Thanks to Tamerlane and Collounsbury for their answers. I’m going to regret Collounsbury’s banning, since his posts were often informative, though I think I can understand the motives.
And I agree, not all of the world’s dysfunctional societies fall within Muslim civilization.
“you don’t live in the context of a dysfunctional civilization badly in need of Reformation”
Actually the West was “dysfunctional” for at least 300 years after the Reformation. Consider the religious wars of the 16th and 17the centuries, the slave trade, colonialism not to mention the Holocaust and the Gulag both within living memory. It’s only in the last 50 years or so that liberal democracy in the fullest sense of the word has become the norm in the West.
And let’s not forget that the West became “functional” precisely by overcoming the kind of superstition and bigotry which is still peddled by the likes of Falwell and Robertson in the US.
We can quibble over the timeline, but you do agree that Islamic civilization has yet to take even the first couple of steps toward a “functional” society that you outline here?
Actually no I wouldn’t agree. All I would agree to is that “Islamic civilization” hasn’t achieved the same standard of political and economic development achieved in the West in the last 50 years. But many Muslim countries have taken some steps in that direction; for instance many of them have quite a modern, educated middle-class. And Muslim countries like Turkey and Malaysia compare quite well with, say, Spain and Portugal or even the Deep South of the US 50 years ago.
How about Albania? It’s corrupt, and poor, but they did have successful and what were ruled as reasonably fair elections, or Azerbaijan, which has its problems, not the least of which is defeat in a war that stripped about 20 percent of its territory, but is still working towards a civil society, or Bosnia, where things are quieted down from the war and they’re attempting to build a puralistic multi-ethnic society?
I may be treading into deep water here, but my rough surface impressions are as follows:
Turkey: a deliberately secular state with a strong European orientation.
Albania, Azerbaijan, and Bosnia: Situated on a volatile border between the Islamic and Western cultural spheres. Interesting case studies, but hardly situated in a Muslim “core” cultural area, wherever that might be found.
Malaysia: Ruled by a nativist autocrat who has used Islamic prejudices to throw his rivals in jail.
I’m not saying that Islamic civilization is hopeless or that it is completely static. But its lagging social and political evolution and the reactionary sentiments of many of its most prominent figures is leading it further and further away from productive interaction with the rest of the world–hence the term “dysfunctional”.
And when I say “dysfunctional” in interacting with the rest of the world, this is illustrated most sharply on an individual level, such as in this current thread where a doper relates that a Somailian student recently told a gay house mate that “they kill homosexuals in her country; and if her son were gay, she’d kill him”. And in this (pre-9/11) thread in which an Afgani exchange student in Canada started berating his female instructor for her “lack of morals and virtues” for wearing a short skirt and short-sleeve shirt, and had to be thrown out by school security.
Malaysia is not a democracy of course. But it’s been one of the fastest growing economies in the world over the last 15 years. It’s literacy rate is a decent 88% and growing. It’s infant mortality rate is only a little higher than the US. So it’s progressing nicely.
And as I have repeated several times the Islamic world is no worse ,using standard economic and social indicators,than the Third World as a whole(including the Christian third world) of which the Islamic world is much less than 50%. So when you talk about economic or social backwardness Islam, per se, is not really the main issue.
Well, there you go: you’re buying into the same argument that modern-day autocrats and dictators are using the world over–the economy is growing, so everything must be OK. By these lights, rich Saudi Arabia must be also one of the world’s most progressive societies. And China–arguable facing a politically-generated demographic catastrophe–is just as peachy as ever.
No, I think where you and I diverge is in the question of what makes a society healthy. Is it just economic growth and basic factors like infant mortality? Or does a society’s health also partially lie in its ability to regenerate and correct itself in the realm of politics and ideas–and in how far that ability allows the society to engage in productive interaction with the rest of the world.
Well, but in all four of those countries, the majority of the population is Muslim. There’s nothing to prevent a Muslim country from being, as you described Turkey “a deliberately secular state with a strong European orientation”.
Sure multi-party democracy and a free press are good things but it’s rather stupid to argue that their absence alone makes a society “dysfunctional”. The ability to provide the basics for the population, building economic infrastructure etc. are at least as important. Of course most Muslim countries have a long way to go in these areas also but they are no worse than the Third World as a whole. If you want you can call the whole Third World “dysfunctional” but if you want to single out the Muslim world I suggest you try to come with some kind of detailed and coherent argument instead of the vague assertions you have given us.
“how far that ability allows the society to engage in productive interaction with the rest of the world”
Well take Malaysia for instance. It’s fairly well-integrated into the world economy. That would count as “productive interaction” in most people’s minds. Also many Malays study in the West especially in the US (as indeed do many Arabs). So the absence of democracy doesn’t stop “productive interaction”
I would feel better if moderate muslims would repudiate the hateful behavior exemplified by Al-Queda. I didn’t hear a singlre voice of protest regarding the events in Kenya, from the imams of the muslim world.
You cannot have it both ways…you either condemn evil or (at least tacitly) condone it.
This is surely the better model. However, the crux of this discussion is whether the dominant religion of the culture dictates the results. I see direct parallels between the self-serving statements of the Malaysian executive and the condemnation by some Protestants of the presidentail campaigns of Al Smith and John Kennedy (to say nothing of the calls for violence espoused or tolerated by Ian Paisley or Meir Kahane). The places in the world where there is the most strife are the poor and underdeveloped regions. Those tend, currently to be the places that currently have majority Muslim populations. However, as several references attest, there are plenty of places that are not Muslim that are experiencing the same problems.
This “Ilamic” tendency would seem to be the accident of history that the Mideast was “protected” from European development by the crumbling Ottoman empire while Africa and Malaysia and Indonesia were initially “protected” from European development by geographic barriers. Now, as those regions attempt to play catch-up to the European economic model, they are subject to social stresses. In the places where Islam is majority, the turmoil is Muslim; in the places where Christianity (or Hinduism or animism or whatever) is the majority, the turmoil reflects those regions’ religious leanings.
I would agree that in many ways, Muslim religious thought is roughly where Christian religious thought was in the late 1800s. They are just now beginning to reconsider the nature of the creation of the Qur’an; they are beginning to explore the nature of secularism and its interaction with the religious. They are, in many cases, only now beginning to move away from the notion that the world is cleanly divided among the “right” belief and the “wrong” belief. And, just as Christianity still has proponents who preach hatred based on their supposed religious values, Islam certainly does, as well.
However, what I see posted (and preached by the likes of Falwell and Robertson–good Christians that they are) is an attitude that the problems arise from the religious belief, rather than arising from the social conditions. Given that there are Islam majority states that are not induging in religious persecution or strife, I would say that it is not the belief or the religion that is the cause.
Turkey is Muslim, but has moved toward secular pluralism.
Syria and Iraq (certainly not my favorite countries) are not using Islam to justify their support of terrorism or war, but justify their actions on political grounds.
Egypt and Pakistan are two more less-than-ideal members of the world community. In each case, the Islamist minorities are locked in a struggle with the secular leadership. While one can note that Islam plays a role in their problems, the majority of their citizens, while Muslim, are not taking sides based on religion, but on political considerations.
Lebanon has moved clearly toward a secular world view and most of its problems are the result of the political issues.
Jordan had been secular and the protection it had provided for people making raids on Israel had been politically motivated. When Israel moved in and tore open the infrastructure, it was the Christians who launched the religious strife.
Iran, in a reversal of the Egyptian model, is currently dominated by a zealous religious minority. They were able to seize power because the majority Muslim population opposed what it perceived as the persecution of Islam by the Shah. Once the revolution had ended, the Iranians began the slow effort to reclaim a society that is secular in nature, but founded on Muslim culture, (much as the U.S. is a secular society with strong Christian cultural underpinnings).
There is no question that there are problems in the Muslim world that trace back to various interpretations of that religion. However, note in my quick survey the wide range of different issues (and different levels of Islamic involvement) in each country.
So we can conclude that Christians pretty much condoned the slaughter of Muslims in Cote d’Ivoire, Lagos, Bosnia, and Lebanon? Or do we find that people tend to look on such situations as local and cultural issues, not religious, and so do not call major press conferences to express their condemnation in the way that the Christian leaders failed to condemn those slaughters of Muslims?
I don’t have time right now for a thorough reply, but one thing I thought I’d point out:
Again and again, tomndebb, I see you and others bringing up examples of what some factions in the West have advocated in an attempt to counter what powerful figures in the Muslim world have actually done. I don’t understand it. When did the Protestant opponents of Smith and Kennedy have the power to have those Catholic candidates beaten and removed from public life through trumped up arrests, show trials, and forced bankruptcy , as Mahathir has done/is doing with Anwar Ibrahim? Y’all keep on going back to marginal figures like Falwell and Robertson as well, as if they have anything like the power or the blood guilt of their supposed “parallels” in the Muslim world.
Agreed. The question then becomes, why don’t more Muslim states take this path? Are you implying that they foster an entrenched antidemocratic clergy and/or radical Muslim political factions by choice?
Hmmm. Interesting . . .
They do not have the power because the U.S. began as a republic and has become a more pluralistic society. (They certainly had the will, as any reading of their rhetoric will demonstrate.) Malaysia is not there, yet. The U.S. was 150 years old when Al Smith ran for the presidency. Malaysia is fewer than 60 years old and Western support for “anti-Communism” has allowed it to remain more authoritarian with less representative government throughout that period. Again, we are seeing the intersection of local culture and politics within the context of religion and you seem to be laying the blame for the issues at the feet of the religion as if the other contexts did not exist.
On the other hand, I see you ignoring what members of other religions have actually done in Cote d’Ivoire, Lagos, Bosnia, and Lebanon as if those events are somehow “different” (in some never explained fashion) than events in Muslim regions.
“Y’all keep on going back to marginal figures like Falwell and Robertson”
Marginal? They are leaders of the Christian Right which is an influential component of the GOP. Their intervention helped swing the GOP primaries to Bush. The Christian Right in general is regularly consulted by the likes of Rove when formulating policy. Key members of the administration and like Ashcroft and of Congress like De Lay seem to share their world-view.
As for advocacy not deeds ,as noted above, we have given you plenty of examples of the latter by non-Muslims (including Christians) all around the world. Neither you nor anyone else has come with a good explanation for why you think the Islamic world is significantly worse than the Third World as a whole.
Moreover words and rhetoric do matter because they tend to shape the deeds of the future. After all Islamic terrorism didn’t suddenly arise out of nowhere but came from decades or even centuries of indoctrination and intolerance from the likes of the Wahabbis. The time to attack bigotry is when it is relatively non-violent rather than waiting for it to acquire a hard-core group of violent followers like Al-quaeda.
Oh yeah, that bastard James K. Polk (1845-1849) was certainly the Mahathir of his day. Didn’t his opponents Henry Clay and Martin Van Buren both die of tuberculosis contracted in prison after he had them arrested on trumped up charges?
As for the Ivory Coast and other regions–as I said before, I’ve never asserted that the Muslim world has a monopoly on undeveloped, superstitious backwaters. But I would suggest that the overarching ideology of Islam provides a much more effective cloak for extremists than rival belief systems. And once it does take hold in a region, I wonder if the nature of its doctrines–particularly its xenophobia, emphasis on conformity, and hostility to fundamental tools for progress like interest on capital–might not create a self-perpetuating dysfunctional society in a much more systematic fashion than other belief systems.
The influence of the Christian Right on GOP policy would be a whole other debate, but even if they have the level of influence that you attribute to them–would you concede that there are significant counterbalancing forces within the Republican Party itself, not to mention the political environment as a whole? As compared with the Wahabis of Saudi Arabia or the Shiite clerics of Iran, then yes, I would say that Falwell and Robertson are quite marginal.
And as for the difference between the Muslim and non-Muslim Third World–as I suggest in my previous post, the real problem in those regions seems to me to be the ideological blank check that this overarching Islamic ideology offers local despots and gangs of thugs.