"There is some justice in one charge that is frequently leveled against the United States, and more generally against the West: Middle Easterners frequently complain that the West judges them by different and lower standards than it does Europeans and Americans, both in what is expected of them and what they may expect, in terms of their economic well-being and their political freedom. They assert that Western spokesmen repeatedly overlook or even defend actions and support rulers that they would not tolerate in their own countries.
...But there is nevertheless a widespread [Western] perception that there are significant differences bewtween the advanced Western world and the rest, notably the peoples of Islam, and that these latter are in some ways different, with the tacit assumption that they are inferior. The most flagrant violations of civil rights, political freedom, and even human decency are disregarded or glossed over, and crimes against humanity, which in a European or American country would evoke a storm of outrage, are seen as normal and even acceptable.
...The underlying assumption in all this is that these people are incapable of running a democratic society and have neither concern nor capacity for human decency."
p104-5, The Crisis of Islam, Bernard Lewis
sophia's finger salute!!!
OK. I just lost it. I'm sitting here with tears streaming down my face. I just cannot grasp how any decent human being could NOT want these people to be free.