Question for Mr Pipes

Submitted by Jonathan Pfeffer (Canada), May 20, 2005 at 22:01

I have a question for Mr Pipes. Did you see Fahrenheit 911? In it there was a scene in which a grieving Iraqi women was standing in front of the camera cursing and yelling in grief obviously after a bombing of some kind, and behind her was a scene of devastation.

The subtitles supplied by Michael Moore's film enabled us to understand what she was saying. She was doing what one might expect a grieving women might do, which is asking why, why has Allah let this happen. But at least half of her yelling was dedicated to a wailing curse of death to those who did this. She asked that Allah have their houses destroyed and on and on the cursing went.

This is not the first time I have seen a scene like this. Is there something about Iraqi or Arab culture that makes revenge such an integral part of grieving?

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