Clash

Reading items such as this article by Lee Harris always makes me shake my head at the utter foolishness purported by pundits and academics that are infatuated with this grandiose idea of "a civilization of people" implying that all people within a "civilization" share common values whether they be religious, social, economic, cultural, etc. and that each "civilization" acts in a coherent manner and are often at odds with other civilizations. In short it's an awful generalization.

The behavior of the Danish government does not suggest that we are in the midst of a clash of civilizations, but, rather, that we are watching a civilization that has lost its sense of purpose capitulating before a civilization that continues to believe, and to believe fanatically, in its own mission. A civilization that no longer believes in itself, and in its values and traditions, is no longer in a position to defend itself from the onslaught of a civilization that does. It is only in a position to appease.

It is hardly fair or even logical to extrapolate from the violent reaction of a small number of Islamic Arabs that they reflect a widespread consensus on the part of all "Arabic civilization" (whatever that is) that violence is an acceptable and encouraged response. Those men and women burning down embassies, calling for the deaths of the Danish editors, and rioting violently in the streets are religious zealots. Period. They hardly speak for all Arabs and to portray the actions of a few onto a wider population is ridiculous. And equating the Danish government's response, which hardly was as bad as Harris makes it seem, with some sort of capitulation on the part of the Western world is inane. Putting aside my feelings about "civilizations" I would hardly consider the Danes representatives of the West. Perhaps more fuss should have been raised about the cartoons in Western newspapers about the controversy but it wasn't. The lack of response doesn't imply surrender to fundamentalists and it's not a harbinger of the decline of the West, it just means the news media had other priorities. This entire "controversy" is so unbelievably stupid.