Thursday, February 05, 2004
Occidentalism
An interesting article on the origins of hatred for the west, termed Occidentalism by the authors of this article.
A very interesting article, that I encourage you to read the rest of; I was somewhat disappointed at a slant in the ending, though:
The authors doesn't point out what "our own forms of intolerance" are. But, they do discuss Christian zealots (which most people reading this article would consider evangelical Christians, regardless of specificity), without clarifying what kind are dangerous. There are many evangelical Christians out there who have very strong beliefs, but these beliefs do not extend to hatred towards Muslims and other groups. The author doesn't say this, however, and lumps all 'zealots' and Evangelicals together and indirectly paints them both as intolerant. This may be an accidental rhetorical slip that doesn't consider that most people view Evangelical Christians as zealous, but I'm not so sure. It may just be the typical bias that one encounters frequently by people in academia, an environment filled with pervasive atheism.
The Chronicle: 2/6/2004: The Origins of Occidentalism: "Something else is going on, which my co-author, Avishai Margalit, and I call Occidentalism (the title of our new book): a war against a particular idea of the West, which is neither new nor unique to Islamist extremism. The current jihadis see the West as something less than human, to be destroyed, as though it were a cancer. This idea has historical roots that long precede any form of 'U.S. imperialism.' Similar hostility, though not always as lethal, has been directed in the past against Britain and France as much as against America. What, then, is the Occidentalist idea of the West?
...
Wherever it occurs, Occidentalism is fed by a sense of humiliation, of defeat. Isaiah Berlin once described the German revolt against Napoleon as "the original exemplar of the reaction of many a backward, exploited, or at any rate patronized society, which, resentful of the apparent inferiority of its status, reacted by turning to real or imaginary triumphs and glories in its past, or enviable attributes of its own national or cultural character."
A very interesting article, that I encourage you to read the rest of; I was somewhat disappointed at a slant in the ending, though:
"In the West itself, we must defend our freedoms against the holy warriors who seek to destroy them. But we must also be careful that in doing so we don't end up undermining them ourselves. In the balance between security and civil liberty, the latter should never be sacrificed to the former. We should also guard against the temptation to fight fire with fire, Islamism with our own forms of intolerance. To think that we are at war with Islamism in the name of Christianity, as some zealots believe, is a fatal error, for that is to conform precisely to the Manichaeistic view of those who seek to defeat us. Muslims living in the West should not be allowed to join the holy war against it. But their rights as Europeans or Americans must be respected. The survival of our liberties depends on our willingness to defend them against enemies outside, but also against the temptation of our own leaders to use our fears in order to destroy our freedoms."
The authors doesn't point out what "our own forms of intolerance" are. But, they do discuss Christian zealots (which most people reading this article would consider evangelical Christians, regardless of specificity), without clarifying what kind are dangerous. There are many evangelical Christians out there who have very strong beliefs, but these beliefs do not extend to hatred towards Muslims and other groups. The author doesn't say this, however, and lumps all 'zealots' and Evangelicals together and indirectly paints them both as intolerant. This may be an accidental rhetorical slip that doesn't consider that most people view Evangelical Christians as zealous, but I'm not so sure. It may just be the typical bias that one encounters frequently by people in academia, an environment filled with pervasive atheism.
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