Nyingjé Tso
Dharma not drama
Well I don't care for them at all either. The problem is that some of them are chosen to go back to their original country in europe to spread the thing, and bring more people in etc etc.
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ISIS officially has 50,000 troops
- Thread starter MD
- Start date
Well I don't care for them at all either. The problem is that some of them are chosen to go back to their original country in europe to spread the thing, and bring more people in etc etc.
This is the kind of black and white oversimplification that's dangerous. Have Western interventions made things worse in the ME? Absolutely!
Did the US break the ME? Of course not! Not even 1/5 the blame should be place on the West. A small portion, sure.
What Islamic history books have you been reading? (And, preemptively, I'm not claiming Christianity's track record is much better). Muslims have been killing each other from day 1 of Islam. A millennium before Columbus was a twinkle in his mother's eye.
Pegg
Jehovah our God is One
MD
qualiaphile
New accounts are coming in that ISIS has upwards of 80,000 fighters.
Last month they recruited 7000 fighters, of which 1000 were foreigners.
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Last month they recruited 7000 fighters, of which 1000 were foreigners.
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
MD
qualiaphile
No, they're troops for the most part. They do engage in some terrorism activity, but mostly are fighting in battles on multiple fronts.
Pegg
Jehovah our God is One
dont' you mean, mostly attacking their muslim brothers for the most part? Which side is Allah with?
MD
qualiaphile
Well most of the people they are fighting happen to be Muslim, but that doesn't make them Islamists.
Assads troops are secular Alawites, the Kurds are secular and the Iraqi army is largely secular. ISIS is mostly fighting Shi'a and Nationalist movements in the Middle East.
Pegg
Jehovah our God is One
MD
qualiaphile
ISIS wants an Islamist state, which basically is a state which is run on an extreme version of Islam.
The other groups they are fighting are fighting for very secular or somewhat secular states.
Phil25
Active Member
I doubt its only secularism though, for example Shias are fighting not because they want a secular state but because they get killed by ISIS Imho. Iran is arming Shias and we all know Iran is not exactly known for its Religious Freedom.
MD
qualiaphile
The Iraqi government might be backed by a Shi'a state and have a bias for Shi'as but it's still more secular than Iran.
Phil25
Active Member
Thats True
Alceste
Vagabond
I think neither of us have read any "Islamic history books", by which I mean academic, secular history books written by scholars who specialize in Islamic history. I suspect that you may have read a number of polemic critiques of Islam written by people who have an inherent bias against it, based on what I perceive to be a persistent bias in your posts. (Although I'd love to be wrong about that and recommendations are more than welcome). I haven't read any of those, since polemics are a whole literary genre I avoid like the plague.
What I have read is human history books. For example, Guns Germs and Steel, Gwynne Dyer's War, Ronald Wright's A Short History of Progress and several other books that discuss military history from a broad, systemic perspective. I've also read a few books on the geopolitcal context for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, both of which I lobbied to prevent.
I confess complete ignorance vis a vis history relating specifically to Islam or Judaism, apart from dubious assertions I learned in church and the significant contributions to philosophy and theology with which individuals from both traditions have blessed us all.
A few easy Google searches to find:
Timeline of 7th-century Muslim history - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tradition vs Charisma: The Sunni-Shi'i Divide in the Muslim World | Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective
Really Alceste, are you arguing that ancient sectarian violence between Islamic sects is the stuff of polemics? Once again, I'm not claiming that Christians have a better track record. This is about questioning your claim that the "US broke the ME".
Timeline of 7th-century Muslim history - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tradition vs Charisma: The Sunni-Shi'i Divide in the Muslim World | Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective
Really Alceste, are you arguing that ancient sectarian violence between Islamic sects is the stuff of polemics? Once again, I'm not claiming that Christians have a better track record. This is about questioning your claim that the "US broke the ME".
MD
qualiaphile
I'm not sure about the ME, but the U.S. did destroy Iraq. First Iran and Iraq war. Then the whole Iraqi troop atrocities in their invasion of Kuwait was a lie for the first gulf war. Then the sanctions killed 500,000 children. Then the second war. It has created an entire populace which is prone to violence.
In Syria Assad is highly secular. Yet the West opposed him and now that country is finished. In Iran a democratic leader was overthrown and the U.S. did sell arms to both sides during the bloody Iran-Iraq war. Yes Reagen sold arms to the dreaded Ayatollah.
Not to mention the closeness between Saudi Arabia and the U.S. Saudi Arabia has spread a lot of its ideology throughout the muslim world and Europe. Saudi Arabia funded the creation of the Taliban and the Chechen rebels. It played a major part in the creation of the jihadist armies of Syria and even in ISIS. There's also Turkey, which is a NATO member. Turkey has also been very strongly funding a lot of these jihadist armies.
This is coming from someone who hates Islamists, the West has played a big part in the Middle Eastern instability and war. I do get annoyed when people blame the West for all the problems, because it makes the other players in the region still act like colonialist puppets, when they're not and they have their own agendas. There are historical ethnic and religion grievances as well, which are exploited by these other states. But the West has played its damaging part.
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YmirGF
Bodhisattva in Recovery
You might want to check out the works of Prof. Bernard Lewis. His is one of foremost academic scholars on Islam and the Middle East in the world and has been for decades.
Bernard Lewis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This link seems to focus more on the questions terrorism and conquest than on sectarian violence. Important topics, but different.
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
So very true, unfortunately. Not only is understanding M.E. history important to understanding what's more fully going on there, so is cultural studies of that region.
I've been studying the M.E. now for almost 50 years both here and there. I was involved for roughly 15 years with the Council on North African and Near Eastern Studies, I taught a three-week unit on the M.E. in my intro anthropology class, taking its roots back to the neolithic time period, and I also taught a two week unit on the M.E. in my political science classes. I've been to a great many seminars on the region but especially on the spread of radical Islam.
Guess what? As Confucius supposedly stated, the more one knows, the more one knows they really don't know. It's an area that's always been rough and unpredictable as far back as we can take it, and brutal war is the norm, not the exception. And it also tends to make fools of experts, such as Bernard Lewis and Thomas Friedman, both of which screwed up on their belief that America going into Iraq would be helpful to the region.
It's area that has no respect for weakness, so the idea that if we just talk and negotiate, and this will lead to peace, tends to carry little weight. Most struggles were over resources, with water being #1. The finding and supplying of oil only complicated things more.
And then there was the pathetic disruption caused by the Europeans, who set up boundaries that pleased them but certain didn't fit the demographics of the region.
Gotta go for now.