Governmental Prayer

[BarakzaiAbdali]

This is a rather inaccurate comparison, don't you think? I mean, is America ruled by an authoritarian Christian priest (yes I know secular dictators exist too)? Tell me, does America structure its economic policies based on Christianity? Do you see American Christians giving other groups ultimatums like convert, pay a special tax, leave your own lands, or die?

Your contention that "One of their favorite canards is to point to the West of the modern era (forgetting that empires rise and fall all across history)" is just vacuous. I don't know about you but when I read historical texts (especially economic history) these days, historians make genuine attempts at causal -in economic and scientific terms- explanations for the flows of history: history, at least in retrospect, is not as arbitrary as you want it to be to prop up this non-argument, Im afraid, especially modern history.
For example, the Turkish-American professor of Economics at Duke University, Timur Kuran, has made a case that one large causal factor in the stagnation of the Islamic world has indeed been Islam in that its legal system has retarded and continues to retard the development of modern economic structures (he himself insists that Islam in and of itself is not a problem but the problem is what he calls problems are in fact orthodox interpretations).
http://www.amazon.com/The-Long-Diver...ds=timur+kuran
http://www.amazon.com/Islam-Mammon-E...mism+economics

I can't make an attempt to summarize all of this book (have a read of the reviews tough) in part because it was pretty complex material (and alas, easily forgotten) and one that I read some time ago but the basic over-arching theme is that "Islamic Economics", like communism, is not based fundamentally on economic problem-solving but a moral and cultural ideology. To give you the most obvious example: it is trivial to demonstrate that the use of interest leads to greater productive and allocative efficiency (and the latter does mean that the argument that it does more harm than good is false in an economic sense) in an economy. Moreover, virtually all methods of combating recessions and inflation via government (fiscal policy) and central bank (monetary policy) intervention as used everywhere except I think in some parts of the Islamic fundamentalist and communist world involves some form of the manipulation of interest rates or interest loaning like government bonds (see chapter 27: The Basic Tools of Finance, chapter 30: Money, Growth and Inflation and chapter 34: The Influence of Monetary and Fiscal Policy on Aggregate Demand in "Principles of Economics" by Mankiw, a very popular undergrad Economics text). This is why the rest of the market economy world, whether it is the West, East Asia, India, South-East Asia, Africa or the American continent use interest. In fact, as Timur Kuran explains, "Islamic Banks" are often just a ruse: most of them typically invent ridiculous meandering ways to use interest without calling it interest (unsurprisingly, it turns out that it is absurdly difficult for banks to break-even much less make a profit without using interest). Even the bloody Salafis have picked up on this.
http://islamqa.info/en/47651

So BarakzaiAbdali, the rest of the world "imitates" much of the west because western forms and structures, with the main exception of foreign policy unfortunately, is driven by scientific and economic problem solving and not ideology like Islam and communism. You can peddle this completely vacuous argument that empires rise and fall all you want but there is a burden of proof that you have to abide by, which means you must make an evidence-based case for why your ideology in the form of social, economic and political policy leads to say better social and political freedoms, economic growth etc just as the "secular militants" have to. There was a time when perhaps most human beings believed in flat-earth, tell me, did that make it any more factual than it is now? What if I were to suggest that rudimentary forms of social organization come and go and that it is feasible for hunter-gathering (believe it or not, this is still practiced by some peoples in South America and Africa) to make a come-back as a significant form of human social organization? Does that sound sensible to you? Well that is what the idea that a 7th century form of social organization, and yes the Salafis for example explicitly seem to aim for that goal, will return as a dominant one sounds like to me. Is that what you are suggesting here? Please clarify.

Nevertheless, I don't dispute that majority rule is the only long-run stable form of political arrangement and totalitarian rule is never going to work if it does not align with the interests of the population, be it secular or religious, as we witness right now in Iraq and Syria. This is why I also believe balkanization will be the best thing for the Muslim world: you see the more the Muslim world becomes inter-dependent, the greater the risk of inter-dependent stagnation. Instead, let the Muslim world break into more and more pieces, preferably ethnic pieces, let each nation develop its own political culture however its population desires, and let the most "fit" nations in the environment of the modern world rise in that Darwinian game. At least then there would be some winners, I think. But Im 99.9% certain that a 7th century jihadist caliphate will make losers of all its participants. Oh well, it will be the Arab worlds loss if it happens.

In summary my point above is not to attack Western Secularism but rather to point out that in our world there are left wing militants for every right one nutcase. Both are detrimental to our advances. Just as we point out how the right wing zealot departs from both his scripture and practice and we hold him to some faith based standard, I think its easy to show that the same phenomena exists for the secular militant. I thought my reference to Tor Khan's reasonable position would clarify that. Another example of this paradigm might be the Qutb versus Nasir or Qaddafi versus Belhaj/Omar Mukhtaar model that raged across the Arab world a few decades back. Or the two sides of the coin (one side being Omar the other being Najib). I hope this clarifies.

[Herat]

The nidus government that would eventually pave the way for the settlement of America was exactly that - a Christian theocracy that was permitted to evolve on its own.

Nathaniel Hawthorne would spend most of his career "apologizing" for the actions of the Mullah Omar equivalent of the day, his grandfather, John Hawthorne. Hawthorne ran the Massachussetts Bay Colony, the precursor to what would establish the foundations of the City Boston, with an iron theocratic fist:

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/...tts-Bay-Colony

Quote:

The Puritans established a theocratic government with the franchise limited to church members.

Hawthorne would preside over the Biblical implementation of the punishment for witches, burning hundreds of women alive.

Puritan rule would go on to enforce things that many might feel ring a familiar bell to the edicts of mullahs of recent Afghan lore.

For instance, Jon Stewart cited this article and noted that "Mullah" Increase Mathers banned Christmas by law and penalties were in place for celebrating it. Stewart, on his Daily Show cited a capital punishment, whereas this article cites the fine:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/op...s.html?hp&_r=1&

This same colony would be left alone without outside or crown interventionalism to kill their women, whip their men, kill the surrounding natives etc and so on and so forth. Eventually in a generation or two these folks realized what they were doing was not conducive to productive living and advancement of society.

In fact, why Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter and other books was as an apology for the harsh and radical actions of his puritan supreme mullah ancestor.

The issue here is that no time was permitted for an Afghan Hawthorne to rise even though we know from our own personal experiences, all of us, of family members that went against convention when it didn't involve occupying troops or a fair skinned man with an M16 trying to enforce change through the barrel of a gun.

In essence, US/NATO and their Afghan collaborators have stalled the coming of our own Hawthornes and instead turned the clock back and radicalized even the Taliban beyond belief. We see the same phenomena with the existence of ISIS which even other insurgents find to be far too right wing.

This is how America was allowed to develop... on its own time (400 or so years from first colonials) with its own civil wars and its own subsequent development of minority men rights first ---> and then early last century finally the right of women to vote ---> and then just 30 years ago the enforcement of the right to vote. It was a gradual evolution that its own people catalyzed... not some secular militant bootlicker beholden to the French or some outside power.

Oh I certainly don't dispute the historical existence of the Christian theocracy, in fact the most enlightening piece of literature on religion that Ive ever read by David Sloan Wilson singled out Calvinism in Geneva at length, turns out that it was significantly more extreme -and not coincidentally even more effective as a stabilizing force- than the modern day Taliban, which it incidentally reminded me of since they came to power under a similarly unstable environment. I misunderstood, I thought you were attempting to compare modern day Christian America to some modern day Islamic states. And I certainly don't endorse the unnecessary and aggressive secularism of those atheist groups in America, I think American Christianity is fine the way it is (tough Ive never experienced it).

I would beg to differ. Crucial moments in history and even simple tactics (e.g. Alexander's father's phalanx) or major events (European empires colliding in WWI and WWII permitting a new power across the Atlantic to rise in the background -USA) are clearly temporal events. Heck, even Wilsonian interventionalism and doctrines would be what would spark the ire of a young German who would go on to rebuild the broken German empire and lead to the aforementioned events. In my own study of Zeitgeist, that particular socialist party was as essential to German rising prowess as that scientific prowess was to their warlike advances.

Or for that matter the examples of Heracles and Khosraw colliding and smashing each others empires such that the way would open up for a desert empire to take both down in short time. Or even before that, Alexander's own TEMPORAL death leading to his inability to conclude or even begin an Arabia Felix expedition that would probably have altered histories arc in massive ways.

Yes there certainly seems to be some intrinsic uncertainty to historical development, I don't disagree, but I also think there are also some general and lasting patterns that have obvious causal basis: in social organization, to give you the most salient example. Agriculture simply replaced hunter-gathering, and I don't think that could have been reversed (or at least it just wasn't likely), i.e. a sort of historical "break-through" happened, because it was the far more economically productive and efficient form of social organization, in fact, it was only agriculture that made possible "states". Hunter-gathering peoples just can't sustain large populations with their way of life, their Malthusian population-ceiling is inherently and very significantly below that of the agricultural peoples, whose way of life simply allows more food production by a vast margin. And my view is that the "modern" world has also brought about just such a significant change in social organization: scientific and technological development has fundamentally changed the name of the game vis-a-vis both within nations and between nations; tiny Israel has beaten the Arabs again and again for that reason. Technologically advanced nations will simply out-compete other nations but to sustainably generate technological prowess you need human capital and you need social institutions that are conducive to it: many Sub-Saharan African states are very rich in natural resources yet they are backward, magically throw in the Japanese exactly as they currently are into those states and I think they will do far better than Sub-Saharan Africans, why? I don't believe there is any difference in inherent ability between Japanese and Africans as populations but I don't subscribe to the view that all cultures and ways of life -which generate different social institutions and seem to respond differently to human-capital stimulus (e.g. some cultures are simply more intellectually oriented than others)- are identically adapted to any given goal either. Now this is where the issue with Islam comes in: Turkey is a Muslim majority nation and Saudi Arabia is a majority Muslim nation yet, ceteris paribus, if we were to throw them into identical nations, which one do you think would be the one more likely to develop as a modern country? So I also think it depends on what you mean by Islam, whether it is Islam as practiced by Turks in Turkey or perhaps by Saudis in Saudi.

Islamic sales and interactions are far removed from communism. There is certainly no demand that the wealthy liquidate their businesses or that competition be inhibited. There are good faith hadithic measures that are promoted that we even see in action in Western nations today... for instance the concept of a buyer being able to return goods not up to the par though frowned upon in Afghanistan and Pakistan is actually a documented business recommendation of the Prophet.

Additionally, the tithe concept is really not all too different from what Catholic centric nations practice.

Indeed Islam is not as bad as communism, however, it also shares with it a general problem, which seems to be dogmatism. The uniqueness of man, virtue of his intelligence, as compared to the other animals is this: he has the ability to solve novel problems presented by different environments. Other animals go extinct in novel environments. It seems to me that economic policy by nature needs to be fluid in addressing a complex and constantly changing economic environment hence the need for economics to be as "problem-solving" oriented, and therefore as scientific as opposed to dogmatic, as possible. Here is where the real issue appears to be in my opinion: to what extent does Islam allow such fluidity? Certainly more than communism I agree but again I personally think economic policy is better left to the consensus of the economists, who ought to be practicing the field as scientists.

Ron Paul and Austrian economic theory would whole heartedly disagree with you and say that this very concept is the root cause of the rapid rise and fall empire process that the USA is undergoing. Inflating and deflating the value of a paper currency not anchored in a tangible and rare commodity is basically a "faith based" economy ironically. In fact, were it such a guaranteed path to economic sustainability and victory, I would venture to say two Presidents would not have had to coerce the Congress on our side of the Pond into passing TARP funds off the back of the hard working American people to bail out the very institutions that abide by such prescriptions.

So rather, I would say Islam is more harmonious with stability and not the boom and bust cycle that pretty much guarantees a people are in perpetual imposed debt and servitude to a government (once again refer to TARP).

General fan of his foreign policy but never heard of his stance on economics, Ill check it out but I have not read much into the Austrian school, ok well there was this one time I read an introductory popular economics book that claimed it was using that approach, I stopped reading after they tried to use formal logic and "axioms" to "derive" economic theory, it seemed that "Austrian economics" was more of a mathematical-philosophical theory than an empirical-scientific-mathematical approach and I just found out that is outside mainstream economics (a minority view among economists). I haven't read too much into Economics but in Mankiws economics text, the cause of the great depression, or at least its persistence, is significantly ascribed to the gold-standard system that most states used back then: because money was backed up by gold, monetary policy was fundamentally constrained and there was no way to use it to stimulate the economy (you print more money into your own economy, once it gets into circulation, aggregate demand rises); most western states abandoned it and the ones that did it earlier typically recovered quicker. Fluidity of the fiat-money system is once again its advantage: the most ideal amount of money that should be circulating in your economy should be the amount that the population demands for it (yes there is indeed a "demand" for money that can be indirectly determined, this is the quantity theory of money that most economists do subscribe to today), if demand increases, you increase the supply, if demand decreases, you decrease the supply, using fiat-money allows significantly more rapid adjustments in the supply of money, i.e. it allows you the benefit of monetary policy. That is the ideal, at least. Tough you are right that the fiat-system can easily lend itself to catastrophes: the historic hyper-inflation in the Weimar Republic was caused by Germany suspending its gold-convertibility to print money to pay for WWI. But in any case, the use of interest and the gold/silver standard vs the fiat system are two different things, is Ron Paul seriously in favour of abolishing the use of interest? Ill check out his economic stance anyways.

I would say Glass-Stiegel and its repeal show its far more complex than just that my friend.

You are right, it is far more complex but that is precisely why you need be allowed policy fluidity.

You misunderstood me. This was not my argument. Rather, kudos to you by standing by and understanding your very own set of arguments and at least being consistent. That is my issue with secular militants, a group which you do not appear to belong to. Why I called secular militancy a phenomena is that they have a supposed set of ideals and morals that they are willing to break with when it comes to their personal views on what to expunge and what to ban. So for instance, Badlun indicates his childhood and experiences with Islam have been what radicalized him to pull Najibullah style maneuvers and actually implement unrealistic and perhaps detrimental bans on the mores and practices of Afghans instead of permitting cultural and social evolution to occur.

So on the one hand he refers to the West and America as the ideal... something I am not against him doing. Yet on the other hand, when American practice diverges from what he "feels" is right or wrong he is willing to ignore the action of that very same paragon of governance that is showing him that you cannot expunge a people's mores, ideologies, and traditions by force.

Ok, to make it clear, I have said it before and I will say it again, I don't subscribe to totalitarian forms of social engineering, especially ones that involve attempts to significantly change historically ingrained cultural norms. It never works, in fact, just the opposite (leads to radicalization), Badlun unfortunately seems to be too stubborn on that.

No, I think you will make out per above that I think self governance in accordance with the mores, ideologies, and practices of the masses is preferable to permit social evolution. Take for instance the example of Iran. With outside interventionalism (removing Mossadegh the democratically elected leader in the 1950s) Iran radicalized under the brutal Shah and Khomenei ruled in the 1980s. The USA triggering Iraq to attack Iran further radicalized and galvanized the populace. Once left alone, the Iranians started to veer leftward and elected Khatami (far more moderate) but when Bush started poking the beehive again the Iranians elected hardliners yet again. Outside interventionalism is not merely the presence of boots on the ground of a foreign power but also their mercenary former natives (e.g. Karzai) who think that they are "advancing their little brown brothers"

I can't argue against that.

In summary my point above is not to attack Western Secularism but rather to point out that in our world there are left wing militants for every right one nutcase. Both are detrimental to our advances. Just as we point out how the right wing zealot departs from both his scripture and practice and we hold him to some faith based standard, I think its easy to show that the same phenomena exists for the secular militant. I thought my reference to Tor Khan's reasonable position would clarify that. Another example of this paradigm might be the Qutb versus Nasir or Qaddafi versus Belhaj/Omar Mukhtaar model that raged across the Arab world a few decades back. Or the two sides of the coin (one side being Omar the other being Najib). I hope this clarifies.

You are right, I did misunderstand you, should have known better. Unfortunately, I started watching the ISIS propaganda videos, particularly disturbing ones, a few days ago and seem to have been overcome by an anti-Islam rampage, I am not this "Islamophobic" if you will. Apologies for the aggressive initial tone.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Oh I certainly don't dispute the historical existence of the Christian theocracy, in fact the most enlightening piece of literature on religion that Ive ever read by David Sloan Wilson singled out Calvinism in Geneva at length, turns out that it was significantly more extreme -and not coincidentally even more effective as a stabilizing force- than the modern day Taliban, which it incidentally reminded me of since they came to power under a similarly unstable environment. I misunderstood, I thought you were attempting to compare modern day Christian America to some modern day Islamic states. And I certainly don't endorse the unnecessary and aggressive secularism of those atheist groups in America, I think American Christianity is fine the way it is (tough Ive never experienced it).



Yes there certainly seems to be some intrinsic uncertainty to historical development, I don't disagree, but I also think there are also some general and lasting patterns that have obvious causal basis: in social organization, to give you the most salient example. Agriculture simply replaced hunter-gathering, and I don't think that could have been reversed (or at least it just wasn't likely), i.e. a sort of historical "break-through" happened, because it was the far more economically productive and efficient form of social organization, in fact, it was only agriculture that made possible "states". Hunter-gathering peoples just can't sustain large populations with their way of life, their Malthusian population-ceiling is inherently and very significantly below that of the agricultural peoples, whose way of life simply allows more food production by a vast margin. And my view is that the "modern" world has also brought about just such a significant change in social organization: scientific and technological development has fundamentally changed the name of the game vis-a-vis both within nations and between nations; tiny Israel has beaten the Arabs again and again for that reason. Technologically advanced nations will simply out-compete other nations but to sustainably generate technological prowess you need human capital and you need social institutions that are conducive to it: many Sub-Saharan African states are very rich in natural resources yet they are backward, magically throw in the Japanese exactly as they currently are into those states and I think they will do far better than Sub-Saharan Africans, why? I don't believe there is any difference in inherent ability between Japanese and Africans as populations but I don't subscribe to the view that all cultures and ways of life -which generate different social institutions and seem to respond differently to human-capital stimulus (e.g. some cultures are simply more intellectually oriented than others)- are identically adapted to any given goal either. Now this is where the issue with Islam comes in: Turkey is a Muslim majority nation and Saudi Arabia is a majority Muslim nation yet, ceteris paribus, if we were to throw them into identical nations, which one do you think would be the one more likely to develop as a modern country? So I also think it depends on what you mean by Islam, whether it is Islam as practiced by Turks in Turkey or perhaps by Saudis in Saudi.


Indeed Islam is not as bad as communism, however, it also shares with it a general problem, which seems to be dogmatism. The uniqueness of man, virtue of his intelligence, as compared to the other animals is this: he has the ability to solve novel problems presented by different environments. Other animals go extinct in novel environments. It seems to me that economic policy by nature needs to be fluid in addressing a complex and constantly changing economic environment hence the need for economics to be as "problem-solving" oriented, and therefore as scientific as opposed to dogmatic, as possible. Here is where the real issue appears to be in my opinion: to what extent does Islam allow such fluidity? Certainly more than communism I agree but again I personally think economic policy is better left to the consensus of the economists, who ought to be practicing the field as scientists.


General fan of his foreign policy but never heard of his stance on economics, Ill check it out but I have not read much into the Austrian school, ok well there was this one time I read an introductory popular economics book that claimed it was using that approach, I stopped reading after they tried to use formal logic and "axioms" to "derive" economic theory, it seemed that "Austrian economics" was more of a mathematical-philosophical theory than an empirical-scientific-mathematical approach and I just found out that is outside mainstream economics (a minority view among economists). I haven't read too much into Economics but in Mankiws economics text, the cause of the great depression, or at least its persistence, is significantly ascribed to the gold-standard system that most states used back then: because money was backed up by gold, monetary policy was fundamentally constrained and there was no way to use it to stimulate the economy (you print more money into your own economy, once it gets into circulation, aggregate demand rises); most western states abandoned it and the ones that did it earlier typically recovered quicker. Fluidity of the fiat-money system is once again its advantage: the most ideal amount of money that should be circulating in your economy should be the amount that the population demands for it (yes there is indeed a "demand" for money that can be indirectly determined, this is the quantity theory of money that most economists do subscribe to today), if demand increases, you increase the supply, if demand decreases, you decrease the supply, using fiat-money allows significantly more rapid adjustments in the supply of money, i.e. it allows you the benefit of monetary policy. That is the ideal, at least. Tough you are right that the fiat-system can easily lend itself to catastrophes: the historic hyper-inflation in the Weimar Republic was caused by Germany suspending its gold-convertibility to print money to pay for WWI. But in any case, the use of interest and the gold/silver standard vs the fiat system are two different things, is Ron Paul seriously in favour of abolishing the use of interest? Ill check out his economic stance anyways.


You are right, it is far more complex but that is precisely why you need be allowed policy fluidity.


Ok, to make it clear, I have said it before and I will say it again, I don't subscribe to totalitarian forms of social engineering, especially ones that involve attempts to significantly change historically ingrained cultural norms. It never works, in fact, just the opposite (leads to radicalization), Badlun unfortunately seems to be too stubborn on that.



I can't argue against that.




You are right, I did misunderstand you, should have known better. Unfortunately, I started watching the ISIS propaganda videos, particularly disturbing ones, a few days ago and seem to have been overcome by an anti-Islam rampage, I am not this "Islamophobic" if you will. Apologies for the aggressive initial tone.

Oh no problem compadre, it allowed me to actually differentiate and delineate what I meant.

I think it is important and high time to have that discussion the Muslim world and some of its Western champions have been avoiding for decades.

I call it the "whodunnit" argument.

Or the Habib Bourguiba versus Omar Mukhtaar argument.

This tete a tete between militant secularists and militant religionists can be symbolized by these two men (obviously they are from different nations but the point still stands).

Both sides swear and point that the other side is a collaborator with the outside imperials.

But in my estimation, only one side truly is in touch with the native sentiment and culture and that is the Omar Mukhtaar side.

All kinds of ridiculous conspiracy theories are then invented to somehow make it seem like the Bourguibaists or modern militant secularist (e.g. Najibiites in our areas) are native enlightened anti British leaders with the notion that the indigenous side takes its marching orders from Langley.

One needs to highlight that for every ISIS there is and was a Haffez Assad... for every UBL there was a Nasser... for every Najib there is an Omar. This bipolarity is tearing apart the Muslim world.

Yet my thesis is that one side is more of a transplant and far less in line with indigenous mores than the other and that each side radicalizes the other into perpetuity.

This thread is to highlight that near religion level zealotry exhibited by the side less spoken of.

[Badlun]

[MENTION=1772]BarakzaiAbdali[/MENTION]

I have explained it to you hundreds of times that I am not a militant secularist or a communist. Neither I am an atheist nor an anarchist nor nihilist. I am simply for separation of Church and the state everywhere in Afghanistan, USA or elsewhere. This is called secularism. I want secularism through democracy, market economy, renaissance, reformation, modern education, science, philosophy, media not through war or violence or terrorism.

I want separation of pulpit(mosque) and throne(parliament). I want Mullah for mosque and politician for the government. Economist for the economy and Mullah for the religious rituals.

religious prayers are for individual or collective prayers in worship places not for offices. This is my simple stand for all religious prayers whether Islamic or Christian or Hindu, in minority or majority, everywhere. If you have any objection to my this approach then we can discuss it but just labeling me militant secularist have no meaning in this discussion.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

@BarakzaiAbdali

I have explained it to you hundreds of times that I am not a militant secularist or a communist. Neither I am an atheist nor an anarchist nor nihilist. I am simply for separation of Church and the state everywhere in Afghanistan, USA or elsewhere. This is called secularism. I want secularism through democracy, market economy, renaissance, reformation, modern education, science, philosophy, media not through war or violence or terrorism.

I want separation of pulpit(mosque) and throne(parliament). I want Mullah for mosque and politician for the government. Economist for the economy and Mullah for the religious rituals.

religious prayers are for individual or collective prayers in worship places not for offices. This is my simple stand for all religious prayers whether Islamic or Christian or Hindu, in minority or majority, everywhere. If you have any objection to my this approach then we can discuss it but just labeling me militant secularist have no meaning in this discussion.

That stance though is a militant secularist stance my friend. That is my whole point. Your own prior essay about the US being the panacea and ideal betrays that point. As I stated, one cannot ignore the accomplishments of the US in walking the balancing act and evolving from its puritan roots yet being the most religious Western nation. Its tapestry of southern and northern states and involvement of religious groups in influencing its democracy is paramount to understanding its stability and evolution as a power (and some of its good and bad decisions in history). Yet as we note above, your militant secularist approach is to simply dismiss this and assume this crucial aspect of its governance and development that make it unique even amongst European colonial offspring is simply ignorable.

I think there is more robust evidence that you are a militant secularist per the references above and since you generated reasoning to, for instance, back the State Department instigated violent coup in Egypt that overturned the democratically elected government. Or for instance your view that various religious parties in the Muslim world participating in the democracies should be banned wholesale without considering their genesis and role in the society in channeling the view of a large swathe of people away from violence and toward the ballot box. Then of course, there is also the backing for Najibullah, who was the King of militant secularism (or its prophet).

Its not an insult my friend, its merely a descriptor that allows us to have a valid discussion about the bipolarity of the Muslim world to show why such approaches are bound to fail and are unhealthy in progressive evolution of a society.

As another example I will provide (despite my own antipathy to Tabligh) we can see that you may not directly promote violence, but you know full well that your actions and labeling of organizations would spawn violence (hence militant secularism):

Tableeghi Jumat thus should be declared a promoter of Terrorism

http://www.pashtunforums.com/showthread.php?t=34988

For instance that move above and these other sorts of subversive approaches are destined to radicalize rather than permit peaceful evolution of thought across a longer time.

Additionally as we showed your original point regarding what would happen was proven wrong as we showed with the Supreme Court outcome and the peaceful resolution of this issue in the US permitting such invocations. Islamic militants and secular militants always pose such untenable or strange theoretical outcomes should a fair and balanced approach be taken to deciding or sorting out a matter... and usually they have no or little evidence to back that.

[Badlun]

That stance though is a militant secularist stance my friend. That is my whole point. Your own prior essay about the US being the panacea and ideal betrays that point. As I stated, one cannot ignore the accomplishments of the US in walking the balancing act and evolving from its puritan roots yet being the most religious Western nation. Its tapestry of southern and northern states and involvement of religious groups in influencing its democracy is paramount to understanding its stability and evolution as a power (and some of its good and bad decisions in history). Yet as we note above, your militant secularist approach is to simply dismiss this and assume this crucial aspect of its governance and development that make it unique even amongst European colonial offspring is simply ignorable.

I think there is more robust evidence that you are a militant secularist per the references above and since you generated reasoning to, for instance, back the State Department instigated violent coup in Egypt that overturned the democratically elected government. Or for instance your view that various religious parties in the Muslim world participating in the democracies should be banned wholesale without considering their genesis and role in the society in channeling the view of a large swathe of people away from violence and toward the ballot box. Then of course, there is also the backing for Najibullah, who was the King of militant secularism (or its prophet).

Its not an insult my friend, its merely a descriptor that allows us to have a valid discussion about the bipolarity of the Muslim world to show why such approaches are bound to fail and are unhealthy in progressive evolution of a society.

As another example I will provide (despite my own antipathy to Tabligh) we can see that you may not directly promote violence, but you know full well that your actions and labeling of organizations would spawn violence (hence militant secularism):



http://www.pashtunforums.com/showthread.php?t=34988

For instance that move above and these other sorts of subversive approaches are destined to radicalize rather than permit peaceful evolution of thought across a longer time.

Additionally as we showed your original point regarding what would happen was proven wrong as we showed with the Supreme Court outcome and the peaceful resolution of this issue in the US permitting such invocations. Islamic militants and secular militants always pose such untenable or strange theoretical outcomes should a fair and balanced approach be taken to deciding or sorting out a matter... and usually they have no or little evidence to back that.

Religiosity is one thing, religion another, Islamism another and theocracy something else. US society may be more religious than other societies but secularism is the law of the land. Religion is not mixed with politics. Priests or God or Pope is not ruler of the land and Bible is not the constitution of the country. This is why I say USA is panacea not poison as many Muslims think.

Najib as a president has many things to be appreciated. You can expect many bad things from the head of a secret intelligence agency or a communist but none of the blames on him are well documented. This is why he is my hero not as a communist but a Pashtun president of Afghanistan who trued his level best to save Afghanistan from the savages.

My ideology is western liberal democracy and secularism with religion for personal or family life so any one who is against my this ideology will be opposed by me by writing, speaking but never by sword or bullet. This does not make me militant secularist but just secularist. If by militancy you mean zeal and zest , then yes I am militant secularist but if militancy means violence or use of force then I am not.

Tableeghi Jamat is directly or indirectly promoting extremism and terrorism so they are my target group to oppose them ideologically but not with arms. I will not kill a Tableeghi but oppose him that his ideas and actions are against the benefits of Muslims and especially Pashtuns. We can discuss it further in the thread on Tablighi Jamat.

I really admire your talent, efforts and research. I do not have the same talent or the time to present my ideas with more substance but as it is a discussion forum not a research forum, I will always put forward my ideas and wishes for the betterment of Pashtuns and will learn and share it with you in good faith never never with bad blood.

My life is dedicated to Pashto, Pashtun and Pashtunwali. I hope to learn a lot from Pashtuns like you in my this journey. I understand that extremes on both sides are bad. Talib is one extreme and militant secularist another extreme. The middle way is religion for mosque and politics for the state.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Religiosity is one thing, religion another, Islamism another and theocracy something else. US society may be more religious than other societies but secularism is the law of the land.

This is an incomplete assessment. You are analyzing this in the current cross section of time. One of the key limitations on cross sectional studies in science generally is that they cannot study temporal (perhaps progressive) relationships between variables. The US is unique not in its current time point in history alone, but that its nidus governments were puritanical theocracies. The puritan ancestors of Hawthorne set up the basic colonies and had rules and dictums as I noted above that were rigid to the point of banning Christmas celebrations, punishing sins with capital punishment etc. (eg. burning women alive for supposedly being witches) But it took a century or more those people to evolve away from that and find moderation.

This approach of yours in confusing the data or offering incomparable time points or ignoring differences in societies across time is what I mean when I say that one could interpret your approach as militant secularist because you refuse to look at the history of a great super power in its totality.

Basically your approach is like taking a severely depressed and abused teenager (representing many third world nations) and saying to that teenager, "You should be smart like Obama, talk like Obama, act like Obama, dress like Obama etc" Every reasonable person will say "Badlun, Obama is the product of years of education, soul searching, development, maternal input, some luck, lots of hard work etc., you cannot just grab the teenager by the throat and make him by force dress like Obama and assume he is going to be the same product. Rather we can look at the history of troubled youth that went on to be great (e.g. Ben Carson) and educate the youth along the same temporal patterns and time lines within a reasonable trajectory.

Religion is not mixed with politics. Priests or God or Pope is not ruler of the land and Bible is not the constitution of the country. This is why I say USA is panacea not poison as many Muslims think.

Refer to my statement above. Read on the Massachussetts Bay Colony and other founder colonies in the North East that established the very foundations of the US and has in some ways left some residual religiosity in its societal mores. Cotton Mather and John Hawthorne were Supreme Religious leaders of their time that were theocrats practicing theocracy

Najib as a president has many things to be appreciated. You can expect many bad things from the head of a secret intelligence agency or a communist but none of the blames on him are well documented. This is why he is my hero not as a communist but a Pashtun president of Afghanistan who trued his level best to save Afghanistan from the savages.

Incorrect because of what he realized too late when he started to clothe his government in a veneer of Islamic legitimacy. He even realized that you cannot use brute force to "save Afghanistan from savages" because you will take moderate simple men and create more "savages" with such an approach. This is what I mean by noting that he was a militant secularist prophet.

My ideology is western liberal democracy and secularism with religion for personal or family life so any one who is against my this ideology will be opposed by me by writing, speaking but never by sword or bullet. This does not make me militant secularist but just secularist. If by militancy you mean zeal and zest , then yes I am militant secularist but if militancy means violence or use of force then I am not.

Yet once or twice you applauded the State Department backed coup in Egypt that subverted three successive democratic elections that propelled the Brotherhood into power and that bought out voters in excess to Al-Sisi. This was despite the fact that Sisi is an autocrat who has rolled back democracy even for secularists with excuses to justify his autocracy. Instead of permitting Morsi to fail or Egyptians to vote him out as Pakistanis and others have voted out religious parties that could not cut it, the excuse was used that Morsi was subverting democracy without an iota of proof. Many of us here may not agree with Brotherhood politics, but Egyptians had the right to reach their own conclusions but militant secularists internally and externally shed blood to subvert democracy.

Tableeghi Jamat is directly or indirectly promoting extremism and terrorism so they are my target group to oppose them ideologically but not with arms. I will not kill a Tableeghi but oppose him that his ideas and actions are against the benefits of Muslims and especially Pashtuns. We can discuss it further in the thread on Tablighi Jamat.

Yes but you favor laws passed by sitting governments that may be passed by outside recommendations or for internal reasons having nothing to do with democracy that illegalizes these groups that have large population followings. This in turn often leads to imprisonment, bloodshed, and murder of these people and the rise of militancy in these groups that resorted to the ballot box instead of the AK-47. Even in the US there is no official law banning a religious political party from existing... in fact evangelicals often view the republicans or the Tea Party as their Voice hence they dont favor starting their own party. Nothing however illegalizes the formation of a political evangelical party. Or take the Netherlands with the religious Calvinist parties called the Reformed Political Party and the Christian Union party... neither of these are ipso facto banned or punishable by prison for belonging to.

I really admire your talent, efforts and research. I do not have the same talent or the time to present my ideas with more substance but as it is a discussion forum not a research forum, I will always put forward my ideas and wishes for the betterment of Pashtuns and will learn and share it with you in good faith never never with bad blood.

My life is dedicated to Pashto, Pashtun and Pashtunwali. I hope to learn a lot from Pashtuns like you in my this journey. I understand that extremes on both sides are bad. Talib is one extreme and militant secularist another extreme. The middle way is religion for mosque and politics for the state.

I would say the middle way is complete autonomy first and then regional social development along their own lines of thinking whatever it may be, tribal vs religious vs fusion and then the eventual evolution of thought that accompanies such choices. The middle way is understanding that putting the seed in the ground does not result in the plant shooting out of the ground and the flower and fruit coming out in 5 minutes... no it takes the gardener effort, some setbacks in the face of weather damage sometimes, water, constancy, patience, sunlight, and time to grow the plant that will offshoot the flower that will produce fruit. Human societal evolution is not so different. Mosque and state and their combination is an unavoidable result of radicalization in the context of outside interventionalism and the response to it. Whatever emerges may have less or more tribalism or less or more democracy or less or more religion but it will be unique and the result of its own evolution.

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