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Hamid Dabashi
Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
Columbia University Books

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Can non-Europeans think?

What happens with thinkers who operate outside the European philosophical 'pedigree'?
Last Modified: 15 Jan 2013 11:41

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www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/01/2013114142638797542.html

In a lovely little panegyric for the distinguished European philosopher Slavoj Zizek, published recently on Al Jazeera, we read:

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Al Jazeera, we read:

Can non-Europeans think? - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

OPINION
An increasingly unchecked surveillance state
MURTAZA HUSSAIN

There are many important and active philosophers today: Judith Butler in the United States, Simon Critchley in England, Victoria Camps in Spain, Jean-Luc Nancy in France, Chantal Mouffe in Belgium, Gianni Vattimo in Italy, Peter Sloterdijk in Germany and in Slovenia, Slavoj Zizek, not to mention others working in Brazil, Australia and China. What immediately strikes the reader when seeing this opening paragraph is the unabashedly European character and disposition of the thing the author calls "philosophy today" - thus laying a claim on both the subject and time that is peculiar and in fact an exclusive property of Europe. Even Judith Butler who is cited as an example from the United States is decidedly a product of European philosophical genealogy, thinking somewhere between Derrida and Foucault, brought to bear on our understanding of gender and sexuality. To be sure, China and Brazil (and Australia, which is also a European extension) are cited as the location of other philosophers worthy of the designation, but none of them evidently merits a specific name to be sitting next to these eminent European philosophers. The question of course is not the globality of philosophical visions that all these prominent European (and by extension certain American) philosophers indeed share and from which people from the deepest corners of Africa to the remotest villages of India, China, Latin America, and the Arab and Muslim world ("deep and far", that is, from a fictive European centre) can indeed learn and better understand their lives. That goes without saying, for without that confidence and self-consciousness these philosophers and the philosophical traditions they represent can scarce lay any universal claim on our epistemic credulities, nor would they be able to put pen to paper or finger to keyboard and write a sentence. Thinkers outside Europe These are indeed not only eminent philosophers, but the philosophy they practice has the globality of certain degrees of self-conscious confidence without which no thinking can presume universality. The question is rather something else: What about other thinkers who operate outside this European philosophical pedigree, whether they practice their thinking in the European languages they have colonially inherited or else in their own mother tongues - in Asia, in Africa, in Latin America, thinkers that have actually earned the dignity of a name, and perhaps even the pedigree of a "public intellectual" not too dissimilar to Hannah Arendt, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Michel Foucault that in this piece on Al Jazeera are offered as predecessors of Zizek? What about thinkers outside the purview of these European philosophers; how are we to name and designate and honour and learn from them with the epithet of "public intellectual" in the age of globalised media? Do the constellation of thinkers from South Asia, exemplified by leading figures like Ashis Nandy, Partha Chatterjee, Gayatri Spivak, Ranajit Guha, Sudipta Kaviraj, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Homi Bhabha, or Akeel Bilgrami, come together to form a nucleus of thinking that is conscious of itself? Would that constellation perhaps merit the word "thinking" in a manner that would qualify one of them - as a South Asian - to the term "philosopher" or "public intellectuals"? Are they "South Asian thinkers" or "thinkers", the way these European thinkers are? Why is it that if Mozart sneezes it is "music" (and I am quite sure the great genius even sneezed melodiously) but the most sophisticated Indian music ragas are the subject of "ethnomusicology"? Is that "ethnos" not also applicable to the philosophical thinking that Indian philosophers practice - so much so that their thinking is more the subject of Western European and North American anthropological fieldwork and investigation? We can turn around and look at Africa. What about thinkers like Henry Odera Oruka, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Okot p'Bitek, Taban Lo Liyong, Achille Mbembe, Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, V.Y. Mudimbe: Would they qualify for the term "philosopher" or "public intellectuals" perhaps, or is that also "ethnophilosophy"? Why is European philosophy "philosophy", but African philosophy ethnophilosophy, the way Indian music is ethnomusic - an ethnographic logic that is based on the very same reasoning that if you were to go to the New York Museum of Natural History (popularised in Shawn Levy's Night at the Museum [2006]), you only see animals and non-white peoples and their cultures featured inside glass cages, but no cage is in sight for white people and their cultures - they just get to stroll through the isles and enjoy the power and ability of looking at taxidermic Yaks, cave dwellers, elephants, Eskimos, buffalo, Native Americans, etc, all in a single winding row. The same ethnographic gaze is evident in the encounter with the intellectual disposition of the Arab or Muslim world: Azmi Bishara, Sadeq Jalal Al-Azm, Fawwaz Traboulsi, Abdallah Laroui, Michel Kilo, Abdolkarim Soroush. The list of prominent thinkers and is endless.
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Soroush. The list of prominent thinkers and is endless.

Can non-Europeans think? - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

Al Jazeera English
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In Japan, Kojin Karatani, in Cuba, Roberto Fernandez Retamar, or even in the United States people like Cornel West, whose thinking is not entirely in the European continental tradition - what about them? Where do they fit in? Can they think - is what they do also thinking, philosophical, pertinent, perhaps, or is that also suitable for ethnographic examinations? The question of Eurocentricism is now entirely blase. Of course Europeans are Eurocentric and see the world from their vantage point, and why should they not? They are the inheritors of multiple (now defunct) empires and they still carry within them the phantom hubris of those empires and they think their particular philosophy is "philosophy" and their particular thinking is "thinking", and everything else is - as the great European philosopher Immanuel Levinas was wont of saying - "dancing". The question is rather the manner in which non-European thinking can reach self-consciousness and evident universality, not at the cost of whatever European philosophers may think of themselves for the world at large, but for the purpose of offering alternative (complementary or contradictory) visions of reality more rooted in the lived experiences of people in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America - counties and climes once under the spell of the thing that calls itself "the West" but happily no more. The trajectory of contemporary thinking around the globe is not spontaneously conditioned in our own immediate time and disparate locations, but has a much deeper and wider spectrum that goes back to earlier generations of thinkers ranging from Jos Marti to Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, to Aime Cesaire, W.E.B. DuBois, Liang Qichao, Frantz Fanon, Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, etc. So the question remains why not the dignity of "philosophy" and whence the anthropological curiosity of "ethnophilosophy"? Let's seek the answer from Europe itself - but from the subaltern of Europe. 'The Intellectuals as a Cosmopolitan Stratum' In his Prison Notebooks, Antonio Gramsci has a short discussion about Kant's famous phrase in Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) that is quite critical in our understanding of what it takes for a philosopher to become universally self-conscious, to think of himself as the measure and yardstick of globality. Gramsci's stipulation is critical here - and here is how he begins: Kant's maxim "act in such a way that your conduct can become a norm for all men in similar conditions" is less simple and obvious than it appears at first sight. What is meant by 'similar conditions'? To be sure, and as Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (the editors and translators of the English translation of Gramsci's Prison Notebooks) note, Gramsci here in fact misquotes Kant, and that "similar conditions" does not appear in the original text, where the German philosopher says: "I am never to act otherwise than so that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law." This principle, called "the categorical imperative", is in fact the very foundation of Kantian ethics. So where Kant says "universal law", Gramsci says, "a norm for all men", and then he adds an additional "similar conditions", which is not in the German original. That misquoting is quite critical here. Gramsci's conclusion is that the reason Kant can say what he says and offer his own behaviour as measure of universal ethics is that "Kant's maxim presupposes a single culture, a single religion, a 'world-wide' conformism... Kant's maxim is connected with his time, with the cosmopolitan enlightenment and the critical conception of the author. In brief, it is linked to the philosophy of the intellectuals as a cosmopolitan stratum". What in effect Gramsci discovers, as a southern Italian suffering in the dungeons of European fascism, is what in Brooklyn we call chutzpah, to think yourself the centre of universe, a self-assuredness that gives the philosopher that certain panache and authority to think in absolutists and grand narrative terms. Therefore the agent is the bearer of the "similar conditions" and indeed their creator. That is, he "must" act according to a "model" which he would like to see diffused among all mankind, according to a type of civilisation for whose coming he is working-or for whose preservation he is "resisting" the forces that threaten its disintegration. It is precisely that self-confidence, that self-consciousness, that audacity to think yourself the agent of history that enables a thinker to think his particular thinking is "Thinking" in universal terms, and his philosophy "Philosophy" and his city square "The Public Space", and thus he a globally recognised Public Intellectual. There is thus a direct and unmitigated structural link between an empire, or an imperial frame of reference, and the presumed universality of a thinker thinking in the bosoms of that empire.
"The world at large, and the Arab and Muslim world in particular, is going through world historic changes - these changes have produced thinkers, poets, artists, and public intellectuals at the centre of their moral and politcial imagination."

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Can non-Europeans think? - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

As all other people, Europeans are perfectly entitled to their own self-centrism. The imperial hubris that once enabled that Eurocentricism and still produces the infomercials of the sort we read in Al Jazeera for Zizek are the phantom OPINIONATED TWEETS [?] INFLUENTIAL TWEEPS memories of the time that "the West" had assured confidence and a sense of [?] its own universalism and globality, or as Gramsci put it, "to a type of civilisation for whose coming he is working". But that globality is no more - people from every clime and continent are up and about claiming their own cosmopolitan worldliness and with it their innate ability to think beyond the confinements of that Eurocentricism, which to be sure is still entitled to its phantom pleasures of thinking itself the centre of the universe. The Gramscian superimposed "similar conditions" are now emerging in multiple cites of the liberated humanity. The world at large, and the Arab and Muslim world in particular, is going through world historic changes these changes have produced thinkers, poets, artists, and public intellectuals at the centre of their moral and politcial imagination - all thinking and acting in terms at once domestic to their immediate geography and yet global in its consequences. Compared to those liberating tsunamis now turning the world upside down, cliche-ridden assumption about Europe and its increasingly provincialised philosophical pedigree is a tempest in the cup. Reduced to its own fair share of the humanity at large, and like all other continents and climes, Europe has much to teach the world, but now on a far more leveled and democratic playing field, where its philosophy is European philosophy not "Philosophy", its music European music not "Music", and no infomercial would be necessary to sell its public intellectuals as "Public Intellectuals". Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York. Among his most recent books is The World of Persian Literary Humanism (2012). The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

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4 months ago

It's very interesting. Reading a book on Indian Philosophy recently, I was struck how 'Indian' thought had been through very similar phases to 'Western' thought, and encountered very similar epistemological problems en route. Some Buddhist thinkers, for instance, took the line of Hume's skepticism against Hindu monistic or dualistic ideas and I got a distinct sense of deja vu while reading them. It's important to get outside your own traditional world-view and see things from the point of view of 'the other', because the differences are more on the surface than in the depths. I think we are all asking the same basic questions, the parameters of which are determined by the overall context of our lives in the "incubator, house and hearse" which is our universe, and we come up with different answers depending on our cultural background. Reading, for example, Vasamazulu Mutwa's "Indaba My Children", based on traditional Bantu myths and legends, it's obvious that there is tremendous philosophising going on in the African tradition, but it's not presented in a European way. The basic questions posed are the same, the difference lies in the method of exposition.
154 Reply c indy wilmore 104 Share
Junkets 4 months ago

i agree. i think the title of this paper should be "can europeans think."
Reply burger1376 Share
cindy wilmore 4 months ago

Hi Cindy, Actually, your post is a bit arrogant. I think the point of the article was to get people to not be so self centered. However, it isn't only Europeans who are Euro-centric. Many Chinese are Sino-centric, many Arabs are Arab-centric, many Indians are Indian-centric and so on. An example of Arab-centric people or Muslim-centric people can be found all over this comment section. Many people here think Muslims do no wrong, muslim culture is sepreme, and everyone should follow or at least appologize to muslims while ignore muslim wrong doings in the world. Your comment kind of shows that you didn't really understand the point of the article.
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burger1376 4 months ago

I think the succinct meat of the matter is that humans are programmed to be tribal/ethnocentric. It's a survival mechanism that should be accepted by Marxist philosophers rather than denounced as bourgeois.
42 ibne qures h Reply Share

burger1376 4 months ago

Have you any stats to prove that a Muslim think "Muslims do no wrong"? www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/01/2013114142638797542.html

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Can non-Europeans think? - Opinion - Al Jazeera English Have you any stats to prove that a Muslim think "Muslims do no wrong"? Being Muslims we despise our masses over their oddities. Islam teaches the Muslims to be answerable to God, instead of patting or defending each other of their maldeeds. Please, never generalize any community. For your argument that a Muslim think " Muslim culture is supereme" and "everyone should follow the Muslims", i think you have overlooked such tendency of all the other corners.
16 Reply Share
burger1376 4 months ago

Mark Fergers on

As WWMD says below, "the succinct meat of the matter is that humans are programmed to be tribal/ethnocentric", but there's gristle in that meat, also found in the article, that "As all other people, Europeans are perfectly entitled to their own self-centrism". I argue that they are NOT so entitled- no group is. That self-centrism is the root of all evil; it allows us to cast anyone not a member of "our" group as "the other", not entitled to consideration as a human being, a candidate for exploitation, slavery or extermination.The West's philosophical development has been away from such centrisms, from the selfconscious arrogances of theocracies toward democracies, from patriarchy toward equality, from racism toward recognition of the essential humanity of all peoples, and the same trend is blatantly evident elsewhere. Yes, the point is to get people to recognize and hopefully reject their selfcentrism, by pointing it out to a particular audience segment, those that claim the European philosophical heritage. As other commenters have pointed out, there really isn't such a thing since all its high points can be found in "ethnophilosophies" from India, China, and so on. I just hope that others will recognize the same fault in themselves and take steps to do the same.
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burger1376 4 months ago

Let him say what he wants to say but the highest level of philophers are people who claim they are God ( or the Supreme One). All of us knows that majority of Europeans are Christians and they worship Jesus as God. Jesus was a Jew, he was not european. Most of Western Laws are based on the Morality of the Bible. The Bible were written by Jews not Europeans. Now Buddhist worship Sidharta Gautama Buddha/ Sakyamuni Buddha as the Highest Supreme Being, Buddha was etnically an Indian, he was not European. Nearly a Billion Hindus worship Krisna which they consider as the Incarnation of the Most Supreme God, Krisna is Indian. Looks like God only incarnates into Indians and Jews. Therefore only Indians and Jews have the conciousness and genetic capability of understanding the infinite God, not Europeans. Thats my logic.
18 1 Reply Share

S elmo Glik s man

burger1376 4 months ago

good comment! and what do you think if i said that everything you said about the arab-centric or muslim-centric could be thought as well for the jews?I mean european jews (ashkenazi)... they also think their way of thinking is superior to other people including north african and oriental jews
6 Reply Share

Ric hard Nogin

burger1376 4 months ago

Well Matt, now that you have a sense of superiority over Cindy, do you wish to bind and urinate on her too?
8 1 Reply Share

S weet W illiam 2

burger1376 4 months ago

Thank you for summarizing the point of the article. I missed it.
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andrew galea 1

burger1376 4 months ago

Very clear and concise. You have a very good point. Well done!
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Cheny ang Li

Can non-Europeans think? - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

burger1376 3 months ago

While you certainly have a point generally speaking this does not apply to me. I am Chinese but my views are not Sino-centric. I simply wish people to consider Chinese philosophy and culture on an equal footing with the European ones. I'm looking for equality, not Chinese superiority. Yet Western academia in the general sense (with some exceptions) doesn't seem to really recognise this. It's true that everyone has some ethnocentric tendencies, we are only human after all, not perfect beings. But objectively there is certainly an inequality here. For instance in Chinese universities European philosophy features much more significantly than Chinese philosophy in European universities. What you describe is how the literate civilisations of Eurasia were like before the age of European colonialism, imperialism and expansion. Now European philosophy and culture clearly dominates the entire globe.
Reply Trut h Hurt s 57 3 Share

cindy wilmore 4 months ago

a lovely post for sufferers of acute Europe envy.

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Truth Hurts 4 months ago

Chuc k Ramone 73 Lwant ale

Reducing all criticism to envy or jealousy: the reasoning of a child.

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Truth Hurts 4 months ago

Give me a break! That is the delusion most of you people live under and use whenever you come under criticism. Acute Europe envy, my foot!!
48 Reply Share

c indy wilmore

Truth Hurts 4 months ago

whatever.
22 Hind A by ad Reply Share

Truth Hurts 4 months ago

Truth Hurts!
13 morris minor 29 Lewis 10 1 Reply Share

cindy wilmore 4 months ago

Sure, those Arabs are great thinkers, for the 12th century
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cindy wilmore 4 months ago

That's not helpful in the slightest and actual insulting.

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B odge Fodge Reply Jamal Loc k e

cindy wilmore 4 months ago

Pshhhawwwggghhh
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Junkets 4 months ago

"I think we are all asking the same basic questions" There's really only one important question, something like "how am I and the people I care about going to continue to live securely?" Pretty much all of what humans do, even things that don't seem related like art & entertainment, are connected to that question. Stupid things like war & aggression are an example of misunderstanding that question.
17 Reply moreman 17 Share
Jamal Locke 4 months ago

Surely the question should be "How can we all best live together?".
Reply Jamal Loc k e Share
moreman 4 months ago

We can best live together by recognizing each other's independence. All human engineered calamities have one thing in common and it's when one group of people starts to obsess about things that other people do that have no effect on them.
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Can non-Europeans think? - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

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Junkets 4 months ago

Let him say what he wants to say but the highest level of philophers are people who claim they are God ( or the Supreme One). All of us knows that majority of Europeans are Christians and they worship Jesus as God. Jesus was a Jew, he was not european. Most of Western Laws are based on the Morality of the Bible. The Bible were written by Jews not Europeans. Now Buddhist worship Sidharta Gautama Buddha/ Sakyamuni Buddha as the Highest Supreme Being, Buddha was etnically an Indian, he was not European. Nearly a Billion Hindus worship Krisna which they consider as the Incarnation of the Most Supreme God, Krisna is Indian. Looks like God only incarnates into Indians and Jews. Therefore only Indians and Jews have the conciousness and genetic capability of understanding the infinite God, not Europeans. Thats my logic.
3 Reply jon776 Share

Ben 4 months ago

The majority of Europeans are not really Christians anymore and the ones who are, are not very religious. Also, most western laws are not based on the bible. As for your logic, it's silly.
28 lee Reply Share

Ben 4 months ago

Hate to break it to you Ben, but if Jesus was born in Bethelehem as rumoured? Jesus was Palestinian. Whatever religion one may or may not practice is irrelevant to their nationality.
16 lee Reply Share

lee 4 months ago

in reply to Disparshun: Religion: The service & worship of God or the supernatural. Commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance. Nationality: People generally acquire a nationality by birth within a particular country's territory. Judaism: A monotheistic religion originating in the Hebrew Bible & explored in later texts such as the Talmud. Judaism is considered by religious Jews to be the expression of the covenantal relationship God established with the Children of Israel (that would be Israel, as in a person, not Israel, as in a country). Judiasm is a religion, it is not a nationality.
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13 Dis paris hun

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lee 4 months ago

Of course, Jew was his nationality. Also his religion. How ironic is it that it is at the foot of this very article that you reproduce the famous European religion::ethnicity split in the usual effort to deny nationhood to the Jews.
3 Fp Chan Reply Share

lee 4 months ago

The Chinese just bought the right to claim Jesus as Chinese. They gave Christians, Jews and Muslims free imitation milk powder in exchange for that right.
2 B lut Gelt Reply Share

lee 4 months ago

Jesus was Palestinian? LOL! Hahahahaa. Technically, Jesus was Roman, as Palestine Roman at the time. However, Jesus probably identified more with his Jewish identity than his "Roman" or "Palestinian" identity. Just stating the obvious.
2 Reply Share

morris minor

lee 4 months ago

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morris minor

Can non-Europeans think? - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

lee 4 months ago

Sorry, but Jesus was a Jew and was totally not a Palestinian as we know them today
3 Junk et s 1 Reply Share

Ben 4 months ago

Since I am of the school which says we should have stayed pagan, what am I to say to your 'logic'? Christianity was a religion which was largely imported into Europe at the expense of the indigenous culture of Europe. The form it eventually came to take emerged out of the collapsed Roman Empire. That is the form of the Roman Church. As Adam Ardrey says, "Rome had ruled for centuries. When Rome fell, many forms of Christianity vied for power, but only one inherited the old framework and structures of the Empire and with a single-minded ruthlessness submerged all other versions of Christianity to win the day. Arianism, Pelagianism, like the old way,... retreated into the shadows of history. The Dark Ages were about to begin." Christianity has been a blight on the European landscape ever since.
5 Reply Share

Chris t opher

Ben 4 months ago

According to your "logic" Ben, you could also conclude that only Indians and Jews are arrogant and delusional enough to believe that God incarnates itself via their genetic material and writes about it.
3 S c ot t Craig Reply Share

Junkets 4 months ago

True. Numerous schools of philosophy which challenged each other's theories of ethics and epistemology, developed in India. Similarly, the development of systematic philosophy with multiple rival schools of thought developed in China. The European philosophers were influenced principally by the richest tradition of philosophy in the ancient world which was developed in Greece. But let's be honest, the Europeans have equalled or surpassed all other traditions of philosophy in scope, breadth of analysis and depth of scrutiny.
2 Tim 1 Reply Share

Junkets 4 months ago

I agree. As of now 114 other people also agree. But (unless I have missed a post) none seem to pointed out that you are disagreeing with the author. The author was saying that European thought is Eurocentric. For example, the author suggests that Kant's categorical imperative is too universal. In effect, Kant presumes that we are all from a single culture. The author was suggesting that we turn to other traditions in order to avoid such universalizing assumptions. If you are correct, then other traditions are equally "universalistic". That's fine, but this means that the author's main point misfires badly. I agree with your comment, but disagree strongly with the article since I am a fan of a priori philosophers like Spinoza.
1 Reply Junk et s Share
Tim 4 months ago

Well, yes, I certainly had misgivings about what the author says. Things are not so easily separated as he seems to suggest. Whether that's due to traditions influencing each other, or because, when one starts to think deeply about life, the same questions keep popping up, I don't know. I do know, for example, that Spinoza was influenced by Ibn Arabi, but he had his own approach which was culturally specific. His use of 'geometrical' methods of argument, for example. So perhaps it's a bit of both.
1 afroblaz ingguns

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4 months ago

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I'm inclined to ask if non-European women can think considering we are barely mentioned (save for Spivak) in this piece.
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afroblazingguns 4 months ago

Jana V eronik a 19 B en

well. may this is field misunderstood by westerners...

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afroblazingguns 4 months ago

Let him say what he wants to say but the highest level of philophers are people who claim they are God ( or the Supreme One). All of us knows that majority of Europeans are Christians and they worship Jesus as God. Jesus was a Jew, he was not european. www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/01/2013114142638797542.html

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Can non-Europeans think? - Opinion - Al Jazeera English are Christians and they worship Jesus as God. Jesus was a Jew, he was not european. Most of Western Laws are based on the Morality of the Bible. The Bible were written by Jews not Europeans. Now Buddhist worship Sidharta Gautama Buddha/ Sakyamuni Buddha as the Highest Supreme Being, Buddha was etnically an Indian, he was not European. Nearly a Billion Hindus worship Krisna which they consider as the Incarnation of the Most Supreme God, Krisna is Indian. Looks like God only incarnates into Indians and Jews. Therefore only Indians and Jews have the conciousness and genetic capability of understanding the infinite God, not Europeans. Thats my logic.
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NIS HTHA R IDROOS

4 months ago

The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men. Plato
48 Reply efby a Share

NISHTHAR IDROOS 4 months ago

In today's context, The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be governed by Sharia.
44 Reply lingum 46 lee Share

efbya 4 months ago

Or might it be the US criminal justice system?

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lingum 4 months ago

in reply to efbya: I'm Western born, have lived in the US & the ME. There's no more wrong with Sharia Law than there is US law when those laws are distorted & manipulated by those in power who choose to do so. It depends on which country one lives in, contrary to your somewhat fantastical conviction that all Muslim countries are somehow one & the the same. As to a 'US criminal justice system', today? It's a parody. I'll take the Sharia Law where I live for the moment, thanks. It's working just fine for me.
39 efby a Reply Share

lingum 4 months ago

What do you prefer, US criminal justice system or Sharia? You should ask this question to the crowd of people in your country who're thronging the US embassy every day for a visa.
36 efby a Reply Share

lingum 4 months ago

>>I'm Western born, have lived in the US & the ME. -----@lee You're Western born because your parents fled the oppressive Chinese system in favor of the Western system. :))
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lingum 4 months ago

Debraj Guhabis was 9 lingum Reply

Its still much better than sharia. No comparison at all.

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Debraj Guhabiswas 4 months ago

Sort of like the caste system in which some human beings are not considered full human beings. Suggest you brush up on the laws of Manu.
2 A lK halil Reply Share

efbya 4 months ago

Any learned person who actually looked up the information about Sharia would gladly prefer Sharia to any other available system of law we have known so far. Go get yourself some real knowledge and then rant. Cheers to you Mr. EnterFromBackYouAnimal...
www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/01/2013114142638797542.html 10/11

22/05/13
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Can non-Europeans think? - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

Mat t Fit t

AlKhalil 4 months ago

Ah, yes... the virtuous Sharia legal system. I've seen some of the videos. It seemed rather efficient, when the sword was adequately sharpened. It also appeared rather disgusting and barbaric. The sort of system that might work well in a brutal totalitarian dystopia... but not really such a good thing for anyone who actually values personal and intellectual freedom... or equality, science, rationality, truth, democracy, dissent, humor, etc. What a sick joke.
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A lK halil

Matt Fitt 4 months ago

You flunk, with a great big ZERO in knowledge. But I will give a point out of ten for having a clean slate (in your head, of course).
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