[lit-ideas] Re: Victor Hanson in Iraq
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2006 23:38:26 -0800 (PST)
As the matter of fact, I doubt that Islam is either a
race or civilization. It's not clear to me what
Muslims from Bosnia, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan,
Uzbekistan, China, Malaysia have in common. They not
only live in different states but they are racially
different, speak different languages, have different
customs, beliefs etc. A few simple sayings such as:
"Il illah ila Allah," might be held in common perhaps,
unless they happen to be secular. This surely does not
amount to the case for a shared civilization. Neither
is Christianity a civilization; a somewhat stronger
case might be made for Hinduism perhaps, but even
there you would probably find significant internal
differences if you studied it seriously.
In this sense, you might be right that 'racism' is not
strictly speaking the correct term; the correct term
might be something like 'religious chauvinism,' a
belief that hundreds of millions of people are defined
entirely by their religion. However, when you target
people solely as a religious congregation, there are
some grounds to expect that they will feel themselves
targeted and maybe try to react. Many Muslims, myself
included, have indeed felt that Iraq was being
targeted not because of the bogus WMDs or the spurious
terrorist connections, but because it was a Muslim and
Arab country.
Finally, to criticize a 'world-explaining' paradigm
that is plainly incorrect, one is not obliged to offer
an alternative world-explaining paradigm herself. I
don't have to be an astronomer in order to reject the
Ptolomeian astronomy.
O.K.
--- Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Andreas,
>
>
>
> In one of the paradigms used to explain this modern
> world, Samuel P.
> Huntington breaks it down into well-known segments
> called ?Civilizations.?
> What you propose is not a world-explaining paradigm,
> Andreas. The Muslim
> world is a Civilization and opposing it does not
> comprise racism any more
> than their attacks against the West comprise racism.
> You subject yourself
> to self-befuddlement when you try to force it into
> those terms -- much as
> Edward Said did in his Orientalism. Note that
> ?racism? isn?t a term the
> Militants use unless they do so to gull naïve
> Leftists into thinking they
> are after all just like them. According to your
> view, we would never be
> able to defend ourselves in a future Clash of
> Civilizations, because you
> define ?Civilization? as ?race? and our defense
> perforce would be racist.
>
>
>
> As to the NYROB article that you find so revelatory,
> even to the point of
> invoking it as fact rather than what it truly is,
> namely, theory; the new
> ideas were brought up by James Bowman in his book
> Honor, A History. I?m not
> referring to his rehash of the Bush/Rumsfeld evils,
> but only the idea that
> hammering Saddam was just the sort of retaliation
> that the Arabs as a
> civilization, would best understand in that it
> confronts their honor system.
>
>
>
>
> However, I?ve lost interest for the time being. The
> race (as in horse race
> not racism) is over and we can check our tickets to
> see how well we did.
> Way back after 9/11 I speculated about whether Bush
> would have the fortitude
> to engage in an effective war against Militant Islam
> before the Leftists
> stopped him. He accomplished quite a lot, chasing
> the Taliban and Al Quaeda
> out of Afghanistan, intimidated Pakistan into
> curtailing its nuclear
> proliferation, intimidated Libya into giving up its
> nuclear weapons, and
> smashing Saddam Hussein. The Democrats are saying
> he doesn?t win anything
> unless he builds a viable nation in Iraq, but that?s
> BS. He wins in the
> Bowman sense because he hammered both the Taliban in
> Afghanistan and Saddam
> and his Baathists in Iraq. Yeah, it would be nice
> if the Iraqi government
> makes it, but if it doesn?t, well tough. We
> defended our honor in the Arab
> sense. We retaliated for their 9/11 by much more
> destruction than they
> perpetrated upon the U.S. In a realpolitik sense,
> if anyone is sensible
> enough any longer to speak in that sense, we could
> advance the argument that
> if they, using military or paramilitary means, do
> another 9/11 in any of our
> cities, they can expect the same level of response
> that they got in
> Afghanistan and Iraq. That could deter certain
> sorts of Militant Islamic
> aggression if the aggressors believe that the US has
> not lost its stomach
> for the fight. Hopefully the Democrats will assure
> the Islamic militants
> that is not the case.
>
>
>
> When the Democrats win in 2008, will they be able to
> utterly abandon the
> ?war against Terror?? I think not. Many of them,
> but not the Leftists
> among them, have argued that the war should be
> fought, just not the way Bush
> & Rumsfeld fought it. And if someone were to look
> back in the archives and
> read what I wrote after 9/11, he would find that I
> described that as all I
> hoped for. Quibble about how to fight it all you
> want -- just as long as
> you keep fighting -- and make it clear to Militant
> Islam that you will
> continue to do so.
>
>
>
> Lawrence, returning to Melville and other literary
> matters
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> On Behalf Of Andreas Ramos
> Sent: Monday, December 11, 2006 9:35 PM
> To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Victor Hanson in Iraq
>
>
>
> From: "Eric Yost" <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
>
>
> > You are very amusing with the "racist" stuff. It's
> sort of like a Salem
> townsfolk's cry of
>
> > "witch," and has the same weight. I mean, you
> think I'm a racist too, and
> if you said that
>
> > to anyone who knows me -- and that includes quite
> an ethnically diverse
> group -- they
>
> > would laugh at you.
>
>
>
> Let's look at definitions of racism:
>
>
>
> - A form of discrimination based on race, especially
> the belief that one
> race is superior to
>
> another.
>
>
>
> - The inherent belief in the superiority of one race
> over all others and
> thereby the right
>
> to dominance.
>
>
>
> - The belief that one 'racial group' is inferior to
> another and the
> practices of the
>
> dominant group to maintain the inferior position of
> the dominated group.
> Often defined as a
>
> combination of power, prejudice and discrimination.
>
>
>
> - Defined broadly as stigmatization of those we
> perceive as different from
> us; defined
>
> specifically as the doctrine that inherent
> differences among the various
> human races
>
> determine cultural or individual achievement,
> usually involving the idea
> that one's own race
>
> is superior.
>
>
>
> And it goes on and on. Just search Google.
>
>
>
> So what do we have here? Attacking a country that
> had nothing to do with
> 9.11, to torch its
>
> cities and inhabitants simply to make a
> demonstration for others, to destroy
> its government
>
> just to prove an ideological point... what do you
> call that?
>
>
>
> The Bush White House feels that the Arabs are
> basically some sort of target,
> an object they
>
> can manipulate as they like. This is racism in its
> pure form.
>
>
>
> It's a racist war. Its supporters are racists.
>
>
>
> yrs,
>
> andreas
>
> www.andreas.com
>
>
>
>
____________________________________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Music Unlimited
Access over 1 million songs.
http://music.yahoo.com/unlimited
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
