The Closed Circle

by David Pryce-Jones

As the violence of the Middle East has come to America, many Westerners are stunned and confounded by this new form of mayhem that appears to be a feature of Arab societies. This book explains how Arabs are closed in a circle defined by tribal, religious, and cultural traditions. David Pryce-Jones examines the forces that "drive the Arabs in their dealings with each other and with the West." In the postwar world, he argues, the Arabs reverted to age-old tribal and kinship structures from which they have been unable to escape. In tribal society, loyalty is extended to close kin and other members of the tribe. The successful nation state - the model that Westerners understand - generates broader loyalties, but the tribal world has no institutions that have evolved by common consent for the common good. Those who seek power achieve it by plotting secretly and ruthlessly eliminating their rivals. In the Arab world, violence is systemic.

Genres: History, Middle East, Islam, Religion, Politics, Nonfiction, Current Affairs

Paperback

First published February 1, 1989

About the author

David Eugene Henry Pryce-Jones (1936–2025) was a British conservative author, historian and political commentator.

Reviews

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want the historical facts w/o all the modern hype and hysteria associated with the Arab people present in the west today, read Pryce-Jones's book. It is not only a great presentation of the history and culture of the Arab people, it is also told by someone who lived among them for many years. Be prepared to sit, read, think and then evaluate all you thought you knew about Arab people.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

A heavy read but an important and credible analysis of the honor/shame character of Arab culture. A strong apologetic for liberal, Western culture, despite its excesses.

I need to ponder this book a while, but it rings true to the apparent revenge logic operating in modern terrorism. The book elicits compassion for the misery of Arab culture; however, the author didn't attempt to point up positive aspects of Arab culture. Without disagreeing with his negative assessments of Arab culture compared to European, I'm sure that there are nonetheless attractive qualities to be encountered in Arab culture.

Pragmatically, communication among cultures must take into account the hermeneutical logic of the other. Understanding the other is not a capitulation of our values but is at least a step toward translating into or speaking into an alien set of values.

The biblical book of Proverbs speaks into a culture of honor and shame. But the big difference between the Islamic and the Christian God is that the latter took on human shame in order to cover our shame with eternal honor and glory. The former simply destroys anything that sullied his honor, leading to a culture of insecure honor that enforced by cruel retaliation and vengeance.

Lots to ponder from this book, chocked full of examples, stories, facts, and figures.

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting background to Arab culture, explains much of what is going on currently in Arab countries.

[Ken Bickley · Rating 3 out of 5]

First, a disclaimer. Pryce-Jones is senior editor at William F. Buckley's "National Review", and a cousin of Helena Bonham-Carter as well as of Baron de Rothschild. We have little or nothing in common, either politically or economically (especially the latter!). Nevertheless, this book is quite interesting. The author says, "The Arab world has no institutions evolved by common consent for common purposes ... no mechanism exists whereby people may participate in what is being decided in their name. A handful of absolute despots oppress and attack with every available stratagem all those within their reach." And he makes a pretty strong case that his contentions are true. He also points out that such terms as "liberty and equality" cannot even be translated directly into Arabic. Thus, our attempts at diplomacy are in vain. Islam only exacerbates the Arabs' natural tendencies toward contempt for anyone not Arab. Indeed, Pryce-Jones believes the Arab world in general is only impressed by superior force. Maybe our government officials should all be required to read it. It's tedious, and perhaps overly doctrinaire, but worth the effort.

[Rhesa]

Anthropological look of the behavior of Middle East nations

[Hellseeker · Rating 1 out of 5]

Shoddy work in ‘deconstructing’ the Arab mind. Takes inspiration from an entire generation of Orientalist writers who have advocated colonialism in the guise of concepts such as ‘liberty’ and ‘development’. Very simplistic understanding of Islam, i.e as an unitary entity without any sort of complexity, ensures that a Muslim in India is very similar to someone in Iraq, merely due to the fact that he/she is a Muslim. Practically enough info here to be ‘deconstructed’ into a major review. One for the ages.

[Red Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think it would be a difficult call whether Pryce-Jones or Bernard Lewis does a better job of explaining the Arabs - read them both!!

Thesis is that institutions do not exist in the Middle East to allow for pluralism. As a result, tribal codes of shame-honor dominate. The Turks who founded the Ottoman Empire were a nomadic warrior people from Asia who adopted Islam.

"Through firsthand experience, this colonel and his kind had in fact grasped that the colonial powers had either to absorb and ingest the power-challenge dialectic and behave like any Muslim power holder, or else to break it once and for all and so integrate peoples of different religions and customs into one value system."

Arabs in Palestine were willing to sell land they thought as worthless to the Jews.

In terms of numbers killed, Arabs have suffered more at the hands of the PLO than Jews.

His advice on Middle East military expeditions: "Depending on the interests at stake, either such entry into the Middle East should be avoided altogether for the sake of the shame-based hostility it will trigger, or it must be undertaken with inflexible determination to use whatever degree of force is required for supreme arbitration."

[Roger Singh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very imformative book on Middle East affairs. Recommend

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 2 out of 5]

All of Pryce-Jones' books are flawed strange organisms
bits of them you can strongly agree with pieces of it, and other bits strongly disagree with his views and commentary

It's an extremely flawed polemicist, and worse as a historian. But he is interesting if you know where he's seriously off his rocker. He's the sorta crank that's enjoyable when you've got ten books on your bookshelf on the topic, and then you can handle one of his works with mild interest.

Sadly, I even disagree with some of the critics of his book, and I even cringe more at the people who praise this book.

My guess is that tons of people are offended by things that don't bother me, and that a lot of his serious flaws aren't brought up by the other people.

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International Affairs

The only puzzle here is how a book like this can find a publisher and be given so much advance publicity in this day and age.

Paul Lalor, St. Anthony's College, Oxford

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Acute insights into how the Middle East works, or fails to work. This is definitely a book to be read, if also one to be thought about carefully and rather critically.

David Morgan, Times Literary Supplement

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Publishers Weekly

Following the end of colonial rule in the Middle East, the newly independent Arab nations did not become progressive and free: they are despotic; most persecute religious or ethnic minorities; all oppress women; none has participatory institutions.

In a scathing and provocative critique, Pryce-Jones (Paris in the Third Reich; Cyril Connolly) blames these dismal conditions on what he sees as a Muslim reversion to tribal and kinship structures as well as slavish obedience to complex codes of honor and shame that prevent concepts such as open debate, democracy and accountability from taking root.

With Islamocentric shortsightedness, Arabs understood Nazism in terms of German revenge for humiliation suffered in World War I. Arab leaders admired both Hitler and Lenin as careerist conspirators who made good.

Pryce-Jones sees the same tribal, king-of-the-hill mentality at work today in the Palestine Liberation Organization, a careerist group built around a few audacious personalities who arrogated the right to speak for a whole people.

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The New Republic

Pryce-Jones argues that Islamic fundamentalism is a means of attempting to mobilize the masses behind the dominant clans.

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the notorious neoconservative Daniel Pipes, who I have similarly mixed feelings about

has this review

Perplexed by the wide gap between the obvious ability of the Arabs and their very modest achievements in the twentieth-century, Pryce-Jones develops a fairly elaborate schema to explain what he perceives as the failure of the Arabs.

He refines three concepts through the book:

- The power-challenge dialectic consists of an unending series of individuals seeking authority as an end in itself; those who win rule despotically, those who fail languish in prison.

- The money-favor nexus is the civilian equivalent; those who have money flaunt it, those without it languish in poverty.

- Shame and honor are the polarity that dominates private life, especially relations between the sexes.

In a sustained tour de force, Pryce-Jones applies these three concepts to explain such diverse phenomena as the career of Ayatollah Khomeini, changes in Israeli society since 1967, the behavior of Western oil companies, and even the predominant themes of modern Arab literature.

The author has read widely and thought hard on the Arab predicament, and the result is thoroughly depressing. He has the courage to document what very few Westerners but quite a few Arab observers have dared discuss, namely that 150 million Arabs are suffering from the self-interested rule of militaristic leaders.

Some may call Pryce-Jones anti-Arab for doing this; but the charge would be false, for he has done the subject Arab populations a service by so fully recording their plight. Only the rulers (and their apologists) will have reason to complain. The Closed Circle is a landmark for understanding the politics of the Middle East.

Orbis Fall 1989
[check out the book reviews at Daniel Pipes dot org]

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[Zach · Rating 4 out of 5]

About as thrilling as reading an encyclopedia, but filled in a lot of the blanks in my understanding of how the modern Middle East came to be, and why it is still confusing as heck for the West to comprehend. Some interesting primary sources - including quotes from 1950s Egyptian actors and singers who made it big internationally and their take on their own society, quotes from some of the former strongmen leaders in Iraq, Syria, and Libya. He even includes Lawrence of Arabia’s take on Israel before it had come into existence.

[Nari · Rating 5 out of 5]

I live in a quasi-Arab country and this has been a tremendous contribution to my understanding of the history and culture and politics of the Middle East. I'd rate it five stars if only for the depth and honesty and effort that went into it in a begone era when writers could be politically incorrect when necessary and had the arguments to back up their claims.
The immediate criticism is the nationality of the author and its colonizing past, but that alone doesn't cancel the arguments themselves.

[Aoife Meehan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I believe for an Arabist, « The Closed Circle » would be awarded 5 stars. I need more hand-holding and storytelling. This book is brimming with anecdotes, dates, names, and trivia. Too much for my brain to absorb and capture. Again, for someone with a greater capacity for information spewing into one’s eyes, it would be five stars.

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would only recommend this book to those who have read other books about the Arab world first. There are plenty of good nuggets in this book, but the author writes in a fussy style so having some background on the subject would be helpful. My recommendations are Patel’s The Arab Mind or Lee Smith’s The Strong Horse.

The most memorable part of this book was the last few pages where the author essentials says that any foreign nation-builders in the Arab world better be resolute because pride and raw strength are ultimately what determines who has power there. All that matters is who the strong horse is so instilling democracy is going to be a huge challenge to say the least. This was written 15 years before Iraq War two. Maybe there is a lesson there.

[Jill]

Note - so far just on the intro - but I don't like the blurb on this book - says "that they haven't been able to break out of" that's biased and perhaps Pryce-Jones is; I don't know. I haven't read very far. However, His introduction he makes a distinction - he is making the point that westerners don't understand because we think like westerners, arabs have a different perspective, a different world view and it is wrong to analyze it, make value judgements about it from a wesstern view. it is different. that's why i'm reading this to try to perceive differently and see/understand 'them' and 'their' way of thinking/living - NOT to expect 'them' to be like 'me' or become like 'me'

I am removing this from my currently reading list with concern that it may be a politically and/or culturally biased book. While I might be reading it critically, I don't want my book shelf to be loaded with one particular perspective - such as I don't only watch or read predominantely Republican or Democrat news, websites and books.

This would be the antithesis of what I am interested in - open perspectives leading to understanding and peace.

[William · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the author clearly points out the shame-honor perspectives of the Arab world, it is often dated to 1989. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then and that is why I thought that the 2009 update would be just that - a full update throughout the book. It sadly is not. The preface to the 2009 edition touches on some of the updated events, it does not go far enough to satisfy my understanding of today's Arab world. However, if you are looking for a deep historical account of how we came to the present situation (at least until 1989), it is thorough and deep in its detail. It is a difficult read as it jumps from one section of the Arab world to another, making it difficult to follow the logic at times. But the author does get his point across about the shame-honor mentality - so much so that I leave this book with a much more cynical outlook to the future of the Middle East.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Pryce-Jones writes from an outsiders perspective on Arab and Islamic society. A controversial book because of some statements and assertions, it nevertheless proves valuable in separating the double threads of "looking at Islamic society in order to pass Western judgements, and at the West in order to pass Islamic judgements." As an outsider myself, I appreciate the perspective on the multiple paradigms of analysis: individual vs tribe, shame vs honor, money and influence. Truly valuable reading material to expand one's worldview and terminology proves inadequate to understanding the Middle East and North Africa.

[Riley · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extremely scholarly and incisive look into the world of the Arabs. The author is brilliant and he comes to some conclusions that are hard to even wrap my head around because, as a Westerner, this world is so different from the one we are familiar with.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little dated, bu otherwise an excellent look into Arab culture.

[Michael Hinsley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading, re-reading. Too journalistic. Needed more thought.

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

meh - it was ok

[Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent discussion of years of Middle East history and treachery.

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very depressing read. No light at the end of this tunnel.