The West is not necessarily to blame for Muslim woes
From Husain Haqqani's "Why Muslims always blame the West", International Herald Tribune, October 16, 2004: "The Palestinian issue and the...Read this article
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Religion does not always allow for self-criticism
"The Islamic doctrine of apostasy is hardly favorable to free inquiry or frank discussion, to say the least, and surely...Read this article
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Jonathan Raban on neocon foreign policy
"There's a sort of corrupted idealism about the insanely innocent Wolfowitz plan for the Middle East, the domino theory in...Read this article
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Dean MacCannell on the modern v. the non-modern world
"No other major social structural distinction (certainly not that between the classes) has received such massive reinforcement as the ideological...Read this article
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Ryszard Kapuscinski on the limitations of conventional journalism
"It is not the story that is not getting expressed: it's what surrounds the story. The climate, the atmosphere of...Read this article
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The problem with Israel's right-wing fundamentalists
"Like the theologians of Hamas, the ideologues of the [Israeli] settlement movement have stripped their religion of all love but...Read this article
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The world has fickle expectations of the United States
"American leadership seems to be required even in cases -- such as Bosnia between 1992 and 1995 -- where the...Read this article
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Western ideals won't necessarily wash in the East
"At a superficial level much of Western culture has indeed permeated the rest of the world. At a more basic...Read this article
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William Dalrymple on the close historical links between East and West
"So one of the things that I hope to achieve with White Mughals is to present an image of how...Read this article
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A perspective on Islamic fundamentalism, from 1992
"The furious and malignant anti-Westernism of the Islamic fundamentalists is in part an expression of the Arab world's rage at...Read this article
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Why the occupation of Iraq risks a new cycle of hatred
"The last time infidels conquered Baghdad was in 1258, when the Mongol horde, led by Genghis Khan’s grandson Hulegu, defeated...Read this article
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Thomas Friedman on the limits of individualism
"Many Americans can easily identify with modernization, technology and the Internet because one of the most important things these do...Read this article
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Lawrence of Arabia: Wahabi Islam is a "fanatical heresy"
"The Wahabis, followers of a fanatical Moslem heresy, had impressed their strict rules on easy and civilized Kasim. In Kasim...Read this article
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Mohammad Khatami: Religion must not be hijacked by superficial literalists
"Nihilism as a mere philosophical indulgence may prove socially quite harmless. Nevertheless, what we are witnessing in the world today...Read this article
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Hollywood predicted what the CIA didn't: A 9/11 omen from 1999
A current foray into screenwriting has me researching movie writing materials -- and a small item under "Pitch Sales" in...Read this article
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Samuel Huntington's theory on the "clash of civilizations"
"In class and ideological conflicts, the key question was "Which side are you on?" and people could and did choose...Read this article
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Why some cultures respond violently to modernization
"The vocabulary of the rejectionist movements varies with the country and the time -- the Koran in today's Saudi Arabia,...Read this article
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Local culture serves as more than just color for tourists
"When you strip people's homes of their distinctiveness -- either by homogenizing them or by destroying them environmentally -- you...Read this article
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Can the digital economy help poor and isolated communities?
"The question being asked is...whether the digital economy can be a catalyst to bring the poor in from the economic...Read this article
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Europe and America aren't culturally exclusive
"In some ways, Europe and America are more alike than ever. The level of commercial interpenetration, the number of young...Read this article
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The war on terror is not a war for cultural survival
"Vulnerable or not, the United States is too powerful compared to the rest of the world, and the nature of...Read this article
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Anti-Americanism has become the default ideology of opposition
"Without this cloak of respectability, America will face a growing hostility around the world. During the Cold War, many nations...Read this article
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Does American intervention make things safer or more dangerous?
"Ever since the Munich agreement and Pearl Harbor, with only a brief interruption during the decade after the Tet offensive,...Read this article
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No nation can stand alone
"Democrats once dreamed of societies whose political autonomy rested firmly on economic independence. The Athenians idealized what they called autarky,...Read this article
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Oil has a long history of poisoning foreign policy
"It was the discovery of black gold underneath the Arabian desert that provided the old religion with the means and...Read this article
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Globalization is no simple binary equation
"The problem with most discussion of globalization is that too many experts treat it as a binary outcome: Either it...Read this article
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William Gibson on the future
"The future is already here -- it’s just unevenly distributed." --William Gibson, quoted in the Economist, June 23, 2000...Read this article
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Radical movements reflect the civilization that spawned them
"Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda followers may not represent Islam, and their statements and their actions directly contradict...Read this article
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American innovation v. American insipidity
"So much of the best new thinking about society, economics, politics and philosophy in the last century came from America....Read this article
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The dubious threat of radical Islam on globalization
"The sheer horror of September 11 also conceals an important fact: By most measures, Islamic fundamentalism is the weakest of...Read this article
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Not everyone wants to live like Americans
"The entire view of the world that supported the markets' faith in globalization has melted down. …Led by the United...Read this article
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The dangers of tribal thinking
"Arabs and Israelis have a real tendency to get caught up in their private tribal worlds, in which all their...Read this article
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A cautionary note about occupying Iraq (fifty years in advance)
"We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization. We must exercise our power. But...Read this article
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Evil can follow from good as well as from evil
"The most powerful societies are still in the West. You'd be amazed at the damage that simple decisions in the...Read this article
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