Arabs Are Shamelessly Motivated by Shame

Originally published at TMQ1 as “Muslims Motivated by Shame” and featured on the Jim Ball Radio Show and web site in Sydney, Australia.

by Shlomo Muslim, Ph.D.

Acting out is the only thing that gets Muslims off. Arabs are the last people to understand what’s behind their crackpot behavior. Some say they are emotionally unstable. Others say Arabs are just a very stupid people. Others blame their leaders. Very few Muslims have a clue why their leaders keep mixing the pot.

People outside the Middle East certainly don’t get it, so I’ve decided to take a look at some of the reasons being bandied about that go part way toward explaining why the Muslim world’s out-of-control.

Thomas L. Friedman believes “the single most under-appreciated force in international relations is humiliation” (The Humiliation Factor. New York Times. November 9, 2003. Op-Ed. Page WK11). There could be something to this, considering people who are motivated by shame are prone to dysfunctional antisocial behavior.

Malaysia’s prime minister Mahathir Mohamad says it’s true Muslims feel humiliated, however he says Muslims seem to like feeling humiliated even though the way they choose to respond keeps biting them in their collective ass.

He said, “Today we, the whole Muslim [community], are treated with contempt and dishonor… There is a feeling of hopelessness among the Muslim countries and their people. They feel that they can do nothing right… Our only reaction is to become more and more angry. Angry people cannot think properly… We sacrifice lives unnecessarily, achieving nothing other than to attract more massive retaliation and humiliation” (in Mahathir Mohamad’s October 16, 2003 speech).

Even though millions of Muslims are acting like thugs and spoiled children, genetically Muslims are no different (at least not much different) than the rest of us. It’s natural for everyone to get embarrassed by our shortcomings. It’s natural to blame other people for our problems.

What makes the rest of us different from them is for the most part, the rest of us live in societies that encourage us to overcome our problems and move on. Islamic society is different. Muslims are taught to blame others.

It’s a different approach. It’s the approach most of us use when we’re children, but we grow out of it. However, Muslim leaders treat their people as children, and their people are glad to go along.

Blaming others is empowering. And no one can deny that this approach has worked well for the Muslim religion.

From our standpoint, we think this approach has been the worst thing in the world for Muslims. Yet they don’t seem to care. If anything, they take pride in their dire straits and do everything possible to perpetuate the cycle.

While the Muslim miasma prefers to go on misfiring and shooting itself in their feet, some of us outside the Muslim world are starting to get a little perspective. For us, blaming others is losing its luster. We’re starting to see that the Israeli/Arab conflict has nothing to do with the Muslim situation.

Jews are a convenient excuse that Muslim leaders have used to great effect. And not only Muslim leaders. Everyone who’s in the business of selling news knows it’s good business to push this Arab/Israeli conflict. It sells.

Killing Jews sells almost as well as sex. Maybe even better.

That could explain why unlike censored Abu Ghraib pictures, no one ever censored all those photos of live naked and dead naked Jews taken shortly before they were killed or shortly after. Apparently the anti-Semitic collective unconscious can’t get enough.

Yet, unlike the pictures of piles of dead Jews that continue to be oggled at, tell me the last time you saw the press publish a photo of even one of the 1.5 million Armenians killed by the Turks. Could it be that most of those killed were Christians, and Jews had nothing to do with it. So the world isn’t nearly as interested? Don’t forget, those Armenians were killed by Muslims. Every last one of them. Is that why the world doesn’t care? We don’t want to upset the Muslims any more than is necessary? We know how they’re prone to overreacting to everything, hotheads that they are.

You think 100 years from now people will remember what happened in Darfur? The world hardly notices right now, while the Arabs are still doing it in Darfur. Oh, that might be because it hasn’t a whit to do with the Jews.

What about the way the Shiites are at the Sunnis throats? Oh, that also has nothing to do with Jews. If Jews were blowing up Muslims the way Arabs are blowing up Arabs, you think the United Nations would be silent? Not a chance.

Don’t forget Hezbollah’s fight against the Lebanese government has nothing to do with Jews. And Hamas verses Fatah has nothing to do with Jews.

That’s why the Muslims desperately work to keep shifting the story, so people think like Mel Gibson. “It’s the Jews’ fault,” when in fact, Jews have nothing to do with what’s going on in Muslim societies.

Now that the Jews are gone from Eastern Europe, they don’t blame Jews for their difficulties. Why, now that Jews are gone from Muslim societies, do they still insist on blaming Jews for all their problems?

I can see why 100 years later the Turks still deny the truth. It’s obvious why the Muslims are all lying to themselves and to the rest of the world; for them the truth only brings shame and humiliation.

Freud said people who recognize their predicament and laugh it off, are better off. I didn’t see one Muslim laugh off those Mohammed cartoons. Instead I saw the Muslim street up-in-arms. Muslims chose to riot, burn and kill. Instead of laughing at themselves, if only we could forget about all that PC bullshit, maybe our societies would start laughing at Muslim societies. They are sapping us of all our patience. Soon we’ll laugh. And then when we see how ineffective it is, we’ll have to punish these societies for misbehaving.

If we do, they’ll whine about how humiliated they are. How shamed they are. And that we did it to them. Which is why they need to start learning how to laugh at themselves.

Research shows shame is more persistent among those who can’t laugh at themselves, while those who can, are able to rise above the absurdity of their situations (see article by Suzanne Retzinger in 1987 issue of Psychoanalytic Psychology).

They say ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. It’s not as simple as that. At first, babies know when their mother or father is happy or angry. It’s not till later that shame and pride start to appear. These don’t show up until an infant begins to form its sense of self. In time even babies starts to tell when their parents moods are and when they aren’t related to the baby. Then later, what we call pride begins to appear, as the baby starts being aware of his or herself.

You don’t see shame developing until the child develops pride, which involves pleasing other people. Children need affirmation and support, and who better to provide this than their parents? Parents, who instead, tell their children they should go off and blow themselves up, provide woefully inadequate love and understanding, and these kids can pretty much forget about getting the attentiveness and empathy their developing psyches crave.

“To have such an unmet need for support and response is in itself a source of shame” (Harvard Medical School psychiatrist Andrew Morrison said this, as quoted by Daniel Goleman, September 15, 1987 New York Times).

Such children grow up believing their efforts don’t matter to their parents and as adults, they feel inferior and unlovable. As adults, these people go on craving approval. Since there’s no way to get it from the people around them, they’re easily manipulated on the national and international levels. That’s where the press steps in.

Arab leaders know their people crave international approval. But they will never tell their subjects you don’t get international approval by acting the way they do. To them, attention is approval. Having reporters and photographers at all their riots and wars provides all the positive reinforcement they need.

This positive reinforcement doesn’t come from merely acting up. It comes from acting up for a supposed reason. And that reason comes straight from the cult of Islam that continually drives Muslims to aberrant excess.

As adults, Muslims go on needing the support they never received as children, and by then they’ve learned the only support they receive comes from directing anger outward. For their Koran tells them this is good. Men are correct when they punish their spouses (Muslim women). Men are correct when they kill their daughters for shaming the family. And men are correct when they lie, plot and scheme to kill non-Muslims.

Their leaders approve. Their religion approves. And when they kill Jews, their wives and mothers approve.

For them, there is no approval without anger. And there is no approvable anger without violence. Muslim societies will never consider blaming their religious leaders, their political leaders, their parents, or themselves for their shame.

People who hide the truth from themselves are very unpleasant to live with or next to. You can’t have a discussion with them. You can’t trust them. You can’t compromise with them.

Just as Sunnis can’t get along with Shiites, it’s no wonder the Arabs can’t get along with their neighbors, blaming everyone but themselves for their predicament.

Whenever their leaders need to vent their internal strife, again they blame Muslim and Arab failings on others. For every time they do, Muslims take the bait. They seize upon it. Blaming others always creates a feeding frenzy. Like sharks, Muslims always take the bait when they smell the blood. And like dogs, Muslims love rolling in shit.

When do you think, instead of holding a conference on how the Holocaust never happened, Muslims will hold a conference on how it’s time to stop blaming and killing others? Never.

Sure, it’s easy for me to say it’s time Arab leaders started fixing Arab problems. Any Arab leader who stepped up to the plate and did this would almost certainly become a hero. However, don’t expect this to happen any time soon. Islam isn’t ready for reason. Thus, Arab leaders will go on preferring the homicidal maniac route.

It makes sense when you realize a billion Muslims and Arabs remain unwilling to do the work that propels a society forward. Their preferred route is “KISS,” keep it simple stupid.

The KISS route is guaranteed to perpetuate Muslims’ ill-feelings for non-Muslims. The KISS route will continue to keep Muslims feeling humiliated while blaming their predicament on those they envy.

It’s way past the time Muslims started learning a lesson or two from the rest of us, instead of blaming and hating others. But they aren’t about to move on. It seems they’ve become attached to their humiliation.

Avishai Margalit wonders if its possible for some people to become attached to their humiliation, when claiming to hate the feelings they say others are forcing upon them (Avishai Margalit, “The Ethics of Memory,” Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 227 pages). Their humiliation empowers them. It makes them feel entitled.

When Arabs say they’ve been victimized, they feel entitled to act aggressively. Margalit says such people enjoy their destructive hatred and become attached to it as an excuse.

Although Muslims are willing to die for what they believe, don’t believe for one second this means they’ll prevail in the end. Never forget, while we live in a society where we all benefit because our society encourages us to get our acts together, Muslim societies go on rewarding their most screwed up people.

By putting far more effort into perpetuating rather than resolving their problems, we can expect Muslim societies, such as those run by “modern” Arabs, will remain misfits for years to come. Our job is to keep their societies from pulling the rest of us down to their level.