@peasoupling said:
World War II ended 70 years ago. There are people alive today who actually remember a time when Europe was composing odes to the virtues of strong, genocidal, warmongering leaders. That tiny bit of historical perspective always makes me wary of radical pronouncements about the essential traits of particular cultures.
We should be wary, but not blind, even if it's with good intentions. Like I said, people would prefer certain things to not be true. It feels terrible to be unkind in our judgment towards others. I don't want to be unkind, but as someone who's also had the opportunity to live for 3 years in an Arabic country, I have to reiterate: their culture and values are alien to us.
It feels stupid to be the one writing this. I remember how pissed off I was with some soldier on a mush who was ranting about being deployed among "goat fuckers" and saying all sorts of crude, disparaging remarks. It was disgusting. It's not like he was there to help them build roads, infrastructure, hospitals, schools. What right does he have to disparage them, when he's investing himself personally in bombing them back into the Stone age? He didn't have to be there, he chose to.
On the other hand, we trace my family's ancestors back to the Ottoman invasions in Europe. They were given a choice: convert or die. They killed, and fled northward. I was on an 8-hour ride through Bosnia this summer, after many years. I was surprised how many new mosques have popped up throughout the landscape. Many more than there used to be, all new and shiny.
Living in an Arabic country, even as a child, I saw all kinds of people. The children by the settlement for foreigners seemed alien. We looked at each other through the wire fence. They were barefoot, dirty, with snot-encrusted noses. The thing is, I got along with the French, the Polish, the Russians, the Bulgarians, the Vietnamese; but when I looked at the Arab kids, it was as if there was no common ground in that shared stare. However, our family was also hosted in an actual castle for dinner, beautifully furnished with a piano, so I also got to see that side. At the university, women were being sent threatening letters: if they don't cover themselves up, they'll get acid thrown in their faces, then they'll have a reason to. A girl stopped showing up at our school for foreigners, we didn't know why until we met her by chance in the street. Her father was an Arab in a mixed marriage, so he had her transferred to an Arabic school. Even though her future would've been much better in the foreign one. I had no idea of the significance of this back then, I only understood it many years later. Lastly, just a couple of years after we left, we heard on the news that extremists killed several foreign workers. This would happen again and again over the years.
Then you have the mess in Europe. It's a clash of cultures with wholly incompatible values. This is not an easy subject to get into. The nicest way I can think of to describe it is "alien," while staying true to what I know. I think it's more important to be truthful, than to be kind in a way that will pleasantly mask the truth.
You're implying Germany in WW2, which is also a touchy subject but it illustrates one point. There were many people in Germany who worked against the Nazi regime, the country paid reparations after the war and has made considerable efforts to atone for those crimes. Nazi ideology and insignia is forbidden by law in Germany. You can get arrested for it, there is no "free speech" amendment when it comes to that. But when Islamic extremists commit atrocities, why aren't there Muslims renouncing Islam in droves? Apologists swarm out of the woodwork with assurances that Islam is not the radical religion of the extremists. Like the cruelest of cults, leaving Islam is punishable by death.
When the Christian church is discovered in yet another scandal, people renounce it and criticize it freely. I've renounced Christianity at some point, so it's not like I'd be expecting them to do something I wasn't willing to do myself. Even if only a few bad apples are pedophiles or corrupt, enough is wrong with it for me to leave the whole mess altogether.
We should be wary of jumping to prejudice, and we should try to keep perspective. At the same time, we should not be blind to an unpleasant reality.
