Recently it's come to my attention, are all Iraq's people just like little kids? I mean how long has this fighting been going on people! Is there really any point at all to violence in a country where things are so under-developed? I'm a little confused here! Let me get this straight, Iraq is a country with people, but has like many different kinds + religions? They can't agree so make trouble for eachother? Sorry I just had a customer yapping at me bout some shipment, stupid Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Anyway so what's the scoop?
They're not childish, not under-developed, not uniquely mixed ethnicly, and not afflicted by their religions, darksidZz. Iraqis have long been in the crossroads of history, and beneath the wheels of empires. The more history you study with an effort at empathy for the people of Mesopotamia, the more things will make sense for you. If you study their Ottoman, British, and Ba'athist periods in turn, you can learn how the Shi'a got consistently shafted, and why the payback is becoming so nasty today- not because of religious mysteries, but for much more mundane reasons- tribal and ethnic reactions to horrific times of danger, repression, and deprivation.
Islam is not a civilizing religion. It reinforces tribalism, not nation building. The Ottomans had one of the world's largest empires, and a significant number of the subjects were the same ethnic group (Turkic) and the same religion (Muslim). Yet when it broke up the Uzbek, Kazakh, Kyrghyz, and Turkmen people splintered off from Turkey and from each other. Wahhab was the first Muslim Arab to successfully attempt nation building. He united all the tribes of Arabia into the world's only true Muslim Arab nation, Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately he did it by launching yet another form of Islam that is arguably more repressive than the others, because that was the only way he could bring power to the House of Saud. The other large Muslim Arab "nations" are just collections of disparate tribes held together by despotic governments. Even non-Arab Afghanistan is in the same condition and non-Arab Pakistan is only modestly better. The phenomenon you're seeing can be blamed on the local religion.
True. In Malaysia & Indonesia. Though Bangladesh, India and Iran have large Muslim populations as well.
