Mr. Heggy says:
"I fear that the primary cause of this is the ‘infantile culture’ of the world’s foremost superpower. The United States,"

This statement just seems to hang there in space with no elaboration in the rest of his comments. Is it the usual ritualistic condemnation required of all Moslems?

He'd like the moderate Moslems to take responsibility and restore their faith, but it's STILL all America's fault. Blah, blah, blah...

Dear Joe:

Unfortunately, I don't believe that

The answer to this question will determine the answer to the question about the future of the Muslim mind: will it follow the route of moderate Islam or that of Wahabbi Islam?

is the question at all. The real question is will the Muslims get their house in order before Islamofascists take all their options away from them?

Wretchard at The Belmont Club has written frequently and well about this. In particular cf. The Three Conjectures.

If history is any judge the answer is no. Tick tock.

Dear Joe:

I completely agree with Lurker above. Could Mr. Heggy elaborate on this a bit? While I agree that U. S. culture is infantile is he making an unfavorable comparison between the U. S. and, say, the more mature culture of France--posssibly the most outspoken supporters of "stability" in the Middle East? Or possibly the more mature culture of Britain who seems to agree with us (at least officially).

I'm a little less quick than Lurker to ascribe Heggy's "infantile culture" to typical Middle Eastern blah, blah, blah. I'd like to have more definition of it first. However, I suspect that Lurker is probably right.

Tarek Heggy does go into the topic of American culture in his book, so I guess I read that statement with more background behind it.

To be really brief, his criticism of U.S. culture is more akin to the "educated" European critique than it is to the "it's all America's fault" critique one hears in the Muslim world.

I still disagree with it, however. Perhaps I can convince him to elaborate on these ideas in a future post, and then I'll come back with my answer (in brief: you say America has no culture, but it's just different in form and in a couple elemnts of its core perspective - culture is there, and it has all of the power and traits one associates with the word).

Heggy & company haven't hit the bottom yet, and are still in denial. The race between "attitude adjustment" and another example of "evolution in action" is still in doubt.

I have exerted tremendous efforts to make it clear to my readers in Egypt and the Middle East that modernization is a human phenomenon first and foremost.
Yes and no. It seems to be very PC to announce that all people can have modernisation and its attendant comforts without having to "westernize" their culture. This may not be the case.
The "upward spiral to affluence" that characterized the West's last 50 years or so, is a feedback effect between technology, social organization, cultural buy-in, and wealth aggregation. It seems pretty clear (to me) that you can't cut out the social and cultural changes and keep the rest. This means that Arabs' fear of being "westernized" is not mistaken - part of the affluence deal is cultural change, and that's always scary if it's your culture being changed.
Islamic countries have a serious problem here: they believe (rightly or wrongly) that a vast spectrum of social change is religiously "out of bounds" for them. Clearly there are some social customs that make it impractical to develop Western levels of social wealth - an focus on subsistance agriculture as the only moral form of economics, say. I believe that contemporary Islam has a set of social customs that are similarly incompatible (excluding women from the economy; primacy of prescriptive moral judgment over reality checks; individual personal liberty).
(Note that I am not arguing that this is required by the sources of Islam [Quran and Hadith]. I'm saying this may be true for Islam as currently practiced and understood.)
I think that in the long run, we are doing Muslims a disservice by pretending that they can have the good bits of Western society without having to take much of the (to them) unsavory bits too. It might make for an easier sales job; but then one of the reasons Arabs are so down on the West is that they were sold that package in the 19th century, and it didn't work.
Is this "cultural imperialism"? No, it's an engineer's judgment, no more than saying, "if you want to fly, you need wings. If you think that wings are immoral, you'll be stuck on the ground." Perhaps there's another way to fly (hot air? :-), but ours requires wings.
Cheers
-- perry

Maybe the problem is the Islamic mind is trying to jump right into Advanced American Culture 350, when they really need to start with Basic American Values 101. I can see how Brintey Spears and Tarantino make no sense to someone who doesnt know much about Elvis Presley or Hemingway or Ben Franklin. American culture isnt about our movies or music videos, those are basically just garments to use Heggy's anatomy analogy. Whats beneath them is a solid core if belief in free speech and expression that allows all this. Put down the 50 Cent cd, and pick up the Federalist Papers. Democracy is for everyone. Liberty is the way God intended men to live. Everything else is negotiable, that is not.

Perry makes a great point. Here's one small example: the West started making its greatest economic strides post industrial revolution, and post WW2. One of the things these two eras had in common was the advent of women into the work place. You can basically chart economic booms by the way in which womens rights evolved. Its amazing what opening up the skills and talents of 50% of your population can do. So here's one of those nasty bottom lines, the Muslim world will never come close to matching the Western world economically or intellectually while it treats its women like chattel. So besides the repellant moral aspect of the practice, the pragmatic weighs upon it as well. Blame the West all you want. We didnt event the system, we just learned to play by its rules.

I agree with Perry 100%. That's why I've never really bought into "democratizing the Middle East." It seems to me Americans have two very stupid ideas about democracy:

1) It was created ex-nihilo on these shores some 200 odd years ago. In fact, it is the result of an evolution over a couple of millenia starting with ancient Athens, through the Roman republic, certain European feudal institutions, the Magna Carta, the British Civil War, and the American Revolution. No non-Western culture has experienced that evolution.

2) It is like kudzu, plant it anywhere, and it will proliferate to the exclusion of local political plants. It seems to me democracy is much more like a delicate tropical flower that can only exist in certain historical, economic, and cultural climates, climates that are extremely rare outside Western Europe and North America.

It might be argued that what one person calls "culture" the other may call "an agglomeration of custom, superstition and bigotry." Further, what one calls "confusion in all intellectual and cultural centers" might also be termed "free and vociferous debates whose participants have been known to change their minds when bested" or maybe even "tolerance of something they don't like."

"No non-Western culture has experienced that evolution."

Japan?
South Korea?
Taiwan?
Turkey?
Indonesia?
India?

Democracy will prosper anywhere that there is justice and the rule of law, in any culture, at any time. But you must have order and justice for it to work. That's why some scholars have argued that the three most important founding fathers were Jefferson, Madison, and John Jay.
If democracy can take hold in Indonesia, it can work in Iraq.

Mark Buehner:

I agree with you completely. The only question is how long will such a process take? I would suggest that 30-50 years might be a realistic estimate for democracy to really take hold (write your number here). Do we have that kind of time?

I take issue with the notion that the failure of Islamic society is America's FAULT, but there is no question that it is now America's PROBLEM. As such, the greatest and most powerful country in the history of the world is going to do it's damn level best to solve the problem.

If it can be solved, it will be.

Mr. Pandin,

Some solutions are more final than others. Let's home we find the others first. Heggy does not understand the stakes in this race.

"Do we have that kind of time?"

Do we have a choice? Turkey went from military dictatorship to parlimentary democracy in less than 10 years and have established an impressively resilient form of government.
Also lets not forget, there is a chicken or the egg type of argument to be made here. Yes it takes certain cultural advancements to create a democracy, but democracy also greatly fuels society advancement itself. Looking at Turkey again, you go from a nation with a horrible human rights record and a military government to one with universal suffrage that makes peace with the Kurds and is about to settle its Cyprus grudge all within 20 years. It can be done. The Iraqs want it, thats the key. If we stand by them, they will do it. It will take time, blood, and treasure, but the reward will be worth it.

Following on comments by Perry, Mark Buehner, Fred, and Tom Holsinger, what does Mr. Heggy welcome under the rubric of "progress," and what does he dread (as "infantile culture")? More to the point, what do majority-Islam nations (Islamic cultures?) welcome or loathe?

Ralph Peters set some terms for the discussion in his 1998 piece "Seven Signs of non-competetive states". Quoting, his "failure factors" are:

--Restrictions on the free flow of information.
--The subjugation of women.
--Inability to accept responsibility for individual or collective failure.
--The extended family or clan as the basic unit of social organization.
--Domination by a restrictive religion.
--A low valuation of education.
--Low prestige assigned to work.

Each Islamic tradition--and for that matter, each individual Muslim--will look differently at these factors. There are reasons for both optimism and pessimism. Per the last few posts, I think we won't have to wait for our grandchildren to grow old to get a clear sense of whether the approach to 'progress' will succeed.

Tarek Heggy has written very specifically here about "Women & Progress", and indeed he has taken on most of the 7 signs in his writings at one point or another. That is not in any way his issue re: culture.

Since I've read his book, I'm going to offer a very brief summary. Essentially, Mr. Heggy looks at the USA and sees specialization to the point of narrowness, a comparative lack of "Renaissance men" as compared with Europe or his own upbringing, and a broader culture whose level of comparative education and interest in the world is low. I'm simplifying, it's more complex and nuanced than that and includes some aspects related to the Mideast specifically. But that's the core. As I said, it has much in common with the standard European view.

Tarek Heggy's worries are that this specialization in the centers of knowledge and limited penetration of what he would consider "true education" beyond have contributed to poor choices by the USA. These choices, he would say have helped shape his region in unfortunate ways over the years. He fears future mistakes for this same reason.

To which my fast reply is [a] look what a mess those "highly cultured" Europeans made when they had their shot; and [b] America does have a culture. It doesn't look like the one you're looking for - but it's real and its strengths are very considerable. You have to see them, too, or you'll miss something very important to your analysis.

Hopefully, we'll be able to make this subject a topic for full discussion and debate in a future Guest Blog.

Arnold Toynbee would say that the future of the Muslim mind is a forgone conclusion; no "dead" or uncreative civilization, such as the Arabs have, has ever escaped being overrun by a "living" civilization. Oh! The leadership of an uncreative civilization may try to escape. They can attempt to retard mimesis-- the flow of foreign ideas and behaviors-- by keeping their populations ignorant and oppressed. They may rebel against the changes caused by a "living" civilization and become like the defenders of "Masada," the "Mahdi the Sudan" or Osama bin Laden. But, this merely slows things down. The cultural vacuum of a “dead” civilization is too strong to slow down enculturalization for long.

A "living" civilization is enormously attractive to members of an uncreative or "dead" one. This happens inside cultures as well as across them. Cities, for most of man's existence, were pest holes. People in the surrounding countryside lived longer lives. But, as people died from disease in the cities, new people were drawn in to take their place.

Improvements in communications and travel have made neighbors out of everyone in the world. Events that would take decades or centuries to play out are proceeding in weeks or months. Especially since in Iraq, we are in "Arab Culture's" face. We are forcing freedom, modernism and representative government down the collective Arab throat. Most of the people there will thank us for shortcutting the inevitable, but rough times are still ahead.

There are reasons for the “cultural infantilism of American policies” that you speak of. First, it is that America is still growing; its policies are in flux. It has had to adjust to enormous challenges in the last hundred years; one's that American would have rather avoided. America, according to Walter Russell Mead, has four competing groups that shape its foreign and domestic policies. It is temporary coalitions between these groups which drew us into two world wars and a cold war. Although some parts of the American population want to export our commerce and values; we want no empire. America has enough problems to solve at home. We would rather let the world go its own way. But, forces which make this impossible are at work.

Second, most of those forces are unconscious. We are not trying to impose our will on the world; yet that seems to be the result. Our "hard power" in the military is trying to keep America safe, but that brings us into intimate contact with the world. American values are different from most peoples. How we fight our wars-- our humanity and effectiveness in them-- is startling. Both are interrelated, but bewilderingly so. The "soft power" of our culture is constantly selling our virtues and values. The world's people are forced to respond to us in our terms.

Third, these events are not driven by the intellectuals; who are often playing catchup. Look at how "out of touch" the recent antiwar movement was; most of the protesters were "60's" radicals replaying the Vietnam war. The last opponent that America fought, the Socialists, have, for the moment, captured the means of communication: the "soft sciences" in higher education, the Cinema and the Media. But, not for long. The Internet, independent movie production and cable news are making an end run around that control. And attempts are being made to reclaim a place for political conservatives in the soft sciences, but most students in higher education merely ignore the Leftist propaganda.

America is currently fighting a two front war: the war on terrorists-- their allied states-- and a new "Cold war" with our domestic Socialists, the EU and the UN. The Social Democrats of the European Union tried to push the world down a path toward global government through the United Nations. A path down which America will not go. Our disagreements over the Kyoto treaty, the ICC treaty and the ABM treaty are a reflection of this. It’s why the US was kicked off the UN Human Rights Commission.

The world’s cultures will eventually combine on a western model, but nothing should lead us to believe it will be easy or soon. The culture which is changing the most is America’s-- on the surface. America is trying to absorb the best of the world. Often, this has lead us to adopt absurd positions, such as interventionist government, progressive taxation, or socialist institutions and values. But, the essence of America is the will to embrace freedom and change; what doesn’t work here is eventually dropped. And what can’t be immediately overcome will be gone around. America will rediscover its lost values and virtues, just as it has recovered its patriotism. The war on terror will hasten that change.

Joe,

Mr. Heggy is in denial. Flat-out denial. Quoting from Peters & AMac above - "Inability to accept responsibility for individual or collective failure."

We'll be the executioner if the Arabs and their twisted version of Islam continue to menace us. They'll blame us for what they make us do at their end just like they blame us now for what they do to themselves and everyone else available. They won't stop blaming us for their own flaws until their end. We'll try everything else first, but there will be an end.

Mark,

Jefferson, Madison, and John Jay? That seems like a pretty odd grouping to me. If you were going for the authors of the Federalist Papers, then it should read Hamilton, Madison, and Jay--Jefferson didn't write under the "Publius" pseudonym. Plus, Jay only wrote three of the Papers; the bulk of them were split pretty evenly between Hamilton and Madison. Also, despite the fact that Jay was also the very first Chief Justice of the United States, I don't remember anything in his biography that would rank his historical impact above, say, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, or Ben Franklin. [/tangent]

There are three main currents responsible for the current state of Muslim affairs.

1. The Muslim mind. William Burroughs outlines it quite nicely in his chapter on Islam Inc. in "Naked Lunch" -- the #1 problem is that Islam Inc. is mainly tribal. They do not get the brotherhood of man bit. All men are created equal etc.

2. Nazi Germany - the hate the Jews bit is culturally crippling in the extreme. Every country that has expelled it's Jews has suffered decline.

3. The USSR for filling the Arab mind with ideas on economics that not only do not work but are flat out counter productive.

America up til now has been mostly reactive to these currents. We are now becoming proactive.

Like any new born that needs a bit of jump starting to get it breathing the Arabs are going to get slapped by the doctor.

There is no doubt that America is the best and possibly only doctor capable of solving this particular medical problem.

American infantile culture is no doubt a reflection of much deeper values that are hidden in the open but invisible because of the noise.

"The Rage and the Pride" by Oriana Fallaci is the best recent exposition on American culture. The short version: American culture is plebian because the plebes are free.

Whiskey, democracy, sexy - the future of the world when the common man has a say.

My take is that the esteemed Mr. Heggy has no clue about American culture, or politics, or science, or philosophy. What he does have is the cargo cult view.

Islam will have to do a number of things to get into the future.

1. Start loving the Jews - not just an end to hatred. The Persians are down with this and once they are free of the Mullahs will be some of the first Islamics in the modern world. The Jews will help them.

2. Give up the infidels vs believers bit. It is not viable. It creates enemies. In fact it has created Islam's strongest enemy to date. America. This goes along with an end to tribalism and the acceptance of the golden rule applied to all people not just kin.

3. Respect private property. The sooner socialism is seen for the dead end it is the sooner the Islamic economies will rise.

Sam, I wish I could remember where I heard that anecdote. The choices of Jefferson, Madison, and Jay were deliberate. Jefferson crafted the moral rational for both the rebellion and the framework of how a new nation should behave in the Declaration. Madison brought together the most radical notions of how the new state would function as a nation of law, a new idea in the Constitution. John Jay, intentionally the most provacative selection, defined and crafted the judiciary into a coequal branch of government, defining law and not politics or executive fiat as the ultimate power in fledgling America. Its a lesson many many young governments never absorbed, to their sorrow.

Hi.

Tarek Heggy's analysis:
Islam: good
Wahhabi: bad

My opinion: a typical Muslim approach: to the extent that there might be any problem, it's all with that perverse sect over there.

This resembles the American evangelists who claimed terrorism came to America 11 September 2001, because God withdrew his protection, because their rivals were allowed to do too well. This was no genuine response at all, just a continuation of their habits with a new rationale.

The problem is not only Wahhabism but Islam. It never relinquished the habit of destructive war (in Caleb Carr's phrase). Muslim "moderation" is a phantasm, except to the extent that people actually turn away from Islam. The only genuine modernizing, moderate key historical face of Islam is Mustafa Kemal. For those who stick with Islam, persecution of heathens, the dhimmi system, religious antisemitism, and sectarian and tribal violence never stopped, nor will they ever stop.

"Lay blame on or tribal/sectarian rivals" is not a big new idea. If feuding among the Sunni, Shi'ite, Abbasid, Umayyad, Fatimid and others was the solution, everything would have been perfected long ago. So much for Tarek Heggy. Next!

Mark,

Ok, but John Jay is the wrong name, then, because he didn't do that. The guy you are looking for is John Marshall--the first significant Chief Justice of the United States. Marshall is the defining figure of early American jurisprudence, chiefly because he authored Marbury vs. Madison, but certainly for many other reasons as well.

As for the list, I think Jefferson's influence is overrated, despite his gift for expressive prose. Madison was one of the foremost political scientists in all of history, though, and any lawyer can tell you how essential Marshall's contributions were to establishing the federal Judiciary as a coequal branch of government.

Ahh, you may be right Sam. Thanks for the correction!

Mark,

I will concede that there are a few non-Western cultures, mainly in Asia, that have created viable democracies. But it is still predominantly a Western phenomenon, and let's look at your examples. Japan was steadily Westernizing for nearly a century before WWII. India experienced the Western evolution vicariously as a colony of Britain for 200+ years. A similar point can be made about South Korea, which was a quasi-colony of the US for about almost half a century. Taiwan: got me there. For most of the twentieth century Turkey has been a democracy until the politicians have done something the army didn't like. True, the army did allow an Islamic party to take power after the last election and didn't stage a coup when that same Islamic party refused to help us out in Iraq. So I may have to concede Turkey but a) the jury may still be out and b) Turkey has always been a crossroads between Europe and the Middle East, so we're still talking a heavy Western influence. Megawati Sukarnoputri is in a pretty weak position vis a vis the Islamofascists in Indonesia. That's why the creep who's responsible for most of the terrorism over there, Abu Bakr I believe, has literally gotten away with murder. How democratic is a country where terrorists wag the dog or at least how long can it continue to be a democracy?

Arguing that democracy can take hold anywhere there is justice and the rule of law is like arguing that the cause of overpopulation is too many people. It is a question-begging argument. The question it begs is: Are there places where justice (by our definition at least) and the rule of law are extremely unlikely to take hold. Based on history and current events, I would argue there are, and the Middle East is primary among them.

Hi David,
I also agree that the statement of
Islam: good
Wahhabi: bad

is misleading. Our problem is not with the Islamic religion, but with Arab culture. The Muslims in Indonesia are pretty laid-back, not fanatics. The Bali bombers were imported from outside. Arab culture is going through the symptoms of a dying civilization. The problem is that dying cultures subordinate everything, even their religion, to keeping the game going one more day.

Arab Moderates are of no use because they can't reveal themselves. Arab culture operates in a climate of fear. Deviation from the norm is deadly. Honor killing is common. No proof is necessary. An accusation is enough.

Nonie Darwish ( http://www.noniedarwish.com ) says that 80 percent of the Muslims she knows are "non practicing muslims." That is, they go through enough rituals to keep the religious authorities off their backs. But, they don't really believe. She should know because she is a Palestinian girl who fell in love with a Christian boy and suddenly found that her family wanted to kill her. She escaped to Cyprus and then to the US.

The Arabs have more to fear from us than we from them. Freedom, especially religious freedom, would reveal how weak their values are.

Fred, you are mining the data a bit here. Basically all you have told me is that no nation becomes democratic until they do. Germany had very limited and negative experience with democracy before the end of WW2. Japan had none, and a caste system, emporer worship, and male dominated society to boot. South Korea was unrecognizable 50 years ago. No industrialization. No western culture. They were a backwoods battleground between China and Japan, despised by both. They have lived under American protection for 50 years. Iraq will have the same opportunity, so that argument doesnt fly. India was an incrediably poor nation until quite recently, their cultural ties to the British notwithstanding. And how do you explain Indonesia? The fourth most populous nation in the world? Bangladesh? What about Poland, or anywhere in Eastern Europe? What history do they have with liberal democracy? Lets cut to the chase, this is essentially a racial destinction. Europeans, Americans, and Asians can handle democracy, but Africans and Arabs are incapable. BS. They havent had the chance. And lets look at which way the historical winds are blowing. 100 years ago, democracy was a western anomaly. Today, China is the only major power without a least a theoretical democracy. More join the club every day. Look at a globe, the winds are blowing.

I fear that the primary cause of this is the ‘infantile culture’ of the world’s foremost superpower. The United States, despite its great achievements in tens of fields suffers from what I call in my lectures the “cultural infantilism of American policies”.

It would certainly help if the US became more sensitive to the cultural richness of the people who inhabit this planet, but it might be even more useful for Tarek to consider that a Michael Moore inspired stereotype of the US isn't the best place to start if he desires to understand the problem from this end. The fact is that the US turned a new cultural leaf, the understanding of which might very well help a "gentler Islam" tame its internal totalitarian movement.

Hegyy, it seems to me, is still in a simplistic blame mode. The guy at www.ideofact.com has some extended discussions of Qutb, an Egyptian who was key in the Muslim Brotherhood in the 40s and 50s, and his point is that most Muslim activists are still bound within a medieval mindset.
One aspect of the current situation that is neglected is the failure to confront what the USA will do in the event that a major biological, chemical, or nuclear strike does hit an American city. I think that the Muslims don't realize what can be unleashed on them. The "Sea of Glass" can come about all too easily. I would regret killing several hundred million Muslims, but not enough to lose sleep over it.

American culture is plebian because the plebes are free.

Thank you M. Simon. I was going to post the same quote, but I couldn't remember the source.

To expand a bit: Our culture isn't "infantile" it is what is desired, apparently by a good deal of the world. It's far more likely that one will find Baywatch on a random TV anywhere in the world than that one will find Swan Lake. It's out there, but no one cares to watch.

The "cultural" argument is elitist crap. If it's so wonderful why does no one want to watch it? These are the same elites who think they should run everything because the plebes aren't capable of taking care of themselves. They're horrified at the thought of a WWF watcher voting.

You raise some good points, but get over yourself.

Mark,

I think you and I will just have to agree to disagree. I'll believe the Middle East can be democratized when I see it.

"And that is why you fail."

-Yoda

Keep in mind that America, for many if not most foreigners, is a canvas for them to project their fantasies on. I.e., their conception of America is about them, not us. Tarek Heggy is no exception.

The converse is probably true also.

In this instance, though, any reference to Islamic problems with modernity which mentions non-Islamic societies unfavorably would almost certainly be a means of avoiding the problem, i.e., more denial games.

I dispute that last paragraph, Tom.

Imagine an Iraqi discussing the problems of Arab/Islamic culture as it applies to Iraq, but also mentioning that French political culture, social structure, and national belief systems were big factors in France's extremely poor and even negative role in Iraq over the last several decades. Rather than helping, France's culture pushed them to act in ways that were profoundly harmful to Iraq's potential for a peaceful future. He worries that since there has been no significant shift in France, the future is likely to bring more of the same.

He then concludes that France's capacity to help with Iraq's desired transformation is necessarily limited. Our writer instead urges that they stop trying to jerk the strings in Iraq via U.N. maneuverings, step back, and let a more appropriate culture and country (American and/or British) handle the role of midwife to a healthy Iraqi culture that can overcome the problems he has outlined. France can assist, but that assistance should be given with a clear awareness of their limitations so they don't make the hard job ahead even harder.

That wouldn't be evasion or blame shifting at all. In fact, it's pretty close to the position I'd take. We can discuss the particulars when one tries to apply similar arguments to the USA and Egypt, for instance, and the argument may fail when that happens. But the argument structure itself is not fatally flawed, at least as far as I can see.

Joe,

Iraq under Saddam Hussein's regime did not present Islamic problems with modernity any more than the Mongol invasion did. One of the many reasons we did Iraq first was that SH had kept the Islamicists out and so made it possible for us to create a functioning democracy there.

The real Islamic problem is its tribal Arabic version, of which the latter's psychotic Wahhabi variant is merely one expression. Mr. Heggy is nibbling around the edges of a major issue here - the degree to which Saudi oil income has allowed the Wahhabis to pervert the rest of Islam. But his blaming anyone other than Muslims for this is denial.

Hucksters don't make their marks gullible. The marks are already gullible. The first lesson I learned at SEC Enforcement was that good con-men merely give their victims the opportunity to con themselves.

Muslims aren't losers because they're Muslim, but Arabs are losers because they're Arabs.

Is this discussion still going on? If so, does anyone have a solution that makes sense?

As far as I can see, Wahhabi Islam must be exterminated, either by education or by the
"sword" they seem to prefer.... their choice!

"I fear that the primary cause of this is the ‘infantile culture’ of the world’s foremost superpower. The United States,"

Lurker gets it in one with the phrase "ritualistic condemnation required of all Moslems."

I believe that Heggy is being completely insincere with this and knows he's lying which is the reason his ritualistic condemnation sounds much less alarming than every other Arab's ritualist condemnation.

The fact that I can name only two Arab writers who can give the ritualistic condemnation a pass is scary, but at least Heggy has the sense to leave it hanging and not make up the usual mad conspiracy theory to back it up.

As far as I can glean from thousands of examples,
it must be considered treason to mention infidels without including some condemnation for conspiring against good Muslims. After all speaches by Mahamoud himself and Hadiths make it clear that Christians and Jews are plotting againt Muslims. Unfortunately instead of taking these rousing speeches to the troups as indications of what existed in that day, or even as what they were, rousing speeches to the troups, they are interpreted as God's explanation of what will exist for all time and as the motivation for Jihad or repression of infidels that every pious Muslim must keep in his heart at all times.

Whatever the source is, it is absolutely impossible to find a single mention of America or Jews without the required condemnation. And Heggy must sound like an infidel for leaving out the conspiracy theory paragraph or paragraphs that always follow.

I had read this installment first.

Going back I find that Heggy had been arguing that Islam used to and once again can find a way to accept cooexisting with the 'Other'.

So it's ironic that as I just posted he can't bring himself to leave out the ritualistic condemnation of the 'Other'.

But I've read Heggy before. He's an Egyptian who's now a professor in (?)Morroco I think.

I've always found his writing radically liberal in concept and submissively stogy in form.

It has the feel of someone living under oppression trying (if only slightly) to avoid offense.

Actually the middle east has a strange feel. As he pointed out, the popular movements are even more facistic and oppressive than the states are. So it's the people who are offended by liberal thinking even more than the rulers. This leads to a severe phobia against nonconformity that's alarming to see in action.

China at its worst, with snitches on every block never managed to sqeeze the will for freedom out of its people the way middle eastern society does.