Fighting the honor/shame culture to save the world

During Yom Kippur I used the machzor (holiday prayer book) written by Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, former chief rabbi of Great Britain.

It is a very good machzor. Sacks uses it as an opportunity to highlight the contributions of Judaism to the world at large as a supremely moral religion.

One of the points he makes is that Judaism was the first guilt culture, as opposed to the shame culture of the rest of the world. He continues to make the case for the guilt culture today, as he writes here:

Judaism gets it right and the zeitgeist gets it spectacularly, dangerously wrong. Consider: guilt enters the world hand in hand with the spirit of forgiveness. God forgives: that is the message emblazoned all over Yom Kippur. God doesn’t expect us to get it right all the time. The greatest of the great, Abraham, Sarah, Moses, David, had their faults and failings, defeats and doubts. There is only one person in the Hebrew Bible who is said to have committed no sin: Job. And look what happened to him. So, because God forgives, we can be honest with Him and therefore with ourselves. Unlike a shame culture, a guilt culture separates agent from act, the person from the deed. What I did may be wrong, but I am still intact, still loved by God, still His child. In a guilt culture, acknowledging our mistakes is doable, and that makes all the difference.

Today’s secular environment is a shame culture. It involves trial by the media, or public opinion, or the courts, or economic necessity, all of which are unforgiving. When shame is involved, it’s us, not just our actions, that are found wanting. That’s why in a shame culture you don’t hear people saying, “I was wrong. It was my fault. I’m sorry. Forgive me.” Instead, people try to brazen it out. The only way to survive in a shame culture is to be shameless. Some people manage this quite well, but deep down we know that there’s something rotten in a system where no one is willing to accept responsibility.

Ultimately, guilt cultures produce strong individuals precisely because they force us to accept responsibility. When things go wrong we don’t waste time blaming others. We don’t luxuriate in the most addictive, destructive drug known to humankind, namely victimhood. We say, honestly and seriously, “I’m sorry. Forgive me. Now let me do what I can to put it right.” That way we and the people we offend can move on. Through our mistakes we discover the strength to heal, learn and grow. Shame cultures produce people who conform. Guilt cultures produces people with the courage to be free.

As we've noted many times before, the Arab world is suffused with the shame culture. And shame cultures value appearance over reality: they cannot separate the sin from the sinner, so instead of admitting mistakes all effort must be made to hide them.

We saw a perfect example of this yesterday. A senior researcher at B'Tselem, Atef Abu Roub, called the Holocaust a lie - on camera - but he insisted for over a month that he did no such thing. B'Tselem defended him for as long as it could until they could no longer deny the facts from the extended video that was released. (Even after the extended video was released, B'Tselem denied it for four more days, before grudgingly admitting it only in Hebrew.)

B'Tselem acted as part of the modern Western shame culture. Abu Roub acted as part of the long-standing Arab shame culture. The modern shame culture, when confronted with facts, reluctantly admits the truth; the Arab shame culture refuses to admit the truth no matter what, since admitting you are wrong is a fatal blow to one's honor.

The entire existence of "honor killings" is a reflection of a shame culture gone amok.

The guilt culture is morally superior to the shame culture. Guilt cultures allow individuals, and ultimately societies, to grow and improve, while shame cultures will remain stagnant and backwards.
If you wrong someone in a guilt culture, you can seek forgiveness and restore the relationship. If you wrong someone in a shame culture then the only solution is to suffer revenge, or to offer appeasement and abasement - there is no growth, no lessons learned. It is a culture based on appearance and not reality, and this is a paradigm that cannot be sustained.

Nominally, Western culture is mostly a guilt culture, although of course shame exists - one need only to look at how most famous actors, sports figures and politicians attempt to weasel out of accusations of misconduct. But even today's celebrities are slowly realizing that public reaction to them telling the truth and seeking forgiveness is much more positive than the reaction when they deny and try to cover it up. Those who continue to be brazen in the face of the facts look like fools and those who admit mistakes can move on - sometimes, even more successfully.

The shame culture has a major weakness: it itself can be shamed. When people from a shame culture are confronted with their shortcomings in a public way, and their lies cannot hold up in the glare of the spotlight, they are forced to change - to salvage what little honor they can, and to try to regain it. Within the shame culture the lies can be tolerated and expected, but from without they cannot and should not be.

This is how to defeat the honor-shame culture in the Arab world. And it is the exact opposite of what Western media and politicians and most "human rights" groups do. They are afraid to shame Arabs out of fear of causing a violent, shame-based reaction. The natural Arab reaction to being shamed is to threaten in response, to maintain their own honor. Those threats are almost always empty but they scare Westerners into adhering to the Arab rules of avoiding shame and shaming.

Yet there have been cases where shame has made an impact on the Arab psyche.

Immediately after 9/11, the Arab world was overwhelmingly supportive of terrorism. Al Jazeera openly praised Osama Bin Laden. But since then, polls have shown a steady decrease of support for suicide bombings and other terror acts throughout the Arab world. Part of the reason is, of course, that they have been the primary victims of terror since 9/11, but I think part of it is because of the Western disgust at terrorism and those who openly support it. People want to feel that their own culture is better than others', and it is hard to defend a culture that supports terror openly.

The culture changed, to a small extent. But it did change.

Another, almost comical example happened in 2008, when Hamas was publicly shamed by Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, in an interview, criticized Hamas for targeting children with its rockets. In response, Hamas denied aiming at civilians - and its press releases from then on pretended to be targeting soldiers with every rocket in Operation Cast Lead!

To be sure, Hamas' actual behavior didn't change, but it was forced to change its public position because of the shame of being berated by another terror group on grounds of morality. It is a small step, but when terrorists are forced to change their publicly stated positions there will be a trickle effect to the masses. Their people learn, over time, that lies are not acceptable.

Another example: Egyptian society now takes harassment against women seriously, something roundly ignored only a few years ago. The reason is because the story was highlighted in the West, especially when female Western reporters were assaulted. They were shamed into confronting it rather than pretending it doesn't exist, the first reaction by someone who is shamed.

The Western world needs to do a full-court press against the more repugnant aspects of the honor-shame culture - because it can be shamed into reforming. When the shame of being publicly exposed as immoral overwhelms the benefits of lying to hide your immorality, then a society can be shamed into abandoning the culture of shame altogether. But the pressure to do so from the West must be relentless, and each lie must be exposed and ridiculed, rather than accepted. The Arab shame society does not want to be publicly exposed as less moral than the hated West.

Imagine how different things could be if Palestinian Arab officials were forced to explain their obvious lies. Imagine if Hamas would be forced to justify every single rocket the way Israel is expected to account for every airstrike. Imagine if the world would automatically discount every statement made by Arab politicians who were already proven to have lied repeatedly and unabashedly.

Imagine if the Western world treated liars in a shame culture the same way it treats their own liars. They would have no choice but to admit to their lies - or look like fools, to even greater shame. The Arab world can be dragged, kicking and screaming, into a world where people take responsibility for their own actions when the alternative is feeling even more shameful.

A major reason that the West lets these lies slide is because the shame culture is being coddled, not confronted.

The shame culture can be shamed into behaving more morally - and it is the most effective, and least-used, weapon we have.

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The politics of honor/shame: PalArabs unlikely to drop UN bid

From AFP:

THE PALESTINIANS are unlikely to agree to drop their UN membership bid in exchange for new peace talks based on the pre-1967 lines, Palestinian officials and analysts say.

On Tuesday, an Israeli official confirmed that Israel has been working with Washington to hammer out a framework for new peace talks that both countries hope could convince the Palestinians to drop their bid for United Nations membership.

But Palestinian officials and analysts said the Palestinian leadership had already invested heavily in the bid, and would face public disgrace if it agreed to drop the much-touted plan. They described the new framework for talks as little more than a public relations exercise for Israel, allowing it to show willingness to resume talks while attempting to torpedo the UN membership campaign.

This is only a minor example, but the shame culture dynamic among Arabs gives them an advantage in any negotiations with a "guilt culture" adversary.

They can always fall back on the importance of honor and fears of disgrace to avoid doing things that are necessary.

In this case, as is often the case, the threat is exaggerated. Yes, Abbas would lose face if he backs down, but it would not be fatal to his hold on power.

What people are not discussing is the downside of going through with the UN stunt. Already, the PLO is planning mass demonstrations on the eve of the vote (under the guise of being "popular demonstrations," of course:)

Palestinian officials said Monday they plan to begin mass marches against Israel's occupation of the West Bank on Sept. 20, the eve of a largely symbolic U.N. vote expected to recognize their independence.

Palestinian official Yasser Abed Rabbo said leaders hope to attract millions, and the protest will be the first of a prolonged effort. He said the campaign would be called "Palestine 194," since the Palestinians hope to become the 194th member of the United Nations.

"The appeal to the U.N. is a battle for all Palestinians, and in order to succeed, it needs millions to pour into streets," he said.

It seems likely that these PLO-organized demonstrations will become PLO-organized "resistance" in short order. And while the PA is not likely to start an armed third intifada, it will have little incentive to stop Hamas and other terror groups in the territories from rebuilding their terror infrastructure and attempting to escalate attacks against Israelis. And even the PA considers rock throwing and Molotov cocktails to be "non-violent resistance."

This UN stunt, in other words, will cost many lives. Most of them will be Arab.

The stunt will also set back the chances for real peace by another decade. The relative security and prosperity that Arabs enjoy in their autonomous areas will disappear. It may be as disastrous for Palestinian Arabs as the second intifada was.

Yet no one is talking about the downside - and one reason is because no one wants to offend  the "honor" of Abbas.

(h/t Mike T)

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The importance of shaming Hamas (Zvi)

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From Zvi:

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If you consider the honor/shame obsession that evidently runs rampant among many of Hamas' supporters, and Hamas' need to remain a menacing shadow in order to keep their own people enslaved, then insulting the honor and courage of terrorists who butchered a pregnant woman is a very sensible thing to do.

Terrorists try to make themselves seem like heroes in the Arab world by causing fear and anger among Israeli civilians. They positively salivate when competent Israeli generals and ministers and foreign leaders notice them and call them a threat or a military force, and their sponsor states and supporters crow about their supposed "achievements" and "great operations."

But they can't stand humiliation. They, and their foreign sponsors (Assad, Khamenei, Muslim Brotherhood) have an obsessive need to be threatening, a menace. Why is this?

These terrorists, and the people who support them, have a secret fear. They are terrified that the world will realize that they are simply pathetic, whinging, bullying losers.

These are the kind of losers who ambush a car containing an unarmed father, mother and hitchikers. They slaughter these four helpless civilians, evidently indulging in blood-drunkedness. And their so-called "military leaders" and their so-called "political leadership" jump up and down with excitement as they claim "credit" for murdering a pregnant woman. Because that is exactly the kind of emotionally dysfunctional, worthless cannon fodder that they are.

They are the kind of losers who attack a hotel or blow up a pizza restaurant. I mean, a pizza restaurant. Such amazing heroism! Such a "military" operation!

The reason that these losers pretend that they think that killing unarmed civilians is a brilliant military success is because they are simply emasculated gutter trash armed with guns and explosives. They can murder civilians, but they are worthless when it comes to doing anything useful in society. They are a historic dead end, a bunch of mercenary traitors to their own people, in the pay of foreign dictators. They are supported by a bunch of ignorant losers whose sense of morals and humanity is as stunted as their own.

Those who support and perpetrate terrorism are worthless cowards, but they don't want to be recognized as such.

Call them on it.

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I would add that the job of shaming Hamas should properly go to the so-called "moderate" Arab world, where it could get some traction among the Arabs who really are sickened by these sorts of attacks but fear saying so out loud.

However, if even Abbas and Fayyad cannot find it in themselves to denounce the terror attacks in terms of morality,  the only conclusion that can be drawn is that they secretly admire Hamas as well and their "condemnations" are purely for Western consumption. Indeed, the West reports these fake condemnations as if they are on par with the condemnations from Israel, the US and the EU, all of which describe the attack in terms that reflect its horror and depravity.

Shaming the terrorists is the best and most effective strategy to get them to stop. We have seen this happen before, when Hamas was shamed by no less than Al Qaeda's second in command for attacking civilians. Hamas responded, incongruously, that they do not intend to kill women and children.

This proves that Hamas would be embarrassed if the Arab world shames them. The problem is that the Arab street, by and large, applauds them and therefore strengthens them instead.

The problem is far deeper than just Hamas.

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Honor/shame and Saudi child abuse

By Khalaf al-Harby, in the Saudi-based Arab News, and article that would be considered "Islamophobic" if it had been written by a Westerner:

Two studies have been issued on the issue of child abuse in the last two months. The first one, conducted in the United States, claims one in six children would be subjected to sexual abuse.

The second study, conducted in Saudi Arabia by Dr. Nura Al-Suwaiyan, director of the family safety program at the National Guard Hospital, revealed one in four children is abused in the Kingdom.

This clearly shows that children are far more likely to be molested in the Kingdom than in the United States!

I know that such a result will shock many of us who believe that we are living in utopia, while American society is devoid of any ethical values. These people will reject the results of these studies or at least doubt the credibility of the researchers. They are dreaming. They are determined to provide a picture of our society as one that is completely flawless.

As it is useless to talk to these dreamers, I will address citizens with a more realistic outlook in our society and tell them that child abuse rates in the US will come down with time, while it will increase in our society.

The reason for this is the way each country deals with the problem. From a legal point of view, while sexual harassment against children in the US is considered a heinous crime, we look at it as a mistake or a wrongdoing, not as a crime, unless the child has been raped.

The child molester in America is considered a dangerous criminal while for us he is a man who committed a mistake that does not necessarily entail informing the police!

In the US, there is a detailed description of child harassment. Showing a pornographic picture to a child or talking to him about sex in the US is considered molestation, while in the Kingdom sexual harassment cannot be considered abuse unless actual sex act has taken place.

From a social point of view, it is a duty of parents and adults in America who notice their children being abused to inform police, but in our society parents would feel ashamed to tell officers if their son or daughter has been molested!

The Americans can confront this problem because they know that they are human beings and hence liable to make mistakes, while those in Saudi Arabia are unable to deal with this problem because they want to adhere to the imaginary idea that we are the purest society in the whole world.

This is a classic example of the differences between an shame culture and a guilt culture.

According to the writer, Saudis are too ashamed to tackle the problem because their honor would be besmirched by association. Of course they love their children, but personal honor is in some ways more important. In other words, the primary concern is based on others' perceptions of reality, not on reality itself.

A classic overview of these concepts can be seen in the 2005 posting by Dr. Sanity.

The good news is that before the Internet, it would have been inconceivable that such an article would have been published in Saudi Arabia. At least some of the better parts of Western culture are slowly seeping in, much to the consternation of the traditionalists who are believe that the negative influences of Western culture are far more pronounced than its positives.

The fact that such an article can be written in The Arab News (and apparently Okaz, the Saudi news agency) is a step in the right direction, but unfortunately the number of those who can write such articles are dwarfed by those who need to read them.

The mindset of an honor/shame culture will not disappear, but the ability to use it for everyone's good is there. In this case, simply publicizing the fact of prevalent Saudi child sexual abuse can be made more shameful than the benefits of hushing it up. And shaming Arabs is probably the best way the West can get them to do what is for everyone's benefit - and not only in this particular example.

(h/t Arthur G in the message board)

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Shame is the best weapon

From Ma'an:

The UNRWA budget will reach zero by the New Year and threaten the regular payment of salaries for UNRWA workers as well as the level of services for refugees, the organization’s media consultant Adnan Abu Hasana said Tuesday from Gaza.

Large international donors are not paying what they used to, the number of individuals depending on UNRWA services are increasing, and several Arab states have failed to follow-through on aid pledges, the spokesman said.

...Additionally, Abu Hasana said, Arab countries have not fulfilled their commitments to the League of Arab States, which pledged to pay 8% of UNRWA’s budget. The official added that last year the Arab League was only able to transfer payments amounting to 1% of the UNRWA budget.

I am no fan of UNRWA. However, most of the world feels that giving Arabs of Palestinian descent welfare forever while not pressuring Arab states to give them citizenship is a good thing. Given that, how can the Arab states justify their reprehensible role in withholding funds for their fellow Arabs?

Here are the top nation-donors to UNRWA's General Fund in 2008:

1	EC	139,685,831
2	USA	95,726,691
3	Sweden	40,645,161
4	UK	37,498,826
5	Norway	27,574,498
6	Netherlands	23,328,149
7	Canada	16,763,476
8	Denmark	15,005,168
9	Italy	14,749,262
10	France	12,655,279
11	Switzerland	11,069,216
12	Germany	10,680,660
13	Spain	10,349,288
14	Japan	8,516,725
15	Ireland	5,919,003
16	Finland	4,672,897
17	Luxembourg	4,569,763
18	Australia	3,764,130
19	Belgium	3,009,532
20	Kuwait	2,499,958

Yes, Luxembourg gives nearly twice the money to UNRWA than any Arab country does.

So Arab nations deliberately keep their Palestinian Arab brethren stateless, and they don't even pretend to help the "refugees" - most of whom were born and will die in their host Arab nations.

With all the pressure that the EU and US like to put on Israel, why is there none to demand that Arab states step up to help solve the problem that they created? Why does the West not call out the Arabs on their hypocrisy of pretending to be in solidarity with the "Palestinian cause" while doing everything they can to perpetuate it?

Here is a beautiful example of where the West could use the honor/shame dynamic of Arab and Muslim countries to everyone's advantage. Sweden or the UK or even the UN could publicly chide Arab states for their complicity in Palestinian Arab misery, and the chart above is Exhibit A. If the West is so anti-Islam, why does it pay for 99% of the budget of the major organization that keeps these Arabs alive? More importantly, why do Arabs not even pay 87% of the pittance they pledge?

Why, in short, is the welfare of the Palestinian Arabs exclusively a Western problem?

Shame the rich Gulf states into paying at least half of the UNRWA budget. Create a ten or twenty year plan to take away the "refugee" status of Arabs born in Arab states and integrate them into their surrounding Arab society, and shame the Arab states into naturalizing the people that have been their "guests" for decades.

The weapon of shame costs nothing and would have better results than six decades of Western welfare. It would help the West, and it would help the vast majority of Palestinian Arabs who would happily become citizens of Arab countries. More importantly, using shame would nullify the usual self-serving Arab arguments for keeping Palestinian Arabs in misery. It exposes their hypocrisy and helps the very people who everyone agrees needs help.

There is no downside, except for the hypocrites who want to keep Palestinian Arabs in misery as pawns against Israel.

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Using the honor/shame culture to everyone's benefit

Last month I reported that an Egyptian court made marrying Israelis illegal. The ruling mainly affected Egyptians who married Arab Israelis.

Now, the Egyptian government is appealing that ruling:

The Ministers of Interior and Foreign Affairs appealed the verdict with the Supreme Administrative Court and demanded an annulment of the ruling, according to the official daily al-Ahram.

They appealed arguing that the issue did not fall within the jurisdiction of the administrative court, the Egyptian daily independent al-Shorouk al-Gadid reported Sunday.

On the other hand, the appeal added, implementing the verdict will negatively impact Egypt's image on the international level as it will appear as a country that does not respect human rights and personal freedoms.

Notice that the argument is not that the ruling restricts personal freedoms - it is that it makes Egypt look like it restricts personal freedoms.

A corollary to the Arab honor/shame culture is that appearances are more important than facts. The perception of morality is more important than morality itself. That is how honor killings can occur to begin with. When one's honor is the most important factor in determining how one acts, it allows him to act immorally in order to maintain honor.

Of course Egypt doesn't care about human rights or personal freedoms. That's almost axiomatic. But the world does, and Egypt is not well served in appearing to be immoral. As a result, actions aren't done for the sake of morality, but for the sake of the appearance of morality.

This will not change.

What we can learn from this, though, is that as Western ideals of morality pervade the world, honor/shame cultures can be shamed into at least forcing the appearance of acting moral. When it can be hidden - when there is no shame - there will be no morality in the Western sense, but Arabs can be prodded into acting in moral ways in public by being shamed into it.

This is why it is terrifically important to place the issue of how the Arab world treats Palestinian Arabs as high as possible in the public sphere. There is no excuse for the Arab world perpetuating a fake "refugee" crisis for decades, and the hypocrisy of saying that they do it for the Palestinian Arabs' own good must be exposed. They will not start treating millions of Palestinian Arabs better; they will not give them full equal rights and citizenship rights, unless they are shamed into it.

If the West would start making this into an issue, it would have a dramatic impact. It needs to be framed as a human rights issue, plain and simple.The Arab world chooses to discriminate against Palestinians and will not allow third and fourth generation Palestinian Arabs born in their countries to become citizens, although they do allow other Arabs to become naturalized citizens. The issue needs to be raised as much as human rights are a part of the conversations around China, North Korea and elsewhere.

Once the naked hatred and bigotry against those of Palestinian origin in the Arab world is publicized, the Arab world will at first try to deflect the issue towards Israel, but they would fail. Perhaps Israel can be blamed for the condition of some Palestinian Arabs in 1949 but what has happened to them since is simply the Arab world' s responsibility.

They will never take this responsibility willingly. But, as we have seen, they can be shamed into it.

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Saudi newspaper fawns over bulldozer terrorist

The Arab News goes even beyond calling terrorism "natural" for Arabs:

Israelis killed a Palestinian youth for driving a bulldozer onto the midst of a crowd in the heart of East Jerusalem and killing three Israelis last week. But the reaction of the Western political leaders to the action of the Palestinian worker, one of over a million and half living in humiliation of the Israeli occupation, amounted to killing him and other Palestinians a thousand times.

Yes, this brilliant writer from our "moderate" friends in Saudi Arabia considers a condemnation of the purposeful killing of Jews to be equivalent to killing a thousand innocent Palestinian Arabs. This is the sort of sick mentality that is mainstream in the Arab world.

While the Western leaders did not feel any compunction in condemning the poor building worker in the harshest words they could find in the dictionary, they did not have the guts to describe the incident as the natural and likely reaction of a human being put to indignities beyond his endurance powers.

Indeed, a fully employed Palestinian Arab, who gets paid by evil Jews hellbent on destroying his dignity, is quite justified in killing them en masse because of his abject humiliation. In other words, Arabs are naturally (really, genetically) prone to murder because their honor is far more important than mere Jewish lives, and the West doesn't have the guts to realize this simple fact and start praising the murderer instead of condemning him.

Over the past six months 365 Palestinians have been killed by Israel, most of them civilians, with children accounting for 50 percent.

I don't know about the 365, but the 50% number is wholly fictional, but it must be OK for an Arab to make up statistics making Israel look bad because, after all, he is being humiliated by the very existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East. If killing is justifiable, certainly lying is.

It is high time that we made a clear distinction between the acts of terror, particularly from a state that calls itself a democracy, and the acts springing from frustration, injustice and humiliation.

In one sentence the author has just justified every single Arab and Muslim terror act over the past century, because each one must have sprung on some level by someone's "frustration" or perceived "humiliation." This, of course, also includes terror attacks against Saudi Arabia itself, not to mention 9/11.

This Palestinian youth was a human being with normal feelings of pride and honor. He could not be blamed for losing his equanimity for a moment when he thought about the plight of his brothers and sisters who are being treated like dirt in the Gaza Strip and West Bank and put under a blockade denying them the most basic requirements of life.

Our good editorialist has now descended from pure fantasy into mind-reading as he not only justifies a terror attack, he places it in a context where such an attack is positively praiseworthy. The author, Abdul Aziz Al-Suwaigh, is a diplomat who has been an employee of Saudi Arabia's Ministry for Foreign Affairs. And this is all done in English in a newspaper that cannot publish anything without the approval of the Saudi royal family.

A blog post by Richard Landes about this post here

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Honor/shame and sexual harassment in Egypt

From AFP:

CAIRO (AFP) — From lewd looks to inappropriate touching, experts say Egypt's growing street harassment of women is a deep-rooted and largely ignored problem shackling the country's progress.

Sexual harassment in public areas is not limited to a specific age category or social class, says the independent Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights (ECWR), which is spearheading a campaign against this "social cancer" in Egypt.

Nor does an outward expression of piety protect from sexual harassment, generally defined as "all unwelcome behaviour of a sexual nature, making women feel uncomfortable and unsafe."

"As soon as I step onto the street, I am surrounded by sexual predators," Rasha Shaaban, 23, from the Mediterranean city of Alexandria told AFP. "I don't feel safe, the problem is getting worse. It has become so bad that I want to leave Egypt."

According to the state National Centre for Social and Criminal Research, sexual crimes are on the rise but while they give no official figures, ECWR says that two women are raped every hour in this country of 80 million and that 90 percent of offenders are jobless men.

There are many contributing factors to the increase in sexual harassment. Rising unemployment may push some men to display their machismo on the streets. The huge cost of marriage and the fact that sex outside marriage is forbidden may also explain the behaviour, experts say.

"Men take out their frustration, not just sexual, against women," Engy Ghozlan, who runs the anti-harassment campaign at ECWR, told AFP.

But some men, who believe a woman's job is to look after the home, say that those out on the street are fair game.

"When (a woman) walks out into the street in tight trousers and tight belts, she deserves what she gets," said Mohamed al-Sayyed, 32, who works as an assistant at an upmarket hairdresser in Cairo.

"The women who come here are different from the ones in my village," he said.

Sayyed grew up in a village near Menya, in the conservative Egyptian south. "My female relatives would never be seen swaying in the street like this," he said, defensively explaining the occasional wolf whistles "and more" he directs at Cairene women.

One sociologist, Dalal al-Bizri, sees a strong link between growing religious conservatism and sexual harassment.

She told AFP that a puritan view of Islam brought over from religiously strict Saudi Arabia is partly responsible for the "culture of hate" against women.

"In the sermons of wahhabi (ultra-conservative) preachers on satellite television, we hear the worst things about women, like the fact that they should not be on the street but at home... that they have an inferior status," Bizri said.

In the Arab honor/shame culture, it is inevitable that men with low self-esteem will try to boost their egos by degrading women. People who are mentally healthy have no need to put others down but those living in cultures where honor is more important than life need to feel superior to others - whether the "others" are women, Jews or infidels. Any admission that they are no better than women is a fatal injury to their bruised self-esteem.

See also my posting that 40% of all Egyptian women have been sexually harassed.
(h/t Watcher)

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