It is encouraging Muso. Catholic schools have also been embracing Muslim students for a few years now and it's worked out very well.

We have to put our faith in the younger generation and hope they can do what we couldn't - promote acceptance and integration successfully.

Platitude thread.

Depends on the kind of aggression thread.

Ohhh, let's put aside all our differences and all hold hands and sing coombayah!!

As far as I know the Islamic world was an antediluvian curiosity to Westerners eighty or so years ago. It had no geopolitical relevance whatsoever. People started paying much more attention to it sometime about nine years ago.

muso wrote on Nov 9^th, 2010 at 8:33am:


Just out of curiosity, how many racial/religious/cultural groups have proven to be as immiscible as us muslims? The Spanish perhaps? Tasmanians? The French?

If we have to organise 'get to know about other religions' sessions why not ban all religions if they are so insular?

freediver wrote on Nov 9^th, 2010 at 7:28pm:


The transcript willl be up in a few days.  It's probably better that you read that or listen to the program. I was impressed by all three groups.  The Jews and the Muslims got along surprisingly well in that program. The Jewish girl said that the hijab made girls look more beautiful.

They were asked at one stage to say what they liked and what they didn't like about the other religion. The Jewish lad said that he found crucifixes 'scary' and wondered why the symbol had to be an instrument of torture.

They didn't exactly tiptoe over the issues and sing Kumbaya, which was good

One of the Muslims brought up the question of the Jews not having a heaven and hell.  

The overall atmosphere was one of respect, but curiosity.

JC Denton wrote on Nov 9^th, 2010 at 3:37pm:


Not exactly. The "world" woke up to the antediluvian curiousity of the Arab world with the OPEC oil crisis of 1973. By upping the oil prices, the Arabs created a global recession which, on top of Nixon abandoning the Bretton Woods gold pledge in 1971, ended the post-war economic boom and changed the world forever.

Historically, the Islamic world has been heavily involved in geopolitics, sitting geographically between Europe and Asia. Arabs, Turks, Kurds and Afghans controlled the Silk Road between Europe and China, and when Marco Polo visited China he saw Europe to be a political and cultural backwater by comparison.

The Arabs were also heavily involved in the slave trade, which was the main source of labour for the colonial powers of the 18th and 19th centuries. Slavery drove the global commodies markets until the 1860s - much the way oil drives industrial society today.

So, by mediating the trade of textiles, spices and other luxury goods; by controlling the slave trade; and now, by sitting on the world's oil surplus, the Islamic world has consistently been crucial to the global economy.

I get the Orientalist references in your post, but there's a reason why the Victorians were curious about the Arab world in the late 19th century: the French were building the Suez Canal, and by doing so, would open up shipping direct to India. The English had just been at war with France and tensions about control of the Suez were high. Also, English explorers and missionaries in the mid-19th century were busy colonising Africa. The Arabs were crucial to this project by providing slaves, supplies and safe passage. The Victorian trope of the "mysterious east" arose from the stories brought back by explorers such as Speke, Stanley and Bruce. Their stories were serialized in the magazines of the time, just as the American genre, Film Noir, captured similar themes in movies like Tangiers and Casablanca once America became the global power following WWII.

The fascination with the Islamic world is economic, and based on the historic dependance of the West upon the Arab world to consolidate its power. The US continues this tradition today by arming and training the Saudi military, at the centre of the Islamic world, cradling Mecca. The relationship between the Saudis and the US is a main sticking point of political Islam, along with Israel, and, with the end of the Cold War, this is why Islam has become enemy numero uno in the Western world today.

Previously, the Islamic world was seen as an ally of the Western powers - a dastardly, double-dealing ally certainly, and one to be watched closely, but it kept America going through the Cold War, as America's own oil reserves could not match Russia's.

It's not just the oil, it's power over the oil. The US has relied on Canadian and Venuzuelan oil for its domestic market since the 1970s. What the US seeks in the middle east is control over Europe and Japan, the main buyers of middle eastern oil, and the US's economic rivals. Firstly, the Saudis agree to sell oil in US dollars, which props up the US dollar. In 2000, Saddam announced he'd sell Iraqi oil in Euros...

Three years later, Saddam was history.

Secondly, the main oil companies are based in the US, therefore it benefits them to buy and sell oil in US dollars rather than, say, rials. To provide oil to its vast military, the US treasury can print dollars to buy oil, so militarily, having oil denominated in US dollars gives the US the winning edge.

Mind you, it didn't help the US win Vietnam, and this was the reason the US floated its dollar: it spent too much Fort Knox gold on the Vietnam War, ended the Bretton Woods system, and this spelt the US's slow global decline.

So the current obsession with the Islamic world is based largely on its oil - not for the intrinsic value of the oil itself, but the economic power this oil represents. The US is now setting its sites firmly on China, and is frantic about the close relationship China is forming with its arch-enemy, Iran.

If OPEC countries decided to break ranks and sell oil in yuan, America would be backed into a corner. When you think about it though - in population terms alone, if not in manufacturing terms - this would make much more sense.

Interfaith-schminterfaith. As Kissenger argued, the world is prevented from destroying itself through the mutual interdependance of conflicting states. In practice, of course, the US had its hand on the levers. After all, states have not been prevented from destroying themselves at all. The war has been relentless.

Interfaith dialogue is a nice idea, but it won't resolve the current economic framework that excludes most of the world. The "clash of civilizations" is not about differing views of civilization at all: it is, and has always been about the distribution of economic power.

The "clash" is merely the surface appearance of the tectonic plates shifting. Cracks appear when power shifts. Just as the backlash against Muslim immigrants in the West relates to the economic insecurity of certain social groups, the rise of militant Islam relates to the same political-economic shift.