In my opinion, all this talk about Islamism is nonsense. Most Arabs wouldn't tolerate anything even close to Iranian-style theocracy, which really is quite crazy, more crazy than even Saudi Arabia.
I suspect should there be a Sunni Islamist state, it might resemble a softer KSA. Maybe. I suspect, though, not much would be different than now. I really doubt there would be stoning or honor killings or whatever insanity the West is convinced would happen.
(Pointing at Afghanistan or Iraq is not really a reasonable argument-- destroy any country's infrastructure, starve them for a decade and bomb them in proxy wars, and ANY population will go mad.)
I don't think there would be much visible difference. People have created this buzzword-cum-bogeyman out of Sunni Islamism, as though the Arab world would suddenly turn into scimitar-wielding demons, ravenous to conquer Vienna.
The 'danger' to the Western world, should a Arab Sunni Islamist (a semi-bollocks term meaning someone who doesn't believe in forgetting one's history and culture) state arise is the fact that it would bridge the Islamic world at large--from Chechnya to Greater Turkestan, and Morocco to Iraq and beyond; not as a superstate, but a confederacy of nations with Islamic heritage and tri-or-quadri-lingual bonds-- wherein an enormous stock of the world's wealth would be located.
Behold the Islamic bloc. Slaves no longer. You won't be driving that Hummer for much longer...
The Safavid Shiites include a large segment of Iranians, who are not Arabs at all; they are Aryans. The Safavid dynasty was in fact a tribe of Turks, neither Aryan nor Arab, ruling over Iran.
Tribalism is not as important as the Orientalists have convinced the West is is. Tribalism is true in some places, not others. It isn't true or at least, far less relevant in urban areas, eg, Damascus, Cairo.
True "tribes" live, with great relevance, in the Gulf, the South of Iraq and interspersed in the rest of the Arab world.
If the Syrian government is overthrown, the Shiite crescent will wither and die. Syria is Hizbullah's lifeline to Iran. And the Iranian secularists will ultimately win out. Afterwards, politicized Shiism in Iraq will crumble and secularism will win out, and return to some semblance of 60's era secular nationalism. The truth is, Shiism is distasteful to the majority of residents of the Middle East, Arab or otherwise.
Bahrain, like most of the Gulf is culturally irrelevant to the Arab and Islamic world. Minus the oil the Gulf Arabs have nothing to offer either the Iranians or the remainder of the Arab world, ex genera, Damascus, Cairo, Baghdad.
To wit, the persistent constructive forces in Islamic history have been Sunni in religious bent and various in ethnicity, eg, Abu Hanifa (Sunni Iranian), Mehmet the Conqueror (Sunni Turk), Abu Jafar Al-Mansour (Sunni Arab).
Safavid Shiites (Iran was forcibly made Shiite--the forgotten origin of the modern Iranians distaste for religion) and the Gulf Arabs, essentially, are the anti-thesis of the majoritarian history of the region. They had little to no constructive part in Islamic history.
The same is true of Najd and her cohorts, Ibn Abdul-Wahhab and Al-Saud.
The Shia who suffered were the ones trying to import Iran’s theocracy into Iraq. This fact is often overlooked. Indeed, the Iraq-Iran, wrong though it was, was ultimately an attempt to prevent Shia theocracy.
Otherwise, secular Shia comprised 70% of the Baath Party, and security forces.
The Revolutionary Command Council, the highest governing body with actual power, beneath Saddam, consisted of 8 people: 3 Sunni Arabs, a Sunni Kurd, an Arab Christian, and 3 Arab Shia.
All those so-called Oppositionists to Saddam were educated in the West on scholarships from the Baath government– Ayad Allawi and Ahmed Chalabi included, both of whom were members of Baath Party. Even more so, they were Saddams minions–Ayad Allawi was a car bomber.
The Shia who suffered were the ones trying to import Iran's theocracy into Iraq. This fact is often overlooked. Indeed, the Iraq-Iran, wrong though it was, was ultimately an attempt to prevent Shia theocracy.
Otherwise, secular Shia comprised 70% of the Baath Party, and security forces.
The Revolutionary Command Council, the highest governing body with actual power, beneath Saddam, consisted of 8 people: 3 Sunni Arabs, a Sunni Kurd, an Arab Christian, and 3 Arab Shia.
All those so-called Oppositionists to Saddam were educated in the West on scholarships from the Baath government-- Ayad Allawi and Ahmed Chalabi included, both of whom were members of Baath Party. Even more so, they were Saddams minions--Ayad Allawi was a car bomber.
Assad is CATEGORICALLY not popular with his country. People hate him, and have been terrified of speaking out. The people hated him especially after the events of Homs and Hama in 82.
I disagree with all of you-- I think that this idea of "decency" and "classy behavior" is really just self-serving bullcrap in order to prevent nations from being indignant, and rightfully so.
Why not show the world what it is that you do exactly? Why doesn't Der Spiegel release the additional 4000 images of the Strkyer Unit in Afghanistan, instead of only three, in the alleged name of decency?
The decent thing to do would be to release them so that people can become so horrified and inflamed worldwide that the acts themselves wouldn't happen.
It isn't the pictures that are indecent-- it is these acts of murder that are indecent.
If the West doesn't take responsibility for the heinous crimes it has committed in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, then responsibility will come to it. One way or another-- karma is coming.
I disagree on one point: the Iranians as a people stand to gain from an Arab rebirth. Void of the morally bankrupt order, everyone in the Islamic bloc/sphere (religosity aside; this is used as a cultural referential index) stands to gain.
You are absurd and an ignoramus. I'm an Arab. I've been to Libya-- it is a shithole, because of Gaddafi. There are practically no paved streets in Tripoli. Corruption and neglect are BEYOND rife.
Though it may be the "Libya is the richest country in Africa, with low inequality and official corruption (acc. to “Libya watchers” quoted by Reuters)" NONE OF THAT MONEY GOES TO THE COUNTRY-- neither the people nor the municipalities. It goes to the 'brave' army and the pockets of the Gaddafi and his ruling clique.
"On the other hand, Palestinian militancy in Gaza has also been a dead end, and terrorist strikes and suicide bombings against Israelis, aside from being morally repugnant, have cost Palestinians dearly in world support."
Because world support has been soooooooo instrumental in guarding the welfare of the Palestinians.
The suicide bombings would be morally repugnant, IF they had other options. You should remember, no one wakes up in the morning and arbitrarily decides to be a suicide bomber.
"Lieberman wants the military conversions to stand, since the official rabbinate has been reluctant to accept large-scale conversions by the hundreds of thousands of non-Jewish Russians who immigrated in the 1990s."
How funny is the above statement? A Jewish state built on the dispossesion of native Arabs, where many of the colonists aren't Jewish at all!
No, I think the only long term solution, is for massive amounts of European Jews to go back to Europe. And take the non-Jewish Russian converts with them.
This is idea of 'equal blame' is absurd on your part.
The Palestinian Arabs were living their lives in their native land, when suddenly an influx of mainly European Jews showed up with guns and told the Arabs to leave their ancestral homes, because God promised Jews this land.
I'd say the blame is pretty clear. If I break into your house, that makes me a burglar. If I break into your house, along with my whole family, does that make me less of a burglar? Does that make you and myself equally blameworthy?
That's what they want: to eliminate Sunni Arabs, Shii Turkoman, and Chrisitian Chaldeans, because none of these groups agree on partitioning OUR country by ethnicity or sect.
There's no honest Iraqi that would say the entire north is Kurdish. This is nonsense. My grandfather was qaim maqam of Tuz Khurmato, and it was a Shii Turkoman/Sunni Arab area-- there were no Kurds. Nobody wants to believe that the cities were void of Kurds until recently.
I'll say it again: the Kurds lived in the mountains, in small villages, or were nomadic. They did not inhabit major metropolitan areas such as Mosul or Irbil.
I suggest you read David Ben Gurion's memoirs. He states that the Israelis paid the Iraqi underworld to harass and abuse the Iraqi Jews as motivation to move to Israel. In other words, the Iraqi population and government really had nothing to do with the Jews leaving.
The cities of the north of Iraq have always been primarily Arab or Turkoman. The unArabized or unOttomanized Kurds rarely ever lived in the cities. Mosul is a city of Arabs, Turks, and Chaldeans. My mother is from Mosul, and to say that ALL the north is Kurdish, is a lie.
Is Los Angeles a city of African-Americans? If, say, there was a future 'Blackistan' movement, could they rightfully claim Los Angeles? Or New York? Or Atlanta? Or DC?
That's how absurd the claims of Kurdistan have become in recent days. Iraq was a multicultural land. No one race or sect can really claim predominance.
The war in Iraq was in the name of freedom. Nazi expansionism was in the name of the Aryan race. Soviet expansionism into Central Asia was in the name of Communism, and class revolution. Chairman Mao's Great Leap Forward was in the name of progress. Is evil in the name of God different?
Men are, and will do, evil in the name of real and imaginary causes. To blame religion is to disacknowledge our own evil.
"In any case a sad debate between two deeply insincere and unreflective men."
Murderers and destroyers of nations debating values of any kind is ironic, but mostly an insult to the intelligence of the audience. Next week, Noriega on democracy.
People have been asking 'why wouldn't someone just detonate at a TSA security checkpoint?'
The answer, I suspect, is that the authorities don't actually care if we do die of terrorism.
What they are trying to prevent is terrorists flying planes into enormous financial, governmental and military structures, causing the establishment to lose face on the world stage, at the very least.
Let's not delude ourselves into thinking they care about us. If they did, they wouldn't enroll us in foreign wars, of which they are non-participants. With the exception of Palin, but she's a card-carrying village idiot.
Deir Yassin was not part of any war.
The difference between you and Mr. Mcphee lies only in his ability to see the forest for the trees, as distinguished from your microscopic myopia.
Unlikely. China has a host of logistical problems on the way, that they are ignoring and will be unable to cope with in the future.
In my opinion, all this talk about Islamism is nonsense. Most Arabs wouldn't tolerate anything even close to Iranian-style theocracy, which really is quite crazy, more crazy than even Saudi Arabia.
I suspect should there be a Sunni Islamist state, it might resemble a softer KSA. Maybe. I suspect, though, not much would be different than now. I really doubt there would be stoning or honor killings or whatever insanity the West is convinced would happen.
(Pointing at Afghanistan or Iraq is not really a reasonable argument-- destroy any country's infrastructure, starve them for a decade and bomb them in proxy wars, and ANY population will go mad.)
I don't think there would be much visible difference. People have created this buzzword-cum-bogeyman out of Sunni Islamism, as though the Arab world would suddenly turn into scimitar-wielding demons, ravenous to conquer Vienna.
The 'danger' to the Western world, should a Arab Sunni Islamist (a semi-bollocks term meaning someone who doesn't believe in forgetting one's history and culture) state arise is the fact that it would bridge the Islamic world at large--from Chechnya to Greater Turkestan, and Morocco to Iraq and beyond; not as a superstate, but a confederacy of nations with Islamic heritage and tri-or-quadri-lingual bonds-- wherein an enormous stock of the world's wealth would be located.
Behold the Islamic bloc. Slaves no longer. You won't be driving that Hummer for much longer...
@ Mark Kerpin:
Israel mulls arming 'trained' settlers
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/08/2011830151421254705.html
Sorry, what was that?
It is not what you suggest.
The Safavid Shiites include a large segment of Iranians, who are not Arabs at all; they are Aryans. The Safavid dynasty was in fact a tribe of Turks, neither Aryan nor Arab, ruling over Iran.
Tribalism is not as important as the Orientalists have convinced the West is is. Tribalism is true in some places, not others. It isn't true or at least, far less relevant in urban areas, eg, Damascus, Cairo.
True "tribes" live, with great relevance, in the Gulf, the South of Iraq and interspersed in the rest of the Arab world.
If the Syrian government is overthrown, the Shiite crescent will wither and die. Syria is Hizbullah's lifeline to Iran. And the Iranian secularists will ultimately win out. Afterwards, politicized Shiism in Iraq will crumble and secularism will win out, and return to some semblance of 60's era secular nationalism. The truth is, Shiism is distasteful to the majority of residents of the Middle East, Arab or otherwise.
Bahrain, like most of the Gulf is culturally irrelevant to the Arab and Islamic world. Minus the oil the Gulf Arabs have nothing to offer either the Iranians or the remainder of the Arab world, ex genera, Damascus, Cairo, Baghdad.
To wit, the persistent constructive forces in Islamic history have been Sunni in religious bent and various in ethnicity, eg, Abu Hanifa (Sunni Iranian), Mehmet the Conqueror (Sunni Turk), Abu Jafar Al-Mansour (Sunni Arab).
Safavid Shiites (Iran was forcibly made Shiite--the forgotten origin of the modern Iranians distaste for religion) and the Gulf Arabs, essentially, are the anti-thesis of the majoritarian history of the region. They had little to no constructive part in Islamic history.
The same is true of Najd and her cohorts, Ibn Abdul-Wahhab and Al-Saud.
The Shia who suffered were the ones trying to import Iran’s theocracy into Iraq. This fact is often overlooked. Indeed, the Iraq-Iran, wrong though it was, was ultimately an attempt to prevent Shia theocracy.
Otherwise, secular Shia comprised 70% of the Baath Party, and security forces.
The Revolutionary Command Council, the highest governing body with actual power, beneath Saddam, consisted of 8 people: 3 Sunni Arabs, a Sunni Kurd, an Arab Christian, and 3 Arab Shia.
All those so-called Oppositionists to Saddam were educated in the West on scholarships from the Baath government– Ayad Allawi and Ahmed Chalabi included, both of whom were members of Baath Party. Even more so, they were Saddams minions–Ayad Allawi was a car bomber.
Don’t believe the hype.
The Shia who suffered were the ones trying to import Iran's theocracy into Iraq. This fact is often overlooked. Indeed, the Iraq-Iran, wrong though it was, was ultimately an attempt to prevent Shia theocracy.
Otherwise, secular Shia comprised 70% of the Baath Party, and security forces.
The Revolutionary Command Council, the highest governing body with actual power, beneath Saddam, consisted of 8 people: 3 Sunni Arabs, a Sunni Kurd, an Arab Christian, and 3 Arab Shia.
All those so-called Oppositionists to Saddam were educated in the West on scholarships from the Baath government-- Ayad Allawi and Ahmed Chalabi included, both of whom were members of Baath Party. Even more so, they were Saddams minions--Ayad Allawi was a car bomber.
Don't believe the hype.
Assad is CATEGORICALLY not popular with his country. People hate him, and have been terrified of speaking out. The people hated him especially after the events of Homs and Hama in 82.
I disagree with all of you-- I think that this idea of "decency" and "classy behavior" is really just self-serving bullcrap in order to prevent nations from being indignant, and rightfully so.
Why not show the world what it is that you do exactly? Why doesn't Der Spiegel release the additional 4000 images of the Strkyer Unit in Afghanistan, instead of only three, in the alleged name of decency?
The decent thing to do would be to release them so that people can become so horrified and inflamed worldwide that the acts themselves wouldn't happen.
It isn't the pictures that are indecent-- it is these acts of murder that are indecent.
If the West doesn't take responsibility for the heinous crimes it has committed in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, then responsibility will come to it. One way or another-- karma is coming.
I disagree on one point: the Iranians as a people stand to gain from an Arab rebirth. Void of the morally bankrupt order, everyone in the Islamic bloc/sphere (religosity aside; this is used as a cultural referential index) stands to gain.
Mobarak, Ben Ali, now it's time for Sayyid Ali.
No lies. Perhaps outdated. I was there over 15 years ago. But congratulations on more than 1 paved road being considered an 'achievement'.
The fact that you're calling me out on that, is the exception that proves the rule.
The richest country in Africa, and all you can show me for 'development' is asphalt (in a desert country), and oil infrastructure?
IN 4 DECADES OF RULING A COUNTRY WITH TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF OIL THATS ALL YOU CAN SHOW ME? ASPHALT?
How about desalination plants, hydroponics, agriculture, a bloody space program or better yet:
A not completely Looney Tunes schizophrenic to run the country?
Does that enter into your analysis?
Look, I don't know what pseudo-intellectual garbage you read in you overpriced college poli-sci courses, but I've been to Libya.
I HAVE BEEN TO LIBYA.
THERE IS NOTHING THERE.
BENGHAZI HAD 1 PAVED MAIN ROAD. THE REST WERE DIRT.
LIBYA IS A COMPLETELY UNDEVELOPED COUNTRY.
So you can keep your socio-economic jargon to yourself, because I can guarantee you wouldn't want to live in 'glorious Gaddafi's Libya'.
You are absurd and an ignoramus. I'm an Arab. I've been to Libya-- it is a shithole, because of Gaddafi. There are practically no paved streets in Tripoli. Corruption and neglect are BEYOND rife.
Though it may be the "Libya is the richest country in Africa, with low inequality and official corruption (acc. to “Libya watchers” quoted by Reuters)" NONE OF THAT MONEY GOES TO THE COUNTRY-- neither the people nor the municipalities. It goes to the 'brave' army and the pockets of the Gaddafi and his ruling clique.
Seriously. Stop talking.
Thank you for having the balls to say that, Andrew. Nobility is your creed!
"On the other hand, Palestinian militancy in Gaza has also been a dead end, and terrorist strikes and suicide bombings against Israelis, aside from being morally repugnant, have cost Palestinians dearly in world support."
Because world support has been soooooooo instrumental in guarding the welfare of the Palestinians.
The suicide bombings would be morally repugnant, IF they had other options. You should remember, no one wakes up in the morning and arbitrarily decides to be a suicide bomber.
What frustration causes a man to decide such?
Again, that would be too simple wouldn't it?
"Lieberman wants the military conversions to stand, since the official rabbinate has been reluctant to accept large-scale conversions by the hundreds of thousands of non-Jewish Russians who immigrated in the 1990s."
How funny is the above statement? A Jewish state built on the dispossesion of native Arabs, where many of the colonists aren't Jewish at all!
No, I think the only long term solution, is for massive amounts of European Jews to go back to Europe. And take the non-Jewish Russian converts with them.
But that would be too logical, wouldn't it?
This is idea of 'equal blame' is absurd on your part.
The Palestinian Arabs were living their lives in their native land, when suddenly an influx of mainly European Jews showed up with guns and told the Arabs to leave their ancestral homes, because God promised Jews this land.
I'd say the blame is pretty clear. If I break into your house, that makes me a burglar. If I break into your house, along with my whole family, does that make me less of a burglar? Does that make you and myself equally blameworthy?
That's what they want: to eliminate Sunni Arabs, Shii Turkoman, and Chrisitian Chaldeans, because none of these groups agree on partitioning OUR country by ethnicity or sect.
There's no honest Iraqi that would say the entire north is Kurdish. This is nonsense. My grandfather was qaim maqam of Tuz Khurmato, and it was a Shii Turkoman/Sunni Arab area-- there were no Kurds. Nobody wants to believe that the cities were void of Kurds until recently.
I'll say it again: the Kurds lived in the mountains, in small villages, or were nomadic. They did not inhabit major metropolitan areas such as Mosul or Irbil.
I suggest you read David Ben Gurion's memoirs. He states that the Israelis paid the Iraqi underworld to harass and abuse the Iraqi Jews as motivation to move to Israel. In other words, the Iraqi population and government really had nothing to do with the Jews leaving.
This map is not accurate.
The cities of the north of Iraq have always been primarily Arab or Turkoman. The unArabized or unOttomanized Kurds rarely ever lived in the cities. Mosul is a city of Arabs, Turks, and Chaldeans. My mother is from Mosul, and to say that ALL the north is Kurdish, is a lie.
Is Los Angeles a city of African-Americans? If, say, there was a future 'Blackistan' movement, could they rightfully claim Los Angeles? Or New York? Or Atlanta? Or DC?
That's how absurd the claims of Kurdistan have become in recent days. Iraq was a multicultural land. No one race or sect can really claim predominance.
You know what reaaaaallly doesn't make sense? Apartheid.
"Nobody should preach to us ethics, nobody!"
The war in Iraq was in the name of freedom. Nazi expansionism was in the name of the Aryan race. Soviet expansionism into Central Asia was in the name of Communism, and class revolution. Chairman Mao's Great Leap Forward was in the name of progress. Is evil in the name of God different?
Men are, and will do, evil in the name of real and imaginary causes. To blame religion is to disacknowledge our own evil.
"In any case a sad debate between two deeply insincere and unreflective men."
Murderers and destroyers of nations debating values of any kind is ironic, but mostly an insult to the intelligence of the audience. Next week, Noriega on democracy.
People have been asking 'why wouldn't someone just detonate at a TSA security checkpoint?'
The answer, I suspect, is that the authorities don't actually care if we do die of terrorism.
What they are trying to prevent is terrorists flying planes into enormous financial, governmental and military structures, causing the establishment to lose face on the world stage, at the very least.
Let's not delude ourselves into thinking they care about us. If they did, they wouldn't enroll us in foreign wars, of which they are non-participants. With the exception of Palin, but she's a card-carrying village idiot.