Letters to the Editor
Chris W
Published Letters: 52 Editor's Choice: 6
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from this paying customer...
[Read the article: Big Think: Ayaan Hirsi Ali on the clash between Islam and the West]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]from this paying customer - first, a big thanks to Salon for bringing me this. I found it interesting, and I would have missed it else.
As for the criticisms here - some people apparently can not differentiate. So she works for the AEI, so she must be evil. Isn't the world s niche simple place?
Ali's insight are far quite interesting; it's you who are blind and narrow minded, not willing to think about. Let's take that example (quoted in a letter above) that islam has to be defeated for it to change. That's actually something worth thinking about - and something that has historical parallels.
What we are talking about is Islam coming to terms with the Enlightenment. Enlightenment, though, didn't just happen. One common claim is that it was a framework whose time had come. But that's to short a thought - more precise would be that enlightenment found its popular roots out of a collective experience. A dramatic, devastating horrible collective trauma, to be more precise.
I'm talking, of course, about the thirty year's war. Never before, nor afterwards did Christian civilization experience a catastropy of comparable size. The war, officially fought about religion, with involvement of most European powers, cost it's core participants about 30% of their population. Whole regions were more or less completely depopulized, most powers involved went bankrupt in the process. When it ended, it left several generations who had never seen anything but war, destruction, and collapse.
While the countries involved started the slow process of rebuilding, it had become evidently clear that the church's function as foundation of peace and civilization (which it had successfully maintained for close to a millennium) had collapsed, not in small part due to the church's moral decay.
It is this common experience of failure that made room for Enlightenment. To put it more succinctly, enlightenment was an idea whose time had not only come - it was a theory that was desperately needed. So, like pacisfism as a popular idea that accrued out of the battlefields of World War I, enlightenment had been grown and nurtured out of the ashes of the thirty year's war.
I suspect without that, Christianity would have never made peace with enlightenment and modern thought.
And I venture to guess today's Islam will need some existential experience of its own to find the power to do the step into modernity.
Back to Hirsi Ali. To the critics, I suggest you keep an open mind. She certainly has an axe to grind, and as such tends to be somewhat monotopical (which is annoying), but it's a legitimate axe, and the world needs people pushing this issue. The treatment of women in the Islamic world is shameful, and we need people who keep the focus on what is wrong, and what must be changed.
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Yes, Mr Cole
[Read the article: Blowback from the GOP's holy war]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yes, Mr Cole. There are no honor killings, And there is no polling data that whole segments of islamic populations in wetern countries condone them. Today.
Yes, Mr Cole. Islam is a tolerant religion. And it is of course untrue that abstaining from islamic faith is a crime in most islamic countries, even moderate ones like Egypt. And that interfaith marriages in those countries are strictly forbidden.
Yes, Mr Cole, Islam allows a broad spectrum of ideas. It is an invention of the press that right now in moderate, western friendly Afghanistan a young man was sentenced to death for blasphemy, because he downloaded a paper from the internet arguing for a modern interpretation of islam. And it is a lie that this verdict was demanded by islamic authorities and legally rests on sharia.
Yes, Mr Cole, speaking oh sharia, it is a lie that numerous islamic countries around the world accept sharia as the law of the land, or even have recently introduced it. And even if it were true, it is a lie that sharia contains barbaric punishments, outrageously disatvantages women and massivle disatvantages people of non islamic faiths, and outrightly outlaws islamic "hertics" like Ba'hai or Ahmadis.
Yes, Mr Cole, it is obvious to everyone that people from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and numerous women's rights groups are liars and ididiots.
Yes, Mr Cole, you are an intelligent academic who is completely based in reality and has not in the least lost perspective about the subject of his research.
Yes, Mr Cole, and the moon is made of green cheese.
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counter proposal
[Read the article: When Mom's in prison, should her baby be behind bars too?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Counter proposal for Mr ♀♀♂♀♀!
go seek a place where nobody can hear, see or smell you, and die there in unimaginable pain.
Discuss.
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@cythera Carter did
[Read the article: McCain apes Bush on Iraq, as Dems stand passively by]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]@cythera Carter did win a general election.
People were just sick of a decade of perpetual war. It took the country 30 years to recover and muster enough foolishness to get into perpetual war again.
Problem with Carter was he lacked political fortune. Which gave doves a bad name.
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whats really going on?
[Read the article: Every Sports Illustrated swimsuit picture is online]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]what's this about? Did you run a bet you'd get the most hist of all salon pages?
Not only did you mention several Models by name, you also managed to squeeze "naked" into your text at least five times. That should give you tones and tons of Google hits.
On the other hand your faible for blond blue eyed P10 models is a little misplaced. Hyping Marisa Miller while ignoring Jessica Gomez seems ... strange.
And lastly, from a tech blog like yours I'd have expected a note or warning on the "no-foreigners" policy of the web site you hype. Heck, maybe even a comment why they would do such a thing. It's a little embarrassing that the first commenter has to do that for you.
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War Hawk Obama
[Read the article: Views of the race from across the Atlantic]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Others have already pointed out the glaring errors in this article. I'd like to add one aspect - the German press has well noticed and reported Obama's demand that Germany should send more troops to Afghanistan and engage in the US's fatal strategy of bombing civilians (i.e. fight in the south under US command).
Both is deeply unpopular here, and should cool off some undeserved admiration he might have got.