Ah, the conundrum of Islamic states, they must derive their legitimacy from their commitment to Islam, yet they at the same time must strive to maintain order within the confines of an untenable set of ancient concepts that are antithetical to modern life.
Muslim friends continue to tell me that Sharia promises a better sort of government and life than we can have in the democratic and liberal West. They tell me this despite the fact that they fled their failed countries to make a life in our land. When I point this out, they get silent then blame the current woe of their lands on the residual effects of imperialism.
Muslims talk in a strange language of denial and duplicity, unable to come to terms that the only obvious and essential fault of their cultures is the thing the hold dearest to their identity: Islam itself. Sometimes the past must be rejected to create a future that holds new opportunities. Muslims fear apostasy more than the decrepit governments and mind-numbing poverty and ignorance that dominates their lands.
Muslim friends continue to tell me that Sharia promises a better sort of government and life than we can have in the democratic and liberal West. They tell me this despite the fact that they fled their failed countries to make a life in our land. When I point this out, they get silent then blame the current woe of their lands on the residual effects of imperialism.
Muslims talk in a strange language of denial and duplicity, unable to come to terms that the only obvious and essential fault of their cultures is the thing the hold dearest to their identity: Islam itself. Sometimes the past must be rejected to create a future that holds new opportunities. Muslims fear apostasy more than the decrepit governments and mind-numbing poverty and ignorance that dominates their lands.
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Blaming the victim
29.12.2003 07:56
Until recently, the USA was shipping fundamentalist textbooks into Afghanistan, since they were hoping up to the last minute to keep the taliban in power and do a deal with them over the Caspian pipeline:
Now that the US-appointed Karzai is setting himself up as an Emir, we can expect this to continue:
Their countries will remain "failed" because it is in western interests for them to remain so. Small chance of democracy ever coming to the Middle East, until they begin kicking out the "democratic and liberal" US and British troops working so hard to keep it out.
Jon