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    S harabi, Omar al-Mukhtar Professor of Arab Culture at Georgetown

    University, goes a step further and claims that Arab children are

    "repressed" to an intolerable degree.106

    Like the Bedouins, Middle Eastern city-dwellers put a premium

    on violence, anger, and revenge.  One young Palestinian discovered

    that his unmarried sister had become pregnant, irredeemably sullying

    the family honor.  The virtuous young man wiped away the shame by

    killing the girl and cutting open her belly with a knife.  According to

    French sociologist Juliette Minces, who has lived and researched

    extensively in the Middle East, incidents like this are extraordinarily

    common.107  No wonder the noted Arab social scientist Halim Barakat

    has blamed the plight of the Levantine on the structure of its

    families.108

    The Arab peasants who stumbled across the famous Nag

    Hamadi Gnostic Gospels in an Egyptian cave in 1945 were just a few

    weeks away from a far more "important" deed at the time.  They were

    planning to avenge the death of their father.  A few weeks after their

    accidental contribution to archaeology, Muhammad 'Ali and his

    brothers tracked down their father's killer, murdered him, cut off his

    arms and legs, then ripped out his heart and ate it.  The cheerleader

    urging them on was none other than their mother.  And it's quite likely

    that the man on whom these faithful sons were venting their rage had

    done away with their father out of obedience to the same ancient laws

    of vengeance.109  The British Orientalist Sir Charles Lyell sums up the

    Arab lust for violence with one blunt aphorism: "who uses not

    roughness, him shall men wrong."110

    Could the denial of warmth lay behind this Arab brutality?

    It wouldn't be the first time that a lack of physical affection has

    gone hand in hand with a love of inflicting pain.  In sixteenth and

    seventeenth century England--the England of Shakespeare and

    Elizabeth I--displaying love to your kids was considered utterly

    inappropriate.  Young humans, cursed by the  original sin of Adam,

    still carried the devil within them.  His Satanic majesty could be chased

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