How exactly do you measure culture by numbers and facts? I guess if you were trying to statistically show the incongruousness of the cultural beliefs of the West versus the Middle East and Africa, one could look at a Pew study entitled “The Global Divide on Homosexuality Persists.” In that study the following was found: “in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, Russia and Ukraine, few say that society should accept homosexuality; only in South Africa (54%) and Israel (47%) do more than a quarter hold this view.” In another Pew study “Muslims and Islam: Key findings in the U.S. and around the world study,” it was found that most Muslims in Afghanistan (99%), Iraq (91%), and Pakistan (84%) support sharia law as official law. These things are incongruous to Western society currently, and the migration of many from these parts of the world to places that are mostly Christian and Liberal such as the UK, France, Germany or Sweden, is bound to have an effect on the culture of those said nations. There is also a correlation to these events and a rise in antisemitism, which is a common sentiment in Islamic populations. What makes you think culture and ethnicity aren’t related? You think that differing groups of people don’t produce unique interpretations of their surrounding environments? The East Germanic tribes of the migration period had their own interpretations of Latin/Roman cultural ideas. The same holds true for the various interpretations of Christianity throughout Europe. Further more, the differing interpretations of Abrahamic religions throughout the world show this to be true, a West African Christian church is going to be very different than one in Croatia, Mexico or Italy. Why is this a zero sum game and it is one or the other? How do you know that certain characteristics in populations aren’t selected for and thus result in certain interpretations? You can’t just discount the effect biology has on these things, but I will concede it is most likely, that the biological aspect is partly a product of environmental adaptation. Ethnicity is intertwined with culture most of the time, though this is not always the case 100% of the time. Most Jewish populations around the world for example, share ancestry from a migration event out of the Middle East sometime over 2000 years ago. Of course you have Sudanese Jews who have limited Semitic admixture. Being a certain ethnic group means having a certain history or link to said ethnic groups history and land, with their culture being mostly a byproduct of the aforementioned. Side note, I should have been more descriptive than Middle Eastern, instead I should have used Arabic, Berber, Turkic, Kurdish or Persian when describing these large ethnic groups of MENA. Would you argue that if “Europeaness” doesn’t exist, does Western Civilization or the West as a concept exist? Is there not a closer relationship between the peoples of say Germany and Italy or France and Italy, than say Lebanon and Italy? To conclude I am actually not sure if I’m in disagreement with you or not. I am not sure what the main point of your argument is. It would be somewhat more helpful if we could state our original disagreements with one another. I will state this, that this is not black and white, you could state the case of Albanians and Serbs, both groups are genetically close though one is Orthodox Christian and the other Muslim. Differing regions and by proxy, culture to some extent, though they share a common ancestry and history. Granted most Albanians are not as strict when it comes to Islam than other Islamic nations such as Pakistan or Saudi Arabia.
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