Muslims rebels will reinvigorate culture

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In today's world, Muslims are the most talked about people. Many generalizations about them are made but divisions between Muslims are deepening.

What will change today's civilized world will be the maturity of the Muslim rebels. Not, as you may think, rebels against Western decadence.

In fact, rebels against Muslim orthodoxy and its didactic morality. Some young Muslim guns will lead the brighter of their Muslim ilk astray into a new-found world.

And along with it, they shall take us: the whites, the blacks and the East-Asians. They will write poetry and books, record films and TV, develop nightlife and behaviour that expands our boundaries.

The belief that Muslims are forever locked in an overzealous solemnity is misguided; it's only a matter of time until some geniuses bolt free and take us all on a trip we'll never forget.

I--as a jaded, sub-urban Caucasian--am looking forward.

They need a 'reformation'. We've already had ours.

We have had progressive Muslims:

" In July 1908, reform-minded Turkish nationalists known as "Young Turks" forced the Sultan to allow a constitutional government and guarantee basic rights."

And following that promising beginning...

But then the Christian, (Western) reformation involved decades of wars and strife. The English civil war formed the short-lived Commonwealth, and that period was marked with religious conflict. Don't look there in the West for a wonderful example to hold up.

Catholic /Protestant, Sunni/Shia... tolerance AND persecution has been seen in both sets of differences.

The New World met the civilised, Christian Europeans: first the Spanish left their mark, then the newly-fledged democracy further north "Won the West", though nowadays it would come with a different name.

"Can you tell me, in a world that is flagrant with the failures of cvilisations, what there is particularly immortal about yours?" G K Chesterton.


Vandike, you are right, the "Muslim" world is not monolithic any more than the "Christian" one is.
For good and ill, in both cases.

For those that don't know, I'd just like to point out one of the most significant "achievements" of the Young Turk movement: the Armenian genocide (the massacre of over a million Armenian Christians in 1915-16).

Anyway ... I can't help feeling Vandike is just having a laugh with this thread.

why? are there not allowed to be "good" muslims too? cos if you're suggesting there is not, it's stereotyping and racism of the worst kind.

I tend to agree with Klytus, to be honest. Polished though his prose may be, Vandike has provided no evidence to back up his seemingly-improbable predictions.

And I really can't see how anyone could draw the conclusion that there are not allowed to be "good" muslims from that.

i happen to agree with your first point, ascan - it certainly seems to be a provocative post, with more than a little tongue-in-cheekness about it. apologies if you're sincere about it, vandike - i'm sure you'll let me know.

as for your other point - just pointing out something in case it all gets heated. i'm a firm believer in prophylaxis...

There are good and bad Muslims. As there are good and bad Christians too. The problem is that when no one speaks out when other religious groups attacked or one group or another attack each-other. Muslims and Christians have been attacking each-other for so many years. That We all forget that We are all humans Living on this World We call Earth Together. That is the real problem in the end.

But humans have always (ok, a few local exceptions here) tended to group up. And define themselves in part by defining the "other".

There is a pull to a solidarity with the whole human race, but also a pull to the family, the tribe, the nation, the religion.

Values clash, and people with them. I would report my brother for drink-driving if I could not stop him any other way. I believe a lot of people would not dream of doing that: "He's my brother!"

"He's a good boy, he's never stolen from his family" was a quote which stuck in my mind, as an example of a different world...

Vandike seems to be saying that he welcomes the increasing influence Muslims are having in the West. Personally, I am not so optimistic. And it was this idea that made me wonder how seriously we're supposed to take this thread.

Western-style democracy is not perfect, but it's the best way of organising society that humans have yet found. What is this great new era that Vanadike is so looking forward to going to look like? I would be sceptical no matter which ethnic or religious group Vandike was talking about.

As a Brit, I will concede that my country probably has a few things to learn from immigrants when it comes to producing interesting cuisine and groovy music. But I don't think we need many fundamental changes to the way our country is run (apart from in the short term: kicking out New Labour, taking Britain out of the EU, etc. )

The fact that Vandike refers to the growing Muslim influence makes me even more sceptical, because it seems that the Muslims in the West with the loudest voices are the ones with the most radical, intolerant views. Of course there are many Muslims who do integrate into Western society. So what? There are many Chinese people who integrate into Western society too. If we decide to let more Chinese into Europe, are they going to help propel us into some new golden age? I doubt it. But they'd probably integrate, on average, far better than the Muslims.
Maybe there will be a Reformation in the Muslim world one day. But while we're waiting for it to happen, I'd rather we do without yet more little sharia colonies in Britain.

What does disease prevention have to do with this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophylaxis

"prophylaxis" as in "prevention".

an idiomatic usage, i dare say.

It's only a matter of time until a Muslim does something more life-affirming and shocking than having sexual intercourse on his mother's grave. Long live the rebels.

Vandike opined

I suspect some confusion here. Muslim orthodoxy has nothing to do with the so-called Islamo-fascists who attract so much of our attention. They represent about a tenth of one percent of Muslims, if that. (Still a lot of people, though). What you imagine is Muslim orthoxy - Wahabbism - is in fact a movement which can be traced back little more than 100 years, and until well into the second half of the last century comprised of just a few dozen intellectuals. The spur to its growth was the unwarranted interference in one Arab country after another by the so-called Great Powers, not to spread democracy but to secure the area (a) to keep control of the oil, and (b) to keep out Russia (at the time, of course, the Soviet Union).

Let's take Iran as an example. Iran is an ancient country, whose people have a long history of political awareness. In 1951, in a perfectly free, modern-style election, the very popular politician Dr Mohammed Mossadegh won a landslide election on the platform of bringing under state ownership the Iranian interests of what is now British Petroleum, which had a monopoly over oil in Iran and paid the government - and the Iranian people - next to nothing for it. His nationalization bill was passed unanimously by the Iranian Parliament. Good old "sanctions" were then applied which crippled the Iranian economy and starved its people, but when they failed to weaken support for Mossadegh, the CIA in 1953 engineered a coup, a takeover of the government, and installed Reza Pahlavi as Shah. His father had led a pro-Nazi government during WW2, and once the Shah found his feet, his regime was pretty tight. In fact, if you so much as hinted in public that there was anything at all wrong with the way he ran the country, you were liable to prolonged barbaric torture and often death. I met many young refugees from his regime when I was at college in the 60's; I've seen first-hand evidence of the torture.

No political activity was allowed. None. In fact there was only one place where anything resembling free speech was allowed. The mosque. And as the pressure built, in the mosques of Tehran people started to organise, particularly the conservative business people who resented not so much the lack of political freedom but that of economic freedom. In 1979, the pressure became too much, there was a rebellion, led by the angriest elements of Iranian society - the students and the trade unionists. After they were heroically but inevitably pretty well massacred and the Shah's crack troops went to stand-down, the reactionaries from the mosques moved in and took power.

History, shmistory, I hear someone say. So let's come to more recent times. There has been - or I should say, was - a great unrest over the last few years in Iran. Owing to the peculiar way the government is arranged there, there was a power struggle between the genuinely moderate President Rafsanjani and the crazy mullahs. The European Union was engaged in long, patient, delicate negotiations to bring Iran more into the western mainstream, initially with some success, and Rafsanjani's popularity grew. Then President Bush blew it. Every attack he made on Iran, every meaningless insult like "axis of evil", every threat, lost more support for the moderates and increased support for the hard-liners, and in last year's election the hard-liners won, to the despair of the majority of Iranians, more than half of whom, btw, are under 20 and love rock music as much as the next kid.

So thank you, US and CIA, for another fine mess you've gotten us into, through greed over the oil and paranoia over the Russians and total ignorance of the cultures and societies you trampled all over. And a fine mess for the Iranian people - not the crazy government, they thrive on confrontation; not the isolated folks in the countryside who have probably never seen a newspaper; but the vast majority of Iranians who just want to get on and live their lives pretty much as we do, if only their government - and us - will let them.

When I travelled in Iraq and Iran and Afghanistan in the 60's as a poor kid with 50 cents a day to spend, I was treated everywhere by everybody without a single exception with generosity and kindness that truly humbled me. It taught me a lot, especially about Islam. In Kabul, one of the most beautiful cities in the world at the time, I was especially impressed by the university, the finest in Central Asia - at the time - where half the students were women. Also, there were women bus drivers, women shopworkers, women builders skilled and labouring, women everywhere strutting their stuff on the streets in blue jeans and silk tops and sweet smiles. No problem. I saw them, not on tv, I was there.

Yes, Afghanistan is in the stone age now, after a quarter century of unrelenting war. The Russians only moved in because the US was supporting rebel armies against a lawful government. I don't have to remind you, that's when Bin Laden got trained by the CIA - oops, another little error of judgement. And then the Russians got kicked, there was appalling civil war between opium-funded "warlords" for a good few years, and Operation Whatever-it-was when the US attacked. Afghanistan is in the stone age now, but it sure wasn't then. It was a beautiful country full of beautiful people, largely medieval but in the nicest possible sense, and modernising fast in the cities. Now that I'm ancient, I've given up being angry about these tragedies, tears don't come to my eyes so often. I don't despair and never have, because I still believe that with humanity's backs against the wall on account of the climate change if nothing else, a change is gonna come. I'm stuck behind a keyboard, kids, if you want that change too, get out there and make it soon. Before it's too late for all of us.

Well, I've enjoyed the debate, Vandike; sorry if this is a little long, but writing off the top of my head at speed with so much true history to convey... you know how it is.

Hey, I just caught your reply to mine on that other crazy thread of yours right here in PPR, the one about "our human stock is threatened". Welcome to WP, Vandike, sincerely.

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__homage to hans asperger__

What else made me think that Vandike might be having a laugh by starting this thread?
Well, for one thing, the fact that he has posted elsewhere about the possibility of forced sterilisation for uneducated people.
Now I am interested in demography myself. But it just seemed like a strange and controversial issue to raise in one of one's first posts on an aspie message board.

Ok, so ... taking this thread seriously for a second ... yes, I admit there are things I would like to see changed in Britain. I think that the rise of yob culture in Britain can be blamed in part on liberal policies several governments have adopted.
And it seems that liberalism is closely linked with secularism.
I personally find religion baffling, but there are probably many people out there who need something to fill the secular void in their lives. Maybe a resurgence in religious belief could benefit Britain (and Europe) in many ways. If this is the case, I would much rather people chose Christianity than Islam.
Unfortunately, our Church seems to spend most of its time apologising for its existence.

Maybe Islam has its good points, but looking at the Islamic world there are a few things that concern me. For example, there's all the business with stoning rape victims, hanging homosexuals and sentencing apostates to death. Add to this the Islamic world's almost complete lack of any scientific and technological innovation in the last 200+ years and their frankly tiresome blaming of the Jews for all their self-inflicted problems.
I could go on.

Klytus opined

Liberal policies? good grief, was I out of the country at the time?
How much have I missed?

I think that the rise of yob culture in Britain can be blamed largely on
(a) the massive unemployment during the Dark Ages of Thatcher
when so many people and their children were left loafing for years,
the social effects of which are still with us, and
(b) the megabillionpound booze industry which does doesn't care how many kids
have their faces bottled on a Friday night or kill themselves in cars on Saturday
or die early of liver disease and promotes slacker culture 'cos it's Good For Business.

Liberal policies... *chuckles*

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__homage to hans asperger__