Chandra Muzaffar Quotes

So ubiquitous is Western influence that most of the time it is no longer seen as an alien element intruding into non-Western societies. It is an influence that has become integrated into the mind and body, the heart and soul of the non-Western human being. Western dominance, in other words, has become normal, it has become natural. By making it so natural and so normal to be 'Western', the centres of power in the West have achieved their ultimate triumph.

The things and ways the West took to the rest have become the ways of the world.

The great question of the 20th century is whether the Anglo-Saxon of the Slav is to impress his civilization upon the world.

It doesn’t matter if we don’t consider ourselves an empire. Others see us as impinging on their lives, their way of life.

The US became arrogant because of what it owns of weapons and technology. For that, it handles the world as it pleases, and changes the ideologies of people, their habits and ethics in order to spread Western culture at the expense of Islam.

The main reason western culture has been dominant is because Europeans have controlled political, economic and social power including educational policy for the last several centuries.

We cannot sit in the West and prescribe for peoples in the East, whose societies and ways of life are being destabilized by Western and imperialistic religious, economic and technological initiatives -- without having walked in their shoes

The opponents of this process have always tried to vilify westernization as a poor imitation.

The domination of western values, beliefs and way of life has angered many from the east and in developing countries.

The 'low' quality of many American films, and of much American popular culture, induces many art lovers to support cultural protectionism. Few people wish to see the cultural diversity of the world disappear under a wave of American market dominance.

We all know what is meant by the term 'international community,' don't we? It's the West, of course, nothing more, nothing less. Using the term 'international community' is a way of dignifying the West, of globalising it, of making it sound more respectable, more neutral and high-faluting.

We are guilty for sending teams into foreign countries to advise them how to be like us.

The standardization of world culture, with local popular or traditional forms driven out or dumbed down to make way for American television, American music, food, clothes and films, has been seen by many as the very heart of globalization.

Every citizen in every country in the world now grows up in two nations. Their own and Hollywood.

In 1920, the West ruled huge amounts of the world.

And this fear that US models are replacing everything else now spills over from the sphere of culture into our two remaining categories: for this process is clearly, at one level, the result of economic domination - of local cultural industries closed down by American rivals.

It is through the European that civilization arrives ... precisely because of their superiority, the civilized people our responsible for an evolving world.

It is urgently necessary that we recognize our own limitations as a moral and ideological force among the Asiatic peoples. Our political philosophy and our patterns for living have very little applicability to masses of people in Asia. They may be all right for us, with our highly developed political traditions running back into the centuries and with our peculiarly favorable geographic position; but they are simply not practical or helpful, today, for most of the people in Asia.

O Muslims! When a Muslim blindly imitates the West, he turns into a loyal supporter of their beliefs and customs; he is like one who tries to reform something but spoils it while he is unaware. He is just like a defeated follower, like a baby who bites and severs his mother's breast while it is in his mouth. Such a person does not know that blind copying of the West involves hidden hazards and that our rights, honor and dignity are violated by such imitation and imbecilic pride.

Hollywood ... proved a more reliable, cost-effective means of securing world domination than any nuclear arsenal or diplomatic d’marche.

Unlike more traditional conquerors, we are not content merely to subdue others: We insist that they be like us.

When you start exporting ideas, philosophy, behavior, products, ways of living, it becomes an assault on the culture. Americans have to understand that.

People in the Middle East do not hate us for our freedom. They do not hate us for our lifestyle. They hate us because we have spent many years attempting to force them to emulate our lifestyle.

Identity politics includes the assertion of difference from ‘the West’, and the defenses against cultural invasions and ‘pollution’ by Western styles. The insistent emphasis on this theme is accompanied by its flagrant but largely unacknowledged subversion in everyday activity and styles, from dress, to food to music and entertainment, to media consumptions, to public spaces and general consumption patterns. While McDonald’s is boycotted because it is American, native fast food chains emerge which are direct imitations; the boycott of Coca Cola spawns Mecca Cola.

The issue of American world cultural dominance is moot. All the international debates on the issue seem to be held in English.