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The Arab Mind edition by Raphael Patai Politics Social Sciences eBooks

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First published in 1973, revised in 1983, and updated in 2007 with new demographic information about the Arab world, The Arab Mind takes readers on a journey through the societies and peoples of a complex and volatile region. This sensitive study explores the historical origins of Arab nationalism, the distinctive rhetorical style of Arabic speakers and its effect on politics, traditional attitudes toward child-reading practices, the status of women, the beauty of Arabic literature, and much more.
Since Sept 11, 2001, the book's lessons have been misconstrued by some but have proven indispensable to those trying to truly understand the roots of the major political conflicts of our time. In 2010 the book is more relevant than ever. Patai's sympathetic but critical depiction of Arab culture explores the continuing role of the Bedouin values of honor and courage in modern Arab culture, inter-Arab conflict and the aspiration toward unity, and how anti-Western attitudes conflated with anti-modernization have led to stagnation in much of the Arab world.
Patai, a prominent anthropologist and historian, drew both on his research and his personal experience to produce this indispensable work in the field of Middle Eastern studies. With an updated forward by Norvell B. DeAtkine, former director of Middle East studies at the JFK Special Warfare School, The Arab Mind remains a relevant and crucial masterpiece of scholarship for anyone seeking to understand this multifaceted culture today.
Reviews "I took this book to Baghdad for my military assignment and left it there with friends who continue to use it to help inform their experiences. The book helped me understand what I was seeing with my own eyes and helped me avoid mis-steps that probably would have been misinterpreted. The book rang true with my experiences and helped me understand the Iraqi people, who I found to be generally good and noble. “
"I have lived in the Middle East, on and off, for four years, and no book explained the Arab mind as well as Raphael Patai's. Written over 30 years ago, it still rings true in so many aspects, and definitely helps explain the cultural clashes that still occur and slow down the process of coexisting. Raphael Patai's love of Arabia and all things Arabic is very obvious throughout his work. Even so, Patai managed to be objective and to portray the good and the bad in Arab culture. Too many authors take one road or the other, allowing personal feelings and thoughts to encroach on the necessary objectivity. Patai, like a true sociologist, presents how a culture was formed, in language easily understandable to the Western mind. . . . "The Arab Mind should nonetheless be mandatory reading for all government workers in the Middle East, as it is truly an indispensible guide through a culture that has been around longer than our own". 1672
“When you read this book, you’ll become interested in sociology as an interesting branch of human sciences. Patai is a genius. His book is by far the best in this respect. For Arab readers Read the book and in no time you'll find yourselves putting names to the abundant examples Patai cites. The book deals with several interesting traits that most Arabs share in their inherent characters. These include the Arab unawareness of time, their tendency to speak more than they can actually deliver, their fixation with sex and their keenness to preserve Bedouin values which include preserving a group's honor by preserving the chastity of its female members. Even though the book is academic, the style is entertaining as it alternates between theories and real life examples to illustrate them. The book, a classic, is certainly worth a read. Try it!"-- Review by an Arab reader

The Arab Mind edition by Raphael Patai Politics Social Sciences eBooks

Written prior to the age of political correctness and therefore honest. The quick summary: This is the story of what happens when you combine arrested development and castration anxiety on a national scale. The rest is details (and still absorbing to read). If your goal is finding context and having an understanding of how to interpret current events radiating out from the the middle east then you will find immense value here.

Product details File Size 1141 KB Print Length 498 pages Publication Date September 16, 2014 Sold by  Digital Services LLC Language English ASIN B00NO949TM

Tags : The Arab Mind - Kindle edition by Raphael Patai. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading The Arab Mind.,ebook,Raphael Patai,The Arab Mind,SOCIAL SCIENCE Ethnic Studies General
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The Arab Mind edition by Raphael Patai Politics Social Sciences eBooks Reviews

Great book by somebody who really new (and loved) Arabs before it was forbidden to say any critical things about Islam.
I will admit to this book being slightly dated, and some of the assertions don't fit in with XXI century ways to handle others' sensitivities, but if you want to really understand Arab culture and you don't flinch as some unvarnished observations, read this book. I did, with an open mind; then I practiced some of the ideas in dealing with my Arab friends and felt that our relationships were better off for it. For instance, I abandoned the Western idea that loose ends have to be wrapped up, people have to be on time to within 5 minutes plus or minus, and that if you say something it's iron clad supposed to happen whether it should or not. This book taught me to keep a relaxed frame of mind and that really has been a fine lesson for me.
Must read for any student of the middle east.
Looking at other reviews of “The Arab Mind,” it appears readers divide into two camps. The first group, for whom ideology matters more than reality, hate this book. The second group, largely military, for whom their lives depend on an accurate perception of reality, love this book. This divergence alone suggests the book is worth reading.

“The Arab Mind” was once an obscure book by an obscure man. Its rise to semi-prominence began in 2004, when during the Iraq War the American military, desperately short of soldiers who knew anything about Arab culture, but desperately needing to insert thousands of soldiers into that culture, began (informally) distributing the book to officers. To all accounts, the book was extremely useful to those officers.

However, the book also came in for a great deal of criticism, led by agitprop artist Seymour Hersh, because it is not politically correct. It dispassionately analyzes Arab culture, and offers a clear roadmap for interacting with that culture. But it also recognizes that Arab culture is very different from American and Western culture, and in some ways inferior. This dispassionate analysis does not serve the ends of the social justice warrior crowd, so they cry racism.

The irony of all this is that Patai actually is very sympathetic to Arabs. He likes Arabs and Arab culture. He lived for decades in Jerusalem (pre-Israel). And, in fact, his conclusions about Arab culture (he last updated the book in 1983, shortly before he died, though it was first published in 1976) are generally quite optimistic about the future of Arabs and Arab culture. If you actually read his book, you see that Patai is far from anti-Arab. But you have to read the book.

There’s the rub. It’s entirely obvious that most or all of those who criticize the book haven’t read it. The critics never have any specifics—they object to the very idea that Arab culture could be perceived as anything but wonderful in all regards. These critics are the people who are slaves to the multicultural ideal, which in brief is that no culture is better in any way than any other, except that all cultures are superior to evil Western/Christian culture. Closely tied to this “ideal” is oppression theory—that cultures and peoples deemed to be oppressed by the West are necessarily particularly virtuous. Because any objective observer can easily discern a range of problems and defects in Arab culture, cognitive dissonance results—given that Arabs are presumed to be and have been oppressed by Western colonialism/imperialism/racism, how can they be anything but perfect and wonderfully virtuous? Because the answer is “they can’t be,” therefore scholars like Patai must be liars. No need to read any books or address any arguments! More time to join the latest howling low-information Twitter mob!

The major criticism of Patai is always variants of “there is no such thing as ‘the Arab mind’—that’s racist and ignores that people are different.” The reality is that Patai is extremely careful to repeatedly note that he is merely drawing a picture of the Arab “modal personality.” (“Modal” is a much better chosen word than “average” would have been.) He emphasize that this involves generalizations of qualities that contain many variations among individuals. Patai exhaustively demonstrates that Arabs themselves have always held that there is a common Arab approach to some things (as any culture has), for example “As can be seen from these quotes from Maqrizi, educated Arabs in the fourteenth and fifteenth century were well aware, not only of the existence of an Arab national character, but also of the character differences between the Arab peoples inhabiting different countries.” One of the most interesting aspects of the book is how Patai uses historical Arab sources to buttress his own conclusions, from Ibn Khaldun on forward.

So the criticisms are misplaced. In fact, what’s apparent is that other authors on this topic who actually spend any time with Arabs, even those who loathe Patai, agree with Patai. You can see that Patai is largely or totally correct in his general conclusions about Arabs by comparing his analysis to the bizarrely awful book “Understanding Arabs,” by Margaret Nydell. That book, which is pushed as an alternative to Patai’s for soldiers and diplomats, says the exact same things about Arabs that Patai does. The difference is that Nydell’s entire book is an attempt to excuse that behavior and to excoriate America and Americans. Patai (writing in 1976) was merely interested in objectivity; Nydell in propaganda. But the facts they offer the reader are close to identical.

For example, Nydell says “Arabs consciously reserve the right to look at the world in a subjective way, particularly if a more objective assessment of a situation would bring to mind a too-painful truth.” This is exactly the same thing Patai says, though in different words. When Nydell leaves off her propaganda and gets around to actually talking about “Arab values,” friendship, emotion, male/female relationships, social structure and formalities, and so forth, she in essence says the same things as Patai, though in less detail. Patai and Nydell also address improvidence, predestination, the tendency to substitute words for action, violence of words, control of temper, etc. (Later sections of Patai’s book address more technical subjects that Nydell doesn’t, such as the Arab approach to decorative arts, literature, and music. Patai also addresses what to Westerners are obscure points like what is apparently a very large and very important cultural difference between Arabs from the north and south of the Arabian peninsula, so-called dual descent, either Qays or Yaman.)

Another important point to make when reading and analyzing Patai is that he focuses relatively little on Islam. Nowadays, Islam gets all the ink in the West, for obvious reasons. But in Patai’s analysis, Islam is important, but largely subordinate in the formation of the Arab mind to Bedouin culture and the idolization of Bedouin culture. Patai also carefully distinguishes “Arab” from “Muslim,” and criticizes other authors who don’t (including many Arabs and Muslims). “Bravery and manliness, hospitality and generosity, and the honor syndrome, all pre-Islamic concepts of Bedouin origin, are the dominant concerns. Yet, with one exception, none of them is part of the ethical system of the Koran; and conversely (again with the same exception), none of the ethical teachings of the Koran have developed into a dominant feature in the actual Arab ethics of virtue.” Patai further addresses sexual behavior and how Bedouin values play into sexual shame, particularly familial shame, in way that leads to behavior like honor killings of female relatives perceived as lacking sexual virtue. (He is not remotely obsessed with Arab sexual behavior, contrary to occasional criticisms, but he does discuss it, as he should.)

Occasionally the book shows its age, though generally its analysis is timeless. For example, Patai states “The days of religious wars between Christians and Muslims (although not between Muslims and Hindus) are gone.” He was wrong about that, and Samuel Huntington was right about Islam’s bloody borders. But then, Patai, as I say, was very positive about the Arab future, in a way that has not been borne out in the past three decades. For example, he extensively addresses, positively, the question of Arab unity and its implication for the Arab future, primarily through a theoretical discussion buttressed by behaviors during Arab/Israeli conflicts during the 1960s and 1970s. Contrary to his hopes, though, Arab unity has declined greatly, with the fragmentation of nation-states brought by the Arab Spring, and the rise of crypto-Kharijites like ISIS.

One point about the version—it literally makes the frequent Arabic phrases that Patai uses unreadable. Weird symbols like apples are substituted for Arabic characters. It’s not critical unless you speak Arabic, I suppose (which I certainly don’t), but it does sharply detract from reading the book on the .

If you’re interested in the Middle East, reading clear-eyed analyses like Patai is important. We, and our government officials, soldiers, businesspeople and diplomats, do ourselves no favors by deliberately blinding ourselves to reality, both its ugly and its pretty faces. Ignoring reality is the luxury of an opulent society. A short-lived luxury, usually, if history is any guide.
Everyone should read this book, especially national politicians. They say 'East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet." Well, after seeing the vast differences between methods of raising children, it's no wonder that the saying is so true. No amount of bombing or assassinating or peace moves or boycotting is going to change the hearts and minds of the Arabic people. It will have to start with the training of children.
This classic and informative book delves deeply into Middle-Eastern culture and thinking, including effects of the structure of Arabic on representation of concepts which can otherwise be traps to a western thinker. This is a must read for anyone attempting to understand communication gaps between East and West, and Arab behavior which may otherwise seem inexplicable. At the same time, the author is careful to distinguish social norms and tendencies from individual and local variations.

The edition, with its easy portability and convenient annotation, comes with a downside, at least in the Android app special characters, especially in transliteration of foreign characters is *maddening*, with currency symbols and other random artifacts spattering Arabic words and names. The author, unfortunately, does not use one of the later pure-ASCII transliteration schemes, and the electronic version seems to have had poor Unicode character conversion. This would be an annoyance only, except it often breaks search within the book and copy-and-search *outside* the book, as well as making note-taking non-trivial. Bringing the content into electronic firm is appreciated, but *needs work*.
I ordered the original addition from the late 1970's. There are newer revisions but I wanted to learn about the Middle East BEFORE much of the recent conflicts. The book is very well written and provides detailed information regarding their societal structures and attitudes. This is an academic rather than a political presentation. The book has helped me to understand why people from this culture will have a very difficult, if not impossible, time assimilating into Western Culture. I highly recommend this book.
Written prior to the age of political correctness and therefore honest. The quick summary This is the story of what happens when you combine arrested development and castration anxiety on a national scale. The rest is details (and still absorbing to read). If your goal is finding context and having an understanding of how to interpret current events radiating out from the the middle east then you will find immense value here.