The Israeli Palestinian conflict

[Occhidiangela]

The Arabs had a magnificent civilization while Europe was still "Tribes 'n Clans". That they have fallen so far in the centuries of Ottoman rule (and, to be fair, the later centuries of their own) is tragic, but it's not like we just found these people in Darkest Peru. We know them to be, culturally, capable of civilization on the level we have. .

I disagree, the Arab world you refer to is a romantic fiction, it was a Muslim world, which included enormous Persian cultural influence. It assimilated some Greek influence, and later adopted Turkic influence. Ottoman period was a furtherence of that civilization, in a similar vein to how America is a furtherence of the Enlightenment of Europe. It was then, and is now, driven by the Tribes and Clans model, or have we forgotten just how quickly the inheritors of Mohamed split over who had the rights to the Caliphate? The familial heirs of Mohamed or the more traditional "wisest of the wise?" They never got secular, so their Tribes and Clans were able to deal with European Tribes and Clans for centuries: they spoke each other's political language beautifully, absent that minor point on religion, which they all agreed belonged as a cultural infusion into the state. The Muslim world had an advantage of not hiding from learning. Being placed in "the cradle of civilization" helped, don't you think? :)

1. What have they done for "civilization" lately? Nothing, they are trapped in anachronisms, trapped in the past. OK, for culture, the Arab world can still split hairs over Islam with the same energy as the Westerners can split hairs over Christianity. Bravo.

2. The "Arabs" are not at present, IMO, culturally capable of our "level of civilization" due to the fundamental tension of theocracy versus secular government, due to the legends, lore and myth mismatch between the cultural roots in the Arab world and the ones at work in the West. Arabs who have become Westernized are just that, Westernized.

The cultural shift, the shift and change in the back story, has not come about. Could it come about? I think so, the great cosmopolitan cities of Al Andalus: Toledo, Granada, Cordova, Seville, showed that the Arab, or at least the Moore, could if he GOT FAR ENOUGH AWAY FROM "HOME" become as cosmopolitan and worldly as anyone. Same is true for hillbillies from Arkansas or West Virginia. The same was true for Crusaders. Once they got exposed to the ideas foreign to their own, Europe was not going to be the same.

"Once they've seen Paris, you can't keep them on the farm."

If you suggest that the potential is there, yeah, I agree. Cairo, Bagdad and Damascus of the Crusader Era were certainly centers of civilization, learning and thought, which spread to Europe slowly via Spain, and via trade exposure.

Of course, that was before the Mongols put paid to that little soire. :P

It's always something, isn't it?

Moscow in the era of USSR was a center of great arts, one of the world's finest ballets, and a global center of education. Does that mean any Russian yearns for a return of deapotism, or that I should consider despotism as an equivalent good to the Western approach?

I don't think so. To restore the Caliphate is a step backwards into clans and tribes, even if it brought a slightly brighter light with it. The foundation of that brilliance was laid by the non modern root.