Response to Rohit

Submitted by sara (United States), Mar 7, 2012 at 18:22

Rohit, I agree with most of your comments and perhaps you will allow me the liberty of limiting my observation to Egypt and Lebanon (as I think I mostly did). Of course there has been bloodshed in Islam prior to the past 50 years. I was pointing out that there was nonetheless evidence of westernization and leaning towards progressive imitation of western culture in Egypt and in Lebanon just 30-40 years ago. That was my point.

In fact, the issue is that the chess games played between USSR and USA created a situation which allowed the flourishing and nurturing of this ideology. This is a major issue, especially since I do believe that prior to the uprising of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and Hizbullah in Lebanon, they might have had a chance to grow into something. But your argument is probably that this would never have been a real choice anyway and it would have been derailed.

The suffering that India has endured at the hands of Islamists is a subject that upsets me no end since I have read the terror incidents starting in 2004 (put out by the US State Dept) and was completely shocked to note that India consistently has the highest number of Jihad attack incidents, eclipsing even Iraq. It is a shame that this is not more widely publicized.

I was not attempting to humanize Islamist fundamentalism. I truly believe that there is a great cultural divide that is pretty much un-breachable, a true clash of civilizations. If you read my other posts on this forum, you will note my problem with this.

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