Something To Think About.....Islam

[onmyknees]

The following is a copy of an article written by Spanish writer Sebastian Vilar Rodriguez and published in a Spanish newspaper on Jan. 15, 2008. It doesn't take much imagination to extrapolate the message to the rest of Europe - and possibly to the rest of the world.
REMEMBER AS YOU READ -- IT WAS IN A SPANISH PAPER
Date: Tue. 15 January 2008 14:30
�
ALL EUROPEAN LIFE DIED IN AUSCHWITZ By Sebastian Vilar Rodrigez
�
I walked down the street in Barcelona , and suddenly discovered a terrible truth - Europe died in Auschwitz .. We killed six million Jews and replaced them with 20 million Muslims. In Auschwitz we burned a culture, thought, creativity, talent. We destroyed the chosen people, truly chosen, because they produced great and wonderful people who changed the world.
�
The contribution of this people is felt in all areas of life: science, art, international trade, and above all, as the conscience of the world. These are the people we burned.
�
And under the pretense of tolerance, and because we wanted to prove to ourselves that we were cured of the disease of racism, we opened our gates to 20 million Muslims, who brought us stupidity and ignorance, religious extremism and lack of tolerance, crime and poverty, due to an unwillingness to work and support their families with pride.
�
They have blown up our trains and turned our beautiful Spanish cities into the third world, drowning in filth and crime.
�
Shut up in the apartments they receive free from the government, they plan the murder and destruction of their naive hosts.
�
And thus, in our misery, we have exchanged culture for fanatical hatred, creative skill for destructive skill, intelligence for backwardness and superstition.
�
We have exchanged the pursuit of peace of the Jews of Europe and their talent for a better future for their children, their determined clinging to life because life is holy, for those who pursue death, for people consumed by the desire for death for themselves and others, for our children and theirs.
�
What a terrible mistake was made by miserable Europe ...
***********************************
�
The Global Islamic population is approximately 1,200,000,000; that is ONE BILLION TWO HUNDRED MILLION or 20% of the world's population. They have received the following Nobel Prizes:

Literature:
1988 - Najib Mahfooz
�
Peace:
1978 - Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat
1990 - Elias James Corey
1994 - Yaser Arafat:
1999 - Ahmed Zewai
�
Economics:
(zero)
�
Physics:
(zero)
�
Medicine:
1960 - Peter Brian Medawar
1998 - Ferid Mourad
�
TOTAL: 7 SEVEN
�
The Global Jewish population is approximately 14,000,000; that is FOURTEEN MILLION or about 0.02% of the world's population. They have received the following Nobel Prizes:
�
Literature:
1910 - Paul Heyse
1927 - Henri Bergson
1958 - Boris Pasternak
1966 - Shmuel Yosef Agnon
1966 - Nelly Sachs
1976 - Saul Bellow
1978 - Isaac Bashevis Singer
1981 - Elias Canetti
1987 - Joseph Brodsky
1991 - Nadine Gordimer World
�
Peace:
1911 - Alfred Fried
1911 - Tobias Michael Carel Asser
1968 - Rene Cassin
1973 - Henry Kissinger
1978 - Menachem Begin
1986 - Elie Wiesel
1994 - Shimon Peres
1994 - Yitzhak Rabin
�
Physics:
1905 - Adolph Von Baeyer
1906 - Henri Moissan
1907 - Albert Abraham Michelson
1908 - Gabriel Lippmann
1910 - Otto Wallach
1915 - Richard Willstaetter
1918 - Fritz Haber
1921 - Albert Einstein
1922 - Niels Bohr
1925 - James Franck
1925 - Gustav Hertz
1943 - Gustav Stern
1943 - George Charles de Hevesy
1944 - Isidor Issac Rabi
1952 - Felix Bloch
1954 - Max Born
1958 - Igor Tamm
1959 - Emilio Segre
1960 - Donald A. Glaser
1961 - Robert Hofstadter
1961 - Melvin Calvin
1962 - Lev Davidovich Landau
1962 - Max Ferdinand Perutz
1965 - Richard Phillips Feynman
1965 - Julian Schwinger
1969 - Murray Gell-Mann
1971 - Dennis Gabor
1972 - William Howard Stein
1973 - Brian David Josephson
1975 - Benjamin Mottleson
1976 - Burton Richter
1977 - Ilya Prigogine
1978 - Arno Allan Penzias
1978 - Peter L Kapitza
1979 - Stephen Weinberg
1979 - Sheldon Glashow
1979 - Herbert Charles Brown
1980 - Paul Berg
1980 - Walter Gilbert
1981 - Roald Hoffmann
1982 - Aaron Klug
1985 - Albert A. Hauptman
1985 - Jerome Karle
1986 - Dudley R. Herschbach
1988 - Robert Huber
1988 - Leon Lederman
1988 - Melvin Schwartz
1988 - Jack Steinberger
1989 - Sidney Altman
1990 - Jerome Friedman
1992 - Rudolph Marcus
1995 - Martin Perl
2000 - Alan J. Heeger
�
Economics:
1970 - Paul Anthony Samuelson
1971 - Simon Kuznets
1972 - Kenneth Joseph Arrow
1975 - Leonid Kantorovich
1976 - Milton Friedman
1978 - Herbert A. Simon
1980 - Lawrence Robert Klein
1985 - Franco Modigliani
1987 - Robert M. Solow
1990 - Harry Markowitz
1990 - Merton Miller
1992 - Gary Becker
1993 - Robert Fogel
�
Medicine:
1908 - Elie Metchnikoff
1908 - Paul Erlich
1914 - Robert Barany
1922 - Otto Meyerhof
1930 - Karl Landsteiner
1931 - Otto Warburg
1936 - Otto Loewi
1944 - Joseph Erlanger
1944 - Herbert Spencer Gasser
1945 - Ernst Boris Chain
1946 - Hermann Joseph Muller
1950 - Tadeus Reichstein
1952 - Selman Abraham Waksman
1953 - Hans Krebs
1953 - Fritz Albert Lipmann
1958 - Joshua Lederberg
1959 - Arthur Kornberg
1964 - Konrad Bloch
1965 - Francois Jacob
1965 - Andre Lwoff
1967 - George Wald
1968 - Marshall W. Nirenberg
1969 - Salvador Luria
1970 - Julius Axelrod
1970 - Sir Bernard Katz
1972 - Gerald Maurice Edelman
1975 - Howard Martin Temin
1976 - Baruch S. Blumberg
1977 - Roselyn Sussman Yalow
1978 - Daniel Nathans
1980 - Baruj Benacerraf
1984 - Cesar Milstein
1985 - Michael Stuart Brown
1985 - Joseph L. Goldstein
1986 - Stanley Cohen [& Rita Levi-Montalcini]
1988 - Gertrude Elion
1989 - Harold Varmus
1991 - Erwin Neher
1991 - Bert Sakmann
1993 - Richard J. Roberts
1993 - Phillip Sharp
1994 - Alfred Gilman
1995 - Edward B. Lewis
1996- Lu RoseIacovino
TOTAL: 129!
�
�
The Jews are NOT promoting brain washing children in military training camps, teaching them how to blow themselves up and cause maximum deaths of Jews and other non Muslims. The Jews don't hijack planes, nor kill athletes at the Olympics, or blow themselves up in German restaurants. There is NOT one single Jew who has destroyed a church. There is NOT a single Jew who protests by killing people.
�
The Jews don't traffic slaves, nor have leaders calling for Jihad and death to all the Infidels.
�
Perhaps the world's Muslims should consider investing more in standard education and less in blaming the Jews for all their problems.
�
Muslims must ask 'what can they do for humankind' before they demand that humankind respects them.
�
Regardless of your feelings about the crisis between Israel and the Palestinians and Arab neighbors, even if you believe there is more culpability on Israel 's part, the following two
sentences really say it all:
�
'If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel ." Benjamin Netanyahu
�
General Eisenhower Warned Us It is a matter of history that when the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Dwight Eisenhower, found the victims of the death camps he ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and even made to bury the dead.
�
He did this because he said in words to this effect:
�
'Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses - because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened'
�
Recently, the UK debated whether to remove The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it 'offends' the Muslim population which claims it never occurred. It is not removed as yet. However, this is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving into it.
�
It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended. This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the, 6 million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians, and 1,900 Catholic priests who were 'murdered, raped, burned, starved, beaten, experimented on and humiliated' while the German people looked the other way.
�
Now, more than ever, with Iran , among others, claiming the Holocaust to be 'a myth,' it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets.

�
How many years will it be before the attack on the World Trade Center 'NEVER HAPPENED' because it offends some Muslim in the United States ?

[trish]

Gee, it DOES make you think. European Christians hated Jews for centuries. The Jews were called Christ killers (the Catholic Church only a month ago finally recanted the accusation) and they were blamed for all the financial woes and collapses of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. Finally Europe "killed six million Jews" and only now, upon walking down the streets of Barcelona and perhaps stumbling upon a street of Middle Eastern restaurants, does it occur to Sebastian Vilar Rodriguez that it might have been a mistake. Not so much for the loss (which he takes care to lament, 'cause it's politically correct and conservatives are very sensitive to political correctness) but it's a mistake because those cremated Jews were replaced my Muslims. What a fucking fear monger! Surely no one could find anything in that article worth repeating for what it says. I assume therefore you posted it as a warning that Europe shouldn't make the same mistake twice, this time with the Muslims.

[russtafa]

The following is a copy of an article written by Spanish writer Sebastian Vilar Rodriguez and published in a Spanish newspaper on Jan. 15, 2008. It doesn't take much imagination to extrapolate the message to the rest of Europe - and possibly to the rest of the world.
REMEMBER AS YOU READ -- IT WAS IN A SPANISH PAPER
Date: Tue. 15 January 2008 14:30
�
ALL EUROPEAN LIFE DIED IN AUSCHWITZ By Sebastian Vilar Rodrigez
�
I walked down the street in Barcelona , and suddenly discovered a terrible truth - Europe died in Auschwitz .. We killed six million Jews and replaced them with 20 million Muslims. In Auschwitz we burned a culture, thought, creativity, talent. We destroyed the chosen people, truly chosen, because they produced great and wonderful people who changed the world.
�
The contribution of this people is felt in all areas of life: science, art, international trade, and above all, as the conscience of the world. These are the people we burned.
�
And under the pretense of tolerance, and because we wanted to prove to ourselves that we were cured of the disease of racism, we opened our gates to 20 million Muslims, who brought us stupidity and ignorance, religious extremism and lack of tolerance, crime and poverty, due to an unwillingness to work and support their families with pride.
�
They have blown up our trains and turned our beautiful Spanish cities into the third world, drowning in filth and crime.
�
Shut up in the apartments they receive free from the government, they plan the murder and destruction of their naive hosts.
�
And thus, in our misery, we have exchanged culture for fanatical hatred, creative skill for destructive skill, intelligence for backwardness and superstition.
�
We have exchanged the pursuit of peace of the Jews of Europe and their talent for a better future for their children, their determined clinging to life because life is holy, for those who pursue death, for people consumed by the desire for death for themselves and others, for our children and theirs.
�
What a terrible mistake was made by miserable Europe ...
***********************************
�
The Global Islamic population is approximately 1,200,000,000; that is ONE BILLION TWO HUNDRED MILLION or 20% of the world's population. They have received the following Nobel Prizes:

Literature:
1988 - Najib Mahfooz
�
Peace:
1978 - Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat
1990 - Elias James Corey
1994 - Yaser Arafat:
1999 - Ahmed Zewai
�
Economics:
(zero)
�
Physics:
(zero)
�
Medicine:
1960 - Peter Brian Medawar
1998 - Ferid Mourad
�
TOTAL: 7 SEVEN
�
The Global Jewish population is approximately 14,000,000; that is FOURTEEN MILLION or about 0.02% of the world's population. They have received the following Nobel Prizes:
�
Literature:
1910 - Paul Heyse
1927 - Henri Bergson
1958 - Boris Pasternak
1966 - Shmuel Yosef Agnon
1966 - Nelly Sachs
1976 - Saul Bellow
1978 - Isaac Bashevis Singer
1981 - Elias Canetti
1987 - Joseph Brodsky
1991 - Nadine Gordimer World
�
Peace:
1911 - Alfred Fried
1911 - Tobias Michael Carel Asser
1968 - Rene Cassin
1973 - Henry Kissinger
1978 - Menachem Begin
1986 - Elie Wiesel
1994 - Shimon Peres
1994 - Yitzhak Rabin
�
Physics:
1905 - Adolph Von Baeyer
1906 - Henri Moissan
1907 - Albert Abraham Michelson
1908 - Gabriel Lippmann
1910 - Otto Wallach
1915 - Richard Willstaetter
1918 - Fritz Haber
1921 - Albert Einstein
1922 - Niels Bohr
1925 - James Franck
1925 - Gustav Hertz
1943 - Gustav Stern
1943 - George Charles de Hevesy
1944 - Isidor Issac Rabi
1952 - Felix Bloch
1954 - Max Born
1958 - Igor Tamm
1959 - Emilio Segre
1960 - Donald A. Glaser
1961 - Robert Hofstadter
1961 - Melvin Calvin
1962 - Lev Davidovich Landau
1962 - Max Ferdinand Perutz
1965 - Richard Phillips Feynman
1965 - Julian Schwinger
1969 - Murray Gell-Mann
1971 - Dennis Gabor
1972 - William Howard Stein
1973 - Brian David Josephson
1975 - Benjamin Mottleson
1976 - Burton Richter
1977 - Ilya Prigogine
1978 - Arno Allan Penzias
1978 - Peter L Kapitza
1979 - Stephen Weinberg
1979 - Sheldon Glashow
1979 - Herbert Charles Brown
1980 - Paul Berg
1980 - Walter Gilbert
1981 - Roald Hoffmann
1982 - Aaron Klug
1985 - Albert A. Hauptman
1985 - Jerome Karle
1986 - Dudley R. Herschbach
1988 - Robert Huber
1988 - Leon Lederman
1988 - Melvin Schwartz
1988 - Jack Steinberger
1989 - Sidney Altman
1990 - Jerome Friedman
1992 - Rudolph Marcus
1995 - Martin Perl
2000 - Alan J. Heeger
�
Economics:
1970 - Paul Anthony Samuelson
1971 - Simon Kuznets
1972 - Kenneth Joseph Arrow
1975 - Leonid Kantorovich
1976 - Milton Friedman
1978 - Herbert A. Simon
1980 - Lawrence Robert Klein
1985 - Franco Modigliani
1987 - Robert M. Solow
1990 - Harry Markowitz
1990 - Merton Miller
1992 - Gary Becker
1993 - Robert Fogel
�
Medicine:
1908 - Elie Metchnikoff
1908 - Paul Erlich
1914 - Robert Barany
1922 - Otto Meyerhof
1930 - Karl Landsteiner
1931 - Otto Warburg
1936 - Otto Loewi
1944 - Joseph Erlanger
1944 - Herbert Spencer Gasser
1945 - Ernst Boris Chain
1946 - Hermann Joseph Muller
1950 - Tadeus Reichstein
1952 - Selman Abraham Waksman
1953 - Hans Krebs
1953 - Fritz Albert Lipmann
1958 - Joshua Lederberg
1959 - Arthur Kornberg
1964 - Konrad Bloch
1965 - Francois Jacob
1965 - Andre Lwoff
1967 - George Wald
1968 - Marshall W. Nirenberg
1969 - Salvador Luria
1970 - Julius Axelrod
1970 - Sir Bernard Katz
1972 - Gerald Maurice Edelman
1975 - Howard Martin Temin
1976 - Baruch S. Blumberg
1977 - Roselyn Sussman Yalow
1978 - Daniel Nathans
1980 - Baruj Benacerraf
1984 - Cesar Milstein
1985 - Michael Stuart Brown
1985 - Joseph L. Goldstein
1986 - Stanley Cohen [& Rita Levi-Montalcini]
1988 - Gertrude Elion
1989 - Harold Varmus
1991 - Erwin Neher
1991 - Bert Sakmann
1993 - Richard J. Roberts
1993 - Phillip Sharp
1994 - Alfred Gilman
1995 - Edward B. Lewis
1996- Lu RoseIacovino
TOTAL: 129!
�
�
The Jews are NOT promoting brain washing children in military training camps, teaching them how to blow themselves up and cause maximum deaths of Jews and other non Muslims. The Jews don't hijack planes, nor kill athletes at the Olympics, or blow themselves up in German restaurants. There is NOT one single Jew who has destroyed a church. There is NOT a single Jew who protests by killing people.
�
The Jews don't traffic slaves, nor have leaders calling for Jihad and death to all the Infidels.
�
Perhaps the world's Muslims should consider investing more in standard education and less in blaming the Jews for all their problems.
�
Muslims must ask 'what can they do for humankind' before they demand that humankind respects them.
�
Regardless of your feelings about the crisis between Israel and the Palestinians and Arab neighbors, even if you believe there is more culpability on Israel 's part, the following two
sentences really say it all:
�
'If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel ." Benjamin Netanyahu
�
General Eisenhower Warned Us It is a matter of history that when the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Dwight Eisenhower, found the victims of the death camps he ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and even made to bury the dead.
�
He did this because he said in words to this effect:
�
'Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses - because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened'
�
Recently, the UK debated whether to remove The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it 'offends' the Muslim population which claims it never occurred. It is not removed as yet. However, this is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving into it.
�
It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended. This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the, 6 million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians, and 1,900 Catholic priests who were 'murdered, raped, burned, starved, beaten, experimented on and humiliated' while the German people looked the other way.
�
Now, more than ever, with Iran , among others, claiming the Holocaust to be 'a myth,' it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets.

�
How many years will it be before the attack on the World Trade Center 'NEVER HAPPENED' because it offends some Muslim in the United States ?
I thought you guys kicked out this scum with el'cid why did you let them back .once wasn't enough

[Stavros]

Why do people choose something like the 'Nobel Prize' to judge an entire civilisation? And even if you look at the list, Yitzak Rabin has confessed to being part of the gang that murdered Lord Moyes in Palestine; and Menachem Begin was, by any standards a mass murderer, neither of which are courses of action to be recommended for a prize, least of all one with the word 'peace' attached to it -the Peace Price is the least distinguished of those fatuous medals anyway.

European countries opting for industrialization after 1945 needed an army of labour, preferably cheap: when de Gaulle became President of France in 1958 it was estimated the country needed in excess of 100,000 labourers a year to grow its industrial base: it reached agreements with the governments of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia and some African and Caribbean states as former colonies; same with the UK and the Caribbean and the Indian sub-continent, while Australians and Canadians had ease of access here too. Caribbeans were the people who drove our buses and trains in the 1950s and 1960s, cleaned hospital wards, just as Indians and Pakistanis started up more family businesses than most English people.

Yes, the Jews have made a positive contribution to the UK in terms of its economy, its culture and its politics; Jews were also notorious criminals especially in London's East End where they dominated, and fixed Boxing tournaments for years; slum landlords, drug pushers, paedophiles -the Jews were there too, which merely indicates that Jews, like everyone else, can produce people at the top and bottom of society. So why judge people because they are Jews, or Muslim, or Christian, or Atheist?

Post-war Germany's economic miracle would not have been possible without an army of 'gastarbeiten' [Guest-workers] mostly from Turkey who were prepared to pluck chickens and press buttons on machines for 10 hours a day for a wage most Germans would not have sniffed at.

We asked these people to enter Europe and build our economies, and because they were not, and are not, slaves, they had rights. It is not the fault of their parents or the younger generation if incompetent government and competition has deflated our economies and reduced the pool of new jobs. And the majority have rejected extremism, a simple enough fact.

One of the reasons why the Middle East and North Africa is in ferment is precisely because decades of one-party rule has stifled progress and achievement, the kinds of things their young people want to make happen in their own back yard, not ours.

Finally, informed observers of the Middle East have noticed that not only is Israel terrified of Arab democracy, so are the Muslim extremists who, and it is a fact, exist on the margins of Arab and Muslim societies -al-Qaeda is an exception not a common phenomenon. Rather than read the views of a bigot who is quoted because he suits the opinions of other bigots, why not try someone who has been studying and living with the reality of being an Arab and a Muslim these past 30-40 years? I will post the link in a separte post.

[Stavros]

A more balanced analysis of the current situation:


POST-ISLAMIC REVOLUTION
By Olivier Roy
In trying to interpret the grass-roots revolts in Egypt and elsewhere across North Africa, European public opinion views the situation with a mindset that is 30 years old – essentially based on the Islamic revolution in Iran. So Europeans are now expecting to see Islamist movements – in this case, the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots in neighboring areas – emerge at the head of these current revolts or at least waiting in ambush to seize power from them. People with these expectations have been surprised and worried by the Muslim Brotherhood’s low profile and pragmatism so far. What are the Islamists up to?
Actually, if you look at the people who launched these revolts, it is clear that they represent a “post-Islamist generation.” For this generation, the great revolutionary movements of the 1970s and 1980s are history -- something that mattered to their parents but not to them. This new generation is not interested in ideology, A their slogans are pragmatic and very concrete (like “erhal,” the Arabic word for “get out”). They do not invoke Islam like the older generation did in Algeria in the late 1980s. What they mainly express is rejection of corrupt dictatorships and the demand for democracy. Of course, this battle-cry does not mean that the demonstrators are demanding secularism. It does signify that they do not see Islam as a political ideology that can bring offer a better system for their societies. So the young generations are operating with the idea of a secular political arena. The same change is true for other ideologies: the younger generations are patriotic (as shown by the flag-waving) but they are not nationalistic. Even more surprisingly, they are not listening to conspiracy theories: they are not blaming the U.S. or Israel for what is wrong in the Arab world. (In Tunisia, they are even not blaming France for their problems despite the fact that Paris supported Ben Ali [the now-overthrown Tunisian leader] right to the end. Even “Arab nationalism” had disappeared from the slogans in the street, even though the existence of a “pan-Arab” political ethos can be seen in the copy-cat contagion that spurred Egyptians and Yemenis to revolt in the wake of events in Tunisia.
This generation of young Muslims has a mentality that wants pluralism – probably because they are also more individualistic. Statistics show that this generation is better educated than the previous one, is more inclined to live in a nuclear family in the place of the old extended one, and has fewer children; but at the same time these young people are more likely to be jobless and to feel that they have been slipping down the social ladder. This generation is better informed, and often has access to modern technology enabling individuals to connect with each other via digital networks instead of via political parties (which are banned anyway). These young people also know that the Islamist regimes have become dictatorships. They are not fascinated by Iran or Saudi Arabia. The protesters in Egypt are exactly the same kind of people who rose up against Ahmadinejad in Iran. (The Iranian regime is putting out propaganda pretending to support the Egyptian revolt, but in fact this only amounts to getting back at Mubarak.) The new revolutionaries are perhaps practicing or even devout Muslims, but they separate their religious faith from their political agenda. In that sense, it is a “secular” movement that separates religion from politics. Religious practice has become an individual act.
What we see are people whose demands are focused mainly on dignity, on “respect” – a motto that emerged in Algeria in the late 1990s. Protestors are making demands in the name of universal human values. But what is important is that today people are demanding democracy as a right that is no longer something imported from the West. That is what makes it so crucially different from what the Bush administration promoted as democracy in 2003, which was unacceptable because it lacked any political legitimacy in the region, and instead was associated with a U.S. military intervention. However paradoxical it sounds, the fact is that the weakened position of the U.S. In the Middle East and the pragmatic posture of the Obama administration today have opened the way for an indigenous demand for democracy to emerge and take hold with its own legitimacy.
Of course, a revolt does not make a revolution. The protest movement has no leaders, no political parties and no apparatus to sustain it. This is natural given the circumstances, but it does mean that all the problems still have to be solved about how to institutionalize democracy. It is unlikely that the disappearance of a dictatorship will automatically bring about the emergence of liberal democracy in its wake – as Washington hoped it would in Iraq. The fact is that every Arab country, like countries in similar situations elsewhere, has its own political landscape – one that is all the more complicated right now because it has been hidden by dictatorship. Indeed, except for the Islamists and, in many places, labor movements (in a weakened condition); there is not much in the way of political entities.
ISLAMISTS HAVE NOT DISAPPEARED: THEY HAVE CHANGED
By “Islamists,” I mean people who see Islam as a political ideology that can provide answers to solve all the problems confronting society. The most radical people in this group have left their countries to join the international jihadist campaign, so they are no longer on the domestic political scene. They are in the deserts of North Africa with the group Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or in Pakistan, or in the suburbs of London. They have no social or political base in their own countries. Global jihad is completely disconnected from the social, political or geopolitical struggles of the local populations there. Naturally, Al-Qaeda tries to depict the jihadist movement as the avant-garde resistance movement for the Muslim world against Western oppression, but the propaganda doesn’t work. The young jihadists recruited by Al-Qaeda are “de-territorialized,” deracinated, cut off from their old neighborhoods, networks and even their own families. The Al-Qaeda remains locked in its own violent creed of “propaganda by the deed” and has never made the effort to build up a political structure of its own inside Muslim societies. Since Al-Qaeda concentrates its action on targets that are located in the West or defined as “Western,” it has no tangible impact on developments in actual Muslim societies.
Another optical illusion is a linkage between the trend toward political radicalization in the Arab world and what many people see as massive “re-Islamization” of these societies over the last 30 years. But even if it is true that the Arab population have obviously become more Islamic than it was 30 or 40 years ago, how does one explain the absence of Islamic slogans in the current wave of events? This is the paradox of Islamization: the very success of the Islamic revival has largely de-politicized Islam. Amid all the evidence of Islam’s social and cultural return (the return to the veil, the number of new mosques and new imams, religious networks on TV) has occurred in a way that is unrelated to the Islamist militants. This shift has opened up what one might call a “marketplace for religions” where no competitor has a monopoly. And the trend fits with the new appetite for faith-based activity among young people, who are individualistic and also changeable in their allegiances. In other words, the Islamists have lost their monopoly in the public “market” for religious zeal that they had in the 1980s in the Muslim revival.
Most Arab dictatorships have identified with a conservative version of Islam (Tunisia is an exception) that has a societal profile, without political content, and concentrates on controlling public signs of social morality – with effects such as ensuring that women wear veils in public. This “state-ist” conservatism dovetails with the approach of the key fundamentalist Muslim school of “Salafis,” who emphasize the re-Islamization of individuals as distinct from control of larger social movements. The result, as paradoxical as it may seem, is this re-Islamization has had the effect of draining the [old] political meaning from Muslim religious symbols of political meaning. When everything is viewed as religious, nothing has any religious charge. In other words, what the West sees as “massive re-Islamization” really amounts to nothing more than the standardization and banalization of Islam. The term “Islamic” now arises in the context of everything from fast food to female fashion. In practice, piety has become individualized; people practice their faith in a more personal way; they want a guide who preaches in term of self-fulfillment, like the Egyptian [Muslim evangelist] Amr Khaled; they are losing interest in the utopia of an Islamic state. “Salafis” are focused on defending religious symbols and values, but they have no political agenda. They are not present in the ranks of protest movements: the female demonstrators don’t wear burqas and nowadays there are lots of women in the ranks of protest movements in the Arab world, even in Egypt). Moreover, other religious currents thought to be in decline such as Sufism are thriving now. Such diversification of faiths is bursting Islam’s dominant framework as the Arab world’s “established” religion: in Algeria and Iran, there has been a wave of conversions to Christianity.
Another mistake is to think of dictatorships as defenders of secularism against religious fanaticism. Authoritarian regimes have not “secularized” societies: on the contrary, these regimes (except in Tunisia) have accommodated a “neo-fundamentalist” brand of re-Islamization, featuring discussions about putting into effect Sharia law without asking the related questions about the real circumstances and nature of the “state” in modern times . Invoking a tired rearguard mood of Muslim theocracy, these Arab states have co-opted the Ulema (the corpus of recognized authorities on Islamic law) and other official Islamic institutions in their countries. For example, the traditional clerics trained at Al-Azhar are no longer in the loop about political issues or major social questions. They have nothing to offer the new generations who want new models for practicing their faith in a more open world. The result is that the religious conservatives of Islam are no longer in step with the popular protest.
A KEY FOR CHANGE
This trend also affects Islamist political movements embodied in the mainstream Muslim Brotherhood and their off-shoots such as the Nahda Party in Tunisia. The Muslim Brotherhood has changed significantly. The change starts with their recent political experiences: it includes apparent success (via the Islamic revolution of Iran) and also defeat (resulting in repression against them everywhere else). The new generations of militants as well as veteran activists such as Rashid Ghannuchi in Tunisia have drawn some lessons from this. They understood that striving to gain power after a revolution leads either to civil war or dictatorship. So, in their struggle against repression, they have drawn closer to other political forces. They have also learned from the Turkish model. In that country, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) have been able to reconcile democracy, electoral victory, economic development, and national independence with the promotion of Islamic values – or at least Muslim “authenticity.”
Crucially, the Muslim Brotherhood is no longer defined by having its own separate economic or social model. It has become socially conservative and economically liberal. This is probably the key development. In the 1980’s, Islamists (especially Shi’ites) claimed to be defending the interests of the oppressed classes, and so they advocated nationalization of the economy and redistribution of wealth. Today, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood has endorsed economic counter-reforms launched by Mubarak, notably the agrarian liberalization that allows landowners to raise the rents for tenant farmers on their lands and also to fire their tenant farmers. As a result, Islamists are no longer influential in agrarian social movements instead; there is a return of the “left,” meaning trade-union organizers and activists.
This change among Islamists to embrace Western-style middle-class political values is beneficial to democracy. If the Islamists are no longer going to play the “Islamic Revolution” card in national politics, it means that they will be pushed toward conciliation, compromise and alliances with political foes. The question today is no longer whether dictatorships are the best bulwark against Islamism or not. Islamists have become players in the democratic game. They will certainly weigh in the direction of more control of social behavior, but without relying on a system of repression (as in Iran) or the religious police (as in Saudi Arabia). Instead, they will have to cope with demands for freedom – including freedoms not confined to the right to free parliamentary elections. The dilemma for the Islamists is they will have to will identify themselves with the Salafist, conservative traditional ideology -- thereby lose their claim to believing in an Islam that can thrive in the contemporary world -- or else they must make an effort to rethink their conception of the relationship between religion and politics.
One reason the Muslim Brotherhood will be a key for change is that the young generation leading the revolt is not trying very hard to create political structures for itself. We remain in the realm of a protest style of revolt, not the imposition of a new type of regime. Arab societies remain conservative, but the middle classes that economic liberalization has produced in these countries want political stability, and they oppose dictatorships and their predatory nature, which often borders on the Tunisian regime’s kleptomania. The comparison between Tunisia and Egypt is enlightening. In Tunisia, the Ben Ali crew weakened all of its potential supporters, by refusing to share not only power, but mostly wealth. The class of businessmen was literally cheated by the family constantly, and the army was not only left out of politics, but most significantly, excluded from a share in the new distribution of wealth. As a result, the Tunisian army was poor and therefore had a “vested interest” in a democratic regime which would probably allot it a larger budget.
In Egypt however, the regime had a broader social base, and the military is not only associated with political power, but also with the management of the economy and its profits. In the Arab world, demands for democracy will therefore depend on how deeply rooted the regimes’ patronage is in social networks. There is an interesting anthropological question here. Is the demand for democracy capable of surpassing the obstacles posed by complex networks of allegiances and membership in national networks (such as armed forces, tribes, political patrons, etc)? To what extent can regimes rely on traditional allegiances (e.g. Bedouins in Jordan, tribes in Yemen)? How can these social groups tap into (or not) this demand for democracy and become players? How will the dimension of religion become more diverse and adapt to new situations? The process will be long and chaotic, but one thing is certain: we are no longer in a mindset of Arab-Muslim exceptionalism. Current events suggest a deep change in the societies of the Arab world. These changes have been occurring for a while, but were also overshadowed by the deep-rooted stereotypes that the West ascribed to the Middle East.
Twenty years ago, I published [I]The Failure of Political Islam. Whether or not it was read has no importance, but what is happening today shows that local actors have drawn lessons from their own history. We are not yet finished with Islam, and liberal democracy is not “the end of history” either. Now we must now think of Islam in the context of its independence from a stereotyped “Arab-Muslim” culture, which today is no more turned in exclusively on itself than it ever was in reality.


Olivier Roy is a professor and the director of the Mediterranean European University Institute in Florence, Italy.

[onmyknees]

Why do people choose something like the 'Nobel Prize' to judge an entire civilisation? And even if you look at the list, Yitzak Rabin has confessed to being part of the gang that murdered Lord Moyes in Palestine; and Menachem Begin was, by any standards a mass murderer, neither of which are courses of action to be recommended for a prize, least of all one with the word 'peace' attached to it -the Peace Price is the least distinguished of those fatuous medals anyway.

European countries opting for industrialization after 1945 needed an army of labour, preferably cheap: when de Gaulle became President of France in 1958 it was estimated the country needed in excess of 100,000 labourers a year to grow its industrial base: it reached agreements with the governments of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia and some African and Caribbean states as former colonies; same with the UK and the Caribbean and the Indian sub-continent, while Australians and Canadians had ease of access here too. Caribbeans were the people who drove our buses and trains in the 1950s and 1960s, cleaned hospital wards, just as Indians and Pakistanis started up more family businesses than most English people.

Yes, the Jews have made a positive contribution to the UK in terms of its economy, its culture and its politics; Jews were also notorious criminals especially in London's East End where they dominated, and fixed Boxing tournaments for years; slum landlords, drug pushers, paedophiles -the Jews were there too, which merely indicates that Jews, like everyone else, can produce people at the top and bottom of society. So why judge people because they are Jews, or Muslim, or Christian, or Atheist?

Post-war Germany's economic miracle would not have been possible without an army of 'gastarbeiten' [Guest-workers] mostly from Turkey who were prepared to pluck chickens and press buttons on machines for 10 hours a day for a wage most Germans would not have sniffed at.

We asked these people to enter Europe and build our economies, and because they were not, and are not, slaves, they had rights. It is not the fault of their parents or the younger generation if incompetent government and competition has deflated our economies and reduced the pool of new jobs. And the majority have rejected extremism, a simple enough fact.

One of the reasons why the Middle East and North Africa is in ferment is precisely because decades of one-party rule has stifled progress and achievement, the kinds of things their young people want to make happen in their own back yard, not ours.

Finally, informed observers of the Middle East have noticed that not only is Israel terrified of Arab democracy, so are the Muslim extremists who, and it is a fact, exist on the margins of Arab and Muslim societies -al-Qaeda is an exception not a common phenomenon. Rather than read the views of a bigot who is quoted because he suits the opinions of other bigots, why not try someone who has been studying and living with the reality of being an Arab and a Muslim these past 30-40 years? I will post the link in a separte post.

You have an interesting take on the world.....I don't share it, but you're entitled to it. I think you attempting to compare some unsavory jews fixing boxing matches not only misses the point, it's frankly laughable when juxtaposed against what's happening in the world as we speak. The US is at war with 3 predominantly Muslim countries. Why do you call the writer a bigot? Did he fabricate any of the data? Maybe you're an apologist?

[Silcc69]

You have an interesting take on the world.....I don't share it, but you're entitled to it. I think you attempting to compare some unsavory jews fixing boxing matches not only misses the point, it's frankly laughable when juxtaposed against what's happening in the world as we speak. The US is at war with 3 predominantly Muslim countries. Why do you call the writer a bigot? Did he fabricate any of the data? Maybe you're an apologist?

Since these muslim's are so bad why do we still export oil from them. Why do we export so much stuff from China. Why don't we just deal with non-muslims countries and non-communist countries?

[trish]

Hell, if they're so fucking dangerous, pass an amendment restricting Second Amendment rights to non-Muslims. Ahhh, but the Muslim haters don't really believe they're all that dangerous. Perhaps dangerous enough to compromise their First Amendment rights ('cause the haters don't really give two shits about the First Amendment), but surely not dangerous enough to compromise the right to carry a glock 19 with a maximum capacity magazine. This is not about the threat of radicalization [of] our Muslim citizenry, it's simply about bigotry and hatred.

[Stavros]

Why do you call the writer a bigot? Did he fabricate any of the data? Maybe you're an apologist?

I meant by the term bigot that he is only interested in his own view, which is why he drew up a list of things which he believes signify achievement and compares an abundance of it with the under-achivement of the Arabs/Muslims.Its not about fabricating data, but selecting the data that fits the one-sided argument, and no, I am not an apologist for any kind of violence whoever does it and for whatever reason. My point about Jews in London who were criminals was an attempt to put this whole debate into an historical context, and one which Roy has perceptive comments on.

Even though the USA was not regularly being blown up by the Provisional IRA in the 1970s and 1980s you ought to be able to see how small groups for whom 'the propaganda of the deed' is merely a means to an end can wreak havoc in democratic societies and smear an entire group of people with the sort of labels such as 'terrorist' etc that only apply to the small segment committing such acts: the majority of Irish people condemned the activities of both Republican and Loyalist armed groups, yet there was in the press and amongst many people an oft-expressed loathing of 'the Irish' in those two decades which was shameful, hurtful and unjustified. Six men were sent to prison for crimes they did not commit, for the simple reason that they were Irish and in Birmingham on the night a bomb demolished a pub called 'The Tavern in the Town'. In the end the pseudo-revolutionaries who used 'spectacular' deeds in an attempt to polarise politics to their advantage failed, vide Baader-Meinhof in Germany, the Red Brigades in Italyand so on.

The historian Niall Ferguson currently has a tv programme called 'Civilization' on Uk tv (Channel 4), in his opening programme he attempted to show why the Ottoman Empire and Muslim societies since have failed to engage on the same level with the economies of Europe, America and Japan, and among many things, cited the huge difference in the number of patents registered in Israel compared to the whole of the Arab world. He missed an obvious point, for an historian, which is to see how a group of nation states, many of which were created by Anglo-French imperialism, evolved historically into one-party states in which growth, creativity and the free expression of ideas -common in Israel- have been crushed -for reasons of politics, not religion, the latter also becoming a political football to the detriment of all concerned. One reason for the optmism surrounding the Arab Spring is the hope that in the long term it will be the moment when the stale, defeated politics of the past will give the Arabs a chance to shine -and as most of them don't want to be associated with an idiot like Bin Laden, they deserve a degree of support.
Lets stop comparing people and civilisations on the basis of World Cups, Gold Medals, and Patents -life is more serious than that.
http://1.2.3.10/bmi/www.hungangels.com/vboard/images/ca_serenity/buttons/quote.gif (http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=902175)

[onmyknees]

Why do you call the writer a bigot? Did he fabricate any of the data? Maybe you're an apologist?

I meant by the term bigot that he is only interested in his own view, which is why he drew up a list of things which he believes signify achievement and compares an abundance of it with the under-achivement of the Arabs/Muslims.Its not about fabricating data, but selecting the data that fits the one-sided argument, and no, I am not an apologist for any kind of violence whoever does it and for whatever reason. My point about Jews in London who were criminals was an attempt to put this whole debate into an historical context, and one which Roy has perceptive comments on.

Even though the USA was not regularly being blown up by the Provisional IRA in the 1970s and 1980s you ought to be able to see how small groups for whom 'the propaganda of the deed' is merely a means to an end can wreak havoc in democratic societies and smear an entire group of people with the sort of labels such as 'terrorist' etc that only apply to the small segment committing such acts: the majority of Irish people condemned the activities of both Republican and Loyalist armed groups, yet there was in the press and amongst many people an oft-expressed loathing of 'the Irish' in those two decades which was shameful, hurtful and unjustified. Six men were sent to prison for crimes they did not commit, for the simple reason that they were Irish and in Birmingham on the night a bomb demolished a pub called 'The Tavern in the Town'. In the end the pseudo-revolutionaries who used 'spectacular' deeds in an attempt to polarise politics to their advantage failed, vide Baader-Meinhof in Germany, the Red Brigades in Italyand so on.

The historian Niall Ferguson currently has a tv programme called 'Civilization' on Uk tv (Channel 4), in his opening programme he attempted to show why the Ottoman Empire and Muslim societies since have failed to engage on the same level with the economies of Europe, America and Japan, and among many things, cited the huge difference in the number of patents registered in Israel compared to the whole of the Arab world. He missed an obvious point, for an historian, which is to see how a group of nation states, many of which were created by Anglo-French imperialism, evolved historically into one-party states in which growth, creativity and the free expression of ideas -common in Israel- have been crushed -for reasons of politics, not religion, the latter also becoming a political football to the detriment of all concerned. One reason for the optmism surrounding the Arab Spring is the hope that in the long term it will be the moment when the stale, defeated politics of the past will give the Arabs a chance to shine -and as most of them don't want to be associated with an idiot like Bin Laden, they deserve a degree of support.

Lets stop comparing people and civilisations on the basis of World Cups, Gold Medals, and Patents -life is more serious than that.
http://1.2.3.10/bmi/www.hungangels.com/vboard/images/ca_serenity/buttons/quote.gif (http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=902175)





Again...you write well, but continue to miss the point....and are you from England? I'm guessing so, thus the obligatory IRA mention. I'll let the Irish Catholics answer you on that, but I did think the mention was revealing.
How can one help but compare and contrast? You sound naive my friend....let's all just get together like an old Coke-a-Cola commerical and hold hands!! That's not the way the world works. We must seperate, contrast, and at times discriminate if you will, to stay alive. The writer laments in the original article that ignorance is the enemy of Islam...not me and not the USA. That's his point. Education. And please don't talk to me about a degree of support for the Arabs. My country has paid a kings ransom in blood and treasure to give Iraq, Afghanastan, Pakistan, Somalia, Kuwait, Saudi Ariba, Egypt, and now Lybia the chance to "shine".....it's some one's else's turn now. How about they look to each other now?????????

[onmyknees]

Since these muslim's are so bad why do we still export oil from them. Why do we export so much stuff from China. Why don't we just deal with non-muslims countries and non-communist countries?

It's silly season I see........We import oil from them because we can't drill for it...mine for it (shale) ...explore for it, and barley can refine it here...that's why. Ask the unemployed rig workers in the gulf.
Look...if you're saying we have a trade imbalance with many countries, I'm with ya. Companies go where it's easier to do bussiness....it's no more complicated than that.

[onmyknees]

Hell, if they're so fucking dangerous, pass an amendment restricting Second Amendment rights to non-Muslims. Ahhh, but the Muslim haters don't really believe they're all that dangerous. Perhaps dangerous enough to compromise their First Amendment rights ('cause the haters don't really give two shits about the First Amendment), but surely not dangerous enough to compromise the right to carry a glock 19 with a maximum capacity magazine. This is not about the threat of radicalization [of] our Muslim citizenry, it's simply about bigotry and hatred.

Yea...let's start on amending the second amendment tomorrow.....
brilliant. Hey....how about all the hate crimes committed on Muslims after Peter King's hearings...you know...us Nazi's were supposed to go wilding according the left wing. what's that...there was none? Whats that...there are 100 times more hate crimes committed on Jews in this country? What a fucking joke you liberals are. You demogogue every time you move your lips.
Ask the Jews on the West Bank and in the settlements how fucking dangerous they are. Ask the airman in Frankfort Airport... Ohhhhhhh wow...Trish called someone a bigot....stop the presses...It's pretty much an every day occurance, thus it's meaningless. Really doesn't affect me. In fact I wear it as a badge of honor coming from you...You're so busy seeing bigots in the shadows, you're country is disappearing before your eyes. here's somethin' for you to chew on you pompous progressive...your hate for Palin pales in comparison to my distrust of certain Muslims, you're just too jaded and hate filled to see it.

[Silcc69]

IDK the counrty was disappearing!? Where is it headed to?

[Ineeda SM]

It's silly season I see........We import oil from them because we can't drill for it...mine for it (shale) ...explore for it, and barley can refine it here...that's why. Ask the unemployed rig workers in the gulf.
Look...if you're saying we have a trade imbalance with many countries, I'm with ya. Companies go where it's easier to do bussiness....it's no more complicated than that.

Now let's give the facts. We import oil because even if we drilled in every area in and around our country where the oil IS, we still would only have 4% of the oil this nation is addicted to. It would pollute all of our shorelines and cost far more than it was worth because American oil workers ask for way too much money. And we would still have to import the other 96%. And FYI, we only import 60% of our oil from Arab nations.

We deal with communist China because we are stupid, and owe them many billions of $$. Also, in the 1980's, Ronald Reagan began giving tax breaks to big businesses (Mostly owned by rich white republicans) that could save money and produce more by sending their production facilities to other countries including China as our number one importer . Why pay an American $12 an hour when they can pay 50 kids in China $12 a month for higher and cheaper production? Then mark it up 2,000% and sell it to idiots at WalMart.

In the past 30 years since Reagan and the GOP gave the tax breaks to businesses to put Americans out of work, more than 64% of our manufacturing has been moved to other countries. Under George Bush, the Reagan tax breaks to big businesses was increased by 6% which is why we have such a high unemployment problem.

Also the GOP goes to all lengths with lie after lie to make sure our nation stays addicted to oil because they own most of it, and get rich from oil. If we go to alternative energy sources, the fat cat republicans will lose lots of money. So it is to their benefit to keep us addicted to oil. We have the technology today to wean ourselves off oil and provide our own energy. But the GOP does everything in their power to prevent it from happening.

Ahhhh republicans. What a real nice bunch of old rich white guys.

[trish]

Trish called someone a bigot....stop the presses...It's pretty much an every day occurance, thus it's meaningless. Really doesn't affect me. In fact I wear it as a badge of honor coming from you...You're so busy seeing bigots in the shadows, you're country is disappearing before your eyes. here's somethin' for you to chew on you pompous progressive...your hate for Palin pales in comparison to my distrust of certain Muslims, you're just too jaded and hate filled to see it. My hate for Palin??? Show me where I indicated hatred of Palin. I think she's incredibly stupid, I think she misleads other stupid people. I certainly don't worship the ground she walks on as do you, but I don't hate her. If you go back over my posts for the last year I doubt if you can find half a dozen places where I've hinted someone might be a bigot...five of those citations might have been directed at you which might explain the bias behind your purely anecdotal assertion. According to you there's a dangerous Muslim behind every shadow. They're disappearing our country!! You truly are hilarious. If they're so fucking dangerous, take the first step in your defense: outlaw Muslim ownership of firearms...simple as that. You're willing to compromise their First Amendment freedom to worship, why not their Second Amendment Freedom to carry? No? Can't see your way to do that? Could it be you don't really believe they're all that dangerous afterall? That you're just selling us a load of crap to rationalize your feelings toward Islam? Could it be you just don't like Muslims?

[russtafa]

fuck the arab cunts

[Stavros]

Again...you write well, but continue to miss the point....and are you from England?
-Yes, and it is because of the unjust treatment of Irish people during 'the troubles' that I am disturbed by the equally unjust treatment of Muslims by Americans on this board because of 9/11, its a facile way out of discussing the politics.

How can one help but compare and contrast?
A fair point, but my point and the point missed by the Spanish article, is that when you use something like the Nobel Prize as a measure of success, the result will be skewed in favour of one rather than another, but without explaining how the Nobel Prize is supposedly this litmus test of success; and its not an issue in education which does not have the same role on the Peace or Literature prizes that it must have say, in Medicine or Physics. The author showed no interest in history or politics, and my point was precisely that it is the way in which the modern state has evolved in the Middle East since 1918 which has led them into stagnation. Although the levels of literacy bear no comparison with what they were in 1900, there has been a culture of immunity in many Arab states which means criticism is considered dangerous: the immunity of the state against precisely the kind of insurrection we see now, for decades students in the Middle East have been bought off or imprisoned by dictatorial regimes: none of it is conducive to the kind of academic freedom we enjoy in 'the west'. Nevertheless, in the Middle East, it is the case that if you need heart surgery, you better hope your surgeon is a Jew or a Palestinian; if your car breaks down, track down a Syrian; because the Arabs do have skills, they are literate, and they are also humane, but too many have been reared in fear. And a few have adopted the violence they grew up with as a norm, to everyone's distress but their own.

You sound naive my friend....let's all just get together like an old Coke-a-Cola commerical and hold hands!! That's not the way the world works.
Not naive at all; what I am suggesting is that an alternative to aerial bombardment and character assassination, is good politics: negotiations without conditions, fair trade, and so on. It works with the European Union and the USA's relations with most other states.

We must seperate, contrast, and at times discriminate if you will, to stay alive.
I agree, but that discrimination is not the same as murder -if you choose one partner rather than another, the one who has lost still has a right to live.

The writer laments in the original article that ignorance is the enemy of Islam...not me and not the USA.
To add to my earlier point on education: one-party states and states like Saudi Arabia which rely on indoctrination, are afraid of critical thinking, that doesn't mean it doesn't take place, but it does tend to a reliance on prejudice, the Middle East undoubtedly has a problem with this but I would say it is not ignorance, but indoctrination, and what the facebook generation have become aware of, is a different world from the one presented to them by their masters and one Olivier Roy also hints at: the rebellion we are witnessing is a rebellion against lies, another reason why the Arab Spring deserves our support.

My country has paid a kings ransom in blood and treasure to give Iraq, Afghanastan, Pakistan, Somalia, Kuwait, Saudi Ariba, Egypt, and now Lybia the chance to "shine".....it's some one's else's turn now. How about they look to each other now?????????
Unfortunately, the 'King's Ransom' was not expended to enable these states to shine, but to maintain their domestic status quo in politics and support US interests as perceived at the time: Pakistan became a US ally because it was the bridgehead into Afghanistan when taking on the USSR was, for US strategists, 'the only game in town' -now both the USA and Pakistan are paying the price for being involved in more than one agenda: everyone involved had their own -for the US it was US-vs-USSR, for Pakistan it was Pakistan-vs-India, for the Mujahideen it was 'Us against the world': nobody thought a ragged bunch of gun-toting shaggy-bearded blokes in pajamas could deliver on their promise to attack the USA, but they did.

US-Saudi Arabian relations were based on Ibn Saud's disaffection with the British in the 1920s, and the US promise of investment in oil at a time when the major British company in the region was sceptical of Arabia's potential as an oil province. It was the discovery of oil in Bahrain in 1932 which sent the geologists on a mad scramble into the peninsula, and it was Standard Oil of New Jersey who got the plums, to the benefit of the USA. You have to accept that you entered into a marriage with the Saudis who are as corrupt and brutal as were the Somoza family in Nicaragua to take but one other example of politics benefitting the US economy, except that you always needed oil more than bananas. The USA has had 40 years to develop alternatives to petroleum and break its dependence on Saudi Arabia, you can't say it gave SA a chance to 'shine' but face it, the USA and individual Americans have made a lot of money out of that country, more so than the UK in spite of al-Yamama and all that.

The nub of the dilemma for the US is as it always has been: you have developed close relations with the ruling family of a state which provided most of the hijackers on 9/11: those events were targeted at the Saudis as well as the USA, but just as the event split al-Qaeda as it then was, the 'movement' has alienated the very Arabs it was supposed to recruit. Ultimately, you will be powerless to prevent change in the region, but if you hang on in there, you will find you have more friends than enemies.

Some years ago I was in dowtown Amman and chatting with a 20-something Palestinian -he was unemployed and wanted one of two things: to get his homeland back; or a one-way ticket to California. The American dream is still alive for the wretched of the earth, even if we can hope he finds his destinty, and a job, in Palestine

[onmyknees]

"Unfortunately, the 'King's Ransom' was not expended to enable these states to shine, but to maintain their domestic status quo in politics and support US interests as perceived at the time: Pakistan became a US ally because it was the bridgehead into Afghanistan when taking on the USSR was, for US strategists, 'the only game in town' -now both the USA and Pakistan are paying the price for being involved in more than one agenda: everyone involved had their own -for the US it was US-vs-USSR, for Pakistan it was Pakistan-vs-India, for the Mujahideen it was 'Us against the world': nobody thought a ragged bunch of gun-toting shaggy-bearded blokes in pajamas could deliver on their promise to attack the USA, but they did."




You have a rather jaded, twisted, dismissive opinion on the sacrafices made, and why they were made...it's espicially distasteful and disrespectful coming form someone in the UK. And you know little about US foreign policy, with all due respect. So what's your answer to the US involvement in Kosovo ?? What the fuck was our strategic interests there ? I submit, and with good data to back me up...if the US had not interviened, they would have killed every last Muslim...but judging by your posts here....you'll come up with some convoluted, over analyzed reason that is more theory than fact. You sound like a university professor who
espouses marvelous sounding lectures from his lofty podium, but has little experience in the heavy lifting. My point is....IMO, the US has done more than it's share to provide Muslims at least a chance of self determination, while the rest of the world shys away and judges from afar. I say let the Arab League pick up the torch...we have too many broken bodies we need to tend to.

[Stavros]

I understand your admiration for the sacrifices made by your armed forces, and I know that this country would not be the same without the contribution made in two world wars, I pass a memorial to it every day in the town where I live.

But the sad fact of the matter is that your armed forces have too often been sent on missions where the endgame was a political advantage for the USA regardless of the domestic situation in the theatre of war: this is not just realist theory, it is really what happened and continues to happen.

It is too early to say, for example, if the allied invasion of Iraq will, over the next 10-20 years have laid the foundations for a stable, prosperous democracy: certainly I could have told Tony Blair the short-term outcome of the policy would be a regime in Baghdad more pro-Iranian than either he or Geoge Bush would want, but Blair ignored expert opinion on the Middle East anyway.

You cannot provide data to show how US aid to Pakistan has benefitted the country, because it hasn't. You cannot provide data to prove how Afghanistan has been improved by US aid because it hasn't, you should be sending your barbed comments to the politicians and administrators who have made a mess of these situations while sending young men and women to death, or a lifetime in wheelchairs.

Kosovo was always going to be the last straw, it was on the agenda from the very day the Serbs attacked Sarajevo as part of the 'Greater Serbia' project: Kosovo had nothing to do with Muslims, and nothing much to do with Kosovo either and everything to do with stopping Milosovic -you might not like it any more than I do, but I hope you also understand the US was never really interested in the Vietnamese but in containing communism: the US has been more beneficial to Vietnam (and vice versa) in the last 20 years precisely because they swapped the military option for the things both countries are really good at: trade, manufacturing and so on.

The moral of all this: by all means support your military (but presumably not the ones who wear smiles on their faces while being photgraphed with dead victims): but bear in mind they are there to do the work of politicians: and if its bad politics, that is the issue to discuss and to take to your representatives, from the Town House to the White House.