Cultural accident of birth has a great deal to do with educational opportunities and recognition. Many of the Jewish Nobel prize-winners were residents in Europe, America or Australia--the fortunate countries.
I find this way of measuring human worth to be about as useful as the IQ test when applied to cultures outside the test's culture of origin.
To generalise about any religious group is pretty unpleasant (although I often think a plague on all their houses.)
I dissociate myself absolutely from fundamentalist Christian zealots who support war (mass-murder) and who blow up buildings in the name of their personal beliefs.
I can't hold Daniel Barenboim responsible for an Israeli citizen who shoots up mosques and generally despises the displaced people whose ancestral land they inhabit.
Nobody is without guilt in this idiotic frenzy and nobody should cast a stone.
I am ferociously against anybody who oppresses women, who blows up citizens, who bombs cities and villages and who thinks they have a license to punish. And if anybody thinks this applies solely to Muslims they haven't been paying attention. Patriarchy is not a myth. Islam is more in its grip than other religions, that I grant but may God save me from the whole blooming lot of them.
I am as scared as any of you.
Janet
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