According to a 2003 editorial in the Wall Street Journal by TUNKU VARADARAJAN, one of the greatest insults one can make in Islam is to show the sole of your foot:
As anyone who has been to the Middle East (or even to countries like India) knows, the foot and shoe are imbued with considerable significance.
The foot occupies the lowest rung in the bodily hierarchy and the shoe, in addition to being something in which the foot is placed, is in constant contact with dirt, soil and worse. The sole of the shoe is the most unclean part of an unclean object....In the Muslim world, according to Hume Horan, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, “to have the sole of the shoe directed toward one is pretty much the equivalent of someone in our culture giving you the finger.” Matthew Gordon, a historian of Islam, says that since one takes one’s shoes off before entering a mosque—as a way of maintaining the purity of the place of worship—”the use of a shoe as something to hit you with is an inversion, directing impurity and pollution at the object of the beating.”
The link is at: http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110003324
I find it interesting that this is the picture selected by the White House to memorialize Obama’s conversation with Netanyahu.
To be clear, only the first and last paragraphs of my post are my writing. The middle of the post was supposed to be indented as it is a quote from Varadarajan’s article, but I screwed up the formatting.
So, the photo was taken DURING Zero’s conversation with Isreal’s PM?
Odd, he put on a Muslim cloth to go see Egypt - right next door to Isreal......