Originally Posted by
tarquinbeech
A thought-provoking post from Andy, whom I have gotten to quite like over these past few years, that contains plenty of facts and a healthy dose of supposition.
Firstly, I watch a lot of Al Jazeera, despite YouTube constantly changing-cancelling the URL and me having to "go looking" for it.....as I have told many on here, I like to get my "facts" from as many sources as possible, simply because I never fully trust the MSM.
In between their superb news coverage, IMO, they also show a lot of Muslim documentaries and I love my history so watched all of their "Caliphate" series.....fascinating stuff, from the birth of Islam to the present day. For the first 500 years or so, Islam pretty much followed the same "development" of all the other religions, mainly Christianity....conquest, "forced" conversion, continual bloodshed, petty intrigue, plotting and full-scale warfare.....IMO, around the Middle Ages, both the Christian West and the Muslim East started to war for different reasons....the UK, Spain and France over trade routes and foreign lands, the UK and Germany twice over World Domination and territorial expansion....it was rarely, if ever over which version of God you supported......sure, there were still Catholic v Protestant v Quaker etc etc, but in the bigger picture it was not a huge issue, people simply moved to the New World or worshiped in secret until the "tide turned" in their favor.
IMO Islam remained rooted in the past, which sect or clan were you from, which holy site do you trek to, which Imam do you support?.....arguably the only country to break the bond of "support your country or your tribal sect" was Turkey.
Now I come to the bit where I fully support Andy......we drew a series of random lines on a map with Sykes-Picot in 1916, which gave no real thought as to what the local population thought....our sole interest was jointly keeping power, land....and Black Gold....we even threw in a chunk for the Jews later on, just for good measure.
Maybe we figured that the Arabs were tribal anyway, they all seemed to hate each other anyway as Lawrence of Arabia discovered.
Those decisions are still with us today, and the only countries to keep a lid on their various factions were hard-line dictators or military coups......so again I agree with Andy, on the one hand we fund Saddam to war with Iran, then topple the guy 10 years later because we suddenly think he is a "nasty person"....the same with Libya and now Syria....the tribal leaders in Afghanistan, same thing, weapons and training to fight the Russians, then "ooops, now we might have to invade you a few years later"
Now the bit I take issue with Andy......what about countries that we haven't meddled too much with?.....Egypt has major problems with it's hard-line Muslims, the killing of tourists, bombing of Christian churchs....but despite a hard-line military, it seems they are powerless to stop their killings......Nigeria, Mali and a host of Sub-Saharan countries have a major ongoing war with Boko Haram, kidnappings and rapes of Christian school-girls....Somalia, same thing....Bali bombings in the far-east?
It seems to me that barbaric Muslim tactics are only just below the surface of most countries with significant Islamic populations....the trigger for their atrocities are not just the West's meddling but something deep inside their culture which never seemed to develop past the Crusades....Holy Jihad, give me a break!....they are still lobbing Gays off carparks, stoning women to death, cutting off ears and noses.....plus other dangly bits, buying and selling Christian slaves or boiling them alive......how the heck are we supposed to drag a culture that still advocates child-marriage, kicking and screaming into the 21st Century?
The answer is way above my pay grade.
