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Inside the Arab Mind! 27

Another feature of the Bedouin ethos is the law of blood revenge. A much quoted Arab
proverb is, “Blood demands blood.” Relatives must avenge the blood of the slain by killing either
the actual murderer or one of his relatives. Even when a murderer is apprehended, convicted in a
court of law, and executed, it does not fulfill the requirements of blood revenge. One of the relatives
of the executed man must die by the hand of one of the victim’s relatives. And, of course, the mur-
dered relative’s blood must be avenged by his relatives. Thus it continues ad infinitum. An Arab
man once remarked that “both the Japanese and the Arabs are ready to kill to regain their lost honor;
but the Japanese will kill himself, while the Arab will kill somebody else” (cited in ibid., p. 212).

Terrorism

Almost every native English speaker is conversant with the words, assassin, assassinate and
assassination. But few would know that these words originate in the Middle East. Assassins was the
name given to a medieval “murderous group of Syrian Moslems” (Laffin, The Arab Mind, p. 38).
The Assassins belonged to a sect of Islam known as Isma’ili, and in a calculated war of terror, they
murdered sovereigns, princes, generals, governors and even the divines of Islam. Their murders
were designed to frighten, to weaken and ultimately to overthrow the Sunni sect of Islam.

The Assassins terrorized the Middle East from the 11th to the 13th century and derived their
name from the Arabic word, Hashshashin, meaning “smokers of hashish.” They whipped them-
selves into a religious frenzy by the smoking of hashish before committing their murders and were
the “forerunners of today’s terrorists” (ibid.). The Assassins seized or bought fortresses for use as
bases for their campaign of terror. They gained a great deal of influence and were given a building
(traditionally a palace) in Damascus itself for use as their headquarters (ibid., p. 39). Another name
by which the ancient Assassins were known was Fedayeen. This word is in common use in Arabic
today and is generally applied to all Arab terrorists.

Little has changed in the Middle East. Numbers of well financed, murderous terrorist
groups have bases and headquarters today throughout the entire region. Names like Abu Nidal (who
was recently killed in Baghdad), Ahmed Jibril (believed to be the mastermind behind the bombing
of the 1989 Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed all 269 people on board and an-
other 11 on the ground), considered to be the world’s most dangerous terrorist next to bin Laden,
George Habash, Yasser Arafat, Nayef Hawatmeh and a host of others whose names are synony-
mous with murder and terror, operate from within the Middle East. Their victims include both
Arabs and non-Arabs, and the numbers killed, maimed or injured annually is in the tens of thou-
sands. Terrorism is so much a part of Arab culture that most Arab countries “levy a two percent ‘fe-
dayeen tax’ on all entertainment tickets” (Laffin, Fedayeen, p. 100).

“Terrorist warfare has allowed Arab regimes to attack Western targets while denying any
responsibility for these attacks. Sovereign Arab states such as Syria, Iraq and Libya have provided
arms, embassies, intelligence services and money to various terror organizations operating against
the West and other objects of their animosity, thereby transforming terrorism that had been a local
peculiarity of Middle Eastern politics into an International malignancy. For international terrorism
is the quintessential Middle Eastern export, and its techniques everywhere are those of the Arab re-
gimes and organizations that invented it. The hijacking and bombing of aircraft, the bombing of

The Berean Voice November-December 2002