Mideast

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Spectrum - Friday, November 20, 2009Send this story
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Letters



Mideast politics

Editor,


Involved for more than 30 years in the politics of Iraq, Ali A. Allawi was a long-time opposition leader against the Baathist regime.

The inadaptability of Islam to modern life, the author argues, stems from its deep roots in the sacred. To be modern, according to Allawi, is to be liberated from the divine as the sole source of ethics and virtues. The author argues that the West's violent encroachment on the Muslim world in the 19th and 20th centuries shattered local institutions and economies and disrupted any natural evolution of Islamic society.

The first Gulf War had other effects as well. The sanctions imposed on Iraq since that time have devastated that poor country and further inflamed Arab and Muslim opinion against the U.S. And it sounded the death knell for any aspirations the Palestinians had for their own state.

Since that time the U.S. has been less and less willing to help them, the Israelis have been more and more hard-line and willing to oppress them, and the rest of the world has grown more and more appalled at the plight of these poor people, and more anti-American and anti-Israeli in their attitudes and actions.

Ted Rudow III,MA
Palo Alto