I'm glad that as a society we aren't regressing

[Arash]

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/06/06/new.york.ground.zero.mosque/index.html?hpt=T2

Love this quote-

"We feel it would be more appropriate maybe to build a center dedicated to expunging the Quranic texts of the violent ideology that inspired jihad, or perhaps a center to the victims of hundreds of millions of years of jihadi wars, land enslavements, cultural annihilations and mass slaughter"


-_-

[WickerNipple]

I want a terrorist monkey god who's been active for hundreds of millions of years!!!!

[Amazonwarlord]

LOL 100,000,000 years .....

And she is the "spokesperson" NiCe!

[Ancow]

I want a terrorist monkey god who's been active for hundreds of millions of years!!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Wu_Kong

[WickerNipple]

Oh I know all about the Monkey King, the cashier at my Vietnamese takeout place calls me that when I grow my ridiculous beard thing all the way out.




But he's no god! Next!

[Arash]

I wish to never see that beard in real life.

[WickerNipple]

Coward.

[Emperors Reckoning]

I guess what I find most appalling about comments like these is the uninformed bigotry. What Monkey-God Comment guy is failing to realize is that the monkey-god of Islam is the same purported entity as the monkey-god of the Christians and the monkey-god of Ms. Geller's tribe as well. Of course, family arguements are the worst.

I am in no way apologizing for actions of greed and political desperation made by medieval nobles, from barons to popes, in the name of "Christendom", but good old God-fearing Christians have got as much responsibilty for the global hate-fest in progress, now.

Andy, you are brainy, research-y guy, what have you come across that traces the origins of the current Islam/West conflict. I don't remember anything like this from when I was a kid. Sometime in the 70's or 80's this movement got a push from somewhere. Do you know where?

[WickerNipple]

Well, I tried to avoid the modern and post-modern periods like the plague if possible - but...

You're right, the current climate of extremity and conflict is pretty new - though not as new as you think. The Christian West and Islam have had their ups and downs for a long long time. You can find people saying the same sorts of stuff they do now at pretty much any time point after Mohammed, but it has a certain fervor and rhetoric now that seems entrenched.

My only in depth studies of Islam centered around Al-Andalus (Islamic occupation of Spain) where the Muslims were generally seen as a force of progress and enlightenment and religious freedom by everyone except the ruling (Christian) nobility who were ousted. This wasn't entirely true, it depended on the Muslim faction in power at the time and they changed hands a lot, but generally Spain during the dark ages was far better off under Islamic rule than the rest of Europe, and all three of the major religions in the region seemed to more or less agree on that and get along for the most part - except for those Christians actively engaged in the Reconquista. And then, even to their foes, the muslim armies were considered highly honorable and worthy opponents. It wasn't so much "religious strife" like we see today and more a conflict over land and modes of thought. (The christian rulers were particularly irked by the muslim establishment of several early forms of state welfare, for example.)

Elsewhere the Crusades obviously generated a ton of hostility from both sides, but I only studied them in passing and really can't tell you much. The Ottoman Empire was a huge concern for Europe all through the 15s-19s, and there's a tremendous amount of anti-muslim opinion associated with the empire's advance. The Ottomans rarely seem to respond in kind - they don't really ever express cultural hatred for Europe or Christians during the period, rather they approach european expansion as a kind of adventurism in the best of cases and pragmatism in the worst.

Zionism in the late 19th century and early 20th century found some of its greatest supporters in the muslim and persian world, even among the Palestinians, but that support didn't extend to statehood nor authority and everything generally unwound when those things were proclaimed. Today's state of rawrarawrrawr is typically traced to the formation of the state of Israel by the UN and the various conflicts that surrounded it, particularly the expelling of the vast majority of the arab population from the new country following the arab-israeli war. Religious relations in that region have been bad ever since that first war, and have been exacerbated by both sides seemingly as much as humanly possible. Interestingly, there weren't really "religious conflicts" prior to that - the conflicts were largely colonial.

Big push for hardline or extremist or fundamentalist or whatever you want to call it Islam likely stems from the Iranian Revolution, but I really don't know anything about the subject beyond what I'd find in wiki or something. Arash probably knows a good deal about it though, and I'm betting the ramifications of it have a lot to do with the new developments you're seeing.

The neocons were also fond of a theory called Arab Inadequacy to explain the current feverish pitch. If I remember correctly I wasn't that fond of it when they pushed it - it stems from the idea that they once held mighty empires and great achievements but no longer do - but I'm loose on the details now and I'm sure you could find better info yourself if you look. I'd treat it with a heavy degree of skepticism, but it does have kernels of truth to it.

[AndyP]

My only in depth studies of Islam centered around Al-Andalus (Islamic occupation of Spain) where the Muslims were generally seen as a force of progress and enlightenment

Absolutely. Didn't a Muslim scholar in that region invent dessert?