Welcome To The Past

 Ibn Al Wahhab (second from right)

When I was very young, living in a USA that led the Free World, we were often frightened by stories of the Socialist trans-national Arab philosophies of Nasser and the United Arab Republic, of the Ba'ath ("resurrection") party with its desire to secularize and modernize Arab society.

We feared the secular socialists.

So we spent time and money.

Now the entire Middle East is sectarian, not socialist; it is parochial, not trans-Arab; it is rife with violence and destruction. The Afghanistan which was Communist and secular was destroyed in a war in which we supported Osama bin Laden as one of our surrogates against the USSR.

Having fought since the Second World War, we look around and see how we have spread our carpet of death, intolerance, and compulsion: any hope that the Middle East might benefit from Western thought - albeit in the heretical form of Marxism - has been utterly destroyed, and we have hoisted into place a new Ottoman Empire of group against group and neighbor against neighbor.

We have managed the Middle East back to a time when Ibn Al Wahhab first appeared in Arabia in the 18th century.

And it is the sign of the decay of empires that not only do they decay from within, but all the ecumene which is in touch with it goes extremely retrograde...

However, maybe this is but a cleansing breath as Islam readies itself for a future without the West.

من يعرف؟
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