"Mobs howled and roiled in the streets of Iuthagar. Here and there, houses burned. No government remained to control horror and anger." (p. 272)
That sounds like some events on Earth right now. We are in the Chaos before the emergence of Technic civilization - or before whatever is going to emerge in our timeline. The people of a region can take a hand in public affairs and surprise everyone - although, in the current case, it is a sectarian army that has come, apparently, out of nowhere. This post will seem dated if it is reread ten years hence.
We have not yet definitely diverged from the course of events that would lead to Technic civilization although we soon will do. Whenever the moment of divergence comes, the alternative history that would have led to van Rijn and Flandry will contain some of the same events and/or kinds of events that we are experiencing now: conflict and chaos.
9 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
We need to have no illusions about recent events in Syria. The terrorist gang most immediately responsible for the fall of the Assad regime, Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), led by Abu Mohammed al Gholani, is no better than the Baathists/Assads. It's not an improvement to have fanatical jihadists like HTS take over as the presumptive new masters in Damascus. Syrian Christians now live in fear of persecution from these thugs. One set of tyrants replaced by another set of despots.
Moreover, since HTS was backed, armed, and financed by the Erdogan dictatorship in Turkey, I strongly suspect that Erdogan, with his neo-Ottoman ambitions, has hopes of dominating Syria thru a client regime. Or even to directly annex Syria into a new Turkish empire. To say nothing of how it will be easier for him to crush the bothersome Kurds!
A few good things came from all these chaos: Iran has been seriously weakened because of how Israel has crushed its Hamas clients and severely weakened its Hezbullah goons in Lebanon. Tehran had been using Hezbullah troops to prop up the Assad dictatorship, meaning one reason it collapsed so rapidly was due to the smashing it got from Israel. To say nothing of how Israel's strikes on Iran badly weakened it militarily. Iran will no longer be able to use Syria as a conduit for shipping weapons to Hamas/Hezbullah. Lastly, Israel very well might strike at the Assad regime chemical weapons plants, to keep them from falling into HTS hands.
Also, the Syrian chaos is a sign of how weak Russia is now. Putin too had been propping up Assad. But the war with Ukraine has absorbed so much of Russia's resources and efforts that the Russian dictator could not adequately support his client in Damascus.
This is how I analyze recent events, mostly very bad.
Ad astra! Sean
It's significant that there are no Arab democracies -- Jordan is the closest thing they have, and it's not very close.
There are deep-cultural reasons for this.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And not just with Arabs, but also with the Turks and Persians. Erdogan has spent the years of his dictatorship in Turkey dismantling the "secularism" Kemal Ataturk tried to institutionalize there, re-Islamicizing Turkey.
A huge reason why democracy has such a hard time taking root in Muslim countries is because of Islam and its doctrinal teachings. Here I mean its belief in the divine authority of Sharia law and the ideal of a theocratic merging of mosque and state. To say nothing of how the Koran mandates an inferior status on all who refuse to be Muslims.
Islam also has nothing in its doctrinal sources like Matthew 22.15-22, where Christ declared we should give to God and Caesar what belongs to them separately. This has had huge consequences in Western political thought, setting limits on the powers and claims of the State. And a huge road block for any temptation to theocracy by Christians.
Merry Christmas! Sean
I have seem it noted that for the first time since Mohammed, the internet has made it possible for Muslims to read critiques of Islam. So there are a lot of quiet ex-Muslims in the countries that have been Muslim for centuries, and they may become less quiet as their numbers grow & become more evident.
This provides some hope for democracy in the currently Muslim world.
All religions change. Look at the different versions of Christianity.
Kaor, Jim and Paul!
Jim: I hope some Muslims will read critiques of Islam by sound and temperate scholars, such as his book ISLAM AND THE WEST. I read Dawood's translation of the Koran in the late 1980's, long before 9/11. After those terrorist attacks I started about Islam. One that was esp. impressive was Andrew McCarthy's THE GRAND JIHAD, which he wrote after prosecuting the "Blind Sheikh," the terrorist who plotted the first World Trade Center bombing. That cause McCarthy to do a detailed study of the history and theology of jihadism and the Muslim Brotherhood, the grandfather of all current jihadist groups. I also read Harry Austryn Wolfson's THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE KALAM, a study of how the early Muslims reacted to contact with Classical philosophy and Christian thought (very high brow and above my pay grade!). One other title I will cite is "Ibn Waraq's" WHY I AM NOT A MUSLIM. I hesitate to recommend this book because of the fury this ex-Muslim has for Islam.
I am aware of how the dar-al-Islaam has a large number of secret "apostates" from Islam, people who are either atheists or would like to convert to Christianity. But how influential can they be if they have to live in fear? The attempted murder of Salman Rushdie by a fanatical Muslim in the US itself in 2022 makes that fear all too realistic!
Paul: And those "changes" within Christianity will be true and valid only if they are a natural and organic development from orthodoxy. A process discussed by John Henry Newman in AN ESSAY ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY, written before he became a Catholic.
Merry Christmas! Sean
Oops! I forgot to say Bernard Lewis wrote ISLAM AND THE WEST.
Sean
Christianity didn't start as a state religion -- it started (and was for a number of centuries) a religion of persecuted minorities. Islam started as a state religion run by a warlord, and it shows.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, actually! I simply also believe Christianity was divinely founded and willed by God not to be a theocratic faith.
Correction: I erred in citing the title of Newman's book, it should be AN ESSAY ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment