Althouse: "My grandmother remembers the Arab world much differently than people view it today."

August 14, 2014

"My grandmother remembers the Arab world much differently than people view it today."

"She remembers a place known for its music, innovation, and intellectual abilities. I may be naive, but I want to help work toward unity in the Arab world — both between our countries and within our countries — so that we can get back to that place again."

83 comments:

Hagar said...: I don't think that is where this is headed.; 8/14/14, 8:37 AM
Anonymous said...: Like Obama she wants to return to an ideal that never existed.; 8/14/14, 8:39 AM
pm317 said...: Yep.. take a look at this photo essay:

Once upon a time in Afghanistan; 8/14/14, 8:39 AM
Ann Althouse said...: Afghanistan ≠ Arab.; 8/14/14, 8:43 AM
The Drill SGT said...: Her Grandma must have been quite old. The last time that "the arab world was a place known for its music, innovation, and intellectual abilities. "

was about 1450. Course in 1453 they ( or Muslim Turks and Arabs sacked the world's greatest city:

The enraged Turkish soldiers . . . gave no quarter. When they had massacred and there was no longer any resistance, they were intent on pillage and roamed through the town stealing, disrobing, pillaging, killing, raping, taking captive men, women, children, old men, young men, monks, priests, people of all sorts and conditions . . . There were virgins who awoke from troubled sleep to find those brigands standing over them with bloody hands and faces full of abject fury. This medley of all nations, these frantic brutes stormed into their houses, dragged them, tore them, forced them, dishonored them, raped them at the cross-roads and made them submit to the most terrible outrages. It is even said that at the mere sight of them many girls were so stupefied that they almost gave up the ghost.

Old men of venerable appearance were dragged by their white hair and piteously beaten. Priests were led into captivity in batches, as well as reverend virgins, hermits and recluses who were dedicated to God alone and lived only for Him to whom they sacrificed themselves, who were dragged from their cells and others from the churches in which they had sought refuge, in spite of their weeping and sobs and their emaciated cheeks, to be made objects of scorn before being struck down. Tender children were brutally snatched from their mothers' breasts and girls were pitilessly given up to strange and horrible unions, and a thousand other terrible things happened. . .

Temples were desecrated, ransacked and pillaged . . . sacred objects were scornfully flung aside, the holy icons and the holy vessels were desecrated. Ornaments were burned, broken in pieces or simply thrown into the streets. Saints' shrines were brutally violated in order to get out the remains which were then thrown to the wind. Chalices and cups for the celebration of the Mass were set aside for their orgies or broken or melted down or sold. Priests' garments embroidered with gold and set with pearls and gems were sold to the highest bidder and thrown into the fire to extract the gold. Immense numbers of sacred and profane books were flung on the fire or tom up and trampled under foot. The majority, however, were sold at derisory prices, for a few pence. Saints' altars, tom from their foundations, were overturned. All the most holy hiding places were violated and broken in order to get out the holy treasures which they contained . . .; 8/14/14, 8:49 AM
hawkeyedjb said...: A world that existed before the Arab (or Muslim) world became obsessed with making the Mideast Judenrein. Lots of energy has gone into that project, perhaps at the expense of other pursuits.; 8/14/14, 8:54 AM
jacksonjay said...: I'm afraid this young woman got caught-up in that John Lennon Imagine bullshit!; 8/14/14, 8:55 AM
Ann Althouse said...: NASA should hire her grandma.; 8/14/14, 9:00 AM
Birkel said...: I am confused. Is the author volunteering for the military?; 8/14/14, 9:06 AM
MadisonMan said...: I wish I could make the not equal sign!

It's very easy to remember a past that didn't ever really exist.; 8/14/14, 9:12 AM
chillblaine said...: More books are translated into Spanish every year, than have been translated into Arabic since the ninth century. Maybe native Arabic speakers just need some different reading material.; 8/14/14, 9:12 AM
tim in vermont said...: We have been pretending that we are not at war. I am in France right now and the French seem a little disconcerted by Obama's feckless leadership in the middle east. They are arming the Kurds, they take the threat from ISIL very seriously.
Obama likes to play golf. He should know that you have to play the ball where it lays when you are POTUS.Bush hit the tee shot into the the sand trap, Obama pretended he could take a mulligan. There are no mulligans. Obama's delusions led directly to this slaughter. Just like leaving southeast Asia led to genocide. You probably blame the person who started the war, as you should, but the person with the last best chance to avoid this outcome was Obama. If you supported abandoning Iraq, you chose this outcome.; 8/14/14, 9:16 AM
Q. said...: Who is she? Does she have a name? Or must she remain anonymous? Does this fact speak for itself?; 8/14/14, 9:18 AM
William said...: The Arabs were just on the verge of abolishing slavery, expanding woman's rights, and developing hip hop music when the western colonizers invaded and put finish to those nascent movements.; 8/14/14, 9:18 AM
Paco Wové said...: Curious. Why does a site called "Humans of New York" appear to be devoted entirely to vignettes of people in Jordan and Iraq?; 8/14/14, 9:19 AM
Paco Wové said...: ≠
makes
≠; 8/14/14, 9:24 AM
gerry said...: Is it OK yet to be anti-ISIL, or are we still in the "You-are-an-Islamophobe" stage of progressive reality denial?; 8/14/14, 9:25 AM
Tank said...: test

≠; 8/14/14, 9:27 AM
Tank said...: OK, that's funny.; 8/14/14, 9:27 AM
virgil xenophon said...: A good book written at a time when things looked hopeful in the ME is one by Agnes Newton Keith, wife of a UN tropical forest expert posted to Libya in the 60s entitled "Children of Allah." (1966) It became all the rage in our fighter squadron when we started going down from the UK to Libya for bomb and gunnery practice at Wheelus AB, Tripoli in the 60s. A very good read..

(PS: Keith's life was a helluva read too. She lived in Malaysia, Borneo, Indonesia, variously and wrote extensively about life in that part of the world also.); 8/14/14, 9:32 AM
The Drill SGT said...: tim in vermont said...
We have been pretending that we are not at war. I am in France right now and the French seem a little disconcerted by Obama's feckless leadership in the middle east. They are arming the Kurds, they take the threat from ISIL very seriously.

It's fun for the Frogs to complain about the US. It's a national pastime. but they are correct.

And they generally feel obligated in areas where they were colonial powers. In this case Syria and Lebanon. After all the L in ISIL is "Levant"; 8/14/14, 9:40 AM
cubanbob said...: A noble sentiment. I wish her well in her endeavor but I'm not holding my breath.; 8/14/14, 9:41 AM
exhelodrvr1 said...: Innovation?; 8/14/14, 9:53 AM
Lem the artificially intelligent said...: Back when the motto was “we have the Maxim gun, and they have not,” non-Western societies tried hard to emulate us, which is why you see those photos of skirted women in record stores in Afghanistan from the 1960s. Now that it’s “cultural sensitivity” and “why do they hate us,” the extremist brand looks viable.; 8/14/14, 10:00 AM
Shanna said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 8/14/14, 10:01 AM
Michael said...: Like Tim in Vermont I have just come from Europe and there is deep concern there over ISIS. Many of the ISIS terrorists are foreigners from the civilized world and the fear, the real fear, is that they will be returning to the civilized western world with an intent to kill.

Starting with George Bush the idea that we are dealing with an aberration of Islam has caused the west to turn its politically eyes away from the obvious. There is a very real terrorist threat that not only exists but which grows. Wishing will not make it go away. Being sweet to it will not make it go away.

When the mayhem comes to our shores in a big way we will drop the PC but in the meantime PC acts as an accelerant on this evil.; 8/14/14, 10:01 AM
bleh said...: Is her grandmother one thousand years old?; 8/14/14, 10:02 AM
Lem the artificially intelligent said...: What?; 8/14/14, 10:02 AM
Browndog said...: In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar, the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle.

Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust, by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the animal passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex and he [Mohammad] declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion [Islam, not "radical Islam"], against all the rest of mankind.

Between these two religions [Christianity and Islam], thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. That war is yet flagrant; nor can it cease but by the extinction of that imposture, which has been permitted by Providence to prolong the degeneracy of man. While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men. The hand of Ishmael will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him. – John Quincy Adams; 8/14/14, 10:04 AM
ron winkleheimer said...: When your opponents are the sort that proudly post pictures of themselves cutting other humans heads off then the only way to end the "cycle of violence" is an application of force so overwhelming that the survivors will be utterly demoralized and unable to strike back.

Or maybe you can post some platitudes on the Internet.; 8/14/14, 10:08 AM
Doug said...: Innovation? Compare the list of patents awarded to Middle Easterners to those of Europe and North America. Joke time.; 8/14/14, 10:34 AM
Anonymous said...: Blogger Doug said...
Innovation? Compare the list of patents awarded to Middle Easterners to those of Europe and North America. Joke time.

8/14/14, 10:34 AM

Innovation = hummus; 8/14/14, 10:43 AM
cubanbob said...: "My grandmother remembers the Arab world much differently than people view it today. She remembers a place known for its music, innovation, and intellectual abilities. I may be naive, but I want to help work toward unity in the Arab world-- both between our countries and within our countries-- so that we can get back to that place again." (Amman, Jordan)"

The last time the Arab world was somewhat like this when it was under colonialism. I wonder if she is aware of that and if she is is she longing for the Europeans to once again take up The White Man's Burden? She writes from Amman Jordan which isn't very far from Tel Aviv Israel where Arabs do engage in music and innovation and intellectual activities and the distance is slightly less than half the distance from Madison to Chicago. I wonder if she has contemplated that.; 8/14/14, 11:09 AM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: While not Arabian, although certainly middle eastern, Iranian born and educated Maryam Mirzakhani just became the first woman to receive the Fields Medal, often described as the mathematician's Nobel Prize.

Blanket statements about other cultures are almost always false.; 8/14/14, 11:19 AM
n.n said...: It was always an oppressive culture. That doesn't mean that it wasn't also productive.; 8/14/14, 11:21 AM
Anonymous said...: Blogger AReasonableMan said...
While not Arabian, although certainly middle eastern, Iranian born and educated Maryam Mirzakhani just became the first woman to receive the Fields Medal, often described as the mathematician's Nobel Prize.

Blanket statements about other cultures are almost always false.

8/14/14, 11:19 AM
-------------------------

post collegiate education and residence = US

Blanket statements hold true about culture. Keep digging. You'll find something.; 8/14/14, 11:25 AM
cubanbob said...: AReasonableMan said...
While not Arabian, although certainly middle eastern, Iranian born and educated Maryam Mirzakhani just became the first woman to receive the Fields Medal, often described as the mathematician's Nobel Prize.

Blanket statements about other cultures are almost always false.

8/14/14, 11:19 AM

As Lars noted you fail to notice where she currently lives and did her prize winning work and its not in Teheran. Indeed to the extent that Arabs and Muslims do such high level work its almost always in the West. As you were saying...; 8/14/14, 11:51 AM
hawkeyedjb said...: "When the mayhem comes to our shores in a big way we will drop the PC"

Seriously? Even after 9/11, there was an immediate rush on the part of officials and all Good Thinking People to assure us that Islam and Muslims had nothing to do with this. Recall Secretary Napolitano's "man-caused disasters"? Recall the phrase "anti-Islamic actions" which was used to describe the latest horror committed by a Muslim?

No, there are too many people for whom PC will triumph over all observable horrors.; 8/14/14, 12:06 PM
Anonymous said...: Here's before (1959) and after (2004 photos of the graduating classes of Cairo University. I'd say Granny wins this one.; 8/14/14, 12:19 PM
Anonymous said...: Here's before (1959) and after (2004 photos of the graduating classes of Cairo University.

http://ninme.com/archives/2010/02/cairo_university_class_of_1959.html

I'd say Granny wins this one.; 8/14/14, 12:22 PM
Insufficiently Sensitive said...: Photos of women college students in Cairo from 1925 show no veils, no burkas, but a group of women who might have been in London and dressed for public activities.

The grandmother is right.; 8/14/14, 12:45 PM
Insufficiently Sensitive said...: The last time that "the arab world was a place known for its music, innovation, and intellectual abilities" was about 1450.

It wasn't Arabs that toppled Constantinople, it was Turks.

And the cultural life of many Arab cities in the early 20th century is the ideal that Grandmother can easily recall.

Islamofascism has come fairly late to the party, but it's coming on strong, and thinks it sees effete Western civilization on the ropes.; 8/14/14, 12:49 PM
I'm Full of Soup said...: It us hard to not be automatically disposed to think all Muslims are dumbshit, backwards zealots. I was in the checout line at Walmart the other night and there was a Muslim family in front of me and I just assumed they were wackjobs. Even with my attitude, I was able to be nice to them and let their young boy get in front of me with their 3rd shopping cart. Maybe there is hope for some of them.; 8/14/14, 12:55 PM
exhelodrvr1 said...: Insufficient,
Examples of innovation (from recent history), please?; 8/14/14, 12:55 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: The attempt at cultural co-option of Maryam Mirzakhani's achievements is a little sad, she was a math star and received gold medals at both the 1994 and 1995 International Mathematical Olympiads long before she left Iran.

Why not just acknowledge that this achievement was a product of Iranian culture, their education system and the innate talent of Dr Mirzakhani?; 8/14/14, 12:58 PM
Doug said...: @Ralph Hyatt Or maybe you can post some platitudes on the Internet.

You forgot to add - a vigorous hashtag campaign.; 8/14/14, 1:09 PM
Anonymous said...: A few years ago I had a co-worker who was a mild-mannered native of India, a Hindu. When we discussed the news he had an observation to share about Muslims. He said, "We have been dealing with them for a long time. You can't reason with them. All you can do is kill them."; 8/14/14, 1:56 PM
buwaya said...: Agnes N. Keith - "Three Came Home"
A classic concentration camp survivors story (the family were imprisoned by the Japanese in WWII).
Made into an excellent movie with Claudette Colbert. My grandmothers favorite. She said it was precisely accurate regarding the Japanese occupation and the conditions of the time.
A very interesting woman.; 8/14/14, 2:20 PM
buwaya said...: "It wasn't Arabs that toppled Constantinople, it was Turks."

Well, it wasn't for lack of trying. The Arabs gave it a few good attempts and came quite close to succeeding a couple of times.

The Turks weren't the first bunch to take Constantinople, the previous, notorious sack was by a coalition of "Crusaders" in 1204. A lot of the same atrocities are attested, but probably not quite as bad, as Constantinople did recover and remained a Greek Orthodox city with the same institutions. The Turks essentially removed the old population and made it their own.; 8/14/14, 2:27 PM
Tarrou said...: Her grandmother is 800 years old? Damn, that's a record, I think! Talk about burying the lead!; 8/14/14, 2:50 PM
Paco Wové said...: "Maryam Mirzakhani just became the first woman to receive the Fields Medal"

She is also, apparently, only the second middle-easterner to ever win the prize, out of the 56 that have ever been awarded – and the other middle-eastern winner was Israeli. That would seem to reinforce the idea the the "Arab world" is currently something of an intellectual backwater.; 8/14/14, 3:02 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: Paco Wové said...
That would seem to reinforce the idea the the "Arab world" is currently something of an intellectual backwater.

Just as Christendom was for 1500 years when most of their intellectual effort went into counting the number of angels on a pinhead. Religion and science are antithetical, despite what people on both sides of the divide may say. Sadly, the majority of the followers of Islam are true believers rather than just giving lip service to the religion.; 8/14/14, 4:44 PM
The Godfather said...: Look, if you want to judge the characteristics of a people, what would you say about European Christians based on their behavior between (say) 1000 and 1700 AD? Pretty barbaric, right? But maybe starting to get a little more civilized toward the end of that period? And part of the reason that the West began to recover from its Dark Ages was what we learned from the Arabs and Muslims (and some of what we learned from them they learned from the Greeks).

The Muslim and Arab worlds at one time were more sophisticated than the European world. Later, they picked up a lot of our more admirable qualities (after we became more admirable).

What's wrong with the message from this young woman is the idea that the way to recapture what her grandmother admired is to foster Arab unity. That's exactly the wrong approach. Learn from other cultures. Learn to live with those who differ from you. The West has begun, imperfectly, to do that. The Arabs and Muslims used to, and need to do so again.; 8/14/14, 5:01 PM
Paco Wové said...: I am always mystified by this (apparently) reflexive need to trash the West whenever the idea that something non-Western is less than wonderful raises its head.; 8/14/14, 5:10 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: Blogger Paco Wové said...
I am always mystified by this (apparently) reflexive need to trash the West whenever the idea that something non-Western is less than wonderful raises its head.

I am not trashing the west. The intellectual achievements of the Greeks equal anything anyone has done anywhere ever.

The long period of Church dominance was not a high point.; 8/14/14, 5:20 PM
Skyler said...: ". . . I want to help work toward unity in the Arab world — both between our countries and within our countries — so that we can get back to that place again."

Too late.; 8/14/14, 5:34 PM
buwaya said...: Being as I am a Catholic, coming from uncountable generations of Catholics, I have to disagree with the Reasonable Man.
The Church was the intellectual powerhouse of western culture. It founded the institutions that created "science", and everything else we count as academic knowledge. And it started from a very low base. And it had to overcome a thoroughly degenerate, declined and and static pagan culture. Late Rome was no longer making much that was new, just recycling the old.
Western Europe from 450-850 was a howling wilderness. The smart people were in the East.
As for the Muslims, they acquired everything they knew from the Eastern Christians they conquered - the smart people, remember.
Even Mehmed II's Great Guns that broke the walls of Constantinople in 1453 were made by Christians.
The great culture of Andalusia ? That was the cultured part of Iberia, preserved largely from the barbarians. Isidore of Seville wrote the first Encyclopedia, in the 7th century, not Diderot in the 18th.; 8/14/14, 5:49 PM
Paco Wové said...: "I am not trashing the west."

Of course not. But why did you even bring the topic up?; 8/14/14, 6:31 PM
Paco Wové said...: "The Arab world is an intellectual backwater."

"Well, the West was a backwater for a long time too!"

Maybe. So? Relevance to current discussion?; 8/14/14, 6:33 PM
pm317 said...: Afghanistan ≠ Arab.

you fail to see the analogy, the big picture.. there is a grandmother that remembers music, culture, intellectual pursuits in Afghanistan or Pakistan, saying the same thing.; 8/14/14, 6:43 PM
Anonymous said...: ARM: Just as Christendom was for 1500 years when most of their intellectual effort went into counting the number of angels on a pinhead.

Your notions of Western intellectual history appear to have been gleaned from comic books.

The Godfather: Look, if you want to judge the characteristics of a people, what would you say about European Christians based on their behavior between (say) 1000 and 1700 AD?

Look, nobody with the meagerest measure of historical literacy is unfamiliar with the the Islamic Golden Age, or doesn't know that centers of intellectual dynamism rise and fall. But I'm pounding my head on my desk here, GF. Were you really taught that Europe was a stagnant nowheresville between 1000 and 1700? Nothin' of interest cultural and intellectual interest goin' on at all?; 8/14/14, 6:56 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 8/14/14, 7:07 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: Anglelyne said...
Your notions of Western intellectual history appear to have been gleaned from comic books.

Crap. I suspect I have forgotten more about the history of science than you will ever know. You have struggled in the past to distinguish personal feelings from quantitative data.

You could have argued that religious ethics got a thorough workout during the dark ages, but that is no doubt also true for the current state of Islam. In neither case does it do much for the advancement of science and technology, which is the issue in question.; 8/14/14, 7:09 PM
Anonymous said...: ARM: Why not just acknowledge that this achievement was a product of Iranian culture, their education system and the innate talent of Dr Mirzakhani?

I hadn't noticed anyone denying the possibility of Iranians doing world-class mathematical work, so what's your point?

But no, the contribution for which the latest Fields Medal was awarded is not the product of "Iranian culture", but of the international culture of mathematics, whose development in the modern era was very much centered in the West. Just as were the great scientific developments of recent centuries. Why some people have so much difficulty acknowledging these facts of history without having to pretend that anybody who does so, must be ignorant of the historical contributions of non-Westerners, I do not know.; 8/14/14, 7:14 PM
Anonymous said...: ARM: You could have argued that religious ethics got a thorough workout during the dark ages...

Why? I thought we were talking about science.

I suspect I have forgotten more about the history of science than you will ever know.

Maybe if you lend me your well-thumbed copies of Carl Sagan's œuvre, I can try to catch up.; 8/14/14, 7:49 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: Anglelyne said...
I hadn't noticed anyone denying the possibility of Iranians doing world-class mathematical work, so what's your point?

Well then you haven't been paying much attention. Multiple commentators here regularly denigrate the intellectual capacities of muslims using their relative lack of recent contributions to science as one more way to infer the inherent inferiority of muslims. As I said at the start, blanket statements about races or cultures are rarely true especially if you take a historical perspective.

Dr Mirzakhani's achievement is something no western woman can currently match.; 8/14/14, 8:05 PM
exhelodrvr1 said...: ARM,
Still have a reading comprehension problem, I see.

"relative lack of recent contributions to science as one more way to infer the inherent inferiority of muslims"
No one has made that inference. The issue is the apparent lack of innovation/scientific contributions from predominantly Muslim nations over the past several (at least) centuries. Can you understand the difference there?; 8/14/14, 8:39 PM
buwaya said...: Indeed, let us take the development of moral reasoning as an example. In Europe this was considered intensively, with the use of reason as a tool. And so we have Christian Ethics, which is the ocean in which our world-view lives, so much so that its invisible to those who breathe it. They are fish in that ocean, much as they deny that they are fish.
And the intellectual arguments that brought this about brought in sets of tools and areas of interest that expanded into essentially everything one can find in universities today.
Islam did little of this. By the year 1100 or so they gave up on reason and logic. Islamic religious academics was reduced, essentially, to textual analysis. And there was no academic work that was not religious. There is nothing in an intellectual sense so degenerate as that.
This is not to say that these populations cannot produce clever people; the human stock that produced their glorious ancient ancestors is not defective. But these people learn a body of knowledge that is foreign. Like everyone else who makes a new discovery they stand on the shoulders of giants, but these are not Arab or Persian giants.; 8/14/14, 8:43 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: exhelodrvr1 said...
No one has made that inference.

Still only seeing what you want see, apparently.; 8/14/14, 8:48 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: buwaya said...
Indeed, let us take the development of moral reasoning as an example. In Europe this was considered intensively, with the use of reason as a tool. And so we have Christian Ethics, which is the ocean in which our world-view lives, so much so that its invisible to those who breathe it.

Like the luminiferous aether?

This is so much baloney. One might just as easily conclude that we are subject to evolutionary constraints on our behavior that facilitate social living and the advance of our species relative to other less socially adept species. No one is explicitly aware of those constraints either.; 8/14/14, 8:54 PM
buwaya said...: Let us get specific - Your perception of right and wrong behavior, of justice and fairness, of your duties and obligations, is not independent, to say the least, of the cultural stew in which you were raised, and that is the result very largely of Christian doctrine.
It takes some experience of the truly foreign to understand that there are other oceans with other fish.; 8/14/14, 9:02 PM
CWJ said...: Has anyone ever noticed Crack and ARM showing up in the same thread? No matter, Crack actually has a greater grasp of logic, without the embarrassing blogger handle.; 8/14/14, 10:02 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: CWJ said...
Has anyone ever noticed Crack and ARM showing up in the same thread? No matter, Crack actually has a greater grasp of logic, without the embarrassing blogger handle.

All invective, no content. Typical Althouse poster. Clueless about how to form an argument or even what one might be. Have another shot and put some thought in this time. I will grade you on a curve.; 8/14/14, 10:15 PM
Darleen said...: All invective, no content. Typical Althouse poster. Clueless about how to form an argument or even what one might be. Have another shot and put some thought in this time. I will grade you on a curve.

[tap tap tap]

I think my irony meter broke.; 8/14/14, 11:55 PM
Anonymous said...: I read the comments at the link.

One of those is that the majority of the 1.6 billion muslims (a number which seems to jump around) are "tolerant" and "peaceful"and that ISIL isn't islam, really.
Now you would think that if that is the case, and islam is indeed so '"tolerant" and "peaceful"' that would be reflected in the laws of those 57 muslim states. But apparently not, and apparently it isn't necessary that it is reflected in those laws.

Another thing in the comments, how tolerant those kumbaya non-muslims are of islam and its practices. A tolerance however they never seem to show for their own society.; 8/15/14, 2:10 AM
Anonymous said...: "Blogger AReasonableMan said...
While not Arabian, although certainly middle eastern, Iranian born and educated Maryam Mirzakhani just became the first woman to receive the Fields Medal, often described as the mathematician's Nobel Prize.

Blanket statements about other cultures are almost always false."

To pile it up.
Its like the jews. They have made contributions out of their number, but for instance I have never heard of Yemeni Jews having any scientific accomplishment in Yemen itself.; 8/15/14, 2:14 AM
Anonymous said...: "Blanket statements about other cultures are almost always false."
versus
"Just as Christendom was for 1500 years when most of their intellectual effort went into counting the number of angels on a pinhead."

"Why not just acknowledge that this achievement was a product of Iranian culture, their education system and the innate talent of Dr Mirzakhani?"

Why not just acknowledge that the scientific revolution and the industrial revolution was a product of European culture and their education system?
And by the way, mr. DontKnowReasonIfItHitMe, there are pages and pages in Wikipedia of Christians who were in religious orders and who made big contributions to science.; 8/15/14, 2:29 AM
Anonymous said...: Give three examples of the Arab innovation she refers to.; 8/15/14, 7:46 AM
viator said...: When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who proved worthy of this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion, but not
with the whining, the pleas of a coward;
listen—your final delectation—to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.

CP Cavafy

"In poet Constantine Cavafy’s era, the Mediterranean port city was a mix of Greek, Italian, Armenian, Syrian, Maltese, British and other nationalities adding to the majority Arab-Egyptian population, all lured there by trade in cotton and wheat.

In the past two decades, the emergence of Islam as a prime source of identity among many Egyptians made Cavafy’s sensuous subject matter unfashionable. By all accounts, Alexandria is a stronghold of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s biggest opposition party. The brotherhood wants Egypt ruled under Islamic law. Alexandria was once a place where women strolled in sun dresses, not headscarves and caftans, and where religion was a matter of personal choice, not political campaigning.

After visiting the museum, I discuss Cavafy at the office of Sobhi Saleh, a Muslim Brotherhood member of parliament. Saleh says Islamic law precludes publishing Cavafy’s poetry."

“Cavafy was a one-time event in Alexandria,” he says. “His poems are sinful.”; 8/15/14, 7:56 AM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: Darleen said...

I think my irony meter broke.

We get this a lot with you Bush voters. After voting twice for the man who oversaw the largest economic collapse since the Depression, the worst attack on US soil since Pearl Harbor and starting the most unnecessary war since WWI, the thing just breaks when you start complaining about Obama not fixing things quickly enough. No instrument can take that kind of stress for a prolonged period.

If you come into the shop we can fix it and also put your sense of humor back into alignment.; 8/15/14, 8:09 AM
viator said...: "I remember Nessim once saying that Alexandria was the great winepress of love; those who emerged from it were the sick men, the solitaries, the prophets - I mean all who have been deeply wounded in their sex."

Laurence Durrell

"Alexandria and all Egypt had changed since the 1930s and 1940s, the period covered in The Alexandria Quartet.

I have found myself wondering what Durrell would have said about Egypt today, where the tolerant, inclusive society he depicted has been almost utterly obliterated. In his time, beauties of every nationality—French, Greek, Italian, Armenian, Egyptian-Jewish and Egyptian-Muslim—would preen in their bathing suits along ‘the sand beaches of Sidi Bishr’, as he calls one popular seafront enclave. These days, the foreigners and Jews are gone, and women who venture to the public beaches must go into the water covered from head to toe.

Could Durrell ever have envisioned such a dark destiny for his city—for all of Egypt? ‘Jamais de la vie’, I can hear him reply.

Jamais de la vie was the name of Justine’s perfume, a fragrance that pervades the Alexandria of Durrell’s Quartet – the name means ‘never’."; 8/15/14, 8:12 AM
Kirk Parker said...: A noble sentiment, indeed, but then followed by a terrible non-sequitur. The Arab world doesn't need *unity* between countries, a mere tolerance will do the trick.; 8/15/14, 9:49 AM
Anthony said...: @Tim in Vermont

"I am in France right now and the French seem a little disconcerted by Obama's feckless leadership in the middle east."

I lived in the UK through the end of the year. I would get complaints about Obama (among other things, the Brits are all convinced he hates them). Then when I noted I did not vote for him, they then would start to berate me.

I had a simple answer -- "You wanted him, you got him. Hopefully you won't get it too hard"; 8/15/14, 11:00 AM