“Richard Landes is an American writer and medieval historian specialising in millennialism. He is associate professor of history at Boston University and the author of several books including Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience (Oxford University Press).” (Source, HERE)
Landes published recently an article in British newspaper The Telegraph is which he rightly criticises the inability of ‘liberal intellectuals’ (by which he means ‘journalists, academics, talking heads, mainstream politicians’) to confront’ what he describes as ‘Islam’s honour-shame culture’.
The starting point in his analysis is the serious problem of the segregation between Muslim immigrants and their host European nations:
The disconnect referred to in the article constitutes one of the most worrying developments in Western culture over the last decade: between a elite that controls much of the discussion in the public sphere (journalists, academics, talking heads, mainstream politicians) and who fear being called Islamophobes and racists more than they fear Islamist racists, and a population of people who, whenever they voice concern about the behavior of the Muslim neighbors, are told not to be Islamophobic racists. The problems are knotty and painful to disentangle. Here’s my outline of an approach. (For a longer version of the following essay, see my blog, The Augean Stables.) Continue reading “Guilt and Innocence vs. Honour and Shame”
Persona 