Very interesting development happening in the Middle-East. The Iranian madman meets the Saudi King in Riyadh. So if Shias & Sunnis consolidate, it could only mean more trouble for the rest of the non-Muslim countries.
@ Kapidhwaja: Concerned as I also am at the prospect of the two gangsters getting together, I am quite convinced that this will not happen. The Iran-Arab dynamic is one of the most interesting in the Muslim world. It is not just Shia-Sunni; there is a very big racial dimension to it, a sense that history had once favored the wrong side and now needs to be corrected. It is also of competing fundamentalisms (competing against one another to outdo each others Islamic credentials). V.S Naipaul – that exemplary observer has written about this in an eye-opening way. I will reproduce below a couple of tracts from Beyond Belief – which made me think of the Iranian people in a new light (and not the Iranian Mullahs – whom I still hate). The author is walking with a student at Qum “He showed us the big hostel for foreign students; they were mainly Indian, Pakistani and African; there were Europeans. There were also a fair number of Arabs. A little later, as if apologising for the dustiness of the town, he said the Arabs made the place dirty. He spoke conversationally, without malice, like a man saying something that everyone would accept; always with Iranians, and in unexpected ways, this uneasiness about Arabs…”
Writing about the war with Saddam’s Iraq “One of the names Saddam had given himself was “Victor of Ghadessiah”…. And Saddam called Iranians “Magis”, Zoroastrains’ worshippers at the fire-temples, adherents to pre-Islamic religion of Iran…. The Iraqi taunts- which were like taunts in a schoolyard – still had the power to wound him….”
Naipaul is sceptical about the Iranians being able to reclaim that past. He says that it is dead already. I am not so sure. If there is going to be a Big Bang disappearance of Islam (Koenraad Elst of all people seems to think this will happen) – then my contention is that the Iranians will play a big part in it. Wonder why Coptic Egypt – even with all that academic fuel being spent by all those Egyptology departments in the west, all those magnificent pyramids and the Sphinx, mummies and glories and the tourist trade– Egypt is never taunted enough. It is not given to this special Iranian edginess with Arabs. Why is that so? Could it be because the Iranian past is not all that dead?
All my speculation apart – we should defer to Shahryar for what all this means. Shahryar’s sources and interpretation will be primary as opposed to an interpreted world.
While I am not sure of the mechanics of such a collapse, Elst has hinted at it over here http://koenraadelst.voiceofdharma.com/interviews/sulekha.html
I quite agree with him that when it happens, the process of the Islamic threat disappearing will be rather quick. The question is when will it happen, and what will it take. Energy independence could certainly be a catalyst. Islamic bluff and bluster today (including the financing of huge armies and nuclear weapons programs) are sustained by high gas prices (Pakistan being the exception - were it is financed by the Americans and built by the Hans!). Take away money and you can significantly reduce the ability of these folks to congeal, oragnise and threaten. I agree that this does not address the fundamentals of Islam (i.e. prophetic monotheism, concept of jihaad etc.), but it in mapping the threat of the enemy (intention + ability) it does reduce the ability portion.
2 comments:
@ Kapidhwaja:
Concerned as I also am at the prospect of the two gangsters getting together, I am quite convinced that this will not happen.
The Iran-Arab dynamic is one of the most interesting in the Muslim world. It is not just Shia-Sunni; there is a very big racial dimension to it, a sense that history had once favored the wrong side and now needs to be corrected. It is also of competing fundamentalisms (competing against one another to outdo each others Islamic credentials). V.S Naipaul – that exemplary observer has written about this in an eye-opening way. I will reproduce below a couple of tracts from Beyond Belief – which made me think of the Iranian people in a new light (and not the Iranian Mullahs – whom I still hate). The author is walking with a student at Qum
“He showed us the big hostel for foreign students; they were mainly Indian, Pakistani and African; there were Europeans. There were also a fair number of Arabs. A little later, as if apologising for the dustiness of the town, he said the Arabs made the place dirty. He spoke conversationally, without malice, like a man saying something that everyone would accept; always with Iranians, and in unexpected ways, this uneasiness about Arabs…”
Writing about the war with Saddam’s Iraq
“One of the names Saddam had given himself was “Victor of Ghadessiah”…. And Saddam called Iranians “Magis”, Zoroastrains’ worshippers at the fire-temples, adherents to pre-Islamic religion of Iran…. The Iraqi taunts- which were like taunts in a schoolyard – still had the power to wound him….”
Naipaul is sceptical about the Iranians being able to reclaim that past. He says that it is dead already. I am not so sure. If there is going to be a Big Bang disappearance of Islam (Koenraad Elst of all people seems to think this will happen) – then my contention is that the Iranians will play a big part in it.
Wonder why Coptic Egypt – even with all that academic fuel being spent by all those Egyptology departments in the west, all those magnificent pyramids and the Sphinx, mummies and glories and the tourist trade– Egypt is never taunted enough. It is not given to this special Iranian edginess with Arabs. Why is that so? Could it be because the Iranian past is not all that dead?
All my speculation apart – we should defer to Shahryar for what all this means. Shahryar’s sources and interpretation will be primary as opposed to an interpreted world.
Kapidhwaja,
While I am not sure of the mechanics of such a collapse, Elst has hinted at it over here
http://koenraadelst.voiceofdharma.com/interviews/sulekha.html
I quite agree with him that when it happens, the process of the Islamic threat disappearing will be rather quick. The question is when will it happen, and what will it take. Energy independence could certainly be a catalyst. Islamic bluff and bluster today (including the financing of huge armies and nuclear weapons programs) are sustained by high gas prices (Pakistan being the exception - were it is financed by the Americans and built by the Hans!). Take away money and you can significantly reduce the ability of these folks to congeal, oragnise and threaten.
I agree that this does not address the fundamentals of Islam (i.e. prophetic monotheism, concept of jihaad etc.), but it in mapping the threat of the enemy (intention + ability) it does reduce the ability portion.
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