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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Senate The Middle East Discussion Thread

Discussion in 'Community' started by Ghost, Jun 11, 2014.

  1. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
    Complexion wise? Sorta is...
     
  2. dp4m

    dp4m Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Nov 8, 2001

    Attempting to pass a law that requires school lunches to have pork in them.

    Good luck explaining that one away. :p
     
  3. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
    Prescribing what you can't eat is barbaric. Especially when that involves pig products.
     
  4. Darth Punk

    Darth Punk JCC Manager star 7 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Nov 25, 2013
    i remember that, pork or nothing.
     
  5. Jabba-wocky

    Jabba-wocky Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    May 4, 2003
    Ender: Your post isn't really a response to dp4m's point. As he noted, the logic would have held as true in 1960 or even 1990 as it any other time. So why is it only in the last decade or so that religiously-affiliated articles of clothing became such an outrageous violation of what is supposed to be a long-standing principle? It's not Jewish or Islamic dress codes that have changed. French society just became less tolerant of it.

    As to the separate issue of the ISIS article, I told you earlier I was only partway through it. Having finished now, I hold to my original concerns. The breathlessly presses the case that they hold to original teachings about the conduct of war. Yet, in the middle of citing an approving jihadi scholar, he has to point out that said scholar disagrees sharply over their use of suicide bombers. How does that work? His whole argument is that they are the highest fidelity representation of "original" medieval Islam. Why is it, then, that he does not even try to explain their embrace of a military tactic involves act explicitly forbidden at multiple points in Islam's religious canon? Conceivably, yes, there might be some explanation that reconciles the two, but one can't argue that a good argument has been made when it wholly ignores such a point of enormous tension.
     
  6. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
    I'll respond in reverse order, if that's ok.

    I asked about the article because you were questioning a point I made that was summarising an argument therein, and I could not be sure whether you felt it was my view or what I took from the piece.

    Aren't we though really just agreeing in a roundabout way that IS' theological underpinnings are weak at best? That despite their attempts to really "emulate" the behavior of the prophet they disagree on suicide bombing because the suicide aspect is theological contestable?

    The reality is, what IS do is not Islamic because Islam is not an immutable and time-locked concept. The central message in Islam is in some parts utterly wonderful, and in others illiberal and prescriptive.

    As for the dp4m piece; why do you think France became less tolerant of it? You asked what's changed, but proceed to ignore the changes that caused the hardening of the secularism laws.
     
  7. Hank Hill

    Hank Hill Jedi Knight star 2

    Registered:
    Feb 9, 2013
  8. Jabba-wocky

    Jabba-wocky Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    May 4, 2003
    I guess for me the take away is different. While I accept that religions change over time, I don't think it's relevant here since they've designated one period as the fixed point of comparison they want to recreate. What has more weight for me--and what this piece touched on less--is the way in which the group fails to do so. That's the basis for my agreeing that IS is not Islamic.

    Moving on, though, I think I've made my case about why I dislike the French moves a couple of times now. If I'm missing something, I'd gladly here what it is. Would you mind making the positive case to defend these policies? Exactly what changes do you see as justifying what's happened?
     
  9. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
    Sure; I think there's a point at which this frustrated backlash against Islam in particular has arisen has been in the last 15 years in particular in response to waves of migration from the Arab world to countries like France, Holland, Denmark, Germany, England etc. It's a complex and layered argument, so if I miss some facets out I apologise, but you have factors like... Europeans worrying excessively that their culture is disappearing. Muslims actively seeking to denigrate the culture of the country they live in. Muslims feeling persecuted and targeted by the war on the terror. The lack of connectivity, perceived or real, between Muslim communities and multiculturalism.

    But most importantly, this kind of ideological and structural change in Islam itself which has made it suffer the equivalent of a cranky temper. People using Islam for violent means isn't new, by any stretch, but the extent to which the religion has seen this violent, regressive, self-styled fundamentalist strains emerge has ramped up of late. I would attribute it to the violent reaction to the death of an old-guard, and birth of a new, but that's an instinctive thing. I can't point to examples without doing some research first, if that's what you want.

    So, Islam's going through teething problems itself (as much as it can be anthropomorphised) and it's not getting alone well with Europeans, both because it's crankly and close minded and because the Europeans are used to people wanting to be more like them, and not retain and identity. Relations have been sour for a long while. This notion that Europeans dislike Islam just because is wrong to me; they see Islam itself as incompatible with their liberalism. I'm not saying if this is right or wrong, but they can and often have made a choice to say "no, this is our country, and these are our rules".

    I guess my point is that the state of Euro-Islamic relations is the fault of no one party, and it emerged in response to issues within both camps. It wasn't just the French deciding to bully a group, for example.
     
  10. SuperWatto

    SuperWatto Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Sep 19, 2000
    Good points, but there's one more:
    The migration has been happening since the sixties, when the first Arabs, with few prospects at home, were invited to come to Europe to perform low wage tasks that the Europeans themselves didn't get around to, being all wrapped up in restaurations. Arabs started filling in the lower class all across Western Europe. The governments were mostly left-wing and liberal - people were allowed to maintain their identity and government documents were issued in Arabic. The low wage migrant families were never really asked to make an effort to fit in and then they got kids. The kids grow up with less chances in life than their native peers, and their cultural identity is low-class. Back in the motherland though, it still shines brightly. It's like German Sehnsucht all over again.
    Then when 9/11 took place, people started to doubt their own laissez-faire attitude. So what we have now is a kind of backlash towards former liberal policies.
     
  11. DarthPhilosopher

    DarthPhilosopher Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Jan 23, 2011
    Regarding Europe; I think it's clearly a result of the economic situation in Europe and the Arab Winter. This happened in the 1930's and I think this is a similar situation, only we don't really have a far-left in this situation. This will calm down, probably, once the economic situation improves so I'm not terribly concerned - in the long run - about Europe (although I am concerned about the immediate violence been seen from the far-right).

    Regarding the Middle-East; I have always seen this as the violent readjustment seen following big societies collapsing (Germany 18-45, Russia 17-38, 91-present, etc). It is a symptom of the failure of the 1919 treaty and the inability of the Arab world to naturally adjust to its reorganisation because of the artificial borders imposed following the Ottoman collapse. This created sectarian violence and a view of the West as occupiers which compounded the issues and then, as always, created fascists.
     
  12. Chancellor_Ewok

    Chancellor_Ewok Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Nov 8, 2004
    An Iraqi Army assault on Mosul may be coming in the spring.
     
  13. SuperWatto

    SuperWatto Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Sep 19, 2000
    "The Iraqi military has also had fresh training, some of it conducted by U.S. and allied forces, to make it more effective."

    How wonderfully reassuring!
     
    Violent Violet Menace likes this.
  14. DANNASUK

    DANNASUK Force Ghost star 7

    Registered:
    Nov 1, 2012
    Christ. That's slightly worrying.
     
  15. Chancellor_Ewok

    Chancellor_Ewok Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Nov 8, 2004
  16. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
  17. Chancellor_Ewok

    Chancellor_Ewok Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Nov 8, 2004
    CNN has reported on that as well.
     
  18. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
    Yeah but they were calling ebola the IS or al-Qaeda of virus' so... they're basically a classier FOXNews at this point.
     
    Rogue_Ten likes this.
  19. Rogue_Ten

    Rogue_Ten Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Aug 18, 2002
    remember when the world was ending from ebola? good times. Jabbadabbado wet dream come true

    to be fair, the irresponsible and counterproductive reaction of the global establishment has been so staggering that its pretty astonishing that we didn't wind up creating a pandemic (yet)
     
  20. Jabbadabbado

    Jabbadabbado Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 19, 1999
    99 new cases of ebola in the week up to 2/22. 23,729 total confirmed cases, 9,604 deaths. Though belated, the U.S. response in Liberia has been a triumph. The noteworthy part is that intense intervention did not arrive until the U.S. public perceived (mostly mistakenly) a direct threat. The disasters in Syria and Iraq are worth noting, as they've become fertile ground for launching new pandemics. A public health disaster that's impossible to contend with or contain.
     
  21. ShaneP

    ShaneP Ex-Mod Officio star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 26, 2001
  22. Lord Vivec

    Lord Vivec Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Apr 17, 2006
    Bangladesh is quite far away from Iraq/Syria/ISIS
     
  23. Violent Violet Menace

    Violent Violet Menace Manager Emeritus star 5 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Aug 11, 2004
    No reporting was needed. IS released the footage themselves of them clubbing to pieces a Babylonian winged lion from 700 BC, among other artifacts. Of course, the selling off thing happens too.
     
  24. ShaneP

    ShaneP Ex-Mod Officio star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 26, 2001

    Wow, you're right. I mistook this for the muslim thread for some reason.
     
  25. ShaneP

    ShaneP Ex-Mod Officio star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 26, 2001
    BBC is reporting the military leader of al-Nusra in Syria, Abu Homam al-Shami, has been killed in an airstrike by Assad's forces. Three other military leaders were killed as well according to reports from the group.

    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-31757502