Casual Discussion International Lounge

[Null/Void]

@Yankeestani today was 30th anniversary of my marriage. I don't do this often but will make a exception here. Please don't make copy of it. My wife and daughter ~ actually I have twins. This is one half. Because they are genetic twins they look the same. Exactly. It might come as surprise to you guys but my wife is very religious.

Congrats on your anniversary how do you reconcile your views on religion and politics with your wife and family members was she born in the UK

 

[Null/Void]

Hard to believe Liberia when my Pops lived there in the mid to late 1970s was like this I will probably post some of my pops pics there when I showed him a old Vice Documnetary he was shock how far its has fallen as a country he left when there was coup in leadership and saw the looting and violence

 

[Null/Void]

 

[Kaptaan]

was she born in the UK

Pakistan.

how do you reconcile your views on religion and politics with your wife

Don't discuss religion. As I have said before I am a 'cultural Muslim'. My inner thoughts are reserved for outside family or cyberspace. I have to accept that my views would cause distress so it's best to keep them to myself.

 

[Nilgiri]

Congrats @Kaptaan

 

[Null/Void]

Pakistan.

Don't discuss religion. As I have said before I am a 'cultural Muslim'. My inner thoughts are reserved for outside family or cyberspace. I have to accept that my views would cause distress so it's best to keep them to myself.

So you went with a "I bring the bride route from homeland" to please family I see but the other day you said you were agnostic or leaning cultural Muslim what about your kids

 

[Kaptaan]

So you went with a "I bring the bride route from homeland" to please family I see but the other day you said you were agnostic or leaning cultural Muslim what about your kids

I don't discuss my views on religion with my family. I follow all the rituals and social conventions revolving around religion.

 

[Null/Void]

I don't discuss my views on religion with my family. I follow all the rituals and social conventions revolving around religion.

What about Politics is your son political I would say my interest in politics and foreign affairs comes from my father

 

[Kaptaan]

Politics is your son political

Yes. Very much. But heavily invested in his career.

 

[Null/Void]

Yes. Very much. But heavily invested in his career.

I thought of taking the US Foreign Services Test for a couple years to become a US diplomat but my moral "consciousness" keeps me away from ever working in that environment still thinking what do past couple years has been rough Covid-19 and health issues my pops had

 

[Glass🚬]

Looks like the 2nd Wave is approaching

 

[Null/Void]

It can be formed if the narrative is anchored in the geography and history of the people who live there. This is what France, Germany, Turkey did. If France had gone for "Christianity" then today every Christian would have been a putative French.

95% of Pakistani's belong to broadly five ethnic groups [something analogous to UK with it's four nations with their flags meshed to form the Union Jack] who live in the five regions of Pakistan.


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These peoples have evolved around the Indus River over 8,000 years going back to the ancient Indus Valley civilizations. Pakistan is just a modern label for a very ancient land. This all makes for a very distinct and unique national project. No doubt Islam had a had impact like it has on so many other peoples. The mistake Pakistani el;ites made was just emphasise Islam and ignore or even discourage our own ethnic histories.

For the Turks who may not be aware the name "PAKSTAN" is a acroym of the five provinces/peoples straddled along the Indus River Basin. It was coined by Rehmat Ali in 1930.

View attachment 1540

Is there a faultline in Pakistan? Yes there is. And it runs north south along the spine of the country. West of Indus River is populated mostly by Iranic speakers [related to Iranians and Kurds] and Indo Aryans on the east related to Indian populations like Sikhs etc. But then every country has this. Does Turkey not have Kurdish majority on the east, does Iran not have Turkic majority in north west Azerbaijan? Dtto Iraq etc.

@Nein2.0

Futurism is an Italian movement, an expression of love for everything that is modern, fast, technologically advanced, new, evolved, high tech etc.

Traditional Islamists on the other hand say that Islam itself is "modern, fast and pro-technology". The term "Futurism" is non-existing in the mindset of many Islamic movements due to the fact that Futurism is simply describing "Allah's order to Muslim".

It's basically 'incorporated' in Islam and they refuse to use Western concepts to express the Islamic order.

However, this is only valid for the TURKO-PERSIAN SPHERE, which consits of three main states: Turkey, Iran, Pakistan.

Arabic Islamists think very differently at this point as shown by ISIS.

This Islamic motivated love for advancement, progress and growth is the reason why 2 out of 3 (Pakistan and Iran) are able to build Atomic bombs while Turkey's former leading Islamist figure, Erbakan, worked on the German Leopard tank. The real rift is between Turko-Persians and Arabs, not between Sunnis and Shias.

Arabs like the Ummayads and the Abbassids had science also focused on science.

What went wrong?

I think we need to really be aware of what we mean by "Arabs" which is a rather loose, imprecise term for various peoples, with various histories and living in various geographies who today happen to speak Arabic. There is not much similarties between a Arab speaking Amazig from Algeria, to Coptic Egyptian to a Sudani to a Assyrian Syrian, to a Phoenician Lebanese to a Mesopotamnic Iraqi, to a true Arab from the interior of Arabian peninsula. True Arabs had not much before advent of Islam.

Rise of Islam enabled Arabia for the first time in history to impose it's influence on neighbouring Mesoptamia, Assyria, Palestine, Egypt and the Magreb thus creating a arc of Arabic speakers. In other words various civilizations were subsumed into the early rise of Islam.

The true Arabs remained ignorant and backward until they found oil under the sand. Not surprsing since exactly what civilization can be nurtured on sand, a camel and a date palm?

@KKF 2.0 did you get chance to read Allama Iqbal's Reconstruction of Religious Though in Islam?

The tragedy for Pakistan was that with discovery of oil in Arabian peninsula it enabled the most backward of Arabs as opposed to Levantine Arabs, Magreb or Egypt to gain influence via petro-dollars which arrested Pakistani society for at least three generations. Pakistan is unique in that it as a society has regressed since 1960s. The rise of mullah power and the ignorant masses underneath was fininaced by and inspired by Oily Arabs.

The destruction this wrought on Pakistan is untold. At home it crippled progress and social evolution. Abroad it destroyed Pakistan's image with Bin Laden [who is not even a Pakistani but a Saudi] becoming Pakistan's placard.

Growing Turkish soft power in Pakistan. Ertrugul's Dogan Alp opening a housing development in Islamabad called "Blue World City" which will have a copy of Istanbul's Blue Mosque in the centre. He makes the comment about why all the men around him are tall. What he does not know is that Pakistan is unique in having seen it's average height reduce contrary to rest of the world. Pakistan had aongst the tallest people once. Today thanks to inbreeding and poor diet average height has dropped. Sad. @Yankeestani @Nilgiri

True but do note they are not Sand and Oil. The south western tip of the peninisula is mountains and has rivers.

Very true. What me must keep in mind is that true Arabs were on the arse end of history. Always peripheral. Nobody bothered with them and even did not even bother conquering them. Nothing is not worth conquering. If you look at even the Ottoman Empire it merely secured the holy cities and then had a route along Red Sea coast or Hijaz. The crucible of Ibn Sauds was nothing.

Islam as it rose quickly cross fertilized with the other host civilizations. Thus very quickly fulcrum moved away from Arabia and ended on the Fertile Crescent where it subsumed higher civilizations like Mesopotamic, Assyrian etc and we can see how Baghdad, Damascus became the centres of Islam. Egypt which never was a Arab civilization also went through same process of Arab colonization. To be fair respect has to given to the first wave out of the desert which managed to conquer and then colonize what were historically higher civilizations like Persians, Mesoptamians, Assyrians, Egytians, Greek colonies in Cyrenica [Libya] and even the Amizag people who had history going back to Hannibal of Carthage.

Yes, I got to admit I was surprised. They were semi-beasts before oil. What a tragedy they got the oil. I despise them for reasons I will touch on some other time.

I wish I was in the mood to respond to the excellent threads and discussions here but alas Life throws random things at you so dont have the luxury of time to respond in due time what makes this forum great is that we dont have to deal with the PDF nonsense or members like Retired Troll and Pan Islamic Pakistan butting in each thread and ruining it with their half baked ideas on everything.Onwards to Arabs in the current context the Gulf Arabs are absolutely despised by most Levantines,Egyptians and Maghrebis as bringing backward cultural mores into their society for example in the 1960s Egypt which was at the top mantle of the Arab world wanted to reform and modernize under the leadership of Gamal Abdel Nasser and you had ideologues like Michael Aflq from Syria pouncing on Arab Socialism like Baathism Egypt really looked like it was going up and up but defeats by Israel in 1967 and 1973 tarnished their brand and unfortunately the Oily Arabs won started to influence their Arab neighbors with Wahhabism and later the rest of the Islamic world due in part of the reaction to the Iranian revolution and the Soviet Afghan conflict

 

[Null/Void]

Turkey was super lucky to have a leader like Mustafa Kemal who was well liked by all social classes and was an excellent military officer leaders like Nasser in the Arab world, Reza Shah father in Iran and others miserably failed in that respect as they only modernized a small but liberal bourgeois
@Kaptaan @T-123456 @KKF 2.0 @Yoyo @ANMDT

 

[Null/Void]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1309963981201846272

 

[Ryder]

Turkey was super lucky to have a leader like Mustafa Kemal who was well liked by all social classes and was an excellent military officer leaders like Nasser in the Arab world, Reza Shah father in Iran and others miserably failed in that respect as they only modernized a small but liberal bourgeois
@Kaptaan @T-123456 @KKF 2.0 @Yoyo @ANMDT

They failed because they constantly forced and pushed religion away hence the reaction.

Islamic world failed in modernisation because they were too busy trying to copy the west rather than taking its science and technology like Japan while keeping its culture and identity.

 

[Gary]

 

[Kaptaan]

Turkey was super lucky to have a leader like Mustafa Kemal

Turkey's Kemal Mustafa succeeded for a variety of reasons. His personal abilities and circumstances played a role. However I don't believe in luck as in luck but often is reflection of something else. Meaning luck is made.

If a guy succeeds in something and people might call it 'luck' but that is a lazy way of explaing something. Could it be he tried harder than you or was there circmstances that gave him a edge. I love geography and one of the reasons is that I believe it plays a huge part in our make and the events that effect us.

Post 1500 the centre of the world moved to Western Europe. Asiatic Anatolia literally is thrust into the European mainland. This mean't the location of Ottoman Empire as subject to recieving the modern advances and progressive ideas coming from Europe.

We for instance in the Indus Valley were effectively isolated from world events and modern ideas. The Arabian desert was even more cut off from the world.

Keep this 'connectivity; idea in mind when making conclusions.

 

[Ryder]

I cant believe it im subscribed to this p****

Either way I just unsubcribed.

 

[Levina]

Welcome @Levina to the forum. And others. The latter being confirmation that the forum is doing well. So many are joining that I have to give a generic "welcome".

My, my!
Look who's here.
Lol
Howdy? Long time!!!


Oops! Jst realized this is not a chit-chat thread.

Looking forward to having genuine discussions with other nationalities.

 

[Kaptaan]

My, my!
Look who's here.
Lol
Howdy? Long time!!!

Me.