January 04, 2002
Why West?
Read this, it's quetly refreshing:By any reckoning, Islam has produced more contemporary fundamentalist movements than any other great religious tradition. Of course, it is inaccurate and wrongheaded to conclude that Islam is therefore inherently intolerant. Muslims have produced a variety of social practices and political cultures; both the Muslims of South Asia and the Muslims of Turkey, for example, have political cultures that differ from those of Arab Muslims. Any totalizing or essentialist description of Islam (Islam is always opposed to free markets, Islam is essentially socialist in nature) is bound to be misleading.and this one:
- Lingua Franca - November 2001 | Field Notes: The Fundamentalist Factor
The issue that has occupied macrohistorians over the past generation can be stated quite succinctly: Why Europe? Why did a relatively small and backward periphery on the western fringes of the Eurasian continent burst onto the world scene in the sixteenth century and by the nineteenth century become a dominant force in almost all corners of the earth? Until recently, two responses have dominated. The first is that something unique in the European past lay behind its eventual economic development and power. This something unique is often seen as a universal good—such as reason, freedom, or individualism—that first developed in Europe but ultimately relates, or should relate, to all human beings. The best-known recent study in this school is The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor (Norton) by the now emeritus Harvard historian David S. Landes.
- Lingua Franca - November 2001 | Cover Story: Why the West?
Posted at January 04, 2002 05:38 PM | Perspective
