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Hamid Dabashi
Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at
Columbia University.
Can non-Europeans think?What happens with thinkers who operate outside the European philosophical 'pedigree'?
Last Modified: 15 Jan 2013 11:41
In a lovely little panegyric for the distinguished European philosopher Slavoj Zizek, published recently on
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The works of French philosopher Michel Foucault is usually at the forefront of Eurocentric philosophy [AFP]
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"Why is European philosophy
'philosophy', but African philosophy
'ethnophilosophy'?"
Al Jazeera, we read:
There are many important and active philosophers today: Judith Butler in the United States,
Simon Critchley in England, Victoria Camps in Spain, Jean-Luc Nancy in France, Chantal
Mouffe in Belgium, Gianni Vattimo in Italy, Peter Sloterdijk in Germany and in Slovenia, Slavoj
Zizek, not to mention others working in Brazil, Australia and China.
What immediately strikes the reader when seeing this opening paragraph is the unabashedly European
character and disposition of the thing the author calls "philosophy today" - thus laying a claim on both the
subject and time that is peculiar and in fact an exclusive property of Europe.
Even Judith Butler who is cited as an example from the United States is decidedly a product of Europeanphilosophical genealogy, thinking somewhere between Derrida and Foucault, brought to bear on our
understanding of gender and sexuality.
To be sure, China and Brazil (and Australia, which is also a European extension) are cited as the location of
other philosophers worthy of the designation, but none of them evidently merits a specific name to be sitting
next to these eminent European philosophers.
The question of course is not the globality of philosophical visions that all these prominent European (and
by extension certain American) philosophers indeed share and from which people from the deepest corners
of Africa to the remotest villages of India, China, Latin America, and the Arab and Muslim world ("deep and
far", that is, from a fictive European centre) can indeed learn and better understand their lives.
That goes without saying, for without that confidence and self-consciousness these philosophers and the
philosophical traditions they represent can scarce lay any universal claim on our epistemic credulities, norwould they be able to put pen to paper or finger to keyboard and write a sentence.
Thinkers outside Europe
These are indeed not only eminent philosophers, but the philosophy they practice has the globality of
certain degrees of self-conscious confidence without which no thinking can presume universality.
The question is rather something else: What about other thinkers who operate outside this European
philosophical pedigree, whether they practice their thinking in the European languages they have colonially
inherited or else in their own mother tongues - in Asia, in Africa, in Latin America, thinkers that have actually
earned the dignity of a name, and perhaps even the pedigree of a "public intellectual" not too dissimilar to
Hannah Arendt, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Michel Foucault that in this piece on Al Jazeera are offered as
predecessors of Zizek?
What about thinkers outside the purview of these European
philosophers; how are we to name and designate and honour and
learn from them with the epithet of "public intellectual" in the age of
globalised media?
Do the constellation of thinkers from South Asia, exemplified by
leading figures like Ashis Nandy, Partha Chatterjee, Gayatri Spivak, Ranajit Guha, Sudipta Kaviraj, Dipesh
Chakrabarty, Homi Bhabha, or Akeel Bilgrami, come together to form a nucleus of thinking that is conscious
of itself? Would that constellation perhaps merit the word "thinking" in a manner that would qualify one of
them - as a South Asian - to the term "philosopher" or "public intellectuals"?
Are they "South Asian thinkers" or "thinkers", the way these European thinkers are? Why is it that if Mozart
sneezes it is "music" (and I am quite sure the great genius even sneezed melodiously) but the most
sophisticated Indian music ragas are the subject of "ethnomusicology"?
Is that "ethnos" not also applicable to the philosophical thinking that Indian philosophers practice - so much
so that their thinking is more the subject of Western European and North American anthropological fieldwork
and investigation?
We can turn around and look at Africa. What about thinkers like Henry Odera Oruka, Ngugi wa Thiong'o,
Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Okot p'Bitek, Taban Lo Liyong, Achille Mbembe, Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze,
Souleymane Bachir Diagne, V.Y. Mudimbe: Would they qualify for the term "philosopher" or "public
intellectuals" perhaps, or is that also "ethnophilosophy"?
Why is European philosophy "philosophy", but African philosophy ethnophilosophy, the way Indian music is
ethnomusic - an ethnographic logic that is based on the very same reasoning that if you were to go to the
New York Museum of Natural History (popularised in Shawn Levy's Night at the Museum [2006]), you only
see animals and non-white peoples and their cultures featured inside glass cages, but no cage is in sight for
white people and their cultures - they just get to stroll through the isles and enjoy the power and ability of
looking at taxidermic Yaks, cave dwellers, elephants, Eskimos, buffalo, Native Americans, etc, all in a single
winding row.
The same ethnographic gaze is evident in the encounter with the intellectual disposition of the Arab or
Muslim world: Azmi Bishara, Sadeq Jalal Al-Azm, Fawwaz Traboulsi, Abdallah Laroui, Michel Kilo, Abdolkarim
Soroush. The list of prominent thinkers and is endless.
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"The world at large, and the Arab
and Muslim world in particular, is
going through world historic
changes - these changes have
produced thinkers, poets, artists,and public intellectuals at the
centre of their moral and politcial
imagination."
In Japan, Kojin Karatani, in Cuba, Roberto Fernandez Retamar, or even in the United States people like
Cornel West, whose thinking is not entirely in the European continental tradition - what about them? Where
do they fit in? Can they think - is what they do also thinking, philosophical, pertinent, perhaps, or is that also
suitable for ethnographic examinations?
The question of Eurocentricism is now entirely blase. Of course Europeans are Eurocentric and see the
world from their vantage point, and why should they not? They are the inheritors of multiple (now defunct)
empires and they still carry within them the phantom hubris of those empires and they think their particular
philosophy is "philosophy" and their particular thinking is "thinking", and everything else is - as the great
European philosopher Immanuel Levinas was wont of saying - "dancing".
The question is rather the manner in which non-European thinking can reach self-consciousness and
evident universality, not at the cost of whatever European philosophers may think of themselves for the
world at large, but for the purpose of offering alternative (complementary or contradictory) visions of reality
more rooted in the lived experiences of people in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America - counties and climes once
under the spell of the thing that calls itself "the West" but happily no more.
The trajectory of contemporary thinking around the globe is not spontaneously conditioned in our own
immediate time and disparate locations, but has a much deeper and wider spectrum that goes back to
earlier generations of thinkers ranging from Jos Marti to Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, to Aime Cesaire, W.E.B.
DuBois, Liang Qichao, Frantz Fanon, Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, etc.
So the question remains why not the dignity of "philosophy" and whence the anthropological curiosity of
"ethnophilosophy"?
Let's seek the answer from Europe itself - but from the subaltern of Europe.
'The Intellectuals as a Cosmopolitan Stratum'
In his Prison Notebooks, Antonio Gramsci has a short discussion about Kant's famous phrase in
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) that is quite critical in our understanding of what it takes
for a philosopher to become universally self-conscious, to think of himself as the measure and yardstick of
globality. Gramsci's stipulation is critical here - and here is how he begins:
Kant's maxim "act in such a way that your conduct can become a norm for all men in similar
conditions" is less simple and obvious than it appears at first sight. What is meant by 'similar
conditions'?
To be sure, and as Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (the editors and translators of the English
translation of Gramsci's Prison Notebooks) note, Gramsci here in fact misquotes Kant, and that "similar
conditions" does not appear in the original text, where the German philosopher says: "I am never to act
otherwise than so that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law." This principle, called
"the categorical imperative", is in fact the very foundation of Kantian ethics.
So where Kant says "universal law", Gramsci says, "a norm for all men", and then he adds an additional
"similar conditions", which is not in the German or iginal.
That misquoting is quite critical here. Gramsci's conclusion is that
the reason Kant can say what he says and offer h is own behaviour
as measure of universal ethics is that "Kant's maxim presupposes a
single culture, a single religion, a 'world-wide' conformism... Kant's
maxim is connected with his time, with the cosmopolitan
enlightenment and the critical conception of the author. In brief, it islinked to the philosophy of the intellectuals as a cosmopolitan
stratum".
What in effect Gramsci discovers, as a southern Italian suffering in
the dungeons of European fascism, is what in Brooklyn we call
chutzpah, to think yourself the centre of universe, a self-assuredness that gives the philosopher that certain
panache and authority to think in absolutists and grand narrative terms.
Therefore the agent is the bearer of the "similar conditions" and indeed their creator. That is,
he "must" act according to a "model" which he would like to see diffused among all mankind,
according to a type of civilisation for whose coming he is working-or for whose preservation he
is "resisting" the forces that threaten its disintegration.
It is precisely that self-confidence, that self-consciousness, that audacity to think yourself the agent ofhistory that enables a thinker to think his particular thinking is "Thinking" in universal terms, and his
philosophy "Philosophy" and his city square "The Public Space", and thus he a globally recognised Public
Intellectual.
There is thus a direct and unmitigated structural link between an empire, or an imperial frame of reference,
and the presumed universality of a thinker thinking in the bosoms of that empire.
Al Jazeera English
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OPINIONATED TWEETSOPINIONATED TWEETS
INFLUENTIAL TWEEPSINFLUENTIAL TWEEPS
Source: Al Jazeera
TweetTweet 1,491
As all other people, Europeans are per fectly entitled to their own self-centrism.
The imperial hubris that once enabled that Eurocentricism and still produces
the infomercials of the sort we read in Al Jazeera for Zizek are the phantom
memories of the time that "the West" had assured confidence and a sense of
its own universalism and globality, or as Gramsci put it, "to a type of civilisation
for whose coming he is working".
But that globality is no more - people from every clime and continent are up and about claiming their own
cosmopolitan worldliness and with it their innate ability to think beyond the confinements of that
Eurocentricism, which to be sure is still entitled to its phantom pleasures of thinking itself the centre of the
universe. The Gramscian superimposed "similar conditions" are now emerging in multiple cites of the
liberated humanity.
The world at large, and the Arab and Muslim world in particular, is going through world historic changes -
these changes have produced thinkers, poets, artists, and public intellectuals at the centre of their moral
and politcial imagination - all thinking and acting in terms at once domestic to their immediate geography
and yet global in its consequences.
Compared to those liberating tsunamis now turning the world upside down, cliche-ridden assumption about
Europe and its increasingly provincialised philosophical pedigree is a tempest in the cup. Reduced to its
own fair share of the humanity at large, and like all other continents and climes, Europe has much to teach
the world, but now on a far more leveled and democratic playing field, where its philosophy is European
philosophy not "Philosophy", its music European music not "Music", and no infomercial would be necessary
to sell its public intellectuals as "Public Intellectuals".
Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at
Columbia University in New York. Among his most recent books is The World of Persian Literary
Humanism (2012).
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's
editorial policy.
TOPICS IN THIS ARTICLE
People
Antonio Gramsci
Hamid Dabashi
Mahatma Gandhi
Michel Foucault
Judith Butler
Chantal Mouffe
Geoffrey Nowell Smith
Victoria Camps
Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze
Shawn Levy
Liang Qichao
Michel Kilo
Jean-Luc Nancy
Cornel West
Roberto Fernandez Retamar
Azmi Bishara
Frantz Fanon
Henry Odera Oruka
Jalal Al-Azm
Souleymane Bachir Diagne , V
al-Din al-Afghani
Simon Critchley
Abdallah Laroui
Jean-Paul SartreQuintin Hoare
Hannah Arendt
Peter Sloterdijk
Fawwaz Traboulsi
Country
United States
China
Brazil
Australia
Germany
Belgium
France
Italy
Slovenia
United Kingdom
Spain
India
Organisation
Columbia University in New York
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Junkets
It's very interesting. Reading a book on Indian Philosophy recently, I was struck how 'Indian'
thought had been through very similar phases to 'Western' thought, and encountered very
similar epistemological problems en route. Some Buddhist thinkers, for instance, took the line of
Hume'sskepticism against Hindu monistic or dualistic ideas and I got a distinct sense of deja vu
while reading them. It's important to get outside your own traditional world-view and see things
from the point of view of 'the other', because the differences are more on the surface than in the
depths. I think we are all asking the same basic questions, the parameters of which are
determined by the overall context of our lives in the "incubator, house and hearse" which is our
universe, and we come up with different answers depending on our cultural background.
Reading, for example, Vasamazulu Mutwa's "Indaba My Children", based on traditional Bantu
myths and legends, it's obvious that there is tremendous philosophising going on in the African
tradition, but it's not presented in a European way. The basic questions posed are the same, the
difference lies in the method of exposition.
154
c indy wilmore
i agree. i think the title of this paper should be "can europeans think."
104
burger1376
Hi Cindy,
Actually, your post is a bit arrogant. I think the point of the article was to get
people to not be so self centered. However, it isn't only Europeans who are
Euro-centric. Many Chinese are Sino-centric, many Arabs are Arab-centric ,
many Indians are Indian-centric and so on. An example of Arab-centric people or
Muslim-centric people can be found all over this comment section. Many people
here think Muslims do no wrong, muslim culture is sepreme, and everyone
should follow or at least appologize to muslims while ignore muslim wrong
doings in the world. Your comment kind of shows that you didn't really
understand the point of the article.
116 1
WWMD
I think the succinct meat of the matter is that humans are programmed tobe tribal/ethnocentric. It's a survival mechanism that should be accepted
by Marxist philosophers rather than denounced as bourgeois.
42
ibne quresh
Have ou an stats to rove that a Muslim think "Muslims do no wron "?
44
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Being Muslims we despise our masses over their oddities. Islam teaches
the Muslims to be answerable to God, instead of patting or defending
each other of their maldeeds. Please, never generalize any community.
For your argument that a Muslim think " Muslim culture is supereme" and
"everyone should follow the Muslims", i think you have overlooked such
tendency of all the other corners.
16
Mark Fergerson
As WWMD says below, "the succinct meat of the matter is that humans
are programmed to be tribal/ethnocentric", but there's gristle in that meat,
also found in the article, that "As all other people, Europeans are perfectly
entitled to their own self-centrism".
I argue that they are NOT so entitled- no group is. That self-centrism is
the root of all evil; it allows us to cast anyone not a member of "our" group
as "the other", not entitled to consideration as a human being, a candidate
for exploitation, slavery or extermination.The West's philosophical
development has been away from such centrisms, from the self-
conscious arrogances of theocracies toward democracies, from
patriarchy toward equality, from racism toward recognition of the
essential humanity of all peoples, and the same trend is blatantly evident
elsewhere.
Yes, the point is to get people to recognize and hopefully reject their self-
centrism, by pointing it out to a particular audience segment, those that
claim the European philosophical heritage. As other commenters have
pointed out, there really isn't such a thing since all its high points can be
found in "ethnophilosophies" from India, China, and so on.
I just hope that others will recognize the same fault in themselves and
take steps to do the same.
14
Be n
Let him say what he wants to say but the highest level of philophers are
people who claim they are God ( or the Supreme One). All of us knows
that majority of Europeans are Christians and they worship Jesus asGod. Jesus was a Jew, he was not european. Most of Western Laws are
based on the Morality of the Bible. The Bible were written by Jews not
Europeans. Now Buddhist worship Sidharta Gautama Buddha/
Sakyamuni Buddha as the Highest Supreme Being, Buddha was etnically
an Indian, he was not European. Nearly a Billion Hindus worship Krisna
which they consider as the Incarnation of the Most Supreme God, Krisna
is Indian. Looks like God only incarnates into Indians and Jews. Therefore
only Indians and Jews have the conciousness and genetic capability of
understanding the infinite God, not Europeans. Thats my logic.
18 1
Selmo Gliksman
good comment! and what do you think if i said that everything you saidabout the arab-centric or muslim-centric could be thought as well for the
jews?I mean european jews (ashkenazi)... they also think their way of
thinking is superior to other people including north african and oriental
jews
6
Richard Nogin
Well Matt, now that you have a sense of superiority over Cindy, do you
wish to bind and urinate on her too?
8 1
SweetWill iam
Thank you for summarizing the point of the article. I missed it.2
andrew galea
Very clear and concise. You have a very good point. Well done!
1
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Chenyang Li
While you certainly have a point generally speaking this does not apply to
me. I am Chinese but my views are not Sino-centric. I simply wish people
to consider Chinese philosophy and culture on an equal footing with the
European ones. I'm looking for equality, not Chinese superiority. Yet
Western academia in the general sense (with some exceptions) doesn't
seem to really recognise this.
It's true that everyone has some ethnocentric tendencies, we are only
human after all, not perfect beings. But objectively there is certainly an
inequality here. For instance in Chinese universities European philosophyfeatures much more significantly than Chinese philosophy in European
universities. What you describe is how the literate civilisations of Eurasia
were like before the age of European colonialism, imperialism and
expansion. Now European philosophy and culture clearly dominates the
entire globe.
Truth Hurts
a lovely post for sufferers of acute Europe envy.
57 3
ChuckRamone
Reducing all criticism to envy or jealousy: the reasoning of a child.73
Lwantale
Give me a break! That is the delusion most of you people live under and
use whenever you come under criticism. Acute Europe envy, my foot!!
48
cindy wilmore
whatever.
22
Hind Abyad
Truth Hurts!13
morrisminor
Sure, those Arabs are great thinkers, for the 12th century
29 1
Lewis
That's not helpful in the slightest and actual insulting.
10
Bodge Fodge
Pshhhawwwggghhh
Jamal Locke
"I think we are all asking the same basic questions"
There's really only one important question, something like "how am I and the people I
care about going to continue to live securely?" Pretty much all of what humans do, even
things that don't seem related like art & entertainment, are connected to that question.
Stupid things like war & aggression are an example of misunderstanding that question.
17
moreman
Surely the question should be "How can we all best live together?".
17
Jamal Locke
We can best live together by recognizing each other's independence. All
human engineered calamities have one thing in common and it's when
one group of people starts to obsess about things that other people do
that have no effect on them.
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3
Ben
Let him say what he wants to say but the highest level of philophers are people who
claim they are God ( or the Supreme One). All of us knows that majority of Europeans
are Christians and they worship Jesus as God. Jesus was a Jew, he was not european.
Most of Western Laws are based on the Morality of the Bible. The Bible were written by
Jews not Europeans. Now Buddhist worship Sidharta Gautama Buddha/ Sakyamuni
Buddha as the Highest Supreme Being, Buddha was etnically an Indian, he was not
European. Nearly a Billion Hindus worship Krisna which they consider as the Incarnation
of the Most Supreme God, Krisna is Indian. Looks like God only incarnates into Indiansand Jews. Therefore only Indians and Jews have the conciousness and genetic
capability of understanding the infinite God, not Europeans. Thats my logic.
3
jon77 6
The majority of Europeans are not really Christians anymore and the ones who
are, are not very religious. Also, most western laws are not based on the bible.
As for your logic, it's silly.
28
lee
Hate to break it to you Ben, but if Jesus was born in Bethelehem as rumoured?
Jesus was Palestinian.
Whatever religion one may or may not practice is irrelevant to their nationality.
16
lee
in reply to Disparshun:
Religion:
The service & worship of God or the supernatural.
Commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance.
Nationality:
People generally acquire a nationality by birth within a particular country's
territory.
Judaism:
A monotheistic religion originating in the Hebrew Bible & explored in later
texts such as the Talmud. Judaism is considered by religious Jews to be
the expression of the covenantal relationship God established with the
Children of Israel (that would be Israel, as in a person, not Israel, as in
a country).
Judiasm is a religion, it is not a nationality.
13
Disparishun
Of course, Jew was his nationality. Also his religion. How ironic is it that
it is at the foot of this very article that you reproduce the famous European
religion::ethnicity split in the usual effort to deny nationhood to the Jews.
3
Fp Chan
The Chinese just bought the right to claim Jesus as Chinese. They gave
Christians, Jews and Muslims free imitation milk powder in exchange for
that right.
2
Blut Gelt
Jesus was Palestinian? LOL! Hahahahaa.
Technically, Jesus was Roman, as Palestine Roman at the time.
However, Jesus probably identified more with his Jewish identity than his
"Roman" or "Palestinian" identity. Just stating the obvious.
2
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Sorry, but Jesus was a Jew and was totally not a Palestinian as we know
them today
3 1
Junkets
Since I am of the school which says we should have stayed pagan, what am I to
say to your 'logic'? Christianity was a religion which was largely imported into
Europe at the expense of the indigenous culture of Europe. The form it eventually
came to take emerged out of the collapsed Roman Empire. That is the form of
the Roman Church. As Adam Ardrey says, "Rome had ruled for centuries. When
Rome fell, many forms of Christianity vied for power, but only one inherited the
old framework and structures of the Empire and with a single-minded
ruthlessness submerged all other versions of Christianity to win the day.
Arianism, Pelagianism, like the old way,... retreated into the shadows of history.
The Dark Ages were about to begin." Christianity has been a blight on the
European landscape ever since.
5
Christopher
According to your "logic" Ben, you could also conclude that only Indians and
Jews are arrogant and delusional enough to believe that God incarnates itself via
their genetic material and writes about it.
3
Scott Craig
True. Numerous schools of philosophy which challenged each other's theories of ethics
and epistemology, developed in India. Similarly, the development of systematic
philosophy with multiple rival schools of thought developed in China. The European
philosophers were influenced principally by the richest tradition of philosophy in the
ancient world which was developed in Greece. But let's be honest, the Europeans have
equalled or surpassed all other traditions of philosophy in scope, breadth of analysis and
depth of scrutiny.
2 1
Tim
I agree. As of now 114 other people also agree. But (unless I have missed a post) none
seem to pointed out that you are disagreeing with the author. The author was saying
that European thought is Eurocentric. For example, the author suggests that Kant's
categorical imperative is too universal. In effect, Kant presumes that we are all from a
single culture. The author was suggesting that we turn to other traditions in order to
avoid such universalizing assumptions. If you are correct, then other traditions are
equally "universalistic ". That's fine, but this means that the author's main point misfires
badly. I agree with your comment, but disagree strongly with the article since I am a fan
of a priori philosophers like Spinoza.
1
Junkets
Well, yes, I certainly had misgivings about what the author says. Things are not
so easily separated as he seems to suggest. Whether that's due to traditions
influencing each other, or because, when one starts to think deeply about life, the
same questions keep popping up, I don't know. I do know, for example, that
Spinoza was influenced by Ibn Arabi, but he had his own approach which was
culturally specific. His use of 'geometrical' methods of argument, for example. So
perhaps it's a bit of both.
1
afroblazingguns
I'm inclined to ask if non-European women can think considering we are barely mentioned (save
for Spivak) in this piece.
87
Jana Veronika
well. may this is field misunderstood by westerners...
19
Ben
Let him say what he wants to say but the highest level of philophers are people who
claim they are God ( or the Supreme One). All of us knows that majority of Europeans
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. , .
Most of Western Laws are based on the Morality of the Bible. The Bible were written by
Jews not Europeans. Now Buddhist worship Sidharta Gautama Buddha/ Sakyamuni
Buddha as the Highest Supreme Being, Buddha was etnically an Indian, he was not
European. Nearly a Billion Hindus worship Krisna which they consider as the Incarnation
of the Most Supreme God, Krisna is Indian. Looks like God only incarnates into Indians
and Jews. Therefore only Indians and Jews have the conciousness and genetic
capability of understanding the infinite God, not Europeans. Thats my logic.
1
NISHTHAR IDROOS
The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
Plato
48
efbya
In today's context, The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be
governed by Sharia.
44
lingum
Or might it be the US criminal justice system?
46
lee
in reply to efbya:
I'm Western born, have lived in the US & the ME.
There's no more wrong with Sharia Law than there is US law when those
laws are distorted & manipulated by those in power who choose to do so.
It depends on which country one lives in, contrary to your somewhat
fantastical conviction that all Muslim countries are somehow one & the
the same.
As to a 'US criminal justice system', today? It's a parody.
I'll take the Sharia Law where I live for the moment, thanks. It's working
just fine for me.
39
efbya
What do you prefer, US criminal justice system or Sharia? You should
ask this question to the crowd of people in your country who're thronging
the US embassy every day for a visa.
36
efbya
>>I'm Western born, have lived in the US & the ME.
------
@lee
You're Western born because your parents fled the oppressive Chinese
system in favor of the Western system. :))
15
Debraj Guhabiswas
Its still much better than sharia. No comparison at all.
9
lingum
Sort of like the caste system in which some human beings are not
considered full human beings. Suggest you brush up on the laws of
Manu.
2
Al Khal il
Any learned person who actually looked up the information about Sharia would
gladly prefer Sharia to any other available system of law we have known so far.
Go get yourself some real knowledge and then rant. Cheers to you Mr.
EnterFromBackYouAnimal...
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Load more comments
What's this?
An i ncreasi ngly unchec ked survei llance
state
I think that most constitutional
lawyers would argue that there is no
constitutional expectation of privacy in
Hezbollah plays its hand in battle for
Syria
Hezbollah are honourable
heroes. We are all very proud of them.
Al-Nakba - S peci al se ri es
...in about 6 months from
now "the holly nation" will cause III world war.
These days the world is witnessing
Why sanctions on Iran are not working
Too bad your ad hominem is false
and not true. While I respect the Shah for the
patriot he was, I was born after the
21 1
Matt Fitt
Ah, yes... the virtuous Sharia legal system. I've seen some of the videos.
It seemed rather efficient, when the sword was adequately sharpened. It
also appeared rather disgusting and barbaric. The sort of system that
might work well in a brutal totalitarian dystopia... but not really such a
good thing for anyone who actually values personal and intellectual
freedom... or equality, science, rationality, truth, democracy, dissent,
humor, etc.
What a sick joke.
48 1
Al Khal il
You flunk, with a great big ZERO in knowledge. But I will give a point out of
ten for having a clean slate (in your head, of course).
12 1
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