Money is what brought Europe out of the dark ages. It started conquering the world and all that wealth improved the standard of living and sparked strengthening monarchies which were uncomfortable with the Church - their power struggles helped foster the Enlightenment. Ironically the best way to have modernize Islam would be to keep Secular tyrants in power who would stamp out the extremists and extremist policies and thus foster the opportunity for moderates to impact the culture. If we really want to help the Islamic world reform, we should keep Assad in power, keep Mubarak in power, and so on. What happens in Egypt and Syria will shape the future of not only the region, but potentially the whole institution of what Islam is. If moderates can hold power in these two countries and begin to build thriving economies, it will begin the shift of reform.
I used libs in the op. Reread it. Based on their behavior in the media and on this forum. Libtards wasn't used until the trolls came into play. I thought math looms post was sincere and from the heart but didn't address the actual letter from the op. It deflected and tried to justify why moderates are deflecting. The religion needs to be held accountable for wayward thinking by people of all classes.
It doesn't help that we sided with the crazies one too many times. They prevail to a large degree because they are ruthless. When someone is ruthless, it's a huge advantage. If you are not ruthless, and stand up to that person, they will just kill you. They have power via intimidation and fear. The strike fear in the people and the gov't. You need a very strong oppressive gov't to keep the crazies at bay. This is what Saddam did. This is what Assad did. This is what Mubarak did. It is what Pakistani leaders and democratic Muslim leaders fail to do. Right now, you can not have a pluralistic society (i.e. democracy) without religious reform. You can not have religious reform without a stable modern state. Thus it is in the crazies best interest to keep the country poor and in chaos so they can hold onto power. The U.S. should hope Assad wins out in Syria at the end of the day.
For some reason Mathloom feels perfectly fine commenting on the United States internal politics and other religions, but he is eager to dismiss (and you agree with him) outsiders commenting on his native lands and he'll even dismiss an insider as being an irrelevant token speaker to make the Americans happy. Like I said, good grief.
Saudi Arabia is one of the richest countries in the world and possibly the most backward/least enlightened.
oh sure, a sadist that killed hundreds of thousands of his own people, and spawned the conditions for ISIS to recruit by shooting at peaceful protesters should win. That's a great way to hope crazy militants go away---put their #1 recruiting prop up, and hope he wins. As long as it's state-systematic violence that wins the day of killing children via bomb, it's just a shred of moral decency higher. You might as well hope for Putin to win WW3, at least he kept Chechens quiet minus a few bomb attacks---and a few political imprisonings, and journalist murders. oh look at who is fighting with ISIS---a lot of Chechens. go figure.
I see your point but I don't see an alternative. I don't see the current sate of Islam being conducive for democracy. It has failed for the most part. Look at Egypt, every gov't that comes into being, Islamic or Secular completely trumps on democracy and resorts to ruling like a dictatorship. It's a matter of picking your poison. Do you want Syria to be ruled by a secular despot, or do you want it to become another Iran, or even worse, fall into the hands of ISIS? There are no good choices. I think Islam isn't the root of the problem. The issue is a matter of modern civilization not reaching this part of the world. They need strong secular monarchies who can provide enough stability that educational systems and economics can have their time to reform Islam as a religion. Otherwise you will have the ATW's of the world screaming that Islam causes people to be violent and needs to be stopped from spreading.
i just want to add again, that Ben Afleck came across as an idiot with a his fake outrage. He should make the woman that wrote this letter some sandwiches.
There are some curious parallels between this thread and the thread about Barkley not being black enough.
Yep, apparently us in 'Merica are all war mongers and he and his middle east are all peaceful citizens who would have found a non-violent resolution to their problems without our interference...right Mathloon?
Important to reply to your post. People who don't live in the Middle East can definitely appreciate the factors at play. But people who are physically and ideologically isolated from the life of Middle Easterners will naturally be unable to identify root causes. That goes both ways - you see a huge majority of Middle Easterners completely incapable of seeing how US domestic policy screws US citizens. This is changing a lot though, in large part because Middle Easterners are exposed to US culture far more than vice versa. There's plenty of criticism for the Middle East of course, and anyone in the world can hold negative opinions of Islam. At this point I'm not sure if you're talking about race, culture or religion since you seem to have conflated these 3 things in your post. The point is, you can be as critical as you want. But for Middle Easterners to take that criticism seriously, you have to display an understanding of the context in your criticism. To act like there are brainwashed barbaric beings born into blowing innocent people up and trying to piece together a pretext from that: it's not going to convince anyone. It's a narrative that Middle Easterners have heard for decades and it's easy to discern genuine cultural criticism from xenophobia. Middle Eastern papers, even the most oppressed ones, are littered with criticism of how the culture has led to the demise of progress in the Middle East. For example when George Galloway - far from being a rational thinker - is critical of Middle Eastern culture and society, people here accept that and consider it very deeply. That's before anyone even suspected him of being Muslim. It's because he has shown that he understands the blueprint of the Middle East, the different races, cultures, history, obstacles, advantages, etc. I do not like what he stands for, but I accept his criticism. What can not happen is ignoring the main, root, core issue. How Middle Eastern culture would develop in an independent sovereign vaccuum is an exercise of imagination. It has not happened for over 1,000 years, and the region has changed drastically since. Everything that happens now is set against the backdrop of one extra large obstacle. The one thing that has been constant. Middle Eastern culture has changed, transformed. Political values have ranged from nationalistic, secular, islamic, extremist, democratic, authoritarian. Results have always been the same. All failed. It's not a discussion to most of the world. Even if it were not true, I can't imagine that there is a better informed group of people than the people who have lived here forever, and that they unanimously agree on just one thing. They don't agree on religion, food, music, women, nothing. They all agree to one single thing. So even if that one thing is not true, it is always going to be a problem. It will always cause hate and resentment and ultimately danger to innocent people of all religions and nationalities. Donald Rumsfled and the State Department found that out through their own research, that Middle Easterners have legitimate beef with US foreign policy and do not by any stretch of the imagination hate anyone for their freedoms or religion. Brookings institute, gallup polls, you name it. You can twist one or maybe two wars with the "spreading democracy" schtick but you look at US behavior in the region over the last 50-60 years and there is no one who can ignore the pattern. The already tiny danger of terrorism against innocent American civilians would disappear if American presence in the region disappeared, just like it was before the American presence arrived. There is absolutely no evidence to point otherwise. These crazy extremists aren't attacking random powerful countries, even if they claim to want to. They attack the ones that are here. That's what they do. They are power hungry, and they want to impose sharia law on everyone, including Muslims who don't believe in sharia as a form of legal governance. This is not awesome for Middle Easterners. If/when that happens, it will leave behind in most countries troops of extremist radicals tested, trained & armed by your government and other governments who will then prey on moderate innocent Muslims. That's going to happen inevitably. It's just a matter of time. It's the willfully ignored consequence of empire. When you go, you leave behind the angry people. Those angry people will let out their anger on whoever has the power. So when the power goes to the people - as it did in Egypt - then the angry people will come for it - as they did in Egypt. The hope, though, is that after a couple of decades of brutal bloody civil war, some semblance of a sovereign government will emerge as it did in Europe. Then we take it from there I guess. At least then Middle Easterners and Americans can deal with their own problems and create their own solutions.
FYI they are not my "native" lands. I dismiss the republican/democrat uniform stuff for sure. That doesn't mean I dismiss criticism. You'll find me constantly agreeing with people that Hamas are screwing their own people, that ISIS are horriffic, that Saudi Arabia is backwards, that Iran is ruled by a bunch of monkeys, etc. This I assume is not enough for you unless I generalize the entire region has having some major central defect? lol I feel perfectly fine speaking about the United States because United States citizens have voluntarily voted for governments which choose to remain in this region and gives US citizens a greater voice in my country than I do myself. Essentially, the US government rules me by proxy. Further, I know a hell of a lot more about US culture and politics than a majority of Americans know about my country's politics or culture. I'm American educated. I'm a third culture kid. I learned about politics by myself, because it's not taught here. I used to consume all the same tv shows, movies, magazines, video games as you. I can name 52 states, describe how elections take place in your country down to each of the two parties, describe the history of American revolution in great detail, and the last 60 years of American colonialism in even greater detail. It's not your fault, but the way the world is geared, everyone simply knows much more about Americans than the average American knows about anyone else. Tell me what you know about my country so that I can take your criticism more seriously. At the time I'm writing this, you probably don't know the capital of my country. You don't know that we speak a different dialect of Arabic. You can't name the President. Nothing. So how wise would it be for me to assign equal weighting to the opinion of people who, for the most part, generalize Middle Eastern politics in the way that I've seen here? Hit me with some criticism. Let's see what you've got.
I don't know what country you live in exactly so I can't say specifically anything about it. I'm sure you've said it before, but I don't remember. I think you are in the UAE somewhere. As for your rant, I don't need to get into a pissing match with you. I've lived in Kuwait, my father lived in Kuwait for the majority of his adult life. But no, I won't present myself as an expert on Dubai, Abu Dhabi, or any of the other countries and it is irrelevant to me what dialect of Arabic you speak just like it is irrelevant to you whether I speak the Queen's English as taught in English schools in Kuwait or Canada or a Cajun dialect of English of just downright Texan southern drawl. You are dismissive of people you don't agree with because you consider yourself some enlightened soul that has wisdom to bestow on the world. You are no less biased than any democrat/republic on this forum that spouts their own pearls of wisdom that are tainted by their own lenses. Yet, you are the one who thinks you can come down from the mountain and educate Americans on their failings and dismiss people who comment on the failings of the Middle East. You make a living in a Middle Eastern country ruled by dictators (in practice if not name) and you work for the government. This much I have learned from following your back and forth with ATW. You are no less complicit in their actions than an American who votes for the proxy rulers you wish to educate. In the end, all of this is irrelevant to the thread topic. The point was you are in no position to dismiss this woman's letter. I stand by that.
I give the girl a lot of credit for speaking about issues that are very true and should be brought up and discussed. Though I have two issues… She is taking advantage of the Ben Affleck comment to get attention. There is plenty of discussion in the media with regards to Islam, so her point that he is stopping dialogue on the criticism of Islam is misplaced. In my opinion the more discussion the better (In an intelligent and informative way) and Ben Affleck apparently started a firestorm of a discussion, so her premise of the open letter makes no sense. Secondly, correct me if I’m wrong, but does she not live in Canada? She’s making it seem like she’s in some sort of danger.
