Republicans & Conservatives: Archives

I concur.

Jack,

Except for the brutal part this all sounds like the Ottoman Empire.

From wikipedia,

“Culture of the Ottoman Empire
“Early on as the Ottoman Turks drove out the Byzantines from Anatolia and later pursued them into Europe, the pursuit was a part of the Jihad (or Holy War) against Christianity, and the first Ottoman rulers called themselves Gazi, or Holy Warriors. But, as the Ottomans moved further west and the assimilation of the Greek and Balkan cultures progressed, the Turkic leaders themselves absorbed some of the culture of the conquered peoples. The alien culture was gradually added to the Turks’ own, creating the characteristic Ottoman culture. After the capture of Constantinople in 1453, most churches were left intact and only a few (including, notably, Hagia Sophia) were turned into mosques. The Ottoman court life in many aspects assembled ancient traditions of the Persian Shahs, but had many Greek and European influences.

The Ottomans had a high tolerance of alien cultures and religions: The men of the ruling Dynasty, the house of Osman, always married women with mixed heritage, Turkish, Greek, Arab, Russian, Serbian, thus themselves were mixed. For centuries, the Ottoman Empire was the refuge of the Jews of Europe.”

For the time this only sounds moderately brutal, and nothing compared to what the Spannish put the natives in Central America through.

Jack,

Sorry I forgot to add the link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire#History

There was a second link provided by wikipedia but the language of the site was Turkish.

Rocky

I am talking about the Muslim empires, which start with the Arabs and more or less ends with the Turks.

I visited Istanbul a while back. Turkey is a great place. I did a short study of the Turks and their history. The Ottomans were interesting people. But we sometimes cut a little too much slack.

In Istanbul, I visited the Sultan’s palace. The guide earnestly explained how the Sultan got his pick of beautiful women of the empire. His soldiers gathered them up. The soldiers were usually not Turks. They were Janissaries or Mamaluks. Each year, the Sultans armies would go out and gather a “tax” of Christian children, who were made into soldiers. The guide explained that the parents were happy to have this happen. Maybe parents were different back then. Guarding the palace were eunuchs. Eunuchs were fairly common. The guide explained that it was a great honor to be a eunuch, but since violence like castration was against Islam, Eunuchs had to be imported from Africa and deprived of their manhood before being brought into the Islamic Empire. Maybe men were less attached to those things back then. Then the guide explained how the Sultan’s soldiers were tolerant and only wiped out populations when they showed disrespect. The Europeans and Americans in the group nodded their approval. Nobody wants to be un PC, but think about this.

The soldiers go out and kidnap the prettiest girls they can find. They all go to a kind of a whorehouse, where the ones that do the best get to marry a rich guy. Little boys are taken as child soldiers. When somebody does that in Sierra Leone or Sudan today we don’t think of it as a romantic thing. As for the eunuch thing, I would prefer to pass up on that honor. It says a lot that some people would aspire to that life. What were the alternatives if that is the best you can do?

I am not saying that this is the worst in history. But don’t buy into the wonderful world either.

Oh yeah – Hagia Sophia. I was there too. Beautiful place. In 1453 the beleaguered inhabitants of Constantinople took refuge in their church, which had been their church for nearly a thousand years. They were killed in heaps. Again, not the only example of intolerance or even the worst, but don’t buy the wonderful pre-western world theory here either.

We happen to live in the most tolerant culture at the most tolerant time in history and we refuse to recognize it. I guess some people feel that admitting it will stop progress. Maybe they are right. But let’s not fool ourselves about the past or other cultures, because any of the other options currently available in the world are worse.

Rocky

I don’t know about the link thing on the computer. I always do it the same way and have not changed anything.

In any case, I have dozens of books about the Turks and admire their culture. But I don’t fool myself about it.

What’s the point of this, Jack? The West has been trying to remake the Middle East in it’s own image for decades. Notice the results? Not that current Arab civilization couldn’t use some kind of easing into the modern world, but it can’t simply be a carbon copy of ours, because they don’t have the culture that our solutions are adapted to. We need to teach them to become modern Arabs and Muslims on their terms, and end the cycle of humiliations and subjugations.

In short, both civilizations have to stop playing the game of “White Man’s Burden”.

Jack,

I don’t dispute that we live in a tolerent time.

You don’t mention that the Ottoman Empire rose to prominence in 1299, and was known as the most tolerent of it’s time, even for the Muslims. None of the religions at the time were persecuted by the Ottomans.
The Ottoman’s began to lose power with that defeat in Vienna, but didn’t actually fall until after WW1. With the colonial powers, oil became king shortly thereafter.

Back to the point.
This spoken by the Prince of Wales in 1993,

“We need to be careful of that emotive label, `fundamentalism’, and distinguish, as Muslims do, between revivalists, who choose to take the practice of their religion most devoutly, and fanatics or extremists, who use this devotion for political ends.”

The rest is history.

Stephen

The point is just historical. As I read and talk to people I realize that there is a great ignorance about sort of world history 101. Americans are castigated for using the word “crusade”, which in modern English has none of the connotations ostensibly attributed to it by Muslims. I agree that if it is offensive, we can just quit using it, but why do we feel guilty about it too? Because we have bought into the idea of history that the West has always been aggressive against Islam. In fact, for about 90% of the time Islam has been aggressive against the West.

You are right that we should both stop. But we also need an accurate view of how the world got to be the way it is today. What caused Islamic civilization to atrophy, or what caused the West to strengthen? The West does clearly is not cause the decline of Islam. Rather, Western power is one of the consequences of the decline of Islamic civilization. It is harder to propose solutions to problems when we don’t properly identify the causes. As long as we believe that the West is the cause of trouble the Middle East, we can’t have a solution. Our feeling guilty will not help.

Jack,

“As long as we believe that the West is the cause of trouble the Middle East, we can’t have a solution. Our feeling guilty will not help.”

I don’t feel guilty in the least that western corporations took advantage of the countries in the Middle East.

With the exception of a time over a thousand years ago, the fanaticism that we are now facing is just that, a recent event, historicly speaking. Whether we are to blame or not is a moot point.
We are fighting them, they blame us.
That sounds pretty simple to me.
I don’t think that we are going to convince them otherwise any time soon.

Jack,
“The Arabs were consumers and transmitters of the cultures of their conquered peoples. The learning… rarely originated from Arab sources.”

That is simply wrong. While it is true the Arabs absorbed & transmitted ideas due to their passion for books, the Caliphates of Bagdhad & Cordoba made original discoveries that we still rely upon today.

For example, algebra is an Arab word, and an Arab discovery. Alghorithms were discovered by Arab Muslims. They were the first to use ‘x.’
In astronomy, they worked with a Copernican system, in which the earth revolved around the sun, long before Europe came to that realization. In medicine, they were the first to develop hospitals. In agriculture…

The list goes on and on.

You’re using the example of Constantinople & the Ottoman Empire and extending it to all Arabs.

The civilizations of the Arabs, Afghans, & Persians fell apart due to the Mongol invasions. In addition, the Black Plague probably hit them just as hard as Europe. That region literally never recovered from the one-two punch of the Mongols & Plague.

Furthermore…
Before we start awarding cultural medals for openness & tolerance, it’s worth remembering names from recent US history like Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, and others. It was only recently that, from a legal point of view, Australians stopped considering Aborigines part of the flora & fauna.

Most of the West’s history has been punctuated by pogroms and gross anti-semitism, culminating in the Holocaust. The Islamic world has a long tradition of living side by side with Jews in peace. From a historical perspective, this changed recently, in reaction to Zionism during the last century.

We’ve come a long way, but we’re not there yet. Encouraging others to join us in promoting peace, human rights, self-rule, openness, & tolerance is certainly a noble & worthwhile goal. But let’s not forget, it’s a work in progress, and the outcome is not guaranteed.

Jack,

Nice history lesson. Though, as far as my studies have ever led me to believe, the eunuch thing was mainly a Roman thing. In Rome, a eunuch was not as politically threatening because he couldn’t father children and thus couldn’t become Emperor. Since the eunuch was not able to become Emperor, he wasn’t a threat to those who wanted to become Emperor or whoever was already Emperor and thus less likely to be assinated.

For the Ottoman Empire, the desire for eunuchs was related to the too many wives thing, since eunuchs could protect and serve the women without being a threat to the “owner’s” manhood. Otherwise, wives whose needs for physical contact were often neglected might seek solace in the arms of another man, so the men they had access to were often either highly trusted or unable to perform.

phx8,
your comment that the history behind western culture is “punctuated by pogroms and gross anti-semitism” leads me to believe you forgot that the nation of israel was enslaved by egyptians, babylonians and persian well before roman conquerors stabilized the region for a brief period. the fact is “islamic civilization” has been at war with every culture it has ever interacted with. the pretense of the “prophets” teaching was to convert or kill the entire population of the world.

Pete,
Are you saying that islam is nothing but a big lie used to covert or kill? I mean it is pretty obvious that is what your saying, but I am just making sure. That is a pretty bold statement, I know very little about this aspect of history, I am ashamed to admit, however I must say that from what I do know of islam it is a peaceful religion. Just as in any other religion, you can pick out certain bits and pieces and exploit them for personal or political gain, I mean look at televangelists, not the same level but still for personal or political gain. Or I could be way off base… I dunno, just putting my two cents in.

I am no longer interested in understanding Islam or the fanatic islamists who attacked us on 9/11 and continue to wreak havoc on the troops of the US and the people of Israel and the Middle East.

I feel no compelling concern as to why they wish to destroy us. My concern is only in stopping them in anyway necessary, and by any means that will accomplish that end as efficiently, and quickly, as possible.

“Longstreet”

Jack-
It’s about whether we repeat the mistakes of the past. These people don’t need to be patronized, they need to dig their way out of the past.

Longstreet-
All terrorists begin as something else. If we can pre-empt the forces that lead folks into the ranks of the terrorists, or that keep them there, then we can weaken our enemy. Is that not a good outcome?

We need to steal al-Qaeda’s thunder, become better friends to the Arabs and Muslims of the world than them. Make them obsolete. Would that be an undesirable outcome?

A good read for anybody interested in Yugoslavian history and/or the Ottoman Empire is “The Bridge on the Drina” Written by a Yugoslav scholar, it paints a true picture of local culture and customs before, during, and after the Muslim Conquest.

-Monica

To put it in terms we blog about, it is as if the “red states” plus Washington DC fell to outside invaders leaving only the “blue states”. What would you think?

Heh. :)

Good post, Jack. Like phx8, I could quibble over the specifics, but I think your point is spot on: “The most benevolent place is here (in the West) and the most benevolent time is now.”

More specifically, with the fall of the Soviet Union and the preeminence of the US as an economic, political, and military behemoth, I think the US could be a catalyst for change that would usher in a new era of peace - if only our leader had a clue. I’ll give him a hint for free, though: it doesn’t involve spreading democracy at the point of a gun.

In fact, I just picked up “The Opportunity”, by Richard Haass (head of that Illuminati stronghold, The Council on Foreign Relations). I’ll let you guys know how it turns out. :)

Jack,

Arabs are a people. Actually, a semitic people like the Jews. Islam is a religion.
There are Jewish and Muslim arabs and there are Jewish and Muslim non-arabs.

What’s your point?

J. Anthony,

I have to wonder what the purpose of this post is. Yours is a simplistic view of Islamic history one that never bothers to touch upon the Crusades and the affect that period of history had upon Islam and Christianity alike. And why it is try that the Byzantine Empire was formed from the Eastern Roman Empire, the Western Roman Empire—the most import part because it contained the city of Rome, heart of the empire and all of Rome’s most important assets—fell and there ensued a Dark Ages; perhaps you’ve heard of it.

I lived in Turkey for a spell and I well know the animosity built up between the Greeks and Turks over the occupation of Greece by the Ottoman Turks. But, again, I don’t not see the point of this article? What is the underlying theme: that Muslims were not always blood-thirsty fundamentalists bent on spreading their religion through violence? Or that the Christian West is a bastion of civility and culture where one is free from religious persecution and able to worship at will?

V. Edward

My kids always give me a hard time because I rail about ancient history. Your post makes me think of this.

By 476, Rome was NOT the heart of the Empire. It wasn’t even the seat of the Western Emperor and the Western part of the Empire was not the most important or advanced. The West descended into what we call the dark ages (actually not all that dark anyway.) The dark ages did not come to the East after the fall of Rome and that part of the world suffered disastrous dislocation only with the rise of Islam. The reason that these details are important is because the false belief about the fall of civilization shapes our perception of the past the present.

History does not determine what we do, but we are undeniably influenced by what has come before. The basis of the Muslim Empires is important for this reason and they are very different than the basis of western states with which we are more familiar. The small numbers of Arab Muslims that conquered the Roman and Persian lands were warriors and merchants. They were not much interested in industry or production. The same guys who toiled and sweated before the conquest did it after it. The Arabs (and later the Turks) conquered the richest parts of the Mediterranean and Middle East. They didn’t build it. The Empire was built with lightning speed. It took the Romans five hundred years to achieve what the armies of Islam did in a generation. This nouveau riche rapid acquisition of great wealth affects perceptions and behavior.

This might be very un-PC, but the parallel with today is oil wealth and the reaction is similar. Wealth acquired in these ways creates a feeling of entitlement, without the corresponding virtues of industry.

This is certainly not limited to these places, peoples or times. The British rulers of India suffered a similar arrogance and so does your average rich kid in any society.

Stephanie

Eunuchs were not a particularly Roman thing and they never developed the eunuch mass-producing industry employed by the Ottomans. They had much less need for them. For one thing, Romans were not as dynastic. In the earlier stages of the Empire, sons generally did not follow fathers as Emperors. And of course they had only one legal wife at time, making the eunuch harem guarding profession superfluous, and ensuring that there would not be very many sons ostensibly from one father, at least not more than he could keep track of without the help of a team of accountants.

Dave

I refer the religion only in the broader cultural sense, as I mentioned in my first paragraph. Many of the people in the Muslim Empires were non-Muslim, including some Arabs, but they were Muslim Empires because of the elite group and their religion.

Excellent article!

I am very happy you touched upon: “The most benevolent place is here (in the West) and the most benevolent time is now.”

Great read

Comment on benevolence and the West.
Some fifty nations brag on their Muslim majorities. How many show any kind of economic prosperity, a functioning democracy or any substancial level of benevolence?

Jack,

I very well could be wrong, but my understanding was that the idea of eunuchs started with the Romans. The Ottomans then took that idea and ran with it, because of their greater “need” for such a work force. That’s all I was saying.

Stephanie

Romans used them. So did every other ancient civilization. They were just not particularly prominent among Romans, but they were one of the keys to understanding the Ottomans (and most other Islamic Empires) mostly because of the marriage patterns and the status of concubines.

The Islamic Empires also developed an industry to make them. That is one reason that although they imported large numbers of black Africans, there is not a corresponding number in the current populations.

This is only my opinion, but the totalitarian and personal aspect of Ottoman culture struck me. The Sultan owned everyone. It is a very different concept than we have in the West. And he owned their bodies and their children. Serf in the Western middle ages lived miserable lives, but they were tied to the land, not to the individual who owned the land and their bodies didn’t belong to the Lord of the Manor in the same way. It would talk a very long time to explain how I think the basis is fundamentally different. In practice – at the time – it was not so different. But the West contained the seeds of individual freedom in a way that the East did not. I think that is one of the reasons that the West could develop liberal institutions, while the Ottomans, despite strenuous efforts, where unable to adapt.

Take the historical perspective. If you looked at the world in 1453, you never would have guessed that Western Civilization would over shadow Islamic Civilization as it so completely has. All the power and initiative seemed to lie in the East. Explaining why the West developed and the East didn’t is more than I can do, but it is an interesting question. We rarely ask it because the current situation seems inevitable, but it sure would not have looked that way.

Jack Wrote:

Wealth acquired in these ways creates a feeling of entitlement, without the corresponding virtues of industry.

I don’t think they are feeling “entitled,” more like taken advantage of, used, almost raped.. The western oil corporations and the few kings/princes/dictators and other well-off types made off like bandits on the natural resources and the rest of the people could not really do shit about it. And if that alone didn’t leave a bad taste in their mouth from the west, we also had US companies like Vinnell Corp. stationed in Saudi Arabia and basically training the Prince’s National Gaurd how to deal with public protest/dissent (likely due to the prince’s oil wealth which was not being used to the benefit of the people).

It’s less about entitlement and more about people getting pissed off after realizing that a few people are taking advantage of their land and not sharing much of anything in return. You would probably be pissed off too. Not because you think the profits should be yours, but because of the “success at the expense of others” model and then using this wealth to develop the region in ways that don’t accomodate what the majority of people even want (i.e. “westernization”).

Furthermore the whole argument being made here seems to be pulling out historic examples that support a predetermined theory rather than looking at the entire history before drawing any conclusions. While you do make an interesting case, there are counter-arguments, and fewer broad generalizations that can be made.

It seems a dangerous road to start shaping history in a way that puts entire continents and nations as morally superior to others, especially in a time when we are battling insurgents and not all that far from war. If people take your ideas a few steps further we will be back in the WWII era of rounding up Japanese Muslim-Americans into internment “resorts” and doing God knows what else with them.

Rather than hypothesizing about the worth of an entire religious population from your comfortable western judeo-christian vantage of history, would it not make more sense to open a dialogue with middle-eastern, muslim, and arabic scholars about historical events and what we might derive from them?

Western benevolence would not be possible were we not already comfortably prosperous and able to help other nations. That prosperity came at the cost of slavery, colonization, and various other means of exploiting others for your own gain. The balance of wealth and power is always moving, and no nation is free of historical and moral baggage. Rather than trying to rank countries or religions by the benevolence meter, we should be concentrating the benevolence inherent in all religions/nations to look for solutions to our common problems that will appease and benefit all involved (not just the ones who “deserve” it).

Me

I am trying NOT to take only the Western view. The prevailing Western view is that of Western imperialism.

I understand why the Arab masses would be annoyed at both their own rulers and anyone associated with them. But the terrorists tend not to come from the Arab masses. The 9/11 highjackers were all rich kids. Osama has is own great personal wealth that supported him in his endeavors. It is another Western myth that the attackers are poor and oppressed. You may have lived in developing countries. If you did you know that the rich are very, very rich, but they like to talk about how poor their countries are and how it is someone else’s fault.

Western Civilization, like all others, practiced slavery, oppression, piracy and war. But those are not the things that made it rich. If that were enough, all the countries of the world would be equally rich. In fact, the West gave up these practices sooner than others.

Slavery existed since before the dawn of time. It was only in the West and only about 300 years ago that any large number of people identified it as a moral problem that should be eliminated.

Let me repeat my question in a slightly different factor. The dilemma is not why the whole was poor and oppressed. That was the general human condition. The question is why the West broke out of this cycle. Again, it can’t be because of slavery, conquest, war or oppression, which were generally practiced by all the unsuccessful cultures.

Thanks. I think in reframing your point, it is easier to digest and brings up better questions. Mostly because you didn’t even need to bring up Arab/Muslim culture to make the same point. This is better starting point especially in the wake of Mike T and Krishnan/s posts further down the red column, and in the midst of very trying times in the middle east.

It’s useful to look at industrialization, what it has done for us, how foreign cultures react to it, etc- but I was mostly trying to get at the fact that wording it as “Muslim vs. The West” seems to be asking for trouble given current events and what not.

me,

“It seems a dangerous road to start shaping history…”

History is always shaped, usually by the victors. Currently, as far as strength goes, that means the West. That doesn’t mean we are superior, just stronger.

It takes a lot of effort and study, as well as access to appropriate materials, to re-write history to accurately reflect what happened, versus what the winning side wanted to claim happened. Even with all that effort, you’re still never going to get it quite right because we can’t know what really happened with any exactness.

To use a relatively contemporary example, our own history books (US) used to claim the American Natives were vicious heathens that needed to be dispersed and killed, and for the sake of Manifest Destiny the ends always justified the means. In actuality, they were usually a fairly mild people who only got ruffled when we took their land and killed their people. Many well intentioned people (and some not so well intentioned people) have worked very hard to correct the history books to reflect that American settlers did something wrong. But it’s taken a lot of effort for that to be accepted and for new history books to be written and distributed throughout the school system. Now it’s considered common knowledge that we screwwed over the American Natives for their land.

The American Natives thing only happened a few hundred years ago and we still can’t claim to know what happened. We still have to “shape” history. You can’t go back a few thousand years and expect to know what happened historically, as the documents that supports the position of the side that lost any given conflict are usually destroyed or never made in the first place. Jack’s “shaping” of history seemed pretty fair and made sense, especially compared to some of the “histories” I’ve heard concerning the ancient world.

Thanks, Stephanie. Very nice of you to say.

I am a very simple working man, (and there is a whole lot of us here in good old U.S.A.
), and came upon this website by mistake, yet I found it very interesting. Thank you for all the updates about islam, but really, as long as these people preach, act and live hate for us today in reality, who cares about what hundreds of years ago took place! We do not need to intergrate with them, we need to kick them out of the country, lock up the borders to them, and protect the very freedom they want to upset. Thats all the average guy cares about. Pretty simple. Oil, yes, oil, we have the ability to overcome that problem to if it was not for the greed that soils our society today.

Welcome Daniel M.

Some of the Muslims, and probably the majority though I doubt there’s an accurate assesment of that, came here to enjoy the very freedoms you suggest we deny them based on their religion/ethnicity. While America has done that in the past, I see that as America at its worst and not something we should repeat.

I find this article terrible. Is the point that it is the religion or the race of a person that makes them incapable of creating a superior civilization? Is it because they are Islamic, or because they are Arab that meant they weren’t capable of creating culture?

Let’s start with race: Isn’t it true that the Semetic race is the origin of three religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Isn’t it true that Abraham was the ancestor of Jesus? And doesn’t Islam trace it’s ancestry to Abraham’s illegitimate son? And in any case, weren’t all three of these religions begun in a 80 mile square area, and isn’t it likely that all of these individuals shared the same genetic history? Didn’t Jesus speak Aramaic? Where is the great Aramaic civilization?

In addition, if the middle east is the origin of monotheism, and if the Islamic religion is the reason it is doing so poorly (throughout history), then what happened to Christianity and Judaism? Why did they not flourish in their place of origin?

Obviously, a lot of individuals who were born into those cultures adopted Christianity and Judaism. If those two religions are so superior, then why didn’t the individuals who adopted them create their own religious utopias in the Middle East prior to the rise of Islam? Why aren’t these former civilizatiosn the origin of medicine, math, and science?

Was it Zeus that made Rome so powerful and create a democratic system?

Or maybe it was the Romance language itself that made all the difference.

Let’s face it, the cultures that spawned early sciences were polytheistic (So should we all start worshipping tree spirits to create a superior civilization?) The Christians who furthered science were almost killed for their views. The Islamic culture felt more benign about its heretics at the time. But at the end of the day, monotheism has little to do with building a railroad. And neither does polytheism.

Personally, I buy into the “Guns, Germs, and Steel” philosophy. You can’t have a superior civilization without resources. You need building materials, good farmland, and a settlement area that contains enough stability so that you can get things done, and enough instability so that you can get rid of the corruption from within.

The Middle East doesn’t do well because it has one major resource, and a lot of open area that meant it was constantly reconqured by Mongols, Visigoths and whoever else. Right when it would get a good thing going, some barbarian would come in and burn the whole thing down (A la the Taliban and their blowing up of 6000 year old statues in Afghanistan). In addition, the lack of food resources encourage nomadism, and you can’t build cities when you are a nomad. Finally, when all the wealth is concentrated in something like oil, then oil becomes the target of every human being with a mafia mentality in the general area.

The settlers conqured North America because they wiped out the Native Americans with smallpox. If they were so superior at conquering, then they would have done the same thing in Africa, but they couldn’t, because the white settlers there kept dying of malaria and typhoid. So does God like Africans better than Native Americans?

Where did the money come from to create settlements in America? It came from the coffers of Europe. You take 1000 people, and you give 2 of them start-up money, and the rest no start-up capital, and take a guess who is going to do well.

Oh, but the American settlers had a “work the earth” mentality. They created wealth with their hands. Of course it was Christianity that gave the settlers blacksmithing, silversmithing, and basic carpentry skills. And polytheism was the reason that the Natives didn’t have these same skills. Or… perhaps living 25 years longer than the average european, with plenty of food and water, was enough for them, so they didn’t learn those skills, since the quality of their life was better than the Europeans at the time. Boy, we showed them the benefits of open sewage!

Why didn’t Christianity do as good a job in Mexico? Or is it doing badly because the Spanish culture is inferior? Wasn’t Spain just as Christian as England… hmmmmm.

What was the difference? As far as I can see, the difference is that the (long-term) succesful English colonies were started by small business start-ups that divided the land among laborers who were directly invested in the advancement of their properties, while the Spanish colonies exclusively parceled out their land to large land-owners who enslaved to maximize their profits. At the time, the Spainards were winning the economic war hands down. They were raking in ten times the profits of those tiny small business owners in the Northeast U.S!

Anyway, I guess the Spainards were culturally pre-disposed to slavery? Oh wait… what about the South?

Now why did Isreal start doing so well economically in an area that was so backwards? Could it be the 50 billion dollars in economic development investment? Or is it the power of their religious culture compared to the barbarians? How much money exactly has been invested in the development of the Palestinian areas?

Ah, but the reason the Palestinians and Arab countries don’t invest in factories and roads is because of their religion. That’s why Vatican City is an economic powerhouse.

It’s nice to think that we created a thriving civilization because of the color of our skin, our language, or our religion. But maybe, just maybe, we’re doing well because circumstances aligned in our favor. Our ancestors lived far away from Genghis Kahn, they had cows and wheat, a king who decided it was worthwhile to see if the world was round so he could get more money on the spice routes, and ancestors who spilled blood so they wouldn’t have to pay a 5% tax on goods, as compared to ancestors who would spill blood to establish the right of the church or the king to order everybody around.

But you can’t have wars over taxes, if you don’t have an economy worth taxing.

Julia,
Fantastic post, as always.

http://www1.umn.edu/umnnews/Columns/SciFri/SciFri_3.18.05_Light_in_the_Dark_Agesancient_Arab_and_Persian_scholars.html

Julia

I was just talking about the history. I didn’t mention race or religion except as descriptive of the particular civilization. I think I made it clear that Islamic civilizations were more advanced (or at least more powerful) than the Euros until about 1700 and even until about 150 years later, most of the “imperialism” in the relationship was on the Muslim side. In fact an important point I was trying to make was that Europeans were not always on top.

Yours is a nice post, but I don’t really understand it in this context.

“Guns, Germs and Steel” btw is a nice theory, but – by its own internal logic - does nothing to explain the current differences between or among Eurasian based civilizations, all of which are heirs to the same technologies that Diamond talks about. His time frames that stretch from the Neolithic age to today also are not particularly useful in making any judgments now. I thought his book was interesting, but nothing really new. He kind of took Arnold Toynbee and spread it thin. I am now reading his new book, “Collapse”, which is interesting but probably even more speculative.

It seemed to me that you were trying to explain that while the Muslim civilization had a golden age, the truth was that the Islamic and Arab culture is a culture of barbarianism, that only had a golden age because it ransacked a Christian kingdom, capitalized on its wealth, and then eventually folded under the weight of its own barbarian corruption.

For instance you refer to the Roman empire as a Christian empire that was overtaken by Muslim hordes, thus implying that Rome was pre-imenent b/c of it’s Christianity, which was the true foundation of the golden age of Islam, and the reason that they failed was because of the slow degredation of the empire by the barbaric practice of polygamy.

So the Arab and Muslims, in your version, only get credit for getting out of the way of the advancement of the Roman Christian culture, and passing that on to the Europeans who actually were able to do something with the information.

You cap this off by giving the implication that imperialism was a Muslim condition, that was only defeated by the Western advancement of science. But if I recall, the Europeans had plenty of kings and despots to go around. Wasn’t there a hundred years war? Didn’t the European countries, up until World War II, continually try to take each other over and create a grand new empire? Was it not the Europeans who carved up the entire Middle East after World War I? Is that not conquering? Is that not “imperialism”? And weren’t they doing that from King Arthur’s time up until 1940? And how long, exactly, do you think we’ve had religious tolerance in Western society?

Our “civilization” owes its pre-imenence to a variety of people who came before us. And really, it comes down to individuals. And the truth is, those individuals are every color, and every religion. (including atheists). We can thank Julius Ceaser for having an affair with Cleopatra, then recognizing that her head preist had a great 365 day calendar, which he then forced upon the roman people (in a very dictatorial manner). But did the Romans stop being “romans” when they ousted the Republic and installed a dictatorship?

So that’s my context.

You claim that we are the culmination of the greatness of Western civilization, as if we had some reason to claim the Romans as our own. I don’t know about you, but I think my ancestors were the Visigoths that destroyed them (most of us who are descended from England are descendants of the barbarians, not the romans) Pretty much all the cultures that are around today are different permutations of Roman “imperialism”.

If we’re taking the “long view” here, I just don’t get what grand point you can make. Being Arab, or white, or muslim, or christian, or whatever has little to do with democracy. Democracy is an idea. Tolerance is an idea. Of course it is better.

But it isn’t “western”. It’s an IDEA. Some countries have it now, and some don’t. The United States isn’t ROME. We aren’t populated by ROMANS. We’re populated by a wide variety of different ethnicities, and religious affiliations. We ADOPTED the Roman culture. We ADOPTED the learning of scientists and mathemeticians. We aren’t the originators of these things. In many ways, we’re like the Muslims in the 700s-1700s, people who recognize valuable ideas and capitalize upon them.

What is “western” culture? Is it the culture of kings and knights? Is it the Romans? Is it the Egyptians? Is it the Greeks? Why do we get to say that “western” culture is the best of the ancient ideas of people who didn’t practice our religion, speak our languge, or live like us. And then why should we define “Islamic” culture by the worst of its ideas rather than the best of its ideas?

Julia

I don’t agree with all your characterizations, but I would say something about what is Western Civilization.

Western Civilization has encompassed most of the great ideas of other cultures. Long before the multicultural sixties, an educated Westerner studied not only the Greek and Roman classics, but also the wisdom of Confucius and Lao Tzu. The Upanishads and the Koran were translated into Western languages and studied in Western universities. It was Western scholars who rediscovered the ancient civilizations of Sumer and Babylonia. The people living on top of the ruins had no idea and little interest in the ancient history. Without Western scholarship, nobody would be able to read the ancient Egyptian texts or understand the cultures of Mesopotamia. Yes, we (and I mean the West) copied from others. We copied and continue to copy the best ideas. Maybe those we copied from should have learned earlier to copy from us and/or each other. The fact is that the ONLY place where a person could study all or most of the cultures of the world would have been in a Western university.

It is unfashionable to say these things today.

As for Islamic Civilization – it stagnated and stopped learning new things. I know it is also politically incorrect to say, but it is undeniably true. It is not a matter of race. Arabs come in all sorts of races and Islamic cultures in general are even more diverse. But it took a wrong turn sometime about 300 years ago.

We have to recognize the reality of Islamic decline if we are to stem it. Each year, more books are translated into Greek (not a major language anymore) than into Arabic. The GDP of Spain alone (not the richest country in the West) is greater than that of ALL the Arab countries combined. Oil wealth has done little to create real wealth in the Arab world. Among all Arab countries, not one is a democracy.

But your point was not to buy into the adversary’s history. I agree with you that modern Arabia stopped incorporating new ideas, while European culture started incorporating new ideas. But you have to give credit to the ancient Muslim empires for making sure that Ptolemy and algebra, and a host of other scientific advances, surivived the dark ages so that we could capitalize upon them today. Yes, we are doing good now. Yes, we should commend ourselves for adopting the ideals of democracy and tolerance. But they don’t belong to US anymore than they belonged to the Muslims when they were the number one dissemenators of that information during their golden age.

I think everyone recognizes that the Islamic countries fell behind. But it wasn’t just the Islamic countries, it was all of Africa, the Middle East, and most of Asia.

Turkey threw off the Ottomans and has hobbled its way towards a democratic system, and is far more advanced than European cultures of 120 years ago. That’s a blink of an eye. India is roaring towards 1st world culture at breakneck speed. Turkey may be able to do the same. Iraq was less than 70 years behind in 1970. Then things fell apart. So, all I’m saying is, 300 years does not “big picture” historical perspective make. We’ll see who comes out on top in the next 300 years. Don’t forget, the United States, 150 years ago, was far from being a superpower. In fact, Canada, pre World-War, used to have the number one economy in the world.