In a message dated 23/12/2002 16:16:25 GMT Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
<< But Islam as practised by the overwhelming majority of countries in which it's the ruling ideology does not respect human rights at all. >> This is offensively ignorant. Have you ever spent time or lived in a Muslim country? I have, and I can assure you that you are way off track. I've had many debates with my family in Pakistan around this subject, and the picture is much more complex than you seem to be seeing it. I am not a Muslim, and disagree violently with what is happening in some predominantly Muslim countries. I also disagree with what happens and has happened in some predominantly Christian countries. If, say, an English tourist gets lost travelling through Pakistan and knocks on someone's door, they will be taken in and given shelter and food, even if the household can barely afford to feed itself. Imagine a Pakistani man knocking on a door in a village in England, unable to speak a word of English. Maybe he will be shown that level of hospitality; more likely he will be told to "get the hell off my property". Maybe the police will be called to report a suspicious looking stranger. We may like to think we're more civilised than "them", but it's not so simple. Australia and the USA have participated in the genocides of their native peoples; in the case of the former this was happening within recent living memory. Britain has colonised large swathes of the world, subjugated local people, stolen their land and their resources and swiped many cultural treasures. Again, this is recent history, I have plenty of relatives who were directly affected by the complete fiasco over the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, which resulted in huge internecine strife and tens of thousands of deaths. The thing that appals me about the West is the assumption that "we" are right and have the right to tell other countries what to do. That satirical piece about sending a UN team into the USA to help establish democracy after a rigged election - it was funny, wasn't it? Only because we know it would never happen, not because there wasn't a case to answer. Azeem in London
