Islam and the West

This is in response to an article by the Iranian political scientist Nazanin Amirian published in the online at “Publico.es” on the 4th July 2009.

The author presents a viewpoint that is very similar to arguments presented by the Iranian foreign minister a couple of years ago in the Opinion section of (I think) the International Herald Tribune.

I do not recall the content of the foreign ministers letter. However what I do recall was that it was full of lies and omissions. It is for this reason that I feel obliged to the case recently put forward by Amirian.

The concept put forward is that the West (primarily the United States) is attempting to dominate the world (include Muslim countries) through military force.

I here only respond to the lies that are found in Amirian’s position.

Amirian argues that the concept of the Muslim or Islamic world is a Western concept that “we” do not recognize. Who is the “we” that Amirian is referring too. It is argued that unlike the geographically correct notion of the West, the concept of Islam is an erroneous concept used to further devious military domination. If the concept of ‘the West’ refers to the United States (and presumably also the United Kingdom), then what about South America and Africa?

Also, even though the Pakistani way of life may well more resemble the Hindu’s of India than the Muslims of Morocco, this in no way falsifies the fact that Pakistan and Morocco are both countries where Islam is the state religion. The concept of generalisation, or indeed its opposite, is used to foster understanding. A generalisation may become an over-simplification. However its use by rational human beings is to create understanding out of simplification.

Amirian argues that the so called war on terror does not refer to Islamic terror in Indonesia. In terms of casualties to ‘Westeners’ by ‘Islamic’ extremists, the two Indonesian Bali bombings rank very highly. I find it difficult to therefore accept Amirian’s argument here.

She talks about the millions of people forced to flee the fighting in the Swat valley. It is argued that this fighting is supposedly between the Pakistan army and the Pakistan Taliban; she states however that this is in fact a disguise: actually they are fleeing bombing by the Americans. Amirian needs a lesson in geography. Relatively speaking, the Swat valley is in the north, and the drone bombing attacks by the United States are on or near the Afghan border to the west.

Why is an Iranian political scientist, just like the Iranian foreign minister, using language that is full of errors, inconsistencies, and omissions? With Amirian I am of the view that she actually believes what she is talking about. With the foreign minister I am not no sure. In any case, the view presented is based on a deep running and blind assumption (a belief) that ‘the West’ is evil.

The hypocrisy is that Amirian argues that the essential intellectual problem is in the generalisation and therefore oversimplification of the concept of Islam. However the truth is that she has an erroneous view based on the generalisation and oversimplification of the concept of the West.

Just because a person can put words together to make a sentence does not make them sane. Amirian and the Iranian foreign minister both demonstrated seriously irrational mental thought processes. The more irrational a person becomes the more they approach being insane. Remember this that Hitler could string words together very nicely, and he was in fact either completely cuckoo or nefariously nuts.