Is Nicholas Kristof an ass?

[annabanana]

Op-Ed Columnist
Is Islam the Problem?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: March 5, 2011

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/opinion/06kristof.html?_r=1


I finally got around to reading yesterday's oped in the Times. It seems to me that at the very center of his hypothesis is the conflation of democracy with capitalism.

Not letting the oldest son inherit the bulk of a fortune? THIS is why democracy hasn't flourished in the Mid East?

[The_Commonist]

1. No, not usually...

But everyone can be an ass on occasion.
Just like - every ass can be right on occasion.

[pampango]

2. Love this: "Islam isn’t the problem and it isn’t the solution, it’s simply a religion."

"These traditional impediments are no longer a problem in the 21st century. Muslim countries now have banks, corporations, and stock and bond markets, and inheritance law now isn’t an obstacle to capital accumulation. So if Professor Kuran’s diagnosis is correct, that should bode well for the region — and Turkey’s boom in recent years underscores the potential for a renaissance.

Yet one challenge is psychological. Many Arabs blame outsiders for their backwardness, and cope by rejecting modernity and the outside world. It’s a disgrace that an area that once produced outstanding science and culture (giving us words like algebra) now is an educational underachiever, especially for girls.

The crisis in the Arab world provides a chance for a new start. I hope we’ll have some tough, honest conversations on all sides about what went wrong — as a starting point for a new and more hopeful trajectory.

The Muslim Brotherhood has often used the slogan, “Islam is the solution.” And to the West, the unstated feeling upon looking across the bleak Middle East landscape has often been: “Islam is the problem.” Professor Kuran’s research suggests that, at least looking forward, the more correct view is: Islam isn’t the problem and it isn’t the solution, it’s simply a religion — meaning that the break is over, there are no excuses, and it’s time to move forward again."

I think Kristoff is right more often than he is wrong. As he said in this piece the issue of how the Islamic world got where it is today is too complicated for one column.