which is centered on the maintenance of honor and the 
avoidance of shame. Some readers will probably accuse me of 
psychobabbling. Note, however, that some very smart observers—the 
Israeli anthropologist Rafael Patai, for instance—have already 
documented the Arab phobia against the experience of shame.
That sensitivity is now at fever pitch. The Arab world is suffering a 
crisis of humiliation. Their armies are routed not only by Americans, 
but also by tiny, Jewish Israel; and as Arthur Koestler once remarked, 
the Arab world has not, in the last 500 years or so, produced much 
besides rugs, dirty postcards, elaborations on the belly-dance esthetic 
(and, of course, some innovative terrorist practices). They have no 
science to speak of, no art, hardly any industry save oil, very little 
literature, and portentous music which consists largely of lugubrious 
songs celebrating the slaughter of Jews.
Now that the Arabs have acquired national consciousness, and they 
compare their societies to other nations, these deficiencies become 
painfully evident, particularly to the upper-class Arab kids who attend 
foreign universities. There they learn about the accomplishments of 
Christians, Jews, (Freud, Einstein, for starters) and women. And yet, 
with the exception of Edward Said, there is scarcely a contemporary Arab 
name in the bunch. No wonder, then, that major recruitment to al-Qaeda's 
ranks takes place among Arab university students. And no wonder that 
suicide bombing becomes their tactic of choice: it is a last-ditch, 
desperate way of asserting at least one scrap of superiority—a spiritual 
superiority—over the materialistic, life-hugging, and ergo shameful West.
But this tactic is not, I suggest, a product of Islam. Rather, it is a 
product of the bruised Arab psyche. Remember that the Japanese also 
turned to suicide tactics in WWII to evade the humiliation of defeat. 
Though their religion was Shinto rather than Muslim, they too 
constituted a paradigm shame/honor culture, and defeat brought about, as 
with the Arabs, a furiously suicidal/homicidal response. After their 
armies had been defeated, their fleets sunk, their cities set aflame, 
and their home islands invaded, they launched the kamikaze bomber 
offensive, thereby committing a hi-tech form of hara-kiri, their usual 
remedy against intolerable shame. It is in this way that the modern Arab 
world resembles the Japan of World War II.  In both cases it is not 
religions but psychic wounds, the wounds inflicted by defeat and evident 
inferiority, that inspire suicide bombers.
It is often asserted that the changes set in train by modernization are 
particularly toxic to the Arabs. No doubt this is true. But if we are 
going to be therapeutic, our diagnoses need to be more specific; we need 
to identify the particular pathogens that are released by modernization. 
Besides sharpening their sense of inferiority relative to the West, 
modernization threatens to bring about the liberation of women (as in 
Afghanistan and Iraq). I say "threatens," because the self-esteem of 
Arab males is in large part predicated on the inferior position of their 
women. The Arab nations have for the most part lost their slaves and 
dhimmis, the subject peoples onto whose persons the stigmata of shame 
could be downloaded. But anyone who has spent time among them knows that 
Arab males have not lost their psychological need for social and sexual 
inferiors. In the absence of slaves and captive peoples, Arab women are 
elected for the special role of the inferior who, by definition, lacks 
honor. Arab men eradicate shame and bolster their shaky self-esteem by 
imposing the shameful qualities of the dhimmi, submission and passivity, 
upon women. Trailing a humbled woman behind them, Arab men can walk the 
walk of the true macho man.
Hence the relative lack of material achievement by Arabs: the Arab world 
has stunted the female half of its brain pool, while the men acquire 
instant self-esteem not by real accomplishment, but by the mere fact of 
being men, rather than women. No wonder, then, that the Arab nations 
feel irrationally threatened by the very existence of Israel. Like 
America, the Jews have brought the reality of the liberated woman into 
the very heart of the Middle East, into dar al-Islam itself. Big Satan 
and Little Satan: the champions of Muslim women.
I contend that female liberation is the most hopeful development in the 
Middle East, greater even than the first stirrings of democracy. I 
believe that Arab women have a greater stake in liberal democracy than 
Arab men, and as they acquire political power, they will fight for it. 
As for suicide bombings, jihadism and the macho posturing of Arab men, 
they are desperate remedies against further humiliation, against the 
perceived threat of “castration,” by their own women. Until Arab women 
achieve freedom and independence, we can expect, at least for awhile, to 
see Arab men cling to these remedies.
Even then, some Arab men will probably backslide to even greater 
suicidal/homicidal tantrums. Others, (perhaps even a majority) no longer 
able to project their deficiencies onto Arab women, will begin to 
recognize the flaws in themselves. These converts would adopt the 
self-critical stance that is already showing up among some daring Arab 
intellectuals and even religious leaders. And when Arab men can no 
longer acquire instant self-esteem by demeaning their women, some of 
them might even turn to the arts of peace, and try to acquire the sense 
of self-worth via instrumental rather than illusory psychological means.
We cannot, in the end, correct all the distortions of the Arab 
shame/honor ethos. But by pledging our support for Arab women's 
liberation—for instance, by advocating expanded liberties for women in 
the text of the new Iraqi constitution—we can hasten its erosion.

 
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=19107
Ma tu  formi le tue opinioni sui fogli dell'estrema destra neocon americana?
E io che tento anche di risponderti...
Ma vaff...
-- 
You_fuck_with_the_bull-You_gonna_get_the_horns

 Ma vaff...
Io formo le mie opinioni leggendo di tutto.
Qualche volta pure roba di sinistra.
Ma, più spesso che no, trovo che quella di sinistra spesso è solo 
brodaglia dell'estrema destra riscaldata.
Mirco