I wonder what being Muslim in name only means?
The BBC has an item on Today asking if Islam is not compatible with modernity, can Islam ever comfortably conform to Western society? Ali Allawi, former cabinet minister in the Iraqi post-war governments, argues in his new book The Crisis of Islamic Civilisation that Muslim modernisers have been seduced by a certainty in scientific knowledge to the extent that they are now Muslim in name alone.
Not sure where this one goes. It seems to me that for some Islamics their interest in “scientific knowledge” does not extend much beyond wiring up an explosives belt or planting a road site bomb. Or maybe piloting a plane or two. To express such a view on the BBC, as I have done on a few occasions, is to invoke the wrath of the Beeboids. It strikes me that Muslim modernisers is an oxymoronic term, a bit like principled politician or balanced BBC. Why can we not challenge Islam, just as every other faith is challenged? Might it be that whilst all religions are equal, some are more equal than others?
“if Islam is not compatible with modernity, can Islam ever comfortably conform to Western society” sound like challenging Islam to me.
I’m not the first to point this out, but Islam has never been through a ‘reformation’ period, unlike Judeaism and Christianity.
And tbh, it’s hard to see how it could, without stopping stopping being Islam altogether. Anti-semitism and anti-christianity are hardwired into it. If you’ve read the Koran, this is obvious within the first chapter (or whatever they’re called).
I’ve always suspected that the anti-christian attitude is a BIG reason why the left (and the Beeb) so love Islam…
Islam is a joke. If someone brought back cavemen would we expect them to integrate into society?
Would we allow them to grab any female they fancied and drag her off on the basis that “it’s their culture innit?”
Guess where most of the BBC will be off for their hols this year.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1181639/Spanish-cities-league-cocaine-laced-air.html
The ongoing frustration for me is that there is a massive difference between muslims, pakis and arabs. Often these are confused but for the sake of clarity, I will generalise it.
Arabs are generally muslim from decent and hardened in their religious beliefs which is why we dont see them immigrating to the UK in their droves. They are also wealthy and not open to any modernisation.
Muslims (is anyone who believes in the religion iteself – could be any colour or creed from any background)
Pakis – the UK seems to be focussing on immigrating and promoting this lot because they are the lowest form. Both intellectually, sprititually and morally. They come here in their droves to sponge from this government. This is where the actual problem is in the UK.
CryBaby
Last I looked, this forum is dedicated in bringing bbc bias to the fore. If you want to just demonstrate your expertise on islam, than may I respectfully suggest that your comments will do more justice on other, more dedicated, forums on “Pakis” and immigration.
Anonymous said…
“if Islam is not compatible with modernity, can Islam ever comfortably conform to Western society” sound like challenging Islam to me.
8:50 AM, May 15, 2009
That was how the item was introduced on Today, prior to discussing why the statement was not true, and adding that many people shared that view. It struck me as odd at the time, since the BBC gives the impression that no-one shares that view. Except the BNP.
I certainly don’t recall any equally soft interviews with people who would agree with the statement.
"If you've read the Koran, this is obvious within the first chapter (or whatever they're called)."
Sutekh, isn't it read left to right, i.e. nearer the end of the book than the front?
Anyway problem is, as in many religions, when people take it word-for-word, uneducated and angry fanatics. I have an intelligent Indian friend who is Muslim & demonstrated there are good principles in there to live by.
CryBaby, you seem to be a good example of the uneducated non-religious fanatic, where your only 'wisdom' seems to come from BNP leaflets.
I think its too general a statement to say that Islam is not challenged on the bbc. Only last Sunday on ‘the big question’ there was a discussion between all faiths, including one or two I hadn’t heard of, and while there was a concerted effort to play down the christian point forcefully put by a christian lady, the christian view did come out,and islams shortcomings particularly on their lack of humour over the cartoons were discussed in length.
Can’t really comment on this programme as I didn’t hear it, but maybe the book defined the paramaters of the discussion and that could be the problem here rather than saying islam cannot be challenged.
I think sweeping statements limit arguments rather than win them, unless you can give absolute proof. Islam like other religions should be relegated to the private sphere and not used to justify limitations on freedom of speech etc. It’s the lack of freedom of speech that should be challenged rather than modernising Islam. If they can’t modernise, then they should go live in their ghettoes and not try to influence wider society.
Crybaby 10:07
You are talking out of your backside !
Why does the Beeb make it just a contest between competing medieval fairytales? We need true religious balance, meaning time for those of No Faith. Those of us with “No to Faith” badges unfortunately don’t go lecturing people how to live so it would be five minutes of silence.
There’s a germ of truth in crybaby’s comment. We are so manipulted by pc that truth just goes out the window. In Saudi Pakistanis are regarded as bottom of the heap. They do the menial jobs Arabs will not sully themselves with and are often no better than slaves. Islam has it’s pecking order and Arabs being the originators of Islam inhabit the top table.
Andrewsouthlondon repeats the usual mantra that people with no faith don’t get a chance to be heard. Actually, atheists get far more than their representative share on the BBC and most other media outlets which have a presumption of the truth of atheism in everything they produce. And as a mater of fact, far from not lecturing, people of no faith are continually insulting those with a faith and calling for religious discussion to be supressed.
You’re absolutely right. Try to speak out against Islam and their point blank refusal to integrate into our society and we’re accused of being racist. I recently wrote this. It’s an outrage.
This is symptomatic of the dhimmitude of the BBC towards Islam, subsidised by BBC licencepayers.
The BBC’s cultural relativism is being imposing on the British people, as the BBC actively promote its agenda of Islamization.
1.)April, 2008:
‘Times’-
“BBC chief Mark Thompson warns of ‘over-cautious’ Islam coverage”
[Extract]:
“Mark Thompson, the Director General of the BBC, tonight warned broadcasters against becoming overly-cautious in their reporting on Islam for fear of causing offence to Muslims.
“Speaking at Westminster Cathedral Mr Thompson, a practising Catholic, said there was ‘a growing nervousness about discussion about Islam and its relationship to the traditions and values of British and Western society as a whole’.
“He said that the BBC and other major channels ‘have a special responsibility’ to ensure that debates about ‘faith and society’ and about any religion ‘should not be foreclosed or censored’.
(‘Times’ 10/04/08.)
2.)October, 2008:
‘Daily Mail’-
“The BBC will tackle Islam differently to Christianity, admits its Director General”
[Extract]:
“BBC programme-makers tackle Islam differently from Christianity, its director general has admitted.
“Mark Thompson was responding to criticism from comedian Ben Elton, who accused the BBC of being scared to make jokes about Islam.
“Mr Thompson said: ‘What Christian identity feels like to the broad population is a little bit different to people for whom their religion is also associated with an ethnic identity which has not been fully integrated.”
(‘Mail’ 15/10/08.)
3.)May, 2009,
‘Daily Mail’:
“BBC appoints Muslim to top religious post in controversial first”
[Extract]:
“The BBC yesterday appointed a Muslim as its head of religious programming in a radical departure from broadcasting tradition.
The post – considered one of the most influential religious roles in the country – has gone to Aaqil Ahmed, who has been working as an executive at Channel 4.
The appointment will cause dismay among the Christian churches.”
The BBC are putting on a brave face re: The One and Guantanamo.
“He has no other choice etc”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8051275.stm
Anyone else notice a change in the tone of the BBC over MP expenses with Malik getting found out?
Last night as I reported here the BBC just refused to mention him anywhere on their news service. Clare Short was the only one mentioned.
Sky stuck to this story and Sky went again this morning. Slowly the BBC responded and also had to cover the Malik story.
Now he’s resigned and the BBC are playing the “enough is enough”. The vile Steve Richards from the Independent on the Daily Politics was claiming that the public have lost the plot and should now ease off (how dare people shout at a Labour politician as his point)
Why? Because more and more LABOUR politicinas are being found out?
The BBC seem upset that horse face Beckett got a kicking on QT last night, yet week after week we on this blog comment on how Tories get beaten up but never a word of complaint.
The BBC and the liberal press didn’t seem to mind when at the start of the week it was Tory MPs and their non existent heli pads or moats (ho ho ho )
But now it’s grubby Liebour MPs that have been the worst offenders (Blears, Morley, Malik, McNulty, 5 bellies) the BBC and the liberal media are now attacking the Telegraph.
Clearly the word has gone out from the one eyed twat. “Kill it”. The BBC is trying just that.
A weekly International TV show called Forum is taking place on Thursday 21st May 2009, hosted by Andrew Gilligan, British Journalist of the Year.
Press TV is pleased to invite you to join as an audience for an hour long debate show covering International current affairs. The programme is part of a weekly series of televised debates on various contemporary political issues.
This is an interactive debate, where you will get the chance to put your questions and arguments to the panel.
The show will feature 4 specialist panellists who will be asked the question.
Click on the link to book the place.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=sJTszTKOVTz74sV0U_2bdAzw_3d_3d
If you are interested in attending the event and would like to put a question to the panellists on air please call Johnny on 0208 728 6472 for more information.
M.Hussain
Martin
"The vile Steve Richards from the Independent on the Daily Politics was claiming that the public have lost the plot and should now ease off (how dare people shout at a Labour politician as his point)"
Richards is, along with SirMikeWhiteLiberal, one of the very worst examples of what Peter Oborne calls a "client" journalist,
always ready to leap to the defence of the Political Class in general, & New Labour in particular.
Craig: Spot on. These people are so far up the arses of politicians they just don’t get it either.
MArtin – Today led its coverage this morning at 6am with the Malik story. And last night’s coverage was led by Short.
Martin @9:30 AM
Would we allow them to grab any female they fancied and drag her off on the basis that “it’s their culture innit?”
Actually, you already do allow it. The BBC will find the occasional women’s rights activist to speak out against it, but unless one of the girls turns up dead, they get away with it all the time.
Nothing is done about it except local councils occasionally hire more community outreach workers.
Anonymouswineliberral @8:50 AM
“if Islam is not compatible with modernity, can Islam ever comfortably conform to Western society” sound like challenging Islam to me.The first words out of Humphrys mouth were that the viewpoint David Vance gives is being challenged by his guest. The whole point of this segment is to change people’s minds about it, to convince people like DV that they have it wrong.
You obviously didn’t listen to the segment at all, but instead leapt to contradict DV, reflexively taking an unthinking, default position.
As for the segment itself, Humphrys needs to be smacked for it.
‘Anonymous’/M.Hussein (2:06 pm above)
Yes, we know that Press TV is allowed to operate in the UK, with its London studios, representing Ahmadinejad, and paid for by the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Anon: Crawl back to your beeboid office. The BBC KNEW the big story was Malik, he’s a fucking Minister. Short is a has been.
Everyone was over Malik, but the BBC didn’t even mention it.
Now piss off.
Sorry, I didnt make my point…
Can Islam conform? – I dont believe it can or will, but I do believe that individuals from the religion can and do. Even the ones who do conform to a certain degree, tend to acknowledge that they dont follow their religion properly. The religion is open to interpretation but not open to any form of alteration or conformity.
I dont understand however why you think it cannot be challenged. It can and should be.
David Preiser: That’s my point. Retarded Muslims are allowed to practice things that would not be accepted by any other group.
White men sending their 14 year old daughters off to another Country to be married and raped would be jailed.
Anonymous said…
“Martin – Today led its coverage this morning at 6am with the Malik story. And last night’s coverage was led by Short.”
Well, as I posted elsewhere, between 7.00 and 9.00 (when most people – including me!) Today put the Malik story at the top of its new bulletin, but Humphrys, Naughtie and Robinson (etc) did not even mention his name never mind discuss the details of his expense claims once between those hours, as you would surely have expected.
Martin was right. The BBC were trying to downplay the story. It’s simple, out-and-out bias.
(As I was writing this Martin replied to you, Mr Nonny. Please take his advice.)
BBC (‘Newsfront page’):
1.)”Justice minister Malik steps down.”
2.) ‘Youtube October 2008 Shahid Malik Labour MP’ (video clip).
Malik is the lead story now on the website and has been all day.
Martin,
Those people were cavemen before Mohammed was a twinkle in his uncircumcised father’s eye. That’s the real problem. I mean, there’s all sorts of barbarity going on in Africa due to the myriad of pagan, animist, magical beliefs. The slaughter in places like Rwanda and the Congo have nothing to do with Islam. Female circumcision existed in Africa before Islam, and we could go on and on about other forms of caveman behavior that existed long before Mohammed married the little girl. That was acceptable in his caveman culture before he invented Islam, of course.
The BBC is intellectually unable to address this, of course. They can scold an African animist for killing a “possessed” child, but they cannot scold a Muslim for killing his daughter because she didn’t want to marry some old slob who payed for her.
The Beeboids don’t love Islam, really, they’re just intellectually weak, and afraid of them.
Anon 3.53
As I also pointed out on another thread earlier, the website put the ex-Labour, ex-minister Clare Short first and the still-Labour, then-current minister Malik second at 7.00 – when the hasbeen Clare Short’s story was clearly of lesser importance.
So MPs expenses may have led all day (unavoidably), but the Malik story certainly didn’t.
‘Telegraph’:
“Shahid Malik, his house and the slum landlord: MPs’ expenses”
[Extract]:
“The controversial way in which Justice Minister Shahid Malik was able to run up the highest expenses claim of any MP can be disclosed by ‘The Telegraph’.
(By Robert Winnett and Gordon Rayner)
“Since being elected in 2005, Mr Malik has claimed the maximum amount allowable for a second home, amounting to £66,827 over three years. Last year, he claimed £23,083 from the taxpayer for his London town house, equivalent to £443 per week. The Telegraph can disclose that the ‘main home’ for which Mr Malik pays out of his own pocket – a three-bedroom house in his constituency of Dewsbury, West Yorks – has been secured at a discounted rent of less than £100 per week from a local landlord who was fined for letting an ‘uninhabitable’ house.
Mr Malik also rents a constituency office from the same businessman, Tahir Zaman.”
Why didnt the BBC cover this Malik story the same time as other national papers?
I get the BBC were playing down the story, but I dont get why?
CryBaby: Because Malik is a Muslim AND A Liebour minister. The BBC were VERY happy at the start of the week to have a go and go at Tory toffs and their Moats (as the twat Malik did yesterday), BUT David Cameron played a total blinder and put McTwat on the back foot. Then the Telegraph came out with some real juicy stories about Liebour and the BBC suddenly tried to downplay things.
Just look at the SHOCK at the BBC today about Beckett being booed. Note Teresa May got very little abuse which as we know is unusual for a QT audience hand picked by the BBC from the usual suspects of politics students, bushy bearded Muslims and public sector workers.
When the Telegraph broke the latest story last night Sky were already waiting, but I honestly checked the BBC news website and there was NO mention of Malik at all, just Clare Short. Surely a serving Minister is more important than a woman who is no longer a member of the Labour Party? Oh hang on here’s a thought, she’s no longer Labour so free game for the BBC.
You just know that the BBC were trying to help out the one eyed twat.
I think the sheer righteous, arrogant indignation in Mr. Malik’s tone, how AFFRONTED he feels, is the thing that made me prick up my ears, rather than any consideration of his religion…
Typical self-righteous lefty. And don’t the Beeb just lap it up?
Mr. Malik’s performance on Sky this morning should be (if it isn’t already) put on YouTube. It was a jaw-dropper.
Craig: Add to that ming Campbell’s hopeless performance on QT and if you haven’t heard it check out Limpdick Opec’s pathetic performance on Radio 5.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/fivelive_aod.shtml?fivelive/morning_wed
Go about 40 minutes in. It is both hilarious and pathetic.
Even better is that on guido’s blog he was in the Strangers Bar at the Commons the other night and apparently Limpdick was looking a very broken man.
Malik is a prick. So is the BBC
Thanks Martin: So if I’m reading this correctly, the bbc is biased in favour of Labour because of..the TV License funding?
I found Malik’s performance this morning super arrogant but he played the racist card, I went steaming into the comments of Sky News.
Malik: “Is it coz I is Black”
Real World: No, its because you’re a thieving little ****!
Crybaby: Not just funding. The BBC feel that thier £3.5 billion free meal ticket fo rlife is safer with a Liebour Government than a Tory one. Elements of the Tory pary hate the BBC.
But the BBC is run by leftists. It’s quite amazing how many beeboids now work for Nu Liebour. I think some bird went from the BBC recently and is now McSnots visual guru. She’s failing badly.
Polly Toynbee used to work for the BBC, she’s a rabid leftist.
People like Marr, Robinson etc are so far up the arse of Liebour Government you can only see thier Toenails. In fact nick Robinson’s nickname att he BBC is Toenails for that very reason.
We hear over and over again that Islam has failed, that it is in crisis. The claims always involve comparing Islam to something else, though to what is often unclear. If ‘failed’ just means ‘hasn’t kept up with the West’, Islam has indeed failed. So has every other culture, except to the extent it has Westernized. And if a culture fails whenever it falls behind the economic or technological front runners, Italian culture has failed in relation to Japanese or American culture.
But if ‘failed’ means something else, what is that? Bernard Lewis says: “In the course of the twentieth century it became abundantly clear that things had gone badly wrong in the Middle East–and, indeed, in all the lands of Islam. Compared with Christendom, its rival for more than a millennium, the world of Islam had become poor, weak, and ignorant.” He also tells us that “Arab” nations rank poorly on a scale of “economic freedom”.
Even if we knew whether we were comparing the West or Christendom with The Middle East or the Arab World or the Muslim World, the terms of the comparison would be uncertain.
It is almost as if any parameter will do, as long as Islam comes out on the bottom: should my heart really swell with pride if I hear that my country has lots of ‘economic freedom’? Sometimes Islam seems to have failed primarily in areas where there is no consensus that it is good to succeed.
Should Egyptians envy the Americans their fine electoral system and the impressive leaders it produces?
Ought Tunisians to learn criminal justice from US courts and prisons?
Should impoverished Iranians yearn for the medical care they would get in America?
We needn’t be relativists when we compare civilizations. But it is one thing to insist on applying ‘Western values’ to practices such as slavery or female genital mutilation. It is quite another to suppose that Western values are whatever today’s ideologues declare them to be– economic freedom, for instance, as opposed to equally Western values like asceticism, environ-mentalism, socialism and communism. And it is something else again to compare Islamic realities, not with Western ones, but with America as it looks to patriotic bar-stool warmers after six beers.
Suppose, then, that we retain ‘Western values’, but spare ourselves the ideological claptrap about democracy and economic freedom. One Western value, I think, is that one should attempt some degree of objectivity when comparing cultures: if one cannot entirely avoid applying one’s own values, one can at least rely only on their most nearly uncontroversial, universal elements. This means avoiding even such apparently undoctrinaire measures as ‘average annual income’ (also a Lewis yardstick). What’s more important, after all, the average or the minimum? What if the average rises only because the rich get richer, despite immense suffering at the bottom of the scale? Western values oblige us to measure the success of society in genuinely moral rather than ideological terms.
If we insist on judging a whole civilization, three constraints might curb our arrogance. First, we should be looking at the basics–poverty, health, exposure to violence. For all the critics of Islam praise freedom and democracy, they offer as proof of their ideological pudding the allegedly superior capacity of non-Islamic societies to deliver these basics. Second, we should measure the success of society by how things are at the bottom of the social scale. Delivering the basics doesn’t mean much if you don’t deliver them to everyone, and even a dazzling civilization can’t be counted successful if it’s built on misery. Third, any judgements delivered must be strictly comparative. The issue isn’t whether Islam has failed to meet certain standards, but whether its failures are worse than those of Christianity.
The comparison, in this form, defines two civilizations by their adherence to two religions. Islam is being compared, not with the West–not with a region–but with Bernard Lewis’ ‘Christendom’. We could, it is true, compare the Islamic Middle East with Western Europe and the US. That would lead only to the unsurprising truth that the West, which actively colonized or occupied the Middle East for many years, did better. We would draw exactly the same conclusions if we compared the West with Latin America, or sub-Saharan Africa, or the Indian subcontinent. To compare regions is not to compare civilizations, and to single out a lagging Islamic region when there are many lagging non-Islamic regions is just plain dishonest. So a comparison of Lewis’ “all the lands of Islam” with ‘all the lands of Christendom’, which focuses on civilizations rather than regions, seems more likely to transcend particular regional problems and advantages. We will say something about the Middle East versus the West later.
To make the comparison, let’s look at some numerical indicators of well-being, as well as some recent history: you can’t very well assess well-being within a culture or society without looking at the wars they have experienced. The idea is to see whether Islam is worse than Christianity at protecting people from the worst things in life. I’ll base the initial comparison on UN statistics. These seem to be the best available, though they have one drawback: for each parameter, the UN figures offer information on a slightly different batch of countries.
The UN offers some ‘millennium indicators’ of material well-being, including health. (There are 48 indicators in all, including HIV incidence, condom use, malaria incidence, educational indicators, market access, internet use, and so on. I have selected some of the ones most directly related to material well-being. The reader can readily verify that my selection is not slanted to favor Islam.) The figures will be integrated with information about the religions of the countries listed, compiled from the Information Please Almanac and the CIA World Factbook. To start, take infant mortality rates for the latest year available, 2000. Do these figures make Islam look worse than Christendom?
Here are figures for the 27 countries whose infant mortality rate is a horrific 10% or more, i.e., at least 100. (This cutoff doesn’t skew anything; the next three countries are not Islamic.)
Infant mortality rate (0-1 year) per 1,000 live births (UNICEF estimates), 2000
Sierra Leone
180
Islam 40%, Christian 35%,
Other 20%
Angola
172
Roman Catholic 47%,
Protestant 38%, Other 15%
Afghanistan
165
Islam (167 in 1990
under secular ruler Najibullah)
Niger
159
Islam 80%, Animist
and Christian 20%
Liberia
157
other 40%, Christian 40%,
Islam 20%
Mali
142
Islam
Somalia
133
Islam
Guinea-Bissau
132
other 65%, Islam 30%, Christian 5%
Congo-Kinshasa
128
Roman Catholic 50%, Protestant 20%,
Kimbanguist 10%, Islam 10%
Mozambique
126
other 60%, Christian 30%, Islam 10%
Mauritania
120
Islam
Chad
118
Islam 44%, Christian 33%, other 23%
Ethiopia [from
1993]
117
Christian
Malawi
117
Christian 75%, Islam 20%
Central African
Republic
115
Christian (other influence) 50%,
Islam 15%, other 35%
Burundi
114
Roman Catholic 62%, Protestant 5%,
other 32%
Guinea
112
Islam 85%, other 7%, Christian 8%
Zambia
112
Christian 50%-75%, Islam and
Hindu 24%-49%, other 1%
Nigeria
110
Islam 50%, Christian 40%,
other 10%
Burkina Faso
105
Islam 50%, Christian (mainly Roman
Catholic) 10%, other 40%
Iraq
105
Islam
Tanzania
104
Christian 40%, Islam 33%
Equatorial Guinea
103
predominantly Christian
with pagan practices
Cote d’Ivoire
102
other 60%, Islam 23%,
Christian 17%
Djibouti
102
Islam
Swaziland
101
Christian 60%, other 40%
Rwanda
100
Roman Catholic 56%, Protestant 18%,
Islam 1%, Other 25%
Certainly the Islamic religion figures prominently among those states with high infant mortality, but Islamic civilization does not. Sierra Leone, for instance, was not only a British colony from 1808 to 1961, but also a seat of British administrative and education institutions for the region. Its current misery is due largely to the “reign of terror” (Infoplease) of Catholic-educated Johnny Paul Koroma, now a born-again Christian. Afghanistan’s infant morality rate was even worse under the secular, Western rule of Russian-backed Najibullah; Iraq’s is a result of Western sanctions policies and Saddam Hussein’s secular, Westernized rule. Otherwise, every single state on the list with a substantial Islamic population has been a Christian colony or protectorate for much of its history. More purely Islamic states, like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Lybia, are nowhere to be found. Nothing here suggests that the worst infant mortality rates are found in the Islamic rather than in the Christian world.
Suppose then we look at something perhaps even more basic: nutrition, specifically those undernourished as percentage of total population. For simplicity’s sake we’ll consider only the worst ten cases. Again, readers can easily consult the original source to verify that this abbreviated view doesn’t distort the comparison.
Nutrition, undernourished as percentage of total population (FAO estimates 1998-2000 average)
Congo-Kinshasa
73
Christian
Somalia
71
Islamic
Afghanistan
70
Islamic
Burundi
69
Christian
Tajikistan
64
80% Islamic population: anti-Islamic government
Eritrea
58
not predominantly Islamic; long Christian rule
Mozambique
55
not predominantly Islamic; long Christian rule
Angola
50
Christian
Haiti
50
Christian
Zambia
50
mainly Christian
Nothing here suggests that Islam is particularly bad at nourishing its people.
What of poverty? There are UN figures on the percentage of population who consume less than $1 a day.
‘Poverty, percentage of population below $1 (PPP) per day consumption (WB)’ (1998 figures when available, otherwise 1999, indicated with *)
Zambia
63.7
Mainly Christian
Gambia
59.3
Islam
Madagascar
49.1*
Christian 41%,
Islam 7%, other 52%
Ghana
44.8*
Islam 30%, Christian 24%,
other 38%
Honduras
24.3
Christian
Venezuela
23
Christian
El Salvador
21
Christian
Colombia
19.7
Christian
Paraguay
19.5
Christian
China
18.8*
Other
Again the figures give no support whatever to the ‘failure of Islam’ hypothesis. (Admittedly the list is very incomplete–where are the poverty-stricken Christian states of Haiti and Ethiopia?–but not, I believe, unrepresentative.)
Sanitation is another relatively uncontroversial indicator of how well a society is doing. This time I’ll list the twelve worst, because the last three on the list are tied.
Sanitation, percentage of population with access to improved sanitation, total (WHO-UNICEF 2000)
Rwanda
8
Christian
Afghanistan
12
Islamic
Ethiopia
[from 1993]
12
Christian
Eritrea
13
not predominantly Islamic;
long Christian rule
Cambodia
17
Buddhist
Niger
20
Islamic
Congo-Kinshasa
21
Christian
Benin
23
Christian 15%, Islam 15%,
other 70%
Central African
Republic
25
Christian (animist influence) 50%,
Islam 15%, other 35%
Haiti
28
Christian
India
28
predominantly Hindu
Nepal
28
predominantly Hindu
Islam is certainly no standout in this hall of shame.
Note that for individual countries, these indicators work very well. Haiti, Burundi, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Ethiopia would, as expected, score much lower on all of them than Britain, France, Switzerland, and the US. Pretty much anyone, regardless of religion or culture, would agree that the low scorers are doing worse than the high scorers. If we were comparing democracy, or freedom, or ignorance, we couldn’t get anything like the same consensus: Cuba or Saudi Arabia are doubtless less democratic than Mexico or Argentina, but not everyone would be sure which are the failed societies.
So on these non-ideological measures of well-being, Islam is no failure in comparison with ‘Christendom’. Indeed Christendom, with its economic dominance and technological superiority, might well be considered more reprehensible in its failures to provide for its poor. Another relatively unbiased but somewhat less materialistic measure would be the degree of violence in a society. One indicator is the murder rates, and the countries with high ones are overwhelmingly Christian. But since murder statistics are debatable, we might also want to survey the propensity of these two civilizations to generate wars. In recent times, if there any failure, it is Christianity. It is not just(!) that ‘Christendom’ has produced two world wars, and Hitler. The postwar period is hardly more encouraging. There is the Korean war, in which Christians but not Muslims played a central role, the Vietnam War which accounts for the deaths of as many as four million people, and terrible civil or colonial wars in Mozambique and Angola. Nor are the death tolls simply a function of Western technology: the horrendous low-tech killing in Rwanda and now in the Congo are thoroughly Christian. On the Islamic side, not much is in the same league. There is the Iran-Iraq war, instigated by secular, Westernized, Iraq. The Lebanese civil war involved both cultures, as does Algeria’s colonial past and, to a lesser extent, its present. So Islam, compared either to the West or to Christianity, has far less killing on its conscience.
What about internal repression? The great killing of Communists in predominantly Muslim Indonesia took place, not as part of some fundamentalist upsurge, but within the context of ongoing American cold-war interference. As for Syria and Iraq, Bernard Lewis himself says that
If you look, for example, at the regimes of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, of the late Hafez el-Asad in Syria, these are not part of the Islamic or Arab tradition; they are the results of European influence and the Europeanization of the Middle East, sometimes also called modernization or Westernization. (Truman News, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Volume V, Issue 1 March 1, 2003)
Iran is certainly Islamic, but it inherited its brutal secret police from its very Westernized and US-sponsored Shah. Though undeniably horrible cruelties are perpetrated throughout the Muslim world, Christianity–even forgetting that Hitler business– easily matches these in the recent past of Haiti, Greece, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, El Salvador, Guatemala, South Africa, Peru, Ethiopia, and many only slightly less vicious Christian dictatorships. And though none of these ‘Christian’ régimes deserve to be called Christian, their crimes are entirely the product of Christian civilization. The crimes of ‘Islamic’ régimes, by contrast, have in most cases important links to non-Islamic, indeed to ‘Christian’ influences.
So compared to Christendom, Islam doesn’t seem to have failed. What if it is instead compared to the West? Certainly on most measures of material well-being (but not of violence), the West triumphs. Yet virtually no one claims Christianity enabled the West to come out ahead, because the rise of the West coincides with the often violent fragmentation of Christianity and the spread of secularism.
‘Experts’ and pundits prefer to attribute Western dominance to democracy. But the West did not exactly elect itself into the lead: it triumphed largely because of its progress in science and technology. And it is a bit odd to see Western success as a failure of Islam, as if Muslims had contracted some strange mental disease: every other civilization fell equally far behind. In any case, can the West’s progress be attributed to democracy? Not likely, because its scientific and technological dominance came first.
The first major advances that put the West ahead included the astronomy of Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Galileo, and Kepler, the explorations of Columbus and Magellan, and the mathematics of Pascal and Fermat. All these occurred before there was the slightest hint of democracy. The English provided the impetus for a second wave of discovery and invention. It developed when the power of the monarchy had been reduced, but certainly before England could be called democratic: the vote excluded women, a large segment of the lower classes, and was in any case so corrupt and manipulated that no one considered it even remotely representative. This only began to be corrected with the First Reform Bill of 1832. Even by 1867, less than 10% of the adult population could vote, and real democracy came only in the early 20th century. Yet before 1832 we get Napier’s logarithms, Snell’s law of refraction, Harvey’s work on the circulation of the blood, the calculus of Newton, the economics of Adam Smith, Herschel’s discovery of Uranus, Hutton’s uniformitarianism, Priestly’s discovery of oxygen, Jenner’s smallpox vaccinations, and Dalton’s laws. In technology, we have Hargreaves’ spinning jenny, James Watt’s steam engine, Cartwright’s power loom, Whitney’s cotton gin, Fulton’s steamboat, Stephenson’s locomotive engine, and the first railroad. This activity is complemented on the not even nominally democratic continent by Bernouilli’s work on probability and fluid mechanics, Michel and Montgolfier’s hot air balloon, Berthollet’s chemical nomenclature, Volta’s battery, Ampère’s work on electricity, Gauss’ and Lobachevsky’s mathematics, Avogadro’s chemistry, and Ampere’s force law.
All the subsequent progress of the 19th century and beyond, up to and including the theory of relativity, occurred before the institution of women’s suffrage (1919) and truly universal suffrage (1928), and therefore before the existence of any ‘democracy’ in the modern sense of the term. (This fact weakens another claim, namely that Islam’s treatment of women was a contributor to its relative underdevelopment.) It is also worth noting that when England eliminated famine in the 1620’s and France around 1709, both countries were securely in the grip of absolutism. (As for literary and cultural achievement, no one claims that the West first flowered in its democratic phase.) So if the comparison is between the Middle East and the West, it is far more plausible to attribute the West’s lead to the formation of cohesive, undemocratic nation states than to the progress of democratic societies. This certainly fits the story of Germany, a scientific and technological giant throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, known otherwise for the conspicuous failure of its democracy.
So if Islam has fallen behind the West, it is not because of either Christianity or democracy, and in this respect Islam is no different from any non-Western culture. Whatever caused the West’s incredible technological surge in the 17th and 18th centuries, the reasons are bound to be big, complex, and, well, un-American. This is not at all the sort of ‘going wrong’ Lewis and others are after. But suppose we make the comparison Lewis may really want us to make: the Islamic Middle East with the West. Suppose too that we look, not at whether democracy accounts for ‘Western success’, but simply at whether Islam has done as well as the West. Can we then say that Islam has failed?
Only, I think, if we resort to a subterfuge in defining “The West”. Certainly if the expression is restricted to Western Europe and the United States, Islam will fare poorly by many standards of well-being, though not, once again, by measures of violence. And Eastern Europe might be excluded because it was so long under ‘non-Western’ Soviet rule. But there is certainly another part of the world that should be counted as belonging to the West, and that is Latin America. It was under Western (mainly Spanish and Portuguese) rule for centuries. It has been a declared sphere of US influence since 1823, a major focus of 19th century British investment, a thoroughly Christian region, and the beneficiary of Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress. Almost all its countries, at some points in their histories, have been democracies. Its cultural outlook is overwhelmingly Western, as are its languages. But once it’s included, things don’t look so good for the West. Minimal levels of well-being in Middle Eastern countries are on the whole higher than in, say, Colombia, Haiti, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guatemala, and now Argentina. In the recent annals of violence and repression, Colombia, Chile, Argentina, Haiti, Paraguay, Brazil, El Salvador, and Guatemala figure as prominently as Algeria, Iraq, or Iran, and much more prominently than that perennial favorite of liberal head-shakers, Egypt. And, since we’re considering the Islamic Middle East, note that the most repressive Middle Eastern countries have all experienced long and pervasive Western influence: Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the former French colony of Algeria, Westernized Turkey, and the erstwhile US client, Iran. The same may be said of Afghanistan, perhaps the worst-off Middle Eastern country in material terms. The much ‘purer’ and often fundamentalist Gulf states come out much better than the West (including Latin America), even if we look at averages rather than minima. So once again, the failure of Islam has slipped away.
Perhaps Islamic civilization, like Christian civilization, has failed according to some more or less objective standards. But in relative terms, it has not. It does no worse than Christendom in providing for its own. In its most degraded impulses, it has no cruelties to teach the civilization responsible for Auschwitz and Hiroshima. And if the comparison is between Western technological success and the relative backwardness of Islam, nothing suggests that democratic or Christian values are involved. More likely, the civilization that almost took Vienna in 1683 simply rested on its wealth and laurels until it was too late. That Islam ‘has failed’ in some morally significant and comparative sense is an illusion induced by looking at the world in the fun-house mirrors of free-market demagogues.
CryBaby said…
Malik: "Is it coz I is Black"
Real World: No, its because you're a thieving little ****!
Shahid Malik, was the original Muslim uncle Tom for New Labour, a parachuted MP, a very dodgy past with significant holes in his chute, he was originally the No.2 to Gurbox Singh, the former commissioner of the CRE, remember him? The Asian lager lout who head-butted policemen. Ok, his deputy will make a good Liebour MP though! Malik was already seen on TV promising Muslim landlords compensation when and if he got into power! How the diversity freaks in the BBC must be hurting now that one of those young Muslim “role models” for the wider community ( they even got him to wear a suit and tie) has turned out to be a common thief and fraudster of the public purse. Any difference from his former boss Gurbox Singh? How it must be hurting the beeboids. Has anybody ever added together the “quality time” that the BBC gave this uncle Tom (from QT to Newsnight) and the astonishingly biased high profile of this man on radio & TV- just because he was Muslim?
Oh, did they ever award that policeman who gave Malik a thick bloodied lip with his truncheon?
johnj, this is just sickening. I’ve realised my 1st comment on here didnt come across how i intended.
I dont mean to come across racist so please bear with me. I dont know of any pikeys who are Ministers or MPs or Peers. Well by putting a Pakistani into one of these positions is what asians see as a pikey.
Look at Uddin?
Re post at 6:14
Google ‘Micheal Neumann’. (correct the spelling first) Israel basher de luxe. (He’s not an antisemite because he says there’s no such thing)
Of what relevance this tedious load of sociological statistics is to B-BBC is beyond me.
Did anyone ask whether Islam has failed?
Martin (5.29, a loooonnnngggg way back on this thread!),
Thanks for the 5-Live link. It was hilarious, & worth a couple of listens at least. Limpdick was skewered, good and proper.
I missed it because I'm allergic to Nicky Campbell and anyone who broadcasts within pissing space of him.
Incidentally, the Daily Telegraph guy, Andrew Pierce, was a far better interviewer than Victoria Derbyshire. I'd love to hear Mr Pierce and Mr Malik do battle on air!
‘He’s not an antisemite because he says there’s no such thing’
Really you must have missed this article –
http://www.counterpunch.org/neumann0604.html
But hey, sue, do you see what you’ve gone and done, played the man and made no attempt to refute any of the argument. Well done for showing up once again, the grey matter of the pro-zionist cabal.
Micheal Neumann,
This is a blog, not a place to present theses. Your post was a little long. How many blogs did you spam with it today? 30, 40? Then I suppose you go back over them and draw in your nets to see how many fish you’ve caught. Don’t you have anything better to do?
Learn how to spell ‘Michael’.
I’ve just watched the BBC’s Carrie Gracie interviewing “honest” Malik. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8051606.stm
I mentioned the “Quality time” that the BBC have given him in the past. Is it by chance that we currently have the following situation
• Labour MP Malik defends expenses(15.33)
• MPs heckled on Question Time(02.15)
• MPs’ expenses: the public reaction(01.43)
• Short: ‘It was an honest mistake'(05.02)
Fifteen minutes and thity-three seconds. I applaud the BBCs Carrie Grace for her “attack mode” interviewing style, she clearly dislikes his snotty and condescending manner, anybody who listens to “honest” and “forthright” Malik, with his nose “in the trough” can only be sickened, apart, that is from his Muslim “constituency” franchise.
However, I am a bit concerned that the BBC does give him so long because he begins his defence by attacking David Cameron and ultimately ends his 14 minute interview by attacking the Daily Telegraph and David Cameron again?
Is it really the case that the BBC gives this Muslim Labour MP so much air time because he attacks the Tories? I must say I am sceptical.
BTW what exactly are the “good causes” in his constituency that “honest” Mailik is giving to? Is it his local mosque? A Dewsbury brothel run by Zaman’s wife?
PS. Micheal Neumann, post your unpublished thesis somewhere else you dope!
Is it just me or does anyone else find the Brazilian murder case curious – in that the Brazilian murderer didn’t exactly have a Portugeuse first name.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8051257.stm
Mohamed D’Ali Carvalho Santos,