Posted on 10/25/2006 5:28:01 PM PDT by aculeus
Yes, Theo Van Gogh was a thoroughly obnoxious, even despicable, man.
Oddly, that made his murder even more of an event. The murder of a pious Christian probably would have passed unnoticed. People might even have thought that he deserved it. But Dutch liberals were shocked when a man like Theo Van Gogh was murdered.
Shocker!
WTF??? India was torn in two by a vicious civil war and was forced to create the islamic state of Pakistan (which it later fought three wars with) to escape the civil war...
Each is always worth reading.
The fact that Buruma writes for al-Guardian and is an avowed Marxist should have automatically had this book written off as garbage.
I am surprised that somebody as astute as Dalrymple would even dignify Buruma by reading it.
1) - "has the second largest population of Muslims in the world", and
2) - (arguably) "has maintained the highest standards of democratic freedom of any country in the Third World"
WTF??? India was torn in two by a vicious civil war and was forced to create the islamic state of Pakistan (which it later fought three wars with) to escape the civil war...
"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation."
The fact that Buruma writes for al-Guardian and is an avowed Marxist should have automatically had this book written off as garbage.
Around 90% of India's population are non-Muslem. India's success is in spite of it's Muslim minority. A large percentage of the violence in India is perpetrated by it's small minority Muslim population.
"However, pessimists might reply that it is the memory and very real threat of intercommunal violence, from which the Muslims must emerge the overall losers because they are so much in the minority, that keeps freedom alive in India and Muslims loyal to, or at least compliant with, the democratic order. If they scented weakness in the Indian state, they—or rather the Islamists among them—would go on the offensive.".
Agreed.
Thanks for posting this. City Journal is a treasure as is Dalrymple.
How droll of Dalrymple to say that he has the makings of a fanatic. I saw him do a reading on tv. In person he is a big bear of a man with a thoroughly English face, like a Toby jug, and the most genial, self-deprecating manner.
It is news to me that Hirsi Ali had a "priviledged background". Is escaping from Somalia with a clittorectomey "priveledged".
Ian Buruma
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Ian Buruma (born 1951) is an Anglo-Dutch writer and academic. Much of his work focuses on Asian culture, particularly that of 20th-century Japan.
He was born in the Netherlands, to a Dutch father and English mother. He studied Chinese literature, and then Japanese film at Nihon University in Tokyo. He has held a number of editorial and academic positions, and has contributed numerous articles to the New York Review of Books.
He has held fellowships at the Woodrow Wilson Institute for the Humanities, Washington, D.C and St Antony's College, Oxford. In 2003 he became Luce Professor of Democracy, Human Rights & Journalism at Bard College, New York.
He resides in New York.
[edit] Works
The Japanese Tattoo (1980) with Donald Richie
Behind the Mask: On Sexual Demons, Sacred Mothers, Transvestites, Gangsters, Drifters, and Other Japanese Cultural Heroes (1983)
Tokyo: Form and Spirit (1986) with James R. Brandon, Kenneth Frampton, Martin Friedman, Donald Richie
God's Dust: A Modern Asian Journey (1989)
Great Cities of the World: Hong Kong (1991)
Playing the Game (1991) novel
The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and in Japan (1994)
Geisha: The Life, the Voices, the Art (1998) with Jodi Cobb
Voltaire's Coconuts, or Anglomania in Europe (1998)
The Missionary and the Libertine: Love and War in East and West, 2000
Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing (2001)
Inventing Japan: From Empire to Economic Miracle 1853-1964 (2003)
Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies (2004) with Avishai Margalit
Murder in Amsterdam (2006)
Scratch an American liberal, and you will find a Pruitan moralist not far beneath the surface. Leftists (there's nothing liberal about these people) are neo-Puritans straight out of the Salem witch hysteria.
Do the rest of the Dutch share Van Gogh's renowned sense of humor? It might help.
bttt
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India is a poor example. There are weekly violent islamist actions throughout much of the country.
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