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Fri 25 Apr, 2003 03:26 am
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsa/n5ctrl/progs/question_time/latest.ram
Wonderful debate between US/UK and progressive muslims. The Americans could learn from their historical and intellectual scope on things.
I'm listening now, Wolf. It's terrific. Thanks!
What it reminds me of is how unfree our media are. Look at the careful questions and insistence that the questions be answered.
They are mistaken.
There never was colonialism in the Middle East.
I am listening with great interest, Wolf.
IronLionZion - welcome back - huh? I thought that there WAS - that Britain and France were very involved in the Middle East.
Do you mean that they did not establish colonies?
Can you explicate?
dlowan wrote:I am listening with great interest, Wolf.
IronLionZion - welcome back - huh? I thought that there WAS - that Britain and France were very involved in the Middle East.
Do you mean that they did not establish colonies?
Can you explicate?
Last time I checked colonialism involved transplanting large groups of people from one region into another region. It is the settlement of people into a conquored nation. The Middle East was simply a conquored and exploited territory; no attempts were made to colonize it.
But there is no doubting that the meddling of the European powers has had a lasting effect on the region. In my personal experiance, I find Middle Easterners and Muslims in general are much more aware of thier history and place much more importance on it than Westerners do. Like Bernard Lewis said "While Westerners see thier history as the history of nations, Middle Easterners tend to see thier history the history of a religion that has been divided into numerous sub-units over time, only one of which is the nation". Thats the basic jist of what he said (can't remember the EXACT quote).
dlowan wrote:IronLionZion - welcome back -
Glad to see I'm remembered. I hope I can find time time to post here more often. Alot of good ideas floating around here.
" Alleged [sic!] exploitation of backward or weak peoples" says the Concise Oxford but I think the American College Dict. has a better one this time: "policy of a nation seeking to extend or retain its authority over other peoples or territories."
I think at the very least the Egyptians would disagree with you, IronLionZion. As might the Palestinians...
Tartarin wrote:" Alleged [sic!] exploitation of backward or weak peoples" says the Concise Oxford but I think the American College Dict. has a better one this time: "policy of a nation seeking to extend or retain its authority over other peoples or territories."
I think at the very least the Egyptians would disagree with you, IronLionZion. As might the Palestinians...
Colonialism, by its very name, is the act of creating
colonies. There were never any colonies in the Middle East, save Isreal and I think that qualifies as a special case. Occupation is just that; occupation.
Great topic.
I disagree with everyone. Or I partially agree with everybody.
I agree with IronLionZion on the definition of colonialism. It's the act of creating colonies. It involves an hegemonic nation transplanting people (not necessarily "large groups") and culture to other subordinate nation.
But Israel is not the only case of colonialism in the Middle East. Lebanon is another important case: many French moved there, and there is still some important cultural French influence in Beirut.
And yes, Britain and France stablished colonies in the Middle East. The fact is that the old imperial powers didn't stay long enough for those outpost to become colonies, as in the (also muslim) Magreb region.
Perhaps we are digressing with definitions (confusing Middle East with Muslim nations) and not getting to the point. This I will try to do in the next inmediate post.
I vividly remember one night in oct. 1973, during the so-called Yom Kippur war. I was in NY at my girlfriend's and the TV was broadcasting a live UN session. A representative of Saudi Arabia was speaking. His speech jumped easily from what we call "politics" to what we call "customs": from critizising the regional role of Israel to critizising hot-dogs and mini-skirts. Unlike all other participants, the Saudi ambassador's speech was interrumpted by a commentator of the US public TV: "this man is the Don Rickles of the Security Council", he said.
That's the size if the cultural gap between Muslims and Americans.
Colonialism is a particularly hard task in Muslim nations, where politics, customs and a religion that has developed little tolerance to the "infidels" are knit so tightly that they melt.
The great Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci, in his "Noterelle di cultura islamitica", found in his "Prison Notebooks", analysed the difficulty of Muslim integration (unluckily the book is at my office, so I recite from memory).
Gramsci says that Muslim nations had to "burn stages " of development too fast and that in them there was still the "marabut" feeling: the sense of being the guardians of the frontier against the infidels. He noted that the "marabut", those who die in battle defending the territory of Islam are amongst the most worshipped heroes or "saints" of Islam. So he pronosticated a backlash against the West intentions of throughly modernizing and faintly democratizing those countries. He practically predicted Ayatollah Khomeini 50 years before his rise to power.
fbaezer wrote:Great topic.
I disagree with everyone. Or I partially agree with everybody.
I agree with IronLionZion on the definition of colonialism. It's the act of creating colonies. It involves an hegemonic nation transplanting people (not necessarily "large groups") and culture to other subordinate nation.
But Israel is not the only case of colonialism in the Middle East. Lebanon is another important case: many French moved there, and there is still some important cultural French influence in Beirut.
And yes, Britain and France stablished colonies in the Middle East. The fact is that the old imperial powers didn't stay long enough for those outpost to become colonies, as in the (also muslim) Magreb region.
Perhaps we are digressing with definitions (confusing Middle East with Muslim nations) and not getting to the point. This I will try to do in the next inmediate post.
Oops! I forgot about Lebanon.
On the subject of what qualifies colonialism: The goups of people have to be sizeable and thier intention has to be to
settle in the region. Almost all of the British and French who lived in the Middle East were there as some extension of thier governments; they had no intention to settle permanantly. When I say 'large groups' I am not talking about millions, but only enough to establish respectably sized communities.
fbaezer wrote: I was in NY at my girlfriend's and the TV was broadcasting a live UN session.
Thats an intersting and exciting way to spend a night with your girlfriend.
Quote:
AGramsci says that Muslim nations had to "burn stages " of development too fast and that in them there was still the "marabut" feeling: the sense of being the guardians of the frontier against the infidels. He noted that the "marabut", those who die in battle defending the territory of Islam are amongst the most worshipped heroes or "saints" of Islam. So he pronosticated a backlash against the West intentions of throughly modernizing and faintly democratizing those countries. He practically predicted Ayatollah Khomeini 50 years before his rise to power.
Couldn't agree more.
Also, while the West grew into, and in many way shaped, the modern world, the Middle East was forced into it. Islam is intertwined with Muslim society and, unlike the Christians, the Muslims didn't have the benefit of going through a period of 'enlightenmight' that allowed them to reconcile thier religious convictions with the demands of modern society. There are many other reasons for the gulf between our civilizations, but your quote reminded me of this one.
Very interesting, Fbaezer - makes intuitive sense.
ILZ.
I got to say, in my defense, that her parents -the father, an Arab-American; the mother, a descendant from the Mayflower pilgrims- were there too.
I have read, from several sources, that several centuries ago, the Muslim Arabs were far more tolerant than they are today, and far more tolerant than their contemporary European Christians. Of course, those were the times when the Arabs were the ones trying to civilize "barbarians", when they were the colonialists.
I wonder how and why this tolerance was lost.
IronLionZion wrote:
On the subject of what qualifies colonialism: The goups of people have to be sizeable and thier intention has to be to settle in the region. Almost all of the British and French who lived in the Middle East were there as some extension of thier governments; they had no intention to settle permanantly. When I say 'large groups' I am not talking about millions, but only enough to establish respectably sized communities.
That not excactly the way, colonies/colonialism is definated generally by historians.
Although there variious definitions with slight differences, this one seems to be respected by nearly all:
Colonialism
Thanks, Walter. Didn't much like the convenient redefinition of colonialism! Very helpful to have the real mccoy.
Walter, Thank you. Better than my dictionary's definiton.
c.i.
In other words, the US is colonizing Central-Asia to acquire planetary global climate change resources. The top 1 in historical hubristic actions, congratulations.
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