My answer to Mr. Tovey-Continuing

Submitted by Debanjan Banerjee (India), Sep 23, 2011 at 07:10

Dear Mr. Tovey ,

Thanks a lot for responding to my answers. Now please find below my responses to your arguments.

1. "While it is definitely certain that cultural differences do exist between the American style and others, it cannot be denied that the death cultures practiced in the absence of American influences are not any better."

What death cultures are you talking about Mr Tovey ? By your own definition then America is the biggest exporter of death culture around the World and particularly in the Muslim world. As per as I know there were no suicide bombings either in Iraq , Afghanistan or Pakistan before the American involvements in theose countries so surely American intervention has helped to produce the vicioud death culture of suicide bombing that we see in these parts of the Muslim world as we see it today. Even in the America itself , according to some statistics , more people are killed in domestic gun crimes than anywhere else in the Muslim World due to suicide bombings. America is the country which jails more people and executes more people. So which country is the promoter of the culture of death here ?

"Further, death and destruction in the Philippines etc., at the hands of others than Americans were part and parcel of the original changes in culture not caused by Americans."

American intervention in the Philippines did cause massive humanitarian disaster in that country. It resulted in a death of 1.5 million Philippino civilians (apprx.) The Philippinos were innocents who were fighting independence agaisnt the Spanish rule when they asked America for support and succur. Surely they did not want to be under the colonial jackboot of American exceptionalism. Have you heard the name of Samuel Longhorn Clemens ? He is also known as Mark twain. Please read this writing of him on American massacre of Moro people in Philippins. http://www.is.wayne.edu/mnissani/cr/moro.htm

2. "America's problem in the purported failures of extending democracy to other nations is that there is a misunderstanding of the freedom and independence Americans enjoy that other cultures seem reluctant and cannot embrace."

Can you kindlky be little more specific to explain exactly what freedom and independence you are talking about here that American enjoy simply because they are an "exceptional" people ? Say the case of Rachel Corie or Furkan Dogan. These were American citizens who were killed by the army of your "apple of the eye of the GOD" and America has not brought into justice those perpetrators of the crime because those perpetrators happened to share a faith of people who happen to be the "apple of the eye of the GOD". So American concepts of freedom and independence is not for the people like Rachel Corie and Furkan Dogan I guess. Some freedom and independence is this...

Have you heard about Hose Padilla ? He was recently sent behind the bars for simply embracing Islam. Some freedom is this I guess..

3. "Further, you are definitely not going to make a successful argument by trying to link Israel with the likes of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, a contradiction of empathies if ever there was one."

There is a similarity in between Israel and the likes of Saudi Arabia , Bahrain etc since both the two countries happen to be status-quo states sharing each other's objectives at this moment of history. For Israel they want to continue their hold upon the land they occupied in the 1967 war and for Saudi Arabia the house of Saud wants to perpetuate its authoritarian rule over its population. So in this case both the countries are status-quo states who want to perpetuate the present circumstances which they enjoy. Moreover , both enjoy strong backing by America which also reflects the strong connection between the two. Both Isreal and Saudi Arabia (as well as their lackies in Washington) are hostile to the Islamic republic in Iran since the Islamic republic represents a different model for the region contrary to the ossified status-quo that Israel , Saudi Arabia or the US represents. This is just similar to the axis powers during WWII like Third Reich , Imperial Japan and Fascist Italy comeing together.

4. "America was never intended to be popular with the Arab world, a world that was not a major concern to America until World War One when the British consorted with the Arabic communities and World War Two when America was faced with siding with Israel after the mufti's of the Middle East consorted with the Third Reich against the Jewish populations already resident in the Middle East."

Mr. Tovie you are contradicting yourself. By your own admission America invaded the Muslim World in 1803 for supposedly grievances so how can you justify that the Muslim world was never America's major concern before the First World war.

America was concerned to the West Asian region primarily because of Oil. Read David Fromkin's "A peace to end all peace" whereby it is clearly mentioned that Standard Oil was interested in the natural resources in the West Asian theatre even prior to the outbreak of the World War I.

Regarding why America was invovled in the West Asian theatre during and World War II is also the same reason that it was involved in the World War I and it was Oil ,, my dear Mr. Tovie. Another point was that since America in the post-1945 World had become a particular hegemon in the Western sphere it wanted to contain the influences of Soviet Union in the region. America also wanted primarily its own hegemony in the region and preservation of authoritarainship in the region that is why it toppled the pro-democracy secular Mossadegh regime in Iran with the pro-US and tyrannical Shah regime.

5. The Muslim world needs to learn a lot from America (and Israel) . These are the things I believe the Muslims need to learn from the US (and Israel)

a. Missionary zeal (The missionary zeal was something that gave the early Muslims victories over the huge empires like the Persian or Byzantine empires. The most problem that one finds in the current statioanry nature of Muslim thinking is because of a lack of missionary zeal which is present in America. This is something Muslims can learn from America)

b. Conviction about one's ideas (The early Ameircan founding fathers and the early Israeli Zionists are great examples of this)

c. Work-culture and Organizational skills (This is where Muslims lack most now days. There is almost no work-culture , descipline and organizational skill present in the Muslim world. I attribute to the Muslim lack of a sense of purpose in life as early Muslims used to have in them. This can be bettered by gradual immigration to the Western world whereby Muslims learn to be more organizational and hard-working)

These are the things Muslims can and should try to learn from America and Israel. However democracy or any other Western values are not needed since I do not consider those are values worthy of emulating by Muslims from Americans and Israelis.

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