America can't be indifferent to the snuffing out of democracy in Pakistan

[WarKa DaNG]

Can we call the situation right now as 'Partial Law' as the only that is working is for the benefit of PDM crooks other than that they have thrown the whole constitution and other laws in the dustbin

 

[Drexluddin Khan Spiveyzai]

Can we call the situation right now as 'Partial Law'

 

[Baburfromsarmarkand]

It’s better suited for the Western world, not the Eastern world.

Better for high IQ nations, not nations where there is no literacy. I am pretty sure Taiwan, HK and Japan are democracies, so is SK, they are doing just fine.

 

[Sabrejet]

Better for high IQ nations, not nations where there is no literacy.

People can have all the IQ in the world, and they can be literate in every language in existence. Those things still don't guarantee that democracy is suitable for those people.

Even the power structure in certain societies isn't democratic. What can be expected from people who defer to their parents for all important life decisions, such as education paths, career, and choice of life partner?

Literacy won't cure these people. They have to learn to question and analyze, and they have to stop letting fear and over-compliance influence their decision making skills.

This is easier said than done.

 

[RescueRanger]

Maybe those orientalists were onto something.

Forgive my ignorance, but it seems the global East has very little contribution to human civilization, esp disproportionate considering how much of humanity lives in the East (don't give me "the Chinese invented paper").

BTW, when I say that, I include Islam in "Western Civilization", not eastern. Islamic caliphates were the intellectual successors of the Roman empire and the predecessors of renaissance Europe.

Watch this when you have time. It's long and starts slow but it's definitely worth watching if you want to understand why I am saying the above.

The point made in the video is, Islam was part of Western Civilization and that PolSci courses in the West are essentially saying "Western Civilization = Christian civilization" and completely ignore the Islamic worlds' contribution to western civilization. He says, PolSci should start with the advent of settled societies and govts, which he says are first recorded around 6th millennium BC. But those 6 millenia are glanced over in a first two of the 15 weeks of the semester. The rest is all about equating Western Civilization to Judeo-christian civilization. And the misleading term, "Dark Ages" is used to indicate the western civilization's darkest period was after the Fall of Rome in 476 AD, when the Roman empire never really fell. It shifted it's capital to it's eastern wing in Constantiople. And that the torch was carried forward by muslims until the renaissance, something that is completely ignored and "Dark ages" myth is peddled.

@_NOBODY_ @Joe Shearer @M. Sarmad @RescueRanger @Jango , @Ssan @HerbertPervert
thoughts?

 

[Ssan]

The reason why the Muslim world or the Islamic civilization lost to the western one is not because of any reasons offered by orientalists. The reason they succeeded was the same reason that IK is losing in Pakistan. Idealism by itself cannot defeat brute pragmatism.

The reason the Europeans eventually beat out everyone else was not because they were more technologically capable. Or organized- or had better military doctrines. They beat the Muslim world because the Muslims were unwilling to do what was necessary to win from a civilizational point of view.

We were unable to effectively colonize a people and impoverish them to make ourselves richer. Under Mughal rule, India flourished with shared prosperity between Muslims and Hindus. The proportion of Muslims to Hindu was even over the centuries of rule between where the Muslims ruled and the held out hindu pockets. Contrast this with the Goan inquisition. Contrast this with the British that left India impoverished.

The Europeans genocided three continents on this planet to supplant with their own race and forced on the edge of a sword another half continent to convert to Christianity.

Here’s a passage from Amitav Ghosh’s in an antique land about why exactly the Europeans succeeded in the Indian Ocean for example.

“A bare two years after Vasco da Gama's voyage a Portuguese fleet led by Pedro
Alvarez Cabral arrived on the Malabar coast. Cabral delivered a letter from the king of



Portugal to the Samudri (Samudra-raja or Sea-king), the Hindu ruler of the city-state of
Calicut, demanding that he expel all Muslims from his kingdom as they were enemies of
the 'Holy Faith'. He met with a blank refusal; then as afterwards the Samudri steadfastly
maintained that Calicut had always been open to everyone who wished to trade there —
the Portuguese were welcome to as much pepper as they liked, so long as they bought it
at cost price. The Portuguese fleet sailed away, but not before Calicut had been
subjected to a two-day bombardment. A year or so later Vasco da Gama returned with
another, much more powerful Portuguese fleet and demanded once again that all
Muslim traders be expelled from Calicut.

During those early years the peoples who had traditionally participated in the Indian
Ocean trade were taken completely by surprise. In all the centuries in which it had
flourished and grown, no state or king or ruling power had ever before tried to gain
control of the Indian Ocean trade by force of arms. The territorial and dynastic
ambitions that were pursued with such determination on land were generally not
allowed to spill over into the sea.

Within the Western historiographical record the unarmed character of the Indian
Ocean trade is often represented as a lack, or failure, one that invited the intervention
of Europe, with its increasing proficiency in war. When a defeat is as complete as was
that of the trading cultures of the Indian Ocean, it is hard to allow the vanquished the
dignity of nuances of choice and preference. Yet it is worth allowing for the possibility
that the peaceful traditions of the oceanic trade may have been, in a quiet and
inarticulate way, the product of a rare cultural choice — one that may have owed a great
deal to the pacifist customs and beliefs of the Gujarati Jains and Vanias who played
such an important part in it. At the time, at least one European was moved to
bewilderment by the unfamiliar mores of the region; a response more honest perhaps
than the trust in historical inevitability that has supplanted it since. 'The heathen [of
Gujarat]', wrote Tome Pires, early in the sixteenth century, 'held that they must never
kill anyone, nor must they have armed men in their company. If they were captured
and [their captors] wanted to kill them all, they did not resist. This is the Gujarat law
among the heathen.'

It was because of those singular traditions, perhaps, that the rulers of the Indian
Ocean ports were utterly confounded by the demands and actions of the Portuguese.
Having long been accustomed to the tradesman's rules of bargaining and compromise
they tried time and time again to reach an understanding with the Europeans — only to
discover, as one historian has put it, that the choice was 'between resistance and
submission; co-operation was not offered.' Unable to compete in the Indian Ocean trade
by purely commercial means, the Europeans were bent on taking control of it by
aggression, pure and distilled, by unleashing violence on a scale unprecedented on those
shores. As far as the Portuguese were concerned, they had declared a proprietorial right
over the Indian Ocean: since none of the peoples who lived around it had thought to
claim ownership of it before their arrival, they could not expect the right of free
passage in it now.



By the time the trading nations of the Indian Ocean began to realize that their old
understandings had been rendered defunct by the Europeans it was already too late. In
1509ad the fate of that ancient trading culture was sealed in a naval engagement that

was sadly, perhaps pathetically, evocative of its ethos: a transcontinental fleet, hastily
put together by the Muslim potentate of Gujarat, the Hindu ruler of Calicut, and the
Sultan of Egypt was attacked and defeated by a Portuguese force off the shores of Diu,
in Gujarat. As always, the determination of a small, united band of soldiers triumphed
easily over the rich confusions that accompany a culture of accommodation and
compromise.

The battle proved decisive; the Indian and Egyptian ships were put to flight and the
Portuguese never again had to face a serious naval challenge in the Indian Ocean until
the arrival of the Dutch. Soon, the remains of the civilization that had brought Ben Yiju
to Mangalore were devoured by that unquenchable, demonic thirst that has raged ever
since, for almost five hundred years, over the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea and the
Persian Gulf. “

Also remember in context that for the passage above, the Portuguese took over the Indian Ocean without a fight at the same time that the ottomans had the strongest navy in Europe until the battle of lepanto much later. But the ottomans that could have easily done what the Portuguese did in the Indian Ocean never did so.