Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2001 12:30:40 -0700 (PDT)
From: Wolf Factory <wolf_factory-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: An article by Francis Fukuyama (II)


There is another point I want to make about the
Francis Fukuyama article. It concerns the following
paragraph:
‘It has always been my belief that modernity has a
cultural basis. Liberal democracy and free markets do
not work at all times and everywhere. They work best
in societies with certain values, whose origins may
not be entirely rational. It is not an accident that
modern liberal democracy emerged first in the
Christian West, since the universalism of democratic
rights can be seen in many ways as a secular form of
Christian universalism.’

Is the emergence of democracy and modernity really an
inevitable product of christian doctrine? What proof
do we have that other factors might not have weighed
more heavily (e.g accidents of history, the geography
of Europe...etc)?

Moreover when he asserts ‘there does seem to be
something about Islam, or at least fundamentalist
Islam, that makes Muslim societies particularly
resistant to modernity’ 
What exactly is that certain ‘something’? Has Fukuyama
compared Islam and Christianity side by side and
arrived at his conclusion? Is the current
fundamentalist trend in Islam an inevitable
development? Could we not take some of the messages in
Islam and imagine them leading to democratic
principles? Equally could we not find passages in the
bible that actually show a shocking intolerance (I am
no expert in this field but some passages in Matthew
strike me as pretty strong stuff)? 

In case anyone misunderstands me, let me be crystal
clear. I have no time for any religion and I think the
sooner we leave religion and other superstitions
behind, the better. Certainly, I am not asserting that
Islam is a ‘kind of Buddhism’ as the author of the
‘call’ put it. However, I think looking for the causes
of the attack within the pages of the Quran is
insufficient to say the least. It constitutes sloppy
thinking. Islam, like any other religions is a sitting
duck. It doesn’t take much intellectual effort to
debunk it. One expects more from  Fukuyama et al. 
--- Marwan Dalal <dmarwan-AT-yahoo.com> wrote:
> The Independent
> 11 October 2001
>
http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=98776
> 
> 
> Francis Fukuyama: We remain at the end of history
> 
> 'I remain right: modernity is a very powerful
> freight
> train that will not be derailed by recent events,
> however painful'
> 
> 
> A stream of commentators has been asserting that the
> tragedy of 11 September proves that I was utterly
> wrong to have said more than a decade ago that we
> had
> reached the end of history. The chorus began almost
> immediately, with George Will asserting that history
> had returned from vacation, and Fareed Zakaria
> declaring the end of the end of history.
> 
> It is, on the face of it, nonsensical and insulting
> to
> the memory of those who died on 11 September  as
> well
> as to those who are now participating in military
> raids over Afghanistan  to declare that this
> unprecedented attack did not rise to the level of a
> historical event. But the way in which I used the
> word
> "history" was different. It referred to the progress
> of mankind over the centuries toward modernity,
> which
> is characterised by institutions like liberal
> democracy and capitalism.
> 
> My observation, made back in 1989 on the eve of the
> collapse of communism, was that this evolutionary
> process did seem to be bringing ever larger parts of
> the world toward modernity. And if we looked beyond
> liberal democracy and markets, there was nothing
> else
> towards which we could expect to evolve. Hence the
> end
> of history. While there were retrograde areas that
> resisted that process, it was hard to imagine an
> alternative civilisation in which people would
> genuinely want to live  particularly after
> socialism,
> monarchy, fascism, and other varieties of
> authoritarian rule had been discredited.
> 
> This view has been challenged by many people, and
> perhaps most articulately by Samuel Huntington. He
> argued that rather than progressing toward a single
> global system, the world remained mired in a "clash
> of
> civilisations" where six or seven large cultural
> groups coexist without converging and constitute the
> new fracture lines of global conflict. Since the
> successful attack on the centre of global capitalism
> was evidently perpetrated by Islamic extremists
> unhappy with the very existence of Western
> civilisation, observers have been handicapping the
> Huntington "clash" view over my own "end of history"
> hypothesis rather heavily.
> 
> I believe that in the end I remain right. Modernity
> is
> a very powerful freight train that will not be
> derailed by recent events, however painful and
> unprecedented. Democracy and free markets will
> continue to expand over time as the dominant
> organising principles for much of the world. But it
> is
> worthwhile thinking about what the true scope of the
> present challenge is.
> 
> It has always been my belief that modernity has a
> cultural basis. Liberal democracy and free markets
> do
> not work at all times and everywhere. They work best
> in societies with certain values, whose origins may
> not be entirely rational. It is not an accident that
> modern liberal democracy emerged first in the
> Christian West, since the universalism of democratic
> rights can be seen in many ways as a secular form of
> Christian universalism.
> 
> The central question raised by Mr. Huntington is
> whether institutions of modernity will work only in
> the West, or whether there is something broader in
> their appeal that will allow them to make headway in
> non-Western societies. I believe there is. The proof
> lies in the progress that democracy and free markets
> have made in regions like East Asia, Latin America,
> Orthodox Europe and South Asia. Proof is also
> offered
> by the millions of Third World immigrants who vote
> with their feet every year to live in Western
> societies and eventually assimilate to Western
> values.
> 
> But there does seem to be something about Islam, or
> at
> least fundamentalist Islam, that makes Muslim
> societies particularly resistant to modernity. Of
> all
> contemporary cultural systems, the Islamic world has
> the fewest democracies (Turkey alone qualifies), and
> contains no countries that have made the transition
> from Third to First World status in the manner of
> South Korea or Singapore.
> 
> There are plenty of non-Westerners who prefer the
> economic and technological part of modernity and
> hope
> to have it without having to accept democratic
> politics or Western cultural values as well (for
> example, China or Singapore). There are others who
> like both the economic and political versions, but
> just can't figure out how to make it happen (Russia
> is
> an example). For them, transition to modernity may
> be
> long and painful. But there are no insuperable
> cultural barriers likely to prevent them from
> getting
> there.
> 
> Islam, by contrast, is the only cultural system that
> regularly seems to produce people, like Osama bin
> Laden or the Taliban, who reject modernity lock,
> stock
> and barrel. This raises the question of how
> representative such people are of the larger Muslim
> community. The answer that politicians East and West
> have been putting out since 11 September is that
> those
> sympathetic with the terrorists are a "tiny
> minority"
> of Muslims. It is important for them to say this, to
> prevent Muslims as a group from becoming targets of
> hatred. The problem is that dislike and hatred of
> America and what it stands for are clearly much more
> widespread than that.
> 
> Certainly the number of people willing to go on
> suicide missions and actively conspire against the
> US
> is tiny. But sympathy for them  feelings of
> schadenfreude at collapsing towers, an immediate
> sense
> of satisfaction that the US was getting what it
> deserved, to be followed only later by pro forma
> expressions of disapproval  is characteristic of
> much
> more than a "tiny minority" of Muslims. It extends
> from the middle classes in countries like Egypt to
> immigrants in the West.
> 
> This broader dislike and hatred would seem to
> represent something much deeper than mere opposition
> to American policies like support for Israel,
> encompassing a hatred of the underlying society.
> Perhaps, as many commentators have speculated, the
> hatred is born out of a resentment of Western
> success
> and Muslim failure. But rather than psychologise the
> Muslim world, it makes more sense to ask whether
> radical Islam constitutes a serious alternative to
> Western liberal democracy.
> 
> Even for Muslims themselves, political Islam has
> proven much more appealing in the abstract than in
> reality. After 23 years of rule by fundamentalist
> clerics, most Iranians, in particular nearly
> everyone
> under 30, would like to live in a far more liberal
> society.
> 
> All of the anti-American hatred that has been
> drummed
> up does not translate into a viable political
> programme that Muslim societies will be able to
> follow
> in the years ahead.
> 
> We remain at the end of history because there is
> only
> one system that will continue to dominate world
> politics  that of the liberal-democratic West. This
> does not imply a world free of conflict, or the
> disappearance of culture as a distinguishing
> characteristic of societies. But the struggle we
> face
> is not the clash of several distinct and equal
> cultures struggling amongst one another like the
> great
> powers of 19th-century Europe. The clash consists of
> a
> 
=== message truncated ==

===="All the wolves in the wolf factory paused at noon, 
for a moment of silence."
........from laughing Gravy by John Ashbery.
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