Anti-Myanmar protest in a nominally Russian region. Source: Елена Афонина / ТАСС / Scanpix / LETA
Photogenic female face of resistance to the junta and Nobel Peace Prize winner comes to power as de facto leader of Myanmar.
Some of Aung San Suu Kyi’s comments about a certain Muslim minority in her country up to that point had been disconcerting for NYT readers, but still, that wasn’t a big deal. It’s not like a Myanmar is a European country and the Rohingya are Chechens in the 1990s (though in that situation, it was the Chechens doing all the ethnic cleansing).
Anyhow, her government proceeds to step up statutory discrimination against said Muslim minority ramps up to what now appears to be large-scale ethnic cleansing.
Now China is friends with Myanmar, good location for a port and an outlet into the Indian Ocean not dependent on the Malacca Straits, and regularly vetoes all UN resolutions against Myanmar. Russia is friends with China, and supports it on these vetoes, just as China does likewise for Russia in Europe. Some bellicose Muslim minority isn’t going to bother them, especially considering that both of them have their own Rohingyas in the form of the Uyghurs and the Chechens.
There’s more WEIRDos who care about such sentimental stuff in the West, of course, but what with Trump’s latest adventures and Best Korea throwing about missiles every other day, there’s plenty of far more interesting stuff to occupy their attention. Besides, there’s no oil in Myanmar, and coming out too stridently against a female resistance leader they had patronized for decades would be a bit awkward.
Fortunately, there was someone to take up the slack, /ourguy/ Ramzan “White Sharia” Kadyrov.
He was very triggered and cried on Intagram all about it.
Soon after, a thousand strong crowd of Muslims gathered around the Myanmar Embassy in Moscow with their usual Allah Snackbars and the less usual “Buddhists are terrorists.” While someone more cynically disposed might sarcastically remark about how the mob must have collectively worked up a few hundreds years’ worth of jailtime under Article 282, Russia’s hate speech statue, we as civilized multicultural Europeans must take a more generous and enlightened view of our Muslim countrymen. Surely they were just discussing this 2013 TIME magazine cover.
Apart from inciting an unsanctioned extremist protest in the capital, Ramzan Kadyrov also herded in hundreds of thousands of Chechens to the center of Grozny in solidarity with the people of Rohingya. One idly wonders how many of them could point to Myanmar on a world map. A hundred? A dozen?
And here is based Chechen man Ramzan Kadyrov himself, governor of a region where more than 80% of the local budget is financed from Moscow:
Why is the Russian media silent? … You think, I am happy with this. Not at all!
And if even Russia was to support these shaitans, who are carrying out these crimes, I will oppose Russia’s position!
“Russia’s” position, along with China’s, is to block UN resolution after UN resolution against what it considers Myanmar’s Anti-Terrorist Operation.
I have my own vision, my own position.
The spread of Islamic identity politics beyond Kadyrov’s fiefdom to Russia at large and even the outside world, all courtesy of the Russian taxpayer.
And why shouldn’t Kadyrov play around? Judging by the muted reaction of the Kremlin, he has nothing to risk.
The cautious and elderly men who rule Russia are constitutionally incapable of fitting Muslims chanting “Buddhists are terrorists” into the Soviet-Putinist worldview of a “friendship of peoples” united against Wahhabis and fascists. The Moscow mayoralty saw nothing untowards in the unsanctioned protests against the Embassy of a sovereign power, there being no arrests, even though an analogous action by any other political group would have been unceremoniously dispersed by the OMON.
The reaction of the Russian MSM has been as schizophrenic as it has been demented, probably the result of no common position having come down from an equally confused Kremlin. Vladimir Solovyev, Russia’s most famous political talkshow host and fawning, has developed a rather strange interest in the welfare of the Rohingya in the past couple of days. State news agency RIA published “Muslim Non-Brothers” criticizing the Moscow protests, and was deleted almost immediately (cached version); on the other hand, the conservative-patriotic tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda article by Alexander Kots that was clearly substantially “inspired” by the former is still up: “Why, Ramzan, Mix Politics and Islam“? RT triangulated, making the case for why it was Soros’ fault.
Meanwhile, Putin has joined Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in condemning “all violence” in Myanmar.
The logical conclusion is that political Islam works in Russia. It gets results. Minority nationalist and sectarian activists have observed it to work, and will draw the required lessons.
The only silver lining is that is about Myanmar and as per above nobody really cares about Myanmar apart from Myanmar and Ramzan Kadyrov. And I suppose Bangladesh, who are having to take in the refugees. Poor Bangladesh, when not flooded by water, flooded by people, as if it still has any room to spare.
Still, there’s no reason this experiment couldn’t be repeated in the future. A whole vista of fascinating scenarios open up.
How wonderful would it be if “Putin’s political son” (according to The Saker) and “Putin’s soldier” (according to Kadyrov himself) were to one day discover the plight of the Uyghurs and force Putin to condemn violence on all sides there? Maybe even send some fighters to help out in the struggle against the Chicom shaitans. At least Kadyrov acknowledged that sending troops to Myanmar is “unrealistic” on account of “the geography,” though he added that if it was up to him, he’d “drop a nuclear bomb there to destroy those people killing women, children, and the elderly.” Happily, no such problems with Xinjiang, which borders Russia.
Or why even bother with Xinjiang. Lots of other potential Islamic states within Russia’s borders. Any one or all of them might conceivable come to be oppressed in Kadyrov’s “vision” and “position.”
Ridiculous to imagine today, of course. But stranger things have happened before. The one sure thing is that the West will still figure out how to blame Russians for everything.
Apologies for my ignorance; basically, what I am curious is this–why exactly does Burma hate the Rohingya?
I wonder, since this has been worldwide, who organized it and what could be learned from it about Muzzie networks.
I had a though the other day that democracy is always part national liberation. That’s how it was in the Baltics, Poland etc. Russia didn’t even have that, it’s though she went from friendship of the peoples-type diversity to actual diversity and from Commie non-democracy to Western consent-manufaturing post-Democracy (dog-and-pony-show politics, widespread use of “polittechnologiya”s etc) with no democracy in between.
It’s said America is Europe N years into the future. Nope, for a picture of Europe AND America N years into the future imagine Russia, and Russians, imagine China (without the economic and political weight.)
From reading the article at Wikipedia it seems that basically, the Rohingya are descendants of Muslim settlers from the subcontinent who colonised western areas of Myanmar during the Raj and illegals who arrived when Bangladesh was fighting for independence from Pakistan. Considering these facts, the people of Myanmar’s resentment should be self-evident.
I really think that Anglin is more important than Sailer.
On the surface, that might seem like a ridiculous thing to say: Steve has been published by numerous reputable national magazines and is widely read by the journalistic and political elite. Steve’s writing has clearly influenced US politics and in particular the Trump administration. And even Steve’s most vociferous critics will acknowledge that he is brilliant.
Anglin, in contrast, is ultimately a loathsome troll. Even most of his fans would probably admit that he is disgusting. Whereas Steve can plausibly claim to wish everyone well, Anglin seems to actively want to worst for all races to the point that he often comes off as a parody of what left wingers think white nationalists believe. Anglin has never been published in a major publication and most elites probably don’t even know who he is.
And yet, in the long run I suspect Anglin will make the bigger impact. There are literally 10s of million of young white men all across America who will never read Sailer simply because he is too high brow for them, but will eagerly devour Anglin’s writings because not only is he such an unapologetic, anti PC, iconoclast, but he is a hilarious and brilliant satirist.
I say, without any hyperbole, that Anglin’s “White Supremacy is a Religion of Peace” article is the most exceptionally effective piece of satire ever written. The article faked out numerous media outlets and when I showed it to my very intelligent, libtard, brother, he thought that the article was completely serious. That article should literally be in text books as the standard that all satirical writing should be measured against.
More recently, Anglin and DailyStormer’s troubles are the result of an article Anglin wrote attacking the victim who was murdered at the Charlottesville rally. While the article was not nearly as clever as the “Moderate White Supremacist” one, it was much more tasteless and even more hilarious. Anglin’s claim in the article that the criticism of the driver who ran the woman over was merely an example of “player hatred” was a perfect example of the subtle nature of Anglin’s comedic genius.
And unlike with the “Moderate White Supremacist” article, this time the left knew that Anglin was trolling them. But pushed their buttons so effectively that they couldn’t resist publicly melting down over it, even thought they knew they were giving him exactly what he wanted.
Now don’t get me wrong, you can’t build a movement around Anglin’s ideology. He is too hateful and too nihilistic. But his writing is already getting to millions of young white men (and probably some Asian and Latino men as well) where it can serve as a gateway drug into the alt-right/alt-lite in a way that Sailer, Vdare, AmRen, VNN and Stormfront never could on their own.
Razib Khan has written a pretty good primer on the situation.
Why doesn’t Russia just cut off Cechnya?
I would rather build a wall around them, then have them be part of your country.
Thanks for the link – that was one of the best analyses I have seen on the subject.
Peace.
backlash against classic birth jihad I guess
Rohingyas occupy the Rakhine province in Myanmar where they make a significant minority. Most of the other population are ethnic Rakhine(‘Arakanese’) who are Buddhists. Many Rohingyas were said to be involved in violent attacks towards ethnic Rakhine/Burmese villagers and gang raping Buddhist girls. Also, the Rohingyas have very high fecundity compared to ethnic Rakhines fuelling fear of being displaced in their own homeland. The Rohingyas are also considered descendants of Muslim migrants from Bangladesh who intermarried with local Rakhine girls in the past and thus considered non indigeneous by Rakhines and Burmese. Of course, the Rohingyas claim they are indigeneous and that atrocities are committed by Buddhist Rakhines and Burmese. Although the Tamatdaw(Burmese army) are no saints and I am sure there were atrocities committed by the Burmese side, I am quite convinced that many Rohingyas indeed are/were involved in demographic expansion by being hostile towards their Buddhist neighbours and raping their girls. Some probably justify these acts because they believe they are following ‘ the true religion’ (Islam) while their victims are Buddhist infidels not fit to be treated as humans.
I agree with Karlin. This is ridiculous . Why should such outpouring be allowed?
Bad. Very bad as Trump will say–
So let’s me help you Karlin- Chinese should not bother about eliminating and dispossessing and expelling Chinese from Malaysia or Indonesia
Russians should not should not bother about eliminating and dispossessing and expelling otehr Russians from Central Asia or Baltics
Future American administration should consider eliminating and dispossessing and expelling Asian and Chinese
Mauritius should start eliminating and dispossessing and expelling Ethnic Indians .
I suspect the Russian elites are worried of these few things should Chechnya be expelled or given ‘independence’….
1. Other ‘ethnic republics’ may also demand independence and lead to breakup of the Russian federation… or at least internal turmoil( to the glee of the EU and USA)
2. The United States and the EU( ‘rival’ powers) or even ‘Frenemy’ states like China may become ‘allies’ with an independent Chenchnya, gaining a toehold there, and that may be seen as a geostrategic threat. What more if the other Muslim republics of the North Caucasus such as Ingushetia and Dagestan join in the fun…Saudi Arabia may fund these new Caliphates to war with infidel Russia.
3. Loss of these territories may be perceived as weakness of the elites and incite rebellion by the populace…
4. Not ‘supporting’ local Caucasus princelings like Kadyrov would lead to revolt and war like the previous Chechen wars. Should these wars happen again:-
a) Russia will be drawn into viscious wars draining the economy and hightening terror acts within Russia.
b) Rival powers will use the war to weaken the Russian state(I can see the Americans and EU supporting Chechen ‘freedom fighters’ ). The final aim is of course to perhaps break Russia up into small states to be gobbled up into an EU superstate.
I don’t know. These are just my guesswork of what’s in Putin’s(and the elites’) mind. To be honest… I think Putin probably detests Kadyrov and these Islamofascists but he is a politician and so must ‘play the politics’ and say niceties. Perhaps those 4 points are his worries( or not…or more)?
Hey sinotibetan,
I would like to be convinced of this too. None of the reports I have come across mention this being some widespread phenomenon. The best report on this I read shows a timeline of events where there are one or two incidents and some rumors that kicked off a series of communal violence:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-18395788
It would be great if you could provide some sources (NGOs, news agencies) that mention widespread raping by Rohingya men as being the catalyst for the violence. I do know some have taken up arms as insurgents and what looks to be happening is some kind of collective punishment.
Peace.
Muslims try and take over everywhere they go. They took Kosovo from the Serbs, they taking over Europe, there is no reason why Burma should just let Muslims take over part of their territory.
The only place where Muslims are being oppressed is in Israel, because there the Jews are trying to take over Muslim land. And the Jews are going to be no more successful than the Crusaders were, unless they are able to persuade most of the Muslims to go to Europe to do some nice harem making there.
As far as I know there is one example of a country where currently, Christianity replacing Islam peacefully. It’s Abkhazia.
Hi Talha..
You are right:’many’ in that sentence is my mistake… with regards to especially rape. Many more reports of violence towards Rakhines rather than reports of rapes although I can’t read Burmese to give you the Burmese/Rakhine versions of the communal violence there. It should be ‘some’ in that sentence. That said, I think the violence (and perhaps even rapes) perpetrated by Rohingyas (especially their militants) against Rakhine civilians are under-reported by mainstream media and Western-backed NGOs. I don’t actually trust Western mainstream media and Western backed NGOs all that much. To me, they give biased reporting.
I don’t think the communal violence perpetrated by either are ‘widespread’ at baseline but definitely present and tense. The extreme violence that flare up are stoked by Rohingya militants vs Tamatdaw.
I do think that Western news agencies reporting are lopsided. Both sides commit violence and killings. Instead news agencies like guardian/ cnn/ bbc etc try to make “Muslim Rohingya” as “innocent/ good guy” victims and “Buddhist Burmese/ Rakhines” as ” bad ethnic-cleansing racists”. Reality is probably murky : militia from both sides commit atrocities; there are innocent victims from both sides; there are civilians from both communities colluding in the crimes of their respective militia. If the Tamatdaw has more victims due to their violence , it is because they are the more powerful group numerically and weapons-wise.
https://www.boell.de/en/2017/05/24/myanmars-religions-and-ethnic-conflicts-no-end-sight
Even in the above website, generally sympathetic to ethnic insurgents in Myanmar, the author alludes to underreporting on Rohingya militia violence on Rakhine civilians due to fear of reprisals upon reporting of violent acts.
Western media and human rights agencies have taken sides. Whether it was in the Yugoslavia conflict or Uyghur separatists freedom fighters or Russia-Chechen wars or Kosovo or etc etc , western media and human rights agencies label some communities victims/good guys vs some communities bad guys/ bad human rights. Violence was both ways in all communal conflicts.
By the way, the Christian Jinghpaws , Chins and Kayins as well as the Buddhist Shans are also victims of Tamatdaw too. Many of their people were killed and women raped. Yet Western media is biased towards highlighting and condemning human rights abuse reporting of Rohingya by Tamatdaw but less so on these other suffering ethnic groups. Why no condemnation of the Islamic world of human rights abuse on non Muslims (by perpetrators regardless of religious affiliation) – at least not at the level of outrage that they show with regards to Rohingyas or Palestinians?
Hey sinotibetan,
No problem – I’m even fine with an NGO that looks after the rights of oppressed Buddhist minorities for the details.
I agree there – it usually is with ethnic communal violence. And as you said, the Burmese military right now has the upper hand and is not pulling punches.
Sure – but there is a sense of proportion to be abided by in conflict. For instance, it is known that there were Armenian insurgents and groups aligned with Russian while the Ottoman Empire was falling apart, but the response by the government was way out of proportion to the threat – wiping out entire villages and complete population removal.
I don’t doubt it – I had a Burmese friend, he was quite open about how brutal the Burmese military apparatus was.
Yeah, that’s not right, but I think the nature of news works on whatever is blowing up at the moment. It’s journalists like John Pilger and others that do deep-dive investigative reports into these things.
Some is ignored, some is not. For instance, Indonesia in Papau is usually ignored because it is generally considered a Western ally, Daesh in Iraq was all over the news because it is a foe.
Peace.
Re Chechens, it is very clear they have no desire to be part of Russia after 200 years of Russians repeatedly killing masses of them since 200 years ago when Russia grabbed their territory from the Persians … and the only reason Russia did not honour their secession in the 1990s like they did that of Ukraine / Donbass, & why Russia killed perhaps 100,000 Chechens in the 90s-00s, was because of Chechnya – Dagestan gas & oil deposits important to Gazprom
Russians will tell you that Putin & Russia had their own fake ‘9-11 false flag terrorist attacks’ at the same time as the USA one, in order to justify the Chechnya suppression … and that is why Putin plays along with the USA 9-11 fairy tales
How quickly things change … Aung San Suu Kyi, ‘The Lady’, First Counsellor of State of Myanmar (Burma), received the Nobel Peace Prize & used to be one of the great glorified heroines of Western media & governments
Now Aung San Suu Kyi is becoming one of the most vilified national leaders by the Western apparatus, because of her indulgence of actions of the Myanmar government against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar’s Rakhine region, a campaign scorned as constituting an ethnic cleansing pogrom of genocidal character
The Myanmar ‘nazi Buddhists’ say three things in their claim that war with the Rohingya is a matter of national survival:
(1) The Rohingya are illegal migrants from next door, even poorer, Bangladesh
(2) The Rohingya are a Trojan horse for ISIS-type Muslim terrorists
(3) The Rohingya are a Trojan horse for Islamic conquest by population invasion, & for de-stabilisation & conflict creation in Myanmar society
Regarding terrorists among the Rohingya, M K Bhadrakumar writes:
« The region’s ethnic problem has morphed in recent years into an Islamist insurgency financed by Saudi Arabia. The jihadi Rohingya Salvation Army is led by one Ataullah abu Ammar Junjuni. Ataullah’s stated mission is to create an Islamist state. Ataullah is a Pakistani from Karachi, born into a Rohingya family, who grew up in Saudi Arabia, receiving a Madrassa education, & was duly spotted by Pakistani intelligence as a promising young ‘jihadist’ & taken home to be given military training in guerrilla warfare. He also worked as a Wahhabi Imam in Saudi Arabia before being inducted into Myanmar. »
http://blogs.rediff.com/mkbhadrakumar/2017/09/05/why-india-should-give-seamless-support-to-aung-san-suu-kyi/
Myanmar is far from the only case of aggressive, militant Buddhists
Buddhists of Sri Lanka conducted a brutal civil war against their Tamil Hindu minority, ended just a few years ago
Tibetans tell an un-wanted story of how the predecessors of the Dalai Lama ran Tibet as an extremely cruel feudal theocracy, so brutal that Mao’s Communists were at first seen as liberators, with Mao a divinely-inspired being … That opinion only faded when Han Chinese also became cruel, and the Beijing overlords restored the old cruel Tibetan landlords as their agents … after that the Tibetans became anti-Beijing, on the idea it would be easier to deal with their own local Tibetan Dalai Lama mafia, rather than the Beijing mafia … The Dalai Lama, from his CIA-funded base in India, & out of power, now mostly speaks in the language of a very compassionate Buddhist … but he seems to avoid discussion of the ruthlessness of past Lamas when they ruled Tibet with great harshness
Non Americans: How is the media in your country reacting to Trump pulling the plug on DACA?
Mostly just reporting it, of course often with a negative undertone and a focus on Obama’s criticism of it. But it’s not a big story compared to everything around the upcoming German elections.
And no offense, but maybe you should rather ask this again in the “Open Thread”, it’s rather off-topic here.
“drop a nuclear bomb there to destroy those people killing women, children, and the elderly.”
Chechens are among the most entertaining people.
We need them in Hollywood.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_people
Diversity sure is shi*.
In Russia this is the media not talking about these events at all.
Putin needs to tell his “spiritual son” to gently caress this entire line of inquiry. Its not helping anyone, even the Chechens, in the long run.
And surely starting a war with China over Muslims would confirm that we, as the human race, exist as sitcom for aliens.
Sounds very democratic.
After almost one thousand years, China has yet to be able to assimilate their Muslims who continue to regularly outbreak and beat up their Han neighbors. Its pretty amazing the solidarity that the religion has provided.
Hey Daniel Chieh,
We talking Hui or Uyghurs? From what I had read, the Hui were doing just fine while the Uyghur thing is more of an ethnic conflict over land resources.
But yeah, the religion provides a bulwark against full assimilation into non-Muslim society, because…why the heck would Muslims want to fully assimilate into non-Muslim norms – doesn’t make sense.
Peace.
Hui are assimilated and fine. Uyghurs snap and murder dozens; and its not like Confucianism doesn’t give everyone a chance to advance. Largely refusing to play by rules – of meritocracy, one of the oldest designs of meritocracy – which have already been liberalized for them is just irritating.
If meritocracy and education is too hard of a pill to swallow, then that suggests larger issues with the religion.
then that suggests larger issues with the religion
Why is that a problem with the religion if non-Muslim countries have the same sorts of problems with minority groups?
The thing is that for better or worse, China has been able to assimilate nearly anything else, as the example of the Kaifeng Jews would show. It can take more or less time, but in the end, they usually find a way which minimizes people killing each other even if other differences continue to exist.
The one exception really has been the Muslims. And in a way, its a problem for the rest of the world too, because historically, they have also formed political blocs within the dynasties which tend to promote aggression from China, usually to protect or promote Islam. Its arguably whether Confucian stagnation served China so well, but there is evidently something both aggressive and universalist to the Muslim religion.
Hey Daniel,
This isn’t the assimilation I was talking about. There is nothing wrong assimilating into education, meritocracy, apple pie or baseball. Mini-skirts and beer-chugging festivals are out.
You just mentioned the Hui are just fine – they are also Muslim. And from what I’ve read, they are also integrated into the larger Muslim Ummah; they go to Hajj, go to study in places like Al-Azhar, Islamic University in Selangor, etc.
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/en/originals/2017/06/chinatown-thrives-in-cairo.html
http://www.newmandala.org/universalising-islam-in-malaysia/
So again, the issue with in China is not the religion per se (if it was, then you’d be having major issues with the Hui also), but perhaps something with Uyghur culture or people that might possibly just not allow for an easy integration into the larger Chinese socio-cultural umbrella.
“but there is evidently something both aggressive and universalist to the Muslim religion”
Universalist for sure – but that doesn’t mean everyone becomes Arabs – the Hui seem to be doing great carving out an authentic Chinese identity while stay true to Islamic principles. If by “aggressive” you mean it keeps growing by adding more adherents or insists or is a proselytizing faith, then sure – we’ll cop to that.
Peace.
I actually knew a few Hui families in SoCal. One was my roommate in university for a summer and was even the president of the Muslim Students Association. Their family had fled to Taiwan once the Communists took over the mainland. His mom introduced me and my wife to a group of Hui families that wanted Muslim mentoring for their kids. We used to teach them on the weekends in a little place in Alhambra.
My friend ended up marrying a Syrian (he had gone to Damascus to study and his Arabic was pretty awesome – really cool seeing a Chinese guy speaking full classical Arabic with barely any accent), while his younger brothers went to Taiwan to pick up a Hui bride.
Great folks! And man – his mom would cook up some of the best halal Chinese food and send it to him to eat during the week!
Don’t know if you missed it, Razib has a good post on Hui here:
https://gnxp.nofe.me/2017/05/18/islam-in-china-is-not-one/
Excellent article! Definitely added some details to the general historical outline I had read elsewhere, but he had these very interesting insights that I thought were just solid:
“The problem that the modern Chinese state has is that it rejects the feudal multicultural compromises of the imperial past. Though Communist regimes pay lip service to national self-determination, the reality in Communist regimes has always been that the party has enforced a normative ethnic identity as one that is aspirational for minorities…”
“Islam over the last generation has been the most powerful binding ideology for national resistance among Uyghurs. But it would be far less relevant if the Uyghurs were not a nation in the first place, which they are.”
The modern nation-state is an imported foreign concept in that region (and many others). It is a European framework. While it has certainly solved certain issues, it has created others where they didn’t exist in previous times.
Peace.
The modern nation-state is an imported foreign concept in that region (and many others). It is a European framework.
True. I thought of this last month when listening to a Hindu in near tears recalling his childhood Muslim friends from before the partition. The sentiment was expressed that partition accomplished little.
It is not consistent. Some groups get countries while some countries are required to accommodate their minorities in place and some get to enforce assimilation. Should the Rohingya get autonomy, should they be forced to assimilate, or should they be left alone in their identity?
As I grow older, I grow closer and closer to that side of the debate; and believe me, it was a debate among the Muslims (including the top ulema) of the time. Both sides had their very legitimate basis for their position, but one has to then judge things by the results.
The funny thing is, I think what the elite in India fear the most is the entire nation of Pakistan throwing up its hands and saying; “we give up, we want in with India”.
People forget – these questions of borders, languages, ethnicities, etc. were solved in Europe over massive amounts of blood and misery – these were not coffee-table discussions. WW2 was of course the last big pow-wow over these details and post-Yugoslavia also had its “discussion” within my lifetime. Of course, sometimes things are done amicably; the dissolution of Czechoslovakia also happened within our lifetime and was probably as clean as one could hope for.
As for the Rohingya; they are currently not in a position to negotiate (they are fairly poor and unarmed – there are some insurgent groups, but these are nowhere near a game changer*, just an annoyance that will accelerate the final outcome**) so they will be either ethnically cleansed and pushed into Bangladesh or perish (if Bangladesh will not take them), since the Burmese military seems to have taken its gloves off and has little moral compunctions about collective punishment. Nobody seems to want to help them get to a position of negotiation. As of now the Burmese govt has zero incentive to stop what they are doing; there are no protests in Burma against it (that I can see), the actions seem to be completely in line with the will of the majority (democracy in action). And I have heard of no serious economic ramifications either. Sure some governments are yapping about it, but the Burmese govt are not Europeans, they’ll let it slide as they establish facts on the ground.
Peace.
*Half a division of Kopassus would be.
**One thing I have noticed with many modern Muslim insurgencies, they simply do not know when to quit or come to the table – they are suicidal. In the past, Sufi Orders led the fight against European colonialism across the Muslim world, but men like Imam Shamil (ra), Emir Abdul Qadir (ra), etc. knew when to capitulate in the interests of their people, especially if the enemy was willing to carry out a scorched-earth policy.
As for the Rohingya; they are currently not in a position to negotiate
They should have listened to Mao regarding the source of political power.
Precisely. If Kadyrov really wanted, he doesn’t have to make any official statements or anything which cause Russia a headache. He simply lets it be known through the Chechen clan networks that the widow and children of any Chechen man found dead in Rakhine will be well taken care of.
A thousand Chechens backed by, say, a couple thousand Uzbeks would be enough to put the fear of God in the Burmese army and establish a safety corridor. Maybe in a month or two, and a few hundred soldiers later, they’d have to decide whether ethnic cleansing is a cause worthy of sending more of their men into a meat-grinder.
But without the will to do something like that – the other side is looking for unconditional surrender/results and time is running out.
Peace.
Who would pay for this? Saudis?
The Hui are not fine, they are just as problematic vis-à-vis the Han as the Uyghurs are. The difference is that they are numerically less concentrated and geographically dispersed thus have been usually unable to bring the weight of numbers to bear in aggression against their non-muslim neighbors. They only need a small enough area where they have localized superiority to cause trouble. The difference between the Hui and the Uyghurs is that the Hui aren’t quite as stupid as the bloody minded Turk so instead of slitting throats, they are doing the passive aggressive low level assault that the West experiences daily (excluding the regular spectacular Jihadist attack). Basically what this means is that the Hui cause trouble for non-Hui wherever they area, however their level of aggression has been calibrated at a precise level to basically sneak under the threshold of where the Communist Party would crack down. The Chinese Communist Party basically coddles the Hui and backs down in the face of their aggression because at a local level they make enough trouble that the authorities are willing to give in to keep the peace but not enough to the point where they are accurately identified as the source of trouble. The reason why this is so is because the Hui are no longer sufficient in number to wage actual violent Jihad because of what happened in the 19th century, but they are making a slow recovery. What you forget was that Ningxia used to be majority Hui in the 19th century, Gansu was basically a third Hui as well, Yunnan used to have a double digit Muslim population. This population balance resulted in war and the fact that the Muslims are quiescent now is not because they are assimilated, but because they were devastated. Ningxia is now little more than a third Muslim, Gansu is barely 5%, and Yunnan is little more than 1%. More than a century after the fighting was done and the Muslim populations are still a small fraction of what they used to be. Rebellious and Jihad minded Kebab was removed with prejudice. Probably the one good thing the Qing court did in the late 19th century was putting so many of them to the sword.
The problem is now that the Hui are making a come back and are now both more internationalized (or I should say Saudiized) as a Muslim community and growing. Hui religiosity is rapidly becoming a public force and a potential threat. A decade ago you never saw Hui women wearing Hijabs, but now they are becoming more and more common. This is basically the first sign of trouble for any Muslim society on the path to radicalization. The Communist Party needs to extend the same level of religious crackdown as applied to the Uyghurs to the Hui and they need to do it now to nip this trend in the bud. Either that or invite Iranian clerics to convert them all to the Shia school. Without this there is going to be trouble, mark my words.
Dear God I hope not! Whenever they run the show, they screw everything up! If they want to help, they can first solve the humanitarian crisis in Yemen by leaving it the hell alone.
Hopefully some of the less crazy Gulf guys – Kuwait maybe…possibly Brunei…
I don’t know what the future holds…
Peace.
Aung San Suu Kyi “is becoming one of the most vilified national leaders by the Western apparatus”, not “because of her indulgence of actions of the Myanmar government against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar’s Rakhine region, a campaign scorned as constituting an ethnic cleansing pogrom of genocidal character”, but because she did not play to the tune she was suppose to play to. Myanmar is leaning to close towards China for American comfort.
On the other hand it is transparent that South-East Asia is worked out for the next phase of the ‘Califate’ smashed in Syria. The OBOR must be sabotaged at any price.
Invite them to convert to Christianity.
@I don’t know what the future holds…
Not ‘Peace’, if by peace you mean the peace of the pseudo- ‘religion of peace’, aka ‘Islam’. ‘Islam’, even if relates to the root S-L-M (which gives also Salam=Peace) means ‘submission’, ‘surrender’ (to wit, ‘surrender’ of the defeated in battle) .
The only true ‘religion of peace’ is Christianity, as it was announced by the Angel of the Lord at the birth of the Christ:
“8 And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. 10 And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. 11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. 12 And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. 13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, 14 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. 15 And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us” (Luke 2:8-15).
It is the Peace (εἰρήνη*) of the Christ:
“20 At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you. 21 He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. 22 Judas saith unto him, not Iscariot, Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world? 23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. 24 He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings: and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father’s which sent me. 25 These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you. 26 But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost**, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. 27 Peace I leave with you, MY peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (John 14:20-27).
**not Mahomed!
Now, make no mistake, Islam is inimical to Christianity, the religion of peace.
Most of the ‘narratives’ about the Rohingya deliberately leave out some important points (which are covered by Wikipedia). It is a history of downright aggression against the Burmese state:
“The Rohingya insurgency in Western Myanmar is an ongoing insurgency in northern Rakhine State, Myanmar (formerly known as Arakan, Burma), waged by insurgents belonging to the Rohingya ethnic minority. Most clashes have occurred in the Maungdaw District, which borders Bangladesh.
From 1947 to 1961, local mujahideen fought government forces in an attempt to have the mostly Rohingya populated Mayu peninsula in northern Rakhine State secede from Myanmar, so it could be annexed by East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh). During the late 1950s and early 1960s, the mujahideen lost most of its momentum and support, resulting in most of them surrendering to government forces.
In the 1970s Rohingya Islamist movements began to emerge from remnants of the mujahideen, and the fighting culminated with the Burmese government launching a massive military operation named Operation King Dragon in 1978. In the 1990s, the well-armed Rohingya Solidarity Organisation was the main perpetrator of attacks on Burmese authorities near the Myanmar-Bangladesh border….
“In May 1946, Muslim leaders from Arakan, Burma (present-day Rakhine State, Myanmar) met with Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, and asked for the formal annexation of two townships in the Mayu region, Buthidaung and Maungdaw, by East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh). Two months later, the North Arakan Muslim League was founded in Akyab (present-day Sittwe, capital of Rakhine State), which also asked Jinnah to annex the region. Jinnah refused, saying that he could not interfere with Burma’s internal matters. After Jinnah’s refusal, proposals were made by Muslims in Arakan to the newly formed post-independence government of Burma, asking for the concession of the two townships to Pakistan. The proposals were rejected by the Burmese parliament.
Local mujahideen were subsequently formed against the Burmese government, and began targeting government soldiers stationed in the area. Led by Mir Kassem, the newly formed mujahideen movement began gaining territory, driving out local Rakhine communities from their villages, some of whom fled to East Pakistan.”
So, the ‘persecution’ of Muslims because… they are Muslims is bollocks.
“In November 1948, martial law was declared in the region, and the 5th Battalion of the Burma Rifles and the 2nd Chin Battalion were sent to liberate the area. By June 1949, the Burmese government’s control over the region was reduced to the city of Akyab, whilst the mujahideen had possession of nearly all of northern Arakan. After several months of fighting, Burmese forces were able to push the mujahideen back into the jungles of the Mayu region, near the country’s border with East Pakistan.
In 1950, the Pakistani government warned its counterparts in Burma about their treatment of Muslims in Arakan. Burmese Prime Minister U Nu immediately sent a Muslim diplomat, Pe Khin, to negotiate a memorandum of understanding, so that Pakistan would cease sending aid to the mujahideen. In 1954, Kassem was arrested by Pakistani authorities, and many of his followers surrendered to the government.
The post-independence government accused the mujahideen of encouraging the illegal immigration of thousands of Bengalis from East Pakistan into Arakan during their rule of the area, a claim that has been highly disputed over the decades, as it brings into question the legitimacy of the Rohingya as an ethnic group of Myanmar…
“On 28 October 1998, the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation merged with the Arakan Rohingya Islamic Front and formed the Arakan Rohingya National Organisation (ARNO), operating in-exile in Cox’s Bazaar. The Rohingya National Army (RNA) was established as its armed wing.
One of the several dozen videotapes obtained by CNN from Al-Qaeda’s archives in Afghanistan in August 2002 allegedly showed fighters from Myanmar training in Afghanistan. Other videotapes were marked with “Myanmar” in Arabic, and it was assumed that the footage was shot in Myanmar, though this has not been validated. According to intelligence sources in Asia, Rohingya recruits in the RSO were paid a 30,000 Bangladeshi taka ($525 USD) enlistment reward, and a salary of 10,000 taka ($175) per month. Families of fighters who were killed in action were offered 100,000 taka ($1,750) in compensation, a promise which lured many young Rohingya men, who were mostly very poor, to travel to Pakistan, where they would train and then perform suicide attacks in Afghanistan.
The Islamic extremist organisations Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami and Harkat-ul-Ansar also claimed to have branches in Myanmar…”
A more detailed history @Rohingya insurgency in Western Myanmar (and links), Wikipedia.
Hey Seraphim,
Thanks for those insights into Christian theology.
Peace.
Somebody sent me this. I hope the Bangladeshis take them up on this to resolve the immediate crisis of the people who are on the brink of survival:
“Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu has called on Bangladesh to open its doors to Rohingya Muslims fleeing violence in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state.
Speaking at a Justice and Development Party (AK Party) Eid al-Adha celebration event in the Mediterranean province of Antalya on Friday, Çavuşoğlu reiterated Turkey’s call to Bangladesh to open its doors to Rohingya people, and said that Turkey would pay all the expenses.”
https://www.dailysabah.com/diplomacy/2017/09/01/turkey-to-bangladesh-open-your-doors-to-rohingya-muslims-well-cover-all-expenses
I do know Kofi Anan was working with Burma for a more permanent solution (that will deal with both the insurgency and civil rights issues) so hopefully this could be a stop-gap until that occurs.
Peace.
I would say that Christianity and Buddhism are inherently peaceful.
Judaism and Islam are inherently violent.
And Hinduism is not inherently either.
Perhaps that means that Hinduism is the one true faith.
Hey Greasy,
Speak for yourself, bro. As far as we’re concerned; there is a time for peace and a time for war (and guidance and guidelines for both) – the wisdom is in recognizing which is when.
Peace.
Exactly. In Christianity and Buddhism, it is always a time for peace.
Sure, but nobody ever lives like that – it’s completely impractical. Even the medieval Christian theologians outlined times when war was justified. If they didn’t understand Christian teachings for centuries – then who does?
If they want to truly live like that (pray for your enemies, turn the other cheek, etc.), they should disband their navies, armies, air forces, etc. and see what happens – otherwise stop virtue-signaling and acting like hypocrites. I have a hell of a lot of respect for people like the Amish that actually walk-the-walk on that subject.
Peace.
That’s right. Inherently peaceful faiths/philosophies are impractical. Glad we are agreed.
completely in line with the will of the majority (democracy in action).
Isn’t there a Hadith regarding smug, “I told you so,” comments? 🙂
Anyway this is mobocracy, what we in the US are headed toward and what our Founding Fathers warned us about.
in the interests of their people
I don’t believe this is peculiar to Islam. It seems to be the problem with elites across the board in all countries and cultures.
Razib on the Rohingya:
https://gnxp.nofe.me/2017/09/06/burma-can-thank-the-british-for-its-current-mess/
Hey iffen,
Yeah – it was a cheap shot – I admit. But it landed clean on the jaw.
That article by Razib was probably one of the best I’ve come across. Why the heck did he leave UNZ again? He was such a good contributor. I mean, even if he just published here and simply didn’t answer any comments – that would still be useful.
Peace.
Why the heck did he leave UNZ again?
AFAIK that is known only by the publisher and him.
It wasn’t because of the comment section. He was in control of his comment section.
Obviously I can’t divulge anything too specific. But it’s not too hard to figure out why Razib might have left based on his public Twitter.
https://twitter.com/ras_nielsen/status/799419845305507840
https://twitter.com/lpachter/status/780460790977433600
Both the above are active in genomics research, and what is said in public tends to be milder than what is said in private.
Yes the wolf always “likes” the sheep that strays from the herd. Of course the Copts very much eschewed the sword and loom where that got them. I doubt you’ve shed many tears for them either.
Have you? How many, during how many nights? I want measurements by the pints*.
I denounce the oppression that they receive at the hands of Muslim extremists if that’s what you’re getting at.
Peace.
*The Hell???
The British empire really did cause trouble in a lot of places through the mass immigration it facilitated (apart from Burma also Sri Lanka, Fiji, Palestine…and probably much more, all societies riven by ethnic conflict). Should have been a cautionary tale about the perils of immigration.
He seems to be attacked a lot by lefties and liberals who think he’s a Nazi (that’s what one can gather from some of his comments on his new site) and apparently decided he’d better be not associated with Unz review since he’s got a family to feed.
And I think he also felt some genuine distaste for much of the stuff on Unz and its somewhat alt-rightish direction (he’s stated that most of the stuff under the HBD label nowadays is just dumb, and has also mocked “net Nazis” and “frog Nazis”).
Hey G_R,
Yeah – I have to admit, that’s a tough choice to make; give up your career path to die as a martyr for your cause or just shut up about those details and continue trying to make a difference without drawing attention.
Funny thing is, with UNZ it’s such a strange marketplace. Razib was both a great resource for a lot of the commentators to get their HBD info from in order to form their views about race, genetic differences in people, etc., but if a bunch of them had it their way, he’d be on a boat to Bangladesh. LOL!
Peace.
The British empire really did cause trouble in a lot of places
I’ll leave everyone to make their own value judgement on the subject. I, for one, am damn glad that they established their colonies in America. Moreover, peoples have always migrated and intermixed. The concept of nation-state seems like it will be a failed concept in the short term rather than the long. That said, I support an immigration hiatus for the US.
get their HBD info from in order to form their views about race, genetic differences in people, etc., but if a bunch of them had it their way, he’d be on a boat to Bangladesh. LOL!
Most of that bunch would feel the same way without the benefit of “HBD.”
Razib wasn’t a good “fit” for Unz.
I think there might be some tweets missing from AK’s comment.
“Moreover, peoples have always migrated and intermixed. The concept of nation-state seems like it will be a failed concept in the short term rather than the long.”
So then, that should also hold true for the shitty little country Israel, right? Is nation-state status a privilege only allowed to Israel? Why is Israel not allowing immigration from faraway alien lands and “intermixing”? Forget about immigration from faraway alien lands – why doesn’t Israel allow the simple return of native Palestinian Arabs kicked out 70 years ago, who are now languishing in squalid camps just outside its borders? Surely, that would be an eminently sensible and humane sort of immigration?? Why don’t Israeli Jews “intermix” with Palestinian Arabs (or anyone else, for that matter), since “immigration and intermixing” seems to be such a good thing and the irresistible wave of the future?
Your neocon Anglo-Zionist forked tongue is powered by an engine of shameless hypocritical chutzpah.
Truly a brave man, a paragon to emulate.
“..what fools these mortals be.” (“Alien” elf Puck in Shakespeare’s Mid Summer Night’s Dream)
Do you mean the same should apply to Western settlers who colonized the US in the 18/19 centuries?
What about Natives American resentment? Are there any left?
… and native Indians should expel Caucasian, Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Arabs, etc… from once was their land?
I’d guess that that there are only about 6 to 8 rural States where “native Americans”, meaning people with known Indian blood of some meaningful quantum, constitute much more than one percent of the population, including these:
North Dakota
South Dakota
New Mexico
Oklahoma
maybe Montana and Idaho
An upright Christian prince is in a default state of peace with his neighbors; an upright Muslim prince (I don’t know enough about Talmudic Judaism to comment) is in a default state of war with his non-Muslim neighbors unless he has specifically bound himself otherwise, or so I understand it (and some schools limit these agreements to ten years, do they not?).
Current international law as I understand it (not very thoroughly) essentially binds everyone to act as a Christian ruler would be expected to.
I’ll leave aside the Amish if you leave aside the Ahmadis.
Looks like everybody fell hook, line and sinker. Very easy to get distracted when it comes to Muslims, isn’t it? …
First, contrary to the author claim, Myanmar has a lot of hydrocarbons. The Shwe gas field, off the Rakhine coast, hold one of the largest gas yields in Southeast Asia and UN resolutions against Myanmar are things of the nineties and noughties.
The Myanmar strife between Muslims and Buddhists is just a smoke screen. What is at play is a geopolitical game. Kiplin’s “Great Game” anyone?
Rakhine State plays an important part in the Chinese “One Belt One Road Initiative” (OBOR), as it is an exit to Indian Ocean and the location of planned multi billion-dollar Chinese projects, the Kyaukphyu deep-sea port, which has oil and natural gas pipelines linked up to Yunnan. Therefore Myanmar is for China a window on the Gulf of Bengal allowing hydrocarbons imports from the Persian Gulf and other commodities from Africa, while avoiding the bottleneck of the Strait of Malacca and disputed parts of the South China Sea.
So it is in “Western interest” to hinder China’s projects in Myanmar. Inciting Jihad in Rakhine could help to achieve that. If the ethnic conflict in Rakhine state is very old, it has over the last years morphed into an Jihadist guerilla war (financed by Saudis on Washington behest, like in Libya and Syria), through Pakistani born Rohingyas who went to madrassa school.
Also, to understand Aung San Suu Kyi inaction, it is worth to remind that she has been groomed to become a Western puppet. Her husband, Michael Aris was a protégé of Hugh Richardson, a British diplomat handler of the young Dalai Lama. So she’s kind of “Family jewel” and close to “colored revolutions” architects like Soros, Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright.
So a mess in Myanmar is in the US interests and the end game could be another R2P like in Kosovo and Libya or a pretext for the United States to propose closer “counter-terrorism cooperation”. This in turn would be another step to permanently station US troops in Southeast Asia, just like in the Philippines currently. This goal has been openly proposed by US policymakers in papers like the 2000 “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” by the PNAC.
Alaska
Hawaii if you count Hawaiians
I believe this is too simplistic; the truth requires precision.
Is a mythical creature like dragons and unicorns. And the the way this prince consolidates his power in the first place is not through the normal process of bringing lesser lords to heel militarily, rather he is a plucky peasant selected by the masses when they see that a mystical lady from a lake gives him a magical sword. And what happens when the lesser lords decide to part ways to secede and start up their own small ideal Christian princedom – the ideal Christian prince does what exactly?
Charles Martel was probably one of the most heroic of these. After he stopped the Muslims at Tours (and some lesser known battles), having secured his Western border, he turned his attention to the East and expanded his territory by consuming lesser Christian and heathen lands.
That is the reality of the world – Islam deals with realities.
This is certainly a major interpretation in the Shafi’i school. One of the legitimizing components of the caliphate is that he wages war and keeps expanding Dar ul-Islam against Dar ul-Harb – whether through raiding or normal arrayed battle. The fortunate thing is that the Maliki and Hanafi schools have no problem in maintaining permanent peaceful relationships with neighbors, but – due to the nature of the pre-modern world – the neighbor must prove themselves peaceful since the default state was war. Another thing to keep in mind is that the Hanafi and Malki schools were the schools that set the policies for most of Muslim history (being the school followed by the Umayyads, Abbasids, Ottomans and Mughals). Again, these interpretations are not merely whether one wants to be aggressive or not – these are interpretations of how God expects us to act. One thing to keep in mind is that the Prophet (pbuh) gave us instructions as to how to behave, for instance his regarding certain nations:
“Leave the Abyssinians alone as long as they leave you alone, and leave the Turks alone as long as they leave you alone.” – reported in Abu Dawud
These nations were neutral (or friendly, in the case of Abyssinia) unlike the Byzantines and Persians who had let their intentions be known that they weren’t interested in any kind of diplomatic relations with the Muslims from the beginning.
Now, I’m not saying Muslim rulers acted like ideal rulers (that would be silly) – most of them certainly didn’t care and were quite aggressive – but I am saying that there is no contradiction for an ideal Muslim ruler (according to some major schools) living in peace with his neighbors.
Again, Shafi’i school – for obvious reasons.
Or a Muslim ruler – which is why I have never heard a single Muslim scholar demand that we overturn those laws or that Muslim nations detach themselves from being signatories.
Peace.
The discussion of “an upright Christian prince” not existing from someone on whose lips is often heard the cry “But that’s not the Islam of the scholars…” is a bizarre one– I’ll assume it’s one of those off-moments we all have. Even Homer nods.
The hadith about Turks and Abyssinians is an interesting one. The mention of Turks specifically sounds rather like an interpolation; the Turks would have been a potential enemy very much on the mind of a Syrian or Persian of the caliphate, but something hardly likely to much concern the audience of the Prophet himself, whose enemies consisted of desert tribes like themselves and of the Greeks (or their Hellenized Arab allies) and the Persians and their allies.
I was also told that the reason the Prophet was somewhat solicitous toward Abyssinia was that the Ethiopian king had sheltered some of the early Muslims.
Do you know of any scholarly discussion of either of these points?
Is the Hanafi interpretation of just-war doctrine similar to the standard Christian one? Are the Shafies the only ones who think raiding a peaceful neighbor is justified?
The notion that premodern (I’m not sure when you mean, but it doesn’t really matter) Christians thought the idea of an aggressive war justified on the part of the ruler is false.
Not a Shafii, obviously.
Thanks for the information. I understand that commenting on this site can put one on edge –I’ve certainly engaged in my share of verbal food-fights– but not everyone is out to vilify your religion.
Why? The reason I correct people on the doctrine is that many people see Muslims doing A and they claim that A is allowed or that A is the course of action mandated by Islam – which is often not the case. Here, I am not accusing Christian doctrine of supporting what Christian rulers often did, in fact, I am saying Christian doctrine is free of practically any ruler that purported to follow it – because it is bloody difficult to follow in practice, being peaceful to a fault.
“Christianity seeks to remake human nature, and its great ambition is its great fault. It is unambiguous in its prohibition of violence for any purpose, including self-defense, and so it makes hypocrites of its warriors. Islam’s great advantage is that it seeks only to govern human nature as it is, and so it doesn’t ask its warriors to be confiicted about confiict, as long as confiicts are conducted according to the principles of the Koran.”
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a858/esq0706jlindh-106/
It’s like trying to run a state based upon only what we see in the Seerah during the time of persecution in Makkah – there is very little guidance on the matter. The earliest Christian communities lived the ideal Christian lives – they were persecuted endlessly and lost many of their scholars, writings, churches, people, etc. Once they went imperial, they had to figure out a way to fit an essentially other-worldly, spiritual doctrine onto the realities of the world.
If it was an interpolation, it would have found itself (not in a highly authenticated collection, but) in the books of rejected or fabricated hadith. Imam Malik (ra) – founder of the Maliki school – built his school around the practice of the people of Madinah (his principle assumption was that the practice of the people of Madinah would not have diverged significantly within two generations from the practice of the Companions [ra]). He was also a high-level hadith scholar. What is interesting is that he doesn’t record this hadith in his collection, but mentions that the practice is sound because the people were acting according to this prohibition. Thus it is validated by text as well as early practice.
Correct, the tradition recognizes friendly exceptions to Dar ul-Harb.
This is difficult to assess – it is certainly similar, but may not come to exactly the same conclusions. But if seriously interested, you can find this book fairly easily even just to check out in a library:
“To reconcile the imperatives of faith with the limits of military power, Islamic scholars developed elaborate legal doctrines. In the second century of the Muslim era (eighth century C.E.), hundreds of years before the codification of international law in Europe by Grotius and others, Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Shaybani, an eminent jurist of the Hanafite school in present-day Iraq, wrote the first major Islamic treatise on the law of nations, Kitab al-Siyar al-Kabir.”
https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/islamic-law-nations
Nobody says raiding a peaceful neighbor is justified because, by definition, in a world filled with war, that neighbor is one with which peaceful relations have been explicitly declared or established. The Shafi’is can sometimes surprise one. For instance, all schools declare it to be impermissible to launch a surprise attack on a neighbor without first establishing contact and declaring hostilities. But only the Shafi’is state that if a surprise attack was to take place, it would not only be impermissible, but that the victims would have to be compensated blood money for their dead. Which is a remarkable opinion given that we are talking about the 8th century!
I didn’t say they did. I said, in historical practice, Christian rulers often did things in contravention to their religion – that was the world that the Muslims dealt with. For instance, did Christianity stop Spain, Britain, France, Belgium, etc. from aggressively colonizing the world and establishing some of the biggest empires known to man – even though it may have been in contravention to their religious doctrine? The only thing that seemed to have stopped them was lack of means.
That’s totally fine – I’m just pointing out that neither is that the final word on the issue nor are Muslims bound to just their opinions. The late Shaykh Ramadan Bouti (ra) wrote a book on jihad:
https://www.amazon.com/Jihad-Islam-How-Understand-Practice/dp/1575472228
He was one of the top level Shafi’i scholars in the world. He came to the conclusion that the other schools were right in their opinion that jihad is not fought simply because the opposing side are “unbelievers”, that there are other factors that must be analyzed in the equation.
Excellent point – apologies for any rudeness on my part.
Peace.
No, it isn’t.
Busy now, but will address other points later.
On
Is there a concise way of summarizing the distinction between the way these nations were treated?
There are about 2.5 million people in the US who identify themselves as American Indians and approximately another 1.5 million of mixed white-Amerindian ancestry.
I understand that – it wasn’t my quote – but if one was to follow the life of Christ (pbuh) in a literal sense, there is very little guidance on statecraft or war (defensive or otherwise).
Unlikely – the jurists devised principles (based on the study of the source texts and practice of the Companions [ra]), it was up to the sultan (and his advisers) to make them actionable with respect to the various people/nations they came across. One size never fits all.
Here is a quote from the introductory chapters in that book I referenced (translation of Imam Shaybani’s worrk):
“We have seen how Abu Hanifa and his disciples, especially Shaybani, laid down general rules and principles governing Islam’s external relations, based on the assumption that a normal state of war existed between Islamic and non-Islamic territories; but they made no explicit statements that the jihad was a war to be waged against unbelievers solely on account of their disbelief (kufr). On the contrary, the early Hanafi jurists seem to have stressed that tolerance should be shown to unbelievers, especially scriptuaries, and advised the Imam to prosecute war only when the inhabitannts of the Dar al-Harb came into conflict with Islam. It was Shafi’i who first formulated the doctrine that the jihad had for its intent the waging of war on unbelievers for their disbelief and not merely when they enetered into conflict with Islam.”
And another important quote from the author that translated that work:
“The objective of jihad, it will be recalled, was not fighting per se, but the prosyletization of unbelievers.”
Sometimes war can be the worst thing you can do for the purpose of jihad.
Peace.
Maybe they were just busy with the elections and other stuff and unprepared for that non-sense.
Note that people were arrested in SPB when a similar protest happened there.
Amerindians are fully justified in feeling resentment at the westward expansion of Anglo-Saxons and while they can’t really do anything about it, I can understand why they would be resentful.
Fortunately for the Burmese however, Burma hasn’t been swamped by tens of millions of Saracens and made a <1% minority in their homeland and are actually in a position to do something about their situation.
“The Hui are not fine, they are just as problematic vis-à-vis the Han as the Uyghurs are.”
What a ridiculous statement. The Uighurs are terrorist insurgents. Whatever issues with the Hui, the problems are not in the same league.
Actually same thing happens in India
In Kashmir the muslims went into open revolt and has had martial law for 25 years, with 100k muslims killed ; in rest of India, they practise low level ethnic cleansing , molesting women, throwing stones at hindu processions, attacking cops, creating no-go zones etc
again finely calibrated to just below the level that would bring in the Indian army
The only Jihad free region in India , is Indian Punjab , where the Sikhs eliminated them from 33% to 1% in 2 months in 1947
Greasy William:
What I consider wrong, is to extremize every issue. Groups of people have their own grievances and unfortunately vent them wrongly. I say wrongly because all groups have a lethal enemy, the MSM.
Like it or not, the media take sides each time the whties take issue with something; almost intermediately the MSM, takes issue with whatever venting whites are venting. Whomever owns the media, seems to have all things ‘white’. Why? cannot answer that. So it is time for whites to loose that cowardice and confront the media with an equal fierceness and with extreme prejudice against the enemies of America, i.e. the MSM.
Now, I am a person who thinks in neutral terms as far as what people call ‘minorities’. Americans are Americans regardless of ethnic membership. We need to understand that, and find common ground to rectify the issues that are hurting our families, community, and nation. The problem is not us versus them, but us all, versus the MSM and the talking heads who are doing their utmost to create an atmosphere of hate, and chaos. Remember the agents of chaos, and confront them, expose them, and annihilate them.
Yes, I wondered why you quoted those lines, since they made the author sound rather a fool without adding much to your argument.
This is very true– this would also require one to be executed as a criminal and to rise three days later, something I doubt rather more my ability than my will to do. To follow the life of Mohammed in a literal sense would get one locked up in any civilized country, including Mohammedan ones– this is not a fruitful field of inquiry.
Christian doctrines are not really at issue among Catholics or saner Protestants.
Again, the specifically modern age of international law derives directly from Christian principles through Vitoria (Catholic) and Grotius (Protestant).
I quite understand that Muslims can also follow these rules at least as well as anyone else and appreciate their benefits– but if Muslims can follow them I’m not quite sure what the point is in saying nobody can, unless that avoiding war is easier in our modern era, with which I’m inclined to agree, with reservations. In all eras some sins become easier or more popular and others less– I trust I was born in the right century for me, however silly that sounds.
This is interesting– I hadn’t known that Islam considered either hadith (hadiths?) or their collectors infallible. This raises interesting theological questions for which this is not the place nor I the proper interlocutor. But I will say that one of the few blessings of the increased secularism of the last century or two has been the critical scrutiny of the Bible, which has after much controversy largely confirmed us in our estimates of the New Testament and cast interesting new lights on the Old. I think something of the kind might be beneficial to Islam as well.
Not really, something of the sort is fairly common among primitive (not necessarily a pejorative) tribes including Germanic. This makes sense considering I once read that the Shafii interpretation was fairly popular among certain Bedouin tribes.
… were all in the age of modern international law (on the edge in the case of the Spanish) and had to be so justified, however speciously at times. The British in particular were famous for doing iffy things, hence perfide Albion. I made a comment on this sometime in the past but it’s too much trouble to dig up.
Thanks. Accepted and offered in turn.
Apologies also for responding late. Long replies to thoughtful comments take more time than I am usually willing to give and I always somehow leave out much of what I meant to say anyway.
Your link to Khadduri’s translation of the Siyar and quotes from its introduction are very interesting, considering that this is the source from which I acquired my original opinions! (see page 17 in the 1966 edition). I guess this goes to show that not even academics are 100% reliable especially when taken out of context*.
Here’s an interesting source with a contrary view; I’m interested in your opinion of the opinions of this strongly opinionated man, who was some sort of advisor to the Sultan in the 19th century.
Here is the Catholic view which is also afaik the saner Protestant view: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15546c.htm
*Not even, alas, Professor Glancy, whose first name I forget. I did the research on this topic (sex with slaves in the early Church) ages ago, but I’m not sure whether I ever posted it– I tend to think not.
I would apologize to Sr. Karlin but I don’t think he reads these posts.
Anyway I can’t dig it all up again but here are the salient points. Prof. Glancy as I remember cites St. Clement of Alexandria in various trivial contexts but somehow misses his statement in the Paedagogus (2.10.91.2**) “touch no woman but your own wife”, which might itself be less considerable as St. Clement is much in the habit of giving advice, save that it is a quotation from Plato’s Laws (8.841d), from which St. Clement has altered the original “no free and noble woman” (free and noble = γενναίων ἅμα καὶ ἐλευθέρων), without even troubling his readers (who as cultivated men and women must be presumed familiar with Plato) about the omission. The other strong piece of evidence, negative this time, is that Tertullian, when he set up his own little sect in the desert and went so mad on monogamy he forbade even the remarriage of widows, wrote copiously and angrily on this issue, but among his many accusations of the Psychici as he calls the Catholics there is never the accusation that they sleep with their slave girls. It makes sense that as you mentioned this aspect of doctrine is only much mentioned after the fourth century, because going by Doellinger’s biography of Callistus the Church in early times consisted of mainly people of the lower classes and women of all classes, with its sprinkling of men from the upper classes, like St. Clement himself, or Hippolytus who is much mentioned in the book, being men of learning, understanding, and discretion, to whom such a basic moral teaching as the definition of adultery would not need much reinforcement. When the Church became fashionable this was no longer the case and instruction became more detailed. The contrary hypothesis, that as the Church expanded into a class of people with rather loose morals and in some respects lessened the rigor of its disciplines, it suddenly introduced a new rule unheard-of in the ancient world, is not to be considered, Professor Glancy to the contrary.
**Somewhere around there.
LOL! Yes.
Erratum:
Christian doctrines are not really at issue among Catholics or saner Protestants.
–>
Christian doctrines on the subject are not really at issue among Catholics or saner Protestants.
Addendum:
I don’t understand. Does he mean the people of Medina were not at war with Turks and Abyssinians? Why would he expect them to be? Or does he mean that the Caliph was not at war with said peoples?
Some of the main teachers of Islam at that time resided in Madinah and Makkah. Imam Malik’s school is derived from their teachings. They taught what the proper doctrine was (according to their interpretation), whether or not the Caliph was following it or not. What I’m saying is that their doctrine coincided with the hadith in question – even if they didn’t accept or know about the hadith. So where did it come from, likely the guidance of the Companions (ra) without direct mention of the hadith.
Peace.
I think you are on to something. I actually agree here and will make use of this point when people point out the idea of following either the Son of Mary (pbuh) or the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) in a literal aspect. I actually have made this point on another thread a while back – for instance, no scholar that I can think of says we must also own and ride camels in order to be true to his teachings and life.
This is a good point. So then can we say Christianity gradually developed a sense of a comprehensive developed theory of “just war” around the 16th century (based on earlier thought by men such as Aquinas)? I have no problems with this.
Since I agree with your point about following Christ (pbuh) in a literal sense is a hard prospect and that Christian theologians developed theory apart from his literal life – this goes under the previous point about field of inquiry.
Some hadith are rock solid – they have the same weight as a verse of the Qur’an; these are called mutawatir reports. No hadith collection or collector is infallible – all of them have mistakes or points of contention. Men like Imam Daraqutni (ra) criticized some hadith in even the collections of Imams Bukhari and Muslim (ra). With hadith you have gradations and scholars differ on criterion, thus you come up with variant rulings based on what is considered authentic or even on differences in text. And there are authentic hadith not recorded within those collections. What I meant was that if scholars had recognized that hadith to have been one to have interpolation, they would have thrown it out – none did to my knowledge.
We’ve been doing criticism from the beginning. That is why you still have scholars coming out to this day with works on hadith criticism, like the late Ghumari brothers (ra) of Morocco. As far as criticism of the text of Qur’an – very difficult because the writing is the afterthought. The original Qur’an is the oral preservation (in its authentic variations) – and has to be, because how else would we know how to accurately pronounce it in liturgy?:
No problems, but I may have missed this one completely.
His opinions sound fairly reasonable. I like how he mentions the distinction between the ulema and the sultan (someone sent me a message about this recent work exploring that dynamic):
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/scholars-and-sultans-in-the-early-modern-ottoman-empire/47E5026CF35CC053545BBFCFAE604C3A#fndtn-information
There is definitely the case to be made that as Europe developed its own sense of these salient features of international conduct (and gradually came to abide by them), the Muslim world also changed in response – deriving the legitimacy for this abatement of hostilities from voices within its own tradition. And this is how the ulema would like to keep it as far as I can see. I seriously don’t see any voices calling for a breakdown of the current order as something antithetical to our tradition. Now if someone was asking; would that initiative have started from the Muslim side – my opinion is maybe, but probably not. Pondering hypotheticals is always shaky, but if the other side hadn’t first started reigning in their foreign policies, I doubt the ulema would have said; “Hey, let’s just back up for a moment and reconsider this whole dar ul-harb business” – especially since most Muslim countries were fairly recently granted independence from foreign powers. The only exception I could think of is if military destructive capabilities proceeded on the same trajectory as we know them to have – in that case, I can certainly see the ulema asking the question – how can we seriously invite these people to the religion if every time we go to war, we end up killing them like Mongol hordes?
I’d like to see a source for this, but I don’t see a exact parallel. Did the Germans extend this outside of their own tribes – meaning to completely foreign people? Because in the case of within these tribes (like the Bedouin Arabs you mentioned), there is expectation of reciprocity. Tribes would generally be very, very brutal to those outside of their collective – see Steven Pinker’s assessment of historic violence. There is no such expectation on the part of the Shafi’is – as far as they are concerned it is a moral obligation to right a wrong.
The jihad continues now as dawah – the West and practically all nations (except Muslim ones) have lifted barriers to preaching Islam to their people. And many people get their info from the Internet.
Peace.
Meaning, I believe only Muslim countries proscribe public preaching of other religions within their territory.
Yes, wergild would have been reciprocal in case of Germans, though of course the same is true of all law. Vikings and so on would not have expected to pay wergild to their victims’ families, no, because their raids were considered legitimate. However under Anglo-Saxon or Frisian law afaik a foreigner could seek recompense quite as well as a native. Of course, though, those codes were only drawn up after Christianization.
In a manner of speaking, yes.
Obligations of rulers to conduct themselves properly (this includes the work of St. Thomas on when and how war can be waged) have always been recognized– what dates to the 16th century is the idea that relations between states can be the subject of law analogous to civil law.
Addendum:
A sort of one-sided international law (fetial law) was practiced even by the Romans. It is referenced by Urquhart (he compares the Turks to the Romans in this respect). I know very little about it, but here’s an article: https://www.jstor.org/stable/292032?seq=2#page_scan_tab_contents .
I definitely do not disagree here – I think the appearance of Aquinas is a watershed moment for Christian thought and codification (at least in the West – I have no idea how he is received in the Eastern Churches). I think it can safely be said though, the formulation of Islamic laws on these matters was more sophisticated and codified in detail at a far earlier stage of development (debates on use of fire, cutting off water supplies, killing animals, etc.). For instance, when we are talking men like Imam Malik (ra) and his contemporaries, we are talking about within the first 150 years. This can be said was by nature and by necessity since the conduct and policies of the first four Caliphs (ra) is a source of law and they were well out of Arabian proper at the time and dealing with other empires/nations by then. They had dealt with everything from conquering lands, developing peace treaties and even how to deal with other Muslims in a civil war.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/fetial
This seems to be very interesting. It certainly points out that Romans took treaties seriously and tried to address aggression by other states by diplomacy and (in theory) this was supposed to keep Romans from waging aggressive war (though I’m not sure how successful that was given their history).
Peace.
By the way, thanks for the exchange – sorry if I started out a bit hostile*. I definitely learned some things I didn’t know before and it has helped me to adjust my approach when trying to assess some of the details of how Christians square their juristic tradition to the life of the Son of Mary (pbuh). I hadn’t read about Vitoria before, but had come across Grotius (who hasn’t if you are interested in the origins of our current international framework).
I don’t know if it’s you on the other thread but it seems Stan d Mute has been, well mute since I posted a response. Seems like I gave him a bloody nose. I’m always up for a reasoned exchange with materialists, but if he comes back with his previous attitude, I’ll lift a page from your playbook and walk away.
I, and my family, remain in need of your prayers.
*It’s always difficult to assess who you are since you use the Anon label – I know who I’m talking to after a couple of exchanges.
Islam is a Christian heresy. The Russian Orthodox Church must stamp out this heresy.
Thanks. I don’t want to engage in historical one-upmanship or civilizational bingo (not, of course, that I’m saying you are) but I should point out that St. Thomas’s doctrine on war essentially follows that of St. Augustine, with some elaboration and discussion.
Properly in Christianity the sphere of questions such as “What should I do in situation XYZ, and what degree of sin will I have committed if I do ABC instead?” fall under the sphere of moral theology, which terminology might be helpful on similar subjects.
Fairly well though I don’t think they’re great fans of Contra Errores Graecorum.
I wouldn’t trust me as the best source in the world, except for very general impressions of how an average Christian looks at things. Your diocesan bishop or his office* –they don’t call them “palaces” here, being democratic I guess– would probably be helpful in directing you to people who can authoritatively answer questions about the Faith, as would probably Protestant ministers with their interpretations.
Also the Catholic Encyclopedia is very helpful, not to mention the Catechism of the Catholic Church, obviously mostly for Catholic topics though I think the Greeks are very close theologically (they’re not heretics).
Yes, it was.
It’s not necessarily a playbook, though in that case I didn’t think more than a curt answer was necessary. I really spend more time on here than I would like, and I still don’t have as much time as I would need to answer even the really interesting questions. A long answer like the thousand-word one above can easily take the better part of an hour, not counting the research for the Glancy thing which took considerably longer. I am in awe of your capability to respond on here despite your responsibilities– I could never keep up.
*Cardinal Cupich, the Archbishop of Chicago, is quite well respected.
I’ve always had a respect for Christian civilization – Muslims like myself see them as a branch of the family – perhaps an older heretical brother or something. 😉
I have deep respect for contemporary Christian thinkers that have traditional views. Feser is a good one. I even respect James White who debates Muslims all the time – because he is honest in his approach (even if he gets things wrong – but he tries in a sincere way). I have heard men like Robert George speak on forums with Muslim scholars and men like him see a place for cooperation between the communities to push back the nihilist darkness that is threatening to cover the world.
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2009/07/452/
When the scholar-philosopher Shaykh Said Nursi (ra) addressed the West in a critique, he made distinctions:
“[Europe] has conveyed [to mankind] crafts which can be beneficial to man’s social life, and sciences that can serve justice and truth, which poured forth from [the elements of] true Christianity; it is not this Europe that I am addressing, but rather the second, corrupted Europe that has come to imagine, due to the darknesses of natural philosophy, civilizational evils to be virtues, and as a result of this has driven humanity to shamelessness and misguidance.”
For someone like me – all positive things that have come out of European civilization can be traced back to the blessed feet of the Son of Mary (pbuh) and the actualization of his teachings. Any faults and sins are truly only their own and he is blameless in the matter. Thus, I don’t have the cognitive dissonance that some Muslims do when they see some of the successes of Christian peoples – these are the fruits of adhering properly to the teachings of God’s emissaries.
I have referenced the Encyclopedia before a few times, never the Catechism – I’ll check it out.
I expect hubris from materialists. But to see such race-based thinking from so many believing Christians is disconcerting. Have they forgotten the teachings about humility? I see so many Christians here talking about how indispensable European races are ad nauseum and I’m thinking; didn’t they learn the best way to make sure God makes an example out of you of exactly how dispensable you are is to keep talking proudly about how you are indispensable? Maybe it is just an extreme reaction to extremes from the Left.
Tell me about it. I’ve lost quite many hours of sleep. But there is benefit in it to a degree. I asked one of my teachers about it and he said what I was doing seemed to be beneficial and it seems some people on these forums have benefited. I try to stay away from conversations that devolve into ad hominem. Also, I just leave Mr. Sailer’s thread alone – I imagine what I feel is akin to walking in on a frat boy circle jerk – just turn around, close the door and walk away.
One other positive aspect is that I discuss some of these issues with my teenage daughter since she will be faced with a lot of these questions and arguments when she goes out into the world. There are only a few that deserve serious merit, the rest of them are so ignorant and inane that we have a laugh about them – I sometimes wonder if I’m conversing with teenagers or adults.
My Qur’an memorization and daily meditation routine has definitely taken a hit. But…
https://xkcd.com/386/
But in all seriousness, I should ease back – there are more important matters to attend to.
Peace.