I have a good friend who I hung out with as a kid. His family immigrated from Pakistan back in the 1970'sand he went back for a visit somewhere around 77. We were both 12 at the time. When he returned, he told me all sorts of stuff. How the State dealt with thieves, by chopping off the hand. How they dealt with murderers, by decapitation, usually in the setting of an audience. Not much has changed in these places other than the fact that we have looked the other way and declared them allies because that's just good business.
I am still friends with this guy and we have discussed this barbaric behavior in a few bull sessions. He said to me, the one thing his Father made sure of when bringing his children to Canada was to work hard and get all of them an education. One sister is a lawyer, another works in the Library system of British Columbia and my friend is a successful Construction Contractor.
Why do these countries live in the dark ages? The fact that there is no separation of church and state is a good reason. The poor are marginalized and kept uneducated. There is no moderation. Any fool knows that burning a book is a fools errand and that if you believe that words inside are those of God himself, then the message can never be burned.
I think the reason that these Countries have not advanced their thinking is because we give them a pass. We trade with them, we look the other way when they slaughter their own and we use them to do our bidding. Nations of the West are culpable if we are to prop up such barbarism and paint it as mere culture.
Our own nation once acted like this, we tried to beat the savage out of the aboriginals, murdered their children for wanting to speak their own language and created generational dysfunction which we don't want to take responsibility for. We used another holy book and our government sanctioned it. We have sequestered people to live on reserves and told them "self -govern" then look on in horror when some leaders turn these "mini-nations" into their own personal kingdom and the money does not trickle down to the people who need it most.
We can be an arrogant self righteous bunch.
Calling the Islamist's savages, while we trade regularly with them and not only them. What of our trade missions with China and India who both have deplorable records on human rights. I think of my friend and how his Dad immigrated here from a land that treated women as fodder, but somehow found it in himself to educate all his children and he did this by working every sh!t job you could think of. Garbage man, picking berries, catching chickens, you name it.
Then I think about anti-Muslim threads and how everyone on this forum has bought goods manufactured in one of these countries. I think of Jean Chretien's Team Canada pushing for more trade in Southeast Asia, Harper pushing to get into these despot nations and tapping their cheap labor and even the new Utopian Trudeau who will line up and call it culture.
We hold responsibility for the madness in these countries as long as we look the other way.
