Saturday, December 04, 2004
Secularist v Islamist societies
Ahmad Al-Baghdadi, a political science lecturer at Kuwait University, writes in the Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassa (translated in MEMRI) that from the moment Western societies distanced "the man of the cloth from life", they began to flourish.
In contrast, he says, are realities in Muslim and Arab countries today, where Islamist religious thought:
- produces terror, because of negative interpretations of Quranic verses regarding Jihad.
- opposes the Other, accuses him of heresy, and objects to living by his side. "There is no Islamic country in which a Christian or a Jew could reveal a cross or a skullcap, and get away with it peacefully. In contrast ... there is no secular country that prohibits the construction of mosques ... (or) prevents the Muslim from praying in public ..".
- persists in accusations of apostasy, leading to the killing of human beings, even without trial. "In the secular world the author, the intellectual, and the journalist are not sent to jail for their opinions ... In contrast, the extremist Muslims and the Islamic clerics often adopt ideological terror" against the "apostate"
- supports political tyranny and opposes democracy, as in Saudi Arabia.　The governments of many Muslim countries, he says, "exploit religious thought in order to impose their legitimacy. Thus you find that they are the most avid supporters of the religious groups, (even while) knowing that these groups include those who support terrorism and harm society."
Al-Baghdadi's ideas seem to be in synch with comments made by Nicholas Kristoff in August, and Christopher Hitchens in November.
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Many academics in Western universities possess neither the courage nor the desire to make such comparisons, instead directing (blinkered, jingoistic) anger at the mythical extremism of the US government.
WSJ reports that a survey commissioned by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) at 50 top US universities confirms the bias alluded to here, and cites this experience of a student at Yale:
"My teacher came into class the day after the election proclaiming, 'That's it. This is the death of America.' The rest of the class was eager to agree, and twenty minutes of Bush-bashing ensued. At one point, one student asked our teacher whether she should be so vocal, lest any students be conservatives. She then asked us whether any of us were Republicans. Naturally, no one volunteered that information, whereupon our teacher turned to the inquisitive student and said, 'See? No one in here would be stupid enough to vote for Bush.' "
