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St Francis Magazine Vol 8, No 4 | August 2012
their religion by defining the “other” with isolation, humiliation and
even death. Stigmatized groups are Jews, Christians, and Sabaeans,
who ultimately have been defined as infidels (kafir) to be subjugated
through the poll tax (jizyah) or to be killed.
9.4 Fear and Distrust
Among Iranians a culture of fear and distrust is endemic. Bar-Tal
identifies two types of fear reaction: results of cues, which directly
imply threat and danger, and conditional stimuli that are nonthreatening
in their nature (Bal-Tal 2001, 603). Fear is stored in
memory and dominates and controls thinking and prolonged experience
of fear causes overestimation of dangers and threats. His research
reveals a tendency “to cause adherence to known situations
and avoidance of risk, uncertainty, and novel situations; it tends to
cause cognitive freezing, which prevents openness to new ideas.”
(ibid, 604) He also suggests that societies may develop collective
emotional orientations. Intractable conflict tends to dominate the
collective fear orientation, and thus becomes embedded into the collective
memory over time. Fear often becomes contagious.
Oversensitized by fear, a society tends to misinterpret cues and information
as signs of threat and danger, searching for the smallest indication
in this direction, even in situations that signal good intentions.
The fear also leads to great mistrust and delegitimization of the adversary
because of its harmful acts and threats. (ibid, 609)
The culture of fear and distrust appears to be an underlying reason
for the disharmony and conflict so prevalent in Iranian fellowships.
Cultural anthropologist Patai states that discord in the Arab
world has always been present since pre-Islamic days. At the
slightest provocation, violent verbal abuse and threats erupt, which
easily degenerate into physical violence.
The situation is complicated by the fact that “unity” is merely a very
abstract and remote ideal, while strife has its historical antecedent and
underpinning in the age-old Arab virtues of manliness, aggressiveness,
bravery, heroism, courage, and vengefulness, which have been extolled
by poets for more than thirteen centuries and survive in the Arab’s con-
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