quadtard wrote:
Throught the middle ages and afterwards, the arab world was in decline, and still in some ways are a backwards (from our perspective) group of people. They lagged (and still do) behind western powers in civil liberties and the like, because theyre religion, the central driving force in many of their lives, told them to be passive and accept authority. Such beleifs alowed leaders to take advantage of them, rule their lives with little fear of opposition.
I agree with hating the submission aspect of Islam (and all religion, fuck you god, you have no right to exist), but I had to address this because it's stupid. It's only in the last century and a half that the middle-eastern Muslim world has been in "decline" as you put it. They were generally on par with European powers in the Middle Ages, as evidenced by the constant back-and-forth of the Crusades and other such territorial disputes rather than the dominance of one side. The Ottoman Empire, which kicked into overdrive around the 1400s, not only invaded plenty of Southeastern Europe, they were also decades if not centuries ahead in terms of civil liberties and general tolerance of different faiths. When Europe was expelling/killing Jews, the Ottoman Turks were like "hey, come here, all we do is make you pay a tax to live peacefully and we'll waive it if you're an upstanding citizen."
So yeah. Islam is idiotic because it's a religion, but claiming that the Middle East has constantly been in Europe's shadow as a result is totally bogus and also I hate you.
More relevantly, I hate threads that start off being about one thing and devolve into another.
I also hate Call of Duty and all its drooling fanboys.
Also, Mayo, it's fucking called soda.
I was reffering mainly to the arab world, not the turks who arent a different ethnic group altogether. Just didnt think to put it in there.