Islamic World Choosing Segregation From West

WHEN AFRICAN Americans first started entering selective colleges in significant numbers after the civil rights revolution of the 1960s they found that they were ill-prepared for the challenge of life at the top and they were ashamed. They were ashamed because they were confronted, as Shelby Steele writes in The Content of Our Character, with overcoming in their own lives, right then and there, the centuries-old myth of racial inferiority. Were they good enough, could they make it in competition with the white kids? So they adopted the defensive strategy of keeping themselves apart, of segregating themselves in the cafeteria, of pressuring college administrations for minority dorms, and in general aggressive behavior.

And they held themselves back from full participation in the great American experiment.

Now we are seeing the same behavior in the Islamic Middle East, reported by Daniel Pipes. The cartoon war, he feels is going to hurt, not the west, but the Islamic world.

I predict it is helping bring on not a clash of civilizations but their mutual pulling apart. This separation, which has been building for years, has dreadful implications.

The sectors involved include trade, consumer items, financial investments, aid, and tourism. The problem is that, just like the African Americans held back by centuries of slavery and discrimination, the Islamic world needs not separation but full involvement in—indeed surrender to—the culture of the west with its magic brew of reason, capitalism, and democracy.

Disengagement will only worsen the Muslim predicament. Reduced contact with the world�s most modern, powerful, and advanced countries would likely cause Muslims to do even worse in those indexes and lapse deeper into a condition characterized by self-pity, jealousy, resentment, anger, and aggression.

Compare the Islamic attitude with the Chinese, reported by Michael Novak in his review of Rodney Stark�s The Victory of Reason. For a century or more the Chinese have been cudgeling their brains about the rise of the west. What is it, they have asked themselves? Why has the west overtaken China, the most advanced country in the world, and put China to shame? The answer, they concluded, was Christianity.

At first, we thought it was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West is so powerful. The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We don�t have any doubt about this.

So the Chinese are converting in their tens of millions to Christianity, as told by David Aikman in Jesus in Beijing.

If that is true then the Islamic world is in deeper trouble than we thought. And they have an additional problem. They lack the cultural confidence of the Chinese, the knowledge that China is the first and the best of all civilizations.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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