The Closed Circle

...them Egypt, girls must submit to the pain and degradation of female circumcision, which serves, as one Arab commentator put it, as "a vaccination against the dangers of sexuality...

...When he changes his mind, Khalil's penis will rise.' " Such fatalism is not, Pryce-Jones insists, the result of some flaw in the Arab national character, as many mystified Westerners—and even some Arab observers—have concluded...

...He knew all pathology, more than any doctor in the hospital, he knew "all the pathology in the world," all surgery and gynecology too, and he gave me a shake with every subject...

...as "indispensable," by Newsweek as "thoughtful and often cheeky," by Carl F.H...

...His refusal to patronize or condescend to the people he is writing about enables us to see them as they really are...

...Nouwen, Russell Kirk, Robert Coles, Francis Canavan, Christopher Lasch, Walker Percy, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Peter Kreeft, and others — express themselves with clarity, verve, style, and heart...

...The Closed Circle is the work not of a specialist in Arab affairs, but of a writer who has tried to make sense of his experience and of the seemingly irrational realities of life in the Arab world...

...Those who write for us — Sheldon Vanau ken, Robert N. Bellah, John Lukacs, Henri J.M...

...Get out...

...For Arabs today, as in the past, family (or group) loyalty takes precedence over individual identity, and the family "is in the hands of an undisputed autocrat who judges himself fit to assess and extend the collective interest...

...Even today, polygamy, underage marriage, temporary marriage, and divorce by repudiation are common practices in the Arab world, and in some places, such as the royal households of Saudi Arabia, one can still find harems, concubines, and slave girls...

...Before consenting to leave, the King insisted on having his favorite wife brought to his bed...

...Jobbing and dealing, even in the most sophisticated Arab circles, remains an essential business of promoting and protecting one's own kind...

...As Pryce-Jones makes clear, such behavior, however inconceivable in a Western setting, is neither wanton nor irrational, but simply characteristic of the way Arabs respond to a setback or challenge...

...Among other things, we scrutinize the religious dimensions of the great events and issues of the past and present, and probe the wisdom offered not only by the Bible and Church fathers, but also by such diverse giants as St...

...We've been characterized by George Will as "splendid," by Bernard Cardinal Law as "excellent," by Berkeley's John T. Noonan Jr...

...Since careerism is the highest value, "no dishonor attaches to such primary transactions as selling short weight, deceiving anyone about quality, quantity or kinds of THE CLOSED CIRCLE: AN INTERPRETATION OF THE ARABS David Pryce-Jones/Harper & Row/464 pp...

...To get a job, for instance, a young man approaches the head of his family or clan, who:is under obligation to do his very best to make sure that his kinsman is given what he asks for...

...In an illustrative anecdote, Pryce-Jones recounts the experience of Ian Young, an English doctor who in the early 1970s worked as a gynecologist at a hospital in Algeria...

...Just as the prohibitions concerning premarital sex—which preclude even innocent physical expressions of affection—lead in some places to widespread homosexuality (and bestiality), so the obsession with marital performance and the publicity surrounding the marriage consummation leave many Arab men sexually inadequate...

...This logic applies in every area of Arab life, with the avoidance of shame always the first imperative...

...The book is based on his travel and observations as well as a comprehensive reading of Arab literature—from political tracts and sociological studies to memoirs and novels...

...That alienation is the subject of this profoundly revealing and disturbing book...

...Islam itself, in Pryce-Jones's view, has done little to alter the tribal legacy, becoming simply another instrument by which aspiring power-holders have made their careers...

...On the contrary, "the individual finds honor-justification in whatever will promote his career...

...A Westerner soon discovers that doing business or just having a conversation with an Arab can be an unsettling experience, since lying "in the Arab world is not really a moral matter but a method of safeguarding honor and status...

...As Pryce-Jones points out, "Civic spirit, the good of the community, or mere considerations of who could best perform the job in hand has no part in these proceedings...

...Henry, the eminent evangelical theologian, as "exceedingly well done," and by Christopher Derrick, England's foremost Catholic apologist, as "by far the best Catholic magazine in the English-speaking world...

...When the opportunity presents itself, he makes his bid, killing or exiling the current power-holder (or, if unsuccessful, being killed or exAmong the well-educated the myth still circulates that religion is the preserve of the dimwitted, unlettered, and irrational...

...25 Steven C. Munson THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1989 47 goods, cheating at gambling, and bearing false witness...

...First and foremost, they are a people still rooted in tribal society...

...The consequences of this cycle—oppression, misery, and endless warfare—have varied little over time, or from one Arab country to another...

...Honor is accorded to the their oppressor...

...Leave this hospital immediately...

...what matters is protecting one's honor and preserving, or improving, one's position...

...owing him nothing, he is not to be blamed for taking what he can...

...His voice became hysterical...

...And what are the Arabs...

...In some Arab countries, among Steven C Munson has written for Commentary, the National Interest, and other publications...

...Lewis, Martin Luther King Jr., Flannery O'Connor, Lech Walesa, Mother Teresa, Graham Greene, Malcolm Muggeridge, and Pope John Paul II...

...Leave this country...

...Yet recently The New York Times Magazine carried an article on the "return to religion" among intellectuals...

...Francis, Aquinas, Dante, Thomas More, Kierkegaard, Newman, Dostoyevsky, Chesterton, Bonhoeffer, Eliot, Silone, Maritain, Niebuhr, Solzhenitsyn, Dorothy Day, C.S...

...We bat around a wide variety of issues and defy easy pigeonholing...

...From birth, boys are considered "capital investment," girls, "the fountainhead of shame...

...When God changes his mind, the Jews will go...

...Placing him, the patron has the right to expect allegiance and loyalty in return, and so he himself is also taking a careerist step forward...

...In the event of the job going to someone else, the patron becomes the object of shame, and his standing is under threat until such time as he can reestablish it by whatever means, and his young kinsman is satisfied...

...Efforts to introduce Western-style reforms have failed everywhere they have been tried...

...According to Pryce-Jones, considerations of shame and honor are always uppermost in the Arab mind, making daily life an entirely different matter from what it is in the West...

...So it happens that the Arab crimes of careerism from being judged for masses come to accept and even to admire what they are...

...For their part, Westerners—including the colonial powers—have largely accommodated the Arabs, usually failing to grasp that disputes in the Arab world (like those engulfing Lebanon) are effectively settled only through the unflinching application of superior force...

...At a less exalted level, Pryce-Jones notes the case of an 85-year-old merchant in Abu Dhabi who, according to a local news agency, "married two teenage girls simultaneously and consummated both marriages the same night...

...The doer of these things is merely quicker off the mark than the next fellow...

...Shamed by Young's exposure of his negligence and incompetence, the supervisor responded by denouncing him: He shook me, and I didn't resist...

...Fluent in Arabic, David PryceJones spent several years of his childhood in Morocco and later returned to the Middle East many times...

...48 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1989 iled himself...

...He would never tolerate it, never...

...he shrieked...

...uch reports notwithstanding, it is apparent that Arab attitudes toward sex and marriage are no less crippling for men than they are for women...

...Whether the institution one is charged with overseeing actually works the way it is supposed to is not a relevant concern...

...Wives and children are viewed as instruments to be used for the head of the family's self-aggrandizement...

...The Times article discussed the NEW OX-F OR D REVIEW as part of this return to religion, and rightly so...

...Far from coming to terms with the psychological consequences of custom," comments Pryce-Jones, "popular wisdom reached the helplessly fatalistic group conclusion that the man's impotence was like the Israeli occupation, and God's will...

...We'll keep you on your toes...

...Moreover, codes of shame and honor cannot be reconciled with Western concepts of contractual relationships, equal treatment under the law, or "the workings of a state with norms legally defined and voluntarily obeyed...

...There seems little likelihood that this condition will change...

...Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that Arab societies, eventhose blessed with oil, have done so little to improve the conditions under which people live, despite the outward signs of modernization...

...man who succeeds in capturing the state because he has truly proved his mastery, he has displayed ruthlessness beyond the In view of this reality, the metaphor of imagination and capacity of the ordinary a closed circle seems entirely apt...

...The next day, after the King's departure had been publicly announced, word of his "strength" the night before was discreetly passed around Riyadh, and his people were thus reassured that he was not too weak to rule...

...He also kills (or otherwise neutralizes) his original co-conspirators, whom he now considers, not unreasonably, to be a threat...

...He cites the example of the late King Saud of Saudi Arabia, who on one occasion fell ill and had to be flown out of the country for medical treatment...

...Needless to say, such practices are incompatible with Western notions of romantic love, which presuppose relations of fundamental equality and respect between men and women...

...After trying a variety of home remedies, all to no avail, his family finally gave up...

...This fascination is largely a result of the failures of secular substitutes for religion (such as positivism, hedonism, technological utopianism, egotism, Freudianism, and Marxism) to give abidingly satisfying answers to the truly significant puzzles in life: goodness, suffering, justice, love, death, and the meaning of it all...

...Pryce-Jones relates a particularly telling incident involving a young Palestinian living in the West Bank, who found himself impotent on his wedding night...

...It is shocking even to someone who thinks he has some notion of what separates Arab culture from our own...

...Often they are killed by their own brothers, who feel no remorse, only satisfaction at having restored the family's honor...

...From the Ivy League to Vanderbilt to Stanford, and among inquisitive people generally, there's an undeniable renewal of interest in the questions traditional religion raises and seeks to answer...

...Girls bring shame by losing their virginity before marriage, an offense so serious that by committing it they risk death...

...To consolidate his power, he places members of his own family or tribal, ethnic, or religious group in key positions, distributes the largess at his disposal among loyal followers, and persecutes those who might oppose him...

...Possessed of few rights, little freedom, and an inferior status, denied opportunities for education, work, and ownership, women are valued insofar as they are able to produce children, especially boys...

...As Pryce-Jones shows in a brilliant series of biographical portraits, Arab (or Muslim) rulers like Anwar Sadat, Muammar Qaddafi, Hafez al-Assad, Saddam Hussein, and Ayatollah Khomeini, for all their differences in personality, education, and background, "have conducted themselves with a conformity that makes their roles in practice so alike as to be interchangeable...

...He also looks beyond his borders for opportunities to mount his next power-challenge, all the while worrying that somewhere a new conspiracy may be forming, this time against him...

...We at the REV I EW are spearheading today's intellectual engagement with what Daniel Bell terms "the sacred...

...49...

...Modern technology has made Arab despotisms more efficient, and modern ideologies—Pryce-Jones has illuminating chapters on the influence of Nazism and Communism—have supplied Arab rulers with both inspiration and a means of mobilizing support...

...A son who refuses the bride selected for him shames his family and may be dealt with severely...

...It is, rather, a way of avoiding shame (in this case, by attributing a young man's lack of virility to a power beyond his control...

...For what this statement makes clear, in as stark a way as could be imagined, is the absolute nature of the Arab alienation from the West...

...Berkeley, CA 94706 PAYMENT MUST ACCOMPANY ORDER $3.50 Faith and Intelligence: Are They Compatible...

...Make check payable to NEW OXFORD REVIEW...

...Indeed, as Pryce-Jones points out, the "cult of virginity" is matched by a "cult of virility," with the most honor accruing to the man who demonstrates his sexual prowess in ways "which in other circumstances would obviously be a debasement, and a brutalization of human feelings...

...In Pryce-Jones's words: THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1989 Considerations of shame and honor forbid man...

...A robustly Catholic monthly magazine, we support the teachings of Holy Mother Church —be they doctrinal, sexual, or social — and do so without getting mean or anti-ecumenical about it...

...Indeed, in reading this book one is struck by the degree to which the author allows the Arabs to speak for themselves...

...Mail to: NEW OXFORD REVIEW Room 1 1069 Kains Ave...

...As a former steward tells it: With the assistance of four slaves, the sick King had intercourse with the woman...

...T his careerist ethos finds its ulti- 1 mate expression in Arab political life, which continues to operate, as it has for centuries, in accordance with tribal norms...

...Whether or not you're a Catholic, if you're committed to the proposition that faith and intelligence are decidedly compatible, give us a try...

...The honor of the whole family is at stake...

...Typically, an Arab ruler begins his career by joining a small conspiracy, perhaps sealed with solemn oaths...

...As for Western influences—ideas of scientific rationality, economic efficiency, social improvement, citizenship, elections, democracy—Arab power-holders have paid them lip service for more than a century in the correct belief that by doing so they could gain the foreign sponsorship needed either to fend off challenges to their rule or to launch a challenge against somebody else...

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...Marriages are arranged, the object of the parents on both sides being to increase their family's standing and honor...

...Our ecumenism is such that we embrace and engage non-Catholics at the highest common denominator of faith, not the lowest...

...How it pained him, that all the sacrifices of the black hours should be brought to nothing, by "white-coated saboteurs passing their hands from vagina to vagina, infecting my heroic people with syphilis...

...Through bribery and acts of violence—honored because they demonstrate his "warrior-like" qualities—he widens his circle of loyalists, at the same time offering his allegiance and services to one or more powerful patrons (the army, a foreign government) in exchange for support...

...As Pryce-Jones notes, in the history of the Muslim Middle East there has been exactly one election that could be called free and fair, and it was held nearly four decades ago, in Turkey...

...Since tribal society has no mechanism for determining leadership, those who hold positions of power and those who aspire to such positions are locked in a constant, if not always visible, struggle in which ambition, ruthlessness, and cruelty are prerequisites for success...

...After observing the filth and malpractice the patients were forced to endure, Young complained to the hospital supervisor, who held his post as a reward for his services as a nursing orderly during the war of liberation...