How is ol’ Ralph gonna get out of this one?

Ralph Peters must have believed that by blaming the evils of Islam exclusively on what he describes as the inherently sick and evil culture of the Middle East, rather than on Islam itself, he would be distinguishing himself from the Islam critics who say that Islam itself is the problem. However, if, as Peters proposes, the people who argue that Islam is the problem secretly dream of slaughtering all Muslims, then Peters, who argues that the Middle Eastern culture is inherently sick and evil, must secretly dream of slaughtering all Middle Easterners.

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Michael E. writes:

Today’s Peters column makes no sense. If it is the Middle East itself that is to blame does that not mean that it is something genetic in the people that causes the pathologies prevalent in their societies? Or is it in the water?

Mr. Peters seems to believe that criticism of a culture, religion or ideology implies contempt or hatred for its people. This is simply not true. In the cold war the people of the US did not hate the Russian people although we rightly feared and despised the communist ideology that motivated the Soviets. And we rightly feared and despised the Soviet Union. We were able to separate the individual and the worth of the individual from our opposition to communism and the Soviet system. And during that time we prudently contained and isolated the Russian people from us because they were the agents of the Soviet system. The same principles should be applied to Islam today.

Alex H. writes:

This blaming of the dirt, rather than the man, by Peters, simply regurgitates Jared Diamond’s “accident-of-geography” thesis, whereby all cultures are equal but for random inequalities in their respective location. The implied remedy is to redistribute people and/or wealth as necessary to restore the presumed, innate equality. Third-world immigration thus constitutes a form of cultural affirmative action—a virtual civil right owed to every global citizen, to atone for historical unfairness. Peters, accordingly, does not want to kill Middle Eastern Muslims, but rather, to bring them here—out of their wicked land and into ours, where they may assume their proper, peaceful station alongside the Europeans, whose “good” cultural behavior, heretofore, represents not an achievement, but the manifestation of an unfair share of the world’s blessings, obtained by accident of birth.

LA replies:

He’s not exactly blaming the “dirt” in the Jared Diamond sense, and he says nothing about immigration, though clearly that is implied, since according to him everything depends on people leaving the Mideast.

Andrew Bostom writes:

What a moron. Just refer in my book to the brutal jihads waged by Islamized Berbers (Almoravids and Almohads), and Islamized Turco-Mongols (Seljuks, Ottomans, the Ghaznavid state, Tamerlane).

Dimitri K. writes:

Being of Russian origin I know several people from Central Asia, which previously was a part of USSR. For example, I knew a physicist, who is currently an Uzbek citizen, an intelligent and educated man with good Western education, though brought up in a traditional Muslim family. He came to U.S. after attacks on Trade center, and was very upset about that. He said that it had been so good before, people could come to U.S. to work. He was even sympathetic to Israel, which I found quite often among my Muslim friends from USSR. We talked to him a lot about politics, and once I asked him what he thought about Islam, Arabs and Middle East. Actually, I suggested the same as Peters, that Asian Muslims are peaceful people, but it was only Arabs who were cruel and not civilized. It seemed to me that it would be a compliment. However, to my surprise, he refused to admit it, and stopped conversation. He also visited a mosque in Chicago, which is the citadel of Farrakhan and the center of Nation of Islam. When I tried to tell him that it was not a right place for a white civilized Muslim to visit, he also dismissed it.

All that taught me two things. First, even most civilized and nice Muslims, who hate violence and like West, consider the most wild and aggressive to be of SAME faith, not a distorted different one. And second, they will not dissociate from Arabs, who are believed to be the CENTER of the Muslim world.

LA replies:

Islam is a single continuum, a single fabric. Different parts of the fabric may have different colors, different designs, but they are all part of the same fabric. Yes, the Shi’ites and Sunni hate each other, but vis à vis non-Muslims the Sunni and Shi’a are as one.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 15, 2006 01:15 PM | Send