Bernard Lewis on “Radical Islam: Israel and the West”, Islam and the West, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and the West

Bernard Lewis on “Radical Islam: Israel and the West”

By Baron Bodissey

February 23, 2010

On February 16, 2010, The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (SICSA) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem hosted an exclusive seminar featuring Prof. Bernard Lewis, a world expert in the field of Middle Eastern studies and Islam entitled “Radical Islam: Israel and the West”.

An Israeli participant sends the following summary of the topics that were discussed:

The seminar was moderated by Prof. Robert S. Wistrich, the Center’s director and a world expert on anti-Semitism.

Muslims and the West

Prof. Lewis began by explaining that “this is the first time in 1,000 years that the Muslim world is in charge of their own affairs.” In this post-Communist era, “the Russians can’t play a role, and the Americans don’t want to play a role.” This change has created a painful new awareness in the Muslim world and has raised questions regarding why Muslim countries have fallen behind the West. There seems to be two very different answers to this question.

The first approach claims that Western Imperialism is to blame. The supporters of this view place the blame squarely on the United States and Israel (“the ‘illegitimate offspring’ of the United States”), who they see as the face of Western Imperialism today. They believe that modernization is a betrayal of their Islamic heritage and the only solution is to return to authentic Islam, no matter the sacrifice. This is what radical Islam is claiming to be doing.

http://newageislam.com/bernard-lewis-on-%E2%80%9Cradical-islam--israel-and-the-west%E2%80%9D/islam-and-the-west/d/2523

Subversion of media is an art form in Pakistan, Islam and the West, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and the West

Subversion of media is an art form in Pakistan

The Collapse Of Western Institutions

By HUMAYUN GAUHAR

Sunday, 26 October 2008.

WWW.AHMEDQURAISHI.COM

The first two separations are well known. It is the third separation, the one between national and international behaviour, which is of particular relevance to my thesis. The double standards that imperial powers applied to their conduct at home and their conduct abroad emerged from this separation. The system of free and fair elections was good at home, but not for the colonies, where the natives had to be educated and con trolled before they could be trusted to understand what was good for them. This was the only logical position that the rulers could adopt when force was the real sanction behind their power. The suggestion that the imperial powers conquered and subjugated vast territories only to educate the conquered people so that they may liberate themselves makes no sense. The education offered to the people in the colonies was meant to alienate them from their own cultures rather than to prepare them for the future. The whole legislative arrangement was an elaborate hoax. The judiciary administered a legal system alien to the people and maintained an august judicial pretence. The judiciary was one of the major instruments of imperialism. There was no freedom that was not suppressed and countenanced by the judiciary so long as the law was not violated. The judiciary administered unjust laws with complete justice. It was the independence of the judiciary that provided the rulers with a machine for the continuance of unjust laws, a machine that appeared impersonal and inspired confidence. This again was understandable because in secular society the judiciary was assigned a definite role: to interpret and to administer the laws. The judiciary was not permitted to extend its jurisdiction or independence to question either the purpose or the substance of laws framed by the rulers. They could not question acts of state, or their application, which were often invidious. The executive objectivity, which was a guarantee for the citizen at home, became a justification for servility in the colonies. The press, an instrument of free expression of views at home, was used to control and influence the intelligentsia in the occupied territories.

http://newageislam.com/subversion-of-media-is-an-art-form-in-pakistan--/islam-and-the-west/d/935