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Why is the Arab world so easily offended? (Fouad Ajami)
Washington Post ^ | September 14, 2012 | Fouad Ajami

Posted on 09/15/2012 2:24:20 PM PDT by neverdem

Modernity requires the willingness to be offended. And as anti-American violence across the Middle East and beyond shows, that willingness is something the Arab world, the heartland of Islam, still lacks.

--snip--

In the narrative of history transmitted to schoolchildren throughout the Arab world and reinforced by the media, religious scholars and laymen alike, Arabs were favored by divine providence. They had come out of the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century, carrying Islam from Morocco to faraway Indonesia. In the process, they overran the Byzantine and Persian empires, then crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to Iberia, and there they fashioned a brilliant civilization that stood as a rebuke to the intolerance of the European states to the north. Cordoba and Granada were adorned and exalted in the Arab imagination. Andalusia brought together all that the Arabs favored — poetry, glamorous courts, philosophers who debated the great issues of the day.

If Islam’s rise was spectacular, its fall was swift and unsparing. This is the world that the great historian Bernard Lewis explored in his 2002 book “What Went Wrong?” The blessing of God, seen at work in the ascent of the Muslims, now appeared to desert them. The ruling caliphate, with its base in Baghdad, was torn asunder by a Mongol invasion in the 13th century. Soldiers of fortune from the Turkic Steppes sacked cities and left a legacy of military seizures of power that is still the bane of the Arabs. Little remained of their philosophy and literature, and after the Ottoman Turks overran Arab countries to their south in the 16th century, the Arabs seemed to exit history; they were now subjects of others...

--snip--

President Obama has taken a different approach. He was sure that his biography — the years he spent in Indonesia and his...

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: arabs; fouadajami; globaljihad; hypersensitivity; muslimworld
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21 posted on 09/15/2012 3:03:04 PM PDT by neverdem ( Xin loi min oi)
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To: Elendur
Not really defending the whole article, just that, particularly considering it's the loathesome WaPo, I was surprised it had some good stuff in it.

From the article:

They know that more than 300 million Arabs have fallen to economic stagnation and cultural decline. They know that the standing of Arab states along the measures that matter — political freedom, status of women, economic growth — is low.

Muslims know their societies can't compete with the West. It drives many of them to rage. Islam is a very political religion and these people are taught they are the best and everyone else is a heathen, yet here they find themselves mired in stagnation and backwardness in virtually every majority Muslim country. It is very hard for them to face their failure.

22 posted on 09/15/2012 3:05:16 PM PDT by Longbow1969
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To: neverdem
Come on.. not all Arab Muslims are like that.

But the minority who are.. how can centuries of Islamism's practice of consanguineous marriages be left out as a factor in their irrational, knee-jerk, extremely violent behavior? We freely recognize that European royal families suffered from consanguineous marriages.

There were studies prior to 2001 about Islamism's practice of consanguineous marriages; now such studies can be used to inflame the nut cases. People die and it's blamed on the study.

Moderate Arabs you would think would hasten to calm this but the Islamists world-wide have infiltrated and indoctrinated even in countries like Turkey which has almost a hundred years of reforming Islam and being a democratic Republic. Now the Islamists are back.

23 posted on 09/15/2012 3:08:23 PM PDT by WilliamofCarmichael (If modern America's Man on Horseback is out there, Get on the damn horse already!)
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To: neverdem

The film may have mocked Islam, but Mohammed really was violent. That’s their role model.

There is an orchestrated push on to try to make saying anything offensive against Islam. But it needs to be pointed out that Islam is very offensive to Christianity. They denigrate our God and accuse him of deception. They say our scriptures are full of errors. They say our apostles lied about Jesus. If there is going to be any banning of free speech, we should make it clear it needs to start with banning Islam.


24 posted on 09/15/2012 3:08:26 PM PDT by DannyTN
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To: neverdem

The self hating muslims have accurately assessed the value of islamic culture and found it worthless. They are touchy on this subject because they themselves are the principle component of the worthless culture.


25 posted on 09/15/2012 3:09:22 PM PDT by muir_redwoods (Hopey changey Low emission unicorns and a crap sandwich)
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To: neverdem
doesn't matter what happens, the goathumpers are safety wired to the terrorist/murderous thug position anyway so fill in the blank...

26 posted on 09/15/2012 3:13:25 PM PDT by Chode (American Hedonist - *DTOM* -ww- NO Pity for the LAZY)
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To: neverdem

It is a truly odd psychosis.


27 posted on 09/15/2012 3:17:09 PM PDT by RIghtwardHo
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To: WilliamofCarmichael

Islam and it’s book, the quran is not subject to reformation.

Any efforts by the govt’s of Turkey et al. are meaningless.

Christian reformation is entirely different.

The quran is supposed to be “the word of God” as opposed to most of the new and old testament, being “inspired by God”

Therefore, the quran CANNOT be reinterpreted as it would contradict God, well beyond the many existing contradictions, to make it worthless.


28 posted on 09/15/2012 3:23:38 PM PDT by Zeneta (Why are so many people searching for something that has already found us ?)
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To: muir_redwoods

Pride comes before the fall.


29 posted on 09/15/2012 3:26:01 PM PDT by Zeneta (Why are so many people searching for something that has already found us ?)
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To: Mamzelle

Mamzelle, you are absolutely correct about inbreeding. But there is much more to the demography.

Polygamy is a hideous social dynamic hardly ever discussed academically or religiously. Where it exists far too many men never have a wife or family, a recipe for violence/conquest. The wealthy men who do have wives acquire and dispose of women according to their fertile years. OBL had 53 brothers and sisters. This causes even more men to be useless, angry drones.

No father can properly raise several dozen children. Mothers must compete viciously for their child’s favorable outcome, so they inadvertently earn the distain accorded “trecherous” women.

In his Satanic wisdom, Mohammed designed an insatiable mercenary force with a sexual imperative to conquer, and if that is impossible they can have boys and female domesticated animals.

Criticizing polygamy should be acceptable due to genetics, anthropology and history. It’s been a colossal failure in other societies besides Muslim.


30 posted on 09/15/2012 3:30:58 PM PDT by bukkdems (Polygamy is the essential ingredient of Islamic evil.)
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To: givemELL

Fantastic set of videos !!!

This Government, our Government, seems hell bent on hiding what they know or refusing to recognize reality.


31 posted on 09/15/2012 3:32:57 PM PDT by Zeneta (Why are so many people searching for something that has already found us ?)
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To: bukkdems

How common is it today?


32 posted on 09/15/2012 3:48:11 PM PDT by kenavi (Obama doesn't hate private equity. He wants to be it with our money.)
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To: neverdem
Why are they so offended?

They're offended for the same fundamental reason that a whole bunch of us conservatives are offended.

The modern world doesn't accept the beliefs they've had all their life, from infancy to adulthood.

I'm offended for the same reasons: PResident Obama has attacked and derided my fundamental beliefs in our justice and legal system, as based on our U.S. Constitution, that this Constitution is the basis of the laws we have today, establishing certain rights and freedoms, that he trashes every day through merely ignoring it and its precedents and/or authoring executive orders in contradiction to its specific language.

But I don't go around rioting, raping, and murdering people because of his actions.

33 posted on 09/15/2012 3:48:19 PM PDT by Real Cynic No More
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To: Mamzelle

If you search for “Middle East consanguinity” you find all sorts of scholarly articles on the subject. It isn’t pretty.


34 posted on 09/15/2012 3:48:19 PM PDT by FreedomPoster (Islam delenda est)
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To: Zeneta
RE: Any efforts by the govt’s of Turkey et al. [to reform Islam] are meaningless.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk did it.. at least he led the conversion from Ottoman Turkey to a secular democratic Republic of Turkey founded in 1923.

The Islamist AK Party has steadily undermined the secular government in Turkey for a decade with lots of help, some say, from American citizen Fethullah Gülen a Turkish imam operating in Turkey and worldwide from a compound in Pennsylvania.

So now one could say "Any efforts by to thwart the [Islamist government] of Turkey . . . are meaningless."

35 posted on 09/15/2012 3:50:51 PM PDT by WilliamofCarmichael (If modern America's Man on Horseback is out there, Get on the damn horse already!)
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To: Real Cynic No More

Or, maybe they’re merely jealous.


36 posted on 09/15/2012 3:51:57 PM PDT by Real Cynic No More
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To: neverdem

Because their “prophet” was an idiot they’re inclined to follow suit.


37 posted on 09/15/2012 3:58:51 PM PDT by onedoug
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To: WilliamofCarmichael

I would simply suggest that reform attempts are short lived and therefore meaningless as the logic of islam (flawed as it is), once extended to its conclusion make lasting reform untenable.


38 posted on 09/15/2012 4:01:28 PM PDT by Zeneta (Why are so many people searching for something that has already found us ?)
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To: Dr. Bogus Pachysandra; Mamzelle
There was a great article featured here about a week ago. I can’t find it now. It talked about, well,,, basically the brain damage inflicted by a couple thousand years of inbreeding. Marrying your first cousin.

Amino-acid deficiency underlies rare form of autism

Why can't they buy a clue in the 21st century?

39 posted on 09/15/2012 4:11:12 PM PDT by neverdem ( Xin loi min oi)
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To: givemELL

Thanks for the link.


40 posted on 09/15/2012 4:12:27 PM PDT by neverdem ( Xin loi min oi)
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