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S harabi, Omar al-Mukhtar Professor of Arab Culture at Georgetown
University, goes a step further and claims that Arab children are
"repressed" to an intolerable degree.106
Like the Bedouins, Middle Eastern city-dwellers put a premium
on violence, anger, and revenge. One young Palestinian discovered
that his unmarried sister had become pregnant, irredeemably sullying
the family honor. The virtuous young man wiped away the shame by
killing the girl and cutting open her belly with a knife. According to
French sociologist Juliette Minces, who has lived and researched
extensively in the Middle East, incidents like this are extraordinarily
common.107 No wonder the noted Arab social scientist Halim Barakat
has blamed the plight of the Levantine on the structure of its
families.108
The Arab peasants who stumbled across the famous Nag
Hamadi Gnostic Gospels in an Egyptian cave in 1945 were just a few
weeks away from a far more "important" deed at the time. They were
planning to avenge the death of their father. A few weeks after their
accidental contribution to archaeology, Muhammad 'Ali and his
brothers tracked down their father's killer, murdered him, cut off his
arms and legs, then ripped out his heart and ate it. The cheerleader
urging them on was none other than their mother. And it's quite likely
that the man on whom these faithful sons were venting their rage had
done away with their father out of obedience to the same ancient laws
of vengeance.109 The British Orientalist Sir Charles Lyell sums up the
Arab lust for violence with one blunt aphorism: "who uses not
roughness, him shall men wrong."110
Could the denial of warmth lay behind this Arab brutality?
It wouldn't be the first time that a lack of physical affection has
gone hand in hand with a love of inflicting pain. In sixteenth and
seventeenth century England--the England of Shakespeare and
Elizabeth I--displaying love to your kids was considered utterly
inappropriate. Young humans, cursed by the original sin of Adam,
still carried the devil within them. His Satanic majesty could be chased
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