When someone from Asia or the Islamic culture talks about honor, he’s more likely to be thinking about “face”, his esteem and reputation among his peers. Typically, “honor” among Muslims can translate as “a reputation as somebody not to be f-—ed with”.
To some extent but as a culture, they are walking around with a huge chip on their shoulder. At the dawn of islam, they took a big chunk of the world and although they couldn’t take all of Europe, they got a chunk and were able to look down on the dark age europeans.
Christendom eventually kicked them out of Europe and displaced them as a world power. That loss of honor is a burden to their psyche to this day. They hate us and the only way they can regain that honor is by putting their collective boot on our neck.
I agree. And I reiterate my view that that is a primitive, tribal notion of honor, vastly different than the chivalric code that encompasses moral integrity, purity of motive, and faithfullness to principle even in the face of adversity.
To so many other cultures, truth and honor are negotiable commodities. What’s true on Monday may be false by Tuesday. That’s partly responsible for the abject cowardice demonstrated by so many Arab “soldiers,” who will turn tail and run at the first sign of a setback. And the hyperbolic denials of reality by buffoons like Baghdad Bob. And the duplicitous treachery of our so-called allies in Iraq and Afghanistan, who work beside our troops every day and then one day smuggle in a bomb and murder a dozen of them.
Contrast that with the courage and sacrifice of our men, like the SEAL team in “Lone Survivor” or the recent Medal of Honor recipient Kyle Carpenter (it’s no coincidence it’s called the Medal of HONOR). We could not be the people we are if all we thought of honor was that it was about saving face. That’s the kind of “honor” that permeates the ghetto culture and results in people being shot because they “dissed” someone with a bigger gun, a faster draw, and a shorter temper.