as an italian i feel really ashamed and embarassed for what our prime minister, mr. berlusconi said last day in Berlin making a foolish declaration saying that western civilisation is superior to Islam because of our achievements in terms of wealth and human rights. Not only the affirmation of a “superior” civilisation is racist per se, whatever the position is; sure there are differences between cultures and people, but this is not the point, and then that specific remark is quite baseless. Let’s have a look back at the past century and we’ll see orrible things in our wonderful western world. It’s true that the economic achievements were great, well, so what ?
I won’t even try to comment on another part of his assertion when he draws a parallel between terrorism and anti-globalisation, this is just such a proof of ignorance that’s enough. What we’d really try to do is know better other cultures and civilisation : Islam and arabs are between us, in our cities or anyway or not so far, so trying to know better what are their ideas, they values is important and could just lead to better understanding and knowledge and maybe cooperation and peace.