The question is, which one applies in this case?
“An Islamicist does not see the world the way you and I do; he filters it through the closed loop of his faith. So it is not so much that he rejects Western culture, he simply does not have room for it because he is invested in sharia.”
A racist does not see the world the way you and I do; he filters it through the closed loop of his race. So it is not so much that he rejects Western culture, he simply does not have room for it because he is invested in racism.
Narrow mindedness comes in many flavors.
The question is, which one applies in this case?
I agree with both of you...(this ended up a bit long, sorry)
At 16 I moved from the UK to the USA. Even though both are ‘English’ speaking the cultural differences made my head spin. England was already very liberal, had largely walked away from Christ, Church attendance dropping like a stone. I was one of a few kids who had parents that took us to Church weekly. Most kids would mock anything to do with the Church. I also heard (UK) “it’s a free country” a million times. I believed it too, Magna Carta and all often mentioned as one of the historical great things of Britain (although we were not taught much British history through the public system). Although, of course, ‘guns bad’ with USA movies portraying endless gun violence (I was terrified!! lol).
When I arrived here, kids in High School were very open about the Church they attended, and there were lots of them. Seeing gun racks in the homes of friends made me very uncomfortable. I had to take a “U.S. Government” class in High School. I was astonished how much some kids seem to know. Plus, there was a focus on “Bill of Rights”. At the time, I just thought “these people are obsessed with ‘rights’” - although I assumed the same (laws) were true in the UK, I’d just not been taught about them. Of course, when it came to 2A, I had the “guns are bad, this is stupid” mentality. Given all the adjustments I was making personally, I didn’t dwell on it. It took years for me to understand.
Looking back, what I learned through some hard lessons, we’re all hard-programmed by culture. It is all we know. It is “what’s right” because we all want to have some level of pride in who we are (national pride). It’s VERY hard to see through it, it’s like low-level programming, hard to undo or see everything through another lens. Same for atheists in western cultures that claim they can “be a good person without God”. The very idea of a “good person” comes from your surrounding culture, that which is saturated from hundreds of years being based in Christianity. When the left says, “get the 10 Commandments out of schools”, my question is, “which one do you disagree with?”. Crickets - because they’re the basis for a civilized society, so why not display them proudly, even as a historical item that influenced the world for the better? ...we know why.
Explaining “cultural differences” is very hard because few people understand their own well, let alone more than one and able to do a ‘compare and contrast’ between them. Truly stepping outside your culture, and understanding it, takes a long time. Most don’t even understand the concept. Now, looking back at the UK, I’m horrified. The same fundamental reasons the USA was born, and emerged out of the UK, still exist. Free speech is gone, with the ‘speech policing’ entering ‘pub talk’ if somebody is offended - and, while many realize what is happening, they’re unarmed. They don’t know what to do. When I listen to them, I can still switch to their ‘lens of the world’, I just do not share that lens anymore...the State is showing its true colors. The ‘democracy’ is a ruse. You get to vote for the ‘chosen’ few, so it really doesn’t matter. They did not vote for mass migration. Nobody asked them. Now the revolt is being met with force, free speech be damned.
Sorry for the essay :) I’m just passionate about culture, how it makes you think, how people do not think the same. The reasons are foundational and religious doctrine shapes things first. It provides the bedrock of what is considered ‘good’. Everything else, e.g. law, government structure, freedoms (or not), follow (compatibility). Then comes ‘sub-culture’. We all have them. Even ‘sub-cultures of sub-cultures’. E.g. ‘the black community’, with many within it distancing themselves from ‘ghetto culture’....same everywhere (Scottish vs. British). It’s complex, human nature is consistent though, we rarely see beyond the culture to which we’re born and are slow to understand others. IMHO...this is what makes Islam today so dangerous. Naive fools think it’s ‘just another’ religion, when it’s worse than the Nazi’s could have ever imagined....but can’t say that, it’s ‘racist’ (in the UK).
I’ll stop before I think about India ;p