We just have different fantasies.
Posted on 01/02/2009 12:07:35 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Many Pakistanis now believe that the recent Islamic terrorist attack in Mumbai, India, was the work of the Israeli Mossad, or the American CIA. Such fantasies are a common explanation, in Moslem nations, for Islamic terrorist atrocities. Especially when women and children, and Moslems, are among the victims, other Moslems tend to accept fantastic explanations shifting the blame to infidels (non-Moslems).
Conspiracies are not unique to the Moslem world, but they are much more common there. After the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, many Moslems again blamed Israel. A favorite variation of this is that, before the attacks on the World Trade Center, a secret message went out to all Jews in the area to stay away. Another variation has it that the 19 attackers (all of them Arab, 15 from Saudi Arabia) were really not Arabs, but falsely identified as part of the Israeli deception. In the United States, some Americans insist that the attack was the work of the U.S. government, complete with the World Trade Center towers being brought down by prepositioned explosive charges. While few Americans accept this, the Moslem fantasies are widely accepted in the Moslem world. Even Western educated Arabs, speaking good English, will casually express, and accept, these tales of the Israeli Mossad staging the attacks, to trick the U.S. into attacking Afghanistan and Iraq. Americans are shocked at this, but the Moslems expressing these beliefs just shrug.
American troops arriving in Iraq go through a real culture shock as they encounter these cultural difference. They also discover that the cause of this, and many other Arab problems, is the concept of "inshallah" ("If God wills it.") This is a basic tenet of Islam, although some scholars believe the attitude preceded that religion. In any event, "inshallah" is deadly when combined with modern technology. For this reason, Arab countries either have poorly maintained infrastructure and equipment (including military stuff), or import a lot of foreigners, possessing the right attitudes, to maintain everything. That minority of Arabs who do have the right attitude towards maintenance and personal responsibility are considered odd, but useful.
The "inshallah" thing is made worse by a stronger belief in the supernatural, and magic in general. This often extends to technology. Thus many Iraqis believe that American troops wear sunglasses that see through clothing, and armor vests that are actually air conditioned. When they first encounter these beliefs, U.S. troops thought the Arabs are putting them on. Then it sinks in that Arabs really believe this stuff. It's a scary moment.
However, many troops learn to live with, and even exploit, these odd beliefs. When troops at one base discovered that they weren't being attacked much, because many of the locals believed that the base was surrounded by a force field, the troops would casually make reference to their force field, when they were outside the wire and among the locals. This reinforced the force field myth, and made the base safer. Other troops would invent new fantasies, like a pretending that a handheld bit of military electronics was actually a mind reading device. That often made interrogations go a lot quicker. Not all Arabs believe in this stuff, and those that didn't and worked for the Americans, often as an interpreter, could only shrug their shoulders when asked about it.
This easy acceptance of fantasies is exploited by leaders throughout the Middle East, and the Moslem world in general. Leaders who know better, build on these fantasies as a way to maintain their control over the population. The problem is a dirty little secret in the Moslem world, that leaders and academics don't even like to discuss it openly, much less with infidels. But it is real, and you can read all about it in the local media, or overhear it in the coffee shops.
The superstitious belief in socialism in the west is just a modern expression of an ancient desire to believe in magic.
The EU is no more sane than the goat-humpers; they are just more tolerant towards those who know how to get things done.
Slightly more tolerant. For now.
But the new Grand Superstition — Global Warming — is going to put an end to that tolerance, in Europe, in America and everywhere in the West.
There’s not fantasy that you can show me in the Arab world that is less fantastical than the leftist notions of what Global Warming is and what must be done to “fix” it.
So please, westerners. Let’s check our feelings of superiority at the door.
Well, that's all happening and at a faster clip now that the terrorists aren't blasting everything in sight to Kingdom Come on a daily basis anymore. It still won't happen overnight, but it's moving forward.
The problem with starting with one small part of the country is that it would have caused a lot of resentment from the rest. You'd have had squabbles and perhaps worse over which part of the country would have gotten those benefits first, coupled with fears that we would withdraw before getting to the other provinces or areas.
But it's working now and the Iraqis are learning all kinds of new technology and they're learning enthusiastically.
One of the problems with Islam is that their concept of God is that of a completely arbitrary, capricious being, who has no internal law of his own, is bound by no inner dynamic, and thus could at any moment decide to be or do exactly the reverse of what he was being or doing prior to that moment.
This means that everything in creation and nature is therefore contingent. Clearly scientific research is pointless if you really can’t be certain that there is any particular law in the first place or if there is any certainty that this law, if it exists, will be adhered to in the future. In fact, even the concept of future is laden with fear and confusion, because a Muslim can’t depend on the future as being reasonably predictable in any That’s why they tend to rely on bizarre prophecies rather than rational analysis and faith.
Lawrence of Arabia once said,
“The Arab can be swung on an idea as on a string.”
Meaning that an Arab can be persuaded to do or to believe anything, as long as one can convince the Arab that it was originally his own idea.
I have coworkers who still believe that we never landed on the moon in 1969. When I remind them that our rival in space the USSR did not even attempt to challenge the reality of the moon missions, they just shrug.
Majority of world opinion is pro-Hamas. Go figure.
Lincoln’s observation that one can’t fool all of the people all of the time is in need of update and revision, IMO.
Except you Texans.
I wonder what they think of global warming...............
The math came from India after they conquered it. The "golden age" of Islam was the period where they had a steady influx of civilized slaves who knew how to run a civilization for them.
I have heard, from a number of sources (including a well known professor of Arabic Studies) that “inshallah” is both a saying and an excuse. “I will see you tomorrow, inshallah,” generally means “I’ll show up, if I feel like it.” And if this person doesn’t feel like it the next day, God willed it. “We will not fire upon you tomorrow, inshalla,” means you should prepare for an attack and so on. And they don’t consider it lying. They literally believe that such behavior is what God wanted them to do in that circumstance. Their word, their actions mean nothing. All is controlled by God. Look up fatalism, its pretty much the same thing.
Ask someone who considers themselves to be Persian. See what they have to say about Arabs. They won’t be kind. lol
The Islamic world was superior in technology in the age of the Crusades up until the Mamluks taking over Egypt. One of their leaders (I don’t recall the name) ordered the destruction of the rebuilt Library of Alexandria, saying that since the Koran was the word of God, and since all other books were either to reinforce that, or blasphemous, no other books were needed.
It was at that point Arab society lost its technological advantages and began to leech off the technological capabilities of the infidels, until this day.
¡The Best Article I’ve Read This Year!
Of course Texans excepted. That goes without saying.
:)
I really, really hope that doesn't come back to bite us in the ass.
L
Best,
L
Arabs believe "if god will's it" (Inshallah). Trying to explain preventive maintenance to an Arab (with this mindset) goes over like a lead balloon.
The route to accepting a 9/11 "controlled demolition," for otherwise reasonable folks, comes from disbelief that two 110 story buildings could fall essentially straight down without the help of demolition expertise. I know I expected one or both to eventually sag and fall to the side, at least the portions above the jet strike and fire, greatly magnifying the damage beyond the WTC. I think the attackers did, too. It was a quirk of the structural design, with the ballon frame and central "core," that spared New York City much greater damage. The whole thing looked very "Hollywood," surreal, too, which no doubt added to the paranoid speculation. When the unthinkable happens, fanciful explanations don't sound any less plausible than realistic ones, to some.
I agree with some of the comments about the overall culture, but a lot of that doesn't apply to Iraq. KSA is quite different in that, as the article mentioned, Saudis don't really work; they have indentured servants running the infrastructure, the service industry, etc. I've seen the same in Kuwait and Dubai. KSA is also very strictly Muslim, whereas Iraq has been largely secular for decades and that has permeated the social fabric.
Iraqis do their own work. Here, they do grow stuff, make stuff and build stuff (as the article put it.) The lack of concept of "maintenance" was also mentioned and we are engaged in a large country-wide effort to provide on-the-job and classroom training for operations and maintenance activities on all aspects of infrastructural facilities such as water and sewage treatment plants, oil production facilities, power plants, schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, airports, etc. Keep your fingers crossed for us (I am directly involved in this effort) because maintenance is a whole new thing for the Iraqis.
The writer had me somewhat skeptical right off the bat by using Jill Carroll as an example. Of course she met the lowest of the low. She was kidnapped and he;d hostage. While I'm glad she was released and is OK, she was boneheaded to do what she did. She was gallivanting around Baghdad during the worst days of the war in soft vehicles and no security detail. I cannot even imagine such stupidity.
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