I'm not criticizing it, I just think we in the west are unbelievably stupid to try and wear rose-colored glasses when it comes to the Ummah. I've been teaching CS to Syrian, Yemeni and Iraqi students in my spare time for the past 10 years. I love working with them, but I would never let any of them meet my daughter, know I'm an atheist, or know that I'm bisexual.
Islam is incompatible with the west, and the sooner we accept that, the sooner we can find a way to make peace and move forward.
> the islamic world has showed absolutely no interest in modernity
Sure, they just created Algebra, cameras, algorithms and many foundation of our modern world. What a coincidence for a society that hates modernity!
Also in another comment you said you lived in the Islamic world 20 years, and now you say you teached CS on the side for 10 years.
So you stayed in a region you unfathomably hate for 20 years for a job you could've done anywhere? And you didn't even pick rich countries either, starting to sound like someone who's just making stuff up.
Algebra is what, 3,000 years old? That's your idea of modernity? Really?
> So you stayed in a region you unfathomably hate for 20 years for a job you could've done anywhere? And you didn't even pick rich countries either, starting to sound like someone who's just making stuff up.
You're putting words in my mouth. I enjoy teaching refugees and trying to convert them to atheism, I love the geographic and landscape here, and I love my queer/gay/liberal/artistic friends and family here. I just dislike the religion and the religious. I feel the exact same way about christianity, judaism and hinduism.
It's great being here. All my friends here are either expats or liberal beyaz turkular who work in entertainment, and feel the same way about Islam and religion as I do.
"Edit out swipes." (<-- "starting to sound like someone who's just making stuff up" definitely counts as a swipe)
(And to answer a common objection, yes, the same rules apply regardless of religion.)
It's a pity because you obviously also have valuable contributions to make - e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34404614. But the damage caused by bombs is greater than the benefit offered by flowers, so we don't really have a choice.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Of course, I meant "worse" from a Western liberal point-of-view, which I would think should be obvious here.
My whole point there is that Western liberals seem to usually think that if people in oppressive regimes only had democratic governments, then they'd magically turn into countries like Norway. So they try installing democratic governments in places like Afghanistan and then are shocked when these countries don't turn into clones of liberal Western democracies.