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How the Arab World Came Apart

nytimes.com

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Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#51

Post by k__ »

jomamaxx wrote: post #28

Ha ha ha ... ha ... The 'Arab World' was never together. Ever. All of the 'Anti-American Imperialism' kids here should remember that the bulk of the 'Arab World' is 'Arab By The Sword'. Arabic is spoken across North Africa, in particular because of Arab Colonialism of the 9th-12th centuries. Not since then has the 'Arab World' been anything resembling 'together'. The Turks kept them (and there was not much of them) u…

Does the west and especially the US have anything from stability?

I think they also would do, what they did to the "arab world" to Russia or China if they could.

The parts of the world that advance faster can dictate more rules, so everyone needs to get ahead. One way to ensure that this is the case is to slow other parts down.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#52

Post by curiousgal »

hacker42 wrote: post #19
not_a_terrorist wrote: post #7

tl:dr 100 pages: 1) People are fucking poor and hungry (extreme wealth inequalities) 2) Salafi/Wahhabi (Saudi) funding of islamism 3) Antediluvian hatred between people (it goes, way, way, way farther back than Sykes-Picot)

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.

>Nobody has time to thrive when they have to prey five times a day

Ah huh.

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

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#54

Post by douche »

return0 wrote: post #38

Long piece , but it fails in that it does not give a coherent message. Pieces of stories here and there are not history. First of all , lets stop calling it Arab Spring. If anything it's the arab Autumn of civil wars, where all arabs are united only in their resentment of the west. Secondly, let's talk about people, their souls, aspirations, and culture instead of political history. Given that these states were built…

Before they were western protectorates, they were Ottoman protectorates. It's been a mess for a long, long time. Once the oil runs out, or we move beyond oil, the whole region will be relegated to the kind of backwater it became after the advent of world-wide oceanic shipping in the age of sail and the overland trade routes were superseded.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#55

Post by return0 »

jomamaxx wrote: post #28

Ha ha ha ... ha ... The 'Arab World' was never together. Ever. All of the 'Anti-American Imperialism' kids here should remember that the bulk of the 'Arab World' is 'Arab By The Sword'. Arabic is spoken across North Africa, in particular because of Arab Colonialism of the 9th-12th centuries. Not since then has the 'Arab World' been anything resembling 'together'. The Turks kept them (and there was not much of them) u…

The snark at the beginning of your comment may be causing downvotes.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#56

Post by ihsw »

hacker42 wrote: post #44
ihsw wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Islam is unrelated to the emotional and intellectual deficits imposed upon victims of poverty and disenfranchisement -- not only that but I think there's a strong argument in that a task performed five times daily repeated ad infinitum doesn't cause cultural impairment, nor does the age of a given mandate. Furthermore, I think maximizing for "human potential" is a red herring -- the inevitable end-result is exercisin…

Sure, the praying alone would not create a huge amount of cognitive load, but it is just symptomatic of an overly binding religion. It must be terribly confusing as a Muslim to see other cultures vastly outperforming them even though these cultures don't follow the word of Allah, e.g. by not throwing people off of cliffs for having wild gay sex and not stoning women for adultery. These are literally the kinds of rule…

Overly binding is subjective and many benefit from the strong social support provided by Islamic communities, and furthermore to feel jealousy towards other cultures is very un-Islamic.

That said, I continue to assert that your arguments are red herrings -- attempts to indirectly answer one question with another's answer. Fixing the issues you brought up are unrelated to removing Islam's influence on the people of the world, unless you feel that Islam's binding influence on large populations is prohibitively restrictive to the point that is an impediment to any social program of any scale on Earth. If that is the case then the natural progression will lead us to war, and many nations around the world have already been lead to this conclusion.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#57

Post by Retric »

_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…

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+economic+devel...

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#58

Post by vixen99 »

abalone wrote: post #42
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.

Because Christians would never pray a lot, slavishly follow an old book or oppress women?

And we hear of the appalling results of this almost every day across the world, or have I missed it?

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#59

Post by vixen99 »

Cenk wrote: post #9
louwrentius wrote: post #4

I haven't read the article yet but from the introduction I sense a narrative that the current situation is due to the 'illegitimate' second war in Irak? So it's Amerika's fault as usual?

May I suggest you read it before commenting on its content? If you want your thoughts in it to be taken seriously, that is.

its content
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