To those here who condemn colonialism: Every accusation is an admission.
George Monastiriakos: The Mideast was shaped by Arab colonialism, but some minorities survive despite the odds (msn.com)
“Progressives” often portray the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) as homogeneously Arab and Muslim. That is not accurate. The MENA is a diverse region, home to many non-Arab minority groups with cultures that predate both the Arabic language and Islam. Some of these ancient communities have resisted Arab colonialism, persecution and assimilation for the past 1,400 years.
Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all Abrahamic religions. Judaism has significant barriers to entry for outsiders who want to adopt the faith. Christianity and Islam, on the other hand, are expansionist in nature, openly seeking and encouraging newcomers to convert to their religions.
Countless wars have been fought around the world in the name of imposing these two belief systems on non-believers. Despite their many similarities, however, Christianity and Islam have diverged in matters regarding diversity and dissent.
For centuries, questioning religious authority was prohibited in Christianity. Many critical thinkers were persecuted and killed for merely exercising common sense. Eventually, however, Christian imperialists engaged in introspection and abandoned their totalitarian conformism in favor of the scientific method and rational thought. Thus emerged the European Enlightenment and western liberalism.
Yet a similar introspective experience, which leads to respect for diversity of opinion and belief, did not materialize in the Islamic world. Tolerance of differences and dissent has been difficult to reconcile with the more monolithic worldview of Islam.
States in the MENA don’t tolerate dissent against their governments, let alone against religion. Blasphemy laws criminalizing criticism of Islam are enforced by most countries in the region. The punishment for apostasy (conversion from Islam to another religion) in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates , two allies of the West, is still death. Non-Muslims cannot openly practice their faith in Saudi Arabia . The list goes on and on. The divine authority of the last and true religion of Abraham must be accepted without criticism.
Despite what Islamists and their apologists would have “progressives” believe, the process of Arabizing the MENA was not peaceful. Far from it. Arab colonialism brought the Arabic language and Islam to the MENA. Both were spread by conquest and consolidated by gradually assimilating those who were conquered. Within a few centuries, Arab expansion resulted in an empire that stretched from the Indus River Valley to the Atlantic Ocean.
A liberal,and democratic Jewish state exists, despite endless efforts to eradicate the difference it represents, and the threat that diversity poses, to Arab hegemony. After all, nearly half of Israel’s Jewish population are the descendants of Mizrachi — mostly Jews from Arab countries who fled persecution across the MENA and can never return.
Despite millennia of exile, statelessness, forced conversions, pogroms, genocide and the 1948 Arab invasion, the Jews finally earned a tiny country of their own where they can pass their religion and language onto their children free from the bullying they endured at the hands of their antisemitic oppressors in Europe and the MENA.
George Monastiriakos: The Mideast was shaped by Arab colonialism, but some minorities survive despite the odds (msn.com)
“Progressives” often portray the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) as homogeneously Arab and Muslim. That is not accurate. The MENA is a diverse region, home to many non-Arab minority groups with cultures that predate both the Arabic language and Islam. Some of these ancient communities have resisted Arab colonialism, persecution and assimilation for the past 1,400 years.
Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all Abrahamic religions. Judaism has significant barriers to entry for outsiders who want to adopt the faith. Christianity and Islam, on the other hand, are expansionist in nature, openly seeking and encouraging newcomers to convert to their religions.
Countless wars have been fought around the world in the name of imposing these two belief systems on non-believers. Despite their many similarities, however, Christianity and Islam have diverged in matters regarding diversity and dissent.
For centuries, questioning religious authority was prohibited in Christianity. Many critical thinkers were persecuted and killed for merely exercising common sense. Eventually, however, Christian imperialists engaged in introspection and abandoned their totalitarian conformism in favor of the scientific method and rational thought. Thus emerged the European Enlightenment and western liberalism.
Yet a similar introspective experience, which leads to respect for diversity of opinion and belief, did not materialize in the Islamic world. Tolerance of differences and dissent has been difficult to reconcile with the more monolithic worldview of Islam.
States in the MENA don’t tolerate dissent against their governments, let alone against religion. Blasphemy laws criminalizing criticism of Islam are enforced by most countries in the region. The punishment for apostasy (conversion from Islam to another religion) in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates , two allies of the West, is still death. Non-Muslims cannot openly practice their faith in Saudi Arabia . The list goes on and on. The divine authority of the last and true religion of Abraham must be accepted without criticism.
Despite what Islamists and their apologists would have “progressives” believe, the process of Arabizing the MENA was not peaceful. Far from it. Arab colonialism brought the Arabic language and Islam to the MENA. Both were spread by conquest and consolidated by gradually assimilating those who were conquered. Within a few centuries, Arab expansion resulted in an empire that stretched from the Indus River Valley to the Atlantic Ocean.
A liberal,and democratic Jewish state exists, despite endless efforts to eradicate the difference it represents, and the threat that diversity poses, to Arab hegemony. After all, nearly half of Israel’s Jewish population are the descendants of Mizrachi — mostly Jews from Arab countries who fled persecution across the MENA and can never return.
Despite millennia of exile, statelessness, forced conversions, pogroms, genocide and the 1948 Arab invasion, the Jews finally earned a tiny country of their own where they can pass their religion and language onto their children free from the bullying they endured at the hands of their antisemitic oppressors in Europe and the MENA.
