A Cultural Wasteland...

...and a Political Prison

Salim Mansur on the Arab and Muslim world:

"Any thinking Muslim with a shred of self-respect must have cringed in disgust on watching the buffoonery of Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the UN recently.

These two leaders taking centre-stage at the General Assembly displayed the sickness that has turned the Arab-Muslim world into a cultural wasteland and political prison."

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"History is a cemetery for people and cultures driven to extinction for the lack of freedom under the arbitrary rule of tyrants.

Gadhafi and Ahmadinejad are the poster images of despots in the greater Middle East, and the nature of their rule explains how their people have been crippled by the Islamist ideology at war with freedom, democracy and Israel."

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"But there are many outside the Arab-Muslim world, and not merely Muslims, who entertain the illusion the sickness there results in part from wrongs done to Arabs and Muslims by the West.

Hence if the West and, in particular, the United States atone for these wrongs the Arab-Muslim world might be then sufficiently cured of its sickness.

Such illusions embolden the wicked and condemn those living inside tyranny to wither away in their wasteland without complaining."

They can also earn you a Nobel Peace Prize.