An extension of feuding

"The Arab world has no institutions evolved by common consent for common purposes, under guarantee of law, and consequently there is nothing that can be agreed as the general good. No mechanism exists so that people may participate in whatever is being decided and performed in their name, and ostensibly for their sake. Without some such mechanism, presumably electoral but certainly representative, rights and duties cannot be defined, wealth cannot be shared with any degree of fairness, and vital issues of peace and war and life and death are at the sole disposition of whoever has power.
      "A handful of absolute despots oppress and attack with every available strategem all those within reach. The rich and strong mercilessly bully and exploit their inferiors. Father subjugate wives and children. From the proudest power holder down to the humblest family, all are engaged in pillaging whatever they can for themselves, or at best for their tribe and religion, rather than considering the public interest and constructing the commonwealth. Politics in practice is reduced to the black arts of applied force, and in any emergency, of terror. In all relationships, domestic, private and public, internal and external, violoence is therefore not only customary but also systematic and utterly impervious to piecemeal reform or amelioration.
      "Choice, invention, equality, wealth-creation, in a word pluralism, are among the benefits of living under institutions in which citizens participate of their own free will. Mutual agreement by contract, as well as compromise and civility, result of their own accord. As things stand, Arabs are excluded from contractual relationships of this kind among themselves, and this in turn prejudices and handicaps their dealings with outsiders. Foreign affairs, commerce, even acquaintanceships are not conducted as between equals, but as probes conducive to victory or defeat, as though an extension of feuding. So there is nothing that can yet be properly called Arab society, but only the inherited collectivity.
      "... The customary attachment of notions of honor to status and behavior, leading to pursuit of a military heroism that has long since been obsolete and make believe in practice, continues to obstruct all reformist thought or experiment throughout the Arab world. Concessions of rights to one another, or to members of other tribes and religions, entails loss of supremacy. Anyone who granted equal rights to outsiders and strangers, or who managed to construct participatory institutions to that end, would be considered to have harmed and diminished himself and his own kind quite pointlessly and heedlessly, and he could not survive what would be perceived as humiliation. Promoted and justified by the quest for honor, careerist crime thrives as a routine at all social and political levels, and simple tolerance remains self-defeating, therefore excluded. Lying and corruption remain necessary strategies for survival. Individual Arabs frequently and movingly express grief and dismay at what they have to suffer by way of systematic persecution and rapacity, but not one so far has profoundly analyzed the cause and proposed and published a cure. On the contrary, the Arab collectivity shows more sign of maintaining faith with itself in the indefinite future than of evolving into modern participatory societies. It is as though the Arabs have trapped themselves inside a closed circle from which they sense that they must break out for their own good, but within which identity and its supportive values paralyze endeavors of rescue.
      "... Until such time as the restraining circle is breached, the Arab approach to the modern world must peter out in inadequacy and frustration. The very defensiveness have an obvious and intimate connection with positive envy and temptation. ... As usual, the collectivity still divides as power holder and challenger come to a test of strength, after which it settles for a breathing space until the next man steps forward with ambitions to sieze the state and its treasury. Conspiracy, manipulation and deception of opinion at home and abroad are still the requisite skills of pretenders to power, with exile and death as the fate of losers. There can be no conception of loyal opposition. To compromise is only to search for advantage by other means. Entire countries are as erratic as their rulers. But homeland security to imported arms and communications, the price paid by the masses for these practices is each time costlier and more bloody, ripping away and canceling material progress that has been made, as in Lebanon bringing civilized life to a standstill. Military despotism, pure and simple, is the looming prospect, or the rule of whoever is brutal enough to put a final stop to all ambitions except his own." (The Closed Circle, David Pryce-Jones, 2002; pages 402-405).