Many people still believe that the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were not just acts of political terrorism, but part of a cultural war, a clash of civilizations. The two things that get people most excited in cultural conflicts are religion and sex, specifically the way that men treat women. They are of course intimately linked: Religion is commonly used as a way to regulate sexual behavior and relations between the sexes.
The cultural interpretation of Sept. 11 as a civilizational clash explains why a number of former leftists have joined conservatives in their hostility to Islam. In the past, most US leftists would have regarded the war in Afghanistan as a neo-imperialist venture. However, since Sept. 11, the tone has changed. The Taliban subjugated women, stopped them from being educated and kept them wrapped in burqas. So a war against the Taliban and their guest, slain al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, could be construed as a war for female liberation.
It is, in fact, unlikely that feminism played any role in then-US president George W. Bush’s decision to take the US to war. However, cultural concerns allowed him to recruit quite a few unlikely allies.
The response to Sept. 11 and to former IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s recent encounter with an African chambermaid in a New York hotel have very little in common, except for one thing: Once again, cultural conflict was invoked in a misleading way.
Whatever happened between Strauss-Kahn and his accuser, the fact that he was arrested and paraded in front of the press as a criminal suspect has been much criticized in France. One allegation, made recently by a well-known French publicist, is that the arrest was typical of US puritanism. The French, he alleged, being from a Latin culture, have a more liberal understanding of sexual behavior. They are more tolerant of human frailties and have a more refined appreciation of the art of seduction.
More than that, the arrest of Strauss-Kahn was supposedly revenge for France’s protection of another man accused of sexual crimes, film director Roman Polanski, and for the French ban on the burqa. In other words, the Strauss-Kahn case was part of another clash of cultures over sex, and, if only tangentially, religion.
One problem with the cultural argument is that it is often used to defend or excuse the behavior of the powerful against the weak. Taliban men no doubt believe that the subjugation of women is a cultural privilege, as well as a religious duty. Authoritarian leaders in Asia routinely claim that their countries are culturally unsuited to democracy.
However, even in the more liberal West — let alone in countries with less liberal traditions, such as Japan — culture comes to the rescue of the powerful more often than it protects the weak. Both Polanski and Strauss-Kahn were engaged in sexual activities with women who were far from being their equals, in age and social status, respectively. Understanding their “human frailties,” then, comes down to excusing the behavior of powerful men toward women with no power at all.
The rather strict use of law in the US to regulate sexual behavior might reflect a puritanical culture, but it is more likely the result of cultural diversity. In a society of immigrants, people come from a wide variety of traditions and faiths, with very different views of sex and the treatment of women. Since Americans cannot rely on homogeneous mores, the law is the only way to regulate behavior. Old societies have customs and traditions; new ones have courts and legislatures.
However, that is not the whole answer, either. Sweden, a country of limited cultural diversity, has even more stringent laws on sexual behavior than the US. And France, beneath its veneer of republican equality, is culturally and ethnically diverse.
One cannot expect the law to solve all cultural conflicts, but it can play a positive role as a tool of emancipation. At best, the law is a great equalizer. The end of the Western slave trade did not come because European culture changed, but because the British changed their laws.
In Japan, sexual harassment of women has sometimes been excused — by Japanese males — to foreigners as part of Japanese culture, and the female victims often put up with it by thinking that this is true. No doubt many Afghan women in burqas are equally convinced that covering their faces is a cultural command — and therefore a natural duty.
However, more and more Japanese women are fighting back against unwelcome male attention, not by denying tradition or culture, but by going to a lawyer and suing. Their problem is not with sex, or the art of seduction, but with the abuse of power.
Muslim women in strict authoritarian societies do not usually have the option of seeking the law’s protection. Men who wish to maintain their control over women will no doubt continue to use culture and religious tradition to justify their dominance.
It would no doubt be better, especially for women, if the citizens of countries like Afghanistan were equal before the law. Likewise, it would be better if powerful Frenchmen were to stop using “Latin culture” as an excuse for abusing their social inferiors.
However, the solutions to these problems are political and legal. That is why Strauss-Kahn was arrested. As for women in Muslim countries, there may not be much that people in the West can do to improve their lot, but it is unlikely that much good will come from bombing them.
Ian Buruma is a professor of democracy and human rights at Bard College.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
US president-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday named US Representative Mike Waltz, a vocal supporter of arms sales to Taiwan who has called China an “existential threat,” as his national security advisor, and on Thursday named US Senator Marco Rubio, founding member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China — a global, cross-party alliance to address the challenges that China poses to the rules-based order — as his secretary of state. Trump’s appointments, including US Representative Elise Stefanik as US ambassador to the UN, who has been a strong supporter of Taiwan in the US Congress, and Robert Lighthizer as US trade
A nation has several pillars of national defense, among them are military strength, energy and food security, and national unity. Military strength is very much on the forefront of the debate, while several recent editorials have dealt with energy security. National unity and a sense of shared purpose — especially while a powerful, hostile state is becoming increasingly menacing — are problematic, and would continue to be until the nation’s schizophrenia is properly managed. The controversy over the past few days over former navy lieutenant commander Lu Li-shih’s (呂禮詩) usage of the term “our China” during an interview about his attendance
Following the BRICS summit held in Kazan, Russia, last month, media outlets circulated familiar narratives about Russia and China’s plans to dethrone the US dollar and build a BRICS-led global order. Each summit brings renewed buzz about a BRICS cross-border payment system designed to replace the SWIFT payment system, allowing members to trade without using US dollars. Articles often highlight the appeal of this concept to BRICS members — bypassing sanctions, reducing US dollar dependence and escaping US influence. They say that, if widely adopted, the US dollar could lose its global currency status. However, none of these articles provide
Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), the son of former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee Politburo member and former Chongqing Municipal Communist Party secretary Bo Xilai (薄熙來), used his British passport to make a low-key entry into Taiwan on a flight originating in Canada. He is set to marry the granddaughter of former political heavyweight Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政), the founder of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital in Yilan County’s Luodong Township (羅東). Bo Xilai is a former high-ranking CCP official who was once a challenger to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) for the chairmanship of the CCP. That makes Bo Guagua a bona fide “third-generation red”