"Jonathan B. Marder" wrote:
> I do not frequent mosques, but I have seen Muslim clerics interviewed on
> TV, and heard incendiary things said about the USA, Israel, Jews and about
> Salman Rushdie. I hope that this "minority view" is insignificant enough
> to keep under control.
The intolerance and integralism of many Muslim clerics and believers is a
reasonable concern for the west (including relatively advanced muslim
nations such as Turkey). My additional concern is that it may become an
excuse to deal with those people with reciprocated intolerance. The history
of catholic religion shows that integralism and intolerance aren't intrinsic
in any religion, but rather result from the overall social and intellectual
context. If we had a medioeval catholic nation today, there would probably
be good reasons to ban it from the UN, apply international sanctions for its
violations of basic human rights, and on and on. Yet integralist catholic
countries managed to evolve in modern, tolerant, democratic countries (e.g.,
Italy). Within the Muslim world, the nations that tend to be on the
integralist side aren't the most developed overall. One should keep in mind
that the people dancing and cheering for the WTC tragedy live in
countries/communities with essentially no free information, among other
things.
The relevant point here is that while religious beliefs cannot be changed by
means of discussion/reasoning, the context to which I am alluding above
might be. This process surely requires that less developed muslim nations,
which live in a partly medioeval universe, be helped in their overall
progress. I'm not sure how can this be done, but I have no clue how could
the bombing of Afghanistan represent an improvement whatsoever for the
problems of Middle East.
Some italian leftist (I can't recall who was that) said an obvious thing:
this war against terrorism should really be a war against the hate that
produced terrorism. If that isn't satisfying, make it a war against the
*culture* that gave birth to terrorism. In both cases, it's very unlikely
that bombing a nation to the ground could be regarded as a battle won. Even
on a purely utilitaristic view, that will at best delay the problem until
some future time (provided the bombing happens to actually damage the actual
terrorists).
-- Andrea SosioMOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/ MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
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