Re: Theodore Sorensen On Islamic Civilisation


Dean G. wrote:
eric.hagedorn@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Dean G. wrote:
Jacob T wrote:
Theodore Sorensen

Some among us scoff that the war on jihadist terror is a war between
civilization and chaos. But they forget that there were Islamic
universities and observatories long before we had railroads.

Theodore Sorensen was special counsel to President Kennedy


Thus, what is being questioned is whether the war on jihadist terror is
a war beween advanced states of social development and confusion and
disorder. I will say that it is indeed that.



I think you have sanitized the facts in your entire argument to produce
a conclusion that is not valid. I am indicating where the specific
arguments are.

First, I point out that, in Canada at least, we have 750,000 Muslims,


Stop right there. You are making a fale premise, by starting in Canada.
Canada is NOT an Islamic land, and the dominant culture in Canada is
Westenr European. A minority can be carried along with the dominant
culture even if their preferred ideas are failures.


You continue to selectively change the rules to back up your weak
arguments. Your argument is, in effect, that the Islamic culture is
barbarian compared to the West. A barbarian cannot mimic a civilized
person, no matter how surrounded he is by civilized persons. He's
still a barbarian and his instincts will betray him.
Conversely, a person who can behave like a civilized person is, by
definition, a civilized person. The vast number of Muslims in Canada
ARE civilized persons. They have integrated seamlessly with Canadian
culture. They co-operate so well with the Jewish culture here that the
FIRST group to express outrage at the vandalism of the Muslim mosque in
Toronto was the Canadian Jewish Congress.







many of whom are from the Mideast. We have had a problem with a
handful of them while the rest have been virtually invisible. If they
are invisible, it means that they have seamlessly integrated into
Canadian society. If the Mideast is a civilization represented by
chaos and disorder, one would assume that we would be having problems
with all 750,000 Muslims, as they should be incapable of adapting to
our "higher" civilization. This does not appear to be the case.

The integrated into a larger culture that would not tolerate the
problems that Islam brings. Canada said "NO" to Shari'a law. Canada is
not limited by the failures of Islam because Canada does not follow the
foolish rules of Isalm.


Sharia law is a bad example, because the banning of sharia law was
accompanied by the banning of dispute resolution by rabbinical court
and by catholic church doctrine. Are you now going to conclude that
the Jews and the Catholic have inferior cultures as well?



Any theory must adequately explain the known facts. Yours fails before
it gets out of the gate.

My theory hold quite well if yyou examine the reality instead of your
inane false premise. I am talking about Islamic culture and
"civilization" (I use the world loosely here) compared to Western
culture and civilization. Talking about minorities in a different
culture is disingenuous, but obviously neccessary for you as there are
no majority Islamic cultures than can stand up to the light of
comparison.


You fail to understand the point because you don't want to. For some
reason, you need to "prove" that Islamic culture is inferior because
you can't live with the reality that it is merely different AND IT
WORKS QUITE WELL FOR THE PEOPLE THAT LIVE THERE. Your democracy in
Afghanistan is a perfect example. These people democratically decided
to found an Islamic state , as did Iraq - it's right there in their
constitutions.
This is very similar to the gay debate - the gays aren't asking
you to go to bed with them and the Muslims aren't asking you to join
their religion or culture (Ordinary Muslims are not prosletyzing their
religion). All they want is for guys like you to stop dumping on them.
But, like a dog with a bone, you just can't leave them alone.

You just have to keep proving your "superiority".

Why is that?

Are you scared that maybe you aren't so superior? That, maybe
they might be your equals?

That, maybe, they might just be PEOPLE?






So the issue at hand is a matter of degrees of language, agricultural,
and social development. Let us take a look at the world of today, and
examine the levels of development of these catagories.

First, let us look at language. Everyone has at least a spoken
language. This predates civilization, so spoken language means little
when discussing civilization. But written language is a very
significant mile-stone. The literacy rate in the USA and Western Europe
(the West) is over 95%.

I don't know where you get your figures. Canada's literacy rate is
nowhere near 95% and the US's is lower.

Multiple sources give the figure of 97% for Canada, and while the US
may be lower, the West, overall, does have a 95% rate. Why is it so
hard for Islamic people and apologists to deal with reality ?


Show me your sources.




In comparison, the literacy rate for the OIC
(Organization of the Islamic Conference) is 51%. It is also worth
noting that the country with the lowest literacy rate in the world
(13%) is a member of the OIC. Moreover, the OIC as a whole publishes
few books. Many small Western nations publish more new books each year
than the entire OIC.


And most of these books are Harlequin romances and pulp fiction.
Hardly an accomplishment.

While it is hardly an accomplishment, Islamic culture fails to live up
to even this level. Beyond that, even if we limit the numbers to only
scholarly works, the West still is more than an order of magnitude
better than the Islamic world.


Next, let us look at agriculture. Again, all people have at least a
limited form of agriculture today. However, some countries have far
higher yields than others. When we compare agricultural productivity,
we see again that the Western world leads the way. Compare this to many
member of the OIC that suffer frequent famines.


The Western world is waking up to the fact that we may have improved
our yields by poisoning our water systems. Again, hardly an
accomplishment.

We can make the same claim about the Islamic lands.

Well, of course we can. We've bombed most of them.


But more to the
point, shall we compare the availability of clean and safe drinking
water in the West to the Islamic lands ? For all your ranting about
poisoned water systems, the West still has cleaner water than the
Islamic lands.



Considering that nearly all of the Arabic lands get their water from
desalinization plants, I would question that. Again, you provide no
figures.




Finally, we have social development. Like the other catagories,
everyone has some degree of social development. But some nations have
better organization, and less confusion. One measure of such is the
degree of civil strife. While such strife is rare in the Western World,
it is far more common in the Islamic World. The strife between Shias,
Sunnis, and other sects flares up not only in Iraq, but also in
Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the Sudan, just to give a few examples.
Note I have only included Islamic sects. The situation is worse when
you consider non-Islamic religion in the Islamic World.

10,000 deaths per year in the US from handguns.

And yet the US is still a less violent place than say Pakistan.


Pakistan has been in a state of nearly perpetual war with India since
it was formed. I am not aware of the US being in a state of war
internally or with its border nations, and STILL it kills 10,000 of its
citizens with handguns every year.


Gangs in every major
city.

Jihadists in every major mosque.


That's a bigotted assumption. Prove it.



Widespread drug addiction.

Afghanistan is the largest producer of opiates in th world. Iran has a
huge drug problem, but like many authoritarian states, the truth is
hidden and people who speak or write about it are persecuted.


I agree on the opiate production. They're the suppliers, we're the
customers. Your point was, I believe, that we are SUPERIOR. Sounds
like we're just as bad as them.



Homelessness a major issue.

No, it really isn't. A lack of mental health care for the poor is a
problem, and many if not most of the homeless are mentally ill. We do
have problems, but homelessness isn't really one of them. Even a poor
person in America can have a decent place to live, a car, a color TV, a
microwave, and still a few dollar left for discretionary spending.


That is such a load of crap. According to the studies done by a major
psychiatric institution in Toronto (don't remember the name but it's
near the Scott Mission, just west on Bloor, I believe), only about
half of the homeless are mentally ill. In Michigan, that "decent place
to live" is a tent city in the middle of winter. In Toronto, one of
the richest cities in North America, EVERY steam vent is occupied by a
homeless person and they live there every day. Shelters? The
shelters are more dangerous than the streets.





Our minimum wage is over $5.00 now, and will rise to $7.25 by 2009.
There are plenty of such jobs that go unfilled. At the 2009 rate, the
anual income from a full time job will be over $15,000/year. This is
our minimum, how many Islamic countries can boast a higher average than
our minimum ? Only a very few. Saudi Arabia is one of them, but while
the US minimum rate is increasing, the Saudi average is falling. I
won't compare average to average because the Islamic lands are so far
behind as to make the laughable.

Children sleeping on the street. An incarceration rate in the US
higher than almost any other nation on Earth.

I agree with the incarceration problem. I believe that only violent
offenders should face long term incarceration, but the religious wackos
here think teenagers smoking marijuana should also face prision terms.
Until we get rid of the religion freaks, there will always be stupid
and solvable problems like this.


Is this your paradise?

Paradise doesn't exist. But I chose to live here instead of any Islamic
country. I do believe it is not only better here, but far better. I'll
call it "Almost Paradise, and getting better all the time."


I will agree with you that I prefer to live here. But, depite all of
their problems, most of the people in the Islamic countries choose to
remain there.


I am only making the point that it is inappropriate for us to judge the
Islamic countries or culture using yardsticks that are skewed to
support a negative judgement. If it works for them, that is
sufficient evidence that Islam serves its people well. If it does not
serve them well, one would expect that they would abandon it. However,
given the choice in Afghanistan and Iraq, the people have again chosen
Islam.

If you believe in democracy, you must support the will of the majority.
They say Islam works for them. Who are we to disagree?



Other measures may include human rights, working conditions, economic
stability, and so on. However, the Islamic lands fall short in all of
these areas. One wonders if they is any measure of civilization where
the Islamic wolrd isn't lagging behind the rest of the world.

Human rights - incarceration in Guantanamo Bay without charges

We must have learned that from the Islamic lands, where they routinely
do such things without much public indignation.


Another load of crap. The US established Guantanamo KNOWING that it
violates the Geneva Convention and the conventions against TORTURE. If
this is an argument for your superior Western culture, you've just
proved the other guy's case.



Even with this
(temporary) problem, the US and the rest of the Western world are still
far better than the Islamic world, where they often have mob rule
justice, executing people accused of "blasphemy" without a trial.


We must have just imagined the Salem witch trials, then. And the
McCarthy era. Oh, and the race riots. And the gangs.......



- widespread illegal wiretapping in the US by
presidential order

And yet the US is still better than the entire Islamic world here, and
also better than most of the Western world as well. It is an issue in
the US because the US is one of the select few countries that puts such
limits on the government. Congratulations to the US for making an issue
of this while most of the world, with perhaps the entire Islamic world,
has no such limit on goverment authority !


If Bush was in Canada and tried that, his government would not last a
week. Nor do I believe that he could pull that in any european
country, nor in Japan, Australia, India, Sri Lanka. There is no
evidence that illegal wiretapping is going on in Afghanistan or Iraq at
this time.



Talk to migrant workers or Mexican nannies about "working conditions"

I did. They love America. They prefer it to where they cam from. That
is, after all, why they are here. Duh !



So your argument is that the terrible working conditions are justified
because they're still better off than starving at home? You'd make a
great straw boss with that attitude.



Economic stability - The US is so heavily in debt that there is talk of
it going bankrupt.

The debt of the US is but a fraction of its GDP. Howver, I agree the
George W. Bush and his "Religious Right" political coalition have way
overspent. Bill Clinton finished off running a surplus and paying down
the debt. After George Bush is gone, the US will get back on track.



You are assuming that Bush is leaving. That's what they thought about
Hitler too, before the Night of the Black Shirts. The rest of the
world isn't so sure...


- GM, Ford, Delphi

Honda is going to build a plant near where I live. Many Hondas,
Toyotas, and other foreign products are produced in the US. I see no
problem with this. The reason that Ford and GM are having problems is
twofold : first, the gave in too much and too often to the labor
unions, and second they had developed a complacent attitude against the
foreign competition. But this is America at work, the companies that
deliver the best value to the consumers thrive, while those that do not
fail. This is a good thing in the long run.

- Families mortgaged to the hilt and maxed
out on their credit cards

People here prefer to live their lives instead of saving for later.
This has ups and downs. The upside is that we tend to live in very nice
houses, the downside is that we pay quite a bit (in interest and fees)
for that. Again, however, this may be good in the long run. Populations
tend to increase, and housing values often rise. If the increase in the
house's value exceeds the interest expense, then it is a winning deal,
even if the interest payment looks large.

- You have a house of cards here and it's
ready to collapse.

I doubt it. The American economy, over the last few years, it the
fastest growing economy in the developed world. That is not a harbinger
of collapse. Compare this to one of the wealthiest Islamic countries,
Saudi Arabia, and we see that it is the Islamic wolrd that is
collapsing even while the are getting ever larger revenues for their
natural resources such as oil.



You are financing your growth with debt. Debt requires confidence.
Confidence requires that no major event occurs to upset the apple
cart. Even Greenspan has expressed his worry about the health of the
US.




Given this, one could well say that any conflict between the Western
world and the Islamic world is indeed a conflict between civilization
and chaos.


A simplistic analysis from an arrogant viewpoint using erroneous facts.

No, it is the reality, but saddly you are unable to deal with it. And
while you call my analysis "simplistic", your analysis is even worse.
You can call me all the names you want. To me, that is the best signal
of your failure, as when you cannot stand against my argument, you
resort to attacking the messanger.

Dean G.



No, Dean, I am simply protesting at your selective use of yardsticks to
prove your case. MY case is that the comparison is irrelevant because
Islam works for its adherents. You, for some reason, have to prove the
inferiority of Islam and its cultures. That is your arrogant
viewpoint, you "have" to be superior to them. I say it doesn't matter.

Nobody appointed you their judge.

Eric

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