Spring 2003
Issue 82

Publication Date: April 15, 2003
Posted: Tuesday, April 4, 2003

This issue features a conference on ethnic conflict and four seminars -- on the morality of war in Iraq, on bioethics in China, on Muslim anger, and on Muslim honor; it also takes note of the new lecture series on technology and society, and the launching of The New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology and Society.


In This Issue :

E Pluribus Plures
Ethnic hostilities account for a very high percentage of distress and instability in the world today. To examine this problem in four volatile countries particularly vital to the war on terrorism -- India, Indonesia, Afghanistan, and Iraq -- the Center sponsored a January 15, 2003, symposium called "Ethnic Conflict, Ethnic Partition, and U.S. Foreign Policy," held at the St. Regis Hotel. [More]

Pros and Cons of War in Iraq
In the weeks leading up to the war in Iraq, numerous commentators argued over the wisdom and the morality of military intervention. Three prominent participants in the public debate—journalist Christopher Hitchens, William Galston of the University of Maryland, and Center senior fellow George Weigel— offered their divergent assessments at the February 6 seminar "War on the Horizon: Is It Just?" [More]

Islam Honor Bound
"Global development has robbed many people in traditional societies of their concept of honor and dignity," and they have reacted by adopting "a perverted notion of honor," asserted Akbar S. Ahmed of American University at the March 10 Center seminar "Islam and the West: Living Dangerously in a Post-Honor World." While not unique to Muslim countries, this "ambiguous notion of honor" is pervasive among Muslims today—especially young, angry, illiterate, unemployed men "looking for a cause" in their disintegrating societies. Divorced from all constraints of chivalry, it exaggerates group loyalty, "propels men to violence" and vengeance, and has put Islam "on a collision course with the other world religions." [More]

Fury Worries
"Muslims are the victims of Islamists," declared Tashbih Sayyed, editor of Pakistan Today, at a January 9 Center seminar entitled "The Roots of Muslim Anger." Extremists who seek to establish Islamic states gain "vitality, energy, and power" by first fostering anti-Western resentment and then exploiting it to advance their political objectives. Through speeches, books, and pamphlets that justify hatred and terror, they "brainwash" the large majority of literate but uneducated Muslims into believing that Judeo-Christian civilization is wholly responsible for their fall and their current hopelessness. The "authority of the pulpit" distorts and manipulates both Islamic history and theology, depicting all conflicts between Muslim and non-Muslim states as religious wars in which infidels challenged Allah. [More]

Bio(non)ethics in China
As Americans have debated the pros and cons of the biogenetic revolution, they have raised serious questions about the state of bioethics and biogenetic advances in China. To explore these questions, the Center sponsored the January 22 panel discussion "Chinese Bioethics? An East-West Exchange on Eugenics, Euthanasia, and the New Human Biotechnologies." [More]

Technology & Society
Excerpts from The New Atlantis
Excerpts from The New Atlantis: A Journal on Technology and Society.  Excerpts include Leon Kass of the American Enterprise Institute, "Ageless Bodies, Happy Souls: Biotech and the Pursuit of Perfection," Mark Blitz of Claremont McKenna College, "Technology and Political Responsibility," and Amy Laura Hall of Duke University Divinity School spoke on "Technology and Parenthood." [More]