Suspected war criminal Condolezza Rice’s notorious remark to ‘shun’ France and ‘ignore’ Germany is apparently not being heeded by the Obama administration. Today in Britain, Pres. Obama’s first appointment of a Muslim and Egyptian-American woman to his administration, Dalia Mogahed, is making headlines.
Mogahed, executive direcotr of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, and now member of Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, is releasing a Gallup Poll shows that attitudes among Britain’s Islamic population are noticably less liberal and more intolerant than in Germany or France on issues such as homosexual acts, abortion, viewing pornography, suicide and sex outside marriage. Muslims in Germany, the working-class leading daily Hamburger Abendblattnotes, identify themselves more with their chosen nationality more than other Germans, 40 percent to 32 percent. Trust there in the legal system, governance, elections and banks is higher as well.
On the issue of sexual relations, it appears that the French and German Muslims were noticeably more tolerant than their British counter-parts, the Guardian reports:
‘On the issue of sexual relations between unmarried men and women, general populations surveyed express similar views, with the majority believing it was acceptable. But the Muslim populations polled again reflected greater diversity on the matter. French Muslims ranked highest again, with 48% believing it was acceptable, followed by 27% of German Muslims responding favorably. British Muslims came last, with only 3% of those questioned personally believing that sex between unmarried men and women was moral. There was a similar outcome when asked for their views on extra-marital affairs.’
There seems to be no reference to US views on these subjects. The US would be an interesting polity to consider in this regard since it is well known among OECD countries for his high level of Church going, and becoming internationally notorious for the high relationship of Church going citizens to a willingness to water board ‘terrorists’, to use a famous French word relating to state policies that evolved out of something like the idea of democratic ‘shock and awe.’
Meanwhile, the Obama administration seems to have irritated its Dutch ally, according to the NRC Handelsblatt. The Netherlands, a country well known for sticking its neck out in NATO deployments abroad, has been slurred with accusation that it is a ‘tax haven.’
Maybe this is an improvement over the attempts of the Bush led Anti-trafficking Office to demote the place on its crime rate indexes over tolerance towards sex crime institutions like ‘prostitution’, but is probably not the most helpful way to address capital flight.