The honour shame axis is one of the main themes in the David Pryce Jones book The Closed Circle. This Blog by Aussiegirl brings it all into fine focus. ". If we are to prevail in this war with fanatical and person Islam, it is extremely important that we understand our enemy thoroughly, from his perspective, not from ours..In order to fully understand what we are dealing with we need to take the world view of the Muslim, and see the conflict from his point of view, not from our own. Unfortunately, this level of cultural relativity has not penetrated the prevailing mindset..The last time the liberal West encountered this form of shame and honour culture was in WWII, when Americans faced the Japanese, to whom the concept of "face" was more important than life itself. It is why there were such huge casualties when we invaded the Pacific Islands and places like Iwo Jima , when wave after suicidal wave of Japanese kept coming, long after it made any strategic or tactical sense. It was better to die an honourable rest, than to live a dishonourable life." Western and Muslim concepts of honor create an unbridgeable cultural divide By Aussiegirl ".. .In addition to honour and shame, and concomitant with it, comes the Muslim sense of manhood or manliness, which involves being capable of great violence and mayhem in defence of the family name or his religion. Our own concepts of tolerance seem hopelessly weak and pathetic to a culture such as this, and in no way makes us palatable to the Muslim male, who sees only weakness.We would be wise to take into account these cultural characteristics, and not make the mistake that the compbuttionate liberal makes -- which is that given enough understanding and tolerance, the other fellow will see your point of view, and come in the end, to be as tolerant as you. In a sense, this is the illogic of tolerance, it buttumes that tolerance is the logical endpoint of all understanding and culture. It is not."
