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“In order to conceal mistakes that would result in shame, features of Arab culture encourage the individual to exaggerate, lie, and/or remain secretive.”

And it goes deeper than that (dunno if he hits this in his book) - information is power. It's not just concealing shames, it's also having information others don't. If an individual knows something, they only pass that knowledge on if they have to , and as limited as possible. The one guy that can repair their weapons, doesn't train someone to help him - he's the valuable one because he's the only one that can do that. If a soldier knows something about an enemy, he must be the one to inform superiors, he won't share the info, because he's the one that needs to be seen as passing the info up to the boss. Their hiding info is on both sides of the coin.

Something I don't see in the article, is the fatalistic, pre-ordained worldview Islam gives its followers. If the jet crashes, it's not because of poor maintenance or bad pilots, it's because Allah decided it's time for that to happen. There's very limited initiative and attempts to make things better, because everything is as Allah wills it, so there's no point in improvement. Stuff will improve if Allah wants it, but otherwise, why bother fighting destiny?

Something I don't see in the article, is the fatalistic, pre-ordained worldview Islam gives its followers.

My dad worked with some guys who were in the Merchant Marine during WWII. A couple of 'em were torpedord and spent days/weeks in a lifeboat. Both of 'em said that the first to die off were the Muslims and Indians, followed by the young guys. The first two groups just gave up and wouldn't lift a finger to help in their survival.