RedbeardUH

Culture is at war. Last century the West fought the Red, the Dictator and the Emperor. The West won. Here in the 21st century the West finds itself at war again with the Middle East. More accurately, the West is warring Islamic culture. I say culture, and not religion, conscientiously. The Western culture promotes secularism, democracy and capitalism. The Islamic culture promotes Islam, theocracy and the oil market. Yes, I am being overly simple, but I am trying to draw a picture for you: not a black and white one, but a more insidious one: 'A' and 'not A.' Black depends on white for its meaning, the two go hand in hand. To see what I mean, imagine the newspaper as all black, or my font to be all white. 'A' and 'not A,' however, cannot exist together; its the law of non-contradiction. The West and Islamic cultures contradict each other. Therefore they cannot, in their current form, exist together.
The West lost something. It lost its religion, its spirit, its soul. Many things have replaced it, skepticism, money, materials, hedonism, the first amendment. The things that replaced it are not all bad, but neither are they all good. It does not matter what replaced our soul, what matters is that the West lost something. I think it might be safe to argue that the West, comprised mainly of Judao-Christians, lost it during the holocaust of World War II.
The Islamic culture has something. It has a soul. It has not entered the age of Nietzsche's Nihilism and Hume's skepticism. It does not question because the soul answers. It does not look beyond the Bible because the Koran tells them everything. Such unquestioning faith is not good, but neither is it bad. It simply is the way it is.
Right now the West is bringing Nihilism and skepticism to the Islamic world. They do not want it. Materials, technology, progress, such things are not worth the onus of Nihilism. They have seen the effects of Nihilism on the West and their response to it is clear: No vacancy here. But the West set a precedence: Israel. The West made it clear that they could and would create a vacancy. How insulting Israel must be to them! Think back when you were a child and a grown-up forced you to play nicely with someone whom you did not like. No one in that situation is to be blamed (hadn't the Jews paid for Israel?) but blame is not necessary for justified hate. It's nobody's fault, but everybody's problem. C'est la vie.
Some might argue that the West has a soul too. It does not. Assuredly, some individuals do, but before you exclaim “I do” ask yourself this: If your God came down and asked you to brutally murder strangers, would you? (“Ah! But my God would not ask such a thing.” They all have.) If a spiritual leader asked you to give up your life, for no reason other than to prove you believe, would yoau? Without questioning? I have no doubt that most people in the Middle East would. I have no doubt that the terrorists (and do not doubt it, they were terrorists) on the planes of 9/11 were smiling with confidence. The West has lost something: its confidence.
Do you see the picture yet? We are trying to instill within the Islamic culture doubt, skepticism and Nihilism, sugar coated with democracy and freedom, of course. But they do not want it. The two of us, the West and Middle East, were never meant to be. I can offer no suggestions, the collision is underway. I only ask that when you see the last struggle of the Islamic culture (one more time, culture, not religion), do not see it as barbaric and uncivilized, but rather see it as a beautiful last stand of the soul and confidence of religion. See it as what we used to have. A beautiful thing is dying. But do not blame yourself, the doom of Nihilism begun its assault on the soul even before Nietzsche. It was inevitable, God help us all.

Eric Bakota
Senior in English at the University of Houston

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He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you

-Friedrich Nietzsche

Pacifier

Don't you think it is enough to post it in either politics OR Philosophy?

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"It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death
— Albert Einstein

RedbeardUH

Convincing rhetoric.
I posted in both because its relavent in both and will attract different viewpoints by people with different backgrounds.

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He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you

-Friedrich Nietzsche

Pacifier

Well, currently I don't have the time to answer the letter, so I edited my post.

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"It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death
— Albert Einstein

AngelicVampire

I would have to disagree, to define a soul as related to a "god" or "God" is an interesting interpretation, could the soul not be relevant to each human individually and our soul as a nation simply the sum and total of all souls within our lands?

Western Culture has been oppressive, we have been violent and we have been brutal, however we now in general are very accepting, to quote a slightly famous book "Do unto others as you would have done unto you", paraphrased by a friendly Scot to: "If you kick them in the balls they will probably kick you in yours". While things like the Iraq war may seem to be purely economically based removing a dictator who did oppress his people, who did have a massive death count and who potentially did have not only weapons of mass destruction but the will to use them is perhaps a necessary evil. However look at Britain, America, Germany etc, we all have relatively large "immigrant" populations, we are not one colour, one faith, one people yet we generally co-exist in the same space without attempting to kill each other. Shared living brings with it a requirement of trust, acceptance and diversity.

Islam and Western culture do not need to clash, we could happily sit on each side of our borders and mutually do nothing, however one side in this is not willing, they take the liberties granted by the Western Culture as an affront to them, look at the Danish Cartoons, massive outcry, when a similar cartoon is suggested about the Holocaust the Jewish people jump on board and make their own, the Christian nations regularly poke fun and point out inconsistancies in their own faith. To quote a man: "We must show them that we can poke fun at ourselves, to do otherwise is to throw stones in a glass house".

Similarly look at Britain, a few outspoken Islamic Clerics have said that they should only obey British law as long as it follows Sharia law. Or in other words the will of a few should overrule the will of the many, and on that I leave you.

Cynthetiq

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tecoyah

Definately an interesting take on culture clash, and makes some very good points. I might follow up with the technology angle, and the evolution it is forcing on Humankind as a whole. Part of the issue between these cultures is based on the economics of Energy vs. Technology in my opinion, as the west has the technology to improve living standards (which is what everyone wants in the long run), while the east carries the power of the energy required to make the technology function. Rather than a clean exchange of resources, there is a battle for control.....its a pity.

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Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

Ustwo

While much to the annoyance of many on the tfp left I've been pointing out this is culture clash, and I agree with much of what you say, you might want to rethink the above.

The West does have a soul, and while it has been diminished by multiculturalism and socialism, which promote internal divisiveness and sloth respectively, there are still young men willing to put their life on the line to defend the freedom many take for granted.

Recall 9/11, the US was unified in vision and spirit, and it scared the crap out of everyone else. Just because we are not willing to die in religious fanaticism, does not mean we have no soul.

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Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

flstf

It seems like Islam is now something like Christianity was about 500 or so years ago.
The barbaric nature of Christianity resulting in such things as the inquisition and crusades is almost gone. The great cathedrals of Europe are like relics of the past with few Europeans having strong religious beliefs. Even though religion (Christianity) seems to be stronger in the U.S. there is also much diversity and tolerance.

At one time Islam seems to have been more tolerant than Christianity. I don't know what happened to change this but it would be better for all concerned if Islam could at least accept western culture to the degree that our freedoms are not perceived as an affront to their religion.

Ustwo

Islam is always tolerant, once they take over and are in charge, well they used to be at any rate.

Spread by the sword is not a myth.

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Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

roachboy

the legion of problems with the huntington thesis, which is simply recycled in the op, have been outlined here repeatedly.

i have neither the time nor the interest in going through a critique of it again.

repetition->irritation->heightened potential for problematic tone of voice->evidence of the problematic status of debate here, which has no cumulative dimension so no sense of movement->time to take my husky to the puppy park.

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

nezmot

I have a question: Why does saying 'culture' and not 'religion' make the statement any less racist, over generalised, or incorrect?

What is this Western 'culture'? German, French, British, American, Swedish? Yes, there are some common threads that can perhaps be pulled out of them, family, respect, education etc.

What then is Islamic 'culture'? Shi'ite, or Sunni? Lebannese, Turkish, Bosnian, Indonesian, Iranian? Can this massively diverse group of these fall under one label? Perhaps they can. What then are the common threads that can be gleaned from these cultures? Family, respect, education....

hiredgun

I have to agree with roachboy; this is just a bizarre new spiritual formulation of the clash of civilizations.

What do you mean that the West has 'lost its soul'?

Do you really think the Israel/Palestine issue is as simple as two children not getting along? More explicitly, do you know anything about the history of that conflict?

On what grounds do you think we are living in two worlds somehow destined to annihilate one another?

Within what 'culture' would you include mainstream American or Canadian Muslim communities?

I apologize in advance for the somewhat condescending formulation of my post as a series of questions, but I cannot think of any more substantive or rational way to reply to an OP who has painted a vivid but extremely broad and wholly unsubstantiated scenario out of pure fantasy, in the guise of something actually relating to politics and the real world.

Tusko

i only browsed the first post and some of the replies.


im not pro-west by ANY stretch of the means, but nor am i pro-islam.

alot of people these days are "don't rag on islam, it's racist" or some such shit.

i've done some studying into islam read parts of (not the whole thing yet) the quran, attended debates on, lectures on, etc etc, and have drawn some intellectual conclusions.


i don't get why alot of people as of late have been sucking the middle east's proverbial penis. just because it is currently the "opressed" part of the world.


i can say from my studies that islam does lend itself to fundamentalism better than other religions (of course, not to say a muslim is more likely to be a nutcase... that's not what i'm insinuating)


i just think it's ridiculous to put the middle-east on a pedestal. sure, i'm not saying it's a hellhole of depravity by any means. i think it has a wondefully diverse history and culture, most of which is not understood by most westerners. but whatever the initial post was getting at just seemed like pure ignorance to me.