Let's assume your interpretation is correct. So how come they have not united yet?? What is stopping them? What has been stopping them?
Primarily because foreign powers will arm and instigate whoever opposes the most promising figures in support of unity. Whenever someone gets too popular, he is destroyed either by a direct strike on the part of a foreign power, or by arms and funds provided to an unpopular gang which will then attempt to seat itself in power.
Again, if the unifiers are the most supported, why aren't they a single country yet?? Because they all like to pay lip service to unity. They have been doing that at least since the times of Saladin. But when it comes down to putting up or shutting up, they always shut up and do what is best for themselves and their local interests.
Well, that's tough to do when a well armed foreign power will supply and train and arm any enemy who might have a chance at killing you.
Notice that this is exactly what happened to Nasser-his army was destroyed, and his pan-Arab movement dismantled shortly thereafter not by Arabs, but by Israel.
The same thing was attempted just this summer against the next popular pan-Arab leader, Nasrallah. It failed, and of course that makes this a crisis time for Western interests in the region. Ideally, Nasrallah would've been smashed just like Nasser, and a major blow would've been dealt to the anti-Mubarak, anti-Saudi, and anti-Hashemite popular majorities of the region.
Your assumption is that these bad leaders somehow live in a vacuum and have no supporters of their own. Somehow they magically remain in power while the "good, honest arab on the street" hates their guts. That's bullshit. No regime can survive without sufficient internal support. All regimes topple when they lose it.
Yeah, but "sufficient" doesn't mean anything near "majority." Especially not when foreign powers are willing to give you all the money and arms you need to stay in power. That helps dictators along quite a bit. Having an army that kills anyone who gets out of line and a secret police force that effectively catches anyone trying to organize a resistance helps too.
I would go further to say that their current leaders are essentially the political and cultural heirs of beduin sheikhs. The same level of tyranny, selfishness, tribalism, and violence. In some cases, they are the genetic heirs of the same as well.
haha, where? Saudi Arabia? That's about the only one where you can make this claim and have a shot.
The bedouins had no real power, again, until British intervention in the region. American and British combined support created Saudi Arabia-if they had not occupied a useful niche at the time of the Ottoman wars, there would've been no realistic chance that those groups would've made it into power. They weren't popular, they didn't have any homegrown support, and their victories were handed to them from the outside.
You're inventing an "Arab created" history that simply never happened. The Arabs did not get together and choose to go in that direction-it was heaved upon them by intervention. If it were so well fitting to their culture, you'd expect that it would've been possible to accomplish without massive foreign armament and would be somewhat stable. It has been neither.
Yes, they collectively controlled a huge territory from Bagdad to Spain, but in reality it was a clay giant. The caliphs that tried to exert more direct control did not last long. Staying power?? And the Ottomans were dominated by turks, so they do not count as arabs, and therefore their empire does not count as arabic either.
Okay, so what are you claiming now then? That the Arab empires that didn't exist and the Arabs who got along fine with the Turks until near the 20th century were "tribal"? That makes no sense. On one hand, you're saying that no government can exist without support. Yet clearly a non-Arab, non-tribal government did exist in these lands for a lot longer than the current governments have. And on the other hand, you say that Arabs are tribal barbarians who would never support any other kind of government.
How do you plan to resolve that contradiction?
Which history, btw, shows a "lack of effective control" on the part of the Ottomans?
Somehow they magically remain in power while the "good, honest arab on the street" hates their guts. That's bullshit. No regime can survive without sufficient internal support. All regimes topple when they lose it.
This is just beyond absurd. If you can't imagine how a dictator could hold on to power while being extremely unpopular, there's no amount of evidence that will convince you because your assumptions are completely irrational.
Say what?? The crusaders were germanic? Check your history books again. Most of them were French, with some English, Germans, Italians, and specifically Venetians thrown into the mix
Okay, looks like your history books didn't go back enough or spent too much time worrying about defining a "meme" instead of recording the historical sources.
Yes, the English, Germans, Italians, and French were germanic peoples. They lived under germanic legal codes and were not too far descended from the germanic hordes that turned Europe from the heights of the Roman empire into a bloody, undeveloped, barbarian killing field.
Germanic hordes were the source of nearly every state that participated in the crusade, except for the mostly forgotten by western triumphalists Byzantine elements.
Most of them did not intend to settle but gain fame and riches and return home. The ones that did want to stay and maintain fortresses were in a sea of arabs that hated them and looked for an opportunity to betray and kill them, or at least capture and ransom them if possible.
Well, there was also the problem that their idea of government consisted of "so and so promises to the other so and so that he will do whatever he says, and will respect no other law besides that." They were notoriously corrupt and had no real organization...they were still a lot like the nomadic barbarian hordes from which their languages and cultures descended.
The settled ones had a subculture of traders that essentially followed the nomadic ways in their dealings with one another. Again, read about Mohammed's life and struggles and come back to tell us that was not tribal and was not how beduins would treat one another in the open desert.
Except that this claim is totally ridiculous because the centers of power of the Muslim world were the settled, agrarian regions. To ignore all of that influence and to go back to Muhammad's (peace be upon him) time, where he was not a nomad but lived in a settled, trading establishment, is really naive. He didn't live in the open desert-he lived in a large trading outpost that was permanent and developed.
So again, I'm not sure where you're getting the "nomadic" culture. Islam did not originate with nomads, and the Arab culture most definitely was not solely defined by people who wandered.
The centers that you mention are FAR older communities from the times of the Persian empire and the following Hellenistic expansion. Here, you are the one that is 1000 years off the mark
Yes, but you are missing the point: These places developed into economic powerhouses that exceeded anything the Hellenic, Persian, and Roman cultures had created. They did so under Arab and later Turkish Muslim rule.
Tribalism, endemic political segmentation, endlessly reciprocal violence among subgroups, inability to produce a nation-state.
I'm noticing that you can't get beyond conclusory remarks about Afghanistan. You simply state your case based on a limited knowledge of Arab history, and then say "Afghanistan is the same" as if that constitutes pointing to some specific features of afghan culture that are the same.
Where is the "endemic political segmentation" as you see it in Afghan society? Between which groups? What in the division is the same as in Arab culture?
"reciprocal violence among subgroups"--where is the connection to Arab culture? What are the parallel groups and events?
"inability to produce a nation state"--Again, which groups inabilities are you comparing to the Arabs? And which nation state of the Arabs should be model of failure to which Afghanistan can compare? Why?
I strongly suspect that you have no specifics because you don't actually know anything about Afghanistan, but are instead using the "brown skin and roughly similar clothing" test to determine that it's even remotely similar to the Arab world.
I made a statement and produced a logical framework. In scientific terms, that's a thesis. Nobody is forcing you to accept it as truth. If you do not believe in it, point out the failure of logic. If you do not understand it, ask for clarification.
Okay, so I'm asking you: Where is the proof that the thesis is true. Let's see it. It is clearly a statement of fact--only these methods of comparing cultures are valid. So where's the proof? I am asking you for a reference to the work that established this statement as supported by some evidence...
So where is it? Let me guess: "It's objective reality because CAnnoneer says so"
