(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAOzlinU94g)
To quote the maker and uploader, PragerU.com:
"What's holding the Arab world back? Why, by nearly every measure, are Muslim nations so far behind the West economically, culturally and scientifically? Bret Stephens, Global View columnist for the Wall Street Journal, explains."
I believe this only partially correct. It's true that Arabs and Muslims broadly are weaned on Jew hatred and it's axiomatic that that hatred drives a great deal of their society and culture. And it's true that their overlords exploit that to distract their subjects from the miserable conditions they live under. But therein is another factor, those very same miserable circumstances. Now before you accuse me of parroting liberal cant that all their problems are because they're poor or because of colonialism etc, stop. That is not at all what I suggest. What I suggest is that the Arab mind is soaked in an elitist arrogance that assumes that the Arab and his world is the most sophisticated, the most powerful, the most advanced, the most superlative of anything. And this critical blindness. By analogy the old name of China is often mistranslated as "The Middle Kingdom". This is not accurate. A better sense of it is "The Center of the World" or better yet "The Center of the Universe". But at the time, the Chinese empire had a great deal to brag about. The Arab world is bluster. They imagine they are the supreme and entitled rulers of Earth with nothing at all to suggest it's a rational point of view. For instance, when Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1799 he conquered the entire nation with a few thousand men. This was not a Cortez invading Mexico and using guns and smallpox to wipe out a nation. The Egyptians had thousands of years of contact with Europe. No they were conquered because they simply could not accept than anyone could ever conquer them. They did not understand what modernity IS because they did not believe anything that wasn't Egyptian or Muslim or Arab had the least thing to teach them. The Arab mind is to sit in mud and claim that everyone else is inferior.
ReplyDeleteIntriguing take on the situation, Trudy. Thanks for that.
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