Rufus Polson
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Rufus Polson commented on Is there a clash of civilizations? on April 1, 2008, 11:22 PM
jmunski makes an interesting point, but I think it springs from a common lack of awareness of just what was happening in between the twelfth century or so, when the Middle East was advanced and Western Europe was backward, and today. If we look at the time of the Industrial Revolution, when change was moving quickly, and at what was happening in the Middle East, we see drastic interventions by powers such as England and France. These interventions often quite calculatedly crushed attempts at modernization by countries such as Egypt or Turkey. The Muslim world was not lost in some dream of stasis, it was to a considerable extent kept in stasis by force. England and France continued their interventions well into the twentieth century, and the United States has continued into the twenty first, propping up corrupt reactionary regimes and destroying more vigorous ones. To now say that the cultural difference is all about *their* rejection of change has about the credibility of an older brother telling his younger brother "Stop hitting yourself" as he bashes the poor kid's own fist into his face.
Rufus Polson commented on Is there a clash of civilizations? on April 2, 2008, 3:22 AM
jmunski makes an interesting point, but I think it springs from a common lack of awareness of just what was happening in between the twelfth century or so, when the Middle East was advanced and Western Europe was backward, and today.If we look at the time of the Industrial Revolution, when change was moving quickly, and at what was happening in the Middle East, we see drastic interventions by powers such as England and France. These interventions often quite calculatedly crushed attempts at modernization by countries such as Egypt or Turkey. The Muslim world was not lost in some dream of stasis, it was to a considerable extent kept in stasis by force. England and France continued their interventions well into the twentieth century, and the United States has continued into the twenty first, propping up corrupt reactionary regimes and destroying more vigorous ones. To now say that the cultural difference is all about *their* rejection of change has about the credibility of an older brother telling his younger brother "Stop hitting yourself" as he bashes the poor kid's own fist into his face.