From: Van oost Kenneth (kennethvanoost@belgacom.net)
Date: Mon 01 Nov 2004 - 20:15:13 GMT
----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott Chase" <osteopilus@yahoo.com>
> I can think of an example where an absolutist mindset
> has remained in a population hat has had some
> significant economic success overall (ceteris
> parabis). Cuban exiles in Miami have been rather well
> off in many respects. Many lack the looming privation
> Keith often refers to. As a matter of fact some of the
> more extreme have enjoyed great privilege and status
> in the community. After finishing Ann Bardach's _Cuba
> Confidential_ I realize, from her discussion, that the
> CANF lobby has tamed down a bit, especially after Mas
> Canosa, the exile war horse, died.
' SNIP '
<< Tensions are felt between Belgians and strangers amongst us, we
all possess a kind of ' insecurity- feeling' that is related to the presence
of strangers and to the possibility of yet a greater influx and to what
they represent or could represent.
I don 't doubt it, they seemingly are well of economically, although
their chances to get a job are minimalized by xenophobic notions due
to our part, but I don 't think that this is the main factor we should be
cling to.
In my mind it is more an element of being ' religiously ' privated that
boils down here, in the understanding that with religiously I mean
their religious backed- up social/ political and cultural order.
That some of our laws prohibit them to keep their daughter or
sisters indoors is something that ain 't is well received in some of
thier mids.
And although we have a high standard of keeping man and woman
equal and another to give them equal rights, Islamitic women, and
all those who call themselves emancipated do have all the same
discours_ they reject our Western values and in the same breath
they tell us that the Western model ain't the only one by which
they can and wish to be eancipated. They still cling to their wishes
to express the state(s) of being a Muslim and with it all what it stands
for.
What is absolute with such a stand is its fundamentalism_ it is the
first, only and most important issue by which they want to call
themselves Muslim. And by closing themselves up within such an
identitiy they isolate themselves from the rest of the community.
On the other hand, though we are getting insecure, we are
getting afraid seeing that this leads to the forming of formal ghetto's
and to communitarism; shuttin ' oneself up within an ethnic or be-
lief community where co- ordinated laws of order aren 't no longer
an option to hold for leads to absolutism of our part!
Regards,
Kenneth
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