OFF: Freeedom of Speech

[M Holmes]

trev writes:

> ..and ...
> it seems to me that the hatred of the west felt by the fundamentalist
> islamic arabs is more to do with jealousy of our technological and social
> superiority.

I have grave doubts about this. The Wahhabi creed, which is largely
behind this is based on teachings by Qutb. His argument is that Western
civilisation has made a fatal error in divorcing religion from the state
and that people here live largely empty and meaningless lives dedicated
to amassing wealth and material goods and trying to create the perfect
lawn or stereo sound.

His idea is that arab society used to be the greatest in the world and
must not be permitted to become merely a poorer copy of the West. What's
felt is more strongly a rejection and frustration that Western
civilisation can be so utterly wrong and yet utterly successful that it
seems to be inevitable that it will become the first planet-wide
civilisation.

One doesn't have to go completely along with that to realise that he has
something of a point in that we are prone to rather neurotic obsessions
(such as the perfect lawn or stereo) and that humanity in general would
have much to lose by yet more indigenous cultures being swamped.  There
used to be 30,000 cultures on this planet and there has to be a
suspicion that we might have have had something to learn from many of
those now extinct.

> this is being expressed by them by these religious excuses.  i have
> been looking into the historical reasons why there is not a single
> arab state capable of manufacturing a car or an aircraft (apart from
> oman where there is an aircraft being made by western companies).
> there are many reasons, but the one which really seemed relevant is
> the fact that their right-wing facistic mullahs and pashas or whatever
> their title was, actually banned the printing press for 200 years thus
> preventing the extrapolation of technological ideas in the east -
> until it was too late.

>From another point of view, can there be any doubt that the printing
press *is* a carrier of alien ideas which can destroy a society? We in
the West are after all happy to say that the photocopier helped destroy
the USSR.

In short: what if the goal of the arab leaders wasn't to be able to
build aeroplanes but to have the perfect religious society? Would it be
morally OK for the West to subsume their society just because we can.
Alternatively if we could somehow fence it off and ignore it, would that
be fair on some poor arab kid who might want to grow up to design rockets?

> > we in the west used to be in a similar state but during the past 400
> > years  or so, the humanistic "lefty" elements in our society have, by
> > their blood  sweat toil and tears, raised up our level of
> > governmental and legal ethics so that now we rightly look upon the
> > ethical and social outlook of the fundamentalist arab world as being
> > disgustingly medieval. no wonder our hackles are raised by these
> > fanatics when we have shed so much > blood and effort, for so long, to
> > achieve "freedom of speech".

I suspect there's underappreciation amongst your average guy in Saudi
that FoS is a "sacred" idea here.

> i am glad to see in the recent news
> that the more civilised elements of islam are at last speaking up.

You and me both.

> terrorism is a fearful weapon which is aimed at you and me and our
> families and loved ones.  it works because it uses "stealth".  the
> only people who can unshield this "stealth weapon" are the more
> intelligent, psychologically balanced, and educated elements of islam
> because they alone are in a position to pinpoint the killers.  i
> mean...bush isn't much better, if at all, but he won't be in power
> forever.

Whoever is in power in the US, the problem of energy will still exist.
The US would need 200 nuclear power stations to have a shot at any kind
of energy independence and that would raise questions as to when the
uranium will run out.

Could be that if we don't develop fusion power soon, we'll see some
uncontrolled fusion in sundry places.

FoFP