Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: John Corrigan et al., Jews, Christians, 

Muslims: A Comparative Introduction to Monotheistic Reli-

gions (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1998); 

Frederick M. Denny and Rodney L. Taylor, The Holy 

Book in Comparative Perspective (Columbia: University 

of South Carolina Press, 1985); William A. Graham, 

Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the 

History of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University 

Press, 1987); F. E. Peters, A Reader on Classical Islam

(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994).

holy war

  See 

jihad

.

honor and shame

Cultural anthropologists have maintained that 

honor and shame are a set of cultural norms 

and expectations that characterizes Mediterranean 

societies, including Arab Muslim ones, but not 

exclusively so. In the Mediterranean region, the 

“honor and shame complex” stresses the value 

of dignified comportment, generosity, and family 

loyalty as well as bravery and independence for 

men and self-control and modesty for women. In 

Muslim societies, honor and shame are imagined 

to involve the application of reason (aql) to con-

trol base instincts (nafs), though parallel concepts 

may be found in other Mediterranean countries 

such as Greece and Italy. Where notions of honor 

and shame exist, family and tribal identity is very 

important, and honor killings, in which male 

family members murder a female relative who has 

transgressed a particularly serious moral bound-

ary, involve attempts to reclaim the honor of the 

larger family group. Some scholars have argued 

that the paired ideals of honor and shame are too 

general to capture the important subtleties and 

differences among Mediterranean societies. Oth-

ers have argued that these are European concepts 

that do not adequately capture the cultural per-

spectives of the non-European Mediterranean.

See also 

cUstomary

 

laW

; 

Women

.