Cultural Clash Quotes
Pederasty was then the height of the fashion among both pagans and Christians.
Islam is a religion, like many Christian sects, where conversion of non-believers is a religious duty. When many of the European day-to-day customs, conflict with Islamic custom or prescription, decadence and the desire to change it becomes a very predictable result.
Damn this world, Damn this time. Damn this fate That uncivilized Arabs have come to make me a Moslem
This is a huge epic poem that he wrote over several years. At the time, the Persians considered themselves far more civilized and sophisticated than the Arabs who were but tribesmen. They really resented the fact that it was the Arabs that brought Islam. And before, most of the Persians worshipped Zoroaster. Although Islam spread faster and further than any religion in history, it was not always easily accepted as this stanza of the poem indicates. There is to this day a superiority that the Iranians perceive over the Arabs. And to this day, many Arabs resent the Iranians for this attitude.
What makes this quote significant is the data—the end of the 19th century and here was an author, in a prestigious journal, warning about the potential economic competition from China which at the time was seen by most as a backward, primitive civilization which could never compete with the West. Also, Hearn was the first writer who communicated information about Asia to Americans on a large scale.
He was the scientist most responsible for the Pakistani nuclear bomb capability. However, he took his technological knowledge and without the knowledge of his government and contrary to their promises to the United States and other nations, accepted large secret payments to assist third world dictatorships to begin a nuclear weapons program. When he was caught, he was arrested but he is one of the very few world class scientists that Pakistan had ever had and was one of the most famous and popular Pakistani figures. The Pakistani Supreme court ruled that he was free to move about Pakistan but may not leave the country, and he is supposedly monitored to prevent his sharing nuclear secrets with terrorists and dictatorial states. In 2012 he formed his own political party.
One remarkable aspect of this quote is that most Western nations have the exact same perception he claims the Islamic word does of what the West is doing. While the Western nations think the defense is necessary and desirable, the Muslim nations fundamentally believe that Christianity and Judaism should and will be supplanted by Islam. To the Islamic fundamentalist religion is a zero sum game. Every person in the world who is not a Muslim is an attack on Islam in that God wants all to follow Islam and wants the faithful to make it so.
The Germans were very ambivalent about Einstein. Although he was already recognized by the world as one of the greatest physicists of all time, he had never been recognized by the German academic establishment. He had been rejected by their universities as a faculty member and was a clerk in the Swiss patent office when he developed his Theory of Relativity. The Germans, then traditionally world scientific leaders, were proud that the greatest physicist was a German, but the fact that he was Jewish stuck in the craw of the developing anti-Semitic government and many Germans.
