Fatima Mernissi Quotes

We cannot just ape the west. What may be good in an alien country may be unpalatable in India.

Secularism is the experience of the Western culture and thought. Insisting on spreading it to places where the underlying intellectual background, and the political and social reasons for its appearance are lacking, is clearly a mistake, regardless of being desirable or not.

Following the West is not surrendering. Following the West, the best of the West, is following originality.

I am intelligent enough to be critical towards the West and take what I need and reject what is bad for me.

In Serbia a lot of people hate me because they want to westernize, not understanding that the western world is bipolar, with very good things and very bad things.

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

Things are so much global and Americanised.

The question was heatedly debated of how much Western culture should be brought into China.

We've had science fiction novels where China is dominant; we've had novels where India is dominant, and I suppose it's all about getting away from that cliched old tired idea that the future belongs to the West.

My hero wants to belong too, but he doesn't want to give up all the things he came to value in the west.

On my parents' scale of values, the more Western something was, the more cultured it was considered.

The legitimacy of the West is contested by the very skepticism it holds so dear.

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.

Fact is, given a choice to erase or embrace Western popular culture, most Muslims would gleefully embrace it.

I cannot see that everything the white man does is to be copied.

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.

I am not a racist, only a culturist. I believe Western culture - rule of law, universal suffrage - is preferable to Arab culture. That's why there are millions of Muslims in Scandinavia, and four Scandinavians in Syria. Follow the traffic.

It isn't pleasant to surrender to the hegemony of a nation which is still wild and primitive, and to concede the absolute superiority of its customs and institutions, science and technology, literature and art. Must one sacrifice so much in the name of the unity of mankind?

Cultural relativism has made it so people don't know who they are anymore.

It would be wrong to see the re-making of Asia, much less India, as a revolt against the West. Asia has indeed been re-built on the ruins of colonialism, but not on the ruins of all that the West has come to represent.

The argument now that the spread of pop culture and consumer goods around the world represents the triumph of Western civilization trivializes Western culture. The essence of Western civilization is the Magna Carta, not the Magna Mac. The fact that non-Westerners may bite into the latter has no implications for their accepting the former.

The West will one day regret its shallow ideas that alienate people from their true nature. One must seek the right religion and the right belief.

When you think after 25 years of Mao, Chinese people had no idea about western music or even western culture. They had no idea about James Dean or the Beatles or Charlie Chaplin, modern music or modern cinema.

I've never left China. My family's been there for 600 years. But my architecture is not consciously Chinese in any sense. I'm a western architect.

I am trying to be true to the work that I want to do and be allowed to make the choices that I want to make.