Readings (25 June 2014)

Why the Arab World Is Lost in an Emotional Nakba, and How We Keep It There, by Richard Landes, from The Tablet.

[E]ven before literary critic Edward Saïd heaped scorn on “honor-shame” analysis in Orientalism (1978), anthropologists had backed off an approach that seemed to make inherently invidious comparisons between primitive cultures and a morally superior West. . . .

But although “Any generous person should have a healthy discomfort with ‘othering,’” he writes,

we should still be able to acknowledge that in some cultures the dominant voices openly promote honor/shame values and in a way that militates against liberal society and progress. Arab political culture, to take one example—despite some liberal voices, despite noble dissidents—tends to favor ascendancy through aggression, the politics of the “strong horse,” and the application of “Hama rules”—which all combine to produce a Middle East caught between prison and anarchy, between Sisi’s Egypt and al-Assad’s Syria.

Taong Putik – A Philippines Tradition Celebrating John the Baptist . . ., by Katrina Fernandez, from Patheos. An example of the kind of thing Brother Gabriel, O.P., was writing about in yesterday’s “Readings.”

Deconstructing the Perfect Burger, from the New York Times. Completely unrelated to Patheosian subjects, but for the maker of hamburgers quite interesting.