[John] >< But what do you think happened, Khaled? > I mean, Islamic leadership in the golden age was guided by high > quality intellect, now it mostly seems to be centered upon demagoguery.
[Khaled] My friend and I were having this discussion. When the Muslim empire spread at first, it was through the persuasion of the sword. unless you were the people of the book ( Jews and Christians), in which case you were given the choice of staying put and paying your taxes. ( since Muslims were already obliged to give alms, that made sure all paid). And as the story goes, when the third ruler, Omar was visiting the Jerusalem, and prayer time came, he happened to have been visiting a church, and the local clergy told him that he was welcome to stay for his prayer. Omar answered him " No, i know my people, they will come and turn this place into a mosque because I prayed here". so he went and prayed outside. The height of Jewish enlightenment happened in Spain, under the Arab rules. As for the outlying countries, Indonesia Malaysia and so on, supposedly people converted because they wanted to be like the Arab/Muslim empire. So You ask as to what kind of Progressive rulers were there. To translate all the Greek manuscripts, study the Indian math, and incorporate the Persian sciences and cuisine. Is is because they were ahead, that they did not feel intimidated? And only when Europe started going through the renaissance that they felt threatened. I really don't know. It was an open door empire. Trade, Travel and all that good stuff. I have always wondered. It's a question that I really like to know the answer too, because it would shed a lot of light on today's problems. [John] > Perhaps today's Islamist is confronted with a certain reactionary > impulse due to being forced to live in a narrowing global village where the > western way seems so rich and successful and all-pervading and a sorta > insecurity sets in that brings with a reaction of stiffness and unyielding > adherence to the old ways, when all else in the world is being gobbled by the new. > > And the new sucks. > > Everybody knows. [khaled] You hit the nail on the head. Just yesterday, the Saudi Thought Police was paroling the street in search of Saint Valentine artifacts. If you were a shopkeeper, you better not have anything red or with a heart on it. Sure, we look at Christmas and say what a crass holiday it has become. The Christmas shopping season is not being pushed to the day after Halloween. We talk about it, and say how bad it is, the Saudi send the thought-police out tot fix that problem. We see crap on TV, we can turn it off. No one is going down to the TV station to straighten them up. The discontent is there. The question is how much brut force are you willing to put behind it. Remember the big Brouhaha over Salman Rushdi 'Satanic Verses". Hell they made a bestseller out of him. It was a mediocre book at best. One other thing. Colonialism is not over. Sure we would like you to be democratic and have free elections, until you elect the guy we don't like. Some countries have tried to straighten up, but what they don't realize is that in the end, they are only the House-negro. ( sorry for having to say that, no flames please) When viceroy Paul Bremmer was ruling in Baghdad, one of the stunts they tried to pull was to force the Iraqi farmers ( in the Iraqi constitution) to buy GMO seeds from the US with a terminator gene in it. Meaning that you could not plant the seeds that you harvested the season before because they were engineered to be sterile. Imagine that Iraqi farmer who is suddenly wondering why nothing came up. Yes the seeds they were using were not good enough to keep feeding their country, but that was not the way to go about it. Khaled ____________________________________________________________ Small Business Tools Compete with the big boys. Click here to find products to benefit your business. http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=VH2H7M-BuBfVtP1e7MuxtQAAJ1BoN5MIA846iJgpKACKCvEMAAYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARMQAAAAA= Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
