Lessons from the the Battle of Britain- 66th Anniversary on 15 Sept.

by Jonathan Ariel, The Jerusalem Post, 12 Sept 2006

"Certain Western liberal intellectual circles have proven themselves capable of coming up with a seemingly limitless supply of specious reasons to explain, understand and even justify this visceral hatred of the West by large parts of the Arab-Islamic world.

Ultimately the reason is very simple: resentment of the ascent of the West.

Islam so far has proven congenitally incapable of doing what Christianity has done - allowing the evolution of a society in which the political and religious establishments are independent of one another. It is this evolution that facilitated and expedited the ascent of the West, by enabling the development of a political system based on democracy, freedom of thought and speech, and religious and cultural pluralism. These then spurred the major technological, scientific, economic and social advancements that empowered the West and have enabled it to dominate the globe politically and economically for the past 200 years.

THE ISLAMIC world has had ample opportunity to adopt the values that were instrumental in the West's ascent, but its political and religious establishments have chosen not to. The reason is very clear: They would rather wield total power over a failed society than share power with other groups in a successful one.

To facilitate this they have abused their oil wealth. Instead of using it to promote and develop their societies, they have impoverished them. Petrodollars that could have been spent on creating first-class educational systems have instead been used to create and maintain security apparatuses whose sole purpose is to ensure the absolute rule of a corrupt elite by repressing any sign of dissent.

These same political and religious leaders have constantly aided and abetted the most reactionary elements within their religious establishments, which in return have channeled popular frustrations generated by the regimes' failures outwards, against the "infidel West."

The Islamic world has, for the most part, been willing to buy this, preferring to blame the West for conspiring against it rather than take responsibility for its spectacular failures. "