# The disparity between islamic cultures and western ones. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [June 6, 2003, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-disparity-between-islamic-cultures-and-western-ones/180105 "2003-06-06T16:07:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![novemberromeo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ee59a6/32.png) [@novemberromeo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/novemberromeo)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2003, 10:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-disparity-between-islamic-cultures-and-western-ones/180105/21 "2003-06-07T10:29:11Z")
[http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030606.html](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030606.html) Interesting Question and lots of interesting comments. I am an aethist and therfore dont carry a bias about any religion. :o But one thing is for sure, muslims dont seem to want to be at peace with any other religion!!! If you look at world conflict today, at the root of every single conflict (Iraq, Africa, India/Pakistan, Indonesia, Afghanistan and on and on) we have the muslims!! :eek: Islamic militants groups are as common as pizzerias in Italy! (In fact there is a decline of pizzerias in Italy but u get my point) 😉 How many times do you hear of Hindu militants blowing up buildings or buddhist monks going on suicide missions??😕 While other religions do advertise they are still careful about calling members of the others infidels and verbiage of the sort. I havent yet heard the pope call upon militant groups to destroy buddhist/hindu temples or mosques around the world. So why do the muslims not want to live in peace? â˜č Is it really about religion? Or is it just another territorial war politically sold into the minds of gullible people? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2003, 10:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-disparity-between-islamic-cultures-and-western-ones/180105/22 "2003-06-07T10:36:30Z")
There are intolerant people in every religion, and many use violence and terrorism to further their goals. However, only in the Muslim world do you see this stuff justified by average everyday folks. Also, you do bring up a good point that the peripheries of the Muslim world are almost all places of constant fighting and terrorism between Muslims and whoever their neighbors are. From Africa(genocide against Africans in Mauritania and Sudan, military actions of Libya against Chad, riots in Nigeria, civil war in Ivory Coast, Arab oppression of Berbers and Coptic Christians), to the Middle East(Muslims vs Jews, Sunnis vs. Shiites, Arabs vs. Kurds, ARmenians vs. Muslims) to the sub-continent(Kashmir conflict) to the far east(Muslims vs. China and Russia) to the Pacific(Philippines). ---
**Author:** ![KGS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/90ced4/32.png) [@KGS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KGS)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2003, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-disparity-between-islamic-cultures-and-western-ones/180105/23 "2003-06-07T11:38:02Z")
> [@](#): > > Islam is much like Christianity, in that you can find something in it to justify almost any fool notion. Best line in a Cecil article, ever. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2003, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-disparity-between-islamic-cultures-and-western-ones/180105/24 "2003-06-07T13:54:41Z")
In a related vein, something that no one has yet mentioned was brought up in a fascinating article I read last week in the Hartford Courant: [“Iraq: Bringing Democracy To A Nation That Doesn’t Want It.”](http://www.ctnow.com/news/opinion/commentary/hc-viorst0601.artjun01.story) (The article originally appeared in the _Los Angeles Times_.) The premise of the author, Milton Viorst (author of _In the Shadow of the Prophet: The Struggle for the Soul of Islam_, 1998, Anchor Books) is that the Islamic world never had a Renaissance, and that that has made all the difference. Excerpted from the article: > [@](#): > > 
The seminal notion that the Renaissance introduced to the West was that mankind, not God, is at the hub of the social universe. It held reason as important as faith, and urged men and women to claim responsibility
for their own lives. > > Under the influence of texts from ancient Greece, Muslims in their Golden Age considered and rejected these ideas before passing the texts on to Europe. After triggering the Renaissance, the ideas led
to the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution. 
Europe created a civilization imbued with a sense of individual identity, in which men and women asserted rights apart from those of the community. These ideas, for better or worse, became the foundation of the secular culture that characterizes Western civilization today. > > Religion by no means disappeared. Instead, it was redefined as a personal bond, a relationship of choice, between the individual and God. The redefinition made Westerners comfortable separating worship from the state
Without it, democracy - and the civil society that, along with the press, supports it - would be impossible. > > This process has largely bypassed Islamic society. Muslims like to say that “Islam isn’t just a religion; it’s a way of life.” What they mean is that there is no barrier between faith and the everyday world
 It is not so much that Muslims are more pious than Westerners. It is that the imperatives of the culture impose limits on diversity of outlook, whether religious or social. These imperatives suppress the demand for personal identity, leaving believers with little tolerance for the free and open debate necessarily at democracy’s core. ---
**Author:** ![Billowen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19b73/32.png) [@Billowen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Billowen)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2003, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-disparity-between-islamic-cultures-and-western-ones/180105/25 "2003-06-07T14:22:38Z")
In response to Adaher’s question about “What is Asia doing right?” I would suggest that much of the Pacific Rim’s recent economic and industrial success can be seen as the result of Japan’s influence upon that region. Again, as with Peter the Great, it all comes down to a willingness to imitate the Western model. After being forced to open their society to Western trade and influence in the mid-19th century, the Japanese made a deliberate effort to preserve their culture by adapting it to the modern world. You therefore get the unusual spectacle of hordes of Japanese proto-industrialists visiting steel mills in Pittsburgh and taking lots of photographs of things like fire hydrants in the early part of the twentieth century. Japan’s formula for resisting colonization (Industialization, frugality, and a ridiculously strong work ethic) was successful in not only preserving their culture and keeping the colonial powers out, but also in raising the standard of living for their citizens. If you are South Korea or Singapore, it doesn’t take much to realize that all of those Acura’s aren’t a mistake. Also, I would suggest that most of Asia still isn’t getting it right. The per capita GNP of most Asian nations seems to sink pretty fast once you stop talking about the pockets of success on the Pacific Rim. The idea that the Middle East never had a Renaissance (Robby’s post) really says it all. Without people like Luther, Locke, Erasmus, Elizabeth, et al. we would all probably still be plowing the fields for the Feudal lord. ---
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2003, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-disparity-between-islamic-cultures-and-western-ones/180105/26 "2003-06-07T15:57:43Z")
My professor for History of Western Civ at the University of Chicago, thousands of years ago, Prof Karl Weintraub, commented that Western Culture had the advantage of a tension between two different cultural attitudes, which he styled Rome and Jerusalem. Roman culture, derived from Greek, focused on arts and literature and science and history. Rome, as conquerer, followed the unique Greek tradition of allowing other cultures to thrive within the Roman Empire. Jerusalem culture, derived from the Judeo-Christian Mid-Eastern traditions, stressed morality, spirituality, and religion. The tension between the two resulted (he argued) in enormous creativity, that other cultures didn’t share. It was an interesting argument from an outstanding teacher. ---
**Author:** ![chappachula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d2c977/32.png) [@chappachula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chappachula)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2003, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-disparity-between-islamic-cultures-and-western-ones/180105/27 "2003-06-07T18:43:22Z")
quote: “Islam is much like Christianity, in that you can find something in it to justify almost any fool notion.” “Best line in a Cecil article, ever.” You are right, KGS, that it’s a good line of Cecil’s.But there’s another, more important point: very few Christians justify any fool notion, But HUGE numbers of Muslims do so. The number of Christian snake-handlers is miniscule. The number of Christians who publicly advocate Holy War is ABSOLUTELY ZERO!!! (I’m talking about today, not the Middle Ages. Back then, for some reason, most intelligent theologians of all cultures advocated holy war, both the Crusaders and the Muslims–so it was an even tie on who is the fool.) So the real question is: why is the ability to “justify any fool notion” more prevalent among Muslim cultures than Western culture?" After Sept 11, repeated polls of university educated people Muslim cultures showed widespread approval of Bin Liden. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Calculus\_of\_Logic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/aeb1de/32.png) [@The\_Calculus\_of\_Logic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Calculus_of_Logic)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2003, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-disparity-between-islamic-cultures-and-western-ones/180105/28 "2003-06-07T19:17:51Z")
I don’t agree with Cecil’s interpretation, and i find it too easily swayed in the direction of political correctness by implying it was Europes fault and that modern Islam has no play in holding these countries back. The reality appears to be that it doesn’t matter if an Islamic country has oil or not, it will still statistically be less democratic and free than other countries of similar geographic or economic backgrounds. For comparisons, look at the Islamic vs. non islamic countries in the ex-soviet union, Africa or South East Asia. The Islamic countries are always worse off. It doesn’t mean Islam is inferior, just that modern Islamic countries are worse off right now than non-islamic countries. Denying this fact because its not PC is ok if thats what you want to do, but its not the truth. If Cecil’s statement “The truth is that the present gap between the fortunes of the Islamic world and those of the West isn’t a result so much of Muslim failure as European success.” was true, then why do the non-islamic countries in the soviet union, africa and asia do better than the Islamic ones? [http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.13511/pub\_detail.asp](http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.13511/pub_detail.asp) These explanations made my freedom house about why Islamic countries lag behind sounds more viable. [http://www.naplesnews.com/01/12/perspective/d729845a.htm](http://www.naplesnews.com/01/12/perspective/d729845a.htm) ---
**Author:** ![mschindler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@mschindler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mschindler)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2003, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-disparity-between-islamic-cultures-and-western-ones/180105/29 "2003-06-07T20:44:50Z")
Novemberromeo, the fact that you characterize yourself as an atheist doesn’t eliminate any “religious bias” on your part, if I may be so bold. The 20th century’s worst atrocities were committed by atheists: Stalin (nominally Orthodox, of course, but I’ll get to that), Hitler, Pol Pot, for instance. We have to be careful to distinguish between religion as a spiritual philosophy and religion as an expression of culture and politics. They are not at all the same thing. Example: the well-known gutsy Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci (author of “Inshallah” and “the Rage and the Pride” amongst others), is an outspoken anti-cleric, an atheist and a communist (I know that means something milder in Italy than it did in the USSR). But yet for all that she still considers herself Roman Catholic, and this is part of her argument in “the Rage and the Pride” for limiting immigration to Italy – Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands made a similar point. Why is she RC? Because, she writes, she was born within the sounds of the bells of [a small church in a village whose name I can’t remember], in rural Tuscany. It’s like race. When you tell people that race is a sociological construct, many stare at you in disbelief. Naturally race is “biological” they would say – you inherit your race from your parents. But do you? Or do you inherit physical characteristics, a certain ‘scattergram’ of which is defined by society as being a particular race? In South Africa, not long before apartheid ended, either P.W. Botha or de Klerk, I can’t remember which, installed a kind of 4-chamber parliament, divided on racial grounds: Whites/Europeans, Blacks/Africans [am using double terms here because the Afrikaans terms tended to use colour, such as Swartjies [sp?] and Blankjis whereas English-speaking ZA-ers tended to use geographical terms], “Coloureds” (which did not simply mean mixed race – it has a precise, historical meaning), and “Asians,” by which was meant primarily Indians, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans, Bangladeshis, and so on. What few Chinese there were were lumped in with whites. Imagine that: a Chinese and a white having the same race! > [@](#): > > How many times do you hear of Hindu militants blowing up buildings or buddhist monks going on suicide missions?? Funny you should use those examples. I’m going to reveal that I must be older than you but 😉 but India is ruled by a militant Hindu party right now, as it happens – the BHP. Mind you, they have to “open the tent” a bit to ensure national unity, but Hindu nationalists regularly attack trains full of Muslims and set them on fire, and a few years ago they destroyed the Muslim mosque at Ayodhya. And, here’s where I reveal I’m probably older than you, but I remember when Buddhist monks would regularly self-immolate in public to protest either the right-wing dictatorship of South Vietnam, or the communists who took over after the fall of South Vietnam. Also, the majority ethnic group in Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese, are Buddhists; some of their extremists see the Tamils as unwanted immigrants from India (Tamil Nadu). The Tamils are Hindus, and the Tamil Tigers are, I think, pretty well-known. And here in Canada – finally – trials are underway to try the Sikh extremists who want to form a separate country called Khalistan, who blew up a 747 that was flying from Montreal to New Delhi, and tried to blow up another, trans-Pacific flight (in the latter the bomb failed to go off on time, but did detonate in the baggage handling area of Narita airport, killing several baggage handlers). In the United States own history anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism runs deep, and at one point even the Mormons had a “massacre order” out from the state of Missouri (it gave them a day, maybe 2, to clear out of the state or they were open targets for anyone who wanted to kill them – it was discovered to be still on the books in I think about 1975 or 1976, and the then-governor of Missouri came to Utah and they had this big ceremony of destroying the old law). Here in Canada, and I think this applies to the US, too, we tried in a deliberate and systematic way to destroy the autochthonous (“First Nations”) culture through boarding schools run by the Anglicans and RCatholics, primarily (although they were actually just subcontractors acting under the Dept. of Indian and Northern Affairs). In Quebec, as recently as the 1960s, Jehovah’s Witnesses were systematically discriminated against in provincial law. I’ll give you one final example. As a prototypical Canadian, I see myself as a polite, non-violent, bridge-building citizen of a middle power which tries to explain Europe to the US and the US to Europe. To the USAmericans this is seen as preachy and condescending, and Europeans are baffled that we should see any difference between ourselves and USAmericans [note the terminology] at all. In the Iraq war, for the first time since Vietnam, Canada did not officially back the U.S. (although indirectly we did, by relieving some US forces in Afghanistan and some naval units in the Gulf who were supporting them, so the US forces could be relocated to Iraq). The geopolitical reason is that Canada sees itself by nature a multilateralist country (like we have a choice! When’s the last time you heard anyone speak of “Canadian imperialism?”\*) and while we agreed that Saddam was not Mr. Nice Guy, to invade a country unilaterally (okay, trilaterally, if you include GB and AUS) was not a “UN” thing to do, and Canada is very big on peace-keeping – our then foreign minister, Lester B. Pearson, won a Nobel Peace Prize for inventing the concept during the Suez Canal crisis in the 50s. But when I talked to US friends who supported the war, they were aghast that I didn’t. “Can’t you see how evil this guy is?” “We’re just doing **what has to be done** ” they’d say. In a famous Freudian slip, Pres. Bush early on referred to the need for a “crusade” (a meaning loaded with historical connotations, to be sure!) to “cleanse” Iraq. In other words, USAmericans who supported the war often expressed themselves in quasi-religious or moralistic tones to justify what many in the world saw as simple, naked aggression, implying that the big oil companies were behind it (something I think has a grain of truth, incidentally, but that’s another discussion). By now we know much of the evidence for Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction and other evils were if not outright fraudulent, at least “spun” politically for domestic consumption. It turns out that the heroic, dramatic rescue of Private Jessica Lynch, who looks like someone you’d take to a high school graduation dance [called “proms” in the US], was “scripted” for maximum effect. The letter supposedly linking Iraq to Niger relating to the purchase of uranium was shown to be a very clumsy forgery. As one cartoon making the rounds of the WWW put it: Pane 1: Tony Blair says “But how can you be sure that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction?” Pane 2: George Bush: “Because we kept the receipts.” This is an irreverent way of pointing out that from about 1985 until 1989, a company based in Maryland (now they are in Virginia) legally sold anthrax, botulinum, sarin and other such material, to Iraq, under the authority of export permits issued by the US Dept. of Commerce. During the first Gulf War (Desert Storm), a public relations firm that specializes in working with governments, called Knowlton & Hill, planted a totally fabricated story about Iraqi soldiers throwing prematurely born babies in Kuwait City hospitals onto the floors so the soldiers could steal the incubators and take them back to Iraq. The U.S. government manufactured the excuse for intervention in Vietnam, too – the Gulf of Tonkin incident – and it even appears that all the way back to the Spanish American War, the U.S. (or, oddly, a newspaper magnate named William Randolph Hearst) manufactured excuses to enter wars. Why? The Soviets never needed an excuse 😉 I tell USAmericans that in a way this is a backhanded compliment to their basic good nature and sense of morality – they need to have a reason to go to war, one they can feel good about. And when it boils down to it, that describes a lot of wars. Sometimes a religious label is attached to it: “the unity of Ireland” isn’t really about Catholics versus Protestants, it’s about England’s settlement of decommissioned Scottish soldiers and their families in Ulster during the 18th century (iirc). But the Scots happen to be Protestants, so the conflict has been presented as being a religious war, which is strictly speaking incorrect. Well, enough examples – you get the point. \*actually, there is a tragi-comic exception. Back in the early 80s a group of businessmen in the Turks and Caicos Islands, a British Caribbean crown colony, approached a Canadian Senator to see if Canada could annex the T&C. I thought this was great, and had a letter published in our largest national paper saying that this would mean Senators could go on vacation for half the year, but still spend their money in Canada. Needless to say, the T&C’s are still a colony, but of Britain. ---
**Author:** ![mschindler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@mschindler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mschindler)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2003, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-disparity-between-islamic-cultures-and-western-ones/180105/30 "2003-06-07T20:48:52Z")
Oh, I forgot to add something about Stalin and Hitler. While Stalin was, for a while, a theology student, and Hitler was nominally Catholic, they were both “religious” in the same sense Oriana Fallaci is. Stalin tried his best to destroy the Russian Orthodox Church, or at least co-opt it where he could, and Hitler was anti-religious as well, wanting to replace religions with a bizarre mix of Teutonic mythology and racial superiority notions which he read back onto (“retrojected”) history. The “official religion” of the Soviet Union, as indeed in modern-day PR China, was atheism. ---
**Author:** ![mschindler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@mschindler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mschindler)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2003, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-disparity-between-islamic-cultures-and-western-ones/180105/31 "2003-06-07T21:00:24Z")
Chappachula: [QUOTE] very few Christians justify any fool notion[/Q] Then how do you justify the election of George W. Bush? [ducking] Okay, here’s a serious example. This is from Harold Blooms _The American Religion_ and while his specific example uses Southern Baptist fundamentalists, I think that’s beside the point. It’s about a specific attitude which is found in many Christian religions especially in the southern United States: > [@](#): > > 
The overwhelming urgency (and viciousness) of Southern Baptist Fundamentalism surpasses all other American instances of that errancy, and makes it shockingly similar to Iranian Shiite Fundamentalism or the worst excesses of the Neturei Karta in Israel. In a most grievous way, the strength and uniqueness of the Moderate Southern Baptist tradition, as codified by Mullins, involuntarily helped produce the furious anti-intellectualism of Criswell, Pressler, and the other representative leaders of the now dominant Fundamentalist faction of the Southern Baptist Convention. The mystical distrust of language in the Moderates, with its attendant repudiation of theology, is reduced by the Fundamentalists to a total devaluation of all language and all thought. Even as Fundamentalists insist upon the inerrancy of the Bible, they give up all actual reading of the Bible, since in fact its language is too remote and difficult for them to begin to understand. What is left is the Bible as physical object, limp and leather, a final icon or magical talisman. To read Criswell or any other Fundamentalist clergyman on the Bible is almost a literal impossibility, at least for me, because they are not writing about the text, in any sense whatsoever of text, or of that text. They write about their own dogmatic social, political, cultural, moral, and even economic convictions, and biblical texts simply are quoted, with frenetic abandon, whether or not they in any way illustrate or even approach the areas where the convictions center. They are quoted also as though they interpreted themselves and were perfectly transparent in their meanings- And then there’s the story that’s variously attributed to either Ma or Pa Ferguson, both of whom served as governors in Texas at various times. It seems that at the time the state legislature was debating whether to provide Spanish-speaking classes in the Texas public school system in order to accommodate the large Hispanic population there. The governor said, apparently in all seriousness, “If English was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for the schoolchildren of Texas.” See, anything can be expressed in religious terms if that’s how you’re used to doing it. ---
**Author:** ![mschindler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@mschindler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mschindler)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2003, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-disparity-between-islamic-cultures-and-western-ones/180105/32 "2003-06-07T21:01:39Z")
Chappachula: > [@](#): > > very few Christians justify any fool notion Then how do you justify the election of George W. Bush? [ducking] Okay, here’s a serious example. This is from Harold Blooms _The American Religion_ and while his specific example uses Southern Baptist fundamentalists, I think that’s beside the point. It’s about a specific attitude which is found in many Christian religions especially in the southern United States: > [@](#): > > 
The overwhelming urgency (and viciousness) of Southern Baptist Fundamentalism surpasses all other American instances of that errancy, and makes it shockingly similar to Iranian Shiite Fundamentalism or the worst excesses of the Neturei Karta in Israel. In a most grievous way, the strength and uniqueness of the Moderate Southern Baptist tradition, as codified by Mullins, involuntarily helped produce the furious anti-intellectualism of Criswell, Pressler, and the other representative leaders of the now dominant Fundamentalist faction of the Southern Baptist Convention. The mystical distrust of language in the Moderates, with its attendant repudiation of theology, is reduced by the Fundamentalists to a total devaluation of all language and all thought. Even as Fundamentalists insist upon the inerrancy of the Bible, they give up all actual reading of the Bible, since in fact its language is too remote and difficult for them to begin to understand. What is left is the Bible as physical object, limp and leather, a final icon or magical talisman. To read Criswell or any other Fundamentalist clergyman on the Bible is almost a literal impossibility, at least for me, because they are not writing about the text, in any sense whatsoever of text, or of that text. They write about their own dogmatic social, political, cultural, moral, and even economic convictions, and biblical texts simply are quoted, with frenetic abandon, whether or not they in any way illustrate or even approach the areas where the convictions center. They are quoted also as though they interpreted themselves and were perfectly transparent in their meanings- And then there’s the story that’s variously attributed to either Ma or Pa Ferguson, both of whom served as governors in Texas at various times. It seems that at the time the state legislature was debating whether to provide Spanish-speaking classes in the Texas public school system in order to accommodate the large Hispanic population there. The governor said, apparently in all seriousness, “If English was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for the schoolchildren of Texas.” See, anything can be expressed in religious terms if that’s how you’re used to doing it. ---
**Author:** ![mschindler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@mschindler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mschindler)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2003, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-disparity-between-islamic-cultures-and-western-ones/180105/33 "2003-06-07T21:06:13Z")
Chappachula: > [@](#): > > After Sept 11, repeated polls of university educated people Muslim cultures showed widespread approval of Bin Liden. Then why doesn’t the US go get him? He’s not in Iraq but in Pakistan, one of your allies. ---
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2003, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-disparity-between-islamic-cultures-and-western-ones/180105/34 "2003-06-07T22:31:17Z")
Let’s try to keep this thread focused on the historic context, rather than go running around looking at modern phenomenon and modern debates, OK? The undeveloped situation in the Moslem world is several centuries old, exacerbated by the oil problem that began a century or more ago. Let’s not get that historic focus off-track by worrying about current politics. ---
**Author:** ![eponymous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e0b2c6/32.png) [@eponymous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eponymous)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2003, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-disparity-between-islamic-cultures-and-western-ones/180105/35 "2003-06-08T06:15:00Z")
\*Originally posted by The Calculus of Logic \* > [@](#): > > If Cecil’s statement “The truth is that the present gap between the fortunes of the Islamic world and those of the West isn’t a result so much of Muslim failure as European success.” was true, then why do the non-islamic countries in the soviet union, africa and asia do better than the Islamic ones? Sorry to burst your bubble, but they (all) don’t. Check out the Human Development Index at [www.undp.org/hdr2002/](http://www.undp.org/hdr2002/) The HDI is calculated using a combination of both economic and social measures to derive a (crude) index that can be used to compare/contrast the “development” of each country. The very poor are almost exclusively found in Sub-Saharan Africa and a large number of these countries are predominantly non-muslim. Another large chunk of “less-developed” countries that are non-muslim are also found in Asia as well. Furthermore, you’ll need to account for those predominantly Muslim countries that have higher ranks than predominantly non-mulsim countires. Compare and contrast the “success” of Malaysia (predominantly Muslim) with that of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam (non-Muslim). ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/e/e489c3b7d8fce19c4b355dd4fc3f88cc39c34b87.png) [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2003, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-disparity-between-islamic-cultures-and-western-ones/180105/36 "2003-06-08T07:14:38Z")
I could spend the day correcting things in this thread. Let me focus on this: On Terror/violence: > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by adaher However, only in the Muslim world do you see this stuff justified by average everyday folks. That is complete and utter ignorant tripe. I would direct you to Hindu extremists, with no small degree of popular support justifying pograms in Gujurat against Muslims, Tamils justifying terror against Budhist majority in Sri Lanka, the support the IRA had in its day, etc. > [@](#): > > Also, you do bring up a good point that the peripheries of the Muslim world are almost all places of constant fighting and terrorism between Muslims and whoever their neighbors are. It’s a foolish point. First, in the Middle East proper, for all the tensions, Xians and Muslim Arabs largely get along quite well, even under quite trying circumstances. Largely, although the al-Qaeda types try to blow that up. > [@](#): > > From Africa(genocide against Africans in Mauritania and Sudan, Okay, again here we have commentary from **gross** ignorance. Mauretania - terrible bloody country I may add having been there- is entirely a ‘domestic’ issue, tension between Muslim Takrour (Toucouleur) / Peul peoples and Arabic and Berber speakers, also Muslim. There is no “genocide” in any sense of the term. There are severe tensions and violence that in the late 1980s verged on civil war. It’s largely driven by access to water and land, in the age old tension between settled farmers (the Takrouri folks) and the nomads (the Arabic and Berber speakers). Sudan, well there you have a real live civil war, and it does largely break down on Arab Muslim versus non Arab and non Muslim bases, although Muslim non-Arabs are also found fighting against the ‘Arab’ North. Genocide is not an accurate term, it is a civil war and a lot of bloody killing is going on, but not genocide in its proper meaning. > [@](#): > > military actions of Libya against Chad, Libya’s military intervention in Chad was in a civil war context and given Chad is dominated by Muslim ethnic groups, with Muslims on both sides of the civil war, portraying the Libyan intervention --which was pure realpolitik-- as religiously driven is pure igonrance. Adventurism and realpolitik, not religion drove those interventions. > [@](#): > > riots in Nigeria, Well, the communal violence in Nigeria is your first example that doesn’t fail, although the most serious issue is North versus South tensions and esp. Ibo seperatism. > [@](#): > > civil war in Ivory Coast, Again, easy and fallacious ignorance. The civil war in Ivory Coast broke out over the issue of “Ivoirite” – esentially ethnic prejudice dressed up as nationalism-- which the post Boigny government created and exploited to drive its opposition out of the country, as Ouattara is a Muslim. As constructed, the policy was intended to deprive northerners, who are largely but not exclusively Muslim (and largely recent conversion, in the past 30-40 years), of access to political power and even citizenship rights. The southerners, largely Xian, have been sold a rather nasty and vaguely fascistic ‘nationalism’ that broke with the peaceful and cooperative framework Boigny wisely established. Again here, the real key is Northerness and especially Burkinabe (Burkina Faso) roots, as a large percent of the Northern ethnicities have confreres in Burkina Faso and are to an extent 'immigrants" although largely during the French colonial era. Nota bene, it is really the Burkinabe connection and not ‘religion’ per se that drives this, and you find the Northern Xians of Burkinabe extraction siding with the rest of the Northerners. Regardless, if there is anyone to blame here, it is largely Xian southern chauvinists and not the Northerners who pursued quite reasonable politics until the military dictatorship took over in 2000. > [@](#): > > Arab oppression of Berbers and Coptic Christians) There is hardly Arab oppression of Berbers as a general matter. Both are Muslim of course. The main population of Berbers centers in Morocco and Algeria, with some in Tunisia, Libya and a small community in Egypt. Calling the situation of Berbers in Morocco “oppression” is pure ignorance, where the communities are intermixed and intermingled and where every other “Arab” is in fact a Berber whose family adopted Arabic through slow assimilation. In Algeria one could go with the label oppresion, but then that applies to the general society insofar as the Generals who runs the show behind the scenes oppress everyone. There have been denial of language rights in Algeria, unlike Morocco, and other measures, but this is not generalizable to the majority of Berberphone pops who live in Morocco. As to Coptic Xians, who are Arabic speakers and with few exceptions self-identify as Arab and Egyptian, similarly calling their position “oppression” given Copts play an outsized role in elite society and Coptic Xians are the single dominant force in the private sector is gross exageration. There is certainly discrimination, above all since the 1970s since when the government has given into extremist demands from time to time, but oppression grossly exaggerates the situation (vis-a-vis generalized oppressive laws in Egypt which oppress all). This goes on and on. Frankly the gross ignorance that is reflected in commentary here on the region is a source of constant annoyance to me. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2003, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-disparity-between-islamic-cultures-and-western-ones/180105/37 "2003-06-08T07:21:49Z")
I’ll concede the first point. But I take issue with the rest of your post. Basically you’ve given explanations, plausible ones at that, for each of the conflicts. That still does nothing to disprove what I said about most of the Muslim world being in conflict with outsiders, as well as internally with different sects and races. In every case there is a surface justification for the fighting, but to my eyes it shows a pattern of racist violence directed at other races and cultures and religions. And it’s consistent and widespread. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2003, 7:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-disparity-between-islamic-cultures-and-western-ones/180105/38 "2003-06-08T07:36:53Z")
[http://www.iabolish.com/today/features/sudan/overview1.htm](http://www.iabolish.com/today/features/sudan/overview1.htm) These governments, and especially the current National Islamic Fundamentalist government, have used and continue to use war methods or weapons such as slavery, Arabization, Islamization, enthnic cleansing, aerial bombardment and man-made famine to either decimate or subjugate the African people of the Southern Sudan and Nuba Mountains. The National Islamic government has even gone as far as to declare “Jihad”, an Islamic Holy war against the people of the South and the Nuba Mountains, who it considers as infidels and who must be totally eradicated or brought under the banner of Arabism and Islamism. [http://www.hrw.org/reports/world/mauritania-pubs.php](http://www.hrw.org/reports/world/mauritania-pubs.php) The campaign to eliminate black culture in Mauritania, orchestrated by the white Moor rulers, peaked in the late 1980s and early 1990s and continues today. Mauritania’s Campaign of Terror documents the range of human rights abuses that the black Africans have suffered in Mauritania. It shows that the most egregious violations — such as massacres, torture, and slavery — have been accompanied by more insidious forms of de facto discrimination against the black Africans, aimed at ensuring their marginalization from the rest of society and depriving them of their fundamental human rights. Perhaps ethnic cleansing is a better term? ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/e/e489c3b7d8fce19c4b355dd4fc3f88cc39c34b87.png) [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2003, 8:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-disparity-between-islamic-cultures-and-western-ones/180105/39 "2003-06-08T08:06:14Z")
Plausible explanations? I’ve given you **actual facts** as opposed to pointless mindless bigotry. Your line of reasoning is indeed nothing but weak-minded fallacy sliding into bigotry. Latin America is plagued by political violence, instability and dictatorship. Indigenous people are almost uniformly oppressed and excluded from meaningful political power. Xian Africa: Congo (ex-Zaire), Zimbabwe, Kenya and Tanzania are mired in dictatorship and inter-ethnic as well as racial violence I _obviously_ must conclude that at least Roman Catholics and Xians in general are constantly mired in ethnic hatred and racism. In short, your observations, poorly informed and superficial tell us literally nothing. Now as to the follow up. (a) the Nuba are Muslims and have been for centuries. The Arabization program is indeed discriminatory and has provoked non-Arabic speaking Muslim minorities to go into opposition. Of course the Arabization program is a key issue for the hard core Islamists and Arab supremacists, but not a Muslim issue per se. (b) The characterization of southern Sudan as ‘racially’ African and the North not is racism. The Northerns are Arabized locals - and their presence goes back time immemorial (as does the cross-fertilization between Semetic lang. speaking tribes such as Arab tribes and locals, insofar as historical record reflects the contacts and insofar as following linguistic evidence, the root stock of Semetic lang. derive from north East Africa, as their somewhat distan cousin lang. anc. Egyptian). This kind of commentary is generally the sign of poorly informed racialist tripe. The situation in Sudan is bad enough without adding to the general racialist idiocy that both sides engage in. © On Mauretania: HRW is frankly badly informed and adopts a language that reflects little understanding of the situation. Indeed the Maure, or Beydane, esp. in the late 1980s and early 1990s, had adopted a program to try to take over the fertile lands of the Senegal river valley, the Takrour. Ethnically driven to an extent, one should understand the history of the region and what the words actually refer to. (i) Beydane: lit. Arabic for the ‘whites.’ Refers to the Arabo-Berber elite class. The designation is hardly very clear, however, insofar as most ‘Beydane’ are really quite “black” although ethnically distinguishable from the Takrouri or Peuls of the valley. Beydane largely speak either Hassaniya or Berber languages. Hassaniya is an Arabic dialect with heavy Berber influence. To be frank, myself as a fluent Arabic speaker and also mastering Maghrebi dialect, have a terrible time understanding Hassaniya. (ii) Haratine: a word meaning more or less serf, these were former slaves / serfs of the Beydane. Skin color plays some role in distinguishing them, but not very much, it’s largely a social status issue. Dark and poor = Haratine, dark and rich = Beydane. (iii) Takrouri (Toucouleur) / Peul: Toucouleurs speak a Pulaar or Peul dialect. In general the Takrouris are traditionally settled farmers, Peul nomads. The Takrour kingdom was a jihadi kingdom in the Senegal valley, at one point ruling over large sections of the valley, and up into the then rather wetter Maurentanian hinterland, as well as down into modern Senegal and into Mali. The Takrouris are largely quite orthodox Muslims and while of course they have a distinct culture from the largely nomadic Maure (to englobe both Beydane and Haratine) and Berbers, to distinguish “African” culture versus “Arab” is racist and fundamentally ignorant of the history. The Maure are almost entirely of Berber descent, even Arabic speakers being assimilated -as their bizarre ass Arabic reflects- and are every bit as “African” as the Takrouris, and both are Muslim ethnicities of ancient lineage. The current but largely past violence is about water. The droughts that have been striking the Sahel have vastly increased tensions between nomads and settled folks, and the river valleys are a site of contention. To pretend this is specificaly “Muslim” is nothing but prejudice. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/e/e489c3b7d8fce19c4b355dd4fc3f88cc39c34b87.png) [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2003, 8:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-disparity-between-islamic-cultures-and-western-ones/180105/40 "2003-06-08T08:09:21Z")
I forgot to mention the Haratine are largely Hassaniya speakers. There are also numbers of Taureq in Mauretania. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-disparity-between-islamic-cultures-and-western-ones/180105.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-disparity-between-islamic-cultures-and-western-ones/180105.md?page=3)