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Who are the ‘extraordinary’ Muslims?
By Spengler
“My job is to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives,” United States President Barack Obama told an Arabic television channel on January 26. Really? What are their names? Word has come to the West of no extraordinary Muslim thinker since the 12th century. There is one first-rank Arab writer working today who tries to explain why there are no extraordinary Muslims - but on that more below.
By “extraordinary”, to be sure, Obama means no more than Garrison Keillor meant in saying that the children of Lake Wobegon all are above average. There is no “there” in Obama’s “patchwork”, as he characterized America in his inaugural address. America is all patches and no quilt, arranged in no particular order, as in his remark in the same interview that America is “a country of Muslims, Jews, Christians, non-believers”. Everyone is ordinary, or maybe extraordinary - whatever. If Obama had said that “the Muslim world is filled with ordinary people, etc”, his meaning would have been clearer.
It’s worth holding Obama to his words, though. In the real world, the ordinary depends on the extraordinary, for it is the extraordinary citizens of a nation who set a mark for the aspirations of ordinary people. Cultures that can’t produce extraordinary individuals can’t survive. That bears on the other half of the president’s assertion. It is true that most Muslims simply want a better life, and the two or three million American Muslims mostly are well-educated economic immigrants who value prosperity over tradition.
But it also is true that among the 1.4 billion Muslims in the world there are tens of millions who would rather kill and die than endure what they perceive as an intolerable humiliation. The majority of Muslims will be content to eat crumbs from the table of the West and conform to the misery of their circumstances. It is the substantial minority that will not be content that should worry Obama.
atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KB03Ak03.html
By Spengler
“My job is to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives,” United States President Barack Obama told an Arabic television channel on January 26. Really? What are their names? Word has come to the West of no extraordinary Muslim thinker since the 12th century. There is one first-rank Arab writer working today who tries to explain why there are no extraordinary Muslims - but on that more below.
By “extraordinary”, to be sure, Obama means no more than Garrison Keillor meant in saying that the children of Lake Wobegon all are above average. There is no “there” in Obama’s “patchwork”, as he characterized America in his inaugural address. America is all patches and no quilt, arranged in no particular order, as in his remark in the same interview that America is “a country of Muslims, Jews, Christians, non-believers”. Everyone is ordinary, or maybe extraordinary - whatever. If Obama had said that “the Muslim world is filled with ordinary people, etc”, his meaning would have been clearer.
It’s worth holding Obama to his words, though. In the real world, the ordinary depends on the extraordinary, for it is the extraordinary citizens of a nation who set a mark for the aspirations of ordinary people. Cultures that can’t produce extraordinary individuals can’t survive. That bears on the other half of the president’s assertion. It is true that most Muslims simply want a better life, and the two or three million American Muslims mostly are well-educated economic immigrants who value prosperity over tradition.
But it also is true that among the 1.4 billion Muslims in the world there are tens of millions who would rather kill and die than endure what they perceive as an intolerable humiliation. The majority of Muslims will be content to eat crumbs from the table of the West and conform to the misery of their circumstances. It is the substantial minority that will not be content that should worry Obama.
atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KB03Ak03.html