>Worse for you, but better for its citizens, which is the whole point of Democracy.

Of course, I meant "worse" from a Western liberal point-of-view, which I would think should be obvious here.

My whole point there is that Western liberals seem to usually think that if people in oppressive regimes only had democratic governments, then they'd magically turn into countries like Norway. So they try installing democratic governments in places like Afghanistan and then are shocked when these countries don't turn into clones of liberal Western democracies.

I never understood why we are so shocked. Mohammed was a tribal warlord who slaughtered and enslaved many millions to build his empire. There is currently no such thing as a secular government in the islamic world and except for the Turkish revolution until Ataturk died, the islamic world has showed absolutely no interest in modernity, individual rights, tolerance or democracy.

I'm not criticizing it, I just think we in the west are unbelievably stupid to try and wear rose-colored glasses when it comes to the Ummah. I've been teaching CS to Syrian, Yemeni and Iraqi students in my spare time for the past 10 years. I love working with them, but I would never let any of them meet my daughter, know I'm an atheist, or know that I'm bisexual.

Islam is incompatible with the west, and the sooner we accept that, the sooner we can find a way to make peace and move forward.

r/atheism is leaking.

> the islamic world has showed absolutely no interest in modernity

Sure, they just created Algebra, cameras, algorithms and many foundation of our modern world. What a coincidence for a society that hates modernity!

Also in another comment you said you lived in the Islamic world 20 years, and now you say you teached CS on the side for 10 years.

So you stayed in a region you unfathomably hate for 20 years for a job you could've done anywhere? And you didn't even pick rich countries either, starting to sound like someone who's just making stuff up.

Oh, just caught this. If I said 20, it's a typo. I moved here at the end of '11. I spent my previous 10 years in Europe. I moved to Turkiye because I love the music here. Microtonal theory is fascinating, and as a percussionist, turkish and arabic drumming are second only to Indian. Hopefully we will move to Rajasthan in a few years after my wife and boyfriend retire.

> Sure, they just created Algebra, cameras, algorithms and many foundation of our modern world. What a coincidence for a society that hates modernity!

Algebra is what, 3,000 years old? That's your idea of modernity? Really?

> So you stayed in a region you unfathomably hate for 20 years for a job you could've done anywhere? And you didn't even pick rich countries either, starting to sound like someone who's just making stuff up.

You're putting words in my mouth. I enjoy teaching refugees and trying to convert them to atheism, I love the geographic and landscape here, and I love my queer/gay/liberal/artistic friends and family here. I just dislike the religion and the religious. I feel the exact same way about christianity, judaism and hinduism.

It's great being here. All my friends here are either expats or liberal beyaz turkular who work in entertainment, and feel the same way about Islam and religion as I do.

You know, I've never actually been on reddit? HN and Slashdot were the only sites of that format I ever visited.

Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes everything worse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Sorry, didn't mean to. Can you highlight which site guideline I broke?

"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." (<-- arguing about religion and countries in this way is both of those)

"Edit out swipes." (<-- "starting to sound like someone who's just making stuff up" definitely counts as a swipe)

We've banned this account for religious flamewar. Not cool. I posted a whole other thing at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34404876 but this is well over the line.

(And to answer a common objection, yes, the same rules apply regardless of religion.)

It's a pity because you obviously also have valuable contributions to make - e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34404614. But the damage caused by bombs is greater than the benefit offered by flowers, so we don't really have a choice.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.