Hi IQBAL LATIF; Re: "One of his daughters had made her way to the University of Texas where she received a master's degree in biology, a son had earned a Ph.D. from the University of Central Florida in Orlando, and yet another son had embarked on that quintessential American degree, an MBA at the American University in Cairo. Al-Qaradawi embodies anti-Americanism as the flip side of Americanization".
I don't see a contradiction here. You want your kids to have the best education, so you send them to the US. But that doesn't mean that you want the US (a) dropping bombs on your cousins in Iraq, or (b) bringing their morality into your country.
In fact, didn't some of the early leaders of India (and Pakistan at the time, I suppose), the ones who insisted on the British leaving, get educated in the West? I'm not perfectly familiar with the details of their personal lives, but I wouldn't doubt that they would send their kids to England for their education too.
It's been going on like that for thousands of years. The elites frequently send their kids to the best schools, whether they abroad or at home. They try to bring back the best of what they see (such as the internet the article refers to), and to reject the parts that they don't want. But it's hardly intelligent to force your country to live in mud huts simply because you don't agree with the morality or foreign policies of the leading countries.
Humans are basically chimps, and chimps are well known for imitation. Where humans beat chimps is that they are better at picking out what to imitate, and understanding and modifying that imitation.
To classify the US as a purely useless country, with no worthwhile technology or anything else, would be silly. No one can seriously doubt that the US leads the world in military technology, and there are many many other areas where we are world leaders.
Perhaps the author fails to understand the complexity of Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi. It notes that his complaint with the US is about: "... the arrogance of the United States and the cruelty of the war it unleashed on Iraq." I fail to see what that has to do with where your children are educated. If the man were a simpleton, who can only possess one thought, then he could conclude that since the US is "arrogant" and started a "cruel" war, therefore the US cannot offer good education. But the very arrogance of the US that he is complaining about speaks to the technological advantages of the US.
Now if the sheik's message was about the "incompetence" of the US, and their inability to compete in business, then his sending his kids to be educated here would be more difficult to understand, though still not impossible. To come to the conclusion that he shouldn't have his kids educated here he would have had to have commented on the "incompetence of the Americans at educating foreign students", LOL.
And no one would think that when the sheik says the US is "arrogant", that this would apply to everyone in the US. Nor would it necessarily apply to every school in the US. Far less than 100% of the American people were in support of the "cruel" war in Iraq. Nor should the American people, as a whole, be blamed for the admittedly arrogant actions of the few people who arranged for the disastrous war with Iraq.
It seems to me that the problem with finding fault with the Sheik for sending his kids to be educated in the "Mother of all Arrogance" is similar to the Israeli tendency to blame the Palestinians for criminal acts by a minority of Palestinian citizens (and vice versa). It's a generalization that neither logic nor experience supports. Nations are not collections of identical creatures; and collective punishment or reward is ineffective.
-- Carl |
