1 is a common misconception:

> According to a 2008 survey of such studies by Alan Krueger of Princeton University, they have found little evidence that the typical terrorist is unusually poor or badly schooled

[0] http://www.economist.com/node/17730424

It seems they are missing an important factor, namely 4) the personal, cultural and economical impairment due to the religion of Islam. Nobody has time to thrive when they have to pray five times a day, when almost every thought and action is dictated by an old book and when half of their human potential is hidden in cloth bags.

Is there much evidence for the specific choice of religion as a casual factor? Methods of blending a traditionalist religion with modern life seem much more important than which religion you start with. For example, Judaism imposes an extremely strict set of rules that govern almost every conceivable aspect of daily life. And indeed you find that strictly observant Orthodox Jews are mostly unable to function in a modern society; a large percentage of those living in Israel are unemployed and supported by state funds. However a large number of Jews have chosen to be somewhat looser in their adherence to Jewish law, which seems to be the key, rather than Judaism itself being more compatible with modernity.

I lived in Western Turkey for a year, and while nearly everyone was Muslim (some atheists sprinkled here and there), there was plenty of alcohol and bars, <20% of women wore the headscarf, and I honestly can't remember any instance of someone praying, let alone dropping what they were doing to pray. In Canada, I have some Muslim friends who do that, though.

Granted, this was in the less religious parts of Turkey, but it's grossly unfair to the moderates to paint everyone with the fundamentalist brush. There's a billion Muslims out there.

The majority of Christians do not believe that the Earth was created 10000 years ago!

I strongly recommend the comic book Persepolis to anyone who wants a better understanding of life in the Middle East (or at least, Iran).

Turkey is not a good argument for Islam being "tolerant" or Muslims being somehow naturally "less religious."

Ataturk abolished the Caliphate in 1924. He explicitly introduced the constitution to Turkey which declared the state to be secular, that is, independent of any religious influence! He effectively banned headscarves (hijabs, nijabs, whatever) in all public institutions (being religious attire, therefore to be separated from state), including schools and universities.

The West however wasn't so smart recently, forgetting how much fights and sacrifices were needed to achieve the freedoms we have now (but will we keep them depends on our readiness to stand for them, more than up to now).

Erdogan now pulls Turkey back to the pre-20th century state. And unfortunately, there are enough of those who support him and his Islamic "revival."

---

The comics Persepolis that you mention, among some personal stories, also covers the moment of "Islamic revolution" in Iran, which, among many other things, destroyed women freedoms. Before:

http://www.parstimes.com/fashion/pre_revolution/

Now:

http://www.aquila-style.com/focus-points/iranian-women-campa...

Watch and weep. Or consider whom you support.

It probably didn't help that the printing press was banned by the Ottoman Empire for centuries and "when they finally allowed it assigned a panel of religious experts to ensure that the books printed met with the moral and religious standards of the political elite."

From the book Why Nations Fail. http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-why-nations-fail/chapanal...

There is clear evidence that Catholic areas have lower levels of economic growth than Prodestent areas even within same country. So, religion really does impact economic growth. But, I don't think there is hard evidence to brake it down to specific causes within each religious group.

PS: While you may disagree with this, there is a lot of research into this topic: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=religion+economic+devel...

Do you have any sources for that claim? I would be genuineley interested in the methodology of this research. Its just anecdotal, but here in Germany it is the other way around. The Catholic south is prosperous, whereas the protestant north (east) is poor. I can think of examples where the opposite is true (Belgium) but I highly doubt that there is a casual connection. In Belgium for example the catholic (and more important industrialized) wallonia was very prosperous during the 19th century, in opposition to the more agrarian flanders. Nowdays its flanders that is more prosperous, and the old industrial regions in the south suffer from the effects of deindustrialisation.

The Protestant northeast suffered from being part of East Germany. A hundred years ago Prussia was much more powerful than Bavaria.

This may be true, but Bremen, Niedersachsen and Schleswig Holstein are not in a very good shape either (at least compared to Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg). But what all of this shows, is that there are a whole bunch of historical and socio-economic factors at play that have no connection with religion.

Prussia was also the last paganic part of Europe.

I have seen several pieces of research on this topic over the years, but here is something from a quick search.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2011/oct/31/economics-...

I have seen US and England held up as other examples, Germany may be a counter example.

That is not really true. It ignores that in many of the states where this is true, there were very many other cultural differences, and also differences in the laws that they were working under.

I don't think this line of research hold up very well, specially not cross country over long timeframes.

I think you're confusing economic differences between the US South (very not-catholic) vs Northeast (very catholic) as being caused by the religion when there are a bunch of much more important differences, economically speaking, you could look at.

Take a look at total GDP per capita, the northeast is way ahead. Different metric, different results, still not caused by religion.

Correlation vs causation. Does protestantism improve productivity, or did the cultures where productivity is valued highly more easily convert to protestantism?

How do you explain Bayern in Germany then?

Simple explanation: communist occupation of East Germany by the Soviets brought there the "excellent" development opportunities also seen in the rest of Eastern Europe and Russia. Before that, Prussia was way ahead of Bavaria.

That still doesn't explain why Bavaria is ahead of other former West German states.

And global worming does not explain any specific daily temperature. The point is there are hundreds of years of history to do comparative analysis and thousands of locations to consider. I would suggest reading the literature instead of trying to point to a counter example.

PS: Bavaria is only nominally 51 Cathlic vs the average of 30 for the entire country. Further, you can break things down to a much lower level. https://cruxnow.com/global-church/2016/07/18/germany-mass-go...

Ok, then: Ireland, Baden-Wurtemberg, Austria, Lombardy.

Max Weber was a smart guy, but he died 100 years ago. I hope we have better things to correlate with prosperity than just one strain of a particular religion.

Over the last several hundred years Ireland has had massive economic issues. This may have little to do with religion but I don't think it supports whatever point your trying to make.

Have you ever heard of Bavaria? Also called Germany's Texas.

>when almost every thought and action is dictated by an old book

Compared to the US, where political actions are sorely based on facts and the bible and religion are completely irrelevant. /s

It's not really an issue only in Islam, people make a lot of actions because of an even older book - the bible - as well.

Have you met any Muslims that pray? Do you know anything about it all? 2 of those prayers occur before and after business hours. And even if they were working there's not a whole lot going on at 4:30am. 2 are short coffee break level prayers. A little meditation and a quick baslama and get on with it. And the longest, conveniently occurs around lunchtime anyway.

I fail to see how prayer affects anyone's potential in a negative way.

here at my workplace co-workers go to "pray" once an hour. And by prayer i mean cigarette breaks. These common interruptions are accepted and I watch as it takes minutes on return to get back to speed. those are the ones that reduce productivity. not sure the islam prayer cycle is that corrosive by a long way

And in our times of hectic impatient noisy lives, 5 pauses to reflect, even on "old religious ideas" (I'm fairly biased against religion), isn't a bad thing IMHO.

Agreed. I work with a devout Muslim. I think I'd more effective if I took meditation breaks as regularly as he takes his short, prayer breaks.

My MIL is Muslim. When we are visiting and it's time to pray she finds a quiet corner, unrolls her rug, does her prayer, and is back before the tea has finished steeping.

I've spent more time getting to the break room at work than she has on afternoon prayer. So I fail to see the connection between the 2-3 scheduled daily prayer times and production. If that is the case, coffee, cigarettes, lunch, and bathroom breaks are equal contributors.

>Nobody has time to thrive when they have to prey five times a day

Ah huh.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age

People always point to that, but the Islamic Golden Age was no more Islamic than Bonnie & Clyde's benders were financed by Bonnie & Clyde (rather than the folks whose money they'd stolen from banks). The fruits of the so-called Islamic Golden Age were planted by Classical civilisation, watered and tended by Zoroastrians, Jews & Christians — and harvested by Islam. Indeed, even during the 'Golden Age' many of the great lights were not of Islamic extraction (e.g. al-Khwarizmi, who was from a Zoroastrian family and may have converted out of economic or political expediency).

That's not to belittle the contributions of actual Mohammedans (e.g. Avicenna, who really did do more than just repeat his Classical forebears), but on the whole the Islamic Golden Age was what one would expect when a supremely wealthy but weak empire (the Eastern Romans) is conquered by poor but strong barbarians: the conquerors are rich & happy for decades, living off of the wealth they have taken. Like Anglo-Saxons building their mead-halls over Roman mosaics, they enjoyed the products of a higher civilisation but were unable to match them (the Umma being rather larger than the Heptarchy, they had a much bigger base from which to decline, and a correspondingly-longer period of relative comfort).

"many of the great lights were not of Islamic extraction"

... really? many of them ? can you please write "many" more from "non Islamic extraction"

"El-Khwarizmi, who was from a Zoroastrian family and may have converted out of economic or political expediency"

...So one particular scholar is not really a "muslim", soo it must that everything else worthy must be from non-muslim people

"but on the whole the Islamic Golden Age was what one would expect when a supremely wealthy but weak empire (the Eastern Romans) is conquered by poor but strong barbarians: the conquerors are rich & happy for decades, living off of the wealth they have taken."

...So they were just plunderers?

This is textbook western self-propaganda.

Don't pin this on western's. There are definitely those of us who have a grasp on history. This guy/gal has a readily apparent bias.

fortunately they are. This phenomena is just saddening, its the same thing on the other side and dialog become impossible.

>>and dialog become impossible.

The dialog becomes impossible because of many other important reasons, too, including,

a. the opposition by liberals/leftists/Islamists to bring forward any critical review of some extremely troubling vicious aspects of Islam and Islamic scriptures (Quran and Hadiths) under the phony reasons of islamophobia

b. the reluctance of Islamists to accept the notion of freedom of expression even if it means some of the expression offends the Muslims (e.g. discussion regarding pedophilia of Muhammad or someone drawing cartoons of Muhammad)

These views by Bill Maher and Sam Harris may help understand this point in a better way. [1], [2], [3]

In fact, the freedom of opinion is under attack because of Islam, even in the free western world to a large extent.

The freedom lovers, liberals and humanists must understand this threat posed by the vicious ideology of mainstream Islam. The USA and the west now must also invest similar (if not more) efforts and resources to fight this vicious ideology as those that they invested to fight another vicious ideology called communism.

It should however be noted that there are many people who have been Muslims just by birth and they do not necessarily follow the vicious ideology to its core.

So the fight must be against Islam and not against all Muslims, per se.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E1u9lQeAsY

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL8rZTuGfZo

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46nh8_BK7ok

No, comments and thinking like yours are the reason there is no progress.

In conflict between group X and group Y, if you ask X it's because Y does (insert list of offenses here). The same from the opposing side. Nobody wants to acknowledge that both sides have issues, and if they work towards fixing said issues the world will be a better place.

Your whole diatribe about "liberals/leftist/Islamist" is the exact same crap that extremist on the other side preach, just projected through your (the way I view it) conservative lense.

The biggest problem is that nobody is willing to step outside of their comfort zone, to see how the other half lives, in order to move forward. That goes for both the "liberals/leftist/Islamist" left and the "conservative/anti-pc/nobody-deserves-to-be-comfortable-except-me" right

> So the fight must be against Islam and not against all Muslims, per se.

If you understand what Islam is, and what a muslim is, this statement makes no sense.

>>If you understand what Islam is, and what a muslim is, this statement makes no sense.

If you mean to say that "Islam and Muslims are the same" I beg to differ. Islam is a religion not person and Muslims are persons.

Let me clarify, Islam is a religion/ideology whereas Muslim is a person who is either practicing Islam (religion/ideology) or who is labeled as Muslim because he/she is born within a family who practices Islam.

By "the fight must be against Islam and not against all Muslims, per se", I mean the fight must against the ideology/religion and must not necessarily against all Muslim population.

So it was a big mistake by USA to attack Iraq as a reaction to the 9/11 attacks on USA, instead the military attack (only small surgical level) should have been restricted to Taliban/Osama in Afghanistan and then along with that small military surgical attack, the USA should have actually opened a war against the vicious ideology of Islam.

The Iraq was not a big threat to USA. Millions of innocent lives could have been saved in Iraq and elsewhere, if the USA had realized that this is an ideological war and must be fought on the ideological war-front. This can and must be done by supporting liberal minded humanists (like, Bill Maher, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins) who are exposing the viciousness of the ideology of Islam and upholding the modern humanist values like freedom of expression and separation of 'mosque and state'.

Muslims are people who practice the religion of Islam.

Religions (for those who practice them) are ideals that are intrinsically woven into peoples lives.

So by saying you should attack Islam (with no qualifiers to that statement), you are indeed saying you should attack Muslims.

I'm not going to address the second part of your statement, other than to say that the war in Iraq was illegal, wrong, and counter-productive. It, 9/11, and US sponsored creation of the terrorist boogieman are largely the root that modern islamophobia, and on the flip side modern terrorist cells, have sprung from.

Just admit that you don't like muslims and go on about your day.

>>So by saying you should attack Islam (with no qualifiers to that statement), you are indeed saying you should attack Muslims.

That is your way of interpreting it.

I never said we should physically attack the Muslim people. I am not against Muslim people, per se. All I am saying is we should attack the vicious ideology of Islam.

If the sentiments of some (potentially radical or not-so-radical) Muslims get hurt due to the thought attacks on the ideology of Islam, so be it. These Muslims should learn to get offended and learn to respect the freedom of expression and learn to respond to such offending expressions in more civilized manners and not by killing people.

You should be telling and encourage these Muslims to learn the fundamentals of free and open society.

If some Muslims are getting offended because some people draw cartoon of their prophet, so be it, these Muslims must learn to live peacefully in a free society even if they get offended by other people.

If some Muslims are getting offended because some people raise the issue of the pedophilia practiced by their prophet Muhammad, so be it, these Muslims must learn to live peacefully in a free society even if they get offended by other people.

The liberals/critical thinkers should not be suppressed just because expression of their thoughts in a peaceful manner hurts the sentiments of some Muslims.

The liberals/critical thinkers have attacked earlier and do attack now also the Christianity/Judaism/Hinduism and our free society never suppresses their thoughts. Islam should not be an exception and hence Islam should not be given special treatment.

Once again let me make it clear that I am not against Muslim people, in fact, I do have many Muslim friends and they are open to such thoughts.

Civilisations built upon each others achievement ever since the dawn of history, it seems rather hypocritical to start cherry-picking the merits of a particular one.

Regardless, OP said Muslims couldn't thrive praying 5 times a day, the Islamic Golden Age (as big or as small as you think it was) still proves otherwise.

The classic "Golden age" deception.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_Qpy0mXg8Y

Yeah youtube, the greatest source to get historical facts straight without any actual political bias.

>I am not a historian (around 9:30)

Last I checked we were discussing history..

Funded by the CSPI, which has a major anti-Islam agenda.

Because Christians would never pray a lot, slavishly follow an old book or oppress women?

And we hear of the appalling results of this almost every day across the world, or have I missed it?

Well they did, which is exactly how we know it's all a massively bad idea.

praying is not a problem. The biggest problem is lack of debt. Wanna open a new business? You can't take credit. Problems with cashflow? You can go to a debt prison. Forget about mortgage for a house etc.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you. But mortgages exist in lots of Muslim majority countries. Are you really suggesting that Muslims don't take on debt?

You can take out a mortgage in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bangladesh, Morocco.. They were the first four I checked.

You can something similar to mortgage or credit in UAE as well, but being late on the payment has devastating consequences.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2194633/Luxury-high-...

It has consequence for enormous part of a life. For example, I was traveling using metro in Dubai. I had 5 dirham on my travel card and the trip I wanted to take costs 3 dirham. I couldn't enter the train, because the maximum charge is 8 dirham, so I could have negative balance.

GP is referring to the fact that interest is forbidden in Islam. However, you can still get interest-based loans in Muslim countries. They're just branded differently.

So GP's point is invalid than, no? Muslims take on debt and business loans regularly.

Sure, this is the same reason that nobody who smokes cigarettes has ever been successful. All those breaks they take in the middle of the day.

How long is a prayer in Islam ? it's an interesting idea but it's hard to believe that this has such a significant impact.

2-4 minutes. About the length of a standard coffee break

Alright, the point above is thus irrelevant.

That's absurd. Everything we do in the modern world stands upon technological, mathematical and scientific success brought to us by the middle east. Don't let you (imo apparently biased) thoughts about islam distort history

You could not be more wrong. I am a software engineer, and I pray five times a day. My wife is a physician, prays five times a day, and wears the headscarf. If our household income is any indication, we are thriving just fine.

It is obviously inaccurate to write "nobody" and I am sorry if I have hurt your feelings by this rhetorical device. I've merely pointed out a general tendency that Islam numbs social, economic and scientific progress, i.e. that the influence on the conflicts in the Arab World with regards to religion is not just a matter of differences in beliefs, but rather an underlying condition of a kind of belief which prevents progress. The niqab and burqa, the excessive structuring of day-to-day life, Islamic extremism, as well as oppression of women, gays and atheists are simply symptomatic examples for an overly binding religion. I've also only pointed out that it plays a significant role in the grievances in the Arab World, not that is the only cause.

I don't know about arabic countries and how religion affects their development but I tend to believe your comment isn't accurate. I've known personally a lot of muslims originally from those countries (colleagues, students, classmates, friends...). None of them preys five times a day or are hidden in cloth bags.

I think that's covered under 2) about Salafism/Wahabism

Islam is unrelated to the emotional and intellectual deficits imposed upon victims of poverty and disenfranchisement -- not only that but I think there's a strong argument in that a task performed five times daily repeated ad infinitum doesn't cause cultural impairment, nor does the age of a given mandate.

Furthermore, I think maximizing for "human potential" is a red herring -- the inevitable end-result is exercising control over a given population to exploit their human potential and TBH that sounds revolting. We should be given the freedom to live our lives out regardless of someone else's small and personal ambitions, including dedicating our lives to practicing Islam.

People see and act through their own personal philosophies and personalities. You can't peel those off and have any kind of reasonable conversation about culture and history.

When faced with impending death, pessimists might commit suicide. Optimists might struggle on. People with under-developed personalities might just listen to the first person they run into.

But whatever the case, their choices will be broadcast through their religious and cultural values. Those committing suicide could self-terminate. Or they could be suicide bombers. Those deciding to carry on could become artists or prophets. Or they might open a house of worship.

In addition, the definition of "impending doom" changes depending on your philosophy of life and worldview.

It's a red herring to blame everything on religion. People are people. But it's also a red herring to refuse to accept the role of religion in determining how well cultures thrive. Whatever myths you choose to believe in has a profound impact on how you see the world around you and how you react to it.

I'm not going to deny that many are judged based on their religious and cultural values, and that there are correlations between all Muslims that point to certain trends that some find alarming (eg: irrationality, lack of self-preservation, and strong desire for justice), but I cannot accept that such trends are a reflection of Islam.

Culture shock happens and when it happens on a massive scale then there will obviously be issues, and I think that is what we are witnessing now. It may take a generation but I am hopeful that Western society will co-exist with Islam peacefully, regardless of the negative interpretations some people have.

You could do the same with a billion and a half people anywhere -- give them a unifying identity, tell them to live in every nation on Earth, and make most of the poor and uneducated. There will be a central global point that people call home, there will be culture clashes, and there will be demagogues taking advantage of the situation.

My post had nothing to do with how people are judged. It was all about how each individual reacts to the same stimulus differently depending on what's inside their head -- which includes religion to a great degree.

Yes, there's a huge culture shock happening. Christianity has been quite flexible over the years. People still think that if aliens land that Christians will freak out. These are people who don't know their history. Whatever kind of weirdness comes along, somehow Christians absorb it into whatever they believe. Then they'll insist that this was what they believed all along :) To adherents, this is probably both a bug and a feature.

The jury is still out with Islam. With so many adherents, it's bound to morph into something. The pressure is certainly high. But I have no idea what the characteristics of that thing is or how much traction it will have in the community. Like I do all people, I wish them the best. Belief systems based on tribal forms of society aren't going to go far in a internet-connected world without a lot of change. Just ask the Judaism folks.

Thanks for the reply!

Preventing women from driving, from being in public without family members, from touching others, from having other see their face etc. etc. is 100% part of the 'intellectual deficit' imposed by Arabic flavours of Islam.

Islam is a religion, an ideology and a culture all blended into one. Parts of it are bad.

But I don't think it's any of that. I think it's something simpler: there is nothing in the desert. It's really hard to build a civilization of nothing. Absent civilization, even if there is Oil in the ground ... the surpluses won't be managed effectively or fairly.

I think that were the Arab world to be green and lush, it would be a better place, because civilization and power would have developed from an agrarian base ... which is more distributed, then higher level civic institutions can come into place etc.

With desert+oil, basic and important institutions don't get a chance to form, and you have a Fedual system which depends on the intelligence and benevolence of the Feudal Lords, aka House of Saud, Qatari 'royal' family etc.

> I think that were the Arab world to be green and lush, it would be a better place, because civilization and power would have developed from an agrarian base ... which is more distributed,

We are going to enter a similar situation in the developed countries as the workforce will be replaced by automation. Work has been a great "distributor" of wealth, each person being in charge of his own work potential. But after automation, people will have nothing to trade for. Regular people will become like "muslims in barren countries", dependants upon the state and wealthy. And the riches will collect in the hands of big corporations who operate the robotic fleets.

The only solution I see is to open source and democratize AI and robotics so it doesn't concentrate wealth like it happened with operating systems (Microsoft), search (Google), social networks (FB) and oil (arab countries). People need to be independent from now on. If corporations are to function without hiring people, then people need to function without needing said corporations. We need to focus on agriculture, 3D printing, solar and open source AI. We need to be self sufficient.

There is no AI or hard logic based systems that humans will agree upon as fair, because inherently human beings don't realize that they may be have been, or continue to be the recipients of hidden benefits.

We also used to say statistics is what people should study (in the early 1970s? iirc). Not everyone has the inclination or bandwidth.

This is a problem that will only be solved by figuring out tools to help the human component.

And Unfortunately any tool created has immense scope of being misused. The power no man should have.

For example, a tool which can identify the intent of a speaker online by studying the sum total of all conversations they have ever had, would be vastly useful in in helping people build bridges with each other. IT would solve immense problems with law keeping, justice, and even mundane things like moderation on a forum.

At the same time knowing intent would be the scariest thing to see abused by an unscrupulous third party.

You are confusing Islam with the cultures of the Arabian Peninsula -- it may be the birthplace of Islam but Muslims have done much more than eek out a meager existence among sand dunes.

Education curriculum, fairness, equality, social justice, civic duty, personal accountability -- all of these things are similarly as present in Islam as they are anywhere else.

Also, governance by royal decree is one of the most un-Islamic things possible. This is not lost on the Gulf monarchies so they are forced into a submissive position when confronted by the relevant Sunni Islamic authority.

> Education curriculum, fairness, equality, social justice, civic duty, personal accountability

The problem is which form they take. Women are clearly not men's equal in the Koran. The Koran talks about all these subjects, it doesn't mean it promotes these. According the to Koran(and the Bible) , slavery is acceptable, the Koran even tells how Muslims should treat their slaves. Is that the fairness,equality and social justice you are talking about ? Or are you twisting the meaning of these words at first place ?

You can argue the Koran is a product of its time,which it totally is. Saying that is a good way to invalidate the fact that it should be taken as "the final, perfect word of \"God\" " if it should be read in context. But it's forbidden for Muslims to criticize the Koran at first place... so back to square one.

Inequality between genders in Islam is a difficult subject to discuss without pointing out that many female Muslims in the Western world are afforded the same rights and freedoms as male Muslims -- indeed, Muslim women have achieved equality without being permitted to enter Islam's holiest sites.

That said, women are most definitely treated differently under Islamic rule as outlined by Islamic law, and there is no point of view that can deny this. Some would argue that women and men are inherently different and that it would be imprudent to ignore this, and this line of reasoning leads us to unpleasant situations like women being denied the same opportunities to achieve success as men are.

Millions of Muslims in the West find slavery to be barbaric and none of them own slaves, and not only that but one of the central tenets of Islam is donation to make slavery unnecessary. This is evidence of fairness, equality, and social justice not only being compatible with Islam, but encouraged.

That said, slavery is permissible in Islam under certain circumstances, and the primary basis for this permission is the profound lack of protection afforded to non-Muslims outlined in Islamic teachings. This is intentional and personally I hope it falls by the wayside.

Finally, criticism of the Quran is a touchy subject. The study of mathematics was regarded as being unable to bring perfection to the human soul, but many Muslims studied it nevertheless and humanity advanced in indescribable ways. Death was similarly regarded as an act of God regardless of the cause of death, but the study of medicine was defended as not being un-Islamic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidah

"Education curriculum, fairness, equality, social justice, civic duty, personal accountability -- all of these things are similarly as present in Islam as they are anywhere else."

My friend, no, they are not, and there is not a single nation on Earth where Islam is the prevailing religion where this is the case.

Now - I'm not saying that Islam is compatible with these things, and I agree that my comments are directed towards the 'Arabic and Arabic influenced world' - and that Islam in Indonesia is obviously something altogether different - nevertheless, your comment does not hold.

The Arab world is literally where civilization--the first development of agriculture, of urban settlements, of writing, coherent state polities, etc.--was first invented in history (note that most of these developments happened independently in a few places). They've had those things for at least 1000 years before anything in Europe showed any signs of comparable developments.

Your comment makes no sense. So Hammurabi was "Arab"? That's extremely anachronistic. Prior to then advent of Islam the Christian Roman Empire was much, much more wealthy advanced and sophisticated than the Arabian desert.

If you're criticizing a region for its geographic resources or lack thereof, it makes sense to discuss its history in terms of that geographic region as opposed to using cultural or ethnolinguistic definitions.

I'll also point out that Hammurabi was likely speaking an Afro-Asiatic language (of which Arabic is the most widely-spoken in modern times), so ancient Mesopotamia is as close to the modern Iraq ethnolinguistically as ancient Greece is to modern Western Europe.

While true, this is unrelated to Islam.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia, the "cradle of civilization," is in Iraq. Keep in mind that it is just one of many, it is nevertheless an area that is green and not an endless sandy expanse.

Sure, the praying alone would not create a huge amount of cognitive load, but it is just symptomatic of an overly binding religion. It must be terribly confusing as a Muslim to see other cultures vastly outperforming them even though these cultures don't follow the word of Allah, e.g. by not throwing people off of cliffs for having wild gay sex and not stoning women for adultery. These are literally the kinds of rules, fears and confusions that shape Islamic cultures.

Overly binding is subjective and many benefit from the strong social support provided by Islamic communities, and furthermore to feel jealousy towards other cultures is very un-Islamic.

That said, I continue to assert that your arguments are red herrings -- attempts to indirectly answer one question with another's answer. Fixing the issues you brought up are unrelated to removing Islam's influence on the people of the world, unless you feel that Islam's binding influence on large populations is prohibitively restrictive to the point that is an impediment to any social program of any scale on Earth. If that is the case then the natural progression will lead us to war, and many nations around the world have already been lead to this conclusion.

Dare I say it - might envy / jealousy towards another culture actually help the Arab world get out of this slump? It is precisely because the Arab world is so closed off - in terms of trade, in terms of cultural exchange, to Western cultural and economic ideas that this widespread poverty remains. This closure means that autocrats are able to pit Islam against Western ideals, constantly - we're bad, but we can stay in power as long as we're not them, them being the decadent and greedy Westerners. Forget about the good ideals we bring - liberal democracy, decentralization of power. We haven't helped matters at all, what with our invasions, but to say it is just Western influence (which some are, not necessarily you) that has caused this morass, is oversimplifying matters and ignoring the huge role of religion and religious fundamentalism.

The fact that when given a chance to re-envision their society and culture, revolutionaries in these countries such as the Muslim Brotherhood keep choosing Sharia and other forms of theocracy means I think they will remain in a society strangled by the yoke of fundamentalist religion for the foreseeable future.

People in the Arab world aren't patients - they are agents, and have the power to change their circumstances.

There already is jealousy -- the Arab world consumes Western culture in greater quantities than ever before and they are migrating to the West in greater quantities than ever (as you may have seen in the news...). I would liken it to the fall of the Iron Curtain but a number of times larger in scale and effect, as well as across massive geographic and cultural faultlines.

But, IMHO, what you are describing is universal. Autocrats have been taking advantage of cultural clash since time immemorial, it's just that the Middle East has been largely uneducated and weak while being led by opportunists.

Anyways, I am completely open to admitting that you are correct. Demonstrating the value of Western culture most definitely results in migration away from Islamic fundamentalism.

Also, it's easy to say that people in the Arab world are afforded agency, but what you are advocating requires people in the Arab world to be educated. The former is useless without the latter.

I think addressing cultural flaws more directly could make such social programs more effective.

Calling them cultural flaws and saying they need to be addressed is one of the worst first steps you can take, but setting aside that there are already many Muslims integrating into Western society without having directly addressed the those issues.

Simply allowing them to participate in Western society is enough to sufficiently "address" those issues, as many will naturally gravitate towards more progressive and liberal lifestyles.

I have seen many Muslim women driving, walking outside, and showing their faces without incident, but I think it's important to point out that there are plenty of non-Muslim cultures that punish unmarried women for public displays of affection (including simply being present with a non-relative male).

Why not call the flaws what they are? The diffusion of values seems to be a very slow process, if it works at all given the ever growing Muslim population. The percentage of third generation Muslims in Western countries who still don't really oppose ideas of violence and misogyny in the Quran and who would prefer to return to a social order of the lifetime of Muhammed is astonishingly high (~30%), and Muslim fanatics in the Middle East are also often highly educated. They know about Western values, but they don't value them. Why should they, given that our view is all wrong to them?

It boils down to the simple question whether value diffusion is faster than they breed and escape possible upcoming droughts and whether there really is potential for a major cultural clash. Some people say it's obvious in one way or the other. I really don't know. I am also not convinced by anything I'm writing, I am just trying to get some confirmation or disconfirmation of these sort of ideas.

And what would be the percentage of Christians in Western countries who don't really oppose ideas of violence[1] and misogyny[2] in the Bible and would prefer to return to a traditional social order?

[1] http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=21

[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/10635510/Women-...

There is a difference in the percentages and arguably in the degree of accepted violence and actually lived misogyny. There is definitely a difference in the extremes (Islam is currently the only ideology to produce suicide bombers in such large quantities). There is also a difference in that the Bible is regarded to consist of interpretations of God's words, whereas the Quran is regarded to contain a direct transcript of Allah's words.

And what would be the degree of accepted violence by Christian extremists, historically?[1][2][3][4] Can we even begin to compare it? Subtly narrowing the definition of "violence" to "suicide bombers" alone serves a political agenda.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_views_on_slavery

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_antisemitism

Back then the inhibition level for violence was much lower than it is today, even in the Middle East. Also the Christian culture went through various changes, i.e. the French revolution and enlightenment, which have never occurred in Islamic cultures. Even the kind of enlightenment in the Golden Age were deeply motivated by religion and were hence inherently unstable and also limited.

I am talking about the cultural difference today, not in the past, about aggression and harmful traditions occurring in reasonably stable and educated middle classes. Note, that I am not trying to whitewash the past of Christianity; both sets of beliefs are bad in that they have or had the potential to produce fundamentalism and badly informed decisions, but I am just arguing for a qualitative difference between Islam and Christianity (especially today's Christianity and Islam), i.e. one is much worse than the other. Today's Christianity does not produce anything as Islam does in other troubled regions such as African countries, even though these people would be in their 'right' to take vengeance for e.g. centuries of slavery, right?

Literally Christians have been the most violent people of the 20th century by orders of magnitude.

But motivated by greed and (geo)politics, rarely by religion.

The last sentence in my previous comment was not very clear. What I meant to say is that there are many non-Muslim African countries which have suffered from Western exploitation, yet we don't witness the kind of religiously motivated violence as in Islamic countries with comparable histories. This is an indicator for different dispositions caused by different sets of cultural memes.

Similar punishments are prescribed by the Old Testament, so not specific to Islam. Luckily religion was replaced as a moral and especially legal guideline in "the West" thanks to the Enlightenment and the French revolution.

> Similar punishments are prescribed by the Old Testament, so not specific to Islam.

Saying that is ignoring the hadiths and the sharia which describe in great details all the aspects of the life of a Muslim. There is no such thing with Christianity. There are no "christian tribunals" describe by the bible. Islam is closer to Judaism in that aspect. The bible doesn't cover in great details all the aspects of life of a christian. Furthermore the new testament is clearly a new covenant incompatible in many aspects with the first one.

The parallel (but in the opposite direction) with the New, potentially peacefuler(1) Testament replacing the older, bloodier one, in Islam is that the "newer" Quran verses (and in the same book specifically proclaimed to be "more true" even if "all are true") are actually those calling for Jihad and the "unbelievers" (original: Kafirs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kafir or mushriks, depending on the verse) to be "slayed" (and variants). The original term for the "newer verses are more true" principle (also known as abrogation) is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naskh_(tafsir)

---

1) but still, regretfully, threatening with the "hell" for ever and ever for the "sinners," judgement day and the stuff

Thanks, will read after work. :-)

It was surprising.

From what I've read, people living for a long time in dictatorships are quite intolerant and hateful. (There were quite a bit of intolerance in East Germany after 1989, too. And examples from Eastern Europe are well known.)

If/when the Arab world get rid of the dictators controlling the media and education gets better, they should become more "normal".

Or maybe I am too liberal in assuming every culture will walk the same path as us. I doubt it. Until someone comes up with something that works better, liberal [edit: and ~ capitalist] democracy is the least bad alternative.

The general public aren't all that liberal even in the liberal west. It seems to be a question of security: the more secure people feel, the more willing they are to let others do their own thing. Whereas if their own economic or security situation is bad, they're much more likely to interpret difference as threat.

No, you're just naive in that a community ruled by religious narratives will suddenly jump to democracy. Look at age of enlightenment. They never had one.

The age of enlightenment only came after a series of religious/civil wars that wracked Europe for hundreds of years, set brother against brother, depopulated and ravaged huge swatches of Germany, central Europe and France, and essentially broke the temporal power of the churches and the papacy.

That's not the most pleasant blueprint to follow...

Correct. The Thirty Years War killed about a third of the population of the Germanies; the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (often erroneously called the "English Civil War" -- there were at least five wars, in England, Scotland, and Ireland) killed about 10% of the total population of the British isles.

Those wars scared everybody who'd grown up in the affected territories off religious absolutism for a very long time -- at least, off religious absolutism by the standards of the time: things were still grim by modern standards -- and created an environment in which philosophers could develop the ideas and concepts of the enlightenment without being burned at the stake for heresy.

The Arab world looks to be on the skids heading towards its own equivalent of the Thirty Years War right now. I just hope the eventual outcome is positive, and that they get to it faster and with less bloodshed.

I passed the small museum of Turda ("unfortunate name", as the Lonely Planet Guide put it) in Transylvania.

Around when we were doing the 30 year war et al in Western Europe, the East Europeans of the area were writing edicts about religious tolerance. (Yes yes, a deplorable lack of fashion sense.)

That example sadly seems unlikely right now. But since soon all minority groups are thrown out of the Middle East, there won't be anyone left to hate (except for those that move to Western Europe).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_of_Torda

And yet that was the result. The price paid for it was enormous and it took time. The question is only if we're willing to repeat this in Europe again.

> If/when the Arab world get rid of the dictators controlling the media and education gets better, they should become more "normal".

When will the West do that ?

Since you won't risk any problems for implying that the Western countries are oppressive dictatorships, that warps the culture to hatred of others -- I'd say the West have gotten a little bit on the way. :-)

(assuming you live in the Western world.)

it was that liberal philosophy that the administration thought it would be a great idea to destabilize and kill the dictators that created this hot mess.

many of the dictators are either dead or crippled, and the world is awash in more terrorism than ever before.

Correlation doesn't imply causation.

Do you think Saudi will fall apart?

Of course it will. Someday, there won't be enough bread and circuses and sinecures for all of the extended offshoots of the House of Saud, and somebody will stir up popular, probably religious, discontent, or else a disaffected faction of the government/royalty will stage a coup.

Besides that, it is a regime, and really, a nation, that is entirely predicated on petro-dollars. They have been fighting a price war against US/Canadian oil production, burning foreign currency reserves, in the hopes of setting back the clock. Unfortunately, the break-even point in the North Dakota and shale oil fields keeps going down[1].

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2016/02/29/the-break-eve...

> it is a regime, and really, a nation, that is entirely predicated on petro-dollars

There was a HN article[1] a few months ago, on the efforts to move Saudi Arabia away from reliance on oil income. Although who can say how successful that effort will be.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11540776

The Saudis will eventually fall, but thats not gone be anytime soon. If the carrot does not work anymore, they have the stick. Just look at Saddam, he was not popular but managed to remain in power for a long time. The Saudis have more money, and a easier to repress, less divided population.

The Saudis will be fine for a long time.

The stick has to be paid too--otherwise things don't go very well for those who wield it. Saddam at least had enough of a domestic economy to tax to pay for the security services, as well as a loyal extended family that actually did some of the grunt work, whereas it is doubtful the Saudis have either.

The Saudis are sitting on the largest reserves in the world. They are profitable at the lowest prices. They have money for the stick and the carrot in excess and will be so long as oil has relevance.

> If the carrot does not work anymore, they have the stick.

Not really; while they've spent a lot of money of hardware to use as the stick, they House of Saud lacks the loyalty of enough of the population for the stick to be the primary control -- they need a lot of carrot to even keep the trigger fingers that would apply the stick on their side, which is a lot of the reason for all the accommodation the regime makes with religious extremists.