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..working on first cup of coffee, here, so this will be a list...
1. History: The people in the ME live in the awareness of their place in a very long, documented history, as well as the traditions handed down through generations. The US disdains history and its lessons, we are a people without a past.
2. Family and Tribe: Throughout the ME, the influence of family and tribe often outweigh allegience to nation-states. The whole idea of a democratic nation-state is completely alien to many groups in the ME.
3. Islam: The emotional development of Islam as a religion halted in the 14th century with the consolidation of the Ottoman Empire. Before that, Islamic culture was far more advanced than western Christian culture. Islam supported advances in the sciences and mathmatics, such as the spred of the use of the zero (as opposed to the Roman system which lacked the concept). The culture supported the arts, literature and music.
But all of that stopped. For the Christian-influenced world, it would be as if there never had been the Reformation, or the Enlightenment, and the mental world looked like it did in 1300. Thus, many of the common people still live in the equalivant of a medieval "head space", and their reactions to western modernism is a reaction to a world they do not understand. Imagine a person from 14th century Europe suddenly dropped into the modern world, with exposure to all the garbage on TV, pop culture, technology, etc. Much of what the person would expierence would be opposed to their belief system and the rigidity of thought to which they were accustomed.
Not all followers of Islam have stayed in the past. In my family, they still follow the basic tennents, but realize that many of the dictates were designed for a different time and place. My step-father has been known to occasionally eat bacon, but he maintians that the pork prohibition was because Mohammad was addressing thosed that lived in the desert ("We have a microwave!". Pork could not be cooked well enough to kill the parasites that killed people, so the Prophet forbade his followers to eat unhealthy foods.
...sorry, brain just called out for more coffee, hope this helps...
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