Scene of three Afghans falling from an American plane Locals say the men were hiding in the tires or fuses of the plane, which fell on the roofs of houses near Hamed Karzai International Airport as it took off. #ZAWIANEWS #Kabul #SanctionOnPakistan #Afghanistan #Talibans
It's like a nightmarish mix of 9/11, Saigon and a climate change disaster movie.
These are searing images, and I just don't see how Biden can polish them away now. They cannot be unseen. But, who knows. Humans move on pretty quickly, probably because we'd go mad if we didn't
Perhaps they should have tried fighting the Taliban when they had the chance.
Whilst I think it a valid point to raise that there does not appear to be the will the fight the Taliban on behalf of a united Afghan state, and that western occupation cannot substitute for that, that is a bit harsh.
I think it's safe to say that England aren't winning this test match.
It’s certainly getting quickly away from them. 250 after lunch is just about doable, there’s still 70 overs to be bowled.
Kane Williamson would probably declare at lunch here. Kohli won't (I think) - but it's getting toward the point where I'm not sure England want to bowl India out...
‘UK defence sources said it was self-evident that Afghan government forces were faring less well than the CIA and Biden had predicted only months ago.
‘Wallace revealed that once other Nato allies – understood to include France and Germany – had rejected forming a coalition of the willing without the US, the UK concluded that it could not go it alone.’
'Biden said as recently as July that there was no chance the Taliban would overrun the country'
Johnson said as recently as July that there was no chance the Taliban would overrun the country
Boris has made a fool of himself. But I do believe, from the words and the demeanor of the UK political and military establishment (even before this debacle) that they thought the rapid withdrawal was an error and they feared the consequences
Ben Wallace actually weeping on LBC does give some credence to that theory
A get out of the UK being utterly impotent isn't the greatest advert for new, thrusting, global Britain.
One has to ask, if these young men are willing to risk near certain death to climb on a fuselage and escape the Taliban, why aren’t they willing to risk death actually fighting the Taliban?
I don’t believe they are all cowards. There is some psychological problem. First, the Taliban has them terrorized. Like Isis did in Syria and Iraq. Second, perhaps they have been infantilised by western aid and defence. They’ve forgotten how to do it for themselves
They surely outnumber the Taliban looking at these scenes. They need one inspiring local leader to say, fuck this, let’s turn and fight and live or die like men
Think *unifying* belief. Which the Taliban are selling and the former Kabul government wasn't.
Yes, Islam is also an issue. Radical Islam has them cowed, as well
The Taliban say ‘we are the appointed army of Allah’. So by fighting them you are fighting god. Therefore you are evil and also you cannot win. A psychological pincer.
So the only answer - if you still fear and loathe the Taliban - is to run away
Maybe they did fight. But remember that in a lot of cases it was not that the Taliban won by fighting but because local leaders surrendered to them. The Taliban were going to be around. The Americans were not.
Also Islam is the issue. If that is what you believe and the Taliban say that they are implementing the laws of Allah, by fighting that you are marking yourself out as an unbeliever, an outcast. Who is going to do that? That is why it is very hard indeed for democracy to take root in societies in which religion is such a dominant overwhelming force, possibly the only thing that all the different tribes in Afghanistan have in common.
If we understood our own history better, we would realise how hard, long and painful the transition from an essentially religious society to one which isn't and one in which democracy can flourish is. And that was with some advantages in our history and religion which Islamic societies don't even have.
Democracy and the instincts and behaviours which go with it and which are essential to its survival need to come from within a society. It didn't happen in 20 years in any country in the West. Why did we think it would happen in 20 years in Afghanistan?
It happened in 20 years in Japan. But then Japan was an educated, modern society even if it was autocratic. And Emperor worship was not as all consuming as Islam as a religion.
Takes a long time to Romanise some parts of the empire. If your goal is a rules based global society built around your own moral framework, there will be times and places where you need to leave soldiers for a very very long time.
This feels like it represents the end of the West attempting to ensure a coherent global family of nations built around democracy and friendliness to the West and its value set.
Some people will think that a good thing of course. The moral relativists and the naive.
This is madness. Afghanistan is a backwards tribal armpit. If our desire is to spread democracy and Western values, the $800 odd billion we have sunk into Afghanistan over two decades could have about a thousand times more bang for the buck elsewhere.
It could yes. But Afghanistan was used as the platform to launch the most serious attack on the West in a lifetime and that is why the focus was there. China will now sweep in tying up the Taliban into belt and road. Another notch on their bedpost in their slow march to silently strangle our way of life.
We can hardly expect democracy and the 'behaviours which go with it' to flourish overseas, when the plain fact is they are withering and dying at home.
Last year there were times when you were banned from seeing your own relatives. Even now you cannot travel without jumping through government hoops, and a copy of the CCP social credit system is planned in the form of vaccine passports. In America, the land of the free, the President is considering banning inter state travel without obeying government diKtat.
The Afghans and others are not stupid. They can see our complete abandonment of our own principles for what it is. Everything we every stood for is an utter sham. It has been for a while, but it has taken the pandemic to expose it. We are no different. Our response to covd shows us for who we are.
Wonderful! It was the Covid passes and masks which led to the fall of Kabul, over three thousand miles away.
ALEX Salmond has claimed Scotland could get rid of Trident on “day one” of independence despite previously accepting it would take years.......
The timetable, which is intended to highlight differences with the SNP’s more gradual approach, is at odds with the one Mr Salmond endorsed while in government.
Well he's not wrong. All the Scottish government would have to do is deny access to the MoD vehicles carrying the 'physics package' to Coulport. It would certainly be rash and highly provocative but it would be the end of Trident in Scotland.
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
Yes, the problem is radical Islam
Blaming Afghanistan on men is like blaming the early Soviet Union on Jews (who comprised so much of the first politburo)
If you think that women are only oppressed or discriminated against by radical Islam, think again.
The issue HERE is primarily radical Islam
I do not deny misogyny is a deeply rooted problem around the world, tho in the west we seem to be sliding into misandry
However broad brush descriptions like yours are not that helpful in situations like this. When it is clear that a radicalized form of Islam is destroying lives and nations just as it has all around this region for decades
It's not even "radical" Islam. Radical Islam is obviously the problem for terrorism, but for misogyny these views are standard for mainstream, your-local-mosque Islam. I challenge anyone on here to find me three Imams worldwide who condemn Mohammed's consummation of marriage with a nine year old. Views on women having to cover their bodies to prevent men from sinning are almost as prevalent. This is the blindness and eggshell walking that stops us actually tackling the issue at its root. Islam, mainstream Islam, has some really bad ideas. It is never going to reform into a modern, pluralistic religion until we actually have out this argument. But if you do that, you are a bigot.
‘UK defence sources said it was self-evident that Afghan government forces were faring less well than the CIA and Biden had predicted only months ago.
‘Wallace revealed that once other Nato allies – understood to include France and Germany – had rejected forming a coalition of the willing without the US, the UK concluded that it could not go it alone.’
'Biden said as recently as July that there was no chance the Taliban would overrun the country'
Johnson said as recently as July that there was no chance the Taliban would overrun the country
Boris has made a fool of himself. But I do believe, from the words and the demeanor of the UK political and military establishment (even before this debacle) that they thought the rapid withdrawal was an error and they feared the consequences
Ben Wallace actually weeping on LBC does give some credence to that theory
A get out of the UK being utterly impotent isn't the greatest advert for new, thrusting, global Britain.
The UK is not much different to any other western country. Bankrupt of ideas and treasure and mulling Chinese Communist Party solutions to its problems.
‘UK defence sources said it was self-evident that Afghan government forces were faring less well than the CIA and Biden had predicted only months ago.
‘Wallace revealed that once other Nato allies – understood to include France and Germany – had rejected forming a coalition of the willing without the US, the UK concluded that it could not go it alone.’
'Biden said as recently as July that there was no chance the Taliban would overrun the country'
Johnson said as recently as July that there was no chance the Taliban would overrun the country
Boris has made a fool of himself. But I do believe, from the words and the demeanor of the UK political and military establishment (even before this debacle) that they thought the rapid withdrawal was an error and they feared the consequences
Ben Wallace actually weeping on LBC does give some credence to that theory
A get out of the UK being utterly impotent isn't the greatest advert for new, thrusting, global Britain.
I grant you that.
However, I don’t believe the slogan was ever meant to project Britain as a thrusting mini-superpower - anyone who used it that way is a dolt. What it means is an open, trading Britain, with friendly connections across the world, able to operate nimbly as a sovereign and significant power, and lots of helpful alliances, but certainly not a superpower
It is still an idea I ascribe to. But despatching gunboats to Goa? No
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
I very much do see what the mullahs and the Taliban did as an issue with Islam. But without wishing to derail the thread there are other issues going in the world right now - in this country even - which show that it is not just Muslim men who think that women primarily exist to serve men.
Might I remind you, for instance of the Incel movement?
Again, a problem with bad ideas. The Incel movement is driven by bad ideas. The problem is not "men", most of which in the West support the equality of women. The problem is holders of bad ideas. And that includes the many women who endorse Islamic beliefs about having to cover up almost their entire bodies to be "modest".
Bad ideas. But at what point do we ask ourselves whether, when those bad ideas are very largely held by men, whether there is something in those ideas which particularly appeals to one sex?
I do not think all men are inherently bad. Far from it. We are moral beings who make choices. But we are a little reluctant to interrogate thoroughly the extent to which such bad ideas are shared by really quite a lot of men, more than we often care to admit.
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
Yes, the problem is radical Islam
Blaming Afghanistan on men is like blaming the early Soviet Union on Jews (who comprised so much of the first politburo)
If you think that women are only oppressed or discriminated against by radical Islam, think again.
The issue HERE is primarily radical Islam
I do not deny misogyny is a deeply rooted problem around the world, tho in the west we seem to be sliding into misandry
However broad brush descriptions like yours are not that helpful in situations like this. When it is clear that a radicalized form of Islam is destroying lives and nations just as it has all around this region for decades
Yes - the problem here is Islam. Which is what my header said.
I think it's safe to say that England aren't winning this test match.
I only really follow cricket matches on the BBC site, Vaughan saying yesterday mid afternoon that England were now in the driving seat was the knell of doom. In my very much amateur and only sometime follower opinion, he's terrible. Mind you Aggers was saying similar on R4 this morning..
Edit: lol
Michael Vaughan Former England captain on BBC Test Match Special How has it got to this?
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
Yes, the problem is radical Islam
Blaming Afghanistan on men is like blaming the early Soviet Union on Jews (who comprised so much of the first politburo)
If you think that women are only oppressed or discriminated against by radical Islam, think again.
The issue HERE is primarily radical Islam
I do not deny misogyny is a deeply rooted problem around the world, tho in the west we seem to be sliding into misandry
However broad brush descriptions like yours are not that helpful in situations like this. When it is clear that a radicalized form of Islam is destroying lives and nations just as it has all around this region for decades
It's not even "radical" Islam. Radical Islam is obviously the problem for terrorism, but for misogyny these views are standard for mainstream, your-local-mosque Islam. I challenge anyone on here to find me three Imams worldwide who condemn Mohammed's consummation of marriage with a nine year old. Views on women having to cover their bodies to prevent men from sinning are almost as prevalent. This is the blindness and eggshell walking that stops us actually tackling the issue at its root. Islam, mainstream Islam, has some really bad ideas. It is never going to reform into a modern, pluralistic religion until we actually have out this argument. But if you do that, you are a bigot.
One doesn't have to formally condemn something that happened to not condone its repetition in the modern age under different circumstances. One can just recognise that the past has happened, and the rules now are different.
As usual, a good and sensible header. But you feel the result was always predictable in Afghanistan. Imperialism is a dirty word but surely the relevant one when you try to change the mindset of another country to suit your own liberal beliefs?
Exactly what the Victorians tried to do in Africa, when conditions were different. And that was a sin only when you disagreed with the Victorian's old-fashioned views.
When I was a lad, the hard left used to accuse the Americans of trying to be the 'policemen of the world', exporting their culture and ideas globally. This was despite the communists doing exactly that. Are the liberals now becoming the bullies? I would support Afghanistan becoming a more liberal society, but I don't live there. In the end, they will decide. As Mr Algarkirk says, and a yellowbelly must be correct, no other country is under any obligation to win 'freedom' for another.
PS Yellowbelly refers to Algarkirk.
Most of the planet live under unpleasant regimes. Some under horrendous regimes. We all know this and that we cannot do much about it directly in most cases. Accordingly most are abandoned in that way. There are unique elements in Afghanistan due to western involvement and obligations that may come with that or should come with that, but while there will be arguments over what could have been done here, and far more competently, solving the fundamental issue of awful regimes and societies is beyond us.
We have a hard enough job preventing our own society getting worse.
‘UK defence sources said it was self-evident that Afghan government forces were faring less well than the CIA and Biden had predicted only months ago.
‘Wallace revealed that once other Nato allies – understood to include France and Germany – had rejected forming a coalition of the willing without the US, the UK concluded that it could not go it alone.’
'Biden said as recently as July that there was no chance the Taliban would overrun the country'
Johnson said as recently as July that there was no chance the Taliban would overrun the country
Boris has made a fool of himself. But I do believe, from the words and the demeanor of the UK political and military establishment (even before this debacle) that they thought the rapid withdrawal was an error and they feared the consequences
Ben Wallace actually weeping on LBC does give some credence to that theory
A get out of the UK being utterly impotent isn't the greatest advert for new, thrusting, global Britain.
I grant you that.
However, I don’t believe the slogan was ever meant to project Britain as a thrusting mini-superpower - anyone who used it that way is a dolt. What it means is an open, trading Britain, with friendly connections across the world, able to operate nimbly as a sovereign and significant power, and lots of helpful alliances, but certainly not a superpower
It is still an idea I ascribe to. But despatching gunboats to Goa? No
Trump started this, but Biden could have delayed or stopped this.
He chose not to and now Afghanistan is back where it was 20 years ago a barbaric regime about to impose its radical beliefs on its people particular on its female population and become once again an Islamic terrorist safe haven.
I refuse to believe that US intelligence, NATO intelligence and the intelligence of its allies didn't see this coming long ago. That the Afghan government and military wasn't up to it despite all the money and resource it was pumping into it.
If Intelligence did fail then people need to be fired, if they did raise it and it was ignored or they did not care then the US government was negligent.
I don't see what we can do beyond making sure the International community including the UK take our share of refugees.
Afghanistan is lost, no going back now and no international pressure will make a jot of difference. That country will have to be monitored like a hawk for terrorism, increased funding if needed to identify the inevitable threats emanating from that country down the line.
This is either the biggest intelligence failure of my lifetime — that is bad intelligence collection — or the ISI have played the Americans to a tee. I'm leaning towards the latter at the moment, things have simply moved too quickly and easily for the Taliban for me to believe that the US was a victim of any kind of systemic failure to collect useful intelligence. In some areas of Afghanistan it's not like a rout has occurred, it's more like a switch was flipped and the Taliban took over.
Trump started this, but Biden could have delayed or stopped this.
He chose not to and now Afghanistan is back where it was 20 years ago a barbaric regime about to impose its radical beliefs on its people particular on its female population and become once again an Islamic terrorist safe haven.
I refuse to believe that US intelligence, NATO intelligence and the intelligence of its allies didn't see this coming long ago. That the Afghan government and military wasn't up to it despite all the money and resource it was pumping into it.
If Intelligence did fail then people need to be fired, if they did raise it and it was ignored or they did not care then the US government was negligent.
I don't see what we can do beyond making sure the International community including the UK take our share of refugees.
Afghanistan is lost, no going back now and no international pressure will make a jot of difference. That country will have to be monitored like a hawk for terrorism, increased funding if needed to identify the inevitable threats emanating from that country down the line.
This is either the biggest intelligence failure of my lifetime — that is bad intelligence collection — or the ISI have played the Americans to a tee. I'm leaning towards the latter at the moment, things have simply moved too quickly and easily for the Taliban for me to believe that the US was a victim of any kind of systemic failure to collect useful intelligence. In some areas of Afghanistan it's not like a rout has occurred, it's more like a switch was flipped and the Taliban took over.
Either way it is a total disaster.
You think the Pakistani intelligence agency is so good they have successfully fooled the CIA, the pentagon, the White House, all the other US Intel agencies, plus MI6, GCHQ, mossad, the French and Germans - all of them?
I think it's safe to say that England aren't winning this test match.
It’s certainly getting quickly away from them. 250 after lunch is just about doable, there’s still 70 overs to be bowled.
Kane Williamson would probably declare at lunch here. Kohli won't (I think) - but it's getting toward the point where I'm not sure England want to bowl India out...
The risk, for England, is that they can’t bat through the day.
Much better to chase the total and fall short, than to try and play out for the draw and miss that too. It’s only four an over.
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
I very much do see what the mullahs and the Taliban did as an issue with Islam. But without wishing to derail the thread there are other issues going in the world right now - in this country even - which show that it is not just Muslim men who think that women primarily exist to serve men.
Might I remind you, for instance of the Incel movement?
Again, a problem with bad ideas. The Incel movement is driven by bad ideas. The problem is not "men", most of which in the West support the equality of women. The problem is holders of bad ideas. And that includes the many women who endorse Islamic beliefs about having to cover up almost their entire bodies to be "modest".
Bad ideas. But at what point do we ask ourselves whether, when those bad ideas are very largely held by men, whether there is something in those ideas which particularly appeals to one sex?
I do not think all men are inherently bad. Far from it. We are moral beings who make choices. But we are a little reluctant to interrogate thoroughly the extent to which such bad ideas are shared by really quite a lot of men, more than we often care to admit.
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
Yes, the problem is radical Islam
Blaming Afghanistan on men is like blaming the early Soviet Union on Jews (who comprised so much of the first politburo)
If you think that women are only oppressed or discriminated against by radical Islam, think again.
The issue HERE is primarily radical Islam
I do not deny misogyny is a deeply rooted problem around the world, tho in the west we seem to be sliding into misandry
However broad brush descriptions like yours are not that helpful in situations like this. When it is clear that a radicalized form of Islam is destroying lives and nations just as it has all around this region for decades
Yes - the problem here is Islam. Which is what my header said.
The problem isn't Islam, its the West. We clearly do not believe in anything any more. How can we expect anybody else to?
I always think Turkey an interesting case, as a bellwether of democracy and religion. It has some of the characteristics of what might be described as a fundamentally religious culture, but also had a dictator and a cult of personality for a hundred years who tried to eradicate or restrict this with scorched earth. On the east side, a society not too far dissimilar from Afghanistan's, but on the west and north-west coasts, a large metropolitan secular population, a proportion of whom are also in fact curiously descended from the very first progenitors of democracy, as muslim-converted greeks from Ionia and the surrounding areas. It's moved broadly with the political-religious trends of the 80's and 90's, like the rest of the Muslim world, but where it goes next will be significant.
One has to ask, if these young men are willing to risk near certain death to climb on a fuselage and escape the Taliban, why aren’t they willing to risk death actually fighting the Taliban?
I don’t believe they are all cowards. There is some psychological problem. First, the Taliban has them terrorized. Like Isis did in Syria and Iraq. Second, perhaps they have been infantilised by western aid and defence. They’ve forgotten how to do it for themselves
They surely outnumber the Taliban looking at these scenes. They need one inspiring local leader to say, fuck this, let’s turn and fight and live or die like men
Think *unifying* belief. Which the Taliban are selling and the former Kabul government wasn't.
Yes, Islam is also an issue. Radical Islam has them cowed, as well
The Taliban say ‘we are the appointed army of Allah’. So by fighting them you are fighting god. Therefore you are evil and also you cannot win. A psychological pincer.
So the only answer - if you still fear and loathe the Taliban - is to run away
Maybe they did fight. But remember that in a lot of cases it was not that the Taliban won by fighting but because local leaders surrendered to them. The Taliban were going to be around. The Americans were not.
Also Islam is the issue. If that is what you believe and the Taliban say that they are implementing the laws of Allah, by fighting that you are marking yourself out as an unbeliever, an outcast. Who is going to do that? That is why it is very hard indeed for democracy to take root in societies in which religion is such a dominant overwhelming force, possibly the only thing that all the different tribes in Afghanistan have in common.
If we understood our own history better, we would realise how hard, long and painful the transition from an essentially religious society to one which isn't and one in which democracy can flourish is. And that was with some advantages in our history and religion which Islamic societies don't even have.
Democracy and the instincts and behaviours which go with it and which are essential to its survival need to come from within a society. It didn't happen in 20 years in any country in the West. Why did we think it would happen in 20 years in Afghanistan?
It happened in 20 years in Japan. But then Japan was an educated, modern society even if it was autocratic. And Emperor worship was not as all consuming as Islam as a religion.
Takes a long time to Romanise some parts of the empire. If your goal is a rules based global society built around your own moral framework, there will be times and places where you need to leave soldiers for a very very long time.
This feels like it represents the end of the West attempting to ensure a coherent global family of nations built around democracy and friendliness to the West and its value set.
Some people will think that a good thing of course. The moral relativists and the naive.
This is madness. Afghanistan is a backwards tribal armpit. If our desire is to spread democracy and Western values, the $800 odd billion we have sunk into Afghanistan over two decades could have about a thousand times more bang for the buck elsewhere.
It could yes. But Afghanistan was used as the platform to launch the most serious attack on the West in a lifetime and that is why the focus was there. China will now sweep in tying up the Taliban into belt and road. Another notch on their bedpost in their slow march to silently strangle our way of life.
If China succeeds in that where the UK, Russia, and the US have all failed so miserably, then good luck to them, quite frankly.
‘UK defence sources said it was self-evident that Afghan government forces were faring less well than the CIA and Biden had predicted only months ago.
‘Wallace revealed that once other Nato allies – understood to include France and Germany – had rejected forming a coalition of the willing without the US, the UK concluded that it could not go it alone.’
'Biden said as recently as July that there was no chance the Taliban would overrun the country'
Johnson said as recently as July that there was no chance the Taliban would overrun the country
Boris has made a fool of himself. But I do believe, from the words and the demeanor of the UK political and military establishment (even before this debacle) that they thought the rapid withdrawal was an error and they feared the consequences
Ben Wallace actually weeping on LBC does give some credence to that theory
A get out of the UK being utterly impotent isn't the greatest advert for new, thrusting, global Britain.
I grant you that.
However, I don’t believe the slogan was ever meant to project Britain as a thrusting mini-superpower - anyone who used it that way is a dolt. What it means is an open, trading Britain, with friendly connections across the world, able to operate nimbly as a sovereign and significant power, and lots of helpful alliances, but certainly not a superpower
It is still an idea I ascribe to. But despatching gunboats to Goa? No
Carrier groups to the Pacific?
Seems pretty pointless to me UNLESS it is a combined show with NATO allies. Then, yes, useful
I think it's safe to say that England aren't winning this test match.
I only really follow cricket matches on the BBC site, Vaughan saying yesterday mid afternoon that England were now in the driving seat was the knell of doom. In my very much amateur and only sometime follower opinion, he's terrible. Mind you Aggers was saying similar on R4 this morning..
Edit: lol
Michael Vaughan Former England captain on BBC Test Match Special How has it got to this?
Because no.pressure was put on the batsmen. It should be 8 men round the bat....ludicrous tactivs imho...
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
Yes, the problem is radical Islam
Blaming Afghanistan on men is like blaming the early Soviet Union on Jews (who comprised so much of the first politburo)
If you think that women are only oppressed or discriminated against by radical Islam, think again.
The issue HERE is primarily radical Islam
I do not deny misogyny is a deeply rooted problem around the world, tho in the west we seem to be sliding into misandry
However broad brush descriptions like yours are not that helpful in situations like this. When it is clear that a radicalized form of Islam is destroying lives and nations just as it has all around this region for decades
It's not even "radical" Islam. Radical Islam is obviously the problem for terrorism, but for misogyny these views are standard for mainstream, your-local-mosque Islam. I challenge anyone on here to find me three Imams worldwide who condemn Mohammed's consummation of marriage with a nine year old. Views on women having to cover their bodies to prevent men from sinning are almost as prevalent. This is the blindness and eggshell walking that stops us actually tackling the issue at its root. Islam, mainstream Islam, has some really bad ideas. It is never going to reform into a modern, pluralistic religion until we actually have out this argument. But if you do that, you are a bigot.
One doesn't have to formally condemn something that happened to not condone its repetition in the modern age under different circumstances. One can just recognise that the past has happened, and the rules now are different.
But if you can accept a nine year old girl should be in an intimate relationship with a 50 year old man in some circumstances and times, doesn't that speak to a pretty clear fundamental view about the role of women? And this wishy, washy "child marriage is ok, even great in some time periods" is also completely exposed to the argument about some future time period or society (i.e. an Islamic state) making it acceptable again. Besides, Islam claims to be the final moral message for eternity.
The only way past this is for Muhammed's marriage to be condemned. And the various Koranic passages saying female POWs can be taken as sex slaves.
I always think Turkey an interesting case, as a bellwether of democracy and religion. It has some of the characteristics of what might be described as a fundamentally religious culture, but also had a dictator and a cult of personality for a hundred years who tried to eradicate or restrict this. On the east side, a society not too far dissimilar from Afghanistan's, and on the west and north-west coasts, a large metropolitan secular population, a proportion of whom are also in fact curiously descended from the very first progenitors of democracy, as muslim-converted greeks from Ionia and the surrounding areas. It's moved broadly with the political-religious trends of the 80's and 90's, of the rest of the Muslim world, but where it goes next will be significant.
Coincidentally I am writing this at a cafe directly underneath the Parthenon. Sipping a decent but not brilliant Cretan white
If I look up from my iPad I can see the chiselled golden pillars of the famous temple, the birthplace of western democracy
I always think Turkey an interesting case, as a bellwether of democracy and religion. It has some of the characteristics of what might be described as a fundamentally religious culture, but also had a dictator and a cult of personality for a hundred years who tried to eradicate or restrict this with scorched earth. On the east side, a society not too far dissimilar from Afghanistan's, but on the west and north-west coasts, a large metropolitan secular population, a proportion of whom are also in fact curiously descended from the very first progenitors of democracy, as muslim-converted greeks from Ionia and the surrounding areas. It's moved broadly with the political-religious trends of the 80's and 90's, like the rest of the Muslim world, but where it goes next will be significant.
I suspect Islam wins, simply because the poorer rural families are having larger families (and so longer term more votes) than the westernised areas of Istanbul and to a lesser extent Izmir and Antalya.
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
I very much do see what the mullahs and the Taliban did as an issue with Islam. But without wishing to derail the thread there are other issues going in the world right now - in this country even - which show that it is not just Muslim men who think that women primarily exist to serve men.
Might I remind you, for instance of the Incel movement?
Again, a problem with bad ideas. The Incel movement is driven by bad ideas. The problem is not "men", most of which in the West support the equality of women. The problem is holders of bad ideas. And that includes the many women who endorse Islamic beliefs about having to cover up almost their entire bodies to be "modest".
Bad ideas. But at what point do we ask ourselves whether, when those bad ideas are very largely held by men, whether there is something in those ideas which particularly appeals to one sex?
I do not think all men are inherently bad. Far from it. We are moral beings who make choices. But we are a little reluctant to interrogate thoroughly the extent to which such bad ideas are shared by really quite a lot of men, more than we often care to admit.
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
Yes, the problem is radical Islam
Blaming Afghanistan on men is like blaming the early Soviet Union on Jews (who comprised so much of the first politburo)
If you think that women are only oppressed or discriminated against by radical Islam, think again.
The issue HERE is primarily radical Islam
I do not deny misogyny is a deeply rooted problem around the world, tho in the west we seem to be sliding into misandry
However broad brush descriptions like yours are not that helpful in situations like this. When it is clear that a radicalized form of Islam is destroying lives and nations just as it has all around this region for decades
Yes - the problem here is Islam. Which is what my header said.
Of course we can ask and think about why some ideas are held more by some groups than others. But the fact you are asking "why do men" rather than "why do Muslims" shows a massive bias when extreme views towards child marriage are far more prevalent among the latter.
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
Yes, the problem is radical Islam
Blaming Afghanistan on men is like blaming the early Soviet Union on Jews (who comprised so much of the first politburo)
If you think that women are only oppressed or discriminated against by radical Islam, think again.
Its not the only sort, but it's presently its both by far the most common and nastiest variety.
The 90s style taliaban regime was considerably worse than pretty much any excesses of Christianity anywhere ever in its repression of women.
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
I very much do see what the mullahs and the Taliban did as an issue with Islam. But without wishing to derail the thread there are other issues going in the world right now - in this country even - which show that it is not just Muslim men who think that women primarily exist to serve men.
Might I remind you, for instance of the Incel movement?
The incel movement, along with the woke movement and the increasing emphasis on transgender rights, could perhaps be seen as evidence of how much our society has become feminist in outlook. But this comes at a point where other societies become more patriarchial and traditional in outlook: Afghanistan is just one example of this trend.
The question this poses is how stable is such a modern society in the face of external threats. We are mocking the men at Kabul airport for not wanting to fight the taliban but really, who is willing to fight to defend our own society? If men feel alienated and excluded from society, they are less likely to fight to defend it.
I think it's safe to say that England aren't winning this test match.
I only really follow cricket matches on the BBC site, Vaughan saying yesterday mid afternoon that England were now in the driving seat was the knell of doom. In my very much amateur and only sometime follower opinion, he's terrible. Mind you Aggers was saying similar on R4 this morning..
Edit: lol
Michael Vaughan Former England captain on BBC Test Match Special How has it got to this?
Because no.pressure was put on the batsmen. It should be 8 men round the bat....ludicrous tactivs imho...
England's consistent inability to wrap up the tail has been one of the two big reasons why we have often fallen short in Test cricket over the last 40 years. The other is the tendency to score too slowly and get bogged down, which makes wickets more likely and hands the initiative to the opposition.
Trump started this, but Biden could have delayed or stopped this.
He chose not to and now Afghanistan is back where it was 20 years ago a barbaric regime about to impose its radical beliefs on its people particular on its female population and become once again an Islamic terrorist safe haven.
I refuse to believe that US intelligence, NATO intelligence and the intelligence of its allies didn't see this coming long ago. That the Afghan government and military wasn't up to it despite all the money and resource it was pumping into it.
If Intelligence did fail then people need to be fired, if they did raise it and it was ignored or they did not care then the US government was negligent.
I don't see what we can do beyond making sure the International community including the UK take our share of refugees.
Afghanistan is lost, no going back now and no international pressure will make a jot of difference. That country will have to be monitored like a hawk for terrorism, increased funding if needed to identify the inevitable threats emanating from that country down the line.
This is either the biggest intelligence failure of my lifetime — that is bad intelligence collection — or the ISI have played the Americans to a tee. I'm leaning towards the latter at the moment, things have simply moved too quickly and easily for the Taliban for me to believe that the US was a victim of any kind of systemic failure to collect useful intelligence. In some areas of Afghanistan it's not like a rout has occurred, it's more like a switch was flipped and the Taliban took over.
Trump started this, but Biden could have delayed or stopped this.
He chose not to and now Afghanistan is back where it was 20 years ago a barbaric regime about to impose its radical beliefs on its people particular on its female population and become once again an Islamic terrorist safe haven.
I refuse to believe that US intelligence, NATO intelligence and the intelligence of its allies didn't see this coming long ago. That the Afghan government and military wasn't up to it despite all the money and resource it was pumping into it.
If Intelligence did fail then people need to be fired, if they did raise it and it was ignored or they did not care then the US government was negligent.
I don't see what we can do beyond making sure the International community including the UK take our share of refugees.
Afghanistan is lost, no going back now and no international pressure will make a jot of difference. That country will have to be monitored like a hawk for terrorism, increased funding if needed to identify the inevitable threats emanating from that country down the line.
This is either the biggest intelligence failure of my lifetime — that is bad intelligence collection — or the ISI have played the Americans to a tee. I'm leaning towards the latter at the moment, things have simply moved too quickly and easily for the Taliban for me to believe that the US was a victim of any kind of systemic failure to collect useful intelligence. In some areas of Afghanistan it's not like a rout has occurred, it's more like a switch was flipped and the Taliban took over.
Either way it is a total disaster.
You think the Pakistani intelligence agency is so good they have successfully fooled the CIA, the pentagon, the White House, all the other US Intel agencies, plus MI6, GCHQ, mossad, the French and Germans - all of them?
Who is running ISI? GPT-59?
The West's authorities fooled themselves.
Afghanistan was never, ever going to take on board a set of values we ourselves abandoned in favour of a vacuum which Chinese Communist Party alternatives have filled.
Arbitrary restrictions on movement and association by authoritarian governments. Vaccine passports as a conduit to social credit scores. Restrictions of overseas travel. Tracking of movement by test and trace. A 'papers please' society.
If you want the reason why Afghanistan folded so quickly, look around you. They are here. You are crazy if you think the Afghans would give their lives for a belief system long since abandoned by its own apologists.
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
Yes, the problem is radical Islam
Blaming Afghanistan on men is like blaming the early Soviet Union on Jews (who comprised so much of the first politburo)
If you think that women are only oppressed or discriminated against by radical Islam, think again.
The issue HERE is primarily radical Islam
I do not deny misogyny is a deeply rooted problem around the world, tho in the west we seem to be sliding into misandry
However broad brush descriptions like yours are not that helpful in situations like this. When it is clear that a radicalized form of Islam is destroying lives and nations just as it has all around this region for decades
It's not even "radical" Islam. Radical Islam is obviously the problem for terrorism, but for misogyny these views are standard for mainstream, your-local-mosque Islam. I challenge anyone on here to find me three Imams worldwide who condemn Mohammed's consummation of marriage with a nine year old. Views on women having to cover their bodies to prevent men from sinning are almost as prevalent. This is the blindness and eggshell walking that stops us actually tackling the issue at its root. Islam, mainstream Islam, has some really bad ideas. It is never going to reform into a modern, pluralistic religion until we actually have out this argument. But if you do that, you are a bigot.
One doesn't have to formally condemn something that happened to not condone its repetition in the modern age under different circumstances. One can just recognise that the past has happened, and the rules now are different.
But if you can accept a nine year old girl should be in an intimate relationship with a 50 year old man in some circumstances and times, doesn't that speak to a pretty clear fundamental view about the role of women? And this wishy, washy "child marriage is ok, even great in some time periods" is also completely exposed to the argument about some future time period or society (i.e. an Islamic state) making it acceptable again. Besides, Islam claims to be the final moral message for eternity.
The only way past this is for Muhammed's marriage to be condemned. And the various Koranic passages saying female POWs can be taken as sex slaves.
There is plenty of mad crap in the bible. The Labour Party believed in eugenics into the 1930s. And so on
Large parts of the Islamic world are still quite civilised. In the 20th century it seemed that Islam might evolve like Christianity, and compromise with modernity and liberalism. Sadly that’s didn’t happen
Perhaps the Chinese are right, that there is no hope for Islamic minorities in non Islamic countries, and therefore they must be destroyed, and their culture wiped away
It is a counsel of bleak despair. And now I’m going to the Parthenon. Finally
One has to ask, if these young men are willing to risk near certain death to climb on a fuselage and escape the Taliban, why aren’t they willing to risk death actually fighting the Taliban?
I don’t believe they are all cowards. There is some psychological problem. First, the Taliban has them terrorized. Like Isis did in Syria and Iraq. Second, perhaps they have been infantilised by western aid and defence. They’ve forgotten how to do it for themselves
They surely outnumber the Taliban looking at these scenes. They need one inspiring local leader to say, fuck this, let’s turn and fight and live or die like men
Think *unifying* belief. Which the Taliban are selling and the former Kabul government wasn't.
Yes, Islam is also an issue. Radical Islam has them cowed, as well
The Taliban say ‘we are the appointed army of Allah’. So by fighting them you are fighting god. Therefore you are evil and also you cannot win. A psychological pincer.
So the only answer - if you still fear and loathe the Taliban - is to run away
Maybe they did fight. But remember that in a lot of cases it was not that the Taliban won by fighting but because local leaders surrendered to them. The Taliban were going to be around. The Americans were not.
Also Islam is the issue. If that is what you believe and the Taliban say that they are implementing the laws of Allah, by fighting that you are marking yourself out as an unbeliever, an outcast. Who is going to do that? That is why it is very hard indeed for democracy to take root in societies in which religion is such a dominant overwhelming force, possibly the only thing that all the different tribes in Afghanistan have in common.
If we understood our own history better, we would realise how hard, long and painful the transition from an essentially religious society to one which isn't and one in which democracy can flourish is. And that was with some advantages in our history and religion which Islamic societies don't even have.
Democracy and the instincts and behaviours which go with it and which are essential to its survival need to come from within a society. It didn't happen in 20 years in any country in the West. Why did we think it would happen in 20 years in Afghanistan?
It happened in 20 years in Japan. But then Japan was an educated, modern society even if it was autocratic. And Emperor worship was not as all consuming as Islam as a religion.
Also, crucially, the God-emperor TOLD the Japanese they had to surrender. So they did. Meekly, in the end
One of the turning points in the fight against ISIS was when very influential mullahs from around the Islamic world - in Egypt, Morocco and so on - denounced ISIS as ‘unislamic’. That seriously devalued their brand
The Japanese did surrender. But not meekly. In fact, there was an attempted coup. I listened to a podcast on this a few years ago, and it might make a brilliant Downfall-style film.
ISTR there was one ?general? who committed sepukku, telling his men that he was taking the dishonour of surrender on himself, and that meant they should not take part in any coup. Can't find any details from a quick Google, though ...
Ben Wallace actually weeping on LBC does give some credence to that theory
A get out of the UK being utterly impotent isn't the greatest advert for new, thrusting, global Britain.
I grant you that.
However, I don’t believe the slogan was ever meant to project Britain as a thrusting mini-superpower - anyone who used it that way is a dolt. What it means is an open, trading Britain, with friendly connections across the world, able to operate nimbly as a sovereign and significant power, and lots of helpful alliances, but certainly not a superpower
It is still an idea I ascribe to. But despatching gunboats to Goa? No
Carrier groups to the Pacific?
The Queen Elizabeth A/craft carrier looks like a gold plated white elephant in the context of Afghanistan...a colossal waste of money and an irritant to Chinese relations at a time when the UK cant afford it...
I think it's safe to say that England aren't winning this test match.
I only really follow cricket matches on the BBC site, Vaughan saying yesterday mid afternoon that England were now in the driving seat was the knell of doom. In my very much amateur and only sometime follower opinion, he's terrible. Mind you Aggers was saying similar on R4 this morning..
Edit: lol
Michael Vaughan Former England captain on BBC Test Match Special How has it got to this?
Because no.pressure was put on the batsmen. It should be 8 men round the bat....ludicrous tactivs imho...
Bumrah has an average around half Jimmy Anderson's. Shami's isn't much better than Anderson's.
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
I very much do see what the mullahs and the Taliban did as an issue with Islam. But without wishing to derail the thread there are other issues going in the world right now - in this country even - which show that it is not just Muslim men who think that women primarily exist to serve men.
Might I remind you, for instance of the Incel movement?
Again, a problem with bad ideas. The Incel movement is driven by bad ideas. The problem is not "men", most of which in the West support the equality of women. The problem is holders of bad ideas. And that includes the many women who endorse Islamic beliefs about having to cover up almost their entire bodies to be "modest".
Bad ideas. But at what point do we ask ourselves whether, when those bad ideas are very largely held by men, whether there is something in those ideas which particularly appeals to one sex?
I do not think all men are inherently bad. Far from it. We are moral beings who make choices. But we are a little reluctant to interrogate thoroughly the extent to which such bad ideas are shared by really quite a lot of men, more than we often care to admit.
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
Yes, the problem is radical Islam
Blaming Afghanistan on men is like blaming the early Soviet Union on Jews (who comprised so much of the first politburo)
If you think that women are only oppressed or discriminated against by radical Islam, think again.
The issue HERE is primarily radical Islam
I do not deny misogyny is a deeply rooted problem around the world, tho in the west we seem to be sliding into misandry
However broad brush descriptions like yours are not that helpful in situations like this. When it is clear that a radicalized form of Islam is destroying lives and nations just as it has all around this region for decades
Yes - the problem here is Islam. Which is what my header said.
Of course we can ask and think about why some ideas are held more by some groups than others. But the fact you are asking "why do men" rather than "why do Muslims" shows a massive bias when extreme views towards child marriage are far more prevalent among the latter.
We are probably about 20 minutes away from someone accusing my of being in the EDL, so I should make clear at this point that I think there are vast numbers of wonderful, decent Muslims who are an asset to our society and all discrimination against them is wrong. People are individuals and should be judged on their own actions and beliefs.
I think it's safe to say that England aren't winning this test match.
I only really follow cricket matches on the BBC site, Vaughan saying yesterday mid afternoon that England were now in the driving seat was the knell of doom. In my very much amateur and only sometime follower opinion, he's terrible. Mind you Aggers was saying similar on R4 this morning..
Edit: lol
Michael Vaughan Former England captain on BBC Test Match Special How has it got to this?
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
I very much do see what the mullahs and the Taliban did as an issue with Islam. But without wishing to derail the thread there are other issues going in the world right now - in this country even - which show that it is not just Muslim men who think that women primarily exist to serve men.
Might I remind you, for instance of the Incel movement?
Again, a problem with bad ideas. The Incel movement is driven by bad ideas. The problem is not "men", most of which in the West support the equality of women. The problem is holders of bad ideas. And that includes the many women who endorse Islamic beliefs about having to cover up almost their entire bodies to be "modest".
Bad ideas. But at what point do we ask ourselves whether, when those bad ideas are very largely held by men, whether there is something in those ideas which particularly appeals to one sex?
I do not think all men are inherently bad. Far from it. We are moral beings who make choices. But we are a little reluctant to interrogate thoroughly the extent to which such bad ideas are shared by really quite a lot of men, more than we often care to admit.
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
Yes, the problem is radical Islam
Blaming Afghanistan on men is like blaming the early Soviet Union on Jews (who comprised so much of the first politburo)
If you think that women are only oppressed or discriminated against by radical Islam, think again.
The issue HERE is primarily radical Islam
I do not deny misogyny is a deeply rooted problem around the world, tho in the west we seem to be sliding into misandry
However broad brush descriptions like yours are not that helpful in situations like this. When it is clear that a radicalized form of Islam is destroying lives and nations just as it has all around this region for decades
Yes - the problem here is Islam. Which is what my header said.
Of course we can ask and think about why some ideas are held more by some groups than others. But the fact you are asking "why do men" rather than "why do Muslims" shows a massive bias when extreme views towards child marriage are far more prevalent among the latter.
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
I very much do see what the mullahs and the Taliban did as an issue with Islam. But without wishing to derail the thread there are other issues going in the world right now - in this country even - which show that it is not just Muslim men who think that women primarily exist to serve men.
Might I remind you, for instance of the Incel movement?
Again, a problem with bad ideas. The Incel movement is driven by bad ideas. The problem is not "men", most of which in the West support the equality of women. The problem is holders of bad ideas. And that includes the many women who endorse Islamic beliefs about having to cover up almost their entire bodies to be "modest".
Bad ideas. But at what point do we ask ourselves whether, when those bad ideas are very largely held by men, whether there is something in those ideas which particularly appeals to one sex?
I do not think all men are inherently bad. Far from it. We are moral beings who make choices. But we are a little reluctant to interrogate thoroughly the extent to which such bad ideas are shared by really quite a lot of men, more than we often care to admit.
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
Yes, the problem is radical Islam
Blaming Afghanistan on men is like blaming the early Soviet Union on Jews (who comprised so much of the first politburo)
If you think that women are only oppressed or discriminated against by radical Islam, think again.
The issue HERE is primarily radical Islam
I do not deny misogyny is a deeply rooted problem around the world, tho in the west we seem to be sliding into misandry
However broad brush descriptions like yours are not that helpful in situations like this. When it is clear that a radicalized form of Islam is destroying lives and nations just as it has all around this region for decades
Yes - the problem here is Islam. Which is what my header said.
Of course we can ask and think about why some ideas are held more by some groups than others. But the fact you are asking "why do men" rather than "why do Muslims" shows a massive bias when extreme views towards child marriage are far more prevalent among the latter.
I find it amusing the way that "problems" are carefully reassigned to groups who are acceptable to have negative opinions of.
For example, the strange issue of why certain people were attacking the idea of Church of England schools. It was not so much that they were a breeding ground of fundamentalist, bigoted... vague niceness, as that the people in question were worried about religious schools of a different genre.
Since directly attacking those schools was out.....
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
Yes, the problem is radical Islam
Blaming Afghanistan on men is like blaming the early Soviet Union on Jews (who comprised so much of the first politburo)
If you think that women are only oppressed or discriminated against by radical Islam, think again.
The issue HERE is primarily radical Islam
I do not deny misogyny is a deeply rooted problem around the world, tho in the west we seem to be sliding into misandry
However broad brush descriptions like yours are not that helpful in situations like this. When it is clear that a radicalized form of Islam is destroying lives and nations just as it has all around this region for decades
It's not even "radical" Islam. Radical Islam is obviously the problem for terrorism, but for misogyny these views are standard for mainstream, your-local-mosque Islam. I challenge anyone on here to find me three Imams worldwide who condemn Mohammed's consummation of marriage with a nine year old. Views on women having to cover their bodies to prevent men from sinning are almost as prevalent. This is the blindness and eggshell walking that stops us actually tackling the issue at its root. Islam, mainstream Islam, has some really bad ideas. It is never going to reform into a modern, pluralistic religion until we actually have out this argument. But if you do that, you are a bigot.
One doesn't have to formally condemn something that happened to not condone its repetition in the modern age under different circumstances. One can just recognise that the past has happened, and the rules now are different.
@Cyclefree thank you for an excellent header. Again.
As regards the discussion above, the issue is that many followers want to go back to the perceived purity of the early days of their religion. They do not accept that the rules now are different. It excuses all types of behaviour by men who are then justified in controlling their women and children AS THEY SEE FIT. We must beware that this mindset is not that far away in our own society once we forget the rule of law and the enlightenment.
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
Yes, the problem is radical Islam
Blaming Afghanistan on men is like blaming the early Soviet Union on Jews (who comprised so much of the first politburo)
If you think that women are only oppressed or discriminated against by radical Islam, think again.
The issue HERE is primarily radical Islam
I do not deny misogyny is a deeply rooted problem around the world, tho in the west we seem to be sliding into misandry
However broad brush descriptions like yours are not that helpful in situations like this. When it is clear that a radicalized form of Islam is destroying lives and nations just as it has all around this region for decades
It's not even "radical" Islam. Radical Islam is obviously the problem for terrorism, but for misogyny these views are standard for mainstream, your-local-mosque Islam. I challenge anyone on here to find me three Imams worldwide who condemn Mohammed's consummation of marriage with a nine year old. Views on women having to cover their bodies to prevent men from sinning are almost as prevalent. This is the blindness and eggshell walking that stops us actually tackling the issue at its root. Islam, mainstream Islam, has some really bad ideas. It is never going to reform into a modern, pluralistic religion until we actually have out this argument. But if you do that, you are a bigot.
One doesn't have to formally condemn something that happened to not condone its repetition in the modern age under different circumstances. One can just recognise that the past has happened, and the rules now are different.
But if you can accept a nine year old girl should be in an intimate relationship with a 50 year old man in some circumstances and times, doesn't that speak to a pretty clear fundamental view about the role of women? And this wishy, washy "child marriage is ok, even great in some time periods" is also completely exposed to the argument about some future time period or society (i.e. an Islamic state) making it acceptable again. Besides, Islam claims to be the final moral message for eternity.
The only way past this is for Muhammed's marriage to be condemned. And the various Koranic passages saying female POWs can be taken as sex slaves.
No, it doesn't. Religions can - and do - exist indefinitely in a state of cognitive dissonance between what was, and what is. Christianity does not need to condemn the Crusades and the existence of blood libels in order to have functional relationships with other religions in the here and now. The State of Israel is not trying to use Old Testament passages about slavery in order to reinstate it as a punishment for theft.
The problem is not intrinsic to Islam - it's just that so many of the followers are poor and uneducated, and their leaders are hell bent on keeping them that way. Because they know what will happen if they can't - the followers will demand change, and the demands will be ultimately irresistible.
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
I very much do see what the mullahs and the Taliban did as an issue with Islam. But without wishing to derail the thread there are other issues going in the world right now - in this country even - which show that it is not just Muslim men who think that women primarily exist to serve men.
Might I remind you, for instance of the Incel movement?
The incel movement, along with the woke movement and the increasing emphasis on transgender rights, could perhaps be seen as evidence of how much our society has become feminist in outlook. But this comes at a point where other societies become more patriarchial and traditional in outlook: Afghanistan is just one example of this trend.
The question this poses is how stable is such a modern society in the face of external threats. We are mocking the men at Kabul airport for not wanting to fight the taliban but really, who is willing to fight to defend our own society? If men feel alienated and excluded from society, they are less likely to fight to defend it.
Are Trans Rights Activists really feminist given their main enemy seems to be so called TERFS
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
I very much do see what the mullahs and the Taliban did as an issue with Islam. But without wishing to derail the thread there are other issues going in the world right now - in this country even - which show that it is not just Muslim men who think that women primarily exist to serve men.
Might I remind you, for instance of the Incel movement?
The incel movement, along with the woke movement and the increasing emphasis on transgender rights, could perhaps be seen as evidence of how much our society has become feminist in outlook. But this comes at a point where other societies become more patriarchial and traditional in outlook: Afghanistan is just one example of this trend.
The question this poses is how stable is such a modern society in the face of external threats. We are mocking the men at Kabul airport for not wanting to fight the taliban but really, who is willing to fight to defend our own society? If men feel alienated and excluded from society, they are less likely to fight to defend it.
The incel movement and transgender rights are not evidence of feminism. Quite the opposite. They are male movements which will harm women. Old wine in new bottles. One believes that men are owed sex by women. The other believes that it knows better than women what womanhood is. Neither are remotely feminist.
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
I very much do see what the mullahs and the Taliban did as an issue with Islam. But without wishing to derail the thread there are other issues going in the world right now - in this country even - which show that it is not just Muslim men who think that women primarily exist to serve men.
Might I remind you, for instance of the Incel movement?
Again, a problem with bad ideas. The Incel movement is driven by bad ideas. The problem is not "men", most of which in the West support the equality of women. The problem is holders of bad ideas. And that includes the many women who endorse Islamic beliefs about having to cover up almost their entire bodies to be "modest".
Bad ideas. But at what point do we ask ourselves whether, when those bad ideas are very largely held by men, whether there is something in those ideas which particularly appeals to one sex?
I do not think all men are inherently bad. Far from it. We are moral beings who make choices. But we are a little reluctant to interrogate thoroughly the extent to which such bad ideas are shared by really quite a lot of men, more than we often care to admit.
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
Yes, the problem is radical Islam
Blaming Afghanistan on men is like blaming the early Soviet Union on Jews (who comprised so much of the first politburo)
If you think that women are only oppressed or discriminated against by radical Islam, think again.
The issue HERE is primarily radical Islam
I do not deny misogyny is a deeply rooted problem around the world, tho in the west we seem to be sliding into misandry
However broad brush descriptions like yours are not that helpful in situations like this. When it is clear that a radicalized form of Islam is destroying lives and nations just as it has all around this region for decades
Yes - the problem here is Islam. Which is what my header said.
Of course we can ask and think about why some ideas are held more by some groups than others. But the fact you are asking "why do men" rather than "why do Muslims" shows a massive bias when extreme views towards child marriage are far more prevalent among the latter.
What is your point here? Are you trying to claim with this link that a higher share of Western men have pro-child marriage views than Muslims?
I am saying that regressive attitudes to women are not limited to Muslim men.
And now I really do have to do other stuff. I am sure we can continue this debate another time, though I do not think that we are fundamentally disagreeing. We are each of us, whether men or women, responsible fo the choices we make and, whether religious or not, it is a cop out to blame religion or society or rules or something else, for the choices we make.
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
Yes, the problem is radical Islam
Blaming Afghanistan on men is like blaming the early Soviet Union on Jews (who comprised so much of the first politburo)
If you think that women are only oppressed or discriminated against by radical Islam, think again.
The issue HERE is primarily radical Islam
I do not deny misogyny is a deeply rooted problem around the world, tho in the west we seem to be sliding into misandry
However broad brush descriptions like yours are not that helpful in situations like this. When it is clear that a radicalized form of Islam is destroying lives and nations just as it has all around this region for decades
It's not even "radical" Islam. Radical Islam is obviously the problem for terrorism, but for misogyny these views are standard for mainstream, your-local-mosque Islam. I challenge anyone on here to find me three Imams worldwide who condemn Mohammed's consummation of marriage with a nine year old. Views on women having to cover their bodies to prevent men from sinning are almost as prevalent. This is the blindness and eggshell walking that stops us actually tackling the issue at its root. Islam, mainstream Islam, has some really bad ideas. It is never going to reform into a modern, pluralistic religion until we actually have out this argument. But if you do that, you are a bigot.
Nobody's a bigot for arguing that Islam, as commonly practiced, validates and empowers misogyny.
The bigotry comes where anti-Muslim prejudice is dressed up as concern for female emancipation by those who otherwise have no interest in it, or for whom the topic normally irritates.
I usually - but not always - find it easy to tell the difference between these 2 things.
You really think people in the developing world cannot see how supposedly 'liberal' and 'democratic' governments in the West have bullied, browbeaten, restricted and in some bankrupted their own citizens in the last 18 months??
Well they can.
And Afghanistan is the result.
There is no Western alternative any more. There is a very pale version of China. So, if that is the way the world is going, why not throw in your lot with the real thing?
Of course we can ask and think about why some ideas are held more by some groups than others. But the fact you are asking "why do men" rather than "why do Muslims" shows a massive bias when extreme views towards child marriage are far more prevalent among the latter.
What a wonderful illustration of the point the other person was making.
"When I was living in Kenya, my father arranged for me to marry a man I had never met. His name was Osman Moussa... Before the nikah ceremony, which would legally wed us"
"Fraidy Reiss, the founder of Unchained At Last, was forced into a marriage in 1995 when she was 19 years old. It quickly turned abusive. She came from an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community"
"Naila Amin was forced into a marriage with her 28-year-old cousin when she was just 15-years-old."
"My friend Yasmine Mohammed escaped a forced marriage to an al-Qaeda terrorist in Canada."
"Judy Wiegand came forward to testify for a ban of child marriages in North Carolina, recounting her own experiences of marrying in northern NC in 1996, at the age of 15."
The thing about reducing the age of consent to nine is that that is simply legalising paedophilia. Granted, anybody that's prepared to allow that probably isn't too bothered about the rights of women, but I do find it curious that a religious regime would openly allow it.
I think it's been remarked on here before, but perhaps it does suggest that attraction to children is much more common than we'd like to admit.
I always think Turkey an interesting case, as a bellwether of democracy and religion. It has some of the characteristics of what might be described as a fundamentally religious culture, but also had a dictator and a cult of personality for a hundred years who tried to eradicate or restrict this. On the east side, a society not too far dissimilar from Afghanistan's, and on the west and north-west coasts, a large metropolitan secular population, a proportion of whom are also in fact curiously descended from the very first progenitors of democracy, as muslim-converted greeks from Ionia and the surrounding areas. It's moved broadly with the political-religious trends of the 80's and 90's, of the rest of the Muslim world, but where it goes next will be significant.
Coincidentally I am writing this at a cafe directly underneath the Parthenon. Sipping a decent but not brilliant Cretan white
If I look up from my iPad I can see the chiselled golden pillars of the famous temple, the birthplace of western democracy
Poignant
Athens the birthplace not only of western democracy but of the Socratic method. @kinbalu was having a bit of a dig yesterday about whether 'logical thinking' was a purely western characteristic. I would argue that 'logical thinking' stems from the philosophy of ancient Athens, and particular Socrates and his successors, in which no question was off limits; in which every statement could be met with 'why?'. This is not a way of looking at the world held everywhere, even in the west, and certainly hasn't always been held in the west. But I would argue that those cultures which are free to ask why (like the west, at its best) are better than those which are not (like Wahabbi Islam).
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
I very much do see what the mullahs and the Taliban did as an issue with Islam. But without wishing to derail the thread there are other issues going in the world right now - in this country even - which show that it is not just Muslim men who think that women primarily exist to serve men.
Might I remind you, for instance of the Incel movement?
The incel movement, along with the woke movement and the increasing emphasis on transgender rights, could perhaps be seen as evidence of how much our society has become feminist in outlook. But this comes at a point where other societies become more patriarchial and traditional in outlook: Afghanistan is just one example of this trend.
The question this poses is how stable is such a modern society in the face of external threats. We are mocking the men at Kabul airport for not wanting to fight the taliban but really, who is willing to fight to defend our own society? If men feel alienated and excluded from society, they are less likely to fight to defend it.
The incel movement and transgender rights are not evidence of feminism. Quite the opposite. They are male movements which will harm women. Old wine in new bottles. One believes that men are owed sex by women. The other believes that it knows better than women what womanhood is. Neither are remotely feminist.
And now I must be off.
The answer to the question in my header is no.
Have a nice day all.
The point is that there are lots of men who want nothing more to do with women - how can this be reconciled with the assertion that we live in a patiarchial society?
Transgender rights - this at least partially (but not exclusively) about men wanting the ability to renounce their biological sex and identify as women.
To me this is evidence that society has become more feminist (or feminine) in terms of its dominant values and outlook.
I always think Turkey an interesting case, as a bellwether of democracy and religion. It has some of the characteristics of what might be described as a fundamentally religious culture, but also had a dictator and a cult of personality for a hundred years who tried to eradicate or restrict this with scorched earth. On the east side, a society not too far dissimilar from Afghanistan's, but on the west and north-west coasts, a large metropolitan secular population, a proportion of whom are also in fact curiously descended from the very first progenitors of democracy, as muslim-converted greeks from Ionia and the surrounding areas. It's moved broadly with the political-religious trends of the 80's and 90's, like the rest of the Muslim world, but where it goes next will be significant.
I did quite a few work trips to Istanbul in the mid 00s (bank sector) and I was struck by how a high proportion of senior execs over there were women. Higher than in the City at the time. Don't know how it is today.
I always think Turkey an interesting case, as a bellwether of democracy and religion. It has some of the characteristics of what might be described as a fundamentally religious culture, but also had a dictator and a cult of personality for a hundred years who tried to eradicate or restrict this. On the east side, a society not too far dissimilar from Afghanistan's, and on the west and north-west coasts, a large metropolitan secular population, a proportion of whom are also in fact curiously descended from the very first progenitors of democracy, as muslim-converted greeks from Ionia and the surrounding areas. It's moved broadly with the political-religious trends of the 80's and 90's, of the rest of the Muslim world, but where it goes next will be significant.
Coincidentally I am writing this at a cafe directly underneath the Parthenon. Sipping a decent but not brilliant Cretan white
If I look up from my iPad I can see the chiselled golden pillars of the famous temple, the birthplace of western democracy
Poignant
Athens the birthplace not only of western democracy but of the Socratic method. @kinbalu was having a bit of a dig yesterday about whether 'logical thinking' was a purely western characteristic. I would argue that 'logical thinking' stems from the philosophy of ancient Athens, and particular Socrates and his successors, in which no question was off limits; in which every statement could be met with 'why?'. This is not a way of looking at the world held everywhere, even in the west, and certainly hasn't always been held in the west. But I would argue that those cultures which are free to ask why (like the west, at its best) are better than those which are not (like Wahabbi Islam).
Well, being annoying in that way certainly got Socrates his jar of hemlock.
When Leon gets back from the Acropolis, I must ask him if he got to see the Assembly on the Pnyx hill.
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
I very much do see what the mullahs and the Taliban did as an issue with Islam. But without wishing to derail the thread there are other issues going in the world right now - in this country even - which show that it is not just Muslim men who think that women primarily exist to serve men.
Might I remind you, for instance of the Incel movement?
The incel movement, along with the woke movement and the increasing emphasis on transgender rights, could perhaps be seen as evidence of how much our society has become feminist in outlook. But this comes at a point where other societies become more patriarchial and traditional in outlook: Afghanistan is just one example of this trend.
The question this poses is how stable is such a modern society in the face of external threats. We are mocking the men at Kabul airport for not wanting to fight the taliban but really, who is willing to fight to defend our own society? If men feel alienated and excluded from society, they are less likely to fight to defend it.
The incel movement and transgender rights are not evidence of feminism. Quite the opposite. They are male movements which will harm women. Old wine in new bottles. One believes that men are owed sex by women. The other believes that it knows better than women what womanhood is. Neither are remotely feminist.
And now I must be off.
The answer to the question in my header is no.
Have a nice day all.
The point is that there are lots of men who want nothing more to do with women - how can this be reconciled with the assertion that we live in a patiarchial society?
Transgender rights - this at least partially (but not exclusively) about men wanting the ability to renounce their biological sex and identify as women.
To me this is evidence that society has become more feminist (or feminine) in terms of its dominant values and outlook.
I might be mis-reading you here, but are you saying Incels want nothing to do with women? Surely that's not right. A defining feature of Incels are that they *do* want sexual (and romantic) relationships with women and are angry/bitter at their inability to do so. They aren't an abstinence movement.
I'd also disagree with your characterisation of the trans movement. There are more people born male but identifying as women these days - but there are also more people born female but identifying as men. The shift isn't the people are preferring to be women compared to the past, but that people of both sexes are more comfortable living in a different gender to that assigned at birth.
I always think Turkey an interesting case, as a bellwether of democracy and religion. It has some of the characteristics of what might be described as a fundamentally religious culture, but also had a dictator and a cult of personality for a hundred years who tried to eradicate or restrict this. On the east side, a society not too far dissimilar from Afghanistan's, and on the west and north-west coasts, a large metropolitan secular population, a proportion of whom are also in fact curiously descended from the very first progenitors of democracy, as muslim-converted greeks from Ionia and the surrounding areas. It's moved broadly with the political-religious trends of the 80's and 90's, of the rest of the Muslim world, but where it goes next will be significant.
Coincidentally I am writing this at a cafe directly underneath the Parthenon. Sipping a decent but not brilliant Cretan white
If I look up from my iPad I can see the chiselled golden pillars of the famous temple, the birthplace of western democracy
Poignant
Athens the birthplace not only of western democracy but of the Socratic method. @kinbalu was having a bit of a dig yesterday about whether 'logical thinking' was a purely western characteristic. I would argue that 'logical thinking' stems from the philosophy of ancient Athens, and particular Socrates and his successors, in which no question was off limits; in which every statement could be met with 'why?'. This is not a way of looking at the world held everywhere, even in the west, and certainly hasn't always been held in the west. But I would argue that those cultures which are free to ask why (like the west, at its best) are better than those which are not (like Wahabbi Islam).
Kinabalu was correcting your fundamental misreading of Kinabalu's point in the exchange he was having with fruity Leon.
The thing about reducing the age of consent to nine is that that is simply legalising paedophilia. Granted, anybody that's prepared to allow that probably isn't too bothered about the rights of women, but I do find it curious that a religious regime would openly allow it.
I think it's been remarked on here before, but perhaps it does suggest that attraction to children is much more common than we'd like to admit.
Pretty sure for diplomatic marriages they used to occasionally marry children, though not have the marriage consumated until much later (though still young by our standards). Sadly probably not the case in these cases.
The thing about reducing the age of consent to nine is that that is simply legalising paedophilia. Granted, anybody that's prepared to allow that probably isn't too bothered about the rights of women, but I do find it curious that a religious regime would openly allow it.
I think it's been remarked on here before, but perhaps it does suggest that attraction to children is much more common than we'd like to admit.
It'll be based on the age Aisha was married to Muhammad according to al-Bukhari's hadith
Clearly leaving Afghanistan to the mercies of the Taliban is a horrible outcome for Afghanis (and not necessarily great for the west, either). But as the header notes, many Afghans have views which are incompatible with western views of personal liberty (especially through not exclusively for women). Inviting, in Rory Stewart's words, 'millions' of them here isn't likely to go particularly well. No doubt there are many among them who are fine individuals who would be an asset to our society. But there are likely to be many more who are not. We have seen repeatedly what happens when we set up parallel societies in our towns made up of people with a very different worldview. The third solution is to try to create a workable Afghanistan - but the west has tried and failed there.
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
I very much do see what the mullahs and the Taliban did as an issue with Islam. But without wishing to derail the thread there are other issues going in the world right now - in this country even - which show that it is not just Muslim men who think that women primarily exist to serve men.
Might I remind you, for instance of the Incel movement?
The incel movement, along with the woke movement and the increasing emphasis on transgender rights, could perhaps be seen as evidence of how much our society has become feminist in outlook. But this comes at a point where other societies become more patriarchial and traditional in outlook: Afghanistan is just one example of this trend.
The question this poses is how stable is such a modern society in the face of external threats. We are mocking the men at Kabul airport for not wanting to fight the taliban but really, who is willing to fight to defend our own society? If men feel alienated and excluded from society, they are less likely to fight to defend it.
The incel movement and transgender rights are not evidence of feminism. Quite the opposite. They are male movements which will harm women. Old wine in new bottles. One believes that men are owed sex by women. The other believes that it knows better than women what womanhood is. Neither are remotely feminist.
And now I must be off.
The answer to the question in my header is no.
Have a nice day all.
The point is that there are lots of men who want nothing more to do with women - how can this be reconciled with the assertion that we live in a patiarchial society?
Transgender rights - this at least partially (but not exclusively) about men wanting the ability to renounce their biological sex and identify as women.
To me this is evidence that society has become more feminist (or feminine) in terms of its dominant values and outlook.
I am not sure how cross dressing men, as opposed to those who have undergone reassignment surgery, wanting to identity as women and access women’s spaces is any evidence of our outlook being more feminist. To many feminists it’s another erosion of hard won freedoms.
Appalling mess of Afghanistan. An absolute unmitigated disaster.
Whether or not you believe that it was right to be involved 20 years ago is moot. That doesn't excuse the disgraceful manner in which we have dumped on the people by pulling out at such breakneck speed.
I always think Turkey an interesting case, as a bellwether of democracy and religion. It has some of the characteristics of what might be described as a fundamentally religious culture, but also had a dictator and a cult of personality for a hundred years who tried to eradicate or restrict this. On the east side, a society not too far dissimilar from Afghanistan's, and on the west and north-west coasts, a large metropolitan secular population, a proportion of whom are also in fact curiously descended from the very first progenitors of democracy, as muslim-converted greeks from Ionia and the surrounding areas. It's moved broadly with the political-religious trends of the 80's and 90's, of the rest of the Muslim world, but where it goes next will be significant.
Coincidentally I am writing this at a cafe directly underneath the Parthenon. Sipping a decent but not brilliant Cretan white
If I look up from my iPad I can see the chiselled golden pillars of the famous temple, the birthplace of western democracy
Poignant
Athens the birthplace not only of western democracy but of the Socratic method. @kinbalu was having a bit of a dig yesterday about whether 'logical thinking' was a purely western characteristic. I would argue that 'logical thinking' stems from the philosophy of ancient Athens, and particular Socrates and his successors, in which no question was off limits; in which every statement could be met with 'why?'. This is not a way of looking at the world held everywhere, even in the west, and certainly hasn't always been held in the west. But I would argue that those cultures which are free to ask why (like the west, at its best) are better than those which are not (like Wahabbi Islam).
Well, being annoying in that way certainly got Socrates his jar of hemlock.
When Leon gets back from the Acropolis, I must ask him if he got to see the Assembly on the Pnyx hill.
Midday drinkies seem to be impeding the grand tour somewhat.
I always think Turkey an interesting case, as a bellwether of democracy and religion. It has some of the characteristics of what might be described as a fundamentally religious culture, but also had a dictator and a cult of personality for a hundred years who tried to eradicate or restrict this. On the east side, a society not too far dissimilar from Afghanistan's, and on the west and north-west coasts, a large metropolitan secular population, a proportion of whom are also in fact curiously descended from the very first progenitors of democracy, as muslim-converted greeks from Ionia and the surrounding areas. It's moved broadly with the political-religious trends of the 80's and 90's, of the rest of the Muslim world, but where it goes next will be significant.
Coincidentally I am writing this at a cafe directly underneath the Parthenon. Sipping a decent but not brilliant Cretan white
If I look up from my iPad I can see the chiselled golden pillars of the famous temple, the birthplace of western democracy
Poignant
Athens the birthplace not only of western democracy but of the Socratic method. @kinbalu was having a bit of a dig yesterday about whether 'logical thinking' was a purely western characteristic. I would argue that 'logical thinking' stems from the philosophy of ancient Athens, and particular Socrates and his successors, in which no question was off limits; in which every statement could be met with 'why?'. This is not a way of looking at the world held everywhere, even in the west, and certainly hasn't always been held in the west. But I would argue that those cultures which are free to ask why (like the west, at its best) are better than those which are not (like Wahabbi Islam).
Well, being annoying in that way certainly got Socrates his jar of hemlock.
When Leon gets back from the Acropolis, I must ask him if he got to see the Assembly on the Pnyx hill.
Socrates came to be associated with a group of radical young men who wanted to reform their society. Get rid of the excesses of democracy and replace it with a rule of The Best. The end point in this journey was the Thirty.....
Once you get past Plato's apologising, it is quite simple *why* Socrates got the chop. He was considered by a number of his fellow Athenians to be the intellectual founder of a movement that had ended up as a quisling, murderous oligarchy.
Clearly leaving Afghanistan to the mercies of the Taliban is a horrible outcome for Afghanis (and not necessarily great for the west, either). But as the header notes, many Afghans have views which are incompatible with western views of personal liberty (especially through not exclusively for women). Inviting, in Rory Stewart's words, 'millions' of them here isn't likely to go particularly well. No doubt there are many among them who are fine individuals who would be an asset to our society. But there are likely to be many more who are not. We have seen repeatedly what happens when we set up parallel societies in our towns made up of people with a very different worldview. The third solution is to try to create a workable Afghanistan - but the west has tried and failed there.
Sorry Cookie but what 'western views of personal liberty are you referring to here?
The 'personal liberty' that stopped grandparents from seeing their grandchildren in Britain?' The 'personal liberty' that stopped you meeting five other people for months on end in Britain? The 'personal liberty' that allowed the government to track and trace your movements? The 'personal liberty' that allows French police to check the medical status of their own citizens as the price of going to a restaurant?
That 'personal liberty?'
The fact is that personal liberty, Western style, has ceased to exist, to the loud applause of many in the West. We do things the China way now. Afghanistan is one corollary of that abandonment.
I always think Turkey an interesting case, as a bellwether of democracy and religion. It has some of the characteristics of what might be described as a fundamentally religious culture, but also had a dictator and a cult of personality for a hundred years who tried to eradicate or restrict this. On the east side, a society not too far dissimilar from Afghanistan's, and on the west and north-west coasts, a large metropolitan secular population, a proportion of whom are also in fact curiously descended from the very first progenitors of democracy, as muslim-converted greeks from Ionia and the surrounding areas. It's moved broadly with the political-religious trends of the 80's and 90's, of the rest of the Muslim world, but where it goes next will be significant.
Coincidentally I am writing this at a cafe directly underneath the Parthenon. Sipping a decent but not brilliant Cretan white
If I look up from my iPad I can see the chiselled golden pillars of the famous temple, the birthplace of western democracy
Poignant
Athens the birthplace not only of western democracy but of the Socratic method. @kinbalu was having a bit of a dig yesterday about whether 'logical thinking' was a purely western characteristic. I would argue that 'logical thinking' stems from the philosophy of ancient Athens, and particular Socrates and his successors, in which no question was off limits; in which every statement could be met with 'why?'. This is not a way of looking at the world held everywhere, even in the west, and certainly hasn't always been held in the west. But I would argue that those cultures which are free to ask why (like the west, at its best) are better than those which are not (like Wahabbi Islam).
Well, being annoying in that way certainly got Socrates his jar of hemlock.
When Leon gets back from the Acropolis, I must ask him if he got to see the Assembly on the Pnyx hill.
Midday drinkies seem to be impeding the grand tour somewhat.
I'm not surprised. Athenian sun, remember. I'd want to sit down and have a cold beer or two with my 'opson' and 'situs', with this news coming in too.
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
I very much do see what the mullahs and the Taliban did as an issue with Islam. But without wishing to derail the thread there are other issues going in the world right now - in this country even - which show that it is not just Muslim men who think that women primarily exist to serve men.
Might I remind you, for instance of the Incel movement?
The incel movement, along with the woke movement and the increasing emphasis on transgender rights, could perhaps be seen as evidence of how much our society has become feminist in outlook. But this comes at a point where other societies become more patriarchial and traditional in outlook: Afghanistan is just one example of this trend.
The question this poses is how stable is such a modern society in the face of external threats. We are mocking the men at Kabul airport for not wanting to fight the taliban but really, who is willing to fight to defend our own society? If men feel alienated and excluded from society, they are less likely to fight to defend it.
The incel movement and transgender rights are not evidence of feminism. Quite the opposite. They are male movements which will harm women. Old wine in new bottles. One believes that men are owed sex by women. The other believes that it knows better than women what womanhood is. Neither are remotely feminist.
And now I must be off.
The answer to the question in my header is no.
Have a nice day all.
The point is that there are lots of men who want nothing more to do with women - how can this be reconciled with the assertion that we live in a patiarchial society?
Transgender rights - this at least partially (but not exclusively) about men wanting the ability to renounce their biological sex and identify as women.
To me this is evidence that society has become more feminist (or feminine) in terms of its dominant values and outlook.
I might be mis-reading you here, but are you saying Incels want nothing to do with women? Surely that's not right. A defining feature of Incels are that they *do* want sexual (and romantic) relationships with women and are angry/bitter at their inability to do so. They aren't an abstinence movement.
I known little about the incel movement - but my understanding is the same as yours - IE men voluntarily withdrawing from interactions with women on the basis that they are experiencing continuous rejection, for which they blame the dominant values of society. My point is that the mere existence of this group is evidence that we are not living in a particularly effective patriarchy. Furthermore, rather than seeing these people as being worthy of sympathy and help, the emerging policy approach seems to be to try and criminalise such expressions as hate speech. None of this is going to solve the problem of division in society, which contributes to the overall decline in coherance and social stability.
Appalling mess of Afghanistan. An absolute unmitigated disaster.
Whether or not you believe that it was right to be involved 20 years ago is moot. That doesn't excuse the disgraceful manner in which we have dumped on the people by pulling out at such breakneck speed.
It's a disgrace.
The speed at which we withdrew makes little difference. The actions that could have made things different are:
1) Not going in 2) Staying much longer 3) Doing a better job at reconstructing society over 20 years
1 and 2 come with their own costs and problems. 3 is where we should try and learn, for our next adventure at nation building which will probably come along somewhere as attitudes change again in about another 15-20 years time. We won't have learnt those lessons.
Actually, Alistair, is Stop The War really that wrong? Simply throwing a huge pile of money at the Afghans no questions asked might have been a better way of convincing them of the merits of the West than the method we chose.
The method we chose being trying to construct a version of the West that does not.....er.....exist in the West any more.
Appalling mess of Afghanistan. An absolute unmitigated disaster.
Whether or not you believe that it was right to be involved 20 years ago is moot. That doesn't excuse the disgraceful manner in which we have dumped on the people by pulling out at such breakneck speed.
It's a disgrace.
The speed at which we withdrew makes little difference. The actions that could have made things different are:
1) Not going in 2) Staying much longer 3) Doing a better job at reconstructing society over 20 years
1 and 2 come with their own costs and problems. 3 is where we should try and learn, for our next adventure at nation building which will probably come along somewhere as attitudes change again in about another 15-20 years time. We won't have learnt those lessons.
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
I very much do see what the mullahs and the Taliban did as an issue with Islam. But without wishing to derail the thread there are other issues going in the world right now - in this country even - which show that it is not just Muslim men who think that women primarily exist to serve men.
Might I remind you, for instance of the Incel movement?
The incel movement, along with the woke movement and the increasing emphasis on transgender rights, could perhaps be seen as evidence of how much our society has become feminist in outlook. But this comes at a point where other societies become more patriarchial and traditional in outlook: Afghanistan is just one example of this trend.
The question this poses is how stable is such a modern society in the face of external threats. We are mocking the men at Kabul airport for not wanting to fight the taliban but really, who is willing to fight to defend our own society? If men feel alienated and excluded from society, they are less likely to fight to defend it.
The incel movement and transgender rights are not evidence of feminism. Quite the opposite. They are male movements which will harm women. Old wine in new bottles. One believes that men are owed sex by women. The other believes that it knows better than women what womanhood is. Neither are remotely feminist.
And now I must be off.
The answer to the question in my header is no.
Have a nice day all.
The point is that there are lots of men who want nothing more to do with women - how can this be reconciled with the assertion that we live in a patiarchial society?
Transgender rights - this at least partially (but not exclusively) about men wanting the ability to renounce their biological sex and identify as women.
To me this is evidence that society has become more feminist (or feminine) in terms of its dominant values and outlook.
I might be mis-reading you here, but are you saying Incels want nothing to do with women? Surely that's not right. A defining feature of Incels are that they *do* want sexual (and romantic) relationships with women and are angry/bitter at their inability to do so. They aren't an abstinence movement.
I known little about the incel movement - but my understanding is the same as yours - IE men voluntarily withdrawing from interactions with women on the basis that they are experiencing continuous rejection, for which they blame the dominant values of society. My point is that the mere existence of this group is evidence that we are not living in a particularly effective patriarchy. Furthermore, rather than seeing these people as being worthy of sympathy and help, the emerging policy approach seems to be to try and criminalise such expressions as hate speech. None of this is going to solve the problem of division in society, which contributes to the overall decline in coherance and social stability.
There's probably an issue with men joining the Incel 'movement' for a wide variety of reasons. IANAE either, but I do think the patriarchy plays an important role in it.
Many men in this country and raised with a rather (ahem) old-fashioned view of women and relationships. To exaggerate: men have to be Phil Mitchell-style hardmen, telling 'their' women what to do, and expecting dinner on the table when they get home from work or the pub. This is a very patriarchal view, and it is a massive turn-off for large numbers of women.
Vast numbers of women are (rightly IMO) not willing to fulfil traditional female roles in the manner they once expected to. Relationships are often now more partnerships than subservient - and I think too many men, even young ones, want control, not partnerships.
(Some women want control as well: but I think the issue is much more pronounced amongst men, who have lost a power they once had. Good riddance to that power IMO.)
Should anyone wish to gain a more nuanced and historically informed view of the situation of where we are today and how we got here in terms of the Middle East, which given some of the hysterical, ignorant gibberish posted over the past few days is sorely needed for some, may I recommend the magisterial ‘The Great War for Civilisation’ by Robert Fisk, a man who knew the Middle East well. Rather better than our phalanxes of armchair generals. It begins with Fisk travelling to Afghanistan to interview Osama Bin Laden.
It won’t make comfortable reading for those on the right of the political spectrum, whose delicate nationalist sensibilities seem to be offended by our resounding defeat and who are doing their level best to pin the blame onto a President who has been in office for five minutes, and who are struggling at seeing us and the US having our collective noses rubbed in the pile of shit we have so assiduously deposited over the course of more than a century across the Middle East.
Afghanistan is a tragedy. It is today and it has been for decades. I wish I had some answers, I don’t, but at least I have half an idea of how we got to this position. It is a shame our politicians, civil servants and military top brass don’t seem to be able to arrive at such a preliminary understanding.
Appalling mess of Afghanistan. An absolute unmitigated disaster.
Whether or not you believe that it was right to be involved 20 years ago is moot. That doesn't excuse the disgraceful manner in which we have dumped on the people by pulling out at such breakneck speed.
It's a disgrace.
The speed at which we withdrew makes little difference. The actions that could have made things different are:
1) Not going in 2) Staying much longer 3) Doing a better job at reconstructing society over 20 years
1 and 2 come with their own costs and problems. 3 is where we should try and learn, for our next adventure at nation building which will probably come along somewhere as attitudes change again in about another 15-20 years time. We won't have learnt those lessons.
1.
1 every time.
I definitely agree that is the case if we cannot do better at reconstructing failed states. As an optimist I do think it is possible to do much better than we have done but perhaps have to accept that our governments will never get it right, or at least not often enough to make it worthwhile.
Appalling mess of Afghanistan. An absolute unmitigated disaster.
Whether or not you believe that it was right to be involved 20 years ago is moot. That doesn't excuse the disgraceful manner in which we have dumped on the people by pulling out at such breakneck speed.
It's a disgrace.
The speed at which we withdrew makes little difference. The actions that could have made things different are:
1) Not going in 2) Staying much longer 3) Doing a better job at reconstructing society over 20 years
1 and 2 come with their own costs and problems. 3 is where we should try and learn, for our next adventure at nation building which will probably come along somewhere as attitudes change again in about another 15-20 years time. We won't have learnt those lessons.
1.
1 every time.
The problem with not going in was al Qaeda. The US had just suffered a massive attack that cost the lives of thousands of civilians: and that was just the latest in a series of such attacks. al Qaeda and bin Laden were not going to just disappear, and they were not being dealt with. The Taliban were harbouring them, and admitted it.
So: how could we have tackled these evil people *without* going in? Bomb them from the air? Or should we just have sat back and let more and more attacks occur?
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
I very much do see what the mullahs and the Taliban did as an issue with Islam. But without wishing to derail the thread there are other issues going in the world right now - in this country even - which show that it is not just Muslim men who think that women primarily exist to serve men.
Might I remind you, for instance of the Incel movement?
The incel movement, along with the woke movement and the increasing emphasis on transgender rights, could perhaps be seen as evidence of how much our society has become feminist in outlook. But this comes at a point where other societies become more patriarchial and traditional in outlook: Afghanistan is just one example of this trend.
The question this poses is how stable is such a modern society in the face of external threats. We are mocking the men at Kabul airport for not wanting to fight the taliban but really, who is willing to fight to defend our own society? If men feel alienated and excluded from society, they are less likely to fight to defend it.
The incel movement and transgender rights are not evidence of feminism. Quite the opposite. They are male movements which will harm women. Old wine in new bottles. One believes that men are owed sex by women. The other believes that it knows better than women what womanhood is. Neither are remotely feminist.
And now I must be off.
The answer to the question in my header is no.
Have a nice day all.
The point is that there are lots of men who want nothing more to do with women - how can this be reconciled with the assertion that we live in a patiarchial society?
Transgender rights - this at least partially (but not exclusively) about men wanting the ability to renounce their biological sex and identify as women.
To me this is evidence that society has become more feminist (or feminine) in terms of its dominant values and outlook.
I might be mis-reading you here, but are you saying Incels want nothing to do with women? Surely that's not right. A defining feature of Incels are that they *do* want sexual (and romantic) relationships with women and are angry/bitter at their inability to do so. They aren't an abstinence movement.
I known little about the incel movement - but my understanding is the same as yours - IE men voluntarily withdrawing from interactions with women on the basis that they are experiencing continuous rejection, for which they blame the dominant values of society. My point is that the mere existence of this group is evidence that we are not living in a particularly effective patriarchy. Furthermore, rather than seeing these people as being worthy of sympathy and help, the emerging policy approach seems to be to try and criminalise such expressions as hate speech. None of this is going to solve the problem of division in society, which contributes to the overall decline in coherance and social stability.
The In in Incel stands for Involuntary, I totally disagree with your characterisation. I also disagree with your conclusion, that it proves we are not in a particularly effective patriarchy. If you will only agree we live in a patriarchal society if every man can sleep with women if they wish (which would appear to entirely ignore the wishes of women) then I'd say you are turning a sliding scale into a binary, and extreme, false dichotemy.
I'll happily agree that a world where every man was entitled to sex would be more patriarchal than this one, but that doesn't mean we live in one which isn't very patriarchal at all.
Finally, I don't agree with your view on how Incels are treated by society. Pre-Plymouth the coverage of them had a lot of sympathy and discussions about how to help them reach more healthy relationships with women and their own minds. The reason the recent coverage has been scared and negative is because on of them murdered several people. That's like saying all response to Islam should be taken from the week after the 7/7 bombings. Obviously the focus is temporarily skewed by events.
On topic, I think (like Canada) accepting 20,000-50,000 refugees of those who have helped us is both proper and achievable. Accepting "millions" is not - there are dozens of countries where hundreds of millions of people live under nasty regimes, and it's not politically feasible to find homes in the West for them all.
The better solution is for the West to actively collaborate to help nation-build - with all the security, economic and sustainability aid required to do that - so people can thrive in more than just one small corner of the world.
DER SPIEGEL: How long can your government resist the Taliban’s attacks without U.S. support?
Ghani: Forever. If I did anything, it was to prepare our forces for this situation. We have already effectively resisted the first wave of attacks in May. But are you writing about that too? We are defensible….
DER SPIEGEL: All that has been built up over 20 years can quickly be shattered. In just one night, for example, the Taliban looted everything they could from institutions, schools and universities in a raid in Kunduz. Has all the reconstruction work by the West, including Germany’s Bundeswehr armed forces, been in vain?
Ghani: I assure you, the women will no longer give up their rights here, nor do they need foreign advisers to represent them. Thirty percent of the administration are women, 58 percent of government officials are young, well-educated people under 40. Our army is a volunteer army. Afghan society has a lively discourse among itself; it makes sovereign decisions. I think this awareness in society is irreversible….
Ghani: I know I am only one bullet away from death. There have been many attempts on my life. But Afghanistan is not South Vietnam, and I did not come here in a coup. I was elected by the people. I’ve never had an American bodyguard or an American tank protecting me. Before I became president, I lived abroad for 28 years, and had a successful career. But I was not happy. No power in the world could persuade me to now get on a plane and leave this country. It is a country I love, and I will die defending...
The claim about being the world's largest producer of pine nuts seems also to be fantasy.
Appalling mess of Afghanistan. An absolute unmitigated disaster.
Whether or not you believe that it was right to be involved 20 years ago is moot. That doesn't excuse the disgraceful manner in which we have dumped on the people by pulling out at such breakneck speed.
It's a disgrace.
The speed at which we withdrew makes little difference. The actions that could have made things different are:
1) Not going in 2) Staying much longer 3) Doing a better job at reconstructing society over 20 years
1 and 2 come with their own costs and problems. 3 is where we should try and learn, for our next adventure at nation building which will probably come along somewhere as attitudes change again in about another 15-20 years time. We won't have learnt those lessons.
1.
1 every time.
The problem with not going in was al Qaeda. The US had just suffered a massive attack that cost the lives of thousands of civilians: and that was just the latest in a series of such attacks. al Qaeda and bin Laden were not going to just disappear, and they were not being dealt with. The Taliban were harbouring them, and admitted it.
So: how could we have tackled these evil people *without* going in?
Just offering the Pakistani ISI $10bn to kill OBL would have been quicker, cheaper and easier.
DER SPIEGEL: How long can your government resist the Taliban’s attacks without U.S. support?
Ghani: Forever. If I did anything, it was to prepare our forces for this situation. We have already effectively resisted the first wave of attacks in May. But are you writing about that too? We are defensible….
DER SPIEGEL: All that has been built up over 20 years can quickly be shattered. In just one night, for example, the Taliban looted everything they could from institutions, schools and universities in a raid in Kunduz. Has all the reconstruction work by the West, including Germany’s Bundeswehr armed forces, been in vain?
Ghani: I assure you, the women will no longer give up their rights here, nor do they need foreign advisers to represent them. Thirty percent of the administration are women, 58 percent of government officials are young, well-educated people under 40. Our army is a volunteer army. Afghan society has a lively discourse among itself; it makes sovereign decisions. I think this awareness in society is irreversible….
Ghani: I know I am only one bullet away from death. There have been many attempts on my life. But Afghanistan is not South Vietnam, and I did not come here in a coup. I was elected by the people. I’ve never had an American bodyguard or an American tank protecting me. Before I became president, I lived abroad for 28 years, and had a successful career. But I was not happy. No power in the world could persuade me to now get on a plane and leave this country. It is a country I love, and I will die defending...
The claim about being the world's largest producer of pine nuts seems also to be fantasy.
Vast numbers of women are (rightly IMO) not willing to fulfil traditional female roles in the manner they once expected to. Relationships are often now more partnerships than subservient
Except that women do expect to fulfil traditional female roles by marrying someone who earns more than them ("the kind of men that single women likely would marry, if they married... had nearly a 55 percent higher income than what the available men in the U.S. actually make"). Couple that with the fact that women rate 80% of men as being uglier than average (whereas male opinions are 'surprisingly charitable: a woman is as likely to be considered extremely ugly as extremely beautiful, and the majority of women have been rated about “medium.”'), and you have an explanation of why the Gini coefficent of the online dating economy is equivalent to Western Europe for women and South Africa for men.
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
I very much do see what the mullahs and the Taliban did as an issue with Islam. But without wishing to derail the thread there are other issues going in the world right now - in this country even - which show that it is not just Muslim men who think that women primarily exist to serve men.
Might I remind you, for instance of the Incel movement?
The incel movement, along with the woke movement and the increasing emphasis on transgender rights, could perhaps be seen as evidence of how much our society has become feminist in outlook. But this comes at a point where other societies become more patriarchial and traditional in outlook: Afghanistan is just one example of this trend.
The question this poses is how stable is such a modern society in the face of external threats. We are mocking the men at Kabul airport for not wanting to fight the taliban but really, who is willing to fight to defend our own society? If men feel alienated and excluded from society, they are less likely to fight to defend it.
The incel movement and transgender rights are not evidence of feminism. Quite the opposite. They are male movements which will harm women. Old wine in new bottles. One believes that men are owed sex by women. The other believes that it knows better than women what womanhood is. Neither are remotely feminist.
And now I must be off.
The answer to the question in my header is no.
Have a nice day all.
The point is that there are lots of men who want nothing more to do with women - how can this be reconciled with the assertion that we live in a patiarchial society?
Transgender rights - this at least partially (but not exclusively) about men wanting the ability to renounce their biological sex and identify as women.
To me this is evidence that society has become more feminist (or feminine) in terms of its dominant values and outlook.
I might be mis-reading you here, but are you saying Incels want nothing to do with women? Surely that's not right. A defining feature of Incels are that they *do* want sexual (and romantic) relationships with women and are angry/bitter at their inability to do so. They aren't an abstinence movement.
I known little about the incel movement - but my understanding is the same as yours - IE men voluntarily withdrawing from interactions with women on the basis that they are experiencing continuous rejection, for which they blame the dominant values of society. My point is that the mere existence of this group is evidence that we are not living in a particularly effective patriarchy. Furthermore, rather than seeing these people as being worthy of sympathy and help, the emerging policy approach seems to be to try and criminalise such expressions as hate speech. None of this is going to solve the problem of division in society, which contributes to the overall decline in coherance and social stability.
I think most of the debate around "incels" is misinformed, and laced with judgement. Yes, there are misogynists and haters amongst them. But many are just geeky, frustrated (often autistic) nerdy young men with poor social skills. You need a carrot as well as a stick.
A better solution would be coaching and mentoring in how to change their attitude, and respectfully interact more with women - including helping them meet those that perhaps share some of their interests.
[PS. I didn't find it easy with women when I was 18 or 19 years old either, particularly with lots of testosterone pumping through my body, and being an avid nerd, and I had to observe/ask a lot of questions of more successful people, and read a lot of books, before I tried and failed enough to figure it out for myself.]
DER SPIEGEL: How long can your government resist the Taliban’s attacks without U.S. support?
Ghani: Forever. If I did anything, it was to prepare our forces for this situation. We have already effectively resisted the first wave of attacks in May. But are you writing about that too? We are defensible….
DER SPIEGEL: All that has been built up over 20 years can quickly be shattered. In just one night, for example, the Taliban looted everything they could from institutions, schools and universities in a raid in Kunduz. Has all the reconstruction work by the West, including Germany’s Bundeswehr armed forces, been in vain?
Ghani: I assure you, the women will no longer give up their rights here, nor do they need foreign advisers to represent them. Thirty percent of the administration are women, 58 percent of government officials are young, well-educated people under 40. Our army is a volunteer army. Afghan society has a lively discourse among itself; it makes sovereign decisions. I think this awareness in society is irreversible….
Ghani: I know I am only one bullet away from death. There have been many attempts on my life. But Afghanistan is not South Vietnam, and I did not come here in a coup. I was elected by the people. I’ve never had an American bodyguard or an American tank protecting me. Before I became president, I lived abroad for 28 years, and had a successful career. But I was not happy. No power in the world could persuade me to now get on a plane and leave this country. It is a country I love, and I will die defending...
The claim about being the world's largest producer of pine nuts seems also to be fantasy.
Maybe 'pine nuts' is code for something..
No, I think they genuinely became a fairly large exporter of pine nuts in recent years.
Appalling mess of Afghanistan. An absolute unmitigated disaster.
Whether or not you believe that it was right to be involved 20 years ago is moot. That doesn't excuse the disgraceful manner in which we have dumped on the people by pulling out at such breakneck speed.
It's a disgrace.
The speed at which we withdrew makes little difference. The actions that could have made things different are:
1) Not going in 2) Staying much longer 3) Doing a better job at reconstructing society over 20 years
1 and 2 come with their own costs and problems. 3 is where we should try and learn, for our next adventure at nation building which will probably come along somewhere as attitudes change again in about another 15-20 years time. We won't have learnt those lessons.
1.
1 every time.
The problem with not going in was al Qaeda. The US had just suffered a massive attack that cost the lives of thousands of civilians: and that was just the latest in a series of such attacks. al Qaeda and bin Laden were not going to just disappear, and they were not being dealt with. The Taliban were harbouring them, and admitted it.
So: how could we have tackled these evil people *without* going in? Bomb them from the air? Or should we just have sat back and let more and more attacks occur?
(All as I recall, might have misremembered, etc.)
Bin Laden was killed by special operatives in Pakistan. Clear missions like that rather than the open ended "nation building" nonsense we had in Afghanistan. We're not there to make any friends, if the Al-Qaeda camps need firebombing, do that then get out.
I always think Turkey an interesting case, as a bellwether of democracy and religion. It has some of the characteristics of what might be described as a fundamentally religious culture, but also had a dictator and a cult of personality for a hundred years who tried to eradicate or restrict this. On the east side, a society not too far dissimilar from Afghanistan's, and on the west and north-west coasts, a large metropolitan secular population, a proportion of whom are also in fact curiously descended from the very first progenitors of democracy, as muslim-converted greeks from Ionia and the surrounding areas. It's moved broadly with the political-religious trends of the 80's and 90's, of the rest of the Muslim world, but where it goes next will be significant.
Coincidentally I am writing this at a cafe directly underneath the Parthenon. Sipping a decent but not brilliant Cretan white
If I look up from my iPad I can see the chiselled golden pillars of the famous temple, the birthplace of western democracy
Poignant
Athens the birthplace not only of western democracy but of the Socratic method. @kinbalu was having a bit of a dig yesterday about whether 'logical thinking' was a purely western characteristic. I would argue that 'logical thinking' stems from the philosophy of ancient Athens, and particular Socrates and his successors, in which no question was off limits; in which every statement could be met with 'why?'. This is not a way of looking at the world held everywhere, even in the west, and certainly hasn't always been held in the west. But I would argue that those cultures which are free to ask why (like the west, at its best) are better than those which are not (like Wahabbi Islam).
Kinabalu was correcting your fundamental misreading of Kinabalu's point in the exchange he was having with fruity Leon.
Well that was fair enough.
I think I just thought it an interesting, though probably rather tangential, point that 'rationalism' is kind of a western (though not exclusively) philosophy rather than necessarily a universal one.
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
I very much do see what the mullahs and the Taliban did as an issue with Islam. But without wishing to derail the thread there are other issues going in the world right now - in this country even - which show that it is not just Muslim men who think that women primarily exist to serve men.
Might I remind you, for instance of the Incel movement?
The incel movement, along with the woke movement and the increasing emphasis on transgender rights, could perhaps be seen as evidence of how much our society has become feminist in outlook. But this comes at a point where other societies become more patriarchial and traditional in outlook: Afghanistan is just one example of this trend.
The question this poses is how stable is such a modern society in the face of external threats. We are mocking the men at Kabul airport for not wanting to fight the taliban but really, who is willing to fight to defend our own society? If men feel alienated and excluded from society, they are less likely to fight to defend it.
The incel movement and transgender rights are not evidence of feminism. Quite the opposite. They are male movements which will harm women. Old wine in new bottles. One believes that men are owed sex by women. The other believes that it knows better than women what womanhood is. Neither are remotely feminist.
And now I must be off.
The answer to the question in my header is no.
Have a nice day all.
The point is that there are lots of men who want nothing more to do with women - how can this be reconciled with the assertion that we live in a patiarchial society?
Transgender rights - this at least partially (but not exclusively) about men wanting the ability to renounce their biological sex and identify as women.
To me this is evidence that society has become more feminist (or feminine) in terms of its dominant values and outlook.
I might be mis-reading you here, but are you saying Incels want nothing to do with women? Surely that's not right. A defining feature of Incels are that they *do* want sexual (and romantic) relationships with women and are angry/bitter at their inability to do so. They aren't an abstinence movement.
I known little about the incel movement - but my understanding is the same as yours - IE men voluntarily withdrawing from interactions with women on the basis that they are experiencing continuous rejection, for which they blame the dominant values of society. My point is that the mere existence of this group is evidence that we are not living in a particularly effective patriarchy. Furthermore, rather than seeing these people as being worthy of sympathy and help, the emerging policy approach seems to be to try and criminalise such expressions as hate speech. None of this is going to solve the problem of division in society, which contributes to the overall decline in coherance and social stability.
There's probably an issue with men joining the Incel 'movement' for a wide variety of reasons. IANAE either, but I do think the patriarchy plays an important role in it.
Many men in this country and raised with a rather (ahem) old-fashioned view of women and relationships. To exaggerate: men have to be Phil Mitchell-style hardmen, telling 'their' women what to do, and expecting dinner on the table when they get home from work or the pub. This is a very patriarchal view, and it is a massive turn-off for large numbers of women.
Vast numbers of women are (rightly IMO) not willing to fulfil traditional female roles in the manner they once expected to. Relationships are often now more partnerships than subservient - and I think too many men, even young ones, want control, not partnerships.
(Some women want control as well: but I think the issue is much more pronounced amongst men, who have lost a power they once had. Good riddance to that power IMO.)
On a personal level, I have the same broad outlook as you in terms of relationships. However, I just don't buy that INCELs are a bunch of frustrated Phil Mitchell style hardmen.
Your explanatory framework of women becoming more liberal does not adequately explain things like the 'tradwife' phenomenon.
On a personal level I know a lot of men who are single, acceptably woke in their opinions, in their late 30s/40's, very gainfully employed but who simply don't have long term relationships and don't really talk about women in the way that they used to. It is an alarmingly high proportion of my friendship group from university - something like over 50%. There is something going on here which goes far beyond the narrative of an estranged patriarchy.
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
I very much do see what the mullahs and the Taliban did as an issue with Islam. But without wishing to derail the thread there are other issues going in the world right now - in this country even - which show that it is not just Muslim men who think that women primarily exist to serve men.
Might I remind you, for instance of the Incel movement?
The incel movement, along with the woke movement and the increasing emphasis on transgender rights, could perhaps be seen as evidence of how much our society has become feminist in outlook. But this comes at a point where other societies become more patriarchial and traditional in outlook: Afghanistan is just one example of this trend.
The question this poses is how stable is such a modern society in the face of external threats. We are mocking the men at Kabul airport for not wanting to fight the taliban but really, who is willing to fight to defend our own society? If men feel alienated and excluded from society, they are less likely to fight to defend it.
The incel movement and transgender rights are not evidence of feminism. Quite the opposite. They are male movements which will harm women. Old wine in new bottles. One believes that men are owed sex by women. The other believes that it knows better than women what womanhood is. Neither are remotely feminist.
And now I must be off.
The answer to the question in my header is no.
Have a nice day all.
The point is that there are lots of men who want nothing more to do with women - how can this be reconciled with the assertion that we live in a patiarchial society?
Transgender rights - this at least partially (but not exclusively) about men wanting the ability to renounce their biological sex and identify as women.
To me this is evidence that society has become more feminist (or feminine) in terms of its dominant values and outlook.
I might be mis-reading you here, but are you saying Incels want nothing to do with women? Surely that's not right. A defining feature of Incels are that they *do* want sexual (and romantic) relationships with women and are angry/bitter at their inability to do so. They aren't an abstinence movement.
I known little about the incel movement - but my understanding is the same as yours - IE men voluntarily withdrawing from interactions with women on the basis that they are experiencing continuous rejection, for which they blame the dominant values of society. My point is that the mere existence of this group is evidence that we are not living in a particularly effective patriarchy. Furthermore, rather than seeing these people as being worthy of sympathy and help, the emerging policy approach seems to be to try and criminalise such expressions as hate speech. None of this is going to solve the problem of division in society, which contributes to the overall decline in coherance and social stability.
There's probably an issue with men joining the Incel 'movement' for a wide variety of reasons. IANAE either, but I do think the patriarchy plays an important role in it.
Many men in this country and raised with a rather (ahem) old-fashioned view of women and relationships. To exaggerate: men have to be Phil Mitchell-style hardmen, telling 'their' women what to do, and expecting dinner on the table when they get home from work or the pub. This is a very patriarchal view, and it is a massive turn-off for large numbers of women.
Vast numbers of women are (rightly IMO) not willing to fulfil traditional female roles in the manner they once expected to. Relationships are often now more partnerships than subservient - and I think too many men, even young ones, want control, not partnerships.
(Some women want control as well: but I think the issue is much more pronounced amongst men, who have lost a power they once had. Good riddance to that power IMO.)
I don't think this is right actually, except at the margins.
I think most simply want a girlfriend and have no clue how to go about it, and largely only get angry and misogynistic when they fail and withdraw, and meet like-minded people online who radicalise them.
Comments
However, I don’t believe the slogan was ever meant to project Britain as a thrusting mini-superpower - anyone who used it that way is a dolt. What it means is an open, trading Britain, with friendly connections across the world, able to operate nimbly as a sovereign and significant power, and lots of helpful alliances, but certainly not a superpower
It is still an idea I ascribe to. But despatching gunboats to Goa? No
I do not think all men are inherently bad. Far from it. We are moral beings who make choices. But we are a little reluctant to interrogate thoroughly the extent to which such bad ideas are shared by really quite a lot of men, more than we often care to admit. Yes - the problem here is Islam. Which is what my header said.
Edit: lol
Michael Vaughan
Former England captain on BBC Test Match Special
How has it got to this?
We have a hard enough job preventing our own society getting worse.
No chance of an England run chase without Stokes.
Who is running ISI? GPT-59?
Much better to chase the total and fall short, than to try and play out for the draw and miss that too. It’s only four an over.
The problem isn't Islam, its the West. We clearly do not believe in anything any more. How can we expect anybody else to?
They'll have the good sense not to try.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/15/us-covid-delta-cases-unvaccinated-sitting-ducks
I look at my life and the hard work I've put in. But really I was just lucky to be born in the region and at the time I was, as is my daughter.
The only way past this is for Muhammed's marriage to be condemned. And the various Koranic passages saying female POWs can be taken as sex slaves.
If I look up from my iPad I can see the chiselled golden pillars of the famous temple, the birthplace of western democracy
Poignant
The 90s style taliaban regime was considerably worse than pretty much any excesses of Christianity anywhere ever in its repression of women.
The question this poses is how stable is such a modern society in the face of external threats. We are mocking the men at Kabul airport for not wanting to fight the taliban but really, who is willing to fight to defend our own society? If men feel alienated and excluded from society, they are less likely to fight to defend it.
Afghanistan was never, ever going to take on board a set of values we ourselves abandoned in favour of a vacuum which Chinese Communist Party alternatives have filled.
Arbitrary restrictions on movement and association by authoritarian governments. Vaccine passports as a conduit to social credit scores. Restrictions of overseas travel. Tracking of movement by test and trace. A 'papers please' society.
If you want the reason why Afghanistan folded so quickly, look around you. They are here. You are crazy if you think the Afghans would give their lives for a belief system long since abandoned by its own apologists.
Large parts of the Islamic world are still quite civilised. In the 20th century it seemed that Islam might evolve like Christianity, and compromise with modernity and liberalism. Sadly that’s didn’t happen
Perhaps the Chinese are right, that there is no hope for Islamic minorities in non Islamic countries, and therefore they must be destroyed, and their culture wiped away
It is a counsel of bleak despair. And now I’m going to the Parthenon. Finally
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_incident
ISTR there was one ?general? who committed sepukku, telling his men that he was taking the dishonour of surrender on himself, and that meant they should not take part in any coup. Can't find any details from a quick Google, though ...
Ben Wallace actually weeping on LBC does give some credence to that theory
A get out of the UK being utterly impotent isn't the greatest advert for new, thrusting, global Britain.
I grant you that.
However, I don’t believe the slogan was ever meant to project Britain as a thrusting mini-superpower - anyone who used it that way is a dolt. What it means is an open, trading Britain, with friendly connections across the world, able to operate nimbly as a sovereign and significant power, and lots of helpful alliances, but certainly not a superpower
It is still an idea I ascribe to. But despatching gunboats to Goa? No
Carrier groups to the Pacific?
The Queen Elizabeth A/craft carrier looks like a gold plated white elephant in the context of Afghanistan...a colossal waste of money and an irritant to Chinese relations at a time when the UK cant afford it...
For example, the strange issue of why certain people were attacking the idea of Church of England schools. It was not so much that they were a breeding ground of fundamentalist, bigoted... vague niceness, as that the people in question were worried about religious schools of a different genre.
Since directly attacking those schools was out.....
As regards the discussion above, the issue is that many followers want to go back to the perceived purity of the early days of their religion. They do not accept that the rules now are different. It excuses all types of behaviour by men who are then justified in controlling their women and children AS THEY SEE FIT. We must beware that this mindset is not that far away in our own society once we forget the rule of law and the enlightenment.
The problem is not intrinsic to Islam - it's just that so many of the followers are poor and uneducated, and their leaders are hell bent on keeping them that way. Because they know what will happen if they can't - the followers will demand change, and the demands will be ultimately irresistible.
Are Trans Rights Activists really feminist given their main enemy seems to be so called TERFS
And now I must be off.
The answer to the question in my header is no.
Have a nice day all.
And now I really do have to do other stuff. I am sure we can continue this debate another time, though I do not think that we are fundamentally disagreeing. We are each of us, whether men or women, responsible fo the choices we make and, whether religious or not, it is a cop out to blame religion or society or rules or something else, for the choices we make.
The bigotry comes where anti-Muslim prejudice is dressed up as concern for female emancipation by those who otherwise have no interest in it, or for whom the topic normally irritates.
I usually - but not always - find it easy to tell the difference between these 2 things.
Well they can.
And Afghanistan is the result.
There is no Western alternative any more. There is a very pale version of China. So, if that is the way the world is going, why not throw in your lot with the real thing?
"When I was living in Kenya, my father arranged for me to marry a man I had never met. His name was Osman Moussa... Before the nikah ceremony, which would legally wed us"
"Fraidy Reiss, the founder of Unchained At Last, was forced into a marriage in 1995 when she was 19 years old. It quickly turned abusive. She came from an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community"
"Naila Amin was forced into a marriage with her 28-year-old cousin when she was just 15-years-old."
"My friend Yasmine Mohammed escaped a forced marriage to an al-Qaeda terrorist in Canada."
"Judy Wiegand came forward to testify for a ban of child marriages in North Carolina, recounting her own experiences of marrying in northern NC in 1996, at the age of 15."
5 examples, 3 of them Islamic. Oh, and the Judy Weigand example took place in the seventies not in the nineties.
I think it's been remarked on here before, but perhaps it does suggest that attraction to children is much more common than we'd like to admit.
@kinbalu was having a bit of a dig yesterday about whether 'logical thinking' was a purely western characteristic. I would argue that 'logical thinking' stems from the philosophy of ancient Athens, and particular Socrates and his successors, in which no question was off limits; in which every statement could be met with 'why?'.
This is not a way of looking at the world held everywhere, even in the west, and certainly hasn't always been held in the west. But I would argue that those cultures which are free to ask why (like the west, at its best) are better than those which are not (like Wahabbi Islam).
Transgender rights - this at least partially (but not exclusively) about men wanting the ability to renounce their biological sex and identify as women.
To me this is evidence that society has become more feminist (or feminine) in terms of its dominant values and outlook.
When Leon gets back from the Acropolis, I must ask him if he got to see the Assembly on the Pnyx hill.
I'd also disagree with your characterisation of the trans movement. There are more people born male but identifying as women these days - but there are also more people born female but identifying as men. The shift isn't the people are preferring to be women compared to the past, but that people of both sexes are more comfortable living in a different gender to that assigned at birth.
Stop the War is calling for the UK to pay reparations to the Taliban.
https://twitter.com/Daniel_Sugarman/status/1427188629235974150
Clearly leaving Afghanistan to the mercies of the Taliban is a horrible outcome for Afghanis (and not necessarily great for the west, either).
But as the header notes, many Afghans have views which are incompatible with western views of personal liberty (especially through not exclusively for women). Inviting, in Rory Stewart's words, 'millions' of them here isn't likely to go particularly well. No doubt there are many among them who are fine individuals who would be an asset to our society. But there are likely to be many more who are not. We have seen repeatedly what happens when we set up parallel societies in our towns made up of people with a very different worldview.
The third solution is to try to create a workable Afghanistan - but the west has tried and failed there.
Whether or not you believe that it was right to be involved 20 years ago is moot. That doesn't excuse the disgraceful manner in which we have dumped on the people by pulling out at such breakneck speed.
It's a disgrace.
Once you get past Plato's apologising, it is quite simple *why* Socrates got the chop. He was considered by a number of his fellow Athenians to be the intellectual founder of a movement that had ended up as a quisling, murderous oligarchy.
The 'personal liberty' that stopped grandparents from seeing their grandchildren in Britain?'
The 'personal liberty' that stopped you meeting five other people for months on end in Britain?
The 'personal liberty' that allowed the government to track and trace your movements?
The 'personal liberty' that allows French police to check the medical status of their own citizens as the price of going to a restaurant?
That 'personal liberty?'
The fact is that personal liberty, Western style, has ceased to exist, to the loud applause of many in the West. We do things the China way now. Afghanistan is one corollary of that abandonment.
It will not be the last.
1) Not going in
2) Staying much longer
3) Doing a better job at reconstructing society over 20 years
1 and 2 come with their own costs and problems. 3 is where we should try and learn, for our next adventure at nation building which will probably come along somewhere as attitudes change again in about another 15-20 years time. We won't have learnt those lessons.
The method we chose being trying to construct a version of the West that does not.....er.....exist in the West any more.
1 every time.
Many men in this country and raised with a rather (ahem) old-fashioned view of women and relationships. To exaggerate: men have to be Phil Mitchell-style hardmen, telling 'their' women what to do, and expecting dinner on the table when they get home from work or the pub. This is a very patriarchal view, and it is a massive turn-off for large numbers of women.
Vast numbers of women are (rightly IMO) not willing to fulfil traditional female roles in the manner they once expected to. Relationships are often now more partnerships than subservient - and I think too many men, even young ones, want control, not partnerships.
(Some women want control as well: but I think the issue is much more pronounced amongst men, who have lost a power they once had. Good riddance to that power IMO.)
Kinda amazing how many people understand epidemiology AND Afghanistan.
https://twitter.com/TamarHaspel/status/1426940909057454080
It won’t make comfortable reading for those on the right of the political spectrum, whose delicate nationalist sensibilities seem to be offended by our resounding defeat and who are doing their level best to pin the blame onto a President who has been in office for five minutes, and who are struggling at seeing us and the US having our collective noses rubbed in the pile of shit we have so assiduously deposited over the course of more than a century across the Middle East.
Afghanistan is a tragedy. It is today and it has been for decades. I wish I had some answers, I don’t, but at least I have half an idea of how we got to this position. It is a shame our politicians, civil servants and military top brass don’t seem to be able to arrive at such a preliminary understanding.
A winning position when Pant went down this morning, now turned into at best a draw.
Edit: and so they declare after seeing the ball swinging. 272 from 60 the target.
So: how could we have tackled these evil people *without* going in? Bomb them from the air? Or should we just have sat back and let more and more attacks occur?
(All as I recall, might have misremembered, etc.)
I'll happily agree that a world where every man was entitled to sex would be more patriarchal than this one, but that doesn't mean we live in one which isn't very patriarchal at all.
Finally, I don't agree with your view on how Incels are treated by society. Pre-Plymouth the coverage of them had a lot of sympathy and discussions about how to help them reach more healthy relationships with women and their own minds. The reason the recent coverage has been scared and negative is because on of them murdered several people. That's like saying all response to Islam should be taken from the week after the 7/7 bombings. Obviously the focus is temporarily skewed by events.
The better solution is for the West to actively collaborate to help nation-build - with all the security, economic and sustainability aid required to do that - so people can thrive in more than just one small corner of the world.
An interview with Ghani from mid May.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-with-afghanistan-president-ashraf-ghani-i-know-i-am-only-one-bullet-away-from-death-a-82dc3dd6-3c27-4f93-97c9-d6cddf0cd117
DER SPIEGEL: How long can your government resist the Taliban’s attacks without U.S. support?
Ghani: Forever. If I did anything, it was to prepare our forces for this situation. We have already effectively resisted the first wave of attacks in May. But are you writing about that too? We are defensible….
DER SPIEGEL: All that has been built up over 20 years can quickly be shattered. In just one night, for example, the Taliban looted everything they could from institutions, schools and universities in a raid in Kunduz. Has all the reconstruction work by the West, including Germany’s Bundeswehr armed forces, been in vain?
Ghani: I assure you, the women will no longer give up their rights here, nor do they need foreign advisers to represent them. Thirty percent of the administration are women, 58 percent of government officials are young, well-educated people under 40. Our army is a volunteer army. Afghan society has a lively discourse among itself; it makes sovereign decisions. I think this awareness in society is irreversible….
Ghani: I know I am only one bullet away from death. There have been many attempts on my life. But Afghanistan is not South Vietnam, and I did not come here in a coup. I was elected by the people. I’ve never had an American bodyguard or an American tank protecting me. Before I became president, I lived abroad for 28 years, and had a successful career. But I was not happy. No power in the world could persuade me to now get on a plane and leave this country. It is a country I love, and I will die defending...
The claim about being the world's largest producer of pine nuts seems also to be fantasy.
Israel started administering a third dose to 60 y/o and above on July 30
By now, over half of this age group received the 3rd dose
In the two weeks that passed, the relative fraction of cases of 60 y/o and above who are vaccinated out of all cases dropped from ~12-14% to ~6%
https://twitter.com/segal_eran/status/1426835378292633602
STW is a contemptible pro-Russia front organisation.
A better solution would be coaching and mentoring in how to change their attitude, and respectfully interact more with women - including helping them meet those that perhaps share some of their interests.
[PS. I didn't find it easy with women when I was 18 or 19 years old either, particularly with lots of testosterone pumping through my body, and being an avid nerd, and I had to observe/ask a lot of questions of more successful people, and read a lot of books, before I tried and failed enough to figure it out for myself.]
I think I just thought it an interesting, though probably rather tangential, point that 'rationalism' is kind of a western (though not exclusively) philosophy rather than necessarily a universal one.
Your explanatory framework of women becoming more liberal does not adequately explain things like the 'tradwife' phenomenon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwT-zYo4-OM
On a personal level I know a lot of men who are single, acceptably woke in their opinions, in their late 30s/40's, very gainfully employed but who simply don't have long term relationships and don't really talk about women in the way that they used to. It is an alarmingly high proportion of my friendship group from university - something like over 50%. There is something going on here which goes far beyond the narrative of an estranged patriarchy.
I think most simply want a girlfriend and have no clue how to go about it, and largely only get angry and misogynistic when they fail and withdraw, and meet like-minded people online who radicalise them.
https://www.india.com/news/world/taliban-takeover-breaking-shackles-of-slavery-in-afghanistan-says-pakistan-pm-imran-khan-4892465/amp/