Download "Cross-Culture Wars" by Dinesh D`Souza

CROSS-CULTURE WARS
by Dinesh D’Souza
Some Muslims complain about U.S. activities in the Middle East or support for Israel, but an
even more widespread concern is cultural: what Muslims see as an American descent into
homosexual marriage, family breakdown, and a popular culture that is often morally repulsive.
We in the United States know that there is a difference between movies/television/music and the
way that Americans actually live, but many Muslims abroad see the America of popular culture
as the real thing.
Surveys show more than 80 percent of people in Indonesia, Uganda, Kenya, Senegal, Egypt,
and Turkey saying they want to protect their values from foreign assault. Their objection is not to
McDonalds or Microsoft–they usually want more American companies, more American
technology, and more free trade–but to what they see as degrading cultural products.
Muslim critics of American culture are quick to concede its fascination and attraction,
especially to the young. When one television interviewer told a sheikh, “I find it curious and
hypocritical that you are so anti-American, considering that two of your sons are living and
studying in America,” the sheikh replied, “But this is not hypocritical at all. I concede that
American culture is appealing. If you put a young man into a hotel room and give him dozens of
pornography tapes, he is likely to find those appealing as well. What America appeals to is
everything that is low and disgusting in human nature.”
Many in traditional cultures see America as materially prosperous but culturally decadent,
technologically sophisticated but morally depraved. Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir
Bhutto noted a Muslim “reaction against the sexual overtones that come across in American mass
culture.” An Iranian from Neishapour told journalist Afshin Molavi, “People say we want
freedom. You know what these foreign-inspired people want? They want the freedom to gamble
and drink and bring vice to our Muslim land. This is the kind of freedom they want.”
It's in this respect that the term “Great Satan,” so commonly used to denounce America in the
Muslim world, doesn’t seem so zany. Muslims share with Jews and Christians the understanding
that Satan is primarily a tempter, not a conqueror; the Quran describes Satan as ‘the insidious one
who whispers into the hearts of men.” Osama bin Laden said in one of his videos that Islam faces
the greatest threat it has faced since Muhanunad and that’s not because U.S. troops were in Saudi
Arabia but because he feared American values and mores grabbing the hearts of Muslims.
Many Americans are also concerned about the cultural ascent of the coarse, trivial, and
disgusting. Many complain about huge doses of vulgar language on prime-time television,
salacious themes in popular movies, and extreme brutality in rap music. From Jerry Springer and
Howard Stem to The Da Vinci Code and Brokeback Mountain, the war against traditional religion
and morality seems unremitting.
The Muslim indictment doesn’t just apply to American “mass culture” but also to liberal “high
culture” that offers itself as refined and sophisticated. For example, Eve Ensler’s obscene play,
“The Vagina Monologues,” has won rave reviews and Hollywood accolades; it’s performed
regularly on American college campuses but also in Turkey, and bookstores in Pakistan, India,
and Egypt sell the book version of the play. Muslims consider the public recitation of Ensler’s
themes and language a grotesque violation of manners and morals.
The debate over popular culture points to a deeper issue. For the past quarter-century
Americans have viewed our “culture war” as one with only domestic ramifications–but the global
consequences are now becoming clear. When we debate hot-button issues like abortion, school
prayer, divorce, gay marriage, and so on, we are debating two radically different views of liberty
and morality. Issues like divorce and family breakdown are important in themselves and are
symptoms of a great moral shift in American society, but that shift also is at the root of the antiAmericanism of traditional cultures.
The cultural shift can be described in this way: Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation
describes the virtues of the World War II generation, but was that generation greater than the
generation of the American founding or the Civil War generation? Or does the World War II
generation stand out because it was the last one to embrace an external code of traditional
morality? The code seems astounding to subsequent generations that don’t have that selfdisciplined, deferred-gratification moral code.
Laws and social norms during the first half of the 20th century typically reflected this moral
consensus: Go to church. Be faithful to your wife. Support your children. Go when your
country calls. And so on. Some did not live up to the prevailing norms, but they supplied a
standard, accepted virtually throughout society, for. how one should act.
That consensus is now gone. The morality of the inner self, of self-fulfillment–a secular
liberal morality–now dominates our popular culture. Liberals often do not approve of all the
grossness and sensuality of contemporary popular culture, but their promotion of autonomy
individuality, and self-fulfillment as moral ideals makes it difficult to question or criticize or
place limits on these cultural trends. In the moral code of self-fu1fillment, “pushing the
envelope” or testing the borders of sexual and moral tolerance becomes a virtue, and fighting for
traditional morality becomes a form of repression or vice.
Many American liberals view the great social revolution of the past few decades–freedom for
abortion, divorce, and homosexuality–through the prism of an expansion of civil liberties,
“freedom of choice,” and personal autonomy. But from the Muslim perspective these same
trends appear as nothing less than the shameless promotion of depravity. So it is not surprising to
see pious Muslims react with horror at the prospect of this new American morality seeping into
their part of the world and potentially destroying their religion and way of life.
So what should America do about this? First, we should recognize how our domestic culture
war and the war on terror are linked. The restoration of American culture will not only be better
for our children, but will help America's image abroad. As a practical matter, of course, such a
restoration will not be easy. At the very least, it is a task that I will take a couple of decades. The
best we can do is to show Muslims, and traditional people around the world, the other America
that they often don't see. The Bush administration should do more to highlight the presence, and
values, of conservative and religious America. Moreover, we should do what we can to export
this America, which is good America, to the rest of the world.
When the other America shows its ugly face, as it inevitably will in many cases, we should not
hesitate to speak out against it and say that this is not the, America of which we are proud. We
should not hesitate to tell traditional Muslims and others that there are many of us who are
working to reverse the tide of liberal immorality in our society and around the world. By
proclaiming our allegiance to the traditional values of Judeo-Christian society, we can the
currents of Anti-Americanism among the Muslims, and thus undercut the appeal of radical Islam
to traditional Muslims around the world.
[Source: 13th January 2007 World, pages 26-27.]