Page 301 - Cultures and Organizations

270 DIMENSIONS OF NATIONAL CULTURES

While in Europe printing had been invented around 1450, the fi rst print-
ing press in Turkey was installed in 1729, and it was closed down in 1742
by conservative Muslims. Lewis writes:

The contrast has sometimes been drawn between the very different responses
of the Islamic world and of Japan to the challenge of the West. Their situa-
tions were very different. . . . Muslim perceptions of Europe were infl uenced,
indeed dominated, by an element which had little or no effect on the Jap-
anese—namely religion. Like the rest of the world, Europe was perceived
by Muslims first and foremost in religious terms, i.e., not as Western or

European or white but as Christian—and in the Middle East, unlike the
Far East, Christianity was familiar and discounted. What lesson of value
could be learned from the followers of a flawed and superseded religion? 80

Today modern technology has penetrated into the Muslim world. There

are both traditional and modern forms of Islam, but the first are still strong
and aggressive. Confronted with backwardness and poverty, some groups
react by calling for reinstating the sharia, laws from the Prophet Muham-
mad’s day. Muslim countries that temporarily collected enormous riches
from their oil resources have hardly adapted better to the modern world
than those that remained poor. The oil benefits seem to have been a liability

rather than an asset. None of the five Dragons had any natural resources

worth mentioning besides the mental software of their populations.
In the second half of the twentieth century, many Muslims migrated
to Western countries. Europe in the beginning of the twenty-fi rst century
counted some 13 million Muslim citizens. Many have integrated and moved
into the working and middle classes, occupying positions of responsibility
in Western societies. Others have failed to integrate, mostly remaining
underclass, and populate new ghettos. The latter group is most tempted

by fundamentalist forms of Islam that compensate their marginal position
in the host society by preaching pride in possessing the right doctrine.
A manifestation of national pride—rather than religiosity—in some
Muslim cultures with a short-term orientation is the migrants’ hesitation
at changing nationality, leading to dual citizenship. The government of
Morocco, as one example, actively encourages this practice; Moroccans
cannot understand why a child of their great country would ever want to
renounce his or her citizenship.