Don't be silly, AEI is a
think tank, not a paramilitary organisation. It won't be taming anyone, and, much like AHA, has zero influence in the Muslim world.
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Thank you for the civics lesson, and I'm sure charter members like international criminal Richard Perle have no influence on policy (although I've heard that the AEI is where neocons send their least capable members, a kind of sinecure, which is funny). Taming is something done UPON someone else, not something someone does to themselves.
You should be more generous -- not unlike TGA -- then we could debate ideas rather than slinging ad homs at each other. I'm sure that there's a more substantive way to disagree than simply accuse her of making the whole thing up to fellate our (though obviously not your) egos.
I didn't accuse her of making it up, I suggested that she might tailor her memoirs to suit her career as neocon ideologue. Not controversial, is it? Should Chomsky write an autobio, should we pretend it's objective fact divorced from his politics?
Yes, it does get complicated, too complicated perhaps for AHA, but I don't think that this helping either. Look at it this way: in some respects, the "West" has developed superior institutions (the separation of church and state, universal sufferage, etc) to the "Islamic World", and these institutions are emboddied in a mesh of social norms and behaviours. In this limited politico-cultural sense, the "West" is superior to the "Islamic World". However, since this exists outwith the individual, asince culture is itself no smooth space or discrete unity, and since human behaviour is relentlessly self-interested regardless of context, it is best not to get too over-excited about our "cultural superiority" and instead concentrate on how we can provide spaces, not for assualts on Islam, but where Islam can be freely practiced in a manner that is denied to most Muslisms in most nominally Muslim countries around the world today.
If we are to have an Islamic reformation, it will come from there, I think, and not from fringe charatcers like AHA.
Well then I guess we are in agreement after all! Though I would like to interrogate these "superior institutions" further (not here, in general), perhaps see how they are implicated in present and past imperialism, I am all for secularism, suffrage, gumdrops, rainbows, and all the rest.
