06-11-2005, 05:30 PM
"I can envision winning the lottery, but that does not mean I will win it. I'm talking about the real world, not some sort of a hypothetical vision of what things *should* be."
Okay... but if you were a Muslim five hundred years ago, saying that the Christians, the conquering, crusading, colonizing, missionary Christians, with their autos de fe, their inqusitions, their overtly racist mindset, would become the model for tolerance and equality among races and genders?
That would seem like a really, really stupid concept. History moves on, and what seems ridiculous one day is inevitable a century later. It's not impossible. It's not even necessarily improbable. I really don't know, but my suspicion is that Al Jazeera television will have an effect on the Arab world, which will itself have an impact on the Islamic world, and we'll see something quite different from that cultural group within a few decades.
After a couple centuries, who knows?
Or, maybe it won't work out that way. It's pointless to just sit back and speculate. But I see no reason, unless one accepts either racism or a peculiar brand of cultural determinism, to simply declare such a thing impossible. Civilization has changed hands throughout history a dozen times at least, and Islamic civilizations have had their time up to bat just like everyone else. They may again.
Jester
Okay... but if you were a Muslim five hundred years ago, saying that the Christians, the conquering, crusading, colonizing, missionary Christians, with their autos de fe, their inqusitions, their overtly racist mindset, would become the model for tolerance and equality among races and genders?
That would seem like a really, really stupid concept. History moves on, and what seems ridiculous one day is inevitable a century later. It's not impossible. It's not even necessarily improbable. I really don't know, but my suspicion is that Al Jazeera television will have an effect on the Arab world, which will itself have an impact on the Islamic world, and we'll see something quite different from that cultural group within a few decades.
After a couple centuries, who knows?
Or, maybe it won't work out that way. It's pointless to just sit back and speculate. But I see no reason, unless one accepts either racism or a peculiar brand of cultural determinism, to simply declare such a thing impossible. Civilization has changed hands throughout history a dozen times at least, and Islamic civilizations have had their time up to bat just like everyone else. They may again.
Jester