h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm just coming to the end of Gods War by Christopher Tyerman and I can't help being struck by how much the crusades are influencing East West Relations today.

Can it be that 800 years later we're still fighting the same war? Except now we're trying to impose democracy not Christianity?

Ha. Um, that's a question that a lot of people are asking (and it didn't help that when Bush talked about Iraq, he used the word 'crusade').

To me, I don't know if it's *exactly* the same war, but I think it's still about religion, despite the claims to democracy or freedom. Both Christianity ad Judaism have a vested interest finding a major religion that they can make 'the other', to show their superiority. Since WWII and the holocaust, making Jews the enemy is neither acceptable or accepted, and religions such as Buddhism are just too 'foreign'. That leaves Islam. But in our post-modern world, persecution based on religion isn't okay, so we cloak it in other words.

Messed up, I know.

Thanks for the reply.

I'm also concerned by how much we try and impose our values on other nations. It's as if we are convinced we have the secret to a valid and happy life and need to spread it.

Seems to be a left over from evangalism.

I agree about needing an 'other' to be 'evil'. And perhaps the history of the crusades makes it easier for it to be Islam.

Then again does our history of attacking Islam make it easier for them to demonise the west.

Oh, certainly. Think about it this way...there are people who claim that when one says "the government of Israel shouldn't have done X or Y," that somehow constitutes anti-semitism. Does it really? No. But it's an easy out.

Same goes for the demonization of the west. Terrorist attacks on civilians are excused because everyone in the west, by virtue of being western, is somehow to blame. It's not true, of course, any more than my dislike of the Israeli wall is somehow reflective of a problem with Jews, but it's a convenient 'cover'.

And I agree with you that this idea of imposing western belief systems onto other countries is a bad one. Democracy works in countries where it has been allowed to develop, and where gender parity is more advanced. I love it when people assume, ahistorically and incorrectly, that Athenian democracy included everyone (even women). We somehow want countries that are new to the process to be 'just like us', and even *we* were not 'just like us' some 75 years ago, so why do we expect these places to leapfrog through multiple layers of political development overnight?

Of course, I think some of the problem can be traced to *ahem* your own country's imperial past. The European imperial/colonial powers drew lines on a map with little regard for language groupings or tribal conflicts, and then everyone wonders why some countries just can't seem to hold it together. The most blatant examples of this are, of course, the civil wars in Africa, but certainly, Afghanistan, a country created by the British as a buffer zone between India and the Russians, has these problems. Three major language groups and diverse social interaction methods, coupled with an almost complete lack of development economically, have created a country ripe for the Taliban. And of course the west is to blame...the Soviets did a number on the country, and Karzahi, with his western ideas, is just a puppet (never mind that it's also due to his ethnic background, which is different than 2/3rds of the country).

Sometimes I wish we'd get a bunch of folks together at the UN or somewhere and redraw the geopolitical lines in such a way that they reflect reality.

And you're also right that by trying to impose 'western' values on 'non-western' nations is patronizing as hell.

I can't see Democracy working in a country which didn't actually want it. Or didn't spontanously generate it?

For centuries through history Democracy hadn't democracy been seen as a 'bad' thing? Didn't we have the concept of herdiatry monarchy as being the right way of doing things for much longer than we ever had the concept of democracy of being the correct way.

I entirely agree about the aftermarth of Empire being a very bad thing. It seems that any form of partion that the English were involved in has led to some sort of war.

Oh, it's not just the English, dear. It was also the French and the Portuguese, Dutch, and Spanish!

I think you've got a point there. I mean, think about it. Leadership was, for a long time, based on one's prowess in war, and then the accident of birth. Much longer, in fact, than democracy. It's a new thing, and not necessarily the best political system, and frankly, has lots of problems. So why we seem to think that other people need to do it...well, that's rather prideful of us, isn't it?