While the Republicans demonize the Arabs/Muslims, we as Democrats

tend to have romantic notions of Arab/Muslim societies.The demonization is mostly as a result of Israeli propaganda.The romanticization of Arab/Muslim societies is due to our conferring victim status to these same societies, mostly from the Israeli repression and now from the War on Iraq.

In many ways,these attitudes reflect our ignorance of these societies and our prejudices.These societies have always been repressive,with strong men controlling the political structure and using religious beliefs to keep the populations ignorant.The religious beliefs have also given the rulers a way to deflect discontent with their own rule.
In essence, these beliefs have produced what V.S.Naipaul has called societies of half formed men with one foot in the modern era and another in their societies, at once brutal and archaic, unable to cope with change.Such a dichotomy was resolved in societies like Japan by the realization that education and rapid modernization was the answer.In Arab societies, on the other hand, the rulers and the clergy, have retreated into their own prescriptions of increased religious dogmas and stringent Koranic teachings.We see the results in the fact that, China and India, backward societies themselves, moving ahead through education and technology while the Arab states despite their wealth remaining stagnant and even regressing.

and who are you to pass judgement, oh wise American who pays for the bombs which rain down upon Iraqi heads? Hmm?

Societies like Egypt and Saudi Arabia have remined stagnant without any intervention from Western Societies.

and who are you to pass judgement, oh wise American who pays for the bombs which rain down upon Iraqi heads? Hmm?

I suppose you think you're free to judge him, then, eh?

It would be wrong for me to call you a hypocrite if you were perfect.

You're not perfect.

is not a judgement, it's a fact. Otherwise, you're equal the hypocrite that I am, for judging me.

You claim judging is wrong then go on to do it yourself.

That's hypocrisy.

I don't think there's anything wrong with judging so I'm no hypocrite for doing it.

Since you're a logician, would you mind explaining how my pointing out a particular individual's hypocrisy is equivalent to the blanket statement that 'judging is wrong'?

I know there must be a parallel universe where this is true, or you wouldn't be so sure of yourself... :eyes:

things are changing very quickly here and it has nothing to do with GW Bush

I don't harbor romantic notions about any group of people.


Thanks in advance.

East Timor, Laos, Nicaragua, Guatamala, etc. etc. etc. etc.

they know their skulls split open with the 'finest' killing machines available on the earth, or their agriculture is devastasted ...
I don't get what you mean

notion that Arabs/Muslims are victims of our technical superiority and that confers on them a special aura lacking in our own is quite prevalent.This is why it is possible for many liberal people of conscience to go to Palestine and advocate resistance to Israeli rule and have those people face tanks and bullets and get killed while our liberals take the next plane home in what Naipaul has called Return Ticket Liberalism. We need to take a cold hard look at our own advice and see whether our well meaning advice winds up in the killing of inncocent people.

great christian nations plunged into the dark ages. if the "arabs" had not saved the great works were would we be now? the rejection of the enlightenment in arab culture may just be what is in store for the great christian nation of america. many of the problems of the muslim states lies with the colonial powers,esp england. we are following the same path and not to understand or even discuss just what happened to the arab enlightenment is foolish

Just curious.

wide ranging topics.From Economics to International Issues to our own domestic politics, I have covered a range of issues.

In the past 100 years, which arab states were not meddled with by
colonial forces from europe and america? Strike these off your list,
as anglo-imperialism has made for a real mess in most of its meddlings.

In world war 1 times, the entire middle east was an outpost of the
hapsburg empire, and later the british. What has kept the evil
government's in place are western dollars paying, like bribes for
oil rights. Without this economic slush, the whole ponzi scheme
would be long bankrupt and the region's peoples economically forced
to open up to change, as was the case in japan... a country without
oil.

I do agree, that many of these societies are repressive, but when
you support them with your right hand, its all a bit rich to scold
them with the left.

And indeed, i concur that our repression coincides with the racist
israeili approach of a 2 tier state, in the name of racial purity,
as sick as any south african state was as well a racially pure
operation. Arab? Sorry, get out in to the refugee camp, you can't
live here... Yes, it was your family's land once before, but now
we've taken it, and you're to get to the refugee camp for your kind.
..

So we come down to the kernel of the race hatred across the middle
east, the israel problem... caused by a century of foolish racist
repression against jews from russia to western europe, all resulting
in a diaspora building a defense-state in palestine. That is the
first nut to crack... to settle the rights of the disenfranchised
once and for all, paying off the arabs that were screwed when their
land was stolen and giving the remaining folks the human right of
citizenship in a free society.

Nasty arab governments could not have existed without western
complicity, and to brand them now, as the problem, misrepresents
the solution. We must stop thieving these poeple's nations, or
using a single democratically-taxed dollar to pay for support of
regimes like saudi arabia and UAR. We are taxed by the right of a
state that is underwritten by our bush-torn constitution. In no
place does it say in that document, that the blood of americans
can be spent to prop up dictators. Until we abide by our own
moral baisis, what is the point of blaming other peoples for loathing
their oppressors and supporting an alternate vision to dictatorship?

the same colonial and racial repressions for hundreds of years and have successfully emerged out of these by their emphasis on education, investments in infrastructure and their own people.The reason Arab societies have not successfully broken out of that morass is because many Arab rulers found it advantageous to maintain their own people in refugee camps for over five decades instead of relocating them and providing them with the seeds of a new life.By making them dependent on Western societies's largesse and constantly encouraging them that they should milk their refugee status, we have eliminated the opportunities that are possible for these people. The Arabs, certainly, are ,to a large extent ,responsible for this permanent refugee status.

I concur that, in some cases, there is a victem's mind state, however
in all honestly, you're talking about palestine and the israel
situation.

That said, as long as you empower dictators, can you but expect the
victems mind state? In a religion where the leader is a "slave"
and the word "muslim" means "slave", there is certainly the basis
for creating a psychology of victemhood and permanent oppression.

The answer then, might be not to oppress, rather than blaming the
victem. A man who has repeatedly abused his wife, is not going to
suddenly charm her out of the victem's mind state. The only way
healing can begin, is to remove him from the equation that she might
come to heal and take back her life without being "ordered to" by
another authority, that she not be the victem of a slaver, even a
benign one.

I would hardly call the dosh that supports pakistan's musharraf,
saudi princes and egyptian dictators largesse. Rather it is bribery
pure and simple, out of guilt for a century of western abuse of
their cultures and peoples. To end this mindset, then we need to
end the "aid" mindset, and shift the funding in to purely positive
empowerment, by removing the opppressors, and granting rights to the
grass roots peoples by paying their governments to show progress
with the rule of law, poverty reduction and nonviolent progress in
trade and industry.

Japan was never colonized by the West--in fact, while the New World was being devastated by the European colonial powers, Japan was completely closed to outsiders until the middle of the 19th century.

China also managed to resist the full brunt of Western colonialism.

Do you know who put the "Saudi" in Arabia? It was the U.S., the British, and the petroleum industry, supporting the House of Saud. Saudi Arabia is little more than a U.S. client state.

"In world war 1 times, the entire middle east was an outpost of the
hapsburg empire, and later the british. What has kept the evil
government's in place are western dollars paying, like bribes for
oil rights. Without this economic slush, the whole ponzi scheme
would be long bankrupt and the region's peoples economically forced
to open up to change, as was the case in japan... a country without
oil."

The whole thing is sort of like Alaska's support for ASWR and the Republicans. Each Alaskan, even babies, gets about $2,000.00 per year from oil profits. Humans are just like that all over. Yes the final price is people get spoiled by a free lunch and become worthless.

I see that mistake too often.

Some Jews are Arab. Some Jews are white. Some Muslims are white. Many Israelis are Jews. Some Israelis are Christians.

Etc, etc.

This conflict is about religous conservatism among Muslims versus the much more permissive Israeli society and the West in general.

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040712fa_fact1

In his essay “Between Yesterday and Today,” Banna wrote that the
colonialist Europeans had expropriated the resources of the Islamic lands
and corrupted them with “their murderous germs”:
"They imported their half-naked women into these regions, together with
their liquors, their theaters, their dance halls, their amusements, their
stories, their newspapers, their novels, their whims, their silly games, and
their vices. . . . The day must come when the castles of this materialistic
civilization will be laid low upon the heads of their inhabitants. "


The Brotherhood’s slogan was, and remains, “God is our objective; the Koran
is our constitution; the prophet is our leader; struggle is our way; and
death for the sake of God is the highest of our aspirations.”

"guilty" indeed i am of abusing the terms. But the point remains.
For lack of better terms, there are local peoples, and invading
peoples.

With the extermination of the american indians, it was more clearly
racial, and the same dynamics are at work in palestine. Frankly,
its even more spooky, if its purely religious persecution, as it
opens israel up to the criticism that it is pursuing a policy that
when nazi germany pursued it, was taboo, the rounding up of people
not of the "true faith" and herding them in to prison camps for
orderly containment.

The final solution in Jenin, Guantanamo and Abu Grahib so soils any
"western" integrity in dealing with problems in the region, there is
no longer the possibility of offering a carrot, as the moral battle
has been utterly lost, and a carrot is not respected.

Just even zionists and indiginous folks, is not fair, as some peoples
in israel are not zionists... blah blah..., so say then, what terms
can we use to discuss the matter, when all terms are inviolate?
To hide behind terms, or the failure to be able to identify systematic
crimes because we can't make proper labels, is as well deceptive.

you posted an "arab leaders need to condemn terrorism" thread yet you're now saying the REST of us are ignorant??

Half of the world has existed under repressive male rule for a very long time, arab and non arab, muslim and non muslim.

Each and EVERY time in recent history an Arab country has looked like getting a secular progressive leader/system there have been western powers ready to intervence to install someone more to their liking who's brutality often forces the population into the hands of equally repressive fundamentalist religious groups because they become the only option.

As for China and India moving ahead, well that seriously depends on who you ask, they are leaving behind a HUGE number of people who sink further into the "untouchable" class but then I guess that's what progressive modern societies do - no need to provide for all

ones we are discussing.However, many of these societies have moved beyond those days mainly as a result of education which has become a universal necessity for these progressive capitalist societies.In Arab societies, on the other hand, there has been no corresponding spread of education throughout the population.Whenever a problem with modernity arises, either by intrusion of Western technology or by the presence of Western women with short skirts, the Muslim societies have sought refuge in the teachings of the Koran to get them over these infidels' dirty tricks.

It is as though we were ruled by the Christian Fundamentalists and each time Janet Jackson's nipples are bared, we have to rush to get absolution from Jerry Falwell.

And between different groups within countries. You stereotype "Muslim societies" as if they were monolithic. Are you aware the largest Muslim country in the world is Indonesia?

Before the first Gulf War, for example, Iraq was the most secular and advanced country in the Middle East--women attended college, had professional careers, etc., and there was a large and thriving middle class.

eom