Islam's Issues
The Noble Pundit has some cogent thoughts on Islam that more or less match up with my own prejudices. I added some comments to his article too.
It may well be that Islam is simply incompatible with modernity. But I just don't buy that, and I'd rather exhaust the alternative scenarios before I come to that conclusion. We have to live with these people somehow. Pakistan already has nuclear weapons, and they won't be the last Muslim nation to have them. I'd rather find a way to get along with the Islamic world, wouldn't you? Draining the swamp that the governing powers in the Middle East thrive on seems like the only answer to me--a scary prospect that's less scary than anything else I can think of.
I, too, don't believe that islam is incompatible with modernity. You don't have to look any further than our own backyard, the U.S. Arabs here in the US are represented at every level of government, local, state, and federal. They work hard, prosper, worship freely, and are good neighbors to all. The difference between arabs here and the ones who didn't emigrate: here they have freedom of speech, and assembly, they don't live in a police state ruled by hate spewing dictators and mullahs. So, there is hope, I believe.
Well, ZB, you have put your finger right on the single factor that causes some people to believe that Islam as a way of life practiced in Islamic societies is incompatible with modernity.
It is because they cannot and will not achieve such modernity unless and until they radically change the political and social psychologies that govern their cultures in that part of the world.
Arabs who have relocated to the United States have in fact achieved these changes. With the exception of those who live in ethnic Arab ghettoes such as those found around Dearborn, Michigan, the Albany Park ethnic enclave of Chicago, and other communities, they have no choice.
Their children go to school almost entirely with non-Moslem offspring of Anglo-Saxons, Scandinavians, Blacks, Irish, Germans, Poles, Czechs, Jews, Italians, Croats, Serbs, Mexicans, Cubans, Greeks, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Koreans, Nigerians, American Indians, Indian Indians, and others too numerous to mention. They date, they screw, they fall in love, they intermarry.
They have western, secular McCulture hammered into their consciousness nonstop 24/7. If they go to local mosques for prayer, they do so in a social atmosphere that increasingly is a suburban Protestant version of Islam, probably not too different to what has happened to modern Judaism or Catholicism in our modern reincarnation of ancient Rome.
They become argumentive Democrats or equally argumentive Republicans. They try to find answers in regard to a host of issues totally unrelated to Middle Eastern affairs that they must deal with on a day-to-day basis. In short, inside a generation, they become Americans like the rest of us.
Meanwhile, back in Saddam/Abdullah Land, day to day life is controlled by sharia, the king or dictator, the tribe or clan, the daily grind to make a living in places where the typical income is $100 per month, and where the schools and mosques teach mostly hatred for the West and for the Jews, where civil liberties depend on prompt payment of bribes, and where there is no such thing as independent and impartial news reporting, and mostly, no such thing as independent thought.
So don't imagine that just because US Arabs act like other Americans, their relatives on the other side of the world will have the opportunity or even the will to do so.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI