Angela Merkel wants to ban the burka?

[barbos]

Yes, but it was long time ago during completely different era. We can't really make conclusion/predictions on such scale.

If we don't base our predictions on the future on the past, what are we supposed to base them on? And a couple of hundred years ago is not that long ago. I don't think you fully realize how close Europe came to get conquered by the Ottomans in 1683. The Holy Roman empire was extremely close to falling. And that was the most powerful army Europe had at the time. 1683 isn't that long time ago.

All right, we can do that. In fact Derec's video did that. If Europe keeps letting muslims in and integration continue to fail as the guy in the video explains then due to the birth rate muslims will be a majority and Germany will be renamed Germastan. And Euoropian Union will go the way Roman Empire went, then Dark Ages.....

 

[iolo]

If we don't base our predictions on the future on the past, what are we supposed to base them on? And a couple of hundred years ago is not that long ago. I don't think you fully realize how close Europe came to get conquered by the Ottomans in 1683. The Holy Roman empire was extremely close to falling. And that was the most powerful army Europe had at the time. 1683 isn't that long time ago.

All right, we can do that. In fact Derec's video did that. If Europe keeps letting muslims and integration continue to fail as the guy in the video explains then due to the birth rate muslims will be a a majority and Germany will be renamed Germastan.

People always do this trick of assuming minorities never change, especially when it comes to the size of families: we all used to be horrified at the prospect of being swamped by Roman Catholic peasants from Ireland, ignorant and superstitious, but their descendants are not in any evident way different from the rest of the population, and they use birth control like everyone else. Advanced capitalism assimilates except when it is colonizing and driving into ignorant barbarism.

 

[DrZoidberg]

If we don't base our predictions on the future on the past, what are we supposed to base them on? And a couple of hundred years ago is not that long ago. I don't think you fully realize how close Europe came to get conquered by the Ottomans in 1683. The Holy Roman empire was extremely close to falling. And that was the most powerful army Europe had at the time. 1683 isn't that long time ago.

All right, we can do that. In fact Derec's video did that. If Europe keeps letting muslims and integration continue to fail as the guy in the video explains then due to the birth rate muslims will be a a majority and Germany will be renamed Germastan.

Full points for missing the plot entirely. My point is that the Islamic world used to be very powerful. They had superior social institutions as well as superior military technology. They lost that edge. Now the Middle-East is struggling to keep up with.. well... not just the west, but countries like China and India. Middle-Eastern immigration isn't going to bring down the west to their level. The way immigration has worked historically is that the best bits from both cultures are retained, while the bad bits get rejected.

Everybody likes strength and power. Everybody wants to be strong and powerful. Muslim immigrants will sooner or later figure out that adopting some Western ways will help make them stronger and more powerful. At that point the conflict is moot, and the conflict will be down to what dishes will be served at your local restaurant. Hardly anything to get anxious about. Except if you're H.P. Lovecraft. He would get anxious anyway. But you can't please everybody.

 

[barbos]

All right, we can do that. In fact Derec's video did that. If Europe keeps letting muslims and integration continue to fail as the guy in the video explains then due to the birth rate muslims will be a a majority and Germany will be renamed Germastan.

People always do this trick of assuming minorities never change, especially when it comes to the size of families: we all used to be horrified at the prospect of being swamped by Roman Catholic peasants from Ireland, ignorant and superstitious, but their descendants are not in any evident way different from the rest of the population, and they use birth control like everyone else. Advanced capitalism assimilates except when it is colonizing and driving into ignorant barbarism.

I don't need to assume anything, I was asked to look at the past and make a prediction based on that. I did exactly that and I saw Dark fucking Ages after Roman Empire fell.

 

[iolo]

People always do this trick of assuming minorities never change, especially when it comes to the size of families: we all used to be horrified at the prospect of being swamped by Roman Catholic peasants from Ireland, ignorant and superstitious, but their descendants are not in any evident way different from the rest of the population, and they use birth control like everyone else. Advanced capitalism assimilates except when it is colonizing and driving into ignorant barbarism.

I don't need to assume anything, I was asked to look at the past and make a prediction based on that. I did exactly that and I saw Dark fucking Ages after Roman Empire fell.

So, don't introduce slavery or pass laws forcing people to follow their father's trade; don't demand very big taxes that don't in any way benefit the taxpayer and, above all, don't have a military that is very well paid and able to set up whomever it chooses in government. mostof all, don't have an Empire that disarms vast numbers of people and prevents them fighting invaders. You are welcome to those lessons, but I fear they are not very relevant, and nor is an obsession with other people's religions, about which you know next to nothing. The Muslims I know are extremely British (other than those in Bradford who insist in sending 'home' for wives), and everything I read suggests that those in the States are even further forward. What's more, Syria before the West started supporting terrorists there, was a pretty forward-looking country, and no Saudi-Arabia.

 

[DrZoidberg]

People always do this trick of assuming minorities never change, especially when it comes to the size of families: we all used to be horrified at the prospect of being swamped by Roman Catholic peasants from Ireland, ignorant and superstitious, but their descendants are not in any evident way different from the rest of the population, and they use birth control like everyone else. Advanced capitalism assimilates except when it is colonizing and driving into ignorant barbarism.

I don't need to assume anything, I was asked to look at the past and make a prediction based on that. I did exactly that and I saw Dark fucking Ages after Roman Empire fell.

The Dark Ages after the Roman empire falling is a myth. The Roman fell because it had become corrupt and ineffective. It had lost it's dynamism. One important thing to keep in mind isn't to try to figure out the weakness. But be amazed at how long it lasted. It constantly adapted to a changing world around it. At some point it lost it's edge to the Germanic tribes and that was it. When the Germanic tribes took over it was business as usual. Nothing much changed, and social and technological adaption and development continued. It certainly wasn't doom and gloom and chaos.

The Dark Ages is a myth created by Renaissance Humanists who were desperately trying to find a glorious golden age they could long for. But it's just a myth. Living in the dark ages was just as fine as living under imperial rule. For people in general it made no difference.

 

[barbos]

I don't need to assume anything, I was asked to look at the past and make a prediction based on that. I did exactly that and I saw Dark fucking Ages after Roman Empire fell.

So, don't introduce slavery or pass laws forcing people to follow their father's trade; don't demand very big taxes that don't in any way benefit the taxpayer and, above all, don't have a military that is very well paid and able to set up whomever it chooses in government. mostof all, don't have an Empire that disarms vast numbers of people and prevents them fighting invaders. You are welcome to those lessons, but I fear they are not very relevant, and nor is an obsession with other people's religions, about which you know next to nothing. The Muslims I know are extremely British (other than those in Bradford who insist in sending 'home' for wives), and everything I read suggests that those in the States are even further forward.

Your anecdotal examples are just anecdotal examples. I too had known some Middle East "muslim", he drank beer and stuff.

What's more, Syria before the West started supporting terrorists there, was a pretty forward-looking country, and no Saudi-Arabia.

Not quite so anymore, thanks to great foreign policy of US and EU.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't need to assume anything, I was asked to look at the past and make a prediction based on that. I did exactly that and I saw Dark fucking Ages after Roman Empire fell.

So, don't introduce slavery or pass laws forcing people to follow their father's trade; don't demand very big taxes that don't in any way benefit the taxpayer and, above all, don't have a military that is very well paid and able to set up whomever it chooses in government. mostof all, don't have an Empire that disarms vast numbers of people and prevents them fighting invaders. You are welcome to those lessons, but I fear they are not very relevant, and nor is an obsession with other people's religions, about which you know next to nothing. The Muslims I know are extremely British (other than those in Bradford who insist in sending 'home' for wives), and everything I read suggests that those in the States are even further forward.

Your anecdotal examples are just anecdotal examples. I too had known some Middle East "muslim", he drank beer and stuff.

What's more, Syria before the West started supporting terrorists there, was a pretty forward-looking country, and no Saudi-Arabia.

Not quite so anymore, thanks to great foreign policy of US and EU.

 

[laughing dog]

But it's her choice. The burqa is generally forced. I don't care what women choose to wear. I care when what they wear is dictated.

Then you should promote a law that makes it illegal to force anyone to wear an article of clothing against their will and stop defending this proposal.

 

[iolo]

I don't need to assume anything, I was asked to look at the past and make a prediction based on that. I did exactly that and I saw Dark fucking Ages after Roman Empire fell.

The Dark Ages after the Roman empire falling is a myth. The Roman fell because it had become corrupt and ineffective. It had lost it's dynamism. One important thing to keep in mind isn't to try to figure out the weakness. But be amazed at how long it lasted. It constantly adapted to a changing world around it. At some point it lost it's edge to the Germanic tribes and that was it. When the Germanic tribes took over it was business as usual. Nothing much changed, and social and technological adaption and development continued. It certainly wasn't doom and gloom and chaos.

The Dark Ages is a myth created by Renaissance Humanists who were desperately trying to find a glorious golden age they could long for. But it's just a myth. Living in the dark ages was just as fine as living under imperial rule. For people in general it made no difference.

I think it was a lot worse - for the tiny, very rich minority who had benefitted from the free trade area. For the majority, it was almost certainly better, though you have to allow for the problems caused by plague, disruption, war (in some areas), and climate change, which probably caused a pretty big population-slump. The main point is that we lose the written record in most of the West, particularly in Britain, where confusion was hugely worse confounded in the racist Nineteenth Century reconstruction of 'the Dark Ages', and which, as bad luck would have it, was the great centre for history. What we had previously wasn't much better, however: it certainly didn't give a notion of what was happening for the majority.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I think it was a lot worse - for the tiny, very rich minority who had benefitted from the free trade area. For the majority, it was almost certainly better, though you have to allow for the problems caused by plague, disruption, war (in some areas), and climate change, which probably caused a pretty big population-slump. The main point is that we lose the written record in most of the West, particularly in Britain, where confusion was hugely worse confounded in the racist Nineteenth Century reconstruction of 'the Dark Ages', and which, as bad luck would have it, was the great centre for history. What we had previously wasn't much better, however: it certainly didn't give a notion of what was happening for the majority.

We lost written records because written records are important to have if you have an empire to run. It's not as important if you don't. Which is why they stopped.

What happened in Britain was that the Vikings took over. And that was a highly civilized and organised group of people. They didn't write things down because they couldn't. The runic alphabet was sacred to them, and was only used for magical spells. Which was one of the reasons they Christianized. It was certainly handy to be able to keep records. So that explains why the records first started after Christianization. Doesn't make it a Dark Age. Viking culture was heavily consensus based. Similar to Greek democracy. Their kings were all elected. With non-hereditary kings. They had institutions to check their rulers and ineffective and weak kings were deposed. It happened many times. So we know the system worked. That led to dynamic and well run kingdoms. Something which the Roman British province certainly wasn't.

 

[iolo]

So, don't introduce slavery or pass laws forcing people to follow their father's trade; don't demand very big taxes that don't in any way benefit the taxpayer and, above all, don't have a military that is very well paid and able to set up whomever it chooses in government. mostof all, don't have an Empire that disarms vast numbers of people and prevents them fighting invaders. You are welcome to those lessons, but I fear they are not very relevant, and nor is an obsession with other people's religions, about which you know next to nothing. The Muslims I know are extremely British (other than those in Bradford who insist in sending 'home' for wives), and everything I read suggests that those in the States are even further forward.

Your anecdotal examples are just anecdotal examples. I too had known some Middle East "muslim", he drank beer and stuff.

What's more, Syria before the West started supporting terrorists there, was a pretty forward-looking country, and no Saudi-Arabia.

Not quite so anymore, thanks to great foreign policy of US and EU.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't need to assume anything, I was asked to look at the past and make a prediction based on that. I did exactly that and I saw Dark fucking Ages after Roman Empire fell.

So, don't introduce slavery or pass laws forcing people to follow their father's trade; don't demand very big taxes that don't in any way benefit the taxpayer and, above all, don't have a military that is very well paid and able to set up whomever it chooses in government. mostof all, don't have an Empire that disarms vast numbers of people and prevents them fighting invaders. You are welcome to those lessons, but I fear they are not very relevant, and nor is an obsession with other people's religions, about which you know next to nothing. The Muslims I know are extremely British (other than those in Bradford who insist in sending 'home' for wives), and everything I read suggests that those in the States are even further forward.

Your anecdotal examples are just anecdotal examples. I too had known some Middle East "muslim", he drank beer and stuff.

What's more, Syria before the West started supporting terrorists there, was a pretty forward-looking country, and no Saudi-Arabia.

Not quite so anymore, thanks to great foreign policy of US and EU.

I suppose that experience and anecdote are different: yes, I have anecdotes about drinking with Muslims, but I have experience of Muslim students, even from Bradford, rather a lot of them, who were already pretty much where I stood on most issues, and I can't see that is just anecdote, because it continued over a number of years. Inevitably you get a reaction, often in the third generation, against assimilation (I had 'Irish' students whose father's were big deal officers in the British Army who learned Irish and went out to the West, but this has always been so - read up on Erskine Childers). In my own case, my parents were quite happy to give up our language, and I have devoted a great part of my life to learning to be a decent patriot). I found that the women Muslim students, in particular, were a great deal more forward-looking and feminist than most of their English contemporaries. I think any personal experience is inevitably limited, but most racist-type opinion is based on prejudice only. And incidentally, in Sarajevo, I have discussed alcohol with a Muslim waiter who was a lot more on the ball than my temperance great-aunts in their formidable Congregationalist masses.

 

[LordKiran]

At certain times the Islamic world has been the height of civilization, Christendom the depths of barbarism. Colonialism and the like have bad effects on people, as do ludicrous bully-boy rulers. Trump should see America out of the civilized world in double-quick time, since he has never heard of civilization, the thick bugger.

The obvious conclusion is that religion is neither the driver of civilization nor it's enemy. Religion also isn't static. It's in constant flux. It adapts to the politics, power dynamics and technological realities it finds itself in. The Islamic world went from the pinnacle of scientific achievement to being insular and fearing change. This shift when the Islamic world was the undisputed leader of the civilized world. In just two hundred years Europe went from ignorant barbarians to blowing the Islamic world out of the water. There's a lesson here to be learned about the cost of arrogance. Arrogance killed Islamic superiority. And it's looking like arrogance is going to kill any current western superiority. Time for some humility and self assessment?

What religion is for or why it exists is another matter. But I think it's pretty obvious that in this context it's the false enemy to go after. Religion is a symptom. Hardly the root cause.

Arrogance didn't kill the Islamic world(as far as the Middle East is concerned.)Rather, a combination of Mongol and Turkic invasions throughout the middle ages that broke up the Caliphate into fragmented tribal kingdoms, Ottoman occupation for much of the modern era that turned these kingdoms into impoverished client states ruled by indifferent foreign aristocracy, and late Victorian European Imperialism broke the Islamic world.

Really the Arabs just couldn't catch a break after the fall of the Abbasid Empire.

 

[Derec]

People always do this trick of assuming minorities never change, especially when it comes to the size of families: we all used to be horrified at the prospect of being swamped by Roman Catholic peasants from Ireland, ignorant and superstitious, but their descendants are not in any evident way different from the rest of the population, and they use birth control like everyone else. Advanced capitalism assimilates except when it is colonizing and driving into ignorant barbarism.

The cultural difference between Ireland and US are minuscule compared to the cultural differences between Europe and third world Islamic shitholes these mass migrants are coming from. Also, this is not regular migration but mass migration, and continuous mass migration because there is no indication it will ever stop unless Europe grows a pair and stops it. And mass migration has different dynamics in that the migrant population has no incentive to change if there is a constant and large influx of fresh migrants.

Irish migration was never sustained and never amounted to anything close to 1% of host countries' population per year. There was one million Islamic migrants in 2015 alone in Germany alone. That is more than 1% of the German population. Extrapolate that over a few years and count in huge Islamic birth rates and pretty soon there will be more Arabs, Pakistanis, Afghans and Africans in Germany than actual Germans. Even if these migrants were not coming from such backward cultures, it should be clear that these numbers of mass migrants make the native population into a minority. Taking in many millions of Asians and Africans each year means an end of Europe over the long run. Why is Europe allowing that in the name of political correctness?

Speaking of Africans, a number of them just violently broke into Spain.
Migrants break in to Spain's Ceuta enclave in North Africa

This Muslim woman on German state TV is saying openly that to be German now means having dark skin, wearing a hijab and being decedent from Islamic migrants and that being "blue eyed and blond" belongs to the past.

This is Islamic/Arab triumphalism already. And if anybody complains and wants to reduce the number of Islamic migrants, they are being prosecuted.

 

[Derec]

Really the Arabs just couldn't catch a break after the fall of the Abbasid Empire.

Poor Arabs.

What do you call the oceans of oil under Arabian sand other than "catching a break"?

Also, it is their fault for maintaining a backward, repressive culture for more than 1000 years. Not anybody else's fault.

 

[barbos]

Your anecdotal examples are just anecdotal examples. I too had known some Middle East "muslim", he drank beer and stuff.

What's more, Syria before the West started supporting terrorists there, was a pretty forward-looking country, and no Saudi-Arabia.

Not quite so anymore, thanks to great foreign policy of US and EU.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't need to assume anything, I was asked to look at the past and make a prediction based on that. I did exactly that and I saw Dark fucking Ages after Roman Empire fell.

So, don't introduce slavery or pass laws forcing people to follow their father's trade; don't demand very big taxes that don't in any way benefit the taxpayer and, above all, don't have a military that is very well paid and able to set up whomever it chooses in government. mostof all, don't have an Empire that disarms vast numbers of people and prevents them fighting invaders. You are welcome to those lessons, but I fear they are not very relevant, and nor is an obsession with other people's religions, about which you know next to nothing. The Muslims I know are extremely British (other than those in Bradford who insist in sending 'home' for wives), and everything I read suggests that those in the States are even further forward.

Your anecdotal examples are just anecdotal examples. I too had known some Middle East "muslim", he drank beer and stuff.

What's more, Syria before the West started supporting terrorists there, was a pretty forward-looking country, and no Saudi-Arabia.

Not quite so anymore, thanks to great foreign policy of US and EU.

I suppose that experience and anecdote are different: yes, I have anecdotes about drinking with Muslims, but I have experience of Muslim students, even from Bradford, rather a lot of them, who were already pretty much where I stood on most issues, and I can't see that is just anecdote, because it continued over a number of years. Inevitably you get a reaction, often in the third generation, against assimilation (I had 'Irish' students whose father's were big deal officers in the British Army who learned Irish and went out to the West, but this has always been so - read up on Erskine Childers). In my own case, my parents were quite happy to give up our language, and I have devoted a great part of my life to learning to be a decent patriot). I found that the women Muslim students, in particular, were a great deal more forward-looking and feminist than most of their English contemporaries. I think any personal experience is inevitably limited, but most racist-type opinion is based on prejudice only. And incidentally, in Sarajevo, I have discussed alcohol with a Muslim waiter who was a lot more on the ball than my temperance great-aunts in their formidable Congregationalist masses.

France/Belgium has had few generations of muslims who now in a state of full de-integration, some of which went to Syria to join ISIS. I know french did a piss poor job of integrating them but even with that I still think it's ridiculous. Problem I think are shitholes like Saudi Arabia who send their mullahs everywhere. It's not that I am against of people migrating it's just this migration is so unnatural. People who move to other country should be willing to accept new culture at least to some degrees. Instead we see these assholes who were born in Europe and who openly harass natives. Oppressing women and treating them like baby making machines is not helping Europe in a long run at all.

 

[LordKiran]

Really the Arabs just couldn't catch a break after the fall of the Abbasid Empire.

Poor Arabs.

What do you call the oceans of oil under Arabian sand other than "catching a break"?

Also, it is their fault for maintaining a backward, repressive culture for more than 1000 years. Not anybody else's fault.

given the political turmoil the existence of such oil tends to cause, I'd say it's something of a double edged sword.

 

[RavenSky]

As an ex Muslim who hates Islam more than any other religion, I find the idea of banning the burqa, or any otherpiece of clothing, to be pretty reprehensible. Wearing the burqa doesn't harm anyone so why ban it?

Earlier in the thread, the user Bomb #20 brought up the idea that objecting to a burqa ban means you have to object to a minimum wage. (Sorry, I'm a newbie at this stuff so I don't know the proper procedure for quoting and all that.)
But anyways, the reason why we can prohibit working for under the minimum wage is because it does hurt other people ( businesses start expecting people to work for less and many can't afford to work for that little.) Wearing the burqa doesnt.
You can argue that wearing the burqa harms the wearer. And I'd actually agree with you. I think the burqa is a horrendous, grotesque symbol of oppression against women. And I'd honestly rejoice if it disappeared from the face of the earyh tomorrow. But you have to respect people's decisions to wear what they want (again, as long as it doesn't bring harm to anyone else.) Even if you think they're making the wrong decision or hurting themselves. Because otherwise you start banning people for smoking weed, or playing too many video games. All because "it's for their own good."

Welcome to the forum.

I generally agree with you on your points with much the same reasoning as in your last sentence. I also agree with whoever commented earlier that using the justification of "general safety" against faces being covered is just a smokescreen for general bigotry against Islam and Muslims.

That said, I have very mixed feelings on the topic on two points:

1. Making exceptions for clothing claimed to be for religious reasons, much as Jolyy Penguin said here:

... Special rights should not exist on the basis of people having imaginary friends. Try going through airport security or walking up to a bank teller wearing the hoodie and mouth covering or ski mask. See how that goes for you. Now watch the Muslim women do it and claim it is their right under "freedom of religion"...

Go into the same place with a dagger on your hip. Make it a dull dagger (they wont know) to match Sikh guys. See how that goes for you.

Now walk into a courtroom passed those signs saying no head coverings allowed except for religious ones, and declare it just a suggestion and wear a baseball cap or ski mask while she walks in wearing a burka and he walks in wearing a turban. Watch in amazement as they are declared to be exercising religious freedom, and you are escorted out of the room by the bailiff.

"Religious Freedom" doesn't mean special rights based on imaginary friends? Really? Open your eyes... Explicit bans on burkas are unfair if others can cover their faces yes, but this needs to run both ways.... It was only a little while back that people were not even allowed to give testimony in court without swearing on a fucking bible.

Related to that, I disagree with allowing religious head/hair coverings for driver's license photos while disallowing baseball caps or non-religious headscarves. Either the head-coverings are not important to security, or they are - the religious nature of the head covering should not matter.

2. The other, more important, point is one of women's rights. I do understand that a lot of women - particularly in the west - wear hijab or even a chador fully by their own choice. But there is also a very long history of these head coverings being forced on girls, and escalated to a complete burqa.

Marwa: I first attempted to take it off when I was thirteen-years-old. At this point in my life, I was living in Saudi Arabia, where I attended an American international school with an expat community from all over the globe. There were only a handful of girls who wore the hijab in the entire K-12 school, and I was tormented and bullied for it. So one day I took my scarf off in the cafeteria at school. My parents found out, of course — only a child would be naive enough to think something like that could remain hidden — and I was punished severely. I was beaten, interrogated, my hair sawed off (literally, with a knife, not even the courtesy of scissors) and I was banished to the storage room to sleep in and do my homework for a few weeks. At the end of the school year, my dad shipped me and my mom and siblings off to Lebanon, where I was enrolled in a strict Islamic school. The urgency and severity of such a reaction helped me realize that although wearing the hijab was always presented as a voluntary choice, there was really only one viable option to choose, which was compliance.

Marwa: While I still vehemently oppose anybody asking a woman to take off or put on a piece of clothing that she actively chooses to wear if it does not pose harm or discrimination to others, I’d like to challenge the ethics of continually heralding the hijab as a free choice when it actively drowns out the experiences, testimonies and legitimacy of women who do not have that free choice, presenting their experiences as anomalous, unrepresentative, or the results of misinterpretation of Islam.

Heina: All too often, the women who are actually affected by hijab and attitudes around it are left out of the conversation. Both women who truly want to wear hijab and women who have been coerced into it are often silenced, the former because many cannot imagine wanting to cover and the latter because Muslims want to claim that coercion isn’t “true” Islam. There is also a lack of differentiation between the plight of women in Muslim-majority countries and that of women in Western ones. It is possible for a woman in a Western country to make the choice to not cover, whereas that’s hardly the case for women in many if not most Muslim-majority countries.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/valerie-tarico/unveiled-three-former-mus_b_5010742.html

There was discussion earlier in the thread that banning the burqa would allow women who don't want to wear it to have the excuse to refuse it in spite of pressure from husband/family/community. But as Marwa's experience shows, it doesn't work. The girl or woman will simply get shipped off to someplace that mandates the veil instead of banning it.

I can understand the appeal of banning (at least) the burqa, but I don't think that it will actually accomplish what it's proponents say they want to accomplish.

 

[RavenSky]

...It certainly wasn't doom and gloom and chaos.

The Dark Ages is a myth created by Renaissance Humanists who were desperately trying to find a glorious golden age they could long for. But it's just a myth. Living in the dark ages was just as fine as living under imperial rule. For people in general it made no difference.

Are you just trying to make me feel better about Trump?

 

[DrZoidberg]

The obvious conclusion is that religion is neither the driver of civilization nor it's enemy. Religion also isn't static. It's in constant flux. It adapts to the politics, power dynamics and technological realities it finds itself in. The Islamic world went from the pinnacle of scientific achievement to being insular and fearing change. This shift when the Islamic world was the undisputed leader of the civilized world. In just two hundred years Europe went from ignorant barbarians to blowing the Islamic world out of the water. There's a lesson here to be learned about the cost of arrogance. Arrogance killed Islamic superiority. And it's looking like arrogance is going to kill any current western superiority. Time for some humility and self assessment?

What religion is for or why it exists is another matter. But I think it's pretty obvious that in this context it's the false enemy to go after. Religion is a symptom. Hardly the root cause.

Arrogance didn't kill the Islamic world(as far as the Middle East is concerned.)Rather, a combination of Mongol and Turkic invasions throughout the middle ages that broke up the Caliphate into fragmented tribal kingdoms, Ottoman occupation for much of the modern era that turned these kingdoms into impoverished client states ruled by indifferent foreign aristocracy, and late Victorian European Imperialism broke the Islamic world.

Really the Arabs just couldn't catch a break after the fall of the Abbasid Empire.

The Ottoman empire was formed in the wake of the Mongol empire disintegrating. And it became stronger and more powerful than any Middle-Eastern power had ever been. The peak of the Ottoman empire and Muslim world was well after the Mongols had been cleaned out.

You could say that indirectly it was the Mongols fault, because they left such a fragmented mess in their wake that it made it relatively easy for one player to seize total and complete control. Which the Ottoman's did. The degree of unchecked power in the Ottoman Caliph's hands led to corruption. And their obvious superiority led to arrogance. Arrogance led to them stopping being open to outsiders. They stopped being cosmpolitan. They stopped being the central hub were thinkers across all of Asia and Europe went. That's what I meant.

It was chance luck that brought them to that point. Similarly it was chance luck that brought the west to dominance. We were lucky enough to have our coal deposits near the sea. When coal power became a thing that was suddenly super handy. And propelled us all the way to global dominance. Also no reason for arrogance. It's important to realize and accept that Western dominance has nothing to do with Western values or Western social institutions. That all came after we already were powerful (because of the coal). USA is now the dominant power because they were the Saudi Arabia of the late 19'th and early 20'th century. Also, had nothing to do with any superior American values. They just won the lottery and are still cashing in on it.

Staying humble is important, if you want to keep up a good thing.

 

[Trausti]

The burka should be banned in all instances where wearing a ski mask would be prohibited. Otherwise, the state should not intrude in personal or religious choice of dress.