Just as Christians had to define their beliefs in
relation to the Torah (the Old Testament), Mus-
lims had to do so in relation to both the Torah
and the Gospel. Because the received form of the
earlier scriptures has been altered, or corrupted,
however, Muslims must look primarily to the
Quran for guidance. With a few exceptions, they
have not consulted the Old and New Testaments
either in matters of religious belief or practice.
Nevertheless, as a result of being People of the
Book, Jews and Christians were allotted legal
rights under Islamic law as “protected” subjects
(ahl al-dhimma). When Muslims encountered
other peoples in the Middle East and Asia, despite
wars and confrontations, they eventually came to
recognize Zoroastrians, Hindus, and Buddhists
as also being religious communities that had
received holy books. In today’s global culture,
traditional Islamic belief in a universal book from
which all holy books are ultimately derived has
provided a basis for engaging in dialogUe across
religious and cultural boundaries.
See also arabic langUage and literatUre; bUd-
dhism and islam; christianity and islam; dhimmi;
JUdaism and islam; shiism; tafsir.
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.Further reading: Lila Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments:
Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society (Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1999); J. G. Peristiany and
J. Pitt-Rivers, eds., Honor and Grace in Anthropology
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991).horse
Horses were treasured animals in the Islamicate
societies of the premodern Middle East, where
they served as mounts for warriors and became
symbols of chivalry and manliness. The most
famous breed is the Arabian horse, a small, swift
riding animal known for its beauty and intelli-
gence. Its strength and maneuverability made it
a valuable asset in battle, and it is credited with
having been an important factor in the successful
Arab conquest of the Middle East, North Africa,horse 309 J