Islam = intolorance to other religions ??

[Tamerlane]

*Originally posted by Dave Stewart *

I actually agree that Indo-China has much more cultural influence from China than Japan, and I can assure you I’m not nuts

Just to be clear ( since both of us are coming off as a little imprecise in our language ), I mean that Japan has been more heavily influenced by China, as a percentage of the totality of their total foreign cultural influences, than Indo-China has been influenced by China.

Indo-China has considerable ( older ) cultural influence from India as well as China. Hence the term Indo-China . Just as one example, Indo-China follows various types of the older ( Indian transmitted, I believe ) Hinayana form of Buddhism, as opposed to the iterations and variations of Mahayana Buddhism practiced in Japan and China.

As regards the category of “Hindu” - Well, I think it is not only imprecise for India as a country, but it leaves countries like Burma, Buddhist, but even more so than Indo-China part of the interface between Indian and “Sinic” culture, out in the cold.

If Burma is categorized as “Sinic”, it doesn’t fit - It has had more continual ansd direct contact with non-Chinese states. If it is categorized as Hindu, it doesn’t fit either - Being non-Hindu .

Then there are countries like Bangladesh - Muslim, but traditionally part of the Indian ( “Hindu” ) polity and far more akin culturally to Hindu neighbors, like Bihar province, than Muslim Turkey.

I just can’t take his “civilization” categories seriously. They fail logically in just too many areas.

• Tamerlane

[Dave_Stewart]

Tamerlane-

Just to be clear ( since both of us are coming off as a little imprecise in our language ), I mean that Japan has been more heavily influenced by China, as a percentage of the totality of their total foreign cultural influences, than Indo-China has been influenced by China.

Indo-China has considerable ( older ) cultural influence from India as well as China. Hence the term Indo-China . Just as one example, Indo-China follows various types of the older ( Indian transmitted, I believe ) Hinayana form of Buddhism, as opposed to the iterations and variations of Mahayana Buddhism practiced in Japan and China.

Oh, that’s what you meant. Sorry, misunderstood.

To me, Japan seems much more different to China than Indo-China does to China.

But I agree that Indo-China is heavily influenced by India, and this gives it a different flavour from China.

Getting back to the OP, I would love to see some stats on conflicts between and within “civilisations” (sticking to Huntington’s framework for the sake of argument) over the course of the 20th century, which, agreeing with Tamerlane, would be less prone to “data massage”.

[system]

*Originally posted by Dave Stewart *

Yeah, he separates northern Islamic Africa from the balance.

Which makes not an iota of historical/analytical sense if you know anything about the history of Islam, above all in North Africa.

Okay, here’s the first thing to take into Huntington and others in the pseudo-quantatative school of political anylsis.

In order to create proper statistical models one to test a hypothesis, one has to have a good model. If your model begins with bad assumptions no amount of data massaging is going to give coherent results. It’s fucking half-assed statistics.

Anyone regarding his civilization categories with a whit of knowledge about the regions quickly sees that he’s operating off of superficial unexamined stereotypes which abstract away from non-trivial differences.

Countries like the Ukraine, which is half Orthodox and half Christian, and Sudan, which is half Christain and half Muslim, are “split countries”. I’ll leave furhter explanation of his model at that, as this drifts away from the OP.

No, because it underrlines the flaws of his analysis: How on earth does one distinguish between “Orthodox” and “Christian” – oh of course I understand his understanding is Roman world versus Greek World Xtianities, but bloody hell, anyone who’s looked at eastern Catholicisms knows it’s a vast over-simplification to pretend one can treat Roman/Orthodox civilizational split. The man falls, at every opportunity into some of the most simplistic, superficial understandings he can find.

Which was my point - you either say that there is a evolutionary incline upwards for societal development, and the West is further up the incline than Islamic countries and therefore the West is “superior”, of you say (my preference) that the societies have fundamentally different starting points and evolutionary factors which shaped them, and that a societal or cultural comparison is unhelpful and inaccurate. Therefore, if Islam is more prone to violence, this is a characteristic of Islam, not a characteristic of an “inferior” society or culture.

The concept of Evolution (even as analogy) does not posit “superior” or “inferior” but “better adapted to a given set of conditions.” There is not, in biological evolutionary theory any such thing as an incline. I dislike this misconception being exported to even non-biological analogies. Indeed I think it is an analytical error as such.

Taking actual evolutionary theory and applying it to culture is always fraught with problems, but if one takes the actual observation that fitness is a function of adaption to specific circumstances then (a) one loses the superior/inferior thing and gets to the more profitable (b) observation of adaption to a certian set of socio-economic conditions.

Clarity.

*Originally posted by Dave Stewart *
"Islam considers itself culturaly superior to the decadent West, and is frustrated by its technological inferiority".

But Dave, why is it “Islam” which considers itself culturally superior to the decadent West? I don’t know of any culture which does not consider itself superior to all others. In addition most conservative cultures consider the West decadent and immoral. Why is Islam singled out here?

That is an exceptionally good point, which I can’t refute. Every society I’ve encountered is ethnocentric and believes the sun and moon revolve around them.

[/quote]

Indeed, Huntington’s very accusation (and the structure of his analysis) point to the same sin as he posits for Islam.

You’ll notice that as Islamic nations become more technologically advanced and economically successful, they tend to adopt certain attitudes which are currently more common in developed countries but which are not contrary to the teachings of Islam.

Is that true? The non-Western countries I’m familiar with are China and Japan. As they technologically progress, I do not see attitudes similar to Western countries developing here (China) nor there (Japan).

Sure you do. There are differences and there are similarities. Japanese society c. 2000 has absorbed plenty of attitudes foreign to relatively impoverished Japan of 1890.

Excessive focus on difference often blinds one to similarities.

Collounsbury-

It is a ludicrous assumption. LUDICROUS. There is no reason to propose that in any given time period that (violent, obvious) conflict will be evenly apportioned across the globe. NONE, nada, zero.

Different time periods and regions will have different mechanisms for dealing with tensions.

E.g. Europe until this century (to be more precise since the last World War) was well-known for staggering levels of violence and inter-nation warfare. At other times, the Muslim world was well-known for its relative peace (people being people).

Why is it ludicrous? Territory and trade are the major causes of war. Neighbours tend to share the same territory, and trade with each other. Therefore, wars are more likely between neighbours, than not (laughing as I write that, because it translates right down to domestic disputes, too). Everyone has neighbours.

It is ludicrous because, as Tamerlane has pointed out, causes of conflict are not equally distributed.

For example, one sees more (violent) conflict in areas where the perceived resources can not be easily divided to satisfy perceived basic needs. Areas of abundance more easily buy off open conflict. Insofar as resources are not evenly distributed around the world and even within countries, there is no reason to presume that conflict will be so distributed. It is an inane supposition.

You are right when you say that some countries have better mechanisms for resolving disputes than others - but these mechanisms are a relatively modern phenomenon.

No, they are most certainly not. Every society has conflict resolution mechanisms. Conflict resolution mechanisms are nothing novel. Our modern ones are certainly more robust (it appears) than the past, but they are not something solely modern. The real question is resources, distribution.

I reccommend looking over Diamond’s Guns Germs and Steel (btw never lend this book out, I have now lost 2 copies doing so.) for an idea about resources and civilization. Nota bene, insofar as Islam as a civilization exists in many different resource-areas, it is more than slightly ignorant to attempt generalizations at that level.

You point out that Europe has been fractitious in the past, and is not now - this was a conscious effort post WW2 to avert another European war (there was a move towards a United States of Europe post WW2 derived from Kants’ idea of the Perpetual Peace, as an aside, scuttled by the French National Assembly in 1954). The point is that this -plus Mercosur, ASEAN etc is all modern. I guess the answer to that, thinking ahead, is that Islamic violence is a modern phenonenon, too.

Bingo.

If one wants to make civilizational level conclusions, looking at a few decads is one fucking stupid way to approach the matter. Only a moron or a dishonest fuck does this.

On the Carribean, he points out that despite a number of efforts, the Anglophone and the Hispanic island nations have been unable to integrate into a regional union.

And what lessons?

Second, the time period analyzed - You already said it. Too short. Smacks of selective data massaging. We take grab samples at my job to track and tweak the process. But all the formal reporting is done with long-term composites .

Yeah, it is short, but it could be argued (weakly) that the violence in the region is a modern phenonenon and so should be measured only over the past decade. The more I think about that, the more it is wrong, though, because if you are looking at Islam as a whole as a “violent culture” you need to go back to its roots, and do a survey over that period - and take into accout its evolution.

Bingo.

[Dave_Stewart]

First time I’ve ever thanked anyone for thinking one of my ideas was “inane”, but thanks for your explanation. I’ve read “Germs Guns and Steel” - a good book.

[system]

Dave

I thought I was calling Hunty boys ideas inane, not yours. Didn’t mean to call your ideas inane at all. Hunty is the fellow who is putting himself forward as someone learned on the subject. For someone to write a serious book …