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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (191105)	12/30/2006 10:17:09 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 793790

The words in the Islamic world seem designed to weave a web of alternative reality which is desired, rather than descriptive of the actual reality which exists. Of course. The alternative reality is honorable, while the actual reality is shameful. Everybody must continually battle to maintain their own status and relationships with all others by seeking honor and avoiding shame. This is what happens in society when a person's only identity is tribal and religious and there is no notion of a public good, no res publica to use the old Roman term. As Bernard Lewis notes, There are no parliaments or representative assemblies of any kind, no councils or communes, no chambers of nobility or estates, no municipalities in the history of Islam; nothing but the sovereign power, to which the subject owed complete and unwavering obedience as a religious duty imposed by the Holy Law. Or, as the old saying goes, Arabs think that truth is far too precious to be handed out free to strangers. In their societies, they are perfectly correct. I am reading David Pryce-Jones' The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs which expands on the subject.