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CONNECTICUT JEWISH LEDGER
April 3, 2002
It's the values, stupid!
By Dennis Prager
There is one overwhelming reason some Americans - particularly
academics and news people - cannot understand why much of the
Islamic Middle East, and especially the Arab world, hates America.
They refuse to acknowledge the painful truth that, at least in
our time, our two civilizations have rather different values.
The notion that cultures have different values and that sometimes
one civilization's values may actually be superior is anathema
to many of the best educated Americans. They believe in multiculturalism,
moral relativism, not passing moral judgments, and other ideas
whose goals are to render all cultures morally equivalent.
Thus, if significant parts of the Islamic world hate us, this
hatred must be explained as American support for non-democratic
regimes in the Arab world, American support for Israel, American
wealth, and the spread of American popular culture (some of which
is, indeed, degrading). But to those who believe no culture's
values are superior to any others, this hatred of America and
the attacks on it must never be explained as reflecting poorly
on the culture that spawned the terrorists.
Take for example, the reaction of James Zogby of the Arab-American
Institute to the recent USA Today/Gallup Poll among Americans
and among residents of Islamic countries. The poll revealed,
among other things, that 90 percent of Americans "believe
that groups of Arabs carried out the attacks against the USA
on Sept. 11," while large to overwhelming majorities of
residents of Islamic countries do not believe that it was Arabs
who attacked America on Sept. 11.
Zogby said that such differing beliefs are a result of "gaps
in perception and gaps in compassion." He explains "gaps
in compassion" as meaning, "We feel our pain and don't
feel theirs. They feel their pain and don't feel ours."
But it is the "gaps in perceptions" notion that is
most telling. For that is how almost all news media report the
widespread denial in the Islamic and Arab worlds that Sept. 11
terrorists were Arabs. Indeed the headline in USA Today was "Differences
in Perceptions Fuel Mistrust: Americans, Muslim world see eye
to eye on few issues."
Differences in perceptions? This reduction of truth to a matter
of perception is Orwellian. Whether one believes that Arabs attacked
the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, has nothing whatsoever to
do with "perceptions." It has to do only with one's
commitment to truth. Acknowledging that groups of Arabs attacked
the United States on that day is no more subject to "perceptions" than
acknowledging that groups of Japanese attacked the United States
on Dec. 7, 1941.
But to recognize that much of the Islamic world believes a huge
lie runs against the intellectual elite's beliefs in the moral
parity of civilizations and in not passing judgments, especially
if the judgment is in favor of Western civilization.
Yet, that is the issue here - almost the whole issue. Much of
the Islamic and Arab world tells itself and believes a lot of
lies.
That is why so many Egyptians deny the just-released National
Transportation Safety Board report with its overwhelming evidence
that EgyptAir pilot Gameel El-Batouti deliberately killed himself
and the 216 others aboard EgyptAir 990 on Oct. 31, 1999. That
is why a Saudi newspaper recently published articles "reporting" in
detail how Jews kill non-Jewish youths and drain their blood
for use in Jewish holiday pastries.
The Arab/Islamic world's media lie about Jews, Israel and America
daily. And the great majority of their listeners, viewers and
readers believe those lies.
This poll has nothing to do with "perceptions." It
has to do with the single most important source of liberty and
morality - truth - and about the single greatest source of evil
- lies.
When hundreds of millions of people deny objective truth, the
battle is far greater than merely political. It is truly civilizational.
Of course, none of this is in any way a form of racial or ethnic
bigotry - any more than saying that Nazi Germany was a culture
with worse values was not a bigoted statement against Germans.
But the fact that many distinguished newspapers and "experts" deny
this values-gap and dismiss it as being merely an issue of differing
perceptions only adds to the enormity of the battle our civilization
has to wage. |
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