Reply #25: Well said Sir.

[bemildred]

It is surprising how often, as with the Nazis, it occurs that a tool
taken up for political reasons assumes a life of it's own. In the
case of Hitler and his minions, this went to the point that needed
military resources were diverted into the fatuous and horrific
"final solution", thus acceleration the Nazis' own demise. One can
point to many other cases where a similar development is arguable,
and wallowing in fundamentalism, xenophobia, and jingoism always
seems to have it's price, witness the decline of the USA today.

In the case of the Islamic nations, I think you are arguing that a
sort of Islamic Renaissance and/or Reformation - perhaps not the
precise idea there - are needed, and that the lack of it contributed
to their failures to resist colonization and exploitation, to compete
successfully with the West. A reasonable point, I do not dispute that
it is not so, but I would suggest that the situation is not that
simple. I offer three arguments:

1.) Quite a number of other peoples of diverse historical record
were likewise colonized by the West, virtually the entire World.
China for example. This suggests that it was not some particular
failure of Islamic culture that was at work.

2.) Such empire building is not a particular accomplishment of the
post-Renaissance European powers, they were just unusually successful
at it.

Combining arguments one and two, I tend to favor the explanations
given by Mr. Diamond for European success, rather than some notion
of cultural superiority as such, and I think that argument applies
to Islam in the same way as to other cultures invaded and colonized
by the Europeans with varying degrees of success.

3.) It has been the policy of colonizers in all places and times to
vitiate the political and cultural development of the colonized. The
reasons for this are patent. To blame the colonized for their
resulting vitiated political and cultural development seems to me
to be perverse. If they had been allowed to develop without
interference for some period, a century or two say, and in that
situation remained stagnated, then one could draw a conclusion.
Absent that, one can only say that they have been colonized and
suffered accordingly.

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Of course, the extent and vigor with which Western meddling was
pursued tends to directly relate to the presence of exploitable
natural resources, and it does not seem to me one can adequately
discuss the history of SW Asia and the Middle East without considering
the effect of all that oil.

It is probably worth mentioning as well, that as Mr. abd el Krim
pointed out to the Spanish in Morocco, the success of the West in
confronting more "primitive" cultures has been spotty in places.

My regards to you.