@Nyotarules @jaime
I read an article a long time ago which said something startlingly simple, but which changed my view on culture. It basically said "it's obvious that not all cultures are equal, lets move past this trite fiction", and made me think about whether this statement was true or not. Up until then, I had followed the post-colonial mindset of insisting that all cultures are equal; it is only education and material conditions that differ. But reading history, I know that in India for example, sati was a real practice, that the British abolished it; India was also richer by far than Britain, when the British arrived, contrary to people's prejudicial image of a third-world country. I knew that when the Russians arrived in Central Asia and Iran in the 18th century, they found an awful culture of human trafficking, institutionalized rape and slavery, justified by a (possibly legitimate) interpretation Islamic scripture, and put an end to it. I know that many native rulers were often more bloody than the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and so on; the Ming Dynasty seem to have ethnically cleansed the Hmong, The Mughal invasion of India was far bloodier than the British one. An Afghan warlord burnt the oldest university in the world, in medieval India, to the ground, on the grounds "it contained no Quran". So, what made European invasions and colonialism more reprehensible than the regimes they replaced exactly? The color of their skin? Being mixed race, I'm not as uncritical of this idea, as some. It is of course good that these countries gained Independence, because whatever else it was, colonialism was still exploitative of the working classes; two wrong don't make a right. In the case of India, many of the rulers were themselves just a previous wave of colonialists; the same might be said for the Qing Dynasty. Thankfully, these two cultures, (India and China), went some way toward redressing this; they rejected the dogma of the past, and adopted European learning and ideas wholesale; China is, nominally at least, Marxist, and India, despite protests that some form of republican oligarchies might have briefly existed at the time of the Buddha, is a democratic republic that owes more to John Locke and Thomas Jefferson than any 5th century BC ganarajya. Japan adopted European institutions, right down to the symphony orchestra, the arts, and the style of dress, to an incredible degree, and was the first asian nation to emerge as an equal to Europe in terms of development - it also preserved its culture to a remarkable extent (probably better than most European nations), which is not as paradoxical as it seems - because in a considered and detached rejection of the past, comes the ability to look upon it neutrally and engage with it anew, through the new paradigm.
Islam didn't do this.
The political movement of Islamism is fundamentally, it seems to me, a prideful and bigoted rejection of the universally applicable sciences, secular politics and culturally neutral learning and arts that accompanied the modern world, just because it came from the loathsome and decadent west (or seemed to; as we know it's influences are complex). And it comes, it seems to me, from the conviction that A). Islam is the final revelation (so how could a Christian or atheist possibly have a better system of ethics) B). it should influence politics, unlike Shinto, Buddhism, Shenism, Hinduism or modern Christianity (with it's "render unto Caesar" separation of religion and state; a safeguard against totalitarianism). How can a polytheist be worthy of my respect, or of equal citizenship when Mohammed made a point of destroying pagan idols in Mecca? How can a woman, given their status in the Quran? Self-criticism, such as a Pakistani Noam Chomsky, is impossible if reverence and deference for the establishment (parents, elders and prachers) is paramount; Bangladesh is nominally a democracy with British common law, but de facto you will be murdered for being an atheist blogger and your police chief will insinuate
'they brought it upon themselves'. Socrates argued that the natural world is the truth, irreverent of how many people believe it, or whether your own parent or preacher threatens to kill your for saying it - it should be investigated independently and impartially - Europe eventually heeded his advice.
Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but the Klingon Empire could increasingly be seen as a metaphor for Islam over time in TNG and DS9; a culture violently asserting it's right to self-determination vs. the Federation, but which never stopped to ask itself whether it's even worth the bravado and prideful defiance; the Federation for all it's flaws, is a nice place. Klingon culture at first seems very different from any monotheistic semitic one - it has the trappings of the Japanese samurai or Norse pagans, or tengriist Mongols, but their reverence of Kahless, which became less orthopraxic, and more like an orthodoxy with a creed over time, looked increasingly like he is their 'prophet'.
Was Ezri Dax infact saying to Worf "I'm not as enamored with Klingon culture as Jadzia was, I think it deserves to die, and I think your misty-eyed devotion to it allows it's hypocrisy to flourish, because all someone has to yell is 'honor' for everyone to rally behind them uncritically - what has it ever really done for you Worf, compared to the Federation, is it even worth your love"?
Star Trek in general, was never un-sceptical of the societies it found - Kirk stopping the death chambers on Eminiar VII, for example. The prime directive never meant all cultures are equal. As Picard stated, it was there, as much to protect the Federation, as to protect others. So yeah, as
@jaime said, I think the well intentioned step of having background characters wearing headscarves in some of the recent novels might be a huge mis-step; yet more pandering to cultural atavists and reactionaries. All cultures have THE POTENTIAL to be equal according to Star Trek's philosophy, but they have to consciously self-examine and reject things that they might not want to, in order to achieve that potential. They aren't simply equal by nature of existing. So no,
@dswynne1 - I don't think embracing a singular vision is good at all. But I do think a genuinely plural one entails everyone respecting everyone, no opt-outs, just because the bigots arn't white.
