WESTERN CIVILIZATION FOUNDED ON REASON, NOT SUPERSTITION.
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Abstract; Some drastic differences between the West and Islam are explored, and explained. That brings forth reflections on some differences between civilization and superstition.
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Strident screaming in France from the politically correct. Claude Gueant, one of the ministers of the discombobulated Sarkozy, observed that:
“Contrary to what the left’s relativist ideology says, for us, all civilizations are not of equal value. Those which defend humanity seem to us to be more advanced than those that deny it. Those which defend liberty, equality and fraternity, seem to us superior to those which accept tyranny, the subservience of women, social and ethnic hatred.” Adding the need to “protect our civilization”, he insisted he had not targeted “one culture in particular”.
[Disclosure: I detest Claude Gueant's immigration policy; but that does not mean I have to detest all his thoughts, especially when they happen to be philosophically correct.]
Islam de France asked Gueant to specify that he did not target Islam. A socialist (related) member of parliament amalgamated Gueant’s observations with Nazism. The French government walked out of the National Assembly, for the first time since 1898.
To progress in the elucidation of things, one has to get where one did not go before. And nothing is best for that than strong emotions. E-motions are called that way, precisely because they move people. Cold logic, per se, is a ship without motion. Logic does not move by itself.
So let me invenominate the debate a bit more. As a public service.
Islam is why the Middle East covered itself with fascist dictatorships.
(Islam is only a proximal cause, however, see below.) OK, let’s roll out Muhammad Himself, Peace Be On Him, He needs it!
“O YE WHO BELIEVE! Obey Allah, and obey the messenger and OBEY THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE IN POWER.” (Quran’s, Sura 4; verse 59).
In other words, obey power, not intelligence, virtue or democracy. I call that Islam’s fascist principle.
The truth can be outrageous. Nothing better than truth to bring rage out. OK, maybe I put the cart, religion, before the donkey, dictatorship. The water crisis in the Middle East forced the establishment of hydraulic dictatorships. As the drought increased, so did the ferocity: the Egyptian religious was softer than Christianism, itself more open minded than Islam.
True, Jesus Christ, a prophet of Islam, ordered to kill non believers. Luke 19:27: “But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me.”
However Christ’s robust self glorification was not the law in the Imperium Francorum. Probably impressed by what the mighty Franks had done in Occident, emperor Justinian, who reigned 40 years, and reconquered the Mediterranean, ordered to separate the secular and the religious in Roman law.
If a Christian wanted to become a Jew, or a Muslim, it was not a cause for execution.
But the Qur’an is more specific: “And if they break their oaths after their agreement and (openly) revile your religion, then fight the leaders of unbelief– surely their oaths are nothing– so that they may desist.” (Qur’an, S 9, v 12) Passages abound in the Hadith (the second sacred book of Islam, full of sayings attributed to Muhammad) of murderous narrow mindedness:
“Allah’s Apostle [Muhammad] said, “The blood of a Muslim who confesses that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that I am His Apostle, cannot be shed except in three cases: In Qisas for murder, a married person who commits illegal sexual intercourse and the one who reverts from Islam (apostate) and leaves the Muslims.”—Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari, 9:83:17
Some with leftist pretentions will erupt:”How dare you? Is not religion good? Do you have something against Islam? Are you an incredible racist?”
No, I am not an incredible racist. Just the opposite. It is precisely because I respect the victims of an all too fascist friendly religion that I intervene.
I spent the essential of my childhood in Muslim countries, and I nearly always respected the individuals I met, and loved the mosques, and the architecture. I even respect several injunctions of Islam: for example no alcohol whatsoever (I am silly enough already on my own to not need adjuvants). However Islam is a system of thought, and thinking is what I eat.
A particular problem with Islam is the way it treats women. As women educate small children, mentally underperforming women means mentally underperforming children, and thus mentally underperforming adults, hence mentally underperforming societies.
So Islam becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. There is no senility like senility, and stupidity is its prophet.
Some with leftist pretentions will hammer their war drums, the way they have been taught is supposed to be correct:”We don’t see you criticizing the West, the Christian civilization!”
Well, you should read me more. I enjoy dogfights with Christianism. My answer is that there is not such a thing as Christian civilization. “Christian civilization” is an oxymoron, except in the most primitive places.
By definition of what a civilization is, civilization cannot be just a religion, especially not a superstitious religion. And, historically, the West was not founded by the Franks as a religion, but as a reaction against the superstitious organization of society by Catholic bishops.
Contrarily to a commonly accepted myth, the West, the synergetic civilizational aggregate imagined by the Franks, was not founded on a particular superstition, or even a particular nation or language. Quite the opposite. It was intrinsically omnirole, and even anti-plutocratic. (The multivaried nature of the empire of the Franks make it closer to the present European Union, than to a conventional empire; the Imperium Francorum was a sort of European Union in its time, but with the world’s mightiest army.)
In the Imperium Francorum, Christians could become Jews, and they did, and, no, they did not have fewer rights, and no, they did not have to wear signs on their clothing warning of their particular superstition.
Whereas in Islam, Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, although had lived there for centuries, when not millennia, were discriminated against by the heavily armed newbies. Non-Muslims had to wear special clothing to warn of their presence, they did not have equal rights, and enjoyed special supplementary taxes. To this day it is forbidden for a Muslim woman to marry a non Muslim. 25% of Lebanese weddings happen in Cyprus, to turn around that interdiction.
According to the Qur’an believers are suppose to kill Pagans and Non Believers:
“But when the forbidden months are past, then fight the pagans wherever you find them, and seize them and beleaguer them and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war). But if they repent and establish regular prayers and practice regular charity, then open the way for them, for Allah is oft-forgiving, most merciful.” [Qur'an, Surah al-Tawbah: verse 5]
Taken at face value in the short, 80,000 words Qur’an, this verse is as clear as it gets. Some Islamists try to wiggle out of it, see Islam Tomorrow.(I enjoy reading Islamists.)
So why such a huge difference between Christian Francia and the contemporaneous first Islamist Caliphate? At first sight, this is strange, because Christianism and Islamism are variants of the same religion of Abraham. (Maybe I should call that mother religion Abrahamism, to rhyme with Shamanism.)
Islam, by promoting jihad, interpreted by Muhammad Himself as a war effort against the West allowed to build the world’s largest empire in one generation. That immense succession of battles was launched from just one city, Medina (where Muhammad is buried).
Muhammad admonished Roman authorities to convert, while telling his followers that, for the first time in 1,000 years, the Greco-Romans and their successor regimes (such as the Persian Sassanids) were weak (from a terrible war between them, and the civil war of the Christians against the Pagans and Thinkers inside the Greco-Roman empire). And it was the time to attack.
In the Orient, jihadist rage, lots of luck, and tremendous overconfidence and incompetence in one major battle by the Roman army high command, led the Arabs to the gates of Constantinople. There they were defeated by a high tech weapon, Grecian fire. Grecian fire, secret to this day, was used successfully against Muslims for centuries. Even in Saint Tropez in the Tenth century when a combined effort of the Frankish army and the Roman navy threw the Islamist armies out of Francia.
Blocked by the enormous walls of Constantinople and its fire spitting navy, the Islamists conceived to go around, and catch Constantinople from behind.
After quickly overrunning Gothic Iberia, massacring 20% of its natives, the armies of Islam met the Franks, in Francia. Not only the franks had defeated the Goths, two centuries prior, but they had sent spies to figure out the Muslims, as soon as Islam swept Palestine and Egypt. The Franks represented legal Roman power, and applied Roman law, with an addition, Salic law, initially written in Latin by Roman jurists around 300CE (it was amended enormously in the following millennium). No religious law for the Franks. Zilcht.
In a succession of three terrible invasions (721-750 CE), the Arab and Berber armies and navies tried to break through Francia, and, instead, were the ones broken to smithereens. Not only were the obnoxious invaders thrown out, bones rotting in the sun, but, exhausted, the Caliphate in Damascus fell (750 CE).
Civilian Muslims left behind were left alone and not discriminated against. They reproduced in peace, as genetics studies on the French population have shown.
The Franks were not fighting in the name of Christianity. They viewed the Sarah-sin as a type of Christian, originating from the Bible’s Sarah. The Franks had a long tradition of fighting fanatical Christians. That is why the Franks organized a succession of coups, wars and elected several scholars as emperors, to break the Christian theocracy in Constantinople. They finally captured Francia in 476 CE (and Constantinople in 1204 CE, vengeance is best cold!)
The Franks viewed in Islam more of the same they knew all too well, and they had fought for five centuries, ever since they were the Free, the Franks.
The Frank Reich had always been multinational and multilingual. They spoke old Dutch, Latin, German…By the time the Islamists invaded, the Franks called themselves “EUROPEANS“.
There was their fundamental religion, what bound them together again: Europe.
Thus, contrarily to the Islamist empire, the West was founded on tolerance and reason, and the secular law. The west of the Franks was not founded on the adoration of the would be child killer, adulator of his boss, Abraham his name. Just the opposite.
A demonstration of this occurred unwittingly when Christianism was unleashed to help reconquer the Middle East. What happened? Christianism soon re-engaged in what it does best, namely plutocratization. Plutocratization, the instauration of the Dark Side. In contrast to civilization.
Why are Christianism and Islam so prone to plutocratization? It is not an accident.
The myth of Abraham is the very foundation of Christianism and Islam. And what do we observe?
The religion of Abraham is founded on the most insane torturous obsession imaginable, the killing of the child by his parent, to please the boss. Worse than that cannot be found. Think about it. That’s what Islamist regimes are founded on.
The Aztec philosophers viewed their own superstition as more humane than Abraham’s pedophobic obsession, and contradicted the Christian theologians point by point.
Remark: the clueless Vatican wonders why so thousands of obsessed priests tortured children. May I remind them of Abraham? Torturing children is what their god does. See what happened to David’s son, according to their little book of horrors.
So what is civilization? The term appeared around 1600 CE in France, after seven religious civil wars in quick succession (instigated by the Catholic fanatic Spanish emperor, son of his French father, Charles V!).
Henri IV built on the tremendous work of his great predecessor Henri III (assassinated by a Catholic fanatic). He put his war marshal the duke of Sully in charge of the economy. The new society was a welfare state (“a chicken in every pot!”), a stimulus program, and a planification of the economy was introduced, with an accent on high tech.
When the protestant Henri de Navarre was told it would be better if he became catholic to sit on the throne of France, he scoffed:”Paris vaut bien une messe!” (“Paris is worth a mass!”)
Civilization is not religion. Civilization is a process, a progress towards a more civil society. Civilization lives in its time (that’s what “secular” means), and on the ground (it’s not standing-over, which is what super-stition means).
Religion is an old, wet rat clinging to an old branch sinking in the middle of the ocean. A superstitious religion is just a revelation. Some guy in the desert, way back, walking on the water, making fish out of wine, listening to archangels in his head, threatening to kill whoever he is unwilling to “believe” in him, and venerate those ready to kill a child, if the boss says so.
Henri III and Henri IV were both assassinated by religious fanatics (after several dozens attempts!). Their crime? Pushing forcefully for a more civil society. For civilization.
Let’s remember that, next time we are told that a religion can be a civilization.
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Patrice Ayme
Tags: Reason, superstition, The West
February 13, 2012 at 4:04 am |
Good article! However, some details in your description of Abrahamism are incorrect. Specifically, the turning of fish to wine. This is not in the text.
February 13, 2012 at 4:06 am |
Thanks Alexi! OK, maybe swine, not wine! It tried to do what I think is called a joke, if I remember the notion well…
!
PA
February 13, 2012 at 5:18 pm |
“WESTERN CIVILIZATION FOUNDED ON REASON, NOT SUPERSTITION.”
Ah yes, reason, as in science.
Which is itself a system of beliefs.
I personally have experienced the inviolable Laws of Sir Isaac Newton proven wrong twice in the 20th century.
And we are not done yet.
We “believe” in Western medicine because it often works. But so does Chinese medicine (sometimes).
And placebos have been proven effective medicine, even when the subject is told that he is the one getting the placebo.
So do we really KNOW, or do we simply BELIEVE?
February 13, 2012 at 5:57 pm |
Dear Old Geezer: Your observations are very astute, and I have long held a similar set of beliefs. Actually, buried in one of my recent essays (I don’t even remember if I published it or not) I pointed out that “faith” and “belief” are central to REASON. In other words, faith and belief are fundamental to the scientific instinct which truly characterize the genus Homo.
“Chinese medecine” is science. Middle Age science, true, but still science. Similarly the basic maneuvers most of us learn when we are children, and play with fire, are also part of science. “Science” comes from the Latin for knowing.
We know if, and only if, we have faith in the knowledge we have. If the commander and the copilot of a superjumbo A380 jet sat behind the commands, and suddenly had no faith in what they used to know the day before, they could not roll down the runway. If it happened in mid-air, the plane would crash. And so it is for all humans doing anything whatsoever. (OK, this is not completely true, because activities such as walking go from the conscious to hardwiring at some point in development, so no more faith is needed to operate them than to operate the heart; but then the surgeon operating on a heart has to use faith, and so did the now unconscious patient when she put her life and faith in the hands of the surgeon).
By the way, it is pretty much known how the placebo effect works. And as far as Newton is concerned, scientists ought to have read him more carefully. He was the first to meta-analyze his gravitation theory, and declare that it made no sense (about the instantaneous interaction at a distance with no medium in between). similarly, the Riemann-(Poincare’?)-Einstein theory of gravitation makes no (fundamental) sense, as it is basically a tautology. However, Newton theory was incremental, significant progress: it explained effects not explained before, and so did the Einstein thing.
Modern QFT is also progress. But when some physicist come, and say they have it all figured out, they are just arrogant, stupid and easy to contradict. They hurt the notion of science by their brutal sociological dominance, proferring absurdities to make themselves interesting.
There is no knowledge without faith, and knowledge is all about beliefs.
PA
February 13, 2012 at 7:49 pm |
Alexi Helligar: Just checking. Usually, your depictions of history and culture are provocative and accurate. The joke was lost on me. Many of the ideas expressed by Abrahamism are sufficiently ridiculous without distortion.
February 13, 2012 at 7:52 pm |
Yes, Alexi, I try to be very accurate, to the point of being boring. But joking is a good technique. So is poetry. I don’t want to be too boring.
People are trained to accept the myths, word for word. So Jesus, as expected, turns water into wine, etc. If one tweaks the myth, as in making Jesus turn water into SWINE, the absurdity comes to the fore, because people are forced to process the absurdity anew…
Along same lines, just more serious, it’s amusing the moon (deity of old Mecca Paganism) and the Kaaba (meteorite adorated in old Mecca Paganism) are central symbols of Islam. Let Muslim scholars point at the part of the Qur’an where they are. Ha ha ha… They are in the Satanic verses! Ooopss… So is Islam Paganism in drags?
PA
February 14, 2012 at 6:35 pm |
Patrice,
My favorite line: “Religion is an old, wet rat clinging to an old branch sinking in the middle of the ocean.”
Well done.
I have one major concern. While you successfully described how Islam’s extremism is more than that of Christianity (due to some particular verses and hadiths), you fail to acknowledge the progression of extremism INHERITED through her parents. Islam is an enthusiastic follower compared to Judaism and Christianity, both of which came BEFORE Islam. Why focus on the evils of Islam when such evil wouldn’t have existed without the two evil religions before it? Islam is the neglected child of an abusive parent – I would much rather read your thoughts on the Torah/Old Testament that the three Abrahamic religions share, versus the one that only the youngest child uses. I know you have talked about them, but not to the extent of the Quran.
You do such a great job of criticizing parents in many other of your arguments, why are you suddenly attacking the child here? For example, you do not attack one random American for being stupid, instead you attack the failure of American society for giving birth to him. I admire that. Why instead with religion do you attack the crazy child born of crazy parents?
Islam stands on the shoulders of Judaism and Christianity. They’re all crazy, yes, but I would appreciate your essays more if you did a better job of acknowledging that. Otherwise, yes, you look like you’re picking on a neglected stepchild.
A
February 14, 2012 at 6:38 pm |
Hi A!
I agree 100% with your critique here, and I make that point all the time myself: Judaism came first, and Christianism
(aka Cretinism, as some critiques had it) came second, and made Judaism much worse… due to its entanglement with Caesar, traceable directly to Christ (“Render onto caesar what is Caeasar’s”).
One can see that implictly as I mention Abrahamism, and view its various sects as just all in the same Abraham basket. So what you say, which is correct, is only about that particular mini (!) essay. It was not: Christianism versus Islamism, but “Islam versus Civilization”.
Somewhere on my site, there are all the abominable quotes of the Qur’an. I got them easily by going to terrorist sites, which used them as excuses. Then I tried to do the same for Christianism, but there were so many, and they are so well hidden, i had to read the Bible line by line, and i gave up, for now. Anyway the Luke quote of Christ I gave is very famous, and enough, and actually NEARLY all the obnoxious stuff in Islam can be tracked to Christianism.
So I agree with you. As I pointed out, the Franks viewed the Msulims as enraged Christians, and treated them as such. The first thing Christian leaders did, actually, when the Islamist armies invaded, was to nationalize the Christian church, and sell its treasure. That’s counterintuive.
But the Franks needed lots of money to rise the largest professional army since the heydays of the Roman empire.
So you made an excellent point, and it will be, it has to be, adressed in further essays. enraged islamists have to be told they are just behaving like the Christians used to, word for word, before a clamp was put on them, Christians, by the rising western civilization. Rising out of the ashes of theocratic Catholic Rome, that is.
PA
February 15, 2012 at 12:18 am |
Patrice,
You are saying you agree with me, but the fact remains that generally speaking, you pick on Islam 90% of the time.
A
February 15, 2012 at 12:27 am |
Why I pick on Islam 90%? (Supposing I do, which I contest) Because it’s still not completely dead. Whereas Christianity is sunk at the bottom of the sea. Once it’s sunk, it’s sunk, we attack the one still floating.
Also because I eat live prey rather than dead, rotting corpses. Really, Christianity is dead, except in a few places which are themselves dead or dying. Who cares about maggots?
Whereas Islam is taken seriously by lots of serious, influential people: see the voting in Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco
each time a clean sweep by Islamists, with an Islamist agenda. And there is an Islamist party in power in Turkey. And islamists control Arabia, Iraq, Iran… Pakistan…
I don’t know of one country with a Christianist party in power, with a Christanist program…. Sure, it used to be a huge problem, but in the Rennaissance (of Christian religious terror, as I pointed out in the essay).
The only western country which has a serious Abrahamist problem is Israel. And that’s due to the highjacking of the representative parliamentary system by fanatical Jews. And they don’t amuse me, except when they dress funny, reminding me of chimps in three piece suits, in their parody of Western bankers’ costumes… A trick to seduce the powers that be in Europe, which leaves seething with barely contained anti-plutocratic irritation.
February 15, 2012 at 4:20 am |
Just because there is no declared “Christian government” doesn’t mean that Christianity is not permeating through entire societies, influencing and shaping the government.
BTW, thumbs up for the French taking on Monsanto…..
A
February 15, 2012 at 4:21 am |
Please give me examples of permeability and influence of Christianity (I know some, but I view them as minor, although some directly irritate me).
As it turns out many of the characteristics viewed as “Christian” were pre-Christian, or had nothing to do with Christianity.
For example:
1) welfare programs were started under the early Roman empire. S.milarly more advanced welfare in the middle Ages were gov decisions, not the church’s.2) outlawing of slavery in the 7C was a Frankish gov decision. it had nothing to do with Christianity. The pope reinstituted slavery for Africans 7 centuries later. Still it stayed unlawful in the old Imperium Francorum, i.e. most of europe, including Great Britain.
3) secular education given by the churches and monasteries was actually a law mandated by the Franks for getting a religious licence.
And so on.
PA
February 15, 2012 at 4:37 am |
IN FACT, I would argue that it’s even more dangerous when religion is NOT declared in a religion-following government, all the while it’s running the whole god damned country. Turning a blind eye and saying it doesn’t exist doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It just makes it harder to destroy when nobody chooses to see it.
AS
February 15, 2012 at 4:39 am |
A respected work of art in the West consists in a bocal of urine drowning a reproduction of Christ inside. Let see the same with Muhammad. Then Islam will be treated by the West as Christianity is.
Something to piss on. Right now Muslims are treated like mentally weak creatures that would go bersek if their image of Muhammad was stomped on, let alone watered with waste. Oh, I forgot; they are supposed to go bersek, at least Sunnis (not Shiah) at the first reproduction of human, or even animal figures…
And once we have really made pissing on all aspects of Christianity respectful, what’s left of it?
The invisible influence nobody can see? Really? In France, all religious establisments are property of the People (except the Grand Mosque in Paris, a gift from the People to the Islam de France! 1920s…)
One can even argue that the cathedrals, with all their ugly gargoyles, were a way, just like Dante’s Inferno, to piss on Christianity. That was written in the early 1300s. Quite a few religious figures, including the pope are down in various circles of hell (with Muhammad!) OK, he probably forgot Christ; nobody is perfect on first try…
PA
February 16, 2012 at 5:53 pm |
While you are right to deflate the French PC bubble over Guéant’s sortie, it should be pointed out that he obviously did not make the statement out of philosophical beliefs or principles. He was implementing the current Sarkozyte last-straw strategy of grabbing Front National voters by any means. This is why the left shot back from the hip, even though inequality among societies (and therefore civilizations) is the very basis of progressive thinking – what is the point of agitating towards another kind of society if it is not a better one?
This will soon be forgotten, as Sarkozy’s campaign obviously will rely on drawing the Socialists into endless meaningless squabbles. Pity that one was so badly – and thoughtlessly – handled.
February 17, 2012 at 5:57 am |
Bonjour Dominique II! What you say nails it on the head, and is tied into the central quandary of the so called left, in the West, for the last, well…
I think the problem started during decolonization, which corresponded to Stalinization (calling Breznev an honorary Stalin for the occasion). By then the left was completely confused. I have to find and (re?) read my copy of Levy-Strauss’ “Tristes Tropiques” because I suspect the problem started there.
Detecting, despising and rejecting erroneous civilizations and cultures, is not just the essence of progressivity, but of the genus Homo.
The left both excoriates progress, while, as you say, it’s supposed to be its main mission (amen!) and the very definition of the word civilization. I lived in some countries where the so called “decolonization” replaced a small capable administration by the natives (with a few French officers and administrators mostly invisible) by coups, arbitrary arrests and shooting in the streets. And now, it’s getting even worse.
I read the Algerian family code, and see rights are fully for the father, as long as he is a Muslim. never mind there were jews in North Africa for a millennium before Islam was invented, and that half of humanity is female. But Algerian sheep will bleat that’s their identity, and thanks allah they were “decolonized”. Were the Jews also “decolonized”?
Once I met some friendly Morroccans, who my spouse had befriended for years, to the point of travelling with them once to Hawai’i. They insisted to invite me over (often a mistake). I mentionned that the Romans were in Morocco 900 years before the Muslims, and they were adamant that was not the case, that could not have been the case, Morocco was always Muslim. They were petty upset, and that was the end of this beautiful relationship.
Fireworks don’t last, but that makes them even more beautiful. Truth is eternal, though.
Srkzy indeed jumped into Hollande’s hate-love relationship to finance. Saying to London the opposite of what he said a few weeks before was worse than not smart, it was, as Srkozy pointed out, a lie. He should know, being an expert. OK, he mostly lie to himself…
PA
February 17, 2012 at 11:33 am |
I’ve lived in African and Middle-East countries, too, and am not naive. I’ve seen OBL posters on perfectly nice shopkeepers’ walls deep in Mali way before AQMI started its mayhem. Still, I think you’re wrong to target Islam, rather than Islamism. A distinguo which may be PC but still deeply valid. As a religion, Islam is suitably obscurantist and rife with barbarity, as befits a goatherders’ creed (another name for Abrahamism). So what. Like a large, vicious dog, Christianity had to be house-trained, and it was, at least in Europe; Islam still has to be house-trained by the citizens of countries it still rules, and by countries which house-trained their own religious hounds long ago; this may take time. Whereas Islamism, which is Islam with rabies, merely has to be put down ASAP. An opinion I often heard from Algerians in Algeria.
Re decolonization you may be a bit harsh. True, most released countries indulged in a riot of political and economical idiocy, sometimes murderous. I really do not see how they could have avoided it, with their ingrained reliance on foreign masters. Things are moving to the better, oh so slowly. The real issue, as an historian must realize, is that of colonization. I once was quite ready to credit it with the usual gifts – health, roads, the trappings of modernity. My lifetime experience has killed that delusion. There is nothing, in the so-called legacy of colonization, which countries could not get through trade and diplomacy; countries which were never colonized actually fared much better on all those counts.
Of course colonization had all the right-sounding reasons: we went out to free the slaves, as we now are out to liberate veiled women in Afghanistan. (we succeeded rather better then). The foot soldiers (including officers) believed it, and among them were tremendous individuals. Some are remembered as active defenders of the natives. But genocide was also a hazard – you are right to quote the Namibian Herero genocide at Von Trotha’s hands, which incidentally set up an uproar in Germany when news of it made it to Berlin; but don’t forget either the American Indians, or the Tasmanians; France itself, AFAIK, never initiated a genocide proper, but mass slaughter did happen. Speaking of non-genocide war crimes, Kurds may recall that their first experience of airborne gassing came to them courtesy of Sir Winston in the 30′s…
Independent countries have been independent long enough to be denied the excuse of the evil colonists’ legacy; but as you often point out, truth is eternal and must not be forgotten.
February 17, 2012 at 4:56 pm |
Dear Dominique II: Thanks for the long, thoughtful comment. I agree 100% with most of what you say. Except that I am wrong, of course.
Although I readily admit that I may look wrong, because whatever I wrote has been insufficient to convey what I really mean, or because my point of view is genuinely difficult to understand. An example is the disctinction between Islam and Islamism, that I deliberately blurr. It did not escape me that in American usage we have: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. “Islamism” is dumped down with Socialism, Communism, Nazism and Capitalism.
The French though use: Christianisme, but “Islamism” is derogatory, just like in the USA.
As I do not see why one should discriminate against Judaism, the inventor of Abrahamism, I make everybody equivalent: Christianism, Islamism, Judaism, Abrahamism. Let Muslims explain to me why jews practice Judaism, but they do not practice Islamism.
I detailled in http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2009/06/22/some-violence-in-holy-quran/
7,200 words in the 80,000 words Qur’an that incite to violence, much of it lethal and terminal… Although the one about Allah burning people alive to death, and then regrowing their skins, to do it again, and again and again, shows clearly that, as far as Allah is concerned, life is for torture, and not conversely.
Thus the Qur’an is a civilizational, and legal, disaster. Christianism is irrelevant at this point, except in the homosexual, pedophiliac Vatican and its antennas (OK, another abbreviation, but speech, being finite and digital, is always an abbreviation, and so are all and any human actions). The Vatican itself is irrelevant, except to reproduce HIV (as it mysteriously forbid one of God’s creation, the condom).
Your argument that countries that did not know “colonization” did better is interesting. But there are very few of these countries. Thailand and japan come to mind, and that’s roughly it. Korea was conquered by the Mongols (as was China, which came epsilon from eradication by the Mongols; other civilizations were eradicated by yhe Mongols and now lay under the sands).
Even China had to compose with the foreign devils, and practice inverted colonization (the 50 million + Chinese diaspora, Singapore, etc.). I agree that “colonization” was atrocious in many parts (and, in Africa, often for the colonizers themselves, who died like flies). Namibia and Congo come to mind.
The PC attitude has polluted the accuracy of debate all over. An example is slavery. I am, of course, against slavery, but the fact is that, contrarily to legend, the slave trade originated in Africa, not in the few European cities rendered rich by it. It was an african civilizational problem. Not that, with the tech capabilities of africa then, there was any choice; it was slavery, or massacre.
I could write an essay. Here is the title: Did slavery save lives?
Anyway, from the philosophical point of view, colonization, at least by ideas, was global.
Today’s Japan has much more to do with 18C England than 18C Japan. So Western civilization, philosophically speaking, conquered Japan, and Japan would not have survived otherwise.
I do believe that the clash of civilizations is the greatest engine of philosophical progress (although I completely reject the work of that Harvard professor who was maniacal obsolete racist on the subject of long dead civilizations clashing…). Although I want to destroy the present Pakistani nuclear state, I am much more measured on Iran’s nuclear ambition, which, I think should be the object of a global negotiation, and is no threat at this moment.
PA
February 22, 2012 at 5:51 am |
DuJuan Ross The Manichaeans were slaughtered for believing in such a duality of Yahweh,…a name they spoke unrepentantly when Semites deemed it too sacred to utter….Societies fade and disappear, features not becoming to a Creator of the Universe conceptually…
Societies? gods?man-made:yes….The Creator of the Universe is conceived by Monotheists and is pontificated to be Everlasting….No society ever conceived is thought to be everlasting,and History bears this out. Ergo,different concepts.
February 22, 2012 at 5:53 am |
Hi DuJuan! Christians (“Catholic Orthodox” as they grandly called themselves!), those “Universals of Common Wisdom” pretty much slaughtered everybody in sight, except the Jews so they could keep on slaughtering those through the ages… I am guessing…
PA
February 22, 2012 at 10:27 pm |
thank you for courageous Atheist remarks, humanity will be better off when faiths die faster than Zeus & Thor & Athena, Jeebus Jehobah Ghost Hole virgin vaginal birthed alleged baby gods? No wonder 6 million women die each year because the Vatican vetoes United Nations WHO spending for condoms & life saving abortions…
February 22, 2012 at 10:34 pm |
Thanks Larry! OK, let’s add another layer!
There is no god, but dog, and submission is its prophet.
Faith in goodness is not just fine with me, but much appreciated. However, barking out malevolent orders, indeed, not so.
PA
March 4, 2012 at 7:55 pm |
[...] I have argued in “Islam Against Civilization”, unreconstructed Islam is fundamentally an enemy of civilization (so my position on attacking the [...]