Rating: 
Summary: Worthy but one-sided
Review: A worthy book, that gets to the heart of Arab cultural norms and motivations. The premise of Pryce-Jones's argument is that Arabic culture, and thus politics, centers itself on the "Shame/Honor" influence. Logic and reason do not prevail - and certainly not justice - as perceptions of "face" more determine outcome than anything.
The book details Middle Eastern political history dating back to the napoleonic era which, while supportive of the thesis, offers very little balance. The author clearly details the points supportive of his argument, but fails to offer any alternatives [positive or negative]. Dictatorships thrive to this day in "western society." In this sense, the book comes across as a judgement of the culture based on western worldviews.
Despite the sense one gets that the author is not particularly optimistic about any change, the book is a definitive building block for better understanding.
Rating:
Summary: Worthy but one-sided
Review: A worthy book, that gets to the heart of Arab cultural norms and motivations. The premise of Pryce-Jones's argument is that Arabic culture, and thus politics, centers itself on the "Shame/Honor" influence. Logic and reason do not prevail - and certainly not justice - as perceptions of "face" more determine outcome than anything.
The book details Middle Eastern political history dating back to the napoleonic era which, while supportive of the thesis, offers very little balance. The author clearly details the points supportive of his argument, but fails to offer any alternatives [positive or negative]. Dictatorships thrive to this day in "western society." In this sense, the book comes across as a judgement of the culture based on western worldviews.
Despite the sense one gets that the author is not particularly optimistic about any change, the book is a definitive building block for better understanding.
Rating: 
Summary: None Better on the Arabs
Review: Although it makes one pessimistic about prospects for the Arabs, THE CLOSED CIRCLE gives answers to a lot of the questions that people have about that part of the world, question such as: Why the lack of heavy industry? Why the disdain for higher learning? Why the obsessive hatred of Israel? Why the hopelessly inept militaries? and Why the grandiose bluster they use in place of effective militaries?Pryce-Jones wondered, too, for a lifetime, then took three years to produce this "interpretation", which is more comprehensive and lucid than any of the other works I've seen on the subject. His thesis is fairly simple: the Arabs, more than any other society, are bound by a code of shame and honor, which prevents them from advancing in nearly every field of human endeavor. The only dynamism in their sclerotic society is what Pryce-Jones calls "power challenging", the process by which one despot knocks another off his pedestal and assumes it himself, though even this can hardly be called dynamic, since one is just like another. They all operate according to these rules of power challenging, which may more simply be called the law of the jungle. The shame/honor and power challenging theses explain a wide range of phenomena that can be baffling to an outsider. On one of the lowest levels, the village, Pryce-Jones gives the example of a local leader who decides to install an irrigation pump to improve agriculture. When a consultant warns of technical problems, the leader avoids the shame of appearing ignorant by pushing ahead with his plan, heedless of the warning. The pump overirrigates, leading to salinification, which ruins the village agriculture. But instead of being blamed by the village for the ruin, the local leader is honored for getting his way. On a larger scale, why is it that Saudi Arabia, whose total revenues from oil some time ago passed the trillion dollar mark, needs the USA to defend it, needs American and European technicians to operate its oilfields, and needs imported labor from South Asia for any non-technical work? Simple: "Technical tasks, and of course laboring in all forms, demeaningly connote low status, and therefore shame." Thus, the Saudi squadrons of AWACS and other warplanes, and tanks, and sophisticated naval equipment, etc., are virtually useless to them, because while the purchase of such stuff brings honor, the maintenance and operation of it is low class and shameful. A fighter jet is little more than a trophy to show off to ones friends-and enemies. Rather than use a jet to defend themselves, "Al Saud prefer the technique of using money defensively...and to convert possible challengers into clients...the Saudis extend their money-favor nexus over the whole Middle East, enmeshing into it the entire spectrum of Arab power holders and challengers. The daily task of the Saudi ruler consists in assessing friends and opponents and then buying or holding them off, estimating and apportioning subsidies, bribes, subventions, the whole gamut of open or concealed transfers of money." Pryce-Jones goes methodically through each Arab society, even one, Turkey, that is not technically Arab, and finds the same pattern in each: leaders that grab their power through violence, and hold onto it through violence and money. Even the much-heralded "Man of Peace", Anwar Sadat, began his career as a Nazi sympathizer, writing glowingly of Hitler in 1953 that the German had "become immortal in Germany" and that was "reason enough for pride". Sadat's subsequent protean career as a power holder took him through "pro-Nazi, pro-Soviet, socialist, capitalist, Jew-hater, and peacemaker" phases, the one constant being his always-cunning response to power challengers. After finally being murdered by a determined group of challengers, Sadat was commemorated by a handful of American presidents in his last permutation, that of peacemaker. His power holding legacy is carried on by Mubarak with Sadat's methods of repression and ample amounts of money, gotten not from oil, but from US foreign aid-payoffs for peace. Pryce-Jones' thesis is not that all Arabs are murderous and power hungry. It does seem to be that one can't rise beyond a certain level in Arab society without being so. All of the leaders are authoritarian. None of the polities are open and democratic. Anyone who has traveled anywhere in the Middle East or Maghreb has met gentle and hard-working Arabs. Many Arabs would admire a leader such as Martin Luther King. But it would never occur to the leaders of the Arabs to take anything but a venal or violent approach to a problem. It's impossible to conceive, for instance, of Yasser Arafat leading a non-violent protest march through Israeli checkpoints on a day when Gaza was sealed off. Even if he were convinced that such an act would get him what he wanted politically, he would be unable to carry it out because of the enormous shame he would feel at being shown in such an ostensibly powerless position. What is shown in CLOSED CIRCLE is that it is impossible to take power or hold power in Arab society without employing the despotic methods of Gaddhafi or Sadat or Sadam or Faud or Arafat. It's a pity that a book of this stature should be out of print in hardback. Something this vital ought to be available with one of the print-on-demand publishers.
Rating:
Summary: The Deepening Tragedy of the Arab World
Review: Although this book came out in 1989, events since then have, unfortunately, only confirmed what is written in it. The thesis of the author is that the Arab world has been unable to break the shackles of its ancient tribal-clan organization of society and build a new civil society found in other parts of the world, particularly in the democratic West. While it is true that in the distant past, all societies were more or less organized on these tribal and clan lines, the more advanced cultures moved onwards and developed societies in which interpersonal and later international relations were based not only on blood kinship but rather on a feeling of mutually-shared responsibility for the world outside their immediate surroundings. Tragically the Arab (and to a large extent, also the Islamic) world has not yet made this shift of mind, whereas others outside Europe and America such as East Asia have succeeded. The author shows that relationships between individual people and countries in the Arab world are made up mostly of suspicion and fear of those outside the "closed circle" of the clan (or country) and this prevents the development of the type of civil society necessary for the development of freedom, democracy and economic prosperity. As a result, all Arabs countries have autocratic or tyrranical regimes that repress their own populations, stifle economic development and are in constant conflict with their neighbors, both Arab and non-Arab.
In what the author calls the "careerist" mentality, he points out that the Arab leaders cynically exploit various Western and non-Western ideologies in order to advance their own personal ambitions, and then they jettison these ideologies once they have the power of the police state behind them which ensures the permanence of their rule. For example, both Syria and Egypt have governments which are called "revolutionary, socialist and progressive", but which, in reality simply confiscated the wealth of the old, pre-revolutionary elite and put it into the hands of a new elite indistinguishable from the old one in its rapaciousness and greed, not benefitting the average citizen in whose name the revolution was carried out. Syria by the beginning of the new century had reverted to being a hereditary monarchy and Egypt was also on the way to becoming one. The book also shows how Baathist ideologue Michel Aflaq first modelled his political ideas on Nazism and Fascism and then easily shifts towards Marxism. Arafat first espouses Marxism and allies himself the Soviet Union but, today, he is running a terrorist regime with a semi-Islamicist ideology under the sponsorship of the Europeans and to some extent the Americans.
The book shows how the corrupt autocrats in power shift the blame for the povery and underdevolpment of their countries from themselves onto fanciful "Zionist-Imperialist" conspiracies and "colonialist exploitation" without explaining how countries like Japan and Germany became prosperous despite having been under foreign military occupation much harsher than anything the Arabs had experienced.
Finally, the author shows great foresight in predicting that the terribly diseased regime and society in Saudi Arabia was not only oppressing its own citizens, but how it would become a threat to the whole world. Although I would have preferred that the author go into more depth in some areas, especially the effects of 20th century urbanization on the clan identity of the Arabs (in other parts of the world, moving to the cities broke down existing links and sentiments of the people involved), this book is must reading for someone who wants to understand the turbulence of the Arab world.
Rating:
Summary: The Deepening Tragedy of the Arab World
Review: Although this book came out in 1989, events since then have, unfortunately, only confirmed what is written in it. The thesis of the author is that the Arab world has been unable to break the shackles of its ancient tribal-clan organization of society and build a new civil society found in other parts of the world, particularly in the democratic West. While it is true that in the distant past, all societies were more or less organized on these tribal and clan lines, the more advanced cultures moved onwards and developed societies in which interpersonal and later international relations were based not only on blood kinship but rather on a feeling of mutually-shared responsibility for the world outside their immediate surroundings. Tragically the Arab (and to a large extent, also the Islamic) world has not yet made this shift of mind, whereas others outside Europe and America such as East Asia have succeeded. The author shows that relationships between individual people and countries in the Arab world are made up mostly of suspicion and fear of those outside the "closed circle" of the clan (or country) and this prevents the development of the type of civil society necessary for the development of freedom, democracy and economic prosperity. As a result, all Arabs countries have autocratic or tyrranical regimes that repress their own populations, stifle economic development and are in constant conflict with their neighbors, both Arab and non-Arab.
In what the author calls the "careerist" mentality, he points out that the Arab leaders cynically exploit various Western and non-Western ideologies in order to advance their own personal ambitions, and then they jettison these ideologies once they have the power of the police state behind them which ensures the permanence of their rule. For example, both Syria and Egypt have governments which are called "revolutionary, socialist and progressive", but which, in reality simply confiscated the wealth of the old, pre-revolutionary elite and put it into the hands of a new elite indistinguishable from the old one in its rapaciousness and greed, not benefitting the average citizen in whose name the revolution was carried out. Syria by the beginning of the new century had reverted to being a hereditary monarchy and Egypt was also on the way to becoming one. The book also shows how Baathist ideologue Michel Aflaq first modelled his political ideas on Nazism and Fascism and then easily shifts towards Marxism. Arafat first espouses Marxism and allies himself the Soviet Union but, today, he is running a terrorist regime with a semi-Islamicist ideology under the sponsorship of the Europeans and to some extent the Americans.
The book shows how the corrupt autocrats in power shift the blame for the povery and underdevolpment of their countries from themselves onto fanciful "Zionist-Imperialist" conspiracies and "colonialist exploitation" without explaining how countries like Japan and Germany became prosperous despite having been under foreign military occupation much harsher than anything the Arabs had experienced.
Finally, the author shows great foresight in predicting that the terribly diseased regime and society in Saudi Arabia was not only oppressing its own citizens, but how it would become a threat to the whole world. Although I would have preferred that the author go into more depth in some areas, especially the effects of 20th century urbanization on the clan identity of the Arabs (in other parts of the world, moving to the cities broke down existing links and sentiments of the people involved), this book is must reading for someone who wants to understand the turbulence of the Arab world.
Rating:
Summary: A grim portrait of the Arab World
Review: David Pryce-Jones doesn't give you much reason to be optomistic about the relations between the West and the Arabs. In fact, he doesn't give you any hope at all. Pryce-Jones's thesis is that the heart of Arab culture is an "Honor/Shame" ethic. Those who live by it, he says, have one great overiding goal: to be powerful and respected in the eyes of others. Any criticism is taken as an attack, and all effort is devoted to subjugating others. There is no real basis for peace within Arab culture, or in the relations of Arabs with non-Arabs, for such a civilization is a perpetual war of all against all, the only question being how violent it will be at any given time. Worse, reason is utterly impotent. Pryce-Jones maintains that Arab civilization is certain it has all the answers. If something is working out the way it should, then that is because someone was plotting against the Arabs. All the West can do is keep defeating them till their entire society disintegrates. I hope Pryce-Jones is wrong, or at least exaggerating. I fear he is not. Regardless, this book's point of view needs to be considered. It may be as bad as he thinks.
Rating:
Summary: A grim portrait of the Arab World
Review: David Pryce-Jones doesn't give you much reason to be optomistic about the relations between the West and the Arabs. In fact, he doesn't give you any hope at all. Pryce-Jones's thesis is that the heart of Arab culture is an "Honor/Shame" ethic. Those who live by it, he says, have one great overiding goal: to be powerful and respected in the eyes of others. Any criticism is taken as an attack, and all effort is devoted to subjugating others. There is no real basis for peace within Arab culture, or in the relations of Arabs with non-Arabs, for such a civilization is a perpetual war of all against all, the only question being how violent it will be at any given time. Worse, reason is utterly impotent. Pryce-Jones maintains that Arab civilization is certain it has all the answers. If something is working out the way it should, then that is because someone was plotting against the Arabs. All the West can do is keep defeating them till their entire society disintegrates. I hope Pryce-Jones is wrong, or at least exaggerating. I fear he is not. Regardless, this book's point of view needs to be considered. It may be as bad as he thinks.
Rating:
Summary: A Timely Read
Review: For those of us trying to make some sense of the tragedy of Sept 11 2001, this book is a must read. The author spent years living and traveling in the Middle East. His interpretation of the Arab culture and subsequent behaviors, published in 1990, is chillingly pertinent to todays events. Time and again I found myself relating his explanations to the events happening currently and finding answers for every behavior in his relation of the Tribalism, values, society, familial relationships,and acculturation of Arabs over the last 500 years. Particularly chilling and uncannily prophetic is his conclusion. To paraphrase, the West should avoid involvement in Arab affairs but if it must get involved, do so with overwhelming and sustainable force.
Rating:
Summary: Review of another
Review: For those who criticize this book, see Jay Nordlinger's editorial in National Review's September 19, 2001 issue, entitled "The Terrible Truth, a Book to Borrow, a Backstreet Boy, &c."
Rating: 
Summary: An Open Arab
Review: I found "The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs" a very thin book in substance. As an Arab myself, I did see points Mr. Pryce-Jones have written in his book that do exist in my society. And there are historical facts that are true too. But as a well-educated person who has first-hand experience with both Arab Culture and American/British Culture I find that each chapter in the book could apply to 80% of the world population that are under-developed and are problems attributed mainly to illiteracy and economic hardship. Islam has also been misrepresented in this book. Islam is a faith practiced by over 1 billion human not only the Arabs (250 million). It is the fastest-growing religion in the World and most of the converts are not from the Middle East. This book suits people who have already made their mind up about the Arabs and are only satisfied by verifing their opinion from what they might see on Television or one movie. I can only encourage people to read more about the Arabs to try to get to know the Arabic Culture. An educated person can not give final judgement on another culture by sitting on a couch and reading this book. Suggested Readings for other point of view:
- Holy War: The Crusades and Their Impact on Today's World
by Karen Armstrong
- Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet by Karen Armstrong
|
