He makes a good point about the cultural dissonance that characterizes Islamic/western relations by noting the recent story about a German woman threatened with the loss of her government subsidy if she refused to take a job as a prostitute. He writes:
When the Germans legalized their whorehouses, they thought it showed how relaxed and enlightened they were. The al-Qaida types take a different line: They think it's a sign that the West is decadent and weak and cannot survive. And they have a point: The government forcing women into prostitution is merely the latest example of the internal contradictions of the modern secular state.
Interesting stuff.
OOPS! It appears that even the journalistic gods nod. As my fearless commentators have pointed out, the German prostitution/welfare story is bogus. Thus we see displayed both the weakness of mainstream journalism [I first saw the story in the Telegraph] and the corrective power of the blogosphere, which quickly righted things. I still stand by my [and Steyn's] main point which is that western secularists and Muslim jihadists have radically different perceptions of the same phenomenon.
3 comments:
Except that the German story wasn't true anyway...
As Sharon says, don't believe everything you read in the papers ....
http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/brothel.asp
Hi Sharon,
You are right that the brothel story was bogus. Snopes seems to be indispensible these days. Jeez, if you can't believe the papers, who can you believe?
The larger point about cognitive dissonance, however, is accurate. Western secularists and Muslim Jihadists do have radically different ways of viewing things. That was what I was focusing on.
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