Op-Ed: Why Arabs are so Easily Offended

Arutz Sheva ^ | 30/9/12 | Ron Jager

[Eleutheria5]

“Call me Ishmael”, is the opening sentence that opens the novel “Moby Dick” authored by Herman Melville. Ishmael, who is telling the story of Moby Dick, recounts that he is sailing to sea out of a sense of alienation and cultural inadequacy.

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Ever since the days of Napoleon's landing upon the shores of Egypt at the very end of the 18th Century and bringing with him the modern era to the Middle East, Islam has been unable to free itself from the shackles of inferiority and self-destructive primal rage that typifies the hatred of modern day Islamic radicalism against Western civilization.

In recent years, despite Israel being at the foci of much of what has been termed the "war of civilizations" between the Western world and Islam, Europe is undergoing a rapid demographic transition that will lead to a large Muslim population harboring an unchanging, hostile attitude toward their national communities.

Nicolai Sennels, a Danish psychologist who has had extensive experience with treating Muslim youths has identified four main differences that are important in order to understand the behavior of Muslims and how they interact with Western influences. Without dismissing the intrinsic value of multiculturalism or the need to identify with ones cultural roots Sennels has identified four main differences that are important in order to understand the behavior of Muslims. They concern anger, self-confidence, the so-called "locus of control" and identity.

Westerners are brought up to think of anger as a sign of weakness, powerlessness and lack of self-control.

In Muslim culture, anger is seen as a sign of strength. ....

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[Cronos]

OK. 1757, then. The British conquered India.

The British didn't conquer India in 1757. In 1757 they fought the Battle of Plassey. They only conquered what is now Bengal and parts of the Coromandel coast. Prior to this they had ports along the shores

this is what their possessions in 1744 looked like

And in 1769

The pre-eminent power in India at that time was the Maratha confederation

The Marathas had just ended a 150 year war with the Mughals and took over most of India except forthe extreme south (which was divided between the Keralites of Travancore and the Nizam of Hyderabad) and the northern portions

The problem is that the Marathas, unlike the centralized Mughals were highly de-centralized, a confederation with a number of autonomous lords

This is why the British and French could set up their own spheres of influence whereas under the Great Mughals they could not

Even in 1857 they hadn't conquered the entire continent of india but had most of the area under their influence

Note also that the "Delhi" that was burned was not the "New Delhi" of today. The city of greater Delhi in India today encompasses 7 prior cities -- the oldest, Hastinapur dating back to at least 1000 BC and the newest, "New Delhi" dating from the 1920s

[muawiyah]

Half the Arabic speaking people on the planet live in Egypt.

[jjotto]

Just to be clear, Jewish tradition regards Ishmael as the archetype of Islam (and Esau/Edom as the archetype of Christianity).

[Cronos]

Their bad luck to encounter the technologically superior Brits at a time when the princes each felt the Brits could be of use to them.

well, not completely correct. The Brits were not so technically superior in the 1800s. In comparison the Portuguese who came in the 1497 and were pre-eminent in the 1500s had a technological advantage

The Brits were initially cowed by the might of the Great Mughals. But when the Mughals fell, due to the outcome of the jihads by Aurangzeb, India became once more a chequerboard of states -- Marathas but also Rajputs and the various satraps like the Nizam, rulers of Oudh etc. looking for independence

The British played a smart game of carrot and stick. They didn't use the stick much, but gave the princes a fantastic carrot -- "we'll take care of your state for you, defence etc., and we'll give you a large stipend to sit around and do nothing".

[Cronos]

They have a grand history of seeking to uplift the poor and extending charity to the oppressed.

Not true for the initial Company Raj in India when it was just about making money from the fabulously wealthy continent of India

Only in the 1800s, thanks to Methodists did that change. And it was after Company Raj ended in 1858 and the Empire started, that's when the entire myth of "we have come to better the world" started.

Yes, they did a lot of good, but also a lot of bad. On the whole the British Empire wasn't evil, but the outcomes of it's blundering (Pakistan, Palestine, Iraq, etc.) mean that it just gets a small plus point

[muawiyah]

The Brits as a people, not the Raj ~ there’s a difference.

[Cronos]

well, yes and no. The British initially came to India in the 1600s following the Dutch (who had come in the 1600s following the Portuguese, who first came in 1497 to India)

For 150 years they had small operations, trading posts.

The Dutch were pre-eminent, even in Europe

But after the Anglo-Dutch wars, the Brits knocked out the Dutch.

Then they had the wars with the French, the 7 years war which was across western Europe, North America and India.

At the same time, India's centralized Mughal Empire had collapsed (note of course that India is a continent with many nations in it - 300+ languages, different ethnicities, in fact 4 different races etc.), so kind of like the aftermath of the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West

The Brits were initially in the 1700s just about importing tea, silk, textiles and selling them at a profit

But in the late 1700s the industrial revolution meant that the Brits could make textile cheaper than India, so imported cotton, but the best way for them was to have a monopoly on buying cotton -- so they took over the chief cotton growing and then tea growing areas

The train was a by-product and it was very good for transporting goods across the vast distances of the indian continent

As things progressed and the Brits slowly co-opted or conquered various Indian nations, they kept up the monopoly, this time not only on buying but also on selling -- no other European or Indian state could sell textiles in British areas. This then extended to other goods

So the Brits had a marvellous system for their own enrichment -- the Indians could only sell their raw products at a substantial discount to the English and then could only buy the finished products from the English

Hence the massive drain of wealth from the Indian continent to England.

Did not the British increase their efforts when it had an empire towards India once we Americans fought and won our independence from the British? - not really connected as the American colonies were colonies of the Crown, the British "govt" so so speak, while the Indian colonies were Company areas, the British East indian company

only in 1858 did this get taken over by the British government, and only in 1858 did the British Empire start.

Also the methods used were different as in America the natives were at least a few 1000 years behind in development and the land was mostly uninhabited, while in India the level of civilisation was the same, actually in 1600 it could be argued that parts of India were ahead. And of course India was inhabited....

[Cronos]

British to put together Israel

Actually the Brits didn't do this. Jews continued living in Tiberias, etc. from the middle ages under the Ottomans

The Ottomans in 1874 set up a separate district of Jerusalem and Jews escaping from Russian pogroms (note that the Russians in the years from 1772 to 1793 had participated in the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth. Prior to this, in the years from 1500 to 1772 the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth,encompassing what is now Poland, lithuania, belarus, western ukraine, large parts of western Russia was home to nearly 60% of the world's Jews -- the Russians didn't have Jews before the partitions and suddenly got this big bunch of non-Russians, so they restricted them to the Pale of Settlement (essentially the parts of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth that Russia took)) -- anyway, the pogroms pushed Jews to America and Israel

The Jews (in Alyah I think it's called) moved in to this Ottoman province

The Jews in WWI supported Germany against Russia -- the Brits tried to get them over to their side to get American Jews to be pro-Brit

The British after WWI got this entire region plonk in their laps

[Cronos]

Also the Brits were set up in India thanks to a dowry from the other Iberian power — Charles II got Bombay as a dowry for his marriage to the Princess of Portugal

[Cronos]

I"m not sure the English in the 1700s drew any clear distinctions between themselves and the Scandinavians and the northern Germans.

True, they were considered one of the Germanic nations (with the Scandanavians and Hanover, Bremen etc. etc.) until rather late

[Cronos]

yes, but note that the Egyptian dialect of Arabic is nearly unintelligible to someone from Syria or the gulf

[muawiyah]

The Jerusalem accent leaves you marked as well ~ according to the neighbors.

The language has been in use outside the old True Arab regions for a very long time.

[Cronos]

I have no idea about the Palestinian dialect of Arabic. You mean just the accent or do they have different words and meanings as well?

[muawiyah]

IT”s mostly the accent ~ but there are some vocab differences.

[Cronos]

The Brits as a people. hmm.... well, this has only been since the Methodists in the early 1800s and that too, not in large numbers initially.

But in the Victorian age they saw themselves as bringing civilisation, at the same time trampling on peoples in the North of England and in Ireland and India (think the famines).

As I said -- they come on the positive on the whole, but just about.

They were not the grand bringers of charity etc. but bringers of charity -- a leser magnitude, but still good.

[Eleutheria5]

Nice novelization of the Ottoman-period Yishuv is Tevye in the Holy Land, by Tzvi Fischer, available in both English and Hebrew. President Yitzchak Ben Tzvi’s major work on the subject is unfortunately rough going, even if you know Hebrew, and is unavailable in English. But there’s always Joan Peters’ Since Time Immemorial.

[Eleutheria5]

The Brits? They’re a great people. As such, they have their dark side as well. But the world we inherited would not have come about without them, and would have been much poorer for it. That’s how I define “great” this morning, after having coffee.

So how does that definition match the Arabs? They invented Algebra (if they didn’t steal it from the Assyrians. Did they, anyone?), scared Europe enough that they went on the Crusades that started the European world moving towards the Renaissance, and made the Castilian/Catalonian alliance of Ferdinand and Izabella a Spain-wide phenomenon, so they could drive out the Muslim Moors, start the Inquisition to fleece Jewish and Muslim backsliders, and finance Columbus’ attempt to find a westerly route to India so they could avoid the brigandry and tariffs of the overland route, and the long trip around Africa. By accident, he discovered America instead, all because of the Moose Limbs. So they, too, were catalysts of great things, which happened in opposition to them, just like the British. But unlike the British, Arabs are mostly f@#$ed up in the head. There. I made a distinction. Hah.

[Cronos]

the Brits were a great people. No disrespect to the many fine English folk I know. I lived in England for years in the early 2000s and while there are still a few good people, the majority are yobs now, unfortunately

This is due to their schooling which has deteriorated precipitately and their Paki minority. Tests showed that most students of the batch of 2003 couldn't pass the exams of the 1950s in Brit schools

But the world we inherited would not have come about without them, and would have been much poorer for it. -- that is true.

The "arabs" -- again, let's be specific and use this to refer to only the Nejd Arabis -- Mohammed and tribe

They didn't produce anything.

The Assyrians, Babylonians were Semites like Arabs or Jews but of different (Amorite or Akkadian) stock.

These Nejd Arabs didn't provide anything, BUT a continuous empire from India to Europe, which allowed for mixing of ideas on a scale that hadn't happened since the Seleucids (and was started by the Persians under Cyrus)

[Cronos]

Europe going on the Crusades... well.. note that the Western Empire never actually "fell" to the Barbarians, but the Barbarians were romanized, just with themselves as rulers.

The real separation was caused by the Moslems conquering Christian Egypt, Syria, Iraq etc.

[muawiyah]

The True Arabs did do one thing rather amazingly ~ during the early period of the European Dark Age (535 to 800 give or take a few decades) when the entire northern tier of nations were in the dumper with busted economies and social orders (Including China), they'd begun saving their gold.

Although they officially want everybody to look to Mecca and Medina as the "source" the city state of Petra and the highlands in Yemen, devised a way to trade in the near abroad (to borrow a soviet term) and build stores of gold and silver.

Although the Silk Road was, so to speak, 'Down', their own overland trade route wasn't and what little trade came from the Indian ocean litoral or the Eastern Mediterranean, would go through there.

Their population centers were far enough removed from the areas affected by recurring plagues that they managed to miss out on that business as well.

One day the guys at Petra discovered the outside world and that changed everything for everybody. Discovery 2 was the Byzantine Army ~ they hadn't been paid in a century. It was a "Hello boys, you need jobs?" Moment.

After the lightning conquest of Syria the Arabs sat down and invented Mohammad and everything that went with it. They continued to buy Byzantine military strength and quite rapidly (as such things went in those days) drove the Persians back to the old Persian core.

That was quickly followed up with economic hegemony in North Africa and the Fertile Crescent ~ and virtually total neglect of the North shore of the Mediterranean.