Honor has not enjoyed a great press in recent years. Reports from the Middle East tell of “honor killings” of women, usually at the hands of male relatives, for some sexual transgression or other. Osama bin Laden defined his objective as the vindication of Muslim honor from repeated American insult. On the eve of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Saddam Hussein urged his people to “remember all of the meaning of what makes a man . . . [to] preserve for children and progeny a record of honor.”

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