I’m reading Derb’s review of The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism in the lasted NRODT and he writes:
Religion, to which most non-Randian conservatives are at least well disposed, adds another complicating factor, since the sacred texts of all three major Western monotheistic faiths proscribe homosexuality in unambiguous terms.
I assume that Derb means Judaism, Christianity and Islam. So here’s my question: Is Islam a religion of the West? Seriously, I’m just curious. We’ve always referred to the core of the Islamic world as “the Middle East.” Whenever we talk about the “West and the rest” or the Clash of Civilizations etc, we separate the Islamic world and the Western world. Obviously, there are plenty of Muslims living in the West, but that’s a relatively new development. And simply because they’re in the West now, does that make them “Western” in orientation? We’ve got plenty of Budhists here now too and they ain’t “Western.”