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Politics : Stop the War!

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To: broadstbull who wrote (8690)4/6/2003 5:14:54 PM
From: Art Bechhoefer  Read Replies (1) of 21614
 
No one, apparently not even the well known scholar Bernard Lewis, has been able to explain why Muslim countries have so much difficulty in modernizing. The reasons you offer as an explanation are merely symptoms, not causes. The latest attempt by Bernard Lewis, in his recently published book "The Crisis of Islam--Holy War and Unholy Terror," doesn't answer the question. And if he doesn't know the answer, then you and everyone else will have to dig deeper.

I think one of the reasons the question hasn't been answered is that people in the West tend to analyze the problems of Arab or Muslim countries by drawing parallels with western history and western tyrants in particular (e.g., Hitler, Stalin). I don't think this is a very fruitful way to get at the problem.

In asserting that Arab (Muslim?) governments are "ALL either dictatorships, royalty, or fundamentalists," you apparently don't find a place either for Egypt or Turkey, both of which have made a great deal of progress with parliamentary government and elected representatives. It's too easy to paint every Arab country as if it is inferior to the West, and in particular to the form of democracy practiced in the U.S. Some people, even in the West, would disagree.

Art
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