To explain some of the train-wreck of the Middle East.

 

To try and explain some of the train-wreck of the Middle East…

 

To explain the train wreck of the Middle East you probably don't have to go back as far as the Crusades of that began e 11^th c. Muslim civilization was in its fullest flower then, Jerusalem was not really its center as Western media sometimes insists it was, so the great Arab and Muslim Empire of Saladin, from Egypt, was threatened, but never fully at-risk.

 

Stat looking later in the 19^th c. wherein the Middle East and Africa were dominated by outside Imperialist interests, both vicious and viciously-competing. It is important to remember that one of those interests was a Muslim, not a Christian, Empire, that of the Ottomans, based in Turkey. They were not Arab-ruled, and usually considered part of Europe, though more accurately called transcontinental, European and Asian.

 

It was during WWI that the Ottomans breathed their last gasp, caused by the Middle-Eastern, mostly Arab, Muslims, allying themselves with Christian West, England and France against the Ottoman’s and also the Germans. England and France promised their allies self-determination, and then betrayed that. The Sykes–Picot Agreement of 1916 is the stuff of the most insane conspiracy theories, except it's real, a few élite men, representing banking and trade interests, smoking cigars in a luxuriously-appointed command centers, cynically cutting deals that cut-out all that were affected by them, as we imagine James Bonds villains do. The Modern History of the Middle East begins there.

 

Rabid hatred of the Jews (you really shouldn’t call it anti-Semitism because the Arabs are a Semitic people) arises in the Middle East only after this date as well, when its people, suffering beneath what was effectively a conspiracy of foreign Globalists and International Bankers, were fed a steady stream of lies about this thing called “the International Jew” by their French, English, and remaining German occupiers -- these fantasies weren't much of a stretch beyond their observable realities.

 

Every nation in the Middle East, at least as we know it, begins its history only long-after 1916, because their real independence from foreign oppressors came only after, and only after taking the beating-after-beating by Western nations engaging in the vilest subversions. These are peoples whose real-histories have been dominated by demonstrable conspiracies that make the conspiratorial fantasies of a 9/11 Truthers pale in comparison. It’s a context where honest politics face exceptional challenges.

 

Our anti-Middle-Eastern prejudices are fundamentally anti-Arab, but the Arabs are not the only people of the Middle-East, and the Arabs aren’t really one people/one culture. And our Anti-Arab prejudices are really Anti-Muslim, but Islam is not the only religion in the Middle-East, not all Arabs are Muslim, and Arabs are not, by any stretch on the imagination, the largest ethnicity in Islam.

 

Regarding any generalization made about Islam, the most important thing to remember, Islam is as diverse as Christianity. It is also huge, estimated as being one-quarter of the human race. I think I can safely generalize the Westborough Baptists, there are only 200 of them and mostly related to each other, but I can’t do the same for the whole of Baptism, 50-to-100 million (depending on how you define it) in the USA alone, up-to 170 million world-wide, and Baptists aren’t the only brand of Christianity -- all of Christianity totals around 2.56 billion.

 

Simply put, almost any broad statement you make about Islam, even a factually-grounded one, encourages some type of fallacy or another -- even if you’re right, you’re still wrong. Think about it this way: If fully one-quarter of the human race acted like Daesh (my preferred acronym for what most people call ISIS), the world would look A LOT different than it does.

 

Still, there is a “Muslim World” which usually means the world reflected in the Muslim-majority countries. If a collective understanding of them was possible, one might have a reasonable yardstick. There are 49 of them, and collectively they are home to about 90% of the world’s Muslims; problem is again, they countries are amazingly diverse, so again, broad statements are almost always wrong.

 

We Americans are overwhelming focused on the Middle Eastern and North African Muslims, the mostly-Arab ones, BUT WAIT! That’s only about 15% of the total. Sometimes were concerned with the Sub-Saharan African Muslims. Problem, that’s only about another 15%. Fully 60% of the world’s Muslims in the Asian regions. You don’t hear much about them, do you?

 

Why?

 

Two reasons:

 

1.) They don’t much effect oil prices.

2.) Though there’s a lot of terrorism in those other places, most of it is secular, not sectarian. Also, the purely sectarian, violence in Asia seems to be imported from the outside. Pakistan is considered Middle East, though it used to more often be referred to as part of South Asia) and much of their worst terrorism in often rooted in Madrasa’s (Muslim Schools) that were financed by Saudi Arabian money. Pakistani nationals have then either committed, or sponsored, horrific cross-border attacks in India, which is South Asian. India, itself, has a massive Muslim population, but isn’t one of the above-mentioned 49 Muslim-majority countries. The Bali bombings of 2002 were similarly the product of imported ideologies.

 

PEW’s research does challenge a lot of the anti-Muslim stereotypes, but it also contains a fair about of bad-news.

 

Of those 49 Muslim Majority countries, something like 75% are theocracies. Now they are also wildly diverse, ruled under small-or-large “T,” moderate or extreme versions of Sharia Law. Still, to be in the 21^st c. and still be in the context of such a lack a separation between Church and State is bad news. I also say that contributes to the violence.

 

PEW research did amazing work trying to nail down the “Muslim Street” through thousands of face-to-face interviews in 36 of the above 49 countries. Unhappily I must report about a solid majority of Muslims support Sharia to be “the official law of the land.” Also, the Sharia-supporters seems focused in the Muslim countries most embroiled in USA-National-interests. In Azerbaijan, Sharia support is only 8%, but in Afghanistan, it’s 99%.

 

That means they are Islamist (they prefer to live in a Theocracy), but that does not mean they are Jihadist (an imperfect use of the word, but I mean supporting or engaging in a violent Holy War). To nail down the popularity of dangerous, radical ideas, there was also a long series of questions regarding suicide bombers, radical groups, targeting of civilians, etc. The answers demonstrated that Jihadists had support of only an infinitesimally small minority on the Muslim Street, about 7%.

 

7% is chicken-feed. 7% is nothing to worry about. Since Muslims are 1.6 -2 billion people worldwide, 7% of that is only…

 

OK. Now we can start getting scared again.