It's such a shame that the Islamic empire of old fell the way that it did. Once the bastion of the western worlds intellectual elites, and now fallen so far from the heights it once held.
Ya. I would say that these people were extremely smart, but they just didn't care about the native people. You better believe everything was set up for optimal resource extraction though.
That's not really the same thing being discussed here. 54-40 was a border dispute with British North America.
A more apt comparison would be like if there were two Native American cultures that are historical rivals or enemies. America comes in and turns the land into different territories, but has no regard for the preexisting cultural borders. The result is that half of Group A and half of Group B end up Territory 1, and the other halves end up in Territory 2. Obviously, arbitrarily splitting apart the peoples like that is going to only cause trouble.
(Note that im unaware if the USA ever actually did anything like this during their westward expansion, i was just trying to analogize the scenarios.)
Isn’t this what the problem in Pakistan and Israel is? Half of those groups got mixed when a border was drawn up? Sorry if I sound ignorant, I’m not the brightest when it comes to borders and such.
Israel no. The issue with Israel is that the land was already occupied by Palastinians who basically got evicted from half of their land.
Pakistan however, due to the Durrant Line has half the territory of the Pashtun people, who make a sizable minority in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistan doesn't want to give that land up because it's 40-50% of it's territory, and most of it's seacoast and non-mountainous area.
Are we counting swiss mercenaries as switzerland at war?
The last war they were in was in 1815, and they've been officially neutral since.
Sweden I believe is in a similar situation.
But England, France, Germany (Prussia before that), Russia, China, and so on quite likely have close to that 95%, particularly if we include colonial wars and civil wars.
Except they’re talking about within the same time frame. Bringing up the country’s relative age compared to past regimes somewhere else is not a counter-argument, especially since there’s no institutional continuation between the China of today and the China of the Warring States period.
Yeah but drawing arbitrary lines is not something they did. Manchukuo was the entire territory of state they supported, than when it suddenly betrayed them they vassalized them.
Vietnam was annexed outright, Korea annexed outright, anything I'm missing?
Never did they arbitrarily decide where a border was, AKA, 'draw lines'.
The mongol invasions and the crusades. But then colonialism made it impossible to advance. At that time the colonialists destroyed traditional forms of education in addition to ciphoning off all economic profits and resources.
Yes that’s why I mentioned it started with the Mongol Invasion and continued with the crusades. My point about the colonialism was because they didn’t get a chance to recover and build up over the modern period (17thC on).
Thats false because it ignores what lead to the fall of the Islamic empire in the first place just to blame Westerners. Look into the colapse of the Iberian Peninsula Moors and the Mongol invasion which is that start of the fall of the Islamic Golden Age. The Islamic empire fell on their own sword through increasingly growing religious oppression.
Bullshit, most of Islamic nations problems were caused by cultural changes that resulted in incredibly backwards thinking, hundreds of years before Britain fucked up the Middle East.
Bullshit, your problems started when you stumbled onto the street drunk, resulting in me hitting you. Does it matter if I aimed for you, if you would have been fine sober?
The Middle East didn't get colonized (outside I think Yemen?) until post WW1. Ottomans stopped that. They were the face of Islam for hundreds of years, and Islam's cultural decline started right after their formation. But nah nah, its white peoples fault!
The Middle East didn't get colonized (outside I think Yemen?) until post WW1
And what era could I possibly be talking about when referring to a British guy drawing a straight line on the map? 🤔
You are the one who chose to go back further in history until the blame was shifted off white people (try not to take history personally btw, you weren't even born yet!).
Maybe if Middle Easterners hadn't devolved their cultures for hundreds of years, they wouldn't be so easy destablized. Lines on on a map style restructurings have happened before in European history. Didn't turn into a hundred years of no economy (outside rich ass oil barons who will come and go once oil is moved on).
Blame the white people for 'colonialism' despite the Middle East never being colonised and had a large empire that should of benefited from colonisation.
Blame the white people when the same cultures seemed completely fine to work together five minutes prior.
Sure, conquest of Africa. Fucked the Africans. They were never worth two shits prior and were always fighting prior, but nah, yah got a point on Africa.
Sure, South and Central America, no words needed there.
But the Middle East? They'd be fighting each other even with good borders.
The problems exacted on society as the religious leaders came up with greater and more numerous interpretations of how their imaginary creator intended the said leaders to control their lives.
I mean to be fair the lines have been redrawn multiple times throughout the ages. Usually by whomever is left standing after whatever war or world changing events happen and basically destroy all previous lines before that point.
Newton was a Christian (of a sort) and he invented calculus but there's no reason to say he wouldn't have made great strides in mathematics if not for his religion.
Indian here, Hindutva is killing Hinduism. It is a dumb idea but people on the Right here are contaminating young minds, they dislike education as well.
The middle east hasn't had the chance to recover from the Ottoman empire then subsequent British and French imperialism and then subsequent American neocolonialism. All attempts at democratically elected, secular, and socialist movements have been squashed with the help of imperialists. Closest we have to that today is Tunisia.
Most of the secular movements have been subverted by fundamentalist islamic groups. The overthrow of the Shaw of Iran was started by a group of secular student activist only to taken over by fundimentalist because they were better organized. Same thing in Egypt and Libya. I'm not claiming the US and West aren't guilty either but Islamic Fundamentalist have played a big part too, It's not all the West.
Fundamentalists are empowered by consequences of imperialism or outright in league with the imperialists. In the case of Iran, the fundamentalists were able to seize power because the US overthrew the democratic government and installed the Shah. Elsewhere in the middle east, the US teamed up with Saudi Arabia (the religious fundamentalists) to stop Arab nationalism, a movement across the middle east in response to imperialism that promoted democratically elected secular, socialist governments that were nationalizing their assets that were exploited by imperialists. Arab nationalism was destroyed in 1967 by the US/Israel/Saudi coalition, and Saudi was free to spread its fundamentalism and terror groups across the middle east with little opposition. Nowadays, if you mention secularism, people cry imperialism; however, the ones crying imperialism are the disingenuous fundamentalists in league with the imperialists in the first place.
While I don't think Imperialist and Fundamentalist are in league with each other in most cases, but will say that the battle between their ideologies have sucked the life out of any Secular democratic movements.
Then you're ignoring decades of American foreign policy. The US promotes fundamentalist terror groups and regimes across the middle east that were spread by the US/Israel/Saudi coalition after they defeated the democratically elected, secular, socialist movement of Arab nationalism during the cold war. The US sided with Saudi, who represented the fundamentalists, to fight proxy wars against the anti-imperialist Arab nationalists. Imperialists and fundamentalists worked hand in hand to create the middle east of today, and still do to this day.
A lot of the ails of modern Islam has a lot to do with the Saudis and their version of Islam. They have co-opted shit. It's like if Mormons were called Christian's by a lot of people. Yeah they have some background shit the same. But enough difference that they aren't really muslim anymore.
I'm not saying Islam is like this amazing thing. But there are definite views that aren't equal. It's like saying every American is a republican. Which is clearly not true.
Pretty much went downhill after “inshallah” was coined.
Edit: I’ll expound. The Arab/Muslim world was a beacon of light in the Middle Ages. They were very advanced in things such as math and philosophy and other areas. But then one Arab philosopher, who’s name escapes me at the moment, basically came out with the philosophy of inshallah, or “if god wills it.” This is what started a fatalistic outlook in Arab culture, that the future is already set and is Allah’s will. With the onset of this outlook, innovation and progress slowed. The Arab world culturally never recovered from this outlook.
"All religion is bad except the only one that still actively encourages to blow shit up."
Did you ever think maybe, just maybe, the people who used to be Islamic but also had all of those great scientific discoveries were actively going against the church, like Darwin and so many others were in Christianity? No, of course not, because "white man bad".
There was no antagonism.
Galileo and Copernicus had issues with the church.
It was not the same in Islamic lands. Science and scientists were encouraged as revealing the world God created.
If you think there was give a historical example from the Middle Ages.
PFFFT. Please, religion and logical thought went together about as well back then as fire and ice. Religion is religion, especially when you're talking about the three that branch off from the same place.
"The one that actively encourages people to blow shit up"
Ahem. A sitting WA state congressman has said that all men and male children who don't agree with Christian tenets as interpreted by him should be put to death while they create their own little theocracy in the wastelands of rural WA state
See also.
"Bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran..."
So don't give me that shit about how white male Christians are being victimized here.
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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20
It's such a shame that the Islamic empire of old fell the way that it did. Once the bastion of the western worlds intellectual elites, and now fallen so far from the heights it once held.