The Clash of Civilizations
For some reason, I have been unable to post the last weeks. I have composed a couple of postings but they were all saved as drafts. I will post some of them in the coming time. Here is one that is almost 4 weeks old...
Today the Netherlands Scientific Council for Advice to the Government published its report on how to deal with (radical) Islam. It is like a fresh breeze in a dry, scorched desert.
The media were all over it.
One of the authors, the arabist scholar Maurits Berger, said in response to a question that reading the Q'uran in order to understand the mind-set of people in the Middle-East is like a Japanese Zen-bhuddist reading the Old Testament in order to understand contemporary Europeans. He pleaded for a more balanced approach of both immigrants from moslim countries to Europe as well as muslim countries. He argued that it is more helpful not to put too much attention to the fact that they indentify themselves as muslims, but to the issues at hand, such as high unemployment, high crime rates, poverty and what have you. He also said that it was extremely strange to refer to Indonesians, Moroccans, Turks and Egyptians as Muslims. It is like calling American, Brits and Germans 'Christians'.
You will recall that this is exactly what I said in an earlier post. It is pleasing to see that some learned fellow agrees.
Today the Netherlands Scientific Council for Advice to the Government published its report on how to deal with (radical) Islam. It is like a fresh breeze in a dry, scorched desert.
The media were all over it.
One of the authors, the arabist scholar Maurits Berger, said in response to a question that reading the Q'uran in order to understand the mind-set of people in the Middle-East is like a Japanese Zen-bhuddist reading the Old Testament in order to understand contemporary Europeans. He pleaded for a more balanced approach of both immigrants from moslim countries to Europe as well as muslim countries. He argued that it is more helpful not to put too much attention to the fact that they indentify themselves as muslims, but to the issues at hand, such as high unemployment, high crime rates, poverty and what have you. He also said that it was extremely strange to refer to Indonesians, Moroccans, Turks and Egyptians as Muslims. It is like calling American, Brits and Germans 'Christians'.
You will recall that this is exactly what I said in an earlier post. It is pleasing to see that some learned fellow agrees.
posted by Bruno at Wednesday, April 12, 2006
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