Unpacked, this appeal asks scholars not to talk about ethnic, racial, or religious differences—what most Middle Easterners will say are very important cultural issues for them. Hence, in his 1994 "Afterward" to a new edition of Orientalism, Said complained about the growing Western focus on Islam as a danger: "both the electronic and print media have been awash with demeaning stereotypes that lump together Islam and terrorism, or Arabs and violence, or the Orient and tyranny."[20] Such phenomena, Said insisted, were "not part of the whole picture" and focusing on them "demeans and dehumanizes lesser people ... [and] denies, suppresses, distorts."[21] In essence, Said enjoined fellow non-Muslims to ignore the very issues they most needed to understand in order to follow the developments of the twenty-first century.

Hence, the very factors now dominant in Arab and Muslim political culture—religious zealotry, violence, terrorism, unbridled authoritarianism, and exploitation of the weak, including women, refugees, and, of course, the perennial victims of Arab political culture, the Palestinians,[22] are not to be mentioned because doing so belittles Arabs and Muslims and hurts their feelings. Those who violate these new, anti-Orientalist directives elicit predictable anger from those they criticize, and equally vehement, if less violent, protests from fellow Westerners, accusing the Islamic critics of racism and of blaming the victim. Those who criticize Muslim hate speech are accused of aggravating the conflict.

So even as the traits that Said branded racist stereotypes grew in strength in the "Orient," the mandarins of Middle East studies and post-colonial academics discussed them only reluctantly, and when pushed to do so, primarily to play them down.[23] As a result, Western audiences remain to this day misinformed about Arabs and Muslims.

While Said framed his critique of the West in post-modern, humanistic terms, it may well be framed in terms of the cultural dynamics of honor-shame. Kalam an-nas—the public opinion whose disapproval is so painful—helps to explain the direction of Said's thought leading up to Orientalism. As an Arab who had great success playing by Western rules, surrounded by admiring colleagues (his "honor world" to that point),[24] Said experienced the catastrophic Arab defeat of the 1967 Six-Day War as a "punishing destiny":


The web of racism, cultural stereotypes, political imperialism, dehumanizing ideology holding in the Arab or the Muslim is very strong indeed, and it is this web which every Palestinian has come to feel as his uniquely punishing destiny. No [American academic] culturally and politically ever identified wholeheartedly with the Arabs; certainly there have been identifications on some level, but they have never taken an "acceptable" form as has liberal American identification with Zionism.[25]

As a "Palestinian," Said had lost face in this catastrophe, and his honor response was not a self-critical look at the Arab attitudes and actors that had contributed to both the unnecessary war and catastrophic defeat, but rather, anger at those who thought badly of Arabs and who claimed to hold the moral high ground. Accordingly, he showed no concern for whether or not the Palestinian cause, whose "wholehearted" support he endorsed and wished others to share, reflected (or disdained) the liberal values to which he appealed. For the honor driven, championing a side in a conflict is not about integrity or liberal values, but about honor, about how one looks, about "face."