José Martí and Chrisopher Hitchins

I've been turned around fairly recently (not that I was ever completely anti-war: it's far too complicated to be only on one side or another). I am starting to believe more and more that the appropriate response to Islamic fundamentalism is not appeasement. It's far more complex than the situation Chamberlain was in in 1939 and there are certainly good arguments for and against I think.
Christopher Hithchens tells a good story about Barbary Coast pirates and Thomas Jefferson. This episode from history pits Islam against Christianity (link) more than a hundred years before the current conflict. The upshot is that the pirates blatantly used the Koran to excuse their actions of slave-taking since those slaves were infidels. This history of infidelity (sic) has been the cause (excuse) of many, many religious wars going back millennia, but is relevant in this argument because there's a feeling in the West that Islam is out to get the West and destroy all infidels. Is this really the case or, more likely, the few extremists who we hear about? It's a very complicated argument and the conspiracy theorists would have us believe that it's a neo-conservative plot to keep us afraid of Islam. Certainly in my experience I have met a few Muslims and they are generally the same as anyone else.

Is it me and my pseudo-Christian sensibilities or are Islam-led regimes more cruel and oppressive and naturally infidel-hating? I suspect that it's a bit of both, e.g. there are infidel-haters in all societies (Christian to Muslim too), however the Taliban are certainly more extreme.

In spite of my intellectual dilly-dallying my inclination is to mistrust a culture that places pressure on women to cover their bodies completely. How much of this is tradition and welcomed by some women is debatable, but it doesn't do a cause much help.

What impressed me this morning, however, is a statue of Jose Marti in New York (link). Marti was a Cuban revolutionary and politician who lived for a time in New York. He is a national hero in Cuba.

Perhaps my impression is wrong, but I get the feeling that, especially the US, but also most Western countries, regard struggle and sacrifice as high virtues and socialist ideals are valued strongly (even some communist ones). For a statue of this calibre to be placed in a foreign city speaks volumes about a country, i.e. the US's ideals are humanistic rather than spiritual; they believe in human endeavour and strength and heroic actions are valued more highly than anything else. This strikes me as particularly Christian and I wonder how compatible this ideal is with Islam (or Buddhism, or Hinduism either).

For now I have to stick with Western ideals because that's all I have ever known and I feel that it's more humanistic and valuable and will encourage the expansion of human knowledge (I am not saying that Islam discourages these things - far from it if you consider Algebra and Astronomy!).