re: #82 Aunty Entity Dragon

The bulk of Islam…at least in a number of countries…appears to be experiencing some sort of cultural backlash to westernized media influences and secularism.

This sounds like a complicated thesis that’d require a lot of research before you asserted it.

That being said, somer of the backlash has been violent in many areas (not at all helped by our drone campaigns, GITMO and Abu Ghraib) and our association with democracy has poisoned the well for democratic government in the eyes of much of the developing world. The lack of real organization in Islam and variety of cultural differences makes it difficult (if not impossible) to see how westernization will take hold if at all, or if rejection of western values becomes ascendant over time. Again, giving primacy to local cultural values is probably healthy to a certain degree, but parochialism can also be damaging and dangerous.

You’re treating Islam like a monolithic entity. You keep qualifying it, but then going back to just saying “Islam”.

It’s also a false dialectic to go Western/anti-Western. The “west” isn’t the only source of secularizing ideas in the world.