Islamic and Western values

Foreign Affairs

Volumn 76, Issue 5, 1997, Pages 118-131

  Mazrui, Ali A ^a  

^a BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0041108639     PISSN: 00157120     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/20048203     Document Type: Review

References (5)

1. In citing the Rushdie case as evidence of Islamic society's repressive nature, Westerners point to the 1989 fatwa, or legal ruling, by the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran indicting Rushdie for blasphemy and the capital crime of apostasy and sentencing him to death in absentia. Iran, however, was the only Muslim country to decree the death penalty for Rushdie. Bangladesh said that Rushdie's crime, if proved, was a capital offense, but that he would have to be tried in a Muslim country to ascertain his guilt. There is a broad consensus that the book is blasphemous (even the Vatican agrees that it is), but Iran stands alone with the fatwa.
2. American writers such as Carl Bernstein, Howard Fast, Erica Jong, and Peter Maas have spoken of both overt and covert censorship; see Midge Decter, "The Rushdiad," Commentary, vol. 87, no. 6 (June 1989), pp. 20-21.
3. See Leonard Binder, Islamic Liberalism: A Critique of Development Ideologies, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988, especially Chapter 9, "Conclusion: The Prospects for Liberal Government in the Middle East," pp. 336-60.
4. Like most other religions and civilizations, Islam tolerated the ownership and trade of slaves for centuries. But slavery among Muslims was almost race-neutral. In contrast to the racially polarized transatlantic slave system - white masters, black slaves - slaves in the Islamic world could be white, black, brown, or other, and so could masters. Moreover, slavery among Muslims allowed for great upward social mobility. Both Muslim India and Muslim Egypt produced slave dynasties; the former slaves who became Mamluk rulers of Egypt dominated the country from 1250 to 1517.
5. Studies by researchers in Ivory Coast of Muslim countries in Africa have shown that approximately half as many Muslims as non-Muslims are likely to be infected with HIV. See Catherine Tastemain and Peter Coles, "Can a Culture Stop AIDS in its Tracks?" New Scientist (London), vol. 139, no. 1890 (September 11, 1993), p. 13.