ARTICLE: "Fiery Campaign Imperils Bosnia's Progress, Officials Warn," by Nicholas Wood, New York TImes, 27 August 2006, p. 3.Europe's seam with Islam is where all the serious battles of Gap integration are occurring right now, to no surprise. The same is true with the Muslim Seam States in SE Asia.
ARTICLE: "Turks Knock on Europe's Door With Evidence That Islam and Capitalism Can Coexist," by Dan Bllefsky, New York Times, 27 August 2006, p. 4.
Standing up and saying you want to be with the connected, with the Core, is a dangerous step for predominately Muslim states, because so many inhabitants--especially the fundamentalists--will see a profound loss of identity in this process. They prefer Sharia and the honor killings over civil law and sense that male control over women will suffer in this integration process. They prefer to continue fighting over past injustices rather than adapt themselves to future opportunities.
In short, they prefer to stick with what they know rather than take the chance of failing in the clearly meritocratic marketplace, where you don't succeed or fail on the basis of your collective identity but on your individual skills.
Sure, it's a scary step. Better to pretend we're all in this together under God than to admit it's every man for himself.
Or is it?
You have to be able to separate the two concepts: the inner life and the outer life. You have to adopt the dominant outer rule set as price for the freedom to pursue the inner one according too your choosing. That's how you accommodate the multiethnic society that naturally arises from increased connectivity with the outside world. No man is an island but some prefer to live on them.
Turkey is dong its best to show us what the economic Reformation of Islam looks like, and it's a perfectly decent effort.
Bosnia shows us how hard it is for old angers to yield to new opportunities.
These are two key battlefields in the Long War. Not that interesting, I know, because we lack the drama of captured journalists threatened with beheadings and the nihilist glamour of suicide bombers.
But this is where the real victories are being won--on the seam.
Comments (1)
Forty years back I moved from Switzerland to Italy. At that time Swiss women couldn't vote and in Italy we had honor killings (faide). That's all gone. When thinking of Turkey, think of Istanbul, Bodrum etc. When thinking Maroc think Fez, Casablanca, Rabat and so on, all modern and rather western towns.
Posted by Hans Suter | August 28, 2006 4:09 AM