A Deeper Cause

Submitted by Ron Thompson (United States), May 9, 2016 at 10:05

While it is useful and necessary to revisit the history (for many probably the first time) of the Sykes-Picot agreement, succinctly explained by Dr Pipes, I think there is a deeper reason for the growing anarchy and violence attributed to it.

That reason is the cultural and psychological background of Islam, a belief system antithetical to
the values, however abused, of Europe and Western civilization.
It may sound trite, but the West, however much honored more in the breach than the practice,
gives lip service, and practice in its best representatives, to the Golden Rule. Whereas islam, in its founder Mohammed and all its dominant practitioners and expounders, scorns that threshold professed commandment of Judaism, Christianity, and for secularists and non-believers, the Enlightenment.
It is this bedrock fact of a culture founded on hostility to the brotherhood of man, much more than the failings of a secret agreement, that accounts for the unraveling of the core Middle East 100 years later.

I agree with Dr Pipes that six smaller and more homogeneous States would be better, or at least offer the prospect of more stability, than the two totalitarian States that evolved from the Sykes-Picot agreement. But absent the inherent hostility of Islam to compromise, evolution, and peaceful solution to conflict, which eventually led to peaceful States in Europe, this could have happened far earlier and at far less cost, than what we are facing now.

As if to prove this, we now have Islam-based chaos and violence being imported into Europe,
with 'refugees" (invaders?) fleeing war, chaos, and poverty, but bringing the ultimate cause of those problems, their religion, with them.

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".