The Nation Magazine and the Middle East: yet again. Adam Shatz figured it out. It is all about Shi`ite "passion for martyrdom." So that is what it is all about. A passion for martyrdom. I was raised by a Shi`te father (and a Sunni mother): he never inculcated "a passion for martyrdom" in his children. If anything, nobody loved life and its pleasures more than my Shi`ite father. My father did not even know how to pray, and never entered a mosque in his life, but Shatz thinks that all Shi`ite are religious fanatics. But Shatz should add a chapter to The Arab Mind under that title. He is now qualified to produce a revised edition of that book.