Love a Muslim: Seattle version

[prole]

Historical movements and events on the national and international stage are always conditioned by "endogenous and exogenous" factors, more often than not to the extent that they become entirely entertwined. It could not be otherwise and I've never argued otherwise. That said, the growing penetration of Western capital, the Cold War political machinations of major players, the legacy of colonial administration and class structures, and the later adoption/flirtation with Western political philosophy and systems makes the relation of former colonies to "the West" of crucial importance (though not necessarily of overdetermination) in any discussion of the modern Middle East as a whole or movements within it as critical and widespread as political Islam. I'm not sure why anyone would seek to obfuscate that history.

Edited April 29, 2010 by prole

[j_b]

The concentration of political and economic power via the "Pan Arab Nationalism" model and socialist central-planning gave birth to a repressive kleptocracy that routed secular rivals and either: left militant Islam as the only outlet for dissent, or dispensed patronage to Islamists in an effort to cultivate popular legitimacy.

 

Hogwash! kleptocracy didn't wait for pan arab nationalism. It was born right out of the colonial partition of oil rich lands. Saudi Arabia and the gulf states being the prime representatives of the theft of natural resources by rich elites.

[olyclimber]

[tvashtarkatena]

Have any of you guys been to the Middle East? You claim to know so much about its people.

[j_b]

So...muslim extremism was a phenomenon unknown to the wider world before the Afghan war? Might be news to Sadat, let alone the folks who traveled there from all points in the Middle East to participate in the jihad, like...Bin Laden.

 

it wasn't unknown but it was not a very significant phenomenon before we enabled them. Prior to the Iranian revolution and the Afghan war of the 80's Islamic fundies had very little power. Can you cite which regions were in the control of Islamic fundies prior to that time?

 

This notion of yours that anything that happens in the Muslim world is simply a reaction to Western provocation of some sort of another, and hasn't been driven by any endogenous factors within their culture is a surprisingly provincial and neo-colonial framework for a committed post-modern, relativist, multi-culti posterboy like yourself to view the world through. Tisk tisk.

 

what drivel. Me, a post-modern relativist? you are just saying anything to look vaguely intelligent, and it's not working.

 

Ditto for your notion that none of the dynamics at play in the Middle East could have roots that extend back in history to any point before there was any meaningful American involvement in the region.

 

as if anything that is occurring presently in oil producing nations of the Middle East could happen outside the framework laid out by post colonial partition of the land and a century of imperialism by western nations.

[prole]

Have any of you guys been to the Middle East? You claim to know so much about its people.

 

It's that time.

 

[j_b]

Nasser, Quadafi, Assad, Hussein, etc.

 

Plenty of larger forces in the region that lead to the same outcome without any US involvement.

 

No western involvement in Egypt, Libya, Syria and Iraq over the last 100 years? simply laughable. btw, Hussein is said to have been a cia asset at some point.

[ivan]

Have any of you guys been to the Middle East? You claim to know so much about its people.

does watching harold n' kumar escape guatanomo count?

[j_b]

what about a week doing the malls in Dubai (JayB's paradise)?

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Why don't you lay it out for me there, big guy?

 

[JosephH]

I had a clever guy in Dubai empty $3k from a bank account once. He stayed in all the best resorts, ate in the best resturants, and went to the best clubs. Looked like he ran through a different cc# about once every 3 days to keep that lifestyle going. He was definitely secular.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

I had a clever guy in Dubai

 

[JayB]

Ah, so do I have it right then - your basic assertion is, absent any provocation, the states, sects and tribes of Mideast always have and will act with widespread, systemic violence against far-flung non-muslim individuals and states purely as a matter of broader cultural friction and internal rivalry?

 

How familiar are you with what's transpired amongst the faithful and their neighbors since 632AD? How about a quick synopsis - e.g. History of Islam, from Muhammad to the end of the Ottoman Empire sans internal or external violence.

 

Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia endured violent repression and political domination orders of magnitude worse than anything that the Middle East had to contend with, and Africans are still vastly more impoverished than their Middle Eastern brethren - yet they seem pretty uninterested in detonating themselves amongst train or planeloads full of Western civilians. On the whole they also seem far less prone to alienation and radicalization once they've immigrated.

 

How do you account for the differences?

[Fairweather]

This thread sucks. Way too coherent, and why is this shit still on topic?

 

Fuck all y'alls.

 

 

 

Makes me think Islamic she-garb isn't such a bad idea after all...

[JayB]

Nasser, Quadafi, Assad, Hussein, etc.

 

Plenty of larger forces in the region that lead to the same outcome without any US involvement.

 

No western involvement in Egypt, Libya, Syria and Iraq over the last 100 years? simply laughable. btw, Hussein is said to have been a cia asset at some point.

 

There's been extensive Western involvement in the middle east for Eons. Familiar Alexander of Macedon, the spice-trade, etc, etc, etc?

 

Your specific claim is that without the CIA pulling the strings the regimes that Nasser, Qadaffi, Assad, Hussein displaced would have persisted in definitely. Go ahead and flesh out that argument a bit, and explain the specific agency that the CIA had in each case.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

This thread sucks. Way too coherent, and why is this shit still on topic?

 

Fuck all y'alls.

 

 

 

Makes me think Islamic she-garb isn't such a bad idea after all...

 

TTK would fit right in...

[j_b]

There's been extensive Western involvement in the middle east for Eons. Familiar Alexander of Macedon, the spice-trade, etc, etc, etc?

 

and?

 

Your specific claim is that without the CIA pulling the strings the regimes that Nasser, Qadaffi, Assad, Hussein displaced would have persisted in definitely. Go ahead and flesh out that argument a bit, and explain the specific agency that the CIA had in each case.

 

I never made that claim. I made the claim that before the Iranian revolution and the 80's Afghan war, Islamic fundies didn't have anywhere close to the power they have had since. Then, I asked you to cite which regions were controled by fundies before that period and you still haven't answered ...

Edited April 29, 2010 by j_b

[Fairweather]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8651519.stm

[Fairweather]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8652861.stm

[Choada_Boy]

 

The redhead on the right looks like an anorexic compared to her fatty friends. Good strategy: make sure your friends are fatter and uglier than you are.

 

or, more in line with this thread:

 

The Imam Was RIGHT!!!

 

 

[Fairweather]

http://thereligionofpeace.com/

 

Latest Offerings from the Religion of Peace

 

2010.04.28 (Khost, Afghanistan) - Islamic hardliners murder a dozen civilians, mostly women and children, with a roadside bomb.

2010.04.28 (Peshawar, Pakistan) - A Shahid suicide car bomber plows into a group of Pakistanis, killing at least four.

2010.04.27 (Baghdad, Iraq) - A family of four is obliterated by sectarian bombers.

2010.04.27 (Afgoi, Somalia) - A respected humanitarian worker is shot to death by suspected Hizbul Islam.

2010.04.27 (Kirkuk, Iraq) - Jihadis take down a student in a drive-by attack.

2010.04.27 (Baghdad, Iraq) - Two local soldiers are killed when Jihadis fire mortars from a residential neighborhood.

LINE

[JayB]

Control as in those in control of the formal institutions that house state power, I'd say Saudi Arabia is the only state that I can think of off the top of my head. Post '79 we've got Iran and a brief interlude where the Taliban officially ran the show in Afghanistan. Or are you talking about de-facto control? I'd put anywhere where adulteress's were routinely stoned to death, forced clitorectomies were commonplace, familial honor killings, etc prevailed which encompasses quite a bit of turf outside of either Saudi Arabia or Iran.

 

What's funny is that you seem to be arguing that Islamic Fundamentalism is something that the CIA conjured up out of thin air in a basement lab somewhere in '78, and that it has no essential connection to any religious, cultural, or political currents in the region that predate the instatement of the Shah.

 

What's interesting here is that there's literally no more regressive cultural force at work in the world right now than political Islam - yet you seem to have bought the line that every bit of barbarity and repression is a legitimate response to 50 year old colonial grievances. "Hey - normally be *opposed* to stoning adulteresses, hanging gays, and suicide bombing at least a tenth as much as I object to religious fanatics that murder abortion providers but..."

 

[prole]

What's funny is that you seem to be arguing that Islamic Fundamentalism is something that the CIA conjured up out of thin air in a basement lab somewhere in '78, and that it has no essential connection to any religious, cultural, or political currents in the region that predate the instatement of the Shah.

 

Personally, I can't think of a single historian, Left or otherwise, that would make this claim, but if you need to trot out this strawman in order to further what starts to look like the same argument you've always made (albeit with a new "historical" twist), feel free. The best histories are always able to keep the "internal" and "external" balls in the air. Apparently, whatever book you just read cannot.

 

[video:google]

[JayB]

Yes - clearly I've been engaged in a dialogue with professional historians of the highest rank in this thread. That's precisely who I was directing my comment towards.

 

Next time we're talking about the beliefs that actuate Jed Guthrie's Christianity I hope you'll take the time to chime in and remind everyone that there are *no* academic episcopalian theologians that have found *any* textual support for The Rapture in the Bible...

 

 

[G-spotter]

if you're keeping balls in the air you're probably lying on your back?