It’s so funny watching ideologues work themselves into these weird corners. The “West,” pretty much no matter how we define it, has committed abominable atrocities. “Islam,” if for some reason you’re inclined to think of it as a civilizational space opposite the “West,” has also committed abominable atrocities. But the West also produced democracy and modern science. Islam - again, in this conception of the term - has not. Neither side in this imagined civilizational contest has any moral advantage over the other when it comes to the capacity to commit atrocities. Yet it is the nations and cultures of the Islamic world that are nevertheless more desperately lacking in women’s rights, democratic institutions, religious and intellectual tolerance, and so on. That’s so patently obvious, demonstrable and uncomplicated that only an academic could struggle to acknowledge it.
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