12th June 2010, 7:14 PM
A Black Falcon Wrote:Because Islam never had a Reformation or an Enlightenment, and is still stuck in the Middle Ages. Belief in concepts such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, that people have inalienable rights, separation of church and state, and much more is rare in Islam, particularly in extremist Islam, and the extremist branch is very, very strong. They do not believe in many of our most fundamental values, and as a result there is a massive culture clash, as should be expected.
Some bits of democracy are starting to spread more in the Middle East, and some Islamic countries are more progressive than others (the Arab ones are the worst, in general), but overall Islam is a very conservative religion which has resisted change.
Antagonizing such people isn't great, but giving in isn't right either -- we should not surrender our rights just because other people don't believe that such rights should exist. They are wrong, and we should say so and stick with what we believe...
Problem is, of course, they are also sometimes violent... So what should we do? It can be tough. But yes, I do not support just giving in. That does not help anything, really.
Secularism emerged as a means to keep the peace in religious divided nations and prevent one group from trying to dominate the other.
When you have a almost monolithic highly conservative populous being uniformly Sunni Muslim there inst gonna be enough friction within the populous to start a firestorm to cause radical change.