Turkey has recalled its ambassador from the US after the House of Representatives voted in favour of recognising the massacre of Armenians as genocide despite opposition from the Obama administration.
Latest Updates: history RSS
-
thabet
-
aziz
Incredible discovery of the oldest known temple in existence – predating the Pyramids by 7000 years. It has the potential to invert the traditional narrative of how agriculture came first, leading to cities and then organized religion. Couuld this be the birthplace of revelation itself?
-
thabet
-
thabet
Tomb of Imam al-Ghazali discovered in Iran:
-
johnpi
There are a lot of ‘retrospectives on the decade’ showing up in the news. This is not to quibble with God, but I don’t think the decade just ending would be considered all that great from a Muslim perspective.
The article linked above tries to describe the world as it was on January 1st, 2000. It would be interesting to see somebody try to capture a description of the world in 2000 from a Muslim perspective.
-
thabet
Rough and ready view of the Enlightenment and religion:
1. French Enlightenment: Eliminate or replace religion.
2. English Enlightenment: Politically control religion.
3. Scottish Enlightenment: Ignore or dismiss religion.
4. German Enlightenment: Rehabilitate religion.
This is a very simplistic view (I can see many weaknesses), put up largely to provoke discussion.
-
thabet
On a post at Comment is Free which calls for an investigate and prosecute British Bangladeshis who are accused of being involved in war crimes carried out in the 1971 war between West and East Pakistan, Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain says:
[Answer from Bunglawala:] I was born in the UK and am not Bangladeshi, so to be honest, I very rarely think about the 1971 war. I reckon it is of much more import to those of Pakistani/Bengali backgrounds than to me.
I do nothing whatsoever to bring justice to Muslims in East Pakistan. I have enough on my plate here in the UK.
Which might be a principled response, except back in 2008, Bunglawala wrote:
Why is calling for the story of Srebrenica to be told despite the fact that he is not Bosnian? And his website, iEngage, has numerous articles on the war crimes committed against Palestinians, despite the fact he isn’t Palestinian. A bit of a weak response from Bunglawala there, which I think only highlights the blind spot British Muslims (mostly Pakistanis) have about the genocidal behaviour of the (West, as it was then) Pakistani Army, and subsequent dismissal of the need to investigate these crimes.
I expect the original Comment is Free post, which includes allegations of war crimes against a prominent British Bangladeshi, to disappear once he gets around to contacting his legal advisers, and I would agree with the other point made by Bunglawala: if someone has evidence against individuals involved in the war crimes, and currently living in the UK, prominent or otherwise, document it, publish it, and promote it.
-
aziz
Was reading the history of the “Jewish problem” in Europe. Will we see an emergent “muslim problem” in the US?
-
thabet
It just occurred to me that all six authors of the Sihah al-Sittah were either Persian or were born and died in areas which were part of historic Iran.
-
thabet
I found this 2007 blog post which argues, quite forcefully and with good evidence, that the claims the Taliban, while brutal, brought peace and security to Afghanistan is unfounded and the result of lazy journalism, lack of knowledge, and Pakistani propaganda.
In particular, the blogger (an academic specialising in Afghanistan) cites the mass killings of Hazaras (something conveniently forgotten by stupid idiots from Birmingham or London), and the way they treated the women of the ‘conquered’ rivals (also something conveniently forgotten by stupid idiots from Birmingham or London).
-
thabet
Midwinterspring has a post on Islam, the Ottomans and the Turkish republic:
What would have been the impact of Turkey’s modernisation efforts, but with the office of sultan in place as a kind of figurehead? Would that even have been possible?
-
thabet
I’ve been reading about the Dhofar Insurgency recently, and will soon be reading an account by a former member of the Special Air Service (SAS) who fought for the Omani sultanate against a number of different (leftist) rebel groups. I found the book on sale in Muscat, so I expect it to be sympathetic to the sultanate (the current sultan overthrew his father during the course of the insurgency).
The Dhofar Insurgency doesn’t seem to attract much attention, but does have some interesting parallels with other conflicts. British involvement in Oman’s internal affairs, which dates back to the 1860s, increased in the 1950s during the Jebel Akhdar War and (later) the Dhofar Insurgency; here’s the Wikipedia entry on the Dhofar campaign:
The [British] military commanders on the ground [...] suggested the implementation of a Hearts and Minds campaign, which would be put into operation primarily by a troop (25 men) from the SAS. The [British] government (then under Conservative leader Edward Heath) supported this unconventional approach to the counterinsurgency campaign. It approved the deployment of 20 personnel of the British Royal Engineers, who would aid in the construction of schools and health centres, and drill wells for the population of Dhofar. A Royal Air Force medical team would also operate out of Salalah hospital, in order to open a humanitarian front in the conflict [...] The British government additionally provided monetary support for the creation of the Dhofar Development Programme, whose aim was to wrest support from the PFLOAG through the modernisation of Dhofar.
Sounds somewhat familiar doesn’t it?
-
thabet
-
thabet
Afghanistan: the new Vietnam… or the new Afghanistan?
-
thabet
According to the Orientalist, even Muslim failures (like success) are not of their own doing but always attributable to pre- or extra-Islamic cultures (pdf):
-
thabet
Oil is 150 years old, although it was known and exploited by the ancients of the far and near east, .
-
thabet
-
thabet
An organisation has a campaign to provide schools with educational packs which aim to highlight scientific legacy of Muslim civilisation:
Last month, atheism activist Richard Dawkins announced plans to distribute free DVDs to UK schools. Whilst FSTC does not consider it`s 1001 Inventions campaign a direct challenge to Dawkins, it does hope to encourage debate about the relationship between science, faith and culture.
FSTC has campaigned for school curriculums to acknowledge the scientific achievements of Muslim civilization for more than a decade. While the Dawkins campaign, supported by the British Humanist Association, positions science and religion as opposing forces, the 1001 Inventions project reminds us that for 1000 years the religious and the scientific were comfortable bedfellows and led to unprecedented openness to new ideas and social change.
The Richard Dawkins Foundation launched its campaign last month.
The FSTC also has an exhibition at the British Science Festival (5th-10th September).
-
thabet
Business trumps all:
In 1999, when a second Taliban delegation (first one was in 1997), came to the United States to discuss some pipe-line issues with various energy companies, they met with an expert in Afghan issues with whom the Taliban representatives…visited Mt. Rushmore.
-
thabet
Russia turns to Muslim scholars to combat ‘radicalism’ in the Caucasus:
The integration of Muslim ulama into Russian state to combat resistance and violence to its control over its Muslim-populated areas is not new. Catherine II did something similar:
“The regime sought religious support for its policies,” Crews says. “In other words, it tried to co-opt local Muslim authorities who might be in a position to confer some kind of religious legitimacy upon state policies in order to reduce the chance of resistance.”
Having studied the Ottoman Empire, Catherine and her advisers wanted to create a hierarchical Muslim structure that would work in tandem with the Russian state.
-
thabet
A book review (from the left) of How Race Survived US History: From Settlement and Slavery to the Obama Phenomenon: From the American Revolution to the Present.
-
thabet
Ziaul Haq’s ‘decade of darkness’.
-
thabet
Ali Eteraz has some thoughts on Jaswant Singh’s expulsion from the BJP and his book on Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
-
thabet
This looks like an interesting read:
Carré’s insight is based not on the discovery of any new historical evidence, but on a novel way of perceiving the dialectics of Islamic existence; that is, not as the dichotomy of text and history, the antinomy of ideals and realities, but as the interplay of ‘governance’ and ‘law’ in the arena of laïcité, in the worldly domain where the political is not under the tutelage of the clergy. Traditional Islam, accordingly, has been ’secular’ without being ’secularist’; it has affirmed the this-worldly logic of politics and history but never accepted the state as sovereign or reduced faith to governance. Carré’s thesis, then, fiercely rejects Orientalist prejudices about Islam’s inherent incapacity to separate governance from sacred law and hence become modern, just as it boldly challenges all other Islamophobic claims that have been advanced in contemporary France in the name of sociology or secularism. Carré’s argument that is based on the lessons of Muslim history and actual praxis, thus, forcefully repudiates all those glib assertions about Islam’s (essential!) incompatibility with individualism, secularism, democracy and the rule of law!
Unfortunately, I can’t find an English translation.
-
thabet
Carlin Romano is our own Buzz Kill and I claim my five pounds
-
thabet
The reason why fanatical neocon Nile Gardiner is outraged about David Miliband’s comments on terrorism in South Africa is that his idols, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, were supporters of the South African apartheid regime.
(That Miliband’s father was a well-known Marxist only helps further neocon and right-wing outrage.)
-
thabet
Even while I can sympathise with the author is trying to achieve, I have to say this is a terrible article on ’secularism in Islam’.
Full of anachronisms, unnecessary attempts to shoehorn one history into another, bizarre use and abuse of terminology, the article misses one crucial fact: the Mu’tazilites of the period the author discusses were just as involved in the political intrigues of their day as their theological opponents.
(Another point is that terms like ‘freedom’ or ‘liberalism’ are not uncontested in Western traditions as the author claims.)
-
thabet
Johann Hari writes a polemic against Andrew Roberts, the “extremely right-wing” historian and champion of the British Empire.
-
thabet
American Empire:
-
razib, murtad fitri
it is common to observe that 1,000 years ago what became the west, and was then western christendom, was the poorest of the great civilizations, defined as western christendom, eastern christendom, the world of islam, india and the far east. this is true. an entertaining history of this material difference can be found in Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium. *but*, it does need to be remembered that around the year 1000 median differences in wealth between societies were measured in proportions, not in multiplicative or orders of magnitude. that is, the west was probably 25% less wealthy than china or the world of islam, and perhaps a little less wealthy than india, on a per person basis. this is not trivial, but it simply not symmetrical with the current state of the world, when nations like the united states and japan are an order of magnitude (10 X) more wealthy per capita than a large number of developing nations.
this is by way of putting context the achievements of ‘islamic science,’ or for that matter ‘chinese’ or ‘greek’ science. these are awesome achievements in a *relative* context of an illiterate world, in the classical greek case, a world where most of the world’s landmass was not taken up by states-level societies. but compared to the incredible productivity of ‘western’ science since 1600 these are dim shadows. contemporary attempts to do ‘muslim’ science strike me as worthless in terms of substantive engineering or explanatory fruit as the project of intelligent designers in the US, or hindutva ‘vedic’ science.
