This is an excerpt from the book “7 Tipping Points That Save The World” by Chris Stewart and Ted Stewart. It is a very good read and well worth the time an effort. The book covers the aurthors 7 turning points that changed the world.The Middle East is covered below and why they think and act the way they do. Hopefully this will help you understand their perception and reaction to the US trying to interject democracy into their country.
Samuel Burns:
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7 Tipping Points That Saved The World
by Chris Stewart and Ted Stewart
After creating a massive kingdom from the sands of the Arabian desert, after spreading its reach across most of the known world and creating an empire that would lead the world in many technological advancements, how could it be entire culture come to such a dramatic standstill?
There are a number of explanations:
1. in fundamentalist Islam, there is no law but religious law, the sharia or holy law of Islam. Sharia law is divine, the word of God. And it is all encompassing, regulating every aspect of life: civil, commercial, criminal, and religious. As such, to the devout Muslim, the holy law of Islam is all the law that is needed. One does not add to or detract from sharia, for to do so would presume that man knows better than God.
It is, therefore, absurd to think that there would be any need for mortal men to meet for the purpose of creating new law. It is absurd to think that a parliament or a Congress or any other deliberative body could better the holy law of Islam. This leaves no room in strict Islam for self-government or representative government.
2.The idea of separation of church and state is utterly foreign in Islam. Separation of the religious from the secular is a creation of Christianity and it is entirely rejected by the Islamic faithful. In an Islamic culture, there is no equivalent of “ render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s,” for everything necessary to direct the affairs of men is found within the holy law.
3.The concept of freedom has a very limited meaning in Islam. Bernard Lewis explains:
Westerners have become accustomed to thinking of good and bad government in the terms of tyranny versus liberty. In Middle Eastern usage, liberty or freedom was a legal not a political term. It meant one who was not a slave. For traditional Muslims, the converse of tyranny was not liberty but justice. Justice in this context meant essentially two things, that the ruler was there by right and not by usurpation, and that he governed according to God’s law.
This very narrow understanding of freedom and justice meant, essentially, that you were either a slave or you were not. Such a limited understanding of personal liberty made it nearly impossible for a faithfull follower of Islam to think it was necessary to make laws that guarantee any further individual freedom. It made it impossible for a faithful follower of Islam to think it was either good or necessary to create a political institution that sought to enhance individual liberty, whether political or economic.
The understanding of justice in the Western world is that all men are entitled to protection under the law. This stands in stark contrast to the Muslim view that justice simply means that one is governed by God’s intended rulers and according to God’s law.
4.When Islam began, its views of equality were viewed as extremely liberal. At a time when the world was a hostile, brutal, and unequal place, with power and wealth concentrated in the hands of a very few, Islam strongly denounced privilege, elitism and inequality. In fact, many of the everyday citizens of the Parisian and Byzantine empires who were conquered by Islamic armies found themselves with more freedom and opportunity than they had ever enjoyed before. This was particularly true of Jews and minority Christian groups.
However aristocracy returned. Within a few generations, whatever improvements these people might have enjoyed had entirely slipped away.
More fundamentally, there are three groups of people who would never be equal to Muslim men within Islamic law: women, slaves and nonbelievers. Islamic law simply viewed these groups as for ever less than equal.
Foley quality had never been available to women. In fundamental Islamic states, this is as true today as it was in the seventh century. And it likely will never be much different, for there is a deep-seated difference between the beliefs of Islam and Western called for regarding the role of the sexes. Although it is true that Western pressure has somewhat bettered the treatment of the nonbelievers, it still can be very difficult and sometimes deadly, to live as a nonbeliever in a Muslim culture today. Of course, slavery has been abolished, but deeply held traditions may still allow for a blind eye to be turned to the trade of women for sexual exploitation.
5.Secular education was never important among the believers of Islam. With the law of Islam being the final word on both government and the affairs of men, it was accepted that no one but religious leaders needed to be educated. Furthering the lack of interest in secular education, as Islamic age, it adopted the view that “knowledge was something to be acquired, stored, if necessary bought, rather than grown or developed.”
As the Renaissance and, later, the technological revolution was beginning to sweep through Europe, in the world of Islam, independent inquiry virtually came to an end, and science was for the most part reduced to variations of a corpus of approved knowledge.
While enormously important advances in science, the arts, technology and industrialization were taking hold in Europe, advancements that bettered the lives of European citizens in almost every way, the world of Islam refused to adopt them. And how could they, with the feelings that they held? Christianity was a moral enemy to Islam. For centuries, and in many different conflicts, Islam had become obsessed with a desire to overrun Christian Europe. And because Christianity was the enemy, any advance that might be tainted with Christianity, that had its origin in Europe, for instance, was deemed to be unworthy. The only exception to this rule was in means of warfare, religious authorities declaring that it was permissible to copy weapons and battlefield tactics from the infidels if the purpose of copying these new technologies was to defeat them.
6.Even when they had been exposed to the concepts of freedom, liberty and self government, Islamic nations turn their backs on them. As the centuries passed, a few of these concepts have seeped into the mindset of some middle eastern leaders, but even today the ability of middle eastern nations to implement such concepts into effective governance is severely limited.
So it is that, despite all of its great qualities, the religion of Islam has proven historically have no tradition of freedom, self-government, science or economic development.
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