"This raises another more general problem: the inability of the West to defend itself intellectually and culturally. Be proud, do not apologize. Do we have to go on apologizing for the sins our fathers? Do we still have to apologize, for example, for the British Empire, when, in fact, the British presence in India led to the Indian Renaissance, resulted in famine relief, railways, roads and irrigation schemes, eradication of cholera, the civil service, the establishment of a universal educational system where none existed before, the institution of elected parliamentary democracy and the rule of law? What of the British architecture of Bombay and Calcutta? The British even gave back to the Indians their own past: it was European scholarship, archaeology and research that uncovered the greatness that was India; it was British government that did its best to save and conserve the monuments that were a witness to that past glory. British Imperialism preserved where earlier Islamic Imperialism destroyed thousands of Hindu temples.
On the world stage, should we really apologize for Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe? Mozart, Beethoven and Bach? Rembrandt, Vermeer, Van Gogh, Breughel, Ter Borch? Galileo, Huygens, Copernicus, Newton and
Darwin? Penicillin and computers? The Olympic Games and Football? Human rights and parliamentary democracy? The west is the source of the liberating ideas of individual liberty, political democracy, the rule of law, human rights and cultural freedom. It is the west that has raised the status of women, fought against slavery, defended freedom of enquiry, expression and conscience. No, the west needs no lectures on the superior virtue of societies who keep their women in subjection, cut off their clitorises, stone them to death for alleged adultery, throw acid on their faces, or deny the human rights of those considered to belong to lower castes."
9 comments:
More pro-Western, white supremacist, anti-the-rest-of-the-world bullshit.
No one has a problem with postive Western contributions to the world. In fact, most cultures appreciate Western technology and culture. But Shakespeare, Mozart and Bach never killed anyone for their land.
It is the negative contributions that we have problems with. Are the Indians supposed to thank the British for killing millions, stealing their land, setting up colonial systems that drain the nation of its own resources and creating the India/Pakistan conflict?
Are indigenous North and South Americans supposed to thank the British, French, Dutch, Spanish and Portugeuse for stealing their land, exterminating 80% of their population, introducing disease and subjugating them to centuries of slavery (which still continues)?
Are Africans supposed to thank Europeans for enslaving us, robbing us of our own vibrant cultures, languages and religions so we could build your fucking empires, and then be satisfied with the crumbs that we get? Should we be satisfied with a neo-colonial system that impoverishes Africa even to this day?
Should the Chinese be grateful for the Opium War? Should the Japanese be grateful for Nagasaki and Hiroshima? Should the Aborigines be grateful for having their children stolen from them well into the middle of the 20th Century?
All of these cultures were doing fine on their own. The Indians weren't upset because they didn't have roads. The indigenous North Americans had a vibrant trading system east of the Mississippi for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years before Europeans arrived. Africans created great civilizations that influenced Greece and Rome, the very origins of Western society. Asian culture was strong and vibrant for thousands of years before they ever saw Marco Polo. And yes, the Gaelic people were doing fine before they were invaded by the Anglo-Saxons too.
Fuck white supremacy. I'm sure Mozart, Beethoven, Bach and Shakespeare would agree with me.
"More pro-Western, white supremacist, anti-the-rest-of-the-world bullshit."
Really? How's that when the author's name is Ibn Warraq?
Six: Where to even begin here? Let me start by merely re-writing Nadir's preposterous statement, thusly:
"More pro-Islam, muslim supremacist, anti-the-rest-of-the-world bullshit."
How's that, Nadir? Does my rephrasing of your statement constitute "More pro-Western, white supremacist, anti-the-rest-of-the-world bullshit"?
====Nadir====
Are Africans supposed to thank Europeans for enslaving us, robbing us of our own vibrant cultures, languages and religions so we could build your fucking empires, and then be satisfied with the crumbs that we get?
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Nadir:
1. You are not an African.
2. You have never been enslaved.
3. Nobody has ever robbed you of a culture, vibrant or otherwise.
4. Nobody has ever robbed you of a language or a religion.
5. You have never built an empire, fucking or otherwise (though I don't know what goes on in your home, now that I think about. But if you do have a fucking empre, does it have a website?).
6. You are not living off of crumbs.
7. You have European ancestors as well as African.
8. Many of your European ancestors been enslaved, murdered, raped and had stolen from them land, religion, and language by invaders.
9. Some of your African ancestors have been invaders who enslaved, murdered, raped and stol land, religion, and language from the people that they conquered.
Why do you only identify with your ancestors who are African?
Why do you only object to the non-Africans (including some of your European ancestors!) who oppressed your African ancestors?
Why do you not object to the Africans who oppressed your African anceostors... to say say nothing of those African oppressors who were your own ancestors! Certainly if we go back far enough, we can identify one of your African ancestors who got into your genetic tree via rape!
====Nadir==
Should the Chinese be grateful for the Opium War? Should the Japanese be grateful for Nagasaki and Hiroshima?
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Should the Chinese be grateful for the Japanese Rape of Nankin?
Should Hungarians be grateful for the Mongol invasion and conquest?
====Nadir======
Are indigenous North and South Americans supposed to thank the British, French, Dutch, Spanish and Portugeuse for stealing their land, exterminating 80% of their population, introducing disease and subjugating them to centuries of slavery (which still continues)
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What about the various pre-Colombus societies that were conquering eather other with murder (including extermination), rape, and land-aquisition?
How about the million or so black Africans who today live in slavery, owned by Arab and black masters?
Are you claiming that non-white cultures are superior to honkey cultures? "Fuck white supremacy", indeed. Usually (as in this case), such a statement means: Whites are morally inferior to the rest of the world's people. Hogwash. Cultures of all socalled races have good and bad people in them.
Nadir: Please find me one nation that has ever existed on this earth that wasn't built on some great injustice. The Chinese dynasties? The Japanese empire that got atomic bombs dropped on them? The various civilizations that eventually became India? The Zulus? How about the Egyptians who built the pyramids? Or their bitter, vilent enemies in todays Yemen and Ethiopia (who were also violent bitter enemies of each other)?
The guy is absolutely correct. Even before honkeys invaded India or the Americas, the great societies there had themselves emerged as unintended consequences of them having been previously conquered by others. Heck, even the great white nations themselves received some of their greatest advances as the consequences of violent conquest by others.
Did Britain ever develop a great nation until Vikings, Romans, and Normans conquered and imposed their own cultural achievements? Today India is probably more powerful than Britain, economically and militarily. Japan certainly has a more powerful economy as a consequence of conquest by the US.
The US southern states: imagine where they would be without conquest by the US federal troops.
Spain and the rest of Europe emerged from the dark ages and became powerful only after conquest by the African muslims from Moroco. We all know what happened to Russia after it's conquest by Germany. China became a powerful nation after obsorbing their Mongol conquerers. Mecca had no military consequence until its violent conquest by Mohammad. All of these conquests involve imposition of language, religion, etc.
I expect Nadir to dismiss these FACTS and simply interpret my presentation of them as constituting an advocacy of invasion and conquest; it is not. I merely acknowledge facts. Until very recently, all the top nations advanced only through military might. Nadir probably thinks nothing's changed; I do not.
Six: The author of this "white supremist" essay is a Pakistani muslim who uses a fake name to keep himself from getting killed by the people whom Nadir thinks that we should appease:
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Born in 1946 in India and raised in Pakistan, Ibn Warraq was educated in Koran schools in Pakistan and later in England. He currently lives in the United States and writes under the pseudonym Ibn Warraq, a pen name traditionally used by dissidents in Islam. He is the author of the best- seller "Why I am Not a Muslim" and the editor of "The Origins of the Koran" and "The Quest for the Historical Muhammad."
I especially like how Warraq claims himself as a westerner, using "we" to describe it, and associating himself with Dante, etc. He is abolutely correct. He is indeed a descendant of Dante, etc., in the only meaningful way that counts. So is Nadir, although of course Nadir rejects his own culture. But Nadir's fierce rejection and bad-mouthing of his culture is very much a part of American culture.
This is why I so much dispise the "balkinization" of history. The Nadir mindset divides students according to his own cataloging of "race", and then assigns to each group of student different legacies. Nadir is no less a descendant of Thomas Paine and George Washington than I am, and he is no more an "African" than I am an "Irishman": not at all. James Joyce and Oscar Wilde belong to Nadir as much as they belong to me (or Tony Soprano!).
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