From: Smigrodzki, Rafal (SmigrodzkiR@MSX.UPMC.EDU)
Date: Thu Sep 13 2001 - 13:09:42 MDT
Greg Birch wrote:
>The root problem is not US foreign policy, as some here have suggested.
It'
>s that there is a widely distributed culture of fanaticism in the Islamic
>world.
### This is not the only fanatical culture. Christian sects, neo-Nazis,
eco-Nazis come as other examples.
It focuses on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but it certainly has
other objects, as well. Consider that the savagery of the Taliban has
basically nothing to do with the on-going crisis in the Levant. Examples
can be found from Algeria to Indonesia that have nothing to do with
Palestinian nationalism.
### The Taliban are a throwback to stone age, a product of Russian
occupation and a civil war. Non-islamic regimes in other parts of the world
(Africa, formerly Cambodia, etc.) are just as virulent if formed under
similar conditions. Meanness has nothing to do with Islam itself, at least
as compared to the other large irrational belief systems.
> That culture of fanaticism has secured the "sacred
>high ground" throughout the Islamic world.
###Only in Palestine, Iran, Saudi Arabia, to a lesser extent in Egypt, Iraq,
Yemen, hardly at all in Syria, and other countries. Palestinians hate
Americans because Israelis kicked them out of their home, using American
weapons and American money. Their problem is not Islam itself.
>As a result, there is no secure
>middle ground in politics or culture in the Islamic world. This is because
>Islamism is truly totalitarian, or "culturally hegemonistic," to borrow a
>phrase form Marxist rhetoric, i.e. it makes claim to relevance to and
>dominance over every aspect of life.
### Any political system shapes every aspect of our lives. Islam is a stupid
concoction of legends
and social interaction rules, just as Christianity or Judaism, but not more
pervasive in its influence on a society than e.g.American individualism
(just less fun). In fact, Islam is losing ground in competition with the
global culture (when is the last time that Moslems as a cultural group
offered anything new to the world, 500 years ago?), and that's why the weak
and hateful ones strike at the symbols of their own cultural impotence, the
WTC or the White House. Losers try to use any means they can but in the end
they will lose, and their children will drink Coke, too.
>Contrary to the claims of
>Arab-Americans and others today, and in the days that follow, that the
>9/11/01 attacks don't represent "true Islam", in fact they do.
### No, they don't. Ask Moslems in the US. A vast majority are repulsed by
the slaughter of innocent persons.
>And herein lies the ultimate, gut-wrenching irony and threat: Our political
>and cultural leaders cannot condemn this root cause of the problem. On the
>one hand, it would likely be ineffective. Condemnation of Islamism would
be
>interpreted by Moslems all over the world as the simple rhetoric of
>inter-religious bigotry and ompetition.
### No need to condemn Islam, just condemn "jihad" and "fatwah". Islam can
do without these ideas, just like Christianity kept being quite successfull
even after the auto-da-fe was rejected. The images of WTC falling can bring
millions of Moslems closer to the mainstream, if the mainstream gives them a
chance (I'm not necessarily talking about the scum who danced in the streets
of the West Bank).
>On the other hand, the modern dogma of cultural relativism makes any kind
of
>public judgment of one culture by another impossible. Any condemnation of
>Islam for the fertilizer of fanaticism that it is would be interpreted by
>the shapers of our own culture as chauvinism. Thus, our public discourse
is
>condemned to a fundamental impotence: We cannot as a civilization even TALK
>about the root cause of the problem.
### Cultural relativism is old news. I don't subscribe to it, and neither do
all the shapers of our culture (aren't we on this list shapers, too?). A
dialog is possible with most Moslems and respect for innocent humans is an
idea most innocent humans can incorporate into their minds.
Rafal Smigrodzki
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