Arnold Harris sent me this interesting article on the necessity of cultural reform in the Middle East by Elan Journo. While I agree that the Middle East is a terribly repressive place, and that many reforms are needed in the region, so much of his article is based on false assumptions I had to take exception to it anyway.
Most of the faults are based on his criticisms of Islam. To whit:
Any look at Christianity will show that submission is at the heart of all Christian doctrine. "Christianity" does not literally mean "submission," of course, while "Islam" does literally mean that.
But so what? The concept of submission is all over the Bible, Old and New Testaments both. It comes right out of Christ's own mouth, where he says all humans are yoked, but his yoke is lighter than the yoke men will otherwise find themselves slaving under. Christian hymns often touch upon the concept of submission to the will of God.
Furthermore, the title is not "God the Brother." It's God the Father. It's not "Our Buddy Jesus." It's "Our Lord Jesus." Submitting to the will of ultimate authority, giving up your desires for the desires of family and community and God, are fundamental, in fact, to Christianity, Judaism, and many of the other monotheistic and even some of the polytheistic faiths.
Yet Western Civilization as we know it was built by these people.
From a rationalist perspective, no one can deny that the Western world, including America and Europe, are an outgrowth of what was (until rather recently) generally known as Christendom. Political liberalism, rationalism, individualism, freedom of thought and worship, and all those other things that make up liberal democracy are, undeniably, an outgrowth of the civilization formed by, and still often dominated by, Christian people.
Of course, we've reached a point where countless people in this civilization no longer call themselves Christian. Yet in America at least, most still do call themselves Christian. And even most who don't call themselves Christian could still be labeled "culturally Christian," as could much of Europe today. Cultural Christians may not worship often, they may not believe much, but their holidays, rituals and values stem from centuries of Christian influence. Very noticeably so, in most cases.
Our civilization stands on the shoulders of a fundamentally Christian culture and heritage--with a huge positive influence from the Jews, by the way. Love it, hate it, criticize it, embrace it, fight to change it or fight to keep it that way: we got here due to the efforts of precisely the kind of people who surrender their individual judgement to the will of God, and who are required by their religion to give to charity and to put the interests of family, community, and church ahead of their own.
Thus, already Elan Journo sounds pretty foolish. Most of his generalizations about Islamic society could just as easily be made about most of the Western world he obviously loves. He's pretty obviously part of that group of people who believe that Islam is backward and intolerant and repressive. He sounds like one of those who believe that Islam itself is the implacable enemy of the western liberal values--tolerance, reason, rationality, individualism, modernity--that we hold dear.
But here are some facts to chew on:
Muslims specifically invented the Scientific Method. It was they, not Christians, who defined and described it. They made many of the earliest and most important scientific discoveries of the last 1400 years.
Muslims also invented the numbering system that everyone reading this message uses--the numbers 0 through 9, and the entire system of basic mathematics we all learned in grade school. Muslims also invented algebra. Indeed, the very word "algebra" is an Arabic term: "al" means "the," and "gebra" means "force" or "restore." (Yes, geeks, "algebra" can be translated as "the force." Now go to the back of the room and shut up.)
Al-gebra of course was exported to the Christian world and was eventually the basis for the creation of things like analytic gemoetry and calculus by Western Christians some centuries later.
Muslims invented what we could call the first banks, and, probably even more important, that most amazing of economic advances: the checque. This made them the premier merchants of the world for centuries.
So. Do you like science? Math? Free market economics? Reach over and kiss the nearest Muslim.
What about tolerance?
Well, when the Christians of Spain were stupid enough to expel or kill all their Jews, the Muslim world was happy to have them--wondering at the fool King of Spain who would throw away such intelligent and productive people as these Jews. Europe's loss, their gain, so far as they were concerned. Those very Jews formed the basis of what is now the Sephardic Jewish community, which is a hugely important part of the Jewish "tribe."
The history of Islam even shows that, going back as far as The Prophet Muhammed himself, more tolerance was shown toward "idol worshippers" (a.k.a. polytheists) than the early Jews ever showed such people. They were often a lot more tolerant than Christians throughout history.
In point of fact, the Muslim world had a long record of unusual tolerance for other faiths. Until the 20th century, that is.
Islam has taken a horrible turn in the last century, mostly due to the influence of the Wahabbists. Wahabbism is a radical sect that seems to be the source for most of the anti-Christian, anti-Jew, anti-Western, anti-Modernist views that have so poisoned the Middle East. And the Wahabbists would have been nothing but a minor radicalist sect if it weren't for the money they have gotten from the Saudi royal family.
No sane view of the history of civilizational development can support the notion that Islam is more fundamentally repressive or backward than any of the other great faiths of the world. Islam has a checkered history, like all the great religions, but an impressive record of cultural, scientific, and philosophical achievement. It's a faith that has, time and time again, proved to be a force for tolerance, moderation, reason, rationality, and even modernity.
History does not start with the British leaving the Middle East. And it does not stop at the borders of Palestine.
There's also a practical aspect to this debate: Islam is a faith that's lasted 1400 years, and which has about a billion adherants. The idea that you're going to get people to give it up is foolish in the extreme. The idea that we are utterly culturally impatible with people of this faith also strikes me as rather pessimistic.
Declaring that we are at war with the members of this faith, quite frankly, strikes me as simply insane. Although I've seen some people who adhere to "Islam is slavery" mentality say exactly that.
I suggest that it would be better to learn about the faith, have tolerance toward it, and gently urge its members in the Middle East toward modernity. We may well fail, of course. But what, pray tell, are the alternatives?
Dean,
You give the Muslims a bit more credit than they deserve. They have not fallen to thier present state in just the past 100 years (or so), and it's not JUST the Wahabbis that have led them there either.
The basic problem is that they have allowed religion to control government. If the Christians did the same thing, the west would suck as badly as the middle east does.
They need to break the yoke of religious tyranny before they will stand a chance at actual freedom.
Um -- when did I send that article to you? I don't remember ever reading it, much less sending it to anyone. (I checked my sent mail -- nothing to you from my computer since March 9th. Are you sure you aren't mixing me up with someone else?)
Ack! Ignore that last comment. I misread the name "Arnold," who is certainly not me. I could have sworn I saw "Andrea." I must go to bed -- I am starting to hallucinate. =O
You might be interested in these two articles describing the status of Jews in Arab lands prior to the establishment of the state of Israel:
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/anti-semitism/Jews_in_Arab_lands_(gen).html
http://www.jimena-justice.org/faq/memmi.htm
While certainly no expert on the subject, I think that you may have overstated Muslim religious tolerance a bit.
Gary: Well, I'm going to talk like I disagree with you here, but I'll bet we actually agree, and that you're just using shorthand. ;-)
But I wanna point out: Many Western liberal Democracies are officially Christian. The United Kingdom is explicitely Christian, for example, even though most Brits don't go to church and most don't believe in God.
On the flip side, in America, we are explicitely non-religious in our government, yet the overwhelming majority of the populace believes in God and professes strong religious belief, and most people are members of some religious denomination.
Churches still have a huge influence on our politics. We have separated them in some ways, but their core influence is still huge. As Reverend King and Malcolm X could tell you. ;-)
So my argument for you--although I am willing to bet you mostly agree with this, and that we don't really disagree--is that it's not that we're free from religion. It's that we have, socially, come to a broad consensus that intolerant sectarianism is bad and that religious tolerance, including tolerance of non-belief, is necessary for a functioning society.
And I think most of our religious authorities have come to the same conclusion--that rabid or violent intolerance of those of differing faiths is simply not Christian, not in keeping with the values of the Torah, etc. I think that's really where we've benefitted.
What I'm saying is that Muslims have shown they have this same capacity in other times and places. They have done it. In many times in their history, they were way better about it than Christians, and better than Jews were when Jews were actually in power in places like ancient Judea.
So I say they just need to rediscover the liberal ideals within their faith. I'd like to think we can help with that, although obviously they have to do most of it for themselves.
Eric Himmelfarb: I will try to read the articles in question soon, but I must ask: do they examine the tolerance of Jews by Christians over the last 1,500 years in Europe? Is there any discussion of the Jews of Spain in those articles?
I'm talking about the Muslim record of religious tolerance throughout its 1,400 year history, as compared to the religious tolerance shown by Jews toward idolaters and some other religions (like, oh, say, Ba'al worshippers and idolaters) throughout their 5,000 year history. And as compared to the tolerance toward other faiths shown by Christians throughout their faith's 2,000 history.
Do the articles look at the issue from that perspective? Or is it just a catalog of grievances in certain times and places? If so, do I get to ask about Samson's tolerance toward the Philistines, or Jews' tolerance toward Moabites or the residents of Jericho?
Andrea: You know the funny thing is, I do that all the time. I see a message from Arnold and I think, "Ooh, Andrea's here!" Or I see one from you and I think, "Man, Arnold's posting a lot lately." %-)
By the way, I want to make two other points:
1) When I said Islam has, at various points in history, shown an unusual tolerance toward other faiths, please be clear: I mean in comparison to what other faiths in other parts of the world were showing, or have shown at other points in history.
2) Before any snarky "all religion is evil" twits come lurking about, let me point out that atheists and strict secularists have people like Stalin and Mao in their history, and would do well to keep their arrogance at bay.
Dean,
The articles do at least make some comparison with religious persecution of Jews in Europe, and the first explicitly states near the beginning that "Jewish communities in Arab and Islamic countries fared better overall than those in Christian lands in Europe." This article does become a catalogue of persecutions towards the end in the section entitled "Violence Against Jews". I still find this catalogue interesting because it shows clearly that persecution of Jews over the past thousand years is not purely a European Christian (and more recently a European racialist) phenomenon. Of note, some of the discriminatory practices in Europe and the Middle East were quite similar, such as the requirement that Jews wear distinctive clothing (enacted by a 9th century caliph in Baghdad; after the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) in Europe).
Memmi, a Tunisian Jew by birth, seems to believe that the levels of persecution in both places were roughly equal, if the 20th century Russian pogroms and the Holocaust are excluded from consideration. I'm skeptical about this for, among other reasons, the rise to wealth and prominence of some Jews at a very early date in the Muslim world and the scale of massacres and expulsions of Jews which occurred in Europe throughout the medieval period. I also happen to think he isn't sensitive enough to the mistreatment of Christians within the Muslim world, though he does discuss it briefly at points. That said, he does make interesting points about the role that simply being a minority among Arabs played in persecution of Jews, about the improved quality of life for Jews during the colonial period, and about the origin of the "myth" prevalent among political Leftists that "the Arabs were oppressed, therefore they could not be anti-Semites."
I agree with you that the Muslim world has, overall, been more religiously tolerant over the last 1500 years than has Europe. I simply thought that your post overstated the level of religious tolerance in the Muslim world.
Incidentally, you might like to look at Paul Halsall's internet medieval sourcebook: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook.html
It has many, many interesting items, including a very thorough list of documents relating to European anti-Semitism under "Jewish Life."
Oh, gee... I feel as though I really ought to weigh in on this one. However... what with Holy Week and Easter, I've just been through eight worship services in the past eight days, which meant pulling five different sermons together... And today is my first day off in three weeks...
I'll limit myself to the hasty observation, from within a Christian perspective, that submission to God-- however one parses that notion on a theoretical level-- can sometimes amount in practice to adamant refusal to submit to this or that regnant earthly power. So in that sense, "submission" is a concept which can cut either way.
But enough! More, perhaps, once I'm rested up... :-)
Dean:
I agree with much of what you said, though I think you're missing one idea: That Islam doesn't deal well with loss of power. Islam is "tolerant" by historic standards, but not by modern ones -- and then only if Muslims are in charge. Then they're magnanimous.
But you learn about someone's character just as much in defeat as in victory. Muslims were tolerant of the Jews, until the Jews were in charge. Now look at 'em. They were tolerant of Christians, until Christians began to win.
Bernard Lewis, in What Went Wrong, says that the Christian world, convulsed by religious wars, found that answer in separation of Church and State and official religious tolerance. Islam has caught that Christian disease of religious warring, Lewis said, and may need to use the Christian cure. But will they take the medicine?
Churches still have a huge influence on our politics. We have separated them in some ways, but their core influence is still huge. As Reverend King and Malcolm X could tell you. ;-)
D'oh!
Tell me again...which government program has has built its foundation on the specific acceptance of Jesus as your Saviour?
Er, none. And it's a good thing, too.
Ara:
It's a good thing ... for the church and for the state.
A government that incorporates religious principles is not at all the same as a government that enforces religious law.
That's my key point.
There is not one muslim country that offers any semblance of religious freedom, not one. That's out of how many, several dozen? What was your point again? Oh, yeah, they used to be so liberal.
While the following citation isn't exactly about religion, it is about toleration and dissent in the Mid-East. Check out Charles Paul Freund's article on the fall of Pan-Arabism at Reason Online:
"The fall of Baghdad this month was accompanied by another event that was less visible but that has potentially far greater consequences: the collapse of Pan-Arabism as an essential and controlling aspect of Arab political thought. Because the triumph of Pan-Arabism half a century ago led to the eclipse of liberal thought in the Arab world, Pan-Arabism's collapse may well make room for liberalism's gradual return in the region's discourse. That could in turn allow the region to break its historic cycle of political failure and economic stagnation. If that occurs, it would be a clear—if perhaps paradoxical—case of liberal interests advanced and served by military means; the true victors of the overthrow of Iraqi Ba'thism would be the long-powerless Arab liberals."
Two things:
From what I understand, a lot of what is attributed to Islam and the Middle East in its "golden period" was actually imported from outsiders. Numbers, for instance, came from India. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but does anyone know how much scientific and philosophical progress was actually made by Islamic culture itself, and how much was imported, contributed by conquered peoples, etc.?
Second, Bernard Lewis has a good book called the Muslim Discovery of Europe, which documents the basic lack of curiosity the Islamic world (even at its height) had towards European culture and science. That may have been justified in the beginning, but even at its most arrogant, Europeans were always curious to learn about what they considered to be lesser cultures. Since Islamic culture and Christian culture had access to much of the same learning (and Islam had it first), could it be that the most basic reason they went so different ways was that Christians / Europeans were curious, and Muslims / Arabs not?
Dean, although I'm not a 'snarky "all religion is evil" twit', I do have to disagree with what you said a bit.
The fact that Stalin and Mao were atheists has nothing whatsoever to do with their crimes. Atheism is not an enabler or a motivator. Banning religion is not 'atheism', it's a tool to avoid political and ideological rivals. The fact that they did not believe in God has about as much to do with the 100+ million they killed as the fact that Mao was bald and Stalin had a moustache.
On the flipside of the coin, OBL was most certainly enabled AND motivated by religion. The Spanish Inquisition was most certainly enabled and motivated by religion. A theocratic government's repression of the populace is enabled and motivated by religion.
The United States has, for example, an atheistic government. Not that it's comprised of atheists, of course, but it operates independently of any supernatural deities and the doctrines of various religions.
Aside from banning all religions, the Soviet Union, and China, et al, were equally devoid of religious influence (unless, of course, you consider Marxist fantasies to be religious in nature. surely, for communism to work, some sort of divine intervention would be required).
My point is that an 'atheocracy' is pretty much tabula rasa as it comes to ideologies, whereas theocracies have a pretty bad track record of repression in the name of the Almighty.
Uh, Dean? You are just about making Arnold's point for him. Christian faith may have "submission to God's will" in its prescription, but our society had to painfully divorce itself from the descriptive part of this belief before "rule of reality" could get anywhere. Arnold seems to be saying that a similar divorce is (a) necessary for Islamic societies to get out of their hole, and (b) hasn't happened yet. Islam and Christianity are on different sides of this painful chasm right now, and they don't have another 500+ years to work it out.
I'm always a bit confused by the argument that Muslim societies in the past were open and rich in science, and therefore Islam cannot now be closed and intellectually oppressive. Clearly Islam and its societies changed; the gates of Ijtihad were locked (and the keys lost), and the cognitive dissonance between reality and the Qranic prescription (that the house of Islam must needs conquer the house of War) is gaping wider each year. So "they used to be better than this" just doesn't seem a very salient argument in favor of present-day Islamic society, though it can serve as demonstration that change for the better is possible without breaking the spiritual core.
If a differential argument between Christianity and Islam is to be made, it may well hinge on how much our "western" culture has overcome the limitations of its religious doctrine without (perhaps) ditching the spiritual core, whereas Islam has retained the unity of religious and worldly law, and is now suffocating from the resulting deadlock. (Obviously this is a horrendous abbreviation of the argument, but this is a comment section :-).
Part of the problem with seperation of Church and State is that in Islam, there is explicitly a revealed system of Law that governs right conduct.
Whereas in Christianity there was a tradition going back to Jesus himself with his whole "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's".
In Christianity, seperation of Church and State is listed as an ideal by it's founder. In Islam the Prophet took exactly the opposite tack.
And most of the Islamic Empires that were friendly to other faiths were not native to Arabia, and all (as commanded in the Koran) drew the line at those outside of Christians and Jews (other "People of the Book", they are not blamed for believing the Old Version. If fact that's all that gives them ANY status to practice their faith under Sharia).
It is under Kurdish, Turkic, Persian and European Empires that Muslim Arabs have allowed religious tolerance.
If you take the theocracy out of Islam, you get Sufi's (who I admire very much, it's like Zen with a more Western sense of Humor. Anyone know any good Nasrudin jokes?)
"Nasrudin walks into a bank, and says to the teller, I'd like to cash this check. She replies, can you identify yourself? Nasrudin pulls out a pocket mirror, looks in it and says, Yes, that's me!"
"Nasrudin rode his donkey around town all day shouting Has anyone seen my donkey?"
But the Sufis are considered heretics by most Muslims, as were Protestants in their day, so there IS hope, just don't look to it in any fatwa.
Please don't lump Stalin and Mao in with real secularists such as the followers of objectivism. The role of a barely disguised mysticism in Communism is central to its enforcement. That's why objectivism came up with the term "collectivist" to comprehend followers of religious, racial, national and ideological mysticism. No criticism or independent thought is allowed. And, no, I don't consider Ayn Rand my goddess or infallible. Just very wise, as proven over and over in the last century or so.
Fierce secularists and atheists deserve having Mao and Stalin thrown in their faces exactly as much as Christians deserve to have the inquisitions and the crusades thrown in their faces. It is every bit as fair, and every bit as appropriate.
And yes, atheism has too been an enabler and motivator for mass slaughter--every bit as much as any religion ever has.
Atheism and rabid secularism start with the presumption that all values are equal and a entirely matter of opinion. They also devolve reguarly to the view that there is no such thing as ultimate authority or clear-cut right and wrong.
And so the notion that secularism is "tabula rasa" is, not to put too fine a point on it, a bunch of crap.
Ayn Rand and Alan Dershowitz deserve having Mao thrown in their faces as much as any Christian deserves having Torquemada thrown in his.
By the way, I'm not a Christian.
Islam has had quite a bit of internal strife and warfare. Most especially between the Shiites and the Sunis, but there have been many others.
I look at these things from a long-term historical perspective. Christendom today has evolved into a secularist society moderated by religious influences it generally chooses to pretend are not there--but which are very strong and very influential nonetheless.
In the whole vast scope of history, the worst you can say about Islam is that the jury is still out. To my eyes, it looks to be, at most, a century or so behind the West. For a 1400 year old faith, that's not exactly an insurmountable lead to have to overcome.
From that perspective, the notion that they cannot develop these values simply because they haven't done so on a mass scale yet strikes me as the height of cultural arrogance.
What's funny is, generally speaking, I'm the one who gets accused of cultural arrogance. Because I do believe we have a superior culture to the Arab world. I just think we're idiots if we think that this is because Islam is screwed up, and it takes a very shallow, ill-informed view of history to assume that Islam is this massively backward and stupid religion that makes progress impossible.
They were way, way, way ahead of us, not all that long ago. And that's a fact. Despite the fact that they started the race a lot later than us. But now they've stumbled, and we think that this means they'll never get back up? How foolish is that?
By the way, there is no code of law in use in the West today that is not based on religious principles.
The question is not whether there is religious principle involved in the law, or religious ethos. Parts of the world have legal traditions that stem from the code of Hammurabi. Some from the Torah. Some from the Sharia. Many come from the British Common Law system, which sprang directly and undeniably from the Christian tradition.
Christ was an interesting figure in that he claimed that some of the old Torah laws were man-made. He also did specifically suggest a difference between church and state when he said "render unto Ceasar." But then again, he claimed to be the fulfillment of the law, not "the fulfillment of the separation of God from the law."
There is a profound misunderstanding of Sharia law here in the west. People act as if it were one system of government or interpretation. But this is bogus. The Koran can no more cover every aspect of law and interpretation of it than the Christian Old Testamnt can. There are at least four major schools of Sharia interpretation in use in the Muslim world, and several minor ones. All have substantial non-Koranic codes of law, because they have to. Many are far more liberal than others.
We can sit here forever trying to find ways in which it is impossible for Islam to ever become anything but a backward, closed, repressive, Mideival religion and system. If that's where you're at, fine. I can find just as much reason to explain to you why Christianity could never have possibly produced the West that we did today, and why secularism has proven to be a tool of death and destruction and despair.
Do you think you're going to talk 1 billion Muslims into giving up their faith?
Do you find it utterly futile to even attempt to find a way to find common ground with these people, or to help show them the way to a better social system without having to give up everything they hold most sacred?
Fuck it, let's just kill all the Muslims and be done with it. They're a bunch of stupid ignorant closed-minded barbaric savages, right?
By the way: if Christ really invented separation of church and state, I find it rather pathetic that it took Christians about 1800 years to figure out how to implement it.
Must be because it's such a backward and oppressive faith, eh?
I will believe that true reform has arrived in the Middle East when we see a free press openly criticize its own government without retribution. Only then will we see actual reform in the way Middle Eastern governments operate. A free press in one integral element in all free societies.
As everybody already knows, Middle Eastern nations have a centuries long trend toward strongman rule. This is truer since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. After that, every single nation in the Middle East opted for kings, dictators and strongman rule.
This not only illustrates the naiveté of the international organization method of keeping international peace. It also reflects the impotence of both the League of Nations and the United Nations. Neither one enforced any of its resolutions, not that either organization cared. The United Nations is a glorified debating society huffing, puffing and doing nothing.
Additionally, the mandate system instituted by the League of Nations created the modern Middle Eastern map of man-made, arbitrarily drawn boundaries between nations lumping together dissimilar nationalities in single countries and splitting others. Iraq incorporates Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds in one nation. I believe Britain managed that mandate. This is a major obstacle we have in making a lasting peace in recently liberated Iraq.
Kurds cross three international boundaries, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. I believe only an arbitrarily drawn map could do such a thing. This is another problem created by the League of Nations in 1919-1921. This is also another hurdle America must clear to retain the confidence of Turkey, gain the trust of Iraq, and keep Syria at bay. This is no easy task.
Nobody, not pundits, not academicians, not even people on this blog site ever discuss the stable 99 years preceding WWI. It was based on a balance of power keeping a relative peace among nations of the world. It worked better than anything we see today ever did. I am no fan of using international organizations such as the UN or the League as you can tell. I believe our world is better off without them. They are impotent. They cost trillions of dollars with zilch to show for it. They also created many problems in the twentieth century that America is cleaning up in the twenty-first. I am interested in discovering others’ opinions.
>> Second, Bernard Lewis has a good book called the Muslim Discovery of Europe, which documents the basic lack of curiosity the Islamic world (even at its height) had towards European culture and science. That may have been justified in the beginning, but even at its most arrogant, Europeans were always curious to learn about what they considered to be lesser cultures. Since Islamic culture and Christian culture had access to much of the same learning (and Islam had it first), could it be that the most basic reason they went so different ways was that Christians / Europeans were curious, and Muslims / Arabs not?
Posted by Bjørn Stærk at April 22, 2003 08:08 AM
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Bjørn Stærk,
You make some very insightful comments regarding the Middle East. However, I doubt that Moslems were not curious people. After all, Arabs developed algebra and the Arabic language along with its alphabet and some modern medicinal practices, such as quarantining.
I see Arabs making the same mistake the Chinese did. The Chinese also thought themselves superior to any other culture, and that foreign cultures could teach nothing to China. The Arabs in the Middle East thought much the same thing. They also believed themselves superior to European nations, and that Europe had nothing to teach them.
This necessarily sealed the entire Ottoman world out from European technological advances.
So, guess what happened when England, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands developed strong galleys to sail the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific? The adequate Levantine ships sailing the calm waters of the Mediterranean, Red Sea, and Persian Gulf were no match for these man-o-wars that could carry larger cannons. Resultantly, principalities of the Ottoman Empire lost successive naval engagements and could not toss out the Europeans.
Bernard Lewis illustrates this best with Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798. Napoleon rampaged around Egypt for two years doing as he saw fit. Then the British tossed him out in 1800. This lesson taught the Arabs 2 things. First, the Arabs could not repel any European invader of the Moslem, or Arabic, world. Second, Arabs learned that it takes a European power to toss out another European power. In short, the Arabs could no longer defend themselves from outsiders. It has been this way for the past two hundred years. The only exception being that America has displaced France, Russia, and Austria. This exact same thing happened to China when she lost Hong Kong and Macao to foreign invaders.
Everything changed along with the genesis of the industrial revolution. China spent two hundred years catching the west. China still pursues the west economically and industrially. The Arabs spent two hundred years blaming Europeans then America for their plight. I personally believe that Arabs have always had trouble dealing with the west. They admit this themselves; however, they offer on solution.
You can say the Arabs are certainly hoist with their own petard. I believe their petard was their own arrogance or narrow-mindedness if you will. They have certainly not modernized either culturally or economically. Their only asset is oil. Oil has corrupted Arabs as much as it helped the Arab people.
If Arabs developed culturally to properly utilize their only asset then oil could benefit the Arabs greatly. As it stands, oil only enriches corrupt Arab governments; and they made quite a mess of things in the entire Middle East.
Thankyou for your comment on my site.
Your knowledge is very vast of current affairs, and other religions :)
And everything you have stated about Islam, concerning the previous past is accurate, and correct.
Just one comment to Gary: Islam is a way of life, and hence it has a central role to play in the government-Islam isn’t a secularist religion-if God created us, and gave us a book to follow, the least as humans we can do is implement it. God is the all-knower, and has infinite knowledge, unlike us humans, who merely come and go.
You state that ‘they’ have allowed religion to control governments-in the present time we live in, I really cant see any true Islamic governing. Some countries may follow the Islamic Shariha [Law]-but that is not the only thing we’re meant to follow, some of these governments oppress their own people, like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and this is definitely not what Islam has taught. If you look to the past-when Islam was at a very dominant period-it was because they followed closely what God revealed, and what his messenger Muhummad peace be upon him laid out. But now a days, if you look at all the governments, e.g. in the middle East, they rarely follow the laws that God has set.
And a comment to rlbtzero-the governments you look at now, aren’t ones which are exactly following Islam, rather they are doing the opposite, you say that they don’t offer religious freedom, well, some of the Middle East governments don’t even offer freedom for their own Religious scholars to speak the truth about them, if they do, then they are put to jail, or chased down by authorities, like recently in Saudi Arabia, there has been a crackdown on religious scholars.
And Bjrn Stark-a lot of progress was made in the scientific field under Islamic culture-just research it. There are some books on it too.
And Perry The Cynic-nice comments made. But as Muslims, we believe that if we follow the Qur’an and Sunnah [Life of Prophet] then we will be successful, if we are patience, success doesn’t come straight away..
And Dean Esmay made some great points in the post that started of ‘Islam has had quite a bit of internal strife and warfare……..’
People’s knowledge here is quite vast, and nice to see people having a dialogue.
Bye
>>…Islam is a way of life, and hence it has a central role to play in the government-Islam isn’t a secularist religion-if God created us, and gave us a book to follow, the least as humans we can do is implement it. God is the all-knower, and has infinite knowledge, unlike us humans, who merely come and go.
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Tora,
Is the close tie between Islam and its government due to the Ottoman government’s close ties to the caliphate? I believe Middle Eastern nations were less theocratic after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. If so, that means the caliphate died with the Ottoman Empire. If I remember my Ottoman history correctly, the caliphate was closely tied to supreme rulers of the Middle East during the Ottoman Empire and before.
The League of Nations created man-made boundaries throughout the entire Middle East previously governed by the Ottomans. You can easily tell this by examining the straight lines composing boundaries throughout the region. They included many dissimilar groups, or tribes, and split others. Iraq is one good example since it includes Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites while splitting the Kurds with Turkey and Syria. I guess we can thank those international organizations such as The League Nations for this mess.
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>>…You state that ‘they’ have allowed religion to control governments-in the present time we live in, I really can’t see any true Islamic government. Some countries may follow the Islamic Sharia [Law]-but that is not the only thing we’re meant to follow, some of these governments oppress their own people, like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and this is definitely not what Islam has taught. If you look to the past-when Islam was at a very dominant period-it was because they followed closely what God revealed, and what his messenger Muhammad peace be upon him laid out. But now a days, if you look at all the governments, e.g. in the Middle East, they rarely follow the laws that God has set.
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Tora,
Were the Arab Moslems dominant while they were the ascending culture in the Middle East? Arabs created algebra, the Arabic language as well as advancements in medicine still practiced in the west today. I believe they even had the finest swords in the world made of Damascus steel. Swords were important weapons until the invention of firearms. Arabs continuously conquered other nations throughout southern Europe until 1698.
That was the year the Austrians forced the Arabs to sign the treaty of Carlowitz with Austria codifying their disastrous loss to the Austrians. The Moslem Arabs experienced a slow decline in influence in their region and the world since then. I personally believe the true decline in Arab world influence occurred since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the mid 1700’s. I do not know of one single cultural advancement in the Arab world since then.
The Chinese also made this same mistake in dismissing the west for so long. They are still playing catch up with the west industrially and economically. However, the Chinese are making quite a good run of it. Their economic growth in 2003 is a phenomenal 8%! Arabs appear to me to still blame Jews, Israel and the America for all their ills.
This is no solution to the mess in the Middle East. Clearly, Arabs need new leadership to pull themselves out their quagmire. Dictators and kings only pillage their countries' oil wealth refusing to improve the plight of their own Arab population at all. Look at the hundreds of millions of American dollars found in Iraq by American G.I.’s the past week alone. Saddam hoarded this money for who knows how long. The Saudis are not much better. The Shah did not improve the lot of average Iranians at all with the tremendous oil wealth he accumulated.
This is all a terrible shame indicating that the entire Moslem world probably will not resolve its problems repeating mistakes with the past with the same authoritarian governments. I personally believe Arab governments are the cause of their own internal problems.
This leads me to conclude that America and Israel, and yes the Jews, are simply scapegoats for many of these corrupt Arab governments. Sorry Tora, I just believe the Middle East Rx requires what Monty Python used to call “now time for something completely different.”
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>>… some of the Middle East governments don’t even offer freedom for their own Religious scholars to speak the truth about them, if they do, then they are put to jail, or chased down by authorities, like recently in Saudi Arabia, there has been a crackdown on religious scholars. And Bjorn Stark-a lot of progress was made in the scientific field under Islamic culture-just research it. There are some books on it too.
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Tora,
Is this one good reason for trying an entirely new form of government in Iraq? Do you believe a democratic form of government in Iraq is worth a try? The old system worked well for its day. Modern Middle Eastern governments have really messed up their own neighborhood.
Dean, I wasn't meaning to imply that Christian nations in the West had an easy time of seperating Church and State, just that it might be a bit easier to pull it off if your religions founder is a pacifist rather than a military leader.
David Warren has a longish piece on the political differences surrounding the birth of Christianity and Islam here.
The current culture of Arab Islam (in the main) is tribal. That is not 100 years behind the West. It is 2,000 to 3,000 years behind the West.
To operate a modern state you need trust outside the kin group. You need trust outside the city. In fact you need trust across regions.
Always know all the facts before you make a strong statement. Remember, Islam is one of the fastest growing religions in the world.
Always know all the facts before you make a strong statement. Remember, Islam is one of the fastest growing religions in the world.
Always know all the facts before you make a strong statement. Remember, Islam is one of the fastest growing religions in the world.
Always know all the facts before you make a strong statement. Remember, Islam is one of the fastest growing religions in the world.
Always know all the facts before you make a strong statement. Remember, Islam is one of the fastest growing religions in the world.
This site has some good information. Keep up the good work.