{"id":520,"date":"2006-09-20T09:56:35","date_gmt":"2006-09-20T16:56:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/balafon.net\/?p=520"},"modified":"2006-09-20T09:56:35","modified_gmt":"2006-09-20T16:56:35","slug":"as-you-sow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/?p=520","title":{"rendered":"As You Sow…"},"content":{"rendered":"

The absurd irony of Muslims around the world shouting “The Pope accused Islam of being violent — kill him!” has bemused me for some days now. Now the Archbishop of Canturbury has added his own voice<\/a> to the call for Muslims to face up to the violence inherent in the system:<\/p>\n

THE former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey of Clifton has issued his own challenge to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153violent\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Islam in a lecture in which he defends the Pope\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153extraordinarily effective and lucid\u00e2\u20ac\u009d speech.
\nLord Carey said that Muslims must address \u00e2\u20ac\u0153with great urgency\u00e2\u20ac\u009d their religion\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s association with violence. He made it clear that he believed the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153clash of civilisations\u00e2\u20ac\u009d endangering the world was not between Islamist extremists and the West, but with Islam as a whole.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We are living in dangerous and potentially cataclysmic times,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There will be no significant material and economic progress [in Muslim communities] until the Muslim mind is allowed to challenge the status quo of Muslim conventions and even their most cherished shibboleths.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d …<\/p>\n

Lord Carey, who as Archbishop of Canterbury became a pioneer in Christian-Muslim dialogue, himself quoted a contemporary political scientist, Samuel Huntington, who has said the world is witnessing a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153clash of civilisations\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/p>\n

Arguing that Huntington\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s thesis has some \u00e2\u20ac\u0153validity\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, Lord Carey quoted him as saying: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Islam\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s borders are bloody and so are its innards. The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That last sentence reinforces the idea that many have put forward as the key idea of the present clash of cultures. Western culture is a culture of guilt<\/i>, where one must be aware of one’s faults and strive to overcome them. Islamic culture is a culture of shame<\/i>, where any slight against one’s perceived honor must be retaliated against with violence.<\/p>\n

The fact that Western culture has been wildly successful at bringing freedom and prosperity to much of the world — often as a direct result of guilt over past crimes — and Islamic culture remains mired in poverty and despotism provides the cognitive dissonance that makes today’s Muslims so darn touchy about their culture.<\/p>\n

(See also Ralph Peters’s Seven Signs of Non-Competitive States<\/i><\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The absurd irony of Muslims around the world shouting “The Pope accused Islam of being violent — kill him!” has bemused me for some days now. Now the Archbishop of Canturbury has added his own voice to the call for Muslims to face up to the violence inherent in the system: THE former Archbishop of … Continue reading “As You Sow…”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}