But it might interest anyone who thinks the West and Islam play on a level field...
AFP: Iranian pastor's death sentence deplorable: Hague
AFP: Iranian pastor's death sentence deplorable: Hague
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- Thread starter Keith1
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What we seem to forget here, is that IMO, the middle east is o nly just arriving to the point developmentaly that Europe had reached in 1700's. We expect them to jump straight in to the 21st century with no evolution of thought or process in between. We cannot simply expect emerging cultures to evolve so quickly or to accept the lessons we have learned without exception.
I am certain they will get there eventually, but until that day and as they get wealthier and wealthier, expect to go to War on a regular basis.
I am certain they will get there eventually, but until that day and as they get wealthier and wealthier, expect to go to War on a regular basis.
Jeff Young
GT40s Supporter
I guess you'd have a point if all or most of Islam was like Iran. Since it's not, not sure what you are trying to say.
Mark makes a valid point that I've read and agreed with before. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, etc. in 1950 were basically feudal countries. They are just now entering the modern age. A better analogy to the west would be more modern Islamic countries like Turkey, Indonesia, etc.
The Muslim hate continues to amaze me. I know we always have to have a bogey man to hate, and with the Soviets gone I guess we had to go after a religion we don't understand.
Mark makes a valid point that I've read and agreed with before. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, etc. in 1950 were basically feudal countries. They are just now entering the modern age. A better analogy to the west would be more modern Islamic countries like Turkey, Indonesia, etc.
The Muslim hate continues to amaze me. I know we always have to have a bogey man to hate, and with the Soviets gone I guess we had to go after a religion we don't understand.
This has been going on for centuries. Did you ever wonder where "from the shores of Tripoli" came from in the Marine hymn? Political correctness will probably have it's way with that in the near fuiture.
At the dawn of a new century, a newly elected United States president was forced to confront a grave threat to the nation — an escalating series of unprovoked attacks on Americans by Muslim terrorists. Worse still, these Islamic partisans operated under the protection and sponsorship of rogue Arab states ruled by ruthless and cunning dictators.
Sluggish in recognizing the full nature of the threat, America entered the war well after the enemy's call to arms. Poorly planned and feebly executed, the American effort proceeded badly and at great expense — resulting in a hastily negotiated peace and an equally hasty declaration of victory.
As timely and familiar as these events may seem, they occurred more than two centuries ago. The president was Thomas Jefferson, and the terrorists were the Barbary pirates. Unfortunately, many of the easy lessons to be plucked from this experience have yet to be fully learned.
The Barbary states, modern-day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, are collectively known to the Arab world as the Maghrib ("Land of Sunset"), denoting Islam's territorial holdings west of Egypt. With the advance of Mohammed's armies into the Christian Levant in the seventh century, the Mediterranean was slowly transformed into the backwater frontier of the battles between crescent and cross. Battles raged on both land and sea, and religious piracy flourished.
The Maghrib served as a staging ground for Muslim piracy throughout the Mediterranean, and even parts of the Atlantic. America's struggle with the terror of Muslim piracy from the Barbary states began soon after the 13 colonies declared their independence from Britain in 1776, and continued for roughly four decades, finally ending in 1815.
Although there is much in the history of America's wars with the Barbary pirates that is of direct relevance to the current "war on terror," one aspect seems particularly instructive to informing our understanding of contemporary Islamic terrorists. Very simply put, the Barbary pirates were committed, militant Muslims who meant to do exactly what they said.
Take, for example, the 1786 meeting in London of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the Tripolitan ambassador to Britain. As American ambassadors to France and Britain respectively, Jefferson and Adams met with Ambassador Adja to negotiate a peace treaty and protect the United States from the threat of Barbary piracy.
These future United States presidents questioned the ambassador as to why his government was so hostile to the new American republic even though America had done nothing to provoke any such animosity. Ambassador Adja answered them, as they reported to the Continental Congress, "that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise."
Sound familiar?
The candor of that Tripolitan ambassador is admirable in its way, but it certainly foreshadows the equally forthright declarations of, say, the Shiite Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the 1980s and the Sunni Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, not to mention the many pronouncements of their various minions, admirers, and followers. Note that America's Barbary experience took place well before colonialism entered the lands of Islam, before there were any oil interests dragging the U.S. into the fray, and long before the founding of the state of Israel.
America became entangled in the Islamic world and was dragged into a war with the Barbary states simply because of the religious obligation within Islam to bring belief to those who do not share it. This is not something limited to "radical" or "fundamentalist" Muslims.
Which is not to say that such obligations lead inevitably to physical conflict, at least not in principle. After all peaceful proselytizing among various religious groups continues apace throughout the world, but within the teachings of Islam, and the history of Muslims, this is a well-established militant thread.
The Islamic basis for piracy in the Mediterranean was an old doctrine relating to the physical or armed jihad, or struggle.
To Muslims in the heyday of Barbary piracy, there were, at least in principle, only two forces at play in the world: the Dar al-Islam, or House of Islam, and the Dar al-Harb, or House of War. The House of Islam meant Muslim governance and the unrivaled authority of the sharia, Islam's complex system of holy law. The House of War was simply everything that fell outside of the House of Islam — that area of the globe not under Muslim authority, where the infidel ruled. For Muslims, these two houses were perpetually at war — at least until mankind should finally embrace Allah and his teachings as revealed through his prophet, Mohammed.
The point of jihad is not to convert by force, but to remove the obstacles to the infidels' conversion so that they shall either convert or become a dhimmi (a non-Muslim who accepts Islamic dominion) and pay the jizya, or poll tax. The goal is to bring all of the Dar al-Harb into the peace of the Dar al-Islam, and to eradicate unbelief. The Koran also promises rewards to those who fight in the jihad, plunder and glory in this world and the delights of paradise in the next.
Although the piratical activities of Barbary genuinely degenerated over the centuries from pure considerations of the glory of jihad to less grandiose visions of booty and state revenues, it is important to remember that the religious foundations of the institution of piracy remained central.
Even after it became commonplace for the pirate captains or their crew to be renegade Europeans, it was essential that these former Christians "turn Turk" and convert to Islam before they could be accorded the honor of engagement in al-jihad fil-bahr, the holy war at sea.
In fact, the peoples of Barbary continued to consider the pirates as holy warriors even after the Barbary rulers began to allow non-religious commitments to command their strategic use of piracy. The changes that the religious institution of piracy underwent were natural, if pathological. Just as the concept of jihad is invoked by Muslim terrorists today to legitimize suicide bombings of noncombatants for political gain, so too al-jihad fil-bahr, the holy war at sea, served as the cornerstone of the Barbary states' interaction with Christendom.
In times of conflict, America tends to focus on personalities over ideas or movements, trying to play the man, not the board — as if capturing or killing Osama bin Laden, for example, would instantly end the present conflict. But such thinking loses sight of the fact that ideas have consequences. If one believes that God commands something, this belief is not likely to dissipate just because the person who elucidated it has been silenced. Islam, as a faith, is as essential a feature of the terrorist threat today as it was of the Barbary piracy over two centuries ago.
The Barbary pirates were not a "radical" or "fundamentalist" sect that had twisted religious doctrine for power and politics, or that came to recast aspects of their faith out of some form of insanity. They were simply a North African warrior caste involved in an armed jihad — a mainstream Muslim doctrine. This is how the Muslims understood Barbary piracy and armed jihad at the time, and, indeed, how the physical jihad has been understood since Mohammed revealed it as the prophecy of Allah.
Obviously, and thankfully, not every Muslim is obligated, or even really inclined, to take up this jihad. Indeed, many Muslims are loath to personally embrace this physical struggle. But that does not mean they are all opposed to such a struggle any more than the choice of many Westerners not to join the police force or the armed services means they do not support those institutions.
Whether "insurgents" are fighting in Iraq or "rebels" and "militants" are skirmishing in Chechnya or Hamas "activists" are detonating themselves in Israel, Westerners seem unwilling to bring attention to the most salient feature of all these groups: They claim to be acting in the name of Islam.
It is very easy to chalk it all up to regional squabbles, economic depression, racism, or post-colonial nationalistic self-determinism. Such explanations undoubtedly enter into part of the equation — they are already part of the propaganda that clouds contemporary analysis. But as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams came to learn back in 1786, the situation becomes a lot clearer when you listen to the stated intentions and motivations of the terrorists and take them at face value.
— Joshua E. London is the author of Victory in Tripoli: How America's War with the Barbary Pirates Established the U.S. Navy and Shaped a Nation (John Wiley & Sons, September 2005); for more about the book visit
Don't get me wrong Z, I'm not advocating war on a consant, regular basis. Simply that if we always attempt to force our ways upon other cultures, then conflict will inevitably be the result.
If it took circa 1000 years since the year 1000AD to evolve culturally as Europe did,(to include the USA etc) to become THE WEST as we know it, why would we expect emerging cultures today to be any quicker at it? Almost all war has been brought about by one advanced culture or another, attempting to bring less developed cultures to their way of thinking. Take away all the techy stuff, and the world today isn't really that much different to the 1700's or earlier to the time of the Crusades.
The only real differnce now is that the emerging cultures have alot of the resources THE WEST demands/needs to survive. Give a tribesman a walkman and he will still be a tribesman, just one that has stereo sound. We shouldn't expect him to drop everything he has ever known and suddenly become a balanced Liberal overnight.
There is nothing racist in my mind as I write this guys, but the media/popular opinion in our culture seems to be focused on all the wrong-doing in far away places and measuring their systems of governance against ours. To them, what they do isn't wrong.
Not so long ago some Spanish dudes roamed Europe burning people for refusing to recant their spiritual beliefs. Lest we forget ole Henry VIII and all of his wrong-doings against Catholics.
Our childeren don't learn from our mistakes and I didn't learn from my parents' mistakes either. Countries and cultures are no different. Half the world still live in mud huts. Those poeple are not going to give a shit about what we think is right or wrong. They are simply trying to stay alive.
If it took circa 1000 years since the year 1000AD to evolve culturally as Europe did,(to include the USA etc) to become THE WEST as we know it, why would we expect emerging cultures today to be any quicker at it? Almost all war has been brought about by one advanced culture or another, attempting to bring less developed cultures to their way of thinking. Take away all the techy stuff, and the world today isn't really that much different to the 1700's or earlier to the time of the Crusades.
The only real differnce now is that the emerging cultures have alot of the resources THE WEST demands/needs to survive. Give a tribesman a walkman and he will still be a tribesman, just one that has stereo sound. We shouldn't expect him to drop everything he has ever known and suddenly become a balanced Liberal overnight.
There is nothing racist in my mind as I write this guys, but the media/popular opinion in our culture seems to be focused on all the wrong-doing in far away places and measuring their systems of governance against ours. To them, what they do isn't wrong.
Not so long ago some Spanish dudes roamed Europe burning people for refusing to recant their spiritual beliefs. Lest we forget ole Henry VIII and all of his wrong-doings against Catholics.
Our childeren don't learn from our mistakes and I didn't learn from my parents' mistakes either. Countries and cultures are no different. Half the world still live in mud huts. Those poeple are not going to give a shit about what we think is right or wrong. They are simply trying to stay alive.
Instructive post Al, but some take that train of thought and conclude that Islam is the enemy and should be vanquished. Let's continue this idea of shifting the timeline a few centuries and do the same for Christianity - back to the Crusades. Couldn't the same conclusions be drawing regarding vanquishing Christianity at that time?
I don't think Christians pirated ships and held the occupants in slavery for ransom, althought they did a pretty good job of wiping out the Aztec and Inca civilizations and torturing hell out of their own people. The world would be a far more peaceful place to live without fucking religion! My Ism is the only true Ism, bullshit, they're all wacked out!
Pete McCluskey.
Lifetime Supporter
+10000 Mate, most of history's wars have been fought in the name of someone's
God.
The trouble is, when you have God on your side, you know what's good for everyone else. And you don't give them the slack to learn and develop and try things. They need to run their lives, their cultures, their countries basically how you tell them, because you've spoken with God and you have the truth.
I don't understand your point. What they did do was ok and not at all relevant to the current topic? The Crusades lasted a couple of centuries and killed in the name of God. Women and children were killed. It was primarily fought against Muslims. If they didn't go to the same extremes as modern day Muslims (again, the radical extreme ones), everything else about them looks the same.
I agree whole heartedly about religion though. If someone wants it - go have it. Leave the rest of us alone.
Jeff Young
GT40s Supporter
Sure they did.
In fact, Christian countries engaged in an organized slave industry until when? Oh, say about 1865......
In fact, Christian countries engaged in an organized slave industry until when? Oh, say about 1865......
Jeff Young
GT40s Supporter
Interesting. So fish, fat shirtless white guys and boats are playing on the same field as Islam?
I'm beginning to see your "logic."
I'm beginning to see your "logic."
Jeff Young
GT40s Supporter
I know, I know, you hate me as much as Islam. Actually kind of glad for it, I like it when the bigots get fiesty.
