Malthus:
So there’s our answer to the OP: Spite!
Sorry; overlooked these posts while writing a reply
The problem lies much deeper then what is touched here. I shall try to give a few points, who are all intertwined with eachother
A
It already begins with the lack of own budget and lack of foreign capital/investments to
- invest in such an education and research
- invest in an economy where such education can be applied.
- having the possibility to create an export market for those products, largely influenced by factors outside the region.
B
One of the main problems who are part of point A or largely influencing it : Governments aren’t all that willing to let control slip out of their direct influence = to give up the idea of State Led Economy completely.
Thus the lack of insight caused by lack of interest/comprehension isn’t going to disappear miraculously.
C
Societies in general, with the prelavence of strictly patriarchal families, aren’t prepared for this. Especially women still have much difficulties to come even close to a position where they are considered as equal to men. This won’t disappear even if reforms are made in Family Law, like for example recently was the case -after years of debate and demonstrations for and against- in Morocco.
D
The problem of illiteracy, still widely spread even in larger cities, and especially among the older and even former generation (I am 31, to give you a point of reference) weighs very heavy on such reform plans, even if they would become a first goal.
E
The poverty of a large part of the population is an additional problem, influencing parts of point C and D and having at the present as result that only those who can afford it would come in a position to have acces on education described in point A.
F
The fact that already now you see a massive immigration from the rural areas to the cities, causing there all the well known problems related to illiteracy in fusion with no ability to find a job, would become and even greater problem.
G
Since most forms of fundamentalism feeds on the frustration of people (especially the younger who want a better future yet run against a wall) education in something that can’t result in a job would become even a greater problem then it is now already.
Thus, your assertion that it would help against fundamentalism isn’t very realistic since that feeds itself on such grounds.
All of this has less to do with “religious tolerance” then with “lack of information” (read here also: lack of literacy and lack of infrastructure) and “acceptance of secularism and democratic values”.
Let it be noticed hereby that “secularism” is something sounding extremely suspicious for a Muslim, even for someone who isn’t all that strict in following the “five pillars”. I know that is difficult to understand for someone looking at it from the outside.
It is also difficult to explain that Islam is not only a religion but a way of life and that it influences people from sunrise to sunset and during the night. You can’t separate religion from daily life and society. (Islam has also largely influenced tribal and local traditions and was in its practice also influenced by them).
People like to refer to Turkey as “the example”.
Yet it is - as I experienced and witnessed it inside and outside Turkey among the Turkish citizens - only “the example” at a rather thin surface that doesn’t influence that much the life in for example rural societies.
Salaam. A
I’m not sure if you are taking a dig at me or making a joke … but I don’t think that “spite” really covers what I said, and in any case, what I said has nothing to do with the OP.
There are two seperate issues. To summarize:
-
Q. What went wrong with Arab culture? A.(extreme summary): invincible steppe nomads.
-
Q. Why don’t Arabs now adopt the ways that have been demonstrated to succeed elsewhere? A.(extreme summary): suspicion that adopting these ways will transform them into foreigners.
This article has a military approach, but it has some points concerning the OP:
Why Arabs Lose Wars
It seems to me that all the ills you list and the paragraph above also describe Europe in the so-called “dark ages” when religion was in ascendency there.
Is that suggestive or am I just grinding my “religion is bunk and also stunts advancement” axe?
I didn’t read that whole article, but this particular piece of nonsense came to catch my eyes
What is done to show normal hospitality and courtesy to the visitors, is translated as showing lack of respect for own people.
Nice.
Now we know why US’ers are looked at as people who never received a decent upbringing, don’t know what hospitality means and don’t know what respect and courtesy is.
And then people wonder why the US in Iraq makes one blunder after the other.
Salaam. A
Well… … It only shows your complete ignorance and lack of ability to even come close to a beginning of understanding what I describe.
In fact: You just confirmed the point I made.
Thank you .
Salaam. A
That, you over bearing pretentious blowhard, was massively out of line. The fact is he’s right, the situations are similar.
No, don’t bother to tell me to re-read your screed.
Don’t be too critical. He’s right that I’m ignorant of a lot of things and don’t have ability in a lot of fields. I’m not sure, though, what that has to do with whether or not the situations as described are similar.
It is a bit of a shame. Aldebaran was putting in a very good showing in this thread up till the end there…
Aldebaren,
It is hard to understand what you are trying to say, perhaps your meaning is different than what comes across, but your attacking others for not being able to “understand” your prose is uncalled for. A society that uses its religion to isolate itself from new ideas and from integration with the reast of the world is living in its own self-imposed Dark Ages. If Islam is allowed to be used for that end then it will be a tool of oppression rather of enlightenment.
To your points:
A: Money has been less the issue than budget priority.
B: Oppresive governments have benefited from certain fundamentalist anit-intellectual interpretations of Islam and have much to fear from an empowered populus embracing democratic values and freedoms of speech and of information. They seem to often to prefer to play the dangerous game of trying to use the monster of religious fundamentalism to keep their citizens distracted and oppressed while trying to dodge its teeth themselves. Recently they may be getting more fearful of being bit by it. Helping governments to be less afraid of democratization than of fundamentalism is key.
C: No doubt womens rights will have to come along with this and such will not happen overnight in societies that function as you describe.
D: Illiteracy is a big problem. Institutional overhauls will need to include the basics in early grades but … the structures to have work and status for knowledge workers needs to be in place or you only produce the frustration of those who expect more than they get. Those suffering the loss of what they felt entitled to are a dangerous population in a society.
E: Education to a basic level must become a public right. Institutional support of a knowledge based economy includes scholarships for those of great merit but poor means.
F: Poverty is all the more reason to educate and prepare for a knowledge based economy. An oil economy serves only the few well and them for only so long.
G: See above - institutions must be developed that provide the educated status and the opportunity to work for ideals in home-grown science and technology or indeed the land is rife for fundamentalist extremists who offer these disenfranchised educated young men a fictive family to sacrifice for.
Finally, as you’ve pointed out, valueing education and science is not foreign. It is as native to Islam as any of the Pillars. Islam has just been hijacked in some quarters for now in service of oppressive masters. Tolerance and openess have been, at various points in history, completely compatable with Islamic and Arab society. In the not so distant past hundreds of thousands of Jews were citizens in Arab lands and (at points) they were tolerated quite well. Arab culture at its peak was open to foreign ideas. The question is how to get the needed infrastructures built so that these values can become ascendent once more.
To clarify:
I said previously
**
So yes, your comment
- Proves that you are indeed completely ignorant on the matter = have no insight at all, just like I said I know the situation is.
- Lacks the ability to even come close to an understanding of what I describe, like I said I know the situation is, meaning by that: I understand completely that people can’t get the idea of what I try to describe.
- Proves thus the point I made with saying that ** I know that it is difficult to understand for someone looking in from the outside **.
So no, it is not the same or similar, but I know that is the view-by-preference outsiders and especially in the West declare to have.
They search for a way to compare with something they percieve as similar, because they can not understand what I described, saying I know it is difficult to understand for someone looking in from the outside.
So no, despite the hobby of a member named Grey to jump on my posts and twist them until they fit his prefered perception of them, I didn’t mean anything more with that comment then what you read above.
I know my posts are sometimes a bit strangly composed and they can even tend to become incoherent. That has to do with causes I explained already since I made my first post here, and about which members like Grey are informed about since the beginning.
So whenever you think you have the idea you don’t get the meaning, please be so kind to ask for further clarification.
Thank you.
Salaam. A
DSeid,
If you want to gain more insight in the matter of intertwined difficulties and problems in the MENA region, I can recommend an excellent study on it.
Not that it is complete, since which study is, not that it covers all points and influences, since it completely ignores the influence and large impact on those societies by what I shall call here (to stay short) “The Outside World”.
Yet it is to be classified among the best studies written by “outside” researchers I have read so far.
It is published in the second edition before the events of 11 september, so the situation is not exactly the same and of course in Iraq completely changed. Yet that doesn’t change the worth of the analysis of the most important points that are cause and effect of the difficulties in the region.
A Political Economy of the Middle East
Alan Richards and John Waterbury
Second Edition
Westview Press, Colorado/Oxford
ISBN 0-8133-2411-4
Salaam. A
<points to sticky on top of forum> Sheesh.
Interesting article in the NY Times Magazine that summarizes a lot of what this thread has been saying. It’s about a couple of Iraqi brothers who are trying to open a resort hotel. They’re interesting guys and point out that there must be a middle class for a country to prosper fairly:
The author goes on to say that when small tribal units are the basis of society, the bonds of trust can’t grow between ‘strangers’, and it’s been seen in Europe too:
I think that’s the key. The insecurity is worse than the actual crimes. I remember when Uday and Qusay were dispatched that one old patriarch was interviewed saying that he didn’t like the fact that the bounty was going to the families of the American soldiers who had killed them. When he was told that it wasn’t, that the soldiers and their families wouldn’t get any compensation besides maybe a medal, he refused to believe it. And this is in the 21st century, and this idiot controlled a whole village!
Yes indeed… This in the 21st century. People still hold on to their tradition.
What a crime it is for narrow minded Westerners who have no idea of the culture they talk about.
By the way:
In this same 21st century the USA has a president who thinks he controls the whole world and has no clue about that world.
What an idiot, no? He invades a country and knows nothing about it and its population and culture. They are only there since a few thousands years.
Oh… What am I saying…I talk about a Surpreme Human, namely a US’er educated in the US… Unforgivable.
Sorry, forgot.
Please show me the kindness of your forgivness of the underscribing idiot, not responsible for it hat God let him be born as one of the vice-heads of a family. And thus under the command of the Head of the Family ruling its members…Which represent a tad more then a village… All complete idiots with no right to even exist anymore in this 21st century.
How can I ever break loose from these horrible painful mind-closing chains? How can I be saved and survive Your Supreme Knowledge And Judgement?
Please lend me your Supreme Ear to hear my misery and give me your Supreme Advice, Oh Supreme US’er… You have all knowledge and we have none.
Salaam. A
Waiting in complete despair.
Aldebaran has a point… if anyone stands for “village” mentality its Bush. As for the village leader… he probably has basic education and can hardly be blamed for thinking so… especially in a give and take society.
No, no, it wasn’t his station, it was the inflexible thinking the elder was showing. It was explained to him very tactfully that things worked differently in the US military and he still refused to believe it. That shows he’s not ready for the new Iraq that’s coming, and I regret that he’s respected so much because his close-mindedness will spread and make things harder for his village. Multiply him by a few thousand and you have real problems. Will he allow somebody from Baghdad to sell them a new irrigation system or whatever or will he refuse because the salesman is not from his little clan? Will he insist on a cut of the village’s aid allotment going directly into his pockets, as a mark of ‘respect’? That’s what turns countries that should be rich into basket cases.
Thanks to Aldebaran I’m beginning to get a better idea of the extent of the problem.
If you are looking for a Bush defender, you certainly have to leave me out. Insularity and hubris are the qualities that I see him exhibit above others. “You are either with us or against us.” “Bring it on!” And this after having slid through one of our supposedly elite educational institutions. Tsk, tsk.
Thus it would be interesting for all participants if you would clarify “your idea” of “the problem” and first of all clarify what the words “the problem” are supposed to mean in the light of your quoting of one of my posts and next writing that comment.
(I see already many problems while reading posts on this very message board alone…)
Salaam. A
As the OP and others point out, the culture under discussion has gone from one that led in science and mathematics to one in which there is strong support for the idea of sending children to blow themselves up in public places and men learning how to fly aiplanes into large buildings.
And there are those who write pages of bullheaded support for that culture based on the theme that no outsider can possible understand it and therefore it is immune to outside criticism.
Well, screw that!