[anasawad]

You clearly haven't read European history then if you think that.

[SolarCross]

You clearly haven't read European history then if you think that.

What that Christianity for all its faults is at least better than Islam? Honestly there is no comparison, we were lucky it was Christianity rather than Islam that dominated us. Compare the MENA today with post-christendom today. The MENA was wrecked by Islam.

[Pants-of-dog]

You have a very odd understanding of history, where the only significant agent of action is religion. Magically nothing else matters.

[SolarCross]

You have a very odd understanding of history, where the only significant agent of action is religion. Magically nothing else matters.

nice try

[Pants-of-dog]

Right, your comparison between Europe and MENA countries that only looked at religion magically looked at more than just religion.

[SolarCross]

Right, your comparison between Europe and MENA countries that only looked at religion magically looked at more than just religion.

There are lots of interacting factors, religion is a major one. It's a major difference between Europe and MENA and Asia.

Don't forget civilisation started in the ME, read up on Sumer, so all else being equal they should be more advanced, that region had a significant head start.

The ME also had the advantage of being in between both Asia and Europe. Science and technology travels along trade routes. Europe had relative proximity to the ME but not Asia. Asia had relative proximity to the ME but not Europe, but the MENA had the proximity to both enabling it to benefit from more sources of technology than either Europe or Asia. That's the advantage of being at the "crossroads of the world".

Egypt was a powerhouse civilisation until conquered by Islam and has been a shithole ever since. Ditto Syria, Iran and Afghanistan and everywhere else they took over.

I am not saying religion is the only factor but it is a major factor for the fortunes of the middle east.

[Pants-of-dog]

There are lots of interacting factors, religion is a major one. It's a major difference between Europe and MENA and Asia.

Yes.

Don't forget civilisation started in the ME, read up on Sumer, so all else being equal they should be more advanced, that region had a significant head start.

From this we can conclude that not all other things are equal. Also, your implicit assumption that all societies progress in the same way is wrong.

The ME also had the advantage of being in between both Asia and Europe. Science and technology travels along trade routes. Europe had relative proximity to the ME but not Asia. Asia had relative proximity to the ME but not Europe, but the MENA had the proximity to both enabling it to benefit from more sources of technology than either Europe or Asia. That's the advantage of being at the "crossroads of the world".

Yes. Can you think of any disadvantages that come from this? I will give you two hints: rats, and bottlenecks.

Egypt was a powerhouse civilisation until conquered by Islam and has been a shithole ever since. Ditto Syria, Iran and Afghanistan and everywhere else they took over.

I am not saying religion is the only factor but it is a major factor for the fortunes of the middle east.

Your weird confusion about correlation and causation, if there even is a correlation, is fallacious.

[anasawad]

No its not.
The middle east is what it is today because of exactly what it is. The middle east. In the middle of every major empire, power, invading nomads, etc to ever exist.
And it doesn't have any geographic barriers to stand in between it and others.
The reason Egypt had a major civilization is because it was sorrounded by vast deserts that no army could cross.
The reason Lebanon and Greece and Iran were major civilizations is because they are all surrounded by mountains.
The middle east for most of its history was a place where a single invading army could go through from one end to the other without encountering a single geographic barrier to stop it. with it being sorrounded from every direction made it inevitible that not a single empire or nation would last forever in it, but rather always fall apart.
The rise of the middle east came when the Islamic empires rose up and expanded beyond its borders that it could get resources and mainly food since most of the middle east is desert that barely grows anything.
When those empires fell and the Persian and Turkic empires took control again, the middle east went back to being surrounded from all sides with no resources.
Forward to the 20th century and oil was discovered in these deserts. And again, its location in the middle of every major power to ever exist and the ease in which anyone can invade into the middle east made it a target for everyone.
Thats why the middle east is in chaos today. And anyone who read anything about geopolitics and the geographic factors would easily understand this.
Europe didn't rise because it had white people or Christians or whatever. It rose because its geography guaranteed all the elements required for growth.
Put Indians or Sub-Saharan Africans or anyone in the same geographic layout as Europe and they'll have pretty much the exact advancements and growth and probably even culture.

Religion is not a factor at all in how civilizations rise and fall. Because religion is in its entirety a reflection of the environment of the society in which it grows in it.
And anyone assuming religion is a factor is someone who doesn't understand what he's talking about. Religion is one of the results of civilizations and its development, not one of the causes. And a single look at either Islam or Christianity would show many sects, each shaped by the society its in, and each society if one wants to trace things back enough, is shaped by the environment its in.


For Iran, again, most Persian empires to exist were Islamic. The reason Iranian empires didn't conquer the world like the first empire is simple. There were other empires at play this time.
The first Persian empire reached its peak not because we Persians are super humans or something, but because the Assyrian empire was decimated by both the Medians and Babylonians along side various nomadic invasions that devastated its armies. a handful of decades after it fell apart, we rose to power because everyone else was so drained from facing the devastating might of the Assyrian force that they were all easy picks for conquering.

[SolarCross]

From this we can conclude that not all other things are equal. Also, your implicit assumption that all societies progress in the same way is wrong.

Indeed and religion is one of the unequal factors. Islam is not equal to Christianity or Buddhism or Shinto. I am not assuming societies progress the same way, another strawman of yours, indeed some don't advance at all.

Yes. Can you think of any disadvantages that come from this? I will give you two hints: rats, and bottlenecks.

Europe was hit by the plague as well. Asia has had its fair share of deadly epidemics too. Disease outbreaks are not the cause of the MEs problems. You could make a fair case that the Native Americans were wrecked by old world germs but if anything those germs originated in the ME as it was the first region to civilise. Cities + trade routes = disease and disease spread.

Bottlenecks are an advantage, it means tolls and taxing trade that isn't even anything to do with you. Before sea routes were found around the ME Chinese silk had to pass through the hands of ME merchants and ME tax collectors before arriving in Europe. European consumption subsidised the middle east. The motivation for finding routes around the ME such as the perilous horn of Africa and Columbus's travels that unveiled the americas to europeans was in no small measure driven by the need to avoid Islamic shakedown artists. If Islamists weren't such massive arsesoles, Europe may not have discovered the americas until much later.

[anasawad]

Actually the silk road main customers were Persians then Turks. And the main exporters were the Chinese, mainly exporting silk. i.e why its called the silk road.
Europeans would only show up on the scene in the late 15th and early 16th century. Pretty much around the same time the silk road was dying out due to the fact that the Islamic empires had established naval trade routes all across the Indian ocean (which the Europeans used to build their empires) that connected all the major civilizations in Asia, middle east, east and south Africa.

There were some ocean trade routes before that, but the network of trade routes which connected everyone and set the stage for the modern world to rise and colonial empires used to expand was established by the Muslim empires.

[noir]

There are no easy solutions. A reconquista probably couldn't be just a cultural or metaphorical conquest, inevitably there will have to be some actual physical re-conquering too.

Will it make difference?

[SolarCross]

Will it make difference?

Maybe, Merkel would have gone sooner or later anyway, it depends on what kind of people will replace her. It could just turn out to be more of the same.

[noir]

It won't be easy. It's decades long of brainwashing. In the West it started in the late 60's but Germany Islamophile attitude started even before, during the Third Reich. The 2015 crisis was just a tipping point.

The guy who confronts the Islamophilic Antifa (chanting Nazis Raus) is the journalist Michael Stürzenberger who recently sentenced to six months in jail for posting on his Facebook page a historical photo of the Arab (Palestinian) Nazi alliance. It was all known before German 68' student revolution. But they succeeded to reframe this German Islamic alliance in fashionable liberal language. Today they keep the pro Arab and Islamic lie by draconian censorship reguation.

Meanwhile, the district court in Munich recently sentenced a German journalist, Michael Stürzenberger, to six months in jail for posting on his Facebook page a historical photo of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, shaking the hand of a senior Nazi official in Berlin in 1941. The prosecution accused Stürzenberger of "inciting hatred towards Islam" and "denigrating Islam" by publishing the photograph. The court found Stürzenberger guilty of "disseminating the propaganda of anti-constitutional organizations". While the mutual admiration that once existed between al-Husseini and German Nazis is an undisputed historical fact, now evidently history is being rewritten by German courts. Stürzenberger has appealed the verdict.

Germany has made no secret of its desire to see its new law copied by the rest of the EU, which already has a similar code of conduct for social media giants. The EU Justice Commissioner, Vera Jourova, recently said she might be willing to legislate in the future if the voluntary code of conduct does not produce the desired results. She said, however, that the voluntary code was working "relatively" well, with Facebook removing 66.5% of the material they had been notified was "hateful" between December and May this year. Twitter removed 37.4%, and YouTube took action on 66% of the notifications from users.

[SolarCross]

The guy who confronts the Islamophilic Antifa (chanting Nazis Raus) is the journalist Michael Stürzenberger who recently sentenced to six months in jail for posting on his Facebook page a historical photo of the Arab (Palestinian) Nazi alliance.

Yeah that is really just a terrible outrage what they did to that man. It speaks volumes of what kind of people they are, vile just vile.

[noir]

Since the late 60's the German liberal elite found a perfect way to live with their guilt; to revert history. The Arab (Palestinians) are the just victims and the Jews (Israelis) are the Nazis. It worked for 50 years, but Karma is a bitch.

No doubt the Antifa in the vid truly believe that importing Muslims (most of whom are de facto Fascists) is anti Fascist righteous thing to do. They were so brainwashed.

It will be hard to remove it. Europe is probably lost.

[Reichstraten]

It will be hard to remove it.

Is this an euphemism for deporting muslims en masse?
There is a civilized way: restrict immigration, make clear to the muslims who are here and all other newcomers what our values are, that they have to integrate, speak the language of their (new) homeland, restrict social benefits, press them to contribute to society, etc. etc.

[noir]

No deportation. As @SolarCross wrote

There are no easy solutions. A reconquista probably couldn't be just a cultural or metaphorical conquest, inevitably there will have to be some actual physical re-conquering too.

The task is to see the Muslims as they are and not as post 68 student movement (68er-Bewegung) propaganda. This propaganda had great psychological meaning, it basically helped them to relief guilt

[Reichstraten]

No deportation.

Please be specific. What does 'physical re-conquering' actually mean?
I don't buy into this veiling euphemistic language you use here.
If you keep evading this issue, I might start thinking you got no real solution at all.

[noir]

Indeed there is no solution.

[SolarCross]

Please be specific. What does 'physical re-conquering' actually mean?
I don't buy into this veiling euphemistic language you use here.
If you keep evading this issue, I might start thinking you got no real solution at all.

No one is being euphemistic. What I mean by physical re-conqouring, could be deportation on the one hand up to a military scale engagement, like for example the French lead intervention in Mali against Boko Haram. If enough muslims have a presence in Europe then we will see likelyhood of organisation like Boko Haram, Hamas or Muslim Brotherhood take over those areas and do exactly what they do anywhere else they have a significant muslim base, wage war on the infidel. That isn't something you can tackle with hugs and kisses, or cardboard protest signs. Not even civilian cops en masse are enough, only a military response will be adequate.

You may say it can never happen here, Europe is special, that sort of thing just happens in terrible foreign places like Mali or Israel but no, it can and no we are not special. What they do in Mali and Israel and elsewhere they can do in Europe if they have the numbers.