Warning: Politically charged
You know, I really do try to respect the standard liberal screed about having respect for other cultures. I feel kinda bad when something annoys me just because I don't understand its cultural context. But there's a point where, looking from the outside in, you just have to stop and wonder what the FUCK is wrong with these people.
KHARTOUM, Sudan - Thousands of Sudanese, many armed with clubs and knives, rallied Friday in a central square and demanded the execution of a British teacher convicted of insulting Islam for allowing her students to name a teddy bear "Muhammad."
Muslim countries in the greater Middle East like to portray themselves as being enlightened and civilized compared to us 'decadent' Westerners, but being so thin-skinned about your religion that you're willing to brutally murder a defenseless woman over the barest imagined slight is indicative of niether. Of course, this is Sudan, which doesn't count as 'civilized' these days anyway, but then you've got things like the potential death scentence for a rape victim that Gabe mentioned earlier today (and make no mistake, 200 lashes can kill a person) from our good friends Saudi Arabia, or the oh-so cosmopolitain Dubai threatening a teenage boy (from another country, no less!) with jail time for the crime of getting gang raped. And that's just the tip of the putrid iceberg. After a while you have to wonder if there's anything here to respect or understand. Are our points of reference on some very basic things too far apart to even open a dialog? How can you have respect for a culture that has absolutely no respect for basic humanity? How can you understand a culture that's refined the Grudge to a regional passtime? And how do you reach a mutual understanding with a culture that's shown, time and time again, that it's not even going to try to respect and understand yours?
I feel bad about saying it, I really do. I'm sure there's plenty of decent and moderate people in these countries who're just trying to get by as best as they can and who don't particulary care for the system they're stuck in, but they're not the public face of their culture. The lunatics have taken over the asylum. (And, to spread some of the blame around, there's some eerie parallels in certain areas of American Christianity. Fundamentalism always ends with someone getting stoned.) But the worst part of all of it is that we're stuck trying to muddle through our attempts at a dialog because they've got all the damned oil. It'd be great to be able to just cut off all ties, politically blockade the entire region and just let the whole thing fester until it eats itself, but we have no decent alternative to the only thing the region can export besides violence. Our economic backbone is in the hands of cultures that are predisposed towards treating their fellow human beings like shit, and we just have to tsk-tsk and pussyfoot around that issue for fear that they'll take our oil away and/or blow us up. It's so fucking depressing.
Ah, fuckit. I should just go to bed.
KHARTOUM, Sudan - Thousands of Sudanese, many armed with clubs and knives, rallied Friday in a central square and demanded the execution of a British teacher convicted of insulting Islam for allowing her students to name a teddy bear "Muhammad."
Muslim countries in the greater Middle East like to portray themselves as being enlightened and civilized compared to us 'decadent' Westerners, but being so thin-skinned about your religion that you're willing to brutally murder a defenseless woman over the barest imagined slight is indicative of niether. Of course, this is Sudan, which doesn't count as 'civilized' these days anyway, but then you've got things like the potential death scentence for a rape victim that Gabe mentioned earlier today (and make no mistake, 200 lashes can kill a person) from our good friends Saudi Arabia, or the oh-so cosmopolitain Dubai threatening a teenage boy (from another country, no less!) with jail time for the crime of getting gang raped. And that's just the tip of the putrid iceberg. After a while you have to wonder if there's anything here to respect or understand. Are our points of reference on some very basic things too far apart to even open a dialog? How can you have respect for a culture that has absolutely no respect for basic humanity? How can you understand a culture that's refined the Grudge to a regional passtime? And how do you reach a mutual understanding with a culture that's shown, time and time again, that it's not even going to try to respect and understand yours?
I feel bad about saying it, I really do. I'm sure there's plenty of decent and moderate people in these countries who're just trying to get by as best as they can and who don't particulary care for the system they're stuck in, but they're not the public face of their culture. The lunatics have taken over the asylum. (And, to spread some of the blame around, there's some eerie parallels in certain areas of American Christianity. Fundamentalism always ends with someone getting stoned.) But the worst part of all of it is that we're stuck trying to muddle through our attempts at a dialog because they've got all the damned oil. It'd be great to be able to just cut off all ties, politically blockade the entire region and just let the whole thing fester until it eats itself, but we have no decent alternative to the only thing the region can export besides violence. Our economic backbone is in the hands of cultures that are predisposed towards treating their fellow human beings like shit, and we just have to tsk-tsk and pussyfoot around that issue for fear that they'll take our oil away and/or blow us up. It's so fucking depressing.
Ah, fuckit. I should just go to bed.