Read this. Its only a chapter of a book of Oriana Fallaci
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http://www.borg.com/~paperina/fallaci/fallaci_6.html
Masochists, yes, masochists. Because do we want to have this discussion about what you call the Contrast-between-the-two-cultures? Well, if you really want to know, it bothers me to even talk about two cultures. To put them on the same level as if they were two parallel realities, of equal weight and measure. Because behind our civilization there is Homer, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Fidia, by god. There’s ancient Greece with her Parthenon and her discovery of Democracy. There’s ancient Rome with her greatness, her laws her concept of law. Her sculptures, her literature, architecture. Her buildings, amphitheaters, aqueducts, bridges, streets. There is a revolutionary, that Christ who died on the cross, that taught us (and patience if we haven’t learned) the concept of love and of justice. There's even is a Church which yes, gave me the Inquisition, I agree. That has tortured and burned a thousand times on the rack, agreed. That has oppressed me for centuries, and for centuries has forced me to sculpt and paint only Christs and Madonnas, that almost killed Galileo Galilei. Humiliated him, and shut him up. However, it also gave a great contribution to the History of Thought: you must agree! Furthermore, behind our civilization there is the Renaissance. There is Leonardo da Vinci, there is Michelangelo, Raffaello, the music of Bach and Mozart and Beethoven. Up and up until Rossini and Donizetti and Verdi and Company. That music without which we don’t know how to live and that in their culture or supposed culture is prohibited. Heaven help you if they whistle a little song or mimic the chorus of the Nabucco. Finally there’s science, by god. A science that has understood many illnesses and their cures. I am still alive, for now, thanks to our science: not the one of Mohamed. A science that has invented marvelous machines. The train, car, plane, spaceships with which we went to the moon and Mars and soon we will go who knows where. A science that has changed the face of this planet with electricity, radio, phone, television, and by the way: is it true that the ultra saints of the left don’t want to say what I have just said?!? God, what dicks! They’ll never change.
And now here is the fatal question: What is there behind the other culture? No clue! Search as I might I can only find Mohamed with his Koran and Averroe with his merits as a scholar. (The comments on Aristotle, etc.), Arafat even finds numbers and mathematics. Again hissing and spitting all over me in 1972 he told me that his culture was superior to mine, much superior to mine, because his ancestors had invented numbers and mathematics. But Arafat has a short memory. This is why he changes ideas and is caught in lies every five minutes. His ancestors did not invent numbers and mathematics. They invented the shape of the numerals that even we infidels use, mathematics was conceived almost contemporarily in all the ancient civilizations. In Mesopotamia, Greece, India, China, Egypt, among the Maya… Your grandparents, illustrious Mr. Arafat, have only left us some beautiful Mosques and a book with which for the last one thousand four hundred years you’ve been breaking my balls, more than the Christians have with their bible or the Jews with their Torah. Now lets look at what are the values that distinguish this Koran. Really values? Since the sons of Allah have semi destructed New York, the experts of Islam have done nothing else but sing the praises of Mohamed to me. They explain that the Koran preaches peace and brotherhood and justice. (After all even Bush is saying it, poor Bush. It is self evident that Bush must appease the twenty four million American-Moslems, convince them to squeal and tell what they know on the eventual relative or friend or acquaintances devoted to Osama Bin Laden). Well then how are we to reconcile this with the story of a tooth for a tooth and eye for an eye? How do we explain this chador, in fact the veil that covers the face of the Moslem women so that in order to be able to make out their neighbors they must look through a thick net placed at eye-level? How do we deal with polygamy and with the principle that women must count less than camels, that they must not go to school, they must not go to the doctor, they must not be photographed, etc. How do we deal with the veto of alcohol and the death penalty for those that drink it? This is also in the Koran, and it does not seem to me to be very just, brotherly, pacifistic. Therefore, here is my answer to your question on the contrasts between the two cultures.
I add another quote of this book. It was written in 2001. But again this book say the truth:
Oh, if Italy would learn these lessons! It is such a divided country, so factious, so poisoned by it’s tribal squabbles. In Italy, they hate each other even within the same party. They cannot be united even when they belong to the same party, they’re jealous, argumentative, vain and petty, they don’t consider anything but their own personal interests. Their own petty little career, their petty little glory, their suburban popularity. For their own petty interests they betray each other, play mean tricks on each other, they accuse each other and prostitute themselves… I am absolutely convinced that if Bin Laden would blow up Giotto’s tower or The Tower of Pisa, the opposition would hold the government responsible, and the government would accuse the opposition. While the heads of the government and the opposition would accuse their own comrades
Change Italy for Spain. Change Pisa for Madrid. Someone remember 11-m?
07-01-2004, 02:15 AM
