Wait, is that a Muslim thing or an Arab thing?
Islamic terrorism is a problem because the Arab countries, Afghanistan, and Pakistan have high birth rates, stagnant economies, and educational systems that teach little besides Islamic bigotry.
Millions of young men enter job markets with little use for them. Feeling that they have little to live for, they have little fear of death. This is not our fault. It is not Israel’s fault. Eventually the Islamic countries will reduce their birth rates. Until then we will need to be vigilant.
I think this may have already been touched upon, but I have heard it said by my father that in 1947, Israel became a sovereign State with the help of the US, NATO, and the UN, (see link here)who simply told the Palestinians that Jews were coming to live in what was once part of their land, and they have hated us ever since, because we made them have Jews live on their land.
It’s sad when you grow up and find that your parents don’t know everything, isn’t it?
The notion that the Islamofascists hate us because we propped up repressive governments is kind of naive. bin Laden attacked us because set foot in Saudi Arabia in the course of driving an oppressive government out of Kuwait.
The fanatics of the world have no problem with oppressive government - they just object when it isn’t their oppressive government.
Regards,
Shodan
BrainGlutton
I understand the question you’re asking but I’m not sure there’s a big difference there. The vast majority on Arabs are Muslim. (Yes, I know there are Christian Arabs) I have always suspected that a lot of Islam is based on old Arab culture anyway. I can’t prove this but believe it to be true.
Regards
Testy
Say hi to your dad. And tell him that there already were Jews living in Palestine in 1947. They’d been there for a long time. (It’s in the Bible.)
The United States had nothing to do with it. (And NATO didn’t even exist in 1947.) Palestine was controlled by the British at the time. They got tired of trying to mediate between the Muslims and the Jews who lived in Palestine so they dumped the problem on the UN. The UN divided Palestine in half and gave each side their own half.
You just described Sufism in a nutshell. Sufism is a major aspect of Islam. It’s actually the predominant aspect of Islam in most Muslim countries. But you never hear about it… and all the Westerners pretending to be capable of analyzing the Muslim world manage to completely ignore it.
What a pile of shit. Try telling that to my Muslim neighbor from Afghanistan who moved here with her five little children after the Taliban murdered her husband.
It’s a major value in Arab culture, found generally in most Muslim cultures, and particularly heavily emphasized in Pashtun culture. People from Pakistan have told me anecdotes of Pashtuns who when a visitor from outside shows up in the village will literally fight each other for the honor of hosting (and pampering) the guest.
I suspect it would be much more similar to the reaction if say… Mexico decided to bomb some bunch of evangelicals who lived out in the hinterlands somewhere in Arizona or something.
Most US Christians think they’re loons, but more importantly, they’re our loons, and if they were attacked for being Christian, I think they’d get a lot of support, regardless of how loony they actually are. Sort of an “all for one/one for all” approach among denominations.
More to the point, after the Roman Empire expelled the Jews from Palestine, when the Caliphate took it the Muslims invited Jews to live there. Then again after the Crusaders had invaded and expelled the Jews and the Muslims retook it, Jews returned to live there again. Including Maimonides in the 12th century and Nachmanides in the 13th century. There was a Jewish culture in Palestine for centuries during the Ottoman Empire, which I learned about from reading the history of the famous Kabbalists in Safed, like Isaac Luria. When the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 and the Ottoman sultan Bayezit II invited them to live in the Ottoman Empire, a bunch of them moved to Palestine. Many Arabs from the region have told me they were fine with the Jews who had been there all along. They only had a problem with the events beginning with the Balfour Declaration, i.e. actions of the British who were perceived as taking advantage of the Zionist movement for their own geopolitical purposes.
astro
Not claiming to have any ultimate answers but spent many years in the Middle East and may have some insight. Unfortunately it is a bit bleak.
The thing that took me several years to realize was that a vast majority of Moslems actually believe. That sounds obvious but I see a quantitative difference between their level of belief and what we are used to in the West. I remember being absolutely stunned and appalled when I realized this. That entire nations were making decisions and laws based on ancient religious texts was and is deeply worrying to me.
Most religions I am aware of in the West, the adherents do whatever they are supposed to do on Sundays and whatever they want or feel they must during the rest of the week. This makes religions able to get along with secular authorities and with other religions.
Not the same in Islamic countries.
The Moslems I knew in Saudi/Bahrain/Kuwait/Syria/Pakistan/India etc were raised to believe in the Koran and the local Imam as early as they could be made aware that there were such things. The belief in Islam is ingrained very deeply, including the harsher bits about what you are allowed to do to and with people that don’t believe or deviate from orthodox behavior. The depth of this belief is frightening, utter certainty without the slightest shred of doubt. The level of belief that makes a Torquemada.
They are supported in this in by their belief that the Koran is the final and most purely revealed word of God. Other religious books such as the Bible and the Torah were well meant but have been debased and contaminated by being over-analyzed, over-qualified, and interpreted into so many languages. By contrast, the Koran is still available in the original language and is word-for-word as it came from God. (I’m an outspoken atheist so I don’t have a dog in that fight.)
The other thing that hurts a lot is that Islam is explicitly not just a religion but a way of life. Islam is supposed to control the laws, both civil and criminal, behavior, both public and private, supposed to control every aspect of the believer’s life. In some countries, it very nearly does. Islam’s absolute control of every aspect of life is seen as an ideal. Shaaria, the religious police, the local Imam’s awareness of everything happening in his neighborhood and changing it to fit Islamic principles. All these are seen as being positive, as striving for that ultimately Islamic society that would please God. A man should be surrounded by Islam throughout his entire life. Islamic banking, laws, dress, Islamic sexual codes, etc. The complete submergence in Islam reinforces and deepens his belief.
That these things are rejected by the West and by most Asian countries are seen as evidence that we are completely corrupt and have turned away from God. Some Moslems will try to fix it by conversion, others would happily use nuclear weapons.
Like the Bible and other religious books, you can use the Koran to justify almost anything. Unlike most Christians I am aware of, the ones who use the Koran to justify their more hellish acts actually believe that they are doing what Allah has commanded. When they lynch some gays or stone a woman to death or behead someone for some other God-given reason, they are not being hypocritical, they are simply following orders, direct from God for the benefit of their society.
IMHO, the only thing that will make them stop being such an appalling PITA is for them to clean up their religion, explicitly reject those passages that encourage violence and mistreatment of people who believe in other religions or who would simply like to be free of ALL religions. Their ingrained mistreatment of the female half of their population. Their treatment of those who vary sexually from a straight heterosexual orientation, and many many other things.
Unfortunately, many of the things we object to so strongly are explicitly supported and required by their religion which in turn is the final revelation direct from God and may not be changed or modified by man. Explaining away, re-interpreting, or simply disregarding the appalling bits is explicitly disallowed. They believe, and are stuck with what they have.
Regards
Testy
You have clearly not spent more than 15 nanoseconds in any of the countries that you claim.
Yes, but when the UN’s Partition Plan was voted on, the US voted in favor of the measure, and nearly all nations who had Islam as their main religion voted against it.
I think the main problem with Islamic radicalism is that it’s an obvious product of a repressive environment, and what I mean by that is considering various secular ideologies have been discredited, and there’s no avenue for legitimate political opposition by joe public, the obvious route for some is increased radicalism, as if that will somehow dislodge the system they hate and allow them to address the problems they see as affecting their lives. If you notice in most of the Islamist groups manifestos, the running theme seems to be reducing corruption in governments.
We fed into the oppression because of Colonialism and the Cold war, and up until recently, because there wasn’t really any viable alternative except for (wrongly perceived) violent Islamist groups, now with the protest movements across the Middle East, this has let out a huge amount of pressure and I can see hopefully things moving a more positive and plural direction from now on.
AK84
28 years in total.
Testy
ETA: Also Egypt and Turkey with admittedly brief (2 weeks or so) in other Islamic countries.
I was at a picnic with Arabs last year. As we sat around talking this subject, they were all aware of the US and its role in the overthrow of the democratically elected Mossadegh government in 1953. Most of them were not even born then. But they all knew of it and what it said about the US intentions.
We provide lip service to the “democratic” strides in the middle east originated by the masses. But most don’t believe we care about democracy. We care about oil .
Arabs were not sad to see Mossadegh go.
I daresay they were. Arabs, Iranians, Turks, all in the same boat WRT Western power.
It always struck me that we keep telling ourselves that we would never be cowed into submission but we think that people who are willing to strap on suicide vests can somehow be beaten into submission.