Social, Political, Military Religious Arab Culture

"There is a huge difference between learning and being educated. We are teaching our  young but they are not getting educated."
"They are not encouraged to find their way to the truth. The truth is considered the exclusive domain of authority -- religious, political or social authority."
"I am writing about the Arab world as a son. I write out of concern regarding the Arab world, which has descended into a dark age. I am the insider turned outsider to tell a story about a culture that was once great, but is now crashing, collapsing."
Elie Mikhael Nasrallah, author, Hostage to History: The Cultural Collapse of the 21st Century Arab World

Palestinian children dressed as Hamas suicide bombers

The answer is in the closed-mindedness of the traditions and the culture, the heritage and the religion clasped close to the heart of the Arab world. At its heart the Arab world cannot rescue itself from its tribal Bedouin history and the culture that grew out of that heritage, handed down proudly and with firm conviction from generation to succeeding generation. Tribalism excludes any not from the tribe, and loyalty to clan closets the mind even more strenuously to shut out all trust of others.

Above all, it is the overarching and all-enveloping nature of Islam that closes minds and keeps them firmly shut. The religion that is all things to the faithful. Demanding five-times-daily obeisance as symbols of faith in the all-powerful deity demanding that loyalty. With so many daily reminders how can the mind lapse into forbidden wanderings of the imagination and awkward questions demanding answers? Rationality is of necessity absent, for there is no room left for it to manoeuvre when faith and emotions of exclusivity and exceptionalism crowd out all else.

Young Palestinian children “executed” an Israeli soldier in a play at an art exhibition at the Al-Surra Elementary School for Boys and Girls, which is under the Hebron Education Directorate under the PA Ministry of Education. A photo from the exhibition posted on the school's Facebook page shows a Palestinian boy wearing a ribbon with the Palestinian flag and the word "Palestine" on it preparing to “execute” another child dressed as an Israeli soldier. He is pointing a toy M16 rifle at the Israeli soldier who kneels with his arms raised in surrender. A second photo shows “the Israeli soldier” lying on the ground after being “executed” by the smiling Palestinian child.

People's minds are kept strictured for a decided reason. Women are subjugated to men's needs and men are assured, under Islam, that their wives and daughters, sisters and cousins are kept in thrall to the stern admonitions of Islam that women must be chaste and worthy of the men who keep them so obedience is a requirement. As the faithful obey Islam, just so must women of faith obey the religion and the culture that delineates them as possessions first and foremost.

Islam despises those among its faithful who have the temerity to think for themselves and to question established culture and Islamic rules. To convince the faithful just how forbidden it is from on high to leave Islam and accept another religion the death penalty is regarded as the cure for such unforgivable abandonment; once a Muslim there can be no other path to god and the penalty for apostasy is foreordained by the Almighty.

When the world turned its attention in fascination at the stirrings of challenges to the Middle East Arab governments that have failed their peoples' aspirations and futures in 2011, it was with the expectation that the tyrants would fall and the people clamouring for change would take charge, tasking those among them with the grasp of what it takes to turn an  uncivil nation into a civil one, to lead them to a new era.

The fallen tyrants, whether removed by popular demand of the people or interference by foreign nations seeing an opportunity to alter the politics of failed nations, simply gave away to dictators even more brutal in their manipulative assaults on their populations. But even their predations on Arab society were eclipsed by the rise of Islamist jihad, persuading the fanatics among the population that Islam's renewal required a return to medieval coercion and violent force.

The world is now witness to the rise of jihadist movements each of which is more devoted to atrocities than those they succeed. Yet their horrific mass assaults on those whom they claim to represent and on the ethnic and religious minorities living among them are well matched by governments such as (non-Arab) Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan/Afghanistan whose mendacious capital punishment laws resemble the punishments meted out by Islamic State, Hezbollah and Hamas.

Yet it is the regime that manages to retain its hold on what is left of Syria that exemplifies the stark brutality inherent in Islamist vengeance and Arab perfidy in its willingness to exterminate challengers to the status quo. From Saddam Hussein to (Persian) Ruhollah Khomeini and Bashar al-Assad, the tradition of violent Islam leads to intimidation, torment, assassination.

In the world of the West people with no conscience exercising their free will to reject the universal social compact of compassion toward humanity are called psychopaths. In the Arab/Muslim world they are called heroes and 'martyrs' for Islam.