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How the Arab World Came Apart

nytimes.com

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Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#141

Post by swalsh »

Salamat wrote: post #109

This is just another propaganda piece to obscure what is really happening.To make sure that no Arab spring takes place, the US has sold all its allies all the weapons they might need to crush any opposition to their fiefdoms. The New York Times never explains to us who those moderate rebels are. "The alliance says it is fighting “terrorists,” a name it uses for all of Mr. Assad’s foes, from the extremists of the Isla…

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paragraph:

Though not required by the syntax of any language, paragraphs are usually an expected part of formal writing, used to organize longer prose.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#142

Post by agumonkey »

yardie wrote: post #64
hacker42 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems they are missing an important factor, namely 4) the personal, cultural and economical impairment due to the religion of Islam. Nobody has time to thrive when they have to pray five times a day, when almost every thought and action is dictated by an old book and when half of their human potential is hidden in cloth bags.

Have you met any Muslims that pray? Do you know anything about it all? 2 of those prayers occur before and after business hours. And even if they were working there's not a whole lot going on at 4:30am. 2 are short coffee break level prayers. A little meditation and a quick baslama and get on with it. And the longest, conveniently occurs around lunchtime anyway. I fail to see how prayer affects anyone's potential in…

And in our times of hectic impatient noisy lives, 5 pauses to reflect, even on "old religious ideas" (I'm fairly biased against religion), isn't a bad thing IMHO.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#143

Post by snomad »

danielbln wrote: post #129
cmdrfred wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She has to pay for the campaign/Clinton foundation donations somehow. Mark my words a vote for Hillary is a vote for war.[0] [0] https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/04/01/19496/defense-con...

So the choice is between war hawk and unpredictable megalomaniac. Sophie's choice of US politics...

Given the utter disdain for both major candidates, perhaps this year we can hope for a 3rd party candidate. Here is a nice visualization of the 4 top candidates and their stances on a wide spectrum of issues http://imgur.com/gallery/n1VdV

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#144

Post by berntb »

cstross wrote: post #78
douche wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The age of enlightenment only came after a series of religious/civil wars that wracked Europe for hundreds of years, set brother against brother, depopulated and ravaged huge swatches of Germany, central Europe and France, and essentially broke the temporal power of the churches and the papacy. That's not the most pleasant blueprint to follow...

Correct. The Thirty Years War killed about a third of the population of the Germanies; the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (often erroneously called the "English Civil War" -- there were at least five wars, in England, Scotland, and Ireland) killed about 10% of the total population of the British isles. Those wars scared everybody who'd grown up in the affected territories off religious absolutism for a very long time --…

I passed the small museum of Turda ("unfortunate name", as the Lonely Planet Guide put it) in Transylvania.

Around when we were doing the 30 year war et al in Western Europe, the East Europeans of the area were writing edicts about religious tolerance. (Yes yes, a deplorable lack of fashion sense.)

That example sadly seems unlikely right now. But since soon all minority groups are thrown out of the Middle East, there won't be anyone left to hate (except for those that move to Western Europe).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_of_Torda

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#145

Post by dragandj »

Chos89 wrote: post #91
Retric wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is clear evidence that Catholic areas have lower levels of economic growth than Prodestent areas even within same country. So, religion really does impact economic growth. But, I don't think there is hard evidence to brake it down to specific causes within each religious group. PS: While you may disagree with this, there is a lot of research into this topic: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=religion+economi…

How do you explain Bayern in Germany then?

Simple explanation: communist occupation of East Germany by the Soviets brought there the "excellent" development opportunities also seen in the rest of Eastern Europe and Russia. Before that, Prussia was way ahead of Bavaria.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#146

Post by ced »

_delirium wrote: post #40
hacker42 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems they are missing an important factor, namely 4) the personal, cultural and economical impairment due to the religion of Islam. Nobody has time to thrive when they have to pray five times a day, when almost every thought and action is dictated by an old book and when half of their human potential is hidden in cloth bags.

Is there much evidence for the specific choice of religion as a casual factor? Methods of blending a traditionalist religion with modern life seem much more important than which religion you start with. For example, Judaism imposes an extremely strict set of rules that govern almost every conceivable aspect of daily life. And indeed you find that strictly observant Orthodox Jews are mostly unable to function in a mod…

I lived in Western Turkey for a year, and while nearly everyone was Muslim (some atheists sprinkled here and there), there was plenty of alcohol and bars, Granted, this was in the less religious parts of Turkey, but it's grossly unfair to the moderates to paint everyone with the fundamentalist brush. There's a billion Muslims out there.

The majority of Christians do not believe that the Earth was created 10000 years ago!

I strongly recommend the comic book Persepolis to anyone who wants a better understanding of life in the Middle East (or at least, Iran).

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#147

Post by bogomipz »

"The Arab World" - What does that even mean? Arab is a language distinction, a language of which there are many dialects. As Arabic is spoken from Western Sahara all the way east to Oman that pretty much disqualifies Arab World from having geographical significance. Arab also does not denote religious faith as there are Arab Jews, Arab Christians(Coptic) and of course Arab Muslims.

There was once briefly a concept of Pan-Arabism but that died when Gamal Abdel Nasser died in 1970.

Does a Muslim Arabic speaker from Morocco really have any sense of kinship with an Arabic Christian(a Coptic) from Egypt? I am going to say probably not. Probably not any more than two Slavic language speakers in different parts of Europe do. Have the Saudis taken in any Arab refugee "brothers" from Syria and Iraq? No. Have the Arab Emirates? Again no.

So what is this "Arab World" that the NYTimes and the rest of the media are so fond of using as a point of reference? Countries carved up as part of the Sykes Picot agreement? Can they not come up with a more meaningful distinction? This matters.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#148

Post by frgewut »

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #103
maze-le wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any sources for that claim? I would be genuineley interested in the methodology of this research. Its just anecdotal, but here in Germany it is the other way around. The Catholic south is prosperous, whereas the protestant north (east) is poor. I can think of examples where the opposite is true (Belgium) but I highly doubt that there is a casual connection. In Belgium for example the catholic (and more im…

The Protestant northeast suffered from being part of East Germany. A hundred years ago Prussia was much more powerful than Bavaria.

Prussia was also the last paganic part of Europe.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#149

Post by berntb »

SixSigma wrote: post #93
berntb wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, will read after work. :-) It was surprising. From what I've read, people living for a long time in dictatorships are quite intolerant and hateful. (There were quite a bit of intolerance in East Germany after 1989, too. And examples from Eastern Europe are well known.) If/when the Arab world get rid of the dictators controlling the media and education gets better, they should become more "normal". Or maybe I a…

> If/when the Arab world get rid of the dictators controlling the media and education gets better, they should become more "normal". When will the West do that ?

Since you won't risk any problems for implying that the Western countries are oppressive dictatorships, that warps the culture to hatred of others -- I'd say the West have gotten a little bit on the way. :-)

(assuming you live in the Western world.)

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#150

Post by mustaflex »

John23832 wrote: post #130
mustaflex wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"many of the great lights were not of Islamic extraction" ... really? many of them ? can you please write "many" more from "non Islamic extraction" "El-Khwarizmi, who was from a Zoroastrian family and may have converted out of economic or political expediency" ...So one particular scholar is not really a "muslim", soo it must that everything else worthy must be from non-muslim people "but on the whole the Islamic Gol…

Don't pin this on western's. There are definitely those of us who have a grasp on history. This guy/gal has a readily apparent bias.

fortunately they are. This phenomena is just saddening, its the same thing on the other side and dialog become impossible.
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