As far as I can tell he’s just making up the stuff about “destabilizing democracy.” There really wasn’t much democracy there to begin with. Don’t get me wrong, the absolutism of monotheism and it’s enforcement did start the Dark Ages, but it didn’t really “destroy democracy.”
As hard as it is to believe by looking around sometimes, we’re collectively smarter today. Ever since the end of the Byzantine Empire (and even some time before) the world has followed a pattern of “catching up” culturally to northern European culture such as Denmark and Scandanavia–you know places where things like gay marriage (unions) have already been established. I don’t see this pattern changing. They’re still leading the Enlightenment. England seems a lot more athiest and secular than the US, so I really doubt that they’ll just start taking to Islam no matter what Prince Charles does.
Islam has been around for a long time. Even though it may have some influence on the western world, chances are that we’ll change Islam more than it changes us in the long run.
However what I DO think will happen is that it will seem like Islam is taking over, or becoming more pervasive. They’re starting to migrate outwards as their societies change and become more progressive. Middle eastern people will start to be more and more able (in terms of money, culture, and government) to move to different parts of the world and start their own lives. So far, it seems to me that they’ve sort of been trapped.
What do you think?
You know it’s funny… it’s pretty typical for the sort of hippy/liberal people to glorify the eastern philosophy of unification of mind and body. Unfortunately reality doesn’t work that way. It always seems like a case of that which is different than us is better than us. Just another way of dealing with opposition: some people’s instinct is to beat ’em, some is to join ’em. But the truth is, we didn’t become the more powerful race/culture/people in the west by having the SAME ideas as the east. It’s not to say that the east doesn’t have some good ideas. But when it comes to science, I think we’ve pretty much proved that the laws of physics are absolute, not matter what spiritual laws they can think of.
It reminds me of an Indonesian woman I knew in school, and how she used to tell me that westerners came over there, didn’t listen to their warnings, and got possessed by spirits or something. She said told me she knew I wouldn’t believe her until it happened to me. Maybe when I was little and watching Unsolved Mysteries, there was some doubt in my mind about whether or not Big Foot exists. But not now 😉
I think the whole thing might be a facade for certain Muslims. I always had the suspicion that Lawrence of Arabia had originally been ordered to “convert” to Islam in order to get the Arabs to respect him. Of course, no one ordered him to write “The Five Pillars of Islam,” so he would have had to of gained interest in the religion, but something about the fact that his conversion helped facilitate the Arab rebellion and ultimately helped out the English crown has always made me wonder. The same thing might be happening with Prince Charles, “secretly” converting in Turkey so that terrorists might think twice about considering England its enemy. Of course, I don’t really see how its helped any, but there may be part of England’s way in using Turkey to divulge more information about militant Islam.
Anyway, I agree with you. There are some people who do fear that Islam will take over England, but I don’t think its possible.
When hippy liberals talk about the east, they’re usually talking about Dharmic religions like Buddhism. And I don’t think its western philosophy that made us more powerful; its the fact that the west has tons of natural resources and the Middle East has a lot of sand. And don’t forget that ideas like the Scientific Method and al-Gebra started in the Middle East and spread to the west. We just put it to better use.
If you look at the health record, we don’t have anywhere near the health problems Europe does, and thats b/c we’re working so hard that all we eat is fast food and junk food, so we add antacids, stomach medicines, etc. to cover up the problem rather than fix it. And things really seem to be going out of control. So much money is being made off the hard-on pills but absolutely none of it is going back into the system. They have all this money for commercials, yet we’re the only country without universal health care. I’m not saying homeopathy or “eastern medicine” is better, but there is definitely room for improvement.
True, Arabia has oil but not much else, and the profit made from that didn’t really come about until the 20th century and at that point the money went directly to the government. Rather than spread it out among the people, Saudi Arabia hired one corporation to build their infrastructure using the oil revenues: the Bin Laden corporation. I don’t think China has a lot of natural resources either (maybe back when silk was en vogue, but now?)
As far as I can tell he’s just making up the stuff about “destabilizing democracy.” There really wasn’t much democracy there to begin with. Don’t get me wrong, the absolutism of monotheism and it’s enforcement did start the Dark Ages, but it didn’t really “destroy democracy.”
As hard as it is to believe by looking around sometimes, we’re collectively smarter today. Ever since the end of the Byzantine Empire (and even some time before) the world has followed a pattern of “catching up” culturally to northern European culture such as Denmark and Scandanavia–you know places where things like gay marriage (unions) have already been established. I don’t see this pattern changing. They’re still leading the Enlightenment. England seems a lot more athiest and secular than the US, so I really doubt that they’ll just start taking to Islam no matter what Prince Charles does.
Islam has been around for a long time. Even though it may have some influence on the western world, chances are that we’ll change Islam more than it changes us in the long run.
However what I DO think will happen is that it will seem like Islam is taking over, or becoming more pervasive. They’re starting to migrate outwards as their societies change and become more progressive. Middle eastern people will start to be more and more able (in terms of money, culture, and government) to move to different parts of the world and start their own lives. So far, it seems to me that they’ve sort of been trapped.
What do you think?
You know it’s funny… it’s pretty typical for the sort of hippy/liberal people to glorify the eastern philosophy of unification of mind and body. Unfortunately reality doesn’t work that way. It always seems like a case of that which is different than us is better than us. Just another way of dealing with opposition: some people’s instinct is to beat ’em, some is to join ’em. But the truth is, we didn’t become the more powerful race/culture/people in the west by having the SAME ideas as the east. It’s not to say that the east doesn’t have some good ideas. But when it comes to science, I think we’ve pretty much proved that the laws of physics are absolute, not matter what spiritual laws they can think of.
It reminds me of an Indonesian woman I knew in school, and how she used to tell me that westerners came over there, didn’t listen to their warnings, and got possessed by spirits or something. She said told me she knew I wouldn’t believe her until it happened to me. Maybe when I was little and watching Unsolved Mysteries, there was some doubt in my mind about whether or not Big Foot exists. But not now 😉
I think the whole thing might be a facade for certain Muslims. I always had the suspicion that Lawrence of Arabia had originally been ordered to “convert” to Islam in order to get the Arabs to respect him. Of course, no one ordered him to write “The Five Pillars of Islam,” so he would have had to of gained interest in the religion, but something about the fact that his conversion helped facilitate the Arab rebellion and ultimately helped out the English crown has always made me wonder. The same thing might be happening with Prince Charles, “secretly” converting in Turkey so that terrorists might think twice about considering England its enemy. Of course, I don’t really see how its helped any, but there may be part of England’s way in using Turkey to divulge more information about militant Islam.
Anyway, I agree with you. There are some people who do fear that Islam will take over England, but I don’t think its possible.
When hippy liberals talk about the east, they’re usually talking about Dharmic religions like Buddhism. And I don’t think its western philosophy that made us more powerful; its the fact that the west has tons of natural resources and the Middle East has a lot of sand. And don’t forget that ideas like the Scientific Method and al-Gebra started in the Middle East and spread to the west. We just put it to better use.
If you look at the health record, we don’t have anywhere near the health problems Europe does, and thats b/c we’re working so hard that all we eat is fast food and junk food, so we add antacids, stomach medicines, etc. to cover up the problem rather than fix it. And things really seem to be going out of control. So much money is being made off the hard-on pills but absolutely none of it is going back into the system. They have all this money for commercials, yet we’re the only country without universal health care. I’m not saying homeopathy or “eastern medicine” is better, but there is definitely room for improvement.
True, Arabia has oil but not much else, and the profit made from that didn’t really come about until the 20th century and at that point the money went directly to the government. Rather than spread it out among the people, Saudi Arabia hired one corporation to build their infrastructure using the oil revenues: the Bin Laden corporation. I don’t think China has a lot of natural resources either (maybe back when silk was en vogue, but now?)