Monday, October 27, 2003
Listening to MahathirTom reacted on my post on the speech of Mahathir a while ago and pointed to this interesting article by Paul Krugman of the New York Times. Krugman makes a couple of valid points but of course I don't agree with him ;). Because, as much as I loathe the Dubya administration, I'm evenly allergic to the cultural relativism of some progressive voices - and I think Krugman's reasoning is to some extent affected by this relativism. He mentions:
" The fact is that Mr. Mahathir, though guilty of serious abuses of power, is in many ways about as forward-looking a Muslim leader as we're likely to find. And Malaysia is the kind of success story we wish we saw more of: an impressive record of economic growth, rising education levels and general modernization in a nation with a Muslim majority."
The thing is, there is another nation with a Muslim majority that didn't pass on modernity - Turkey - and this is mainly due to the vision of Kemal Ataturk, who reformed the Ottoman empire from a society governed by Muslim theological scholars to a modern secular state.
Yet almost hundred years after this we hardly see any other dominantly Muslim nation with a decent track record in general education levels, scientific output, economic growth et cetera (even more surprising given the abundant natural resources some of those nations have).
So Krugman says Malaysia may be one exception, supposedly due to a domestic balancing act Mahathir is performing between the dominantly Muslim majority and an ethnic Chinese minority, responsible for most of the economic drive of the country. The anti-semitism in Mahathir's speech - intended to cover his domestic flank - is then an indicator of how deeply rooted anti-semitism and anti-Americanism is in the Muslim populations, a situation encouraged by the retarded policies of the Bushites.
This might be an accurate depiction of the current state of affairs, but openly blaming the issues and lack of progress of an entire culture on the Jews/Americans/fill-in-your-favorite-third-party without a healthy dose of self-criticism is pathethic, even though one might just have strategic reasons to do so. It also demonstrates very well how the lack of open debate and introspection in that culture forces even the relatively 'enlightened' leaders of it to convey their messages in indirect and covert ways. In the end, it doesn't really matter; the only way things will change and progress can be made is by removing institutionalized religious 'clerics' who are poisoning the minds of people from the cradle on with their irrational and insane crap - just like Ataturk did many years ago (btw, I realize Kemal was no saint either, but his political/military exploits are I think here not relevant). Can someone also explain me why Muslims in South East Asia need to be encouraged to rally around a conflict many thousands of miles away from them? In the past ten years more Muslim casualties have reportedly been counted in the Kashmir conflict between Pakistan and India than in the conflict between Israel and the Palestines, yet I hear no Muslim leader rage about Indians ruling the world (I guess the Jews are an easier target). I'm with Richard Dawkins here (check his 'A Devil's Chaplain' collection of essays - a post by metamanda pointed me to this):
"The human psyche has two great sicknesses: the urge to carry vendetta across generations, and the tendency to fasten group labels on people rather than see them as individuals. Abrahamic religion [i.e. Judaism, Christianity and Islam] mixes explosively with (and gives strong sanction to) both. "
El Hombre 11:52 PM