Mubarak photo doctored, but why?

Glenn Reynolds linked to an AOL News page displaying the before-and-after photos of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak walking along a red-carpet runway with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Barack Obama, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and King Abdullah II of Jordan at the White House. The writer, former Navy public affairs officer J.D. Gordon, offers the photos as an example of how " fiction is often relayed as fact in their press in a way which most Americans couldn't fathom."

That's true, but that's not the real reason the photo in question was doctored. So, let's go to the photos.

The original news photo:

Note that Mubarak is at the far left of the shot. Most significantly, he is to the rear of the other heads of state. Keep that in mind.

Here is the "shopped" photo as it appeared in Egyptian press.

Note that not only is Mubarak placed in front, it's not even the same photo, something Mr. Gordon did not detect. The second shot shows the men as they passed further down the carpet, closer to the photographer. The angle of the photo is more directly above them in the second photo than the first and the men's stride is different. 

I suppose it's possible that Mubarak suddenly darted to the front of the pack in only two or three steps, but he would have had to rearrange the angle of his necktie doing so, since it slants the other way in shot number two. No, using only the second shot, editors lifted Mubarak's image from the rear and inserted into the front. The editors flipped his image left to right, too.

The relocation of Mubarak to the place of leadership is obvious. But what most Westerners will miss is that there is more involved here than the Egyptian media sucking up to Dictator President For Life Mubarak.

The editor moved Mubarak not merely to the head of the pack, but to the place of honor. Westerners find it hard to understand the role honor and shame play in Middle Eastern cultures. In 2004, US Marine General James Mattis, then commanding a Marine division, commissioned a paper for his troops to study called, “Marines are from Mars, Iraqis are from Venus.” Here is how the paper described an Iraqi explaining their sense of honor:

Our sense of honor pervades everything we do. This isn’t the Western definition of honor, it’s more like Hispanic honor of machismo. Perception of manhood is vital and in fact it can be a matter of life and death. A man without honor gets no wife, often no work, and in Iraq he may be shunned or even killed by the own family depending on how grave the offense is. Defending honor is part of our cultural heritage. It is the focal point of everything we do and is jealously guarded. Honor means influence and power, our foremost concern. Less power means fewer contracts, less money, less food, angrier families. We must regain lost honor any way we can, even if it means violently attacking the ones who dishonored us.

I wrote at some length on the role of honor and shame in Middle Eastern cultures, especially in the Arab tribal systems, in "Honor, shame, the Middle East and the American left." I won't rehash that post here (go read!) but instead relate a true story of my experiences with Arab honor-shame dynamics.

In 1982 I was a US Army captain attending the Field Artillery Officer Advanced Course at Ft. Sill, Okla. There were a large number of allied officer (that is, US Marines) attending as well as many foreign officers. The Arab contingent was pretty large, and most of them were Saudis. But in my section there were two Egyptian lieutenant colonels and one major.

The two light colonels and I became pretty good friends. Their names were Solomon and Osman. They were great guys and real party animals, as Muslim men often are when they reach the decadent, non-Islamic West.

Anyway, one day the entire class of 300 or so was taking a tactics exam in an auditorium-type room. We all sat at long, folding tables and opened the exams when told to start. Needless to say, all the US officers had long ago internalized the credo, "An officer does not lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those who do." Cheating on this or any other assigned work would end a career!

The first section of the test was multiple choice. To my right rear sat all the Saudi officers in a row. Very soon, we all heard a slue of Arabic, followed by a clear enunciation of the letter, "B." A moment later, more Arabic, then "D." Repeat, ending with "A." And so on.

In the analysis part of the test and essays, the Saudis made no attempt to disguise their verbal collaboration. I got highly irritated and I was not the only one. But we knew nothing would be done about their cheating for political reasons, and besides, foreign officers' scores did not affect our class standing.

A couple of days later I asked Lt. Col. Solomon why the Saudis were so blatant in their cheating. He broke into laughter and replied, "They were not cheating. The Saudi lieutenant colonel fills the role of the sheik while they are here. The major next to him was reading his answers to all the rest so they could make sure they did not score higher than him on the test. If they did, it would bring great shame to him and would be dishonorable for the junior officer. Very bad problem, that."

That is the main reason the Egyptian press doctored the photo. The original displayed Hosni walking in the rear. But in Arab cultures, that is a place of subservience. It is where a proper Arab woman must walk when in public with her father, husband or other male relative. In the original, Mubarak is immediately preceded by none other than Israeli PM Netanyahu. Of all then world leaders to show preceding Mubarak, that would be the worst!

To print a photo of Mubarak walking in the rear of the other leaders, especially Netanyahu, would have brought dishonor upon him in the eyes of the Egyptian people, and would have been shameful for the editors who printed it. "Very bad problem, that," and consequences for the editors almost certainly would have been very bad, too.