Quote Originally Posted by Banquo's Ghost View Post
I would certainly be interested in you posting some of your references. PJ has made his position clear and advanced some evidence to back up his ideas. Whereas I am personally loathe to accept the over-arching theorem, he has piqued my interest. I would be grateful if you could further the debate by providing counter-evidence as this is a fascinating area of study (to someone like me who is instinctively against imperialist agendas).

It seems to me that whilst modern Arab states clearly suffer from structural deficiencies in providing development opportunities for their peoples, characterising "the Arab" as a monolithic entity is as shaky as any other stereotype. (A trifle like characterising "the European" by reference to the political development of Bulgaria or Moldova). What I am interested in is what role external interference has had in the stagnation of most Arab states, and in addition how pernicious religion has helped this stagnation - indeed, regression in many cases, given that the Arab world was largely quite advanced culturally several hundred years ago.

(I note that this discussion is veering off at a tangent from the original topic. I may move it to a new thread - if anyone objects to a new thread, please let me know by PM with reasons).
Alright, this is a bit of a big question, but let me clarify first, my whole point in this argument is that a statement like "Arab Culture" used as an identifier to make sweeping generalizations is false, his [PJ] evidence as far as i'm aware is only backed up by 2 books he linked but failed to reference, and when pressed he produced a bunch of links that were already of dubious quality, if i had to link to think tank based websites i'd produce a whole page myself. There is no evidence required to debunk this claim since just as you have stated its more of a stereotype. I have alot of references from the media, and the internet, besides the books by Edward Said, which are rather old but still quite relevant, things that actually affected my debate in this thread actually:

http://english.aljazeera.net/program...843342531.html <-- This is Slavoj and Tariq Ramadan discussing the popular uprising in egypt, pretty much debunking the oft brought up "Clash of Civilizations" trope in political discussion, if you're really curious read everything and watch everything slavoj zizek talks, Ramadan on the other hand is alright for muslim-european matters.
http://www.amazon.com/Rogue-State-Gu...tt_at_ep_dpt_3 <-- William Blum is probably your best bet for anti-imperialism, you should read the other books published, but this one is important to understand the current events.
http://www.salon.com/ <-- There are tons of articles here, but read the ones by Glenn Greenwald.

As for the arab states and external interference, this is for the history books, but its a combination of external meddling by colonial powers, ottoman stagnation and a whole load of tribalism. If you can ever find it, try looking in big libraries about George Hourani, he touches alot on arabic society in several time periods, but particularly post islamic, the Book is called "History of the Arabs", I read this one in 2008 but if i recall correctly he goes into detail about the colonial period. I'll update this post in the future with more reference as soon as i have the time to rifle through my collection of osprey books, i'm pretty sure i missed several.