Replies

Virtually ALL Arabs forget the 11th century. That's where they lost their independence and identity and began to be absorbed into a TURKISH EMPIRE that styled itself the Islamic Caliphate.

Eventually they became nothing more than tax slaves to that empire ~ which impoverished them, destroyed their higher culture, and left them in an unenviable degenerate state.

They were finally liberated by The West in WWI (and to some degree before that in earlier French and British forays into the region). President Truman laid down the law to both the French and British that they had to get out of the Middle East.

He even reversed the earlier Roman destruction of the autonomous state of Israel ~

All things were replaced where they had been.

There's an old saying ~ beggars can't be choosers. It appears to not have a counterpart in Arabic ~ but it's still true. Google Translate says that it could be: يمكن أن المتسولين لا يكون اخيار

Eventually they became nothing more than tax slaves to that empire ~ which impoverished them, destroyed their higher culture, and left them in an unenviable degenerate state.

They seem to prefer a degenerate state, especially if they can destroy the Jews.

Mehmet Ali, the de facto independent governor of Egypt in the early 19th century, might have overthrown the Ottomans if the western powers had not intervened on the sultan's behalf. Who knows how later Middle Eastern history would have played out if that had been allowed to happen.

Before WWI, Egypt was no longer under Turkish control (rather under British), Libya was under Italy, Tunisia and Algeria were under France, and Morocco was divided between France and Spain. Much of the Arabian peninsula was not under effective Ottoman control.

Mehmet Ali, whose family ruled Egypt until 1952, was of Albanian descent.