Sunday, 7 November 2010

Has Islam a cultural inferiority complex?

I was impressed with an article by The Times correspondent Matthew Parris, "Has terrorism become a weird kind of game", 6th November 2010. Here is an extract from it:-

"Islamists seem spellbound by high-tech and by electronics. While despising the Babylon they think the West has spawned, they are fascinated and impressed by its technological underpinnings, and crave this wizardry for themselves. They cannot build planes and would struggle to run an airline; but to be clever enough to bring down one of ours soothes what may be a deep-seated inferiority complex. To do it by suicide weaves elements of Muslim courage and piety into Western-style scientific mastery: a three-layered self affirmination."

5 comments:

  1. It's ironic, considering that the Islamic world used to be way ahead in terms of maths and science between the 8th & 14th centuries. Sad that they've regressed.

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  2. Yes it is, and strange too. I must delve. Surely someone has looked into the reasons.

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  3. I met Matthew Paris, long before he would admit he was gay, actually.

    I just wonder where he got this from and how sound its premise is.

    It's typical of Matthew to try to be reassuring!

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  4. Is this really true?,a deep seated inferiority complex;can you clarify this?.Is the reason stated an insult rather then a true explanation,very simplistic,soothes an arrogance of the victim rather then the culprit.
    Weird kind of game,definitely.

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  5. I suspect the term "inferiority complex" can only be correctly applied to an individual, but one senses what MP means. True? I don't know, but It seems a valid hypothesis.

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