Dirt Sands
Well-known member
- Joined
- Aug 17, 2017
- Messages
- 907
- Reaction score
- 130
Amazing analysis, no ****. As you pointed out, they don't particularly like each other. We always side with the Sunni statehoods, but ISIS, Alqueada, and others are Sunni also. The massive weaponry we just sold to Saudi Arabia, really says what side we take. Sometimes, we have to choose dictators who are less evil than those that oppose us. Something tells me were ****ing up.Very true. But the way I see it, countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are having to face the product they created. Much has been stated about how America created this problem because of its support for dictators. Often enough scholars, mostly journalists (like Stephen Kinzer), not historians, will use the CIA-led 1953 coup as a source. But this is an error because such blame removes responsibility from the region and those who are intimately responsible. The U.S. merely exacerbated a developing local problem.
- Islamic Modernists: Philosophers and academic scholars developed a theory that it was the weakened condition of Islam that had made the Muslim world so vulnerable and easily subjugated by the late nineteenth century. Instead of blaming the foreign powers, Islamic modernists from India, Iran, and Egypt agreed that the traditional ulema (religious scholars) was to blame because they, for centuries, had refused Sharia (Sacred Law) to grow as time advanced. They believed that since foreign colonial systems of economy and law were alien, Islam was necessary to unite Muslims against the Europeans. BUT, by reinterpreting the original sources to meet the demands of present day, they argued that Islam and Sharia was adaptable to democracy.
Doesn't sound so bad, right? They blamed themselves? They sought to harmonize Islam (as was done during the Golden Age) to today's systems of economy and governance? However, time continued. Europeans dug in deeper. Not only did they create a World War, in which countless Muslims died too, but Europeans actually carved up the Middle East in 1922 to try to comply with promises to local Muslim allies, thus creating Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Arabia.
- Islamists: With Rida (before WWI), but largely with al-Banna (after WWI), Islamists began to see that the "enlightened" Europeans were not so enlightened and their systems led to the deaths of almost 40 million people. And now they slashed borders across Middle East deserts? Islamists began to argue that only they could save themselves and that this meant only Islamic government. They agreed with the Modernists that some reinterpretation was necessary in order to embrace technology, philosophy, and education. But foreign systems only led to a World War. Between Rida and Qutb, all Islamist philosophers agreed that one of the purposes of creating an Islamic state was to counter the twentieth-century’s exponentially growing immorality. SO, Islamists began to argue that only Muhammad's fabled Islamic state could lead them out of subjugation and better the world.
Sound familiar? Europeans dug in deeper. Then came another, more devastating, World War. The people liked them for their social and educational programs that compensated for the local government's failures. Then came the creation of Israel. Along the way, Islamists were imprisoned, tortured, and executed for their political views and stresses upon local governments. This is why it is properly argued that Islamism was born in the Egyptian prisons. Then came the U.S. during the Cold War, which supported the strongman who would deny the Soviets. Then came an angry Qutb in 1964, who lashed out in his prison manifesto and used the U.S.' culture and dominance over the globe as an assault on Muslim society.
AND today we see the Arab Spring versus the so-called Islamic State. One pushed for socioeconomic justice, dignity, and democracy in a region-wide attempt to topple dictators. One pushed to punish Muslims in a bitter and violent display of Islamic perversion just so they could replace autocratic tyranny with religious tyranny. This represents that Islamic Modernist philosophy against the Islamist philosophy. If we are going to see this mess to the other side, we have to wake up and see this for what it is. Our foreign policy has to acknowledge what is actually going on countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and Egypt have to own the mess they created. But like the U.S., they are merely reacting.
This is because we largely lack a Foreign Policy. All of this "America First" junk and purposefully removing ourselves from world leadership just to thumb our noses at "Libruls" has pushed allies to seek other allies.
Sent from my Z833 using Tapatalk