A world without Petrodollars

Sakal Gharelu Ustad

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I seriously believe that poverty lies at the heart of many of the problems faced by our world today. There have been many studies which point out that foreign aid is ineffective and so it acts a mere strategic tool in international relations.

Let us look at following facts:
1. Petro-$ of the gulf countries are the major funding source of extremism in the world
2. These countries are also the source of backward democratic values and biggest challenge to any reforms in Islam

Given the above facts, Islamic reform is not going to come from the gulf as it does not make sense to the rulers there. But sadly, they are the leaders on Islamic faith and dialogue today due to the financial muscle. But if India, with a sizable Muslim population is able to uplift muslims i.e. make them rich, we should see a paradigm shift in Islamic leadership on the world stage.

What do you think?
 

pmaitra

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I largely agree, but then, there are the oil corporations, who lobby governments, and fund election campaigns. The government in turn has to make sure the tap remains open, even if that comes at the cost of the values the country stands for.

Obviously, the government here is the US.

The title here has two keywords, "petro," and "dollars." The first involves oil producing countries and their regimes, while the second involves the source of the money.
 

Yusuf

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Problem is huge amount of petro dollars have flowed into India and converted many into that kind of thinking as prevalent in Mid East.
It has to start with education in India especially religious seminaries.
 

Mad Indian

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I seriously believe that poverty lies at the heart of many of the problems faced by our world today. There have been many studies which point out that foreign aid is ineffective and so it acts a mere strategic tool in international relations.

Let us look at following facts:
1. Petro-$ of the gulf countries are the major funding source of extremism in the world
2. These countries are also the source of backward democratic values and biggest challenge to any reforms in Islam

Given the above facts, Islamic reform is not going to come from the gulf as it does not make sense to the rulers there. But sadly, they are the leaders on Islamic faith and dialogue today due to the financial muscle. But if India, with a sizable Muslim population is able to uplift muslims i.e. make them rich, we should see a paradigm shift in Islamic leadership on the world stage.

What do you think?
You cant actually expect reform in a religion which threatens death for apostasy and rational thinking!!!

And I am sorry, I wont agree on Petro dollars. There were no petro dollars when Islamic barbarians(kind of redundant :p) came invading to India, destroying temples and massacaring Hindus. Its always easy to put blame on something and hide behind without acknowledging the truth- Islam's problem lies in Islam itself and not on Petro dollars or Paki mentality
 

LurkerBaba

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Given the above facts, Islamic reform is not going to come from the gulf as it does not make sense to the rulers there. But sadly, they are the leaders on Islamic faith and dialogue today due to the financial muscle. But if India, with a sizable Muslim population is able to uplift muslims i.e. make them rich, we should see a paradigm shift in Islamic leadership on the world stage.
SGU, its true that Petrodollars have fueled Wahhabism in recent times. But petrodollars didn't exist at the time of Partition. AMU (which professes a reformed, westernized Islam) had a key role in formulating the ideology of Pakistan.

IMO the only guys who can reform Islam are the Iranians.
 

Sakal Gharelu Ustad

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SGU, its true that Petrodollars have fueled Wahhabism in recent times. But petrodollars didn't exist at the time of Partition. AMU (which professes a reformed, westernized Islam) had a key role in formulating the ideology of Pakistan.

IMO the only guys who can reform Islam are the Iranians.
You need to understand the role of history in the case you pointed out. AMU was formed after Islam lost the power to Hindus in a Congress dominated British India.

1) Muslims lost the control over most of the power they enjoyed before the arrival of British and among other things AMU attempted to revive it
2) Everyone including the muslims were poor back then and elites among the Muslims hijacked that ideology for personal gains

Now, looking at present I see history has little role to play. Most Muslims living in India now chose to do it out of their will after the partition. So, the historical argument would not be very useful now. Second, I believe spread of education and income will make people think about themselves rather than follow an extremist ideology which is only beneficial to the elites. My idea is once people have more to lose than gain by extremism, they will choose sanity over extremism. There is a long way to go but I think India has the potential to do that. A free muslim thinking about himself, his career and family will have a lot of other issues to bother about that what some Mullah in Deoband has to say. Most important thing in this whole change would be empowerment of the women. A significant improvement in Islamic values will come with the equality of women.
 

Mad Indian

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Now, looking at present I see history has little role to play. Most Muslims living in India now chose to do it out of their will after the partition. So, the historical argument would not be very useful now. Second, I believe spread of education and income will make people think about themselves rather than follow an extremist ideology which is only beneficial to the elites. My idea is once people have more to lose than gain by extremism, they will choose sanity over extremism. There is a long way to go but I think India has the potential to do that. A free muslim thinking about himself, his career and family will have a lot of other issues to bother about that what some Mullah in Deoband has to say. Most important thing in this whole change would be empowerment of the women. A significant improvement in Islamic values will come with the equality of women.
Except for the fact that this does not account for the fact that almost all terrorists are well educated and are from a middle class family.

You need some level of technical sophistication to even pull it off !!!
 

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SGU, its true that Petrodollars have fueled Wahhabism in recent times. But petrodollars didn't exist at the time of Partition. AMU (which professes a reformed, westernized Islam) had a key role in formulating the ideology of Pakistan.
Sir Syed's ideology was antithetical to Deobandi/Wahabbi/Salafi etc.
And Deobandis were against Partition. Infact JuI used to call Jinnah Gaddhar-e-Azam or something

IMO the only guys who can reform Islam are the Iranians.
Conservative Azeris might agree with you, but not Persians.
 
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Singh

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Except for the fact that this does not account for the fact that almost all terrorists are well educated and are from a middle class family.

You need some level of technical sophistication to even pull it off !!!
Jihadists in Chechnya, Bosnia, Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Philipines, Bangladesh etc. by and large are neither well educated nor belong to middle class.
 

Sakal Gharelu Ustad

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Except for the fact that this does not account for the fact that almost all terrorists are well educated and are from a middle class family.

You need some level of technical sophistication to even pull it off !!!
Many of them are, but not all. I agree to that point.

Now, how does extreme mentality sets in case of more educated people. I will point out one chain of thought process:
- Everyone neglects Islam and muslims are dominated by other religions
- We, muslims are more poor and so something needs to be done
- There is no democratic set-up to vent out our anger
- We will pick up the arms

Now look at the west. They claim to be secular but Muslims are nowhere in the political arena. Even Hindus change their religion to Christianity in US to fight elections. So, delusion of educated muslims in west makes some sense. This is not going to be the case in India due to their larger numbers. There is already some presence of muslims in politics.

On top of that, I will give you more clear picture. First answer these questions:
- What % out of educated are terrorists?
- What % out of all terrorists are educated?

When you quote those figures distinction has to be made for west and India or for a country in discussion.

Then there are others who fight because they think they are the best, Islam is the best, Kafirs need to be wiped out. But such fringe elements exist everywhere in every religion. The idea is to engage everyone else in normal and peaceful dialogue and social life, which is only possible if people are educated and can think for themselves.
 

JBH22

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Jihadists in Chechnya, Bosnia, Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Philipines, Bangladesh etc. by and large are neither well educated nor belong to middle class.
Use the correct term Sirji why hesitate these poor jihadist are cannon fodder funded by radical wahabbis who are basically hypocrites because we know the sheikhs get planes of prostitutes from Ukraine,Russia,Belorussia and even do all the "haram" activities they are supposed to resist :)

what the term our neighbours use munafiq??
 

Mad Indian

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Jihadists in Chechnya, Bosnia, Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Philipines, Bangladesh etc. by and large are neither well educated nor belong to middle class.
But those who were operating it and who pulled off the bomb blasts in US/India/Denmark etc all are.

So the extremist ideology has nothing to do with lack of education. Come up with a better one!
 

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Sir Syed's ideology was antithetical to Deobandi/Wahabbi/Salafi etc.
And Deobandis were against Partition. Infact JuI used to call Jinnah Gaddhar-e-Azam or something
I'm not talking about Deobandis, but the educated folks at Aligarh who were pro-partition.

Deobandis were against partition not out of patriotic reasons but because Islam doesn't really accept the concept of nation states
 

Singh

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I'm not talking about Deobandis, but the educated folks at Aligarh who were pro-partition.
Educated folks at Aligarh of the time were landed elite. And Pakistan was supposed to be an elitist muslim haven.

Deobandis were against partition not out of patriotic reasons but because Islam doesn't really accept the concept of nation states
Later Jamiatis like Mawdudi(?) said something different.
 

Mad Indian

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Many of them are, but not all. I agree to that point.

Now, how does extreme mentality sets in case of more educated people. I will point out one chain of thought process:
- Everyone neglects Islam and muslims are dominated by other religions
- We, muslims are more poor and so something needs to be done
- There is no democratic set-up to vent out our anger
- We will pick up the arms
We have terrorists in USA/UK/Denmark too, who are wealthy. They have voting rights. And if they want political representation, then they should not have left their own country in the first place!

Now look at the west. They claim to be secular but Muslims are nowhere in the political arena. Even Hindus change their religion to Christianity in US to fight elections. So, delusion of educated muslims in west makes some sense. This is not going to be the case in India due to their larger numbers. There is already some presence of muslims in politics.
They should not have entered the west if they are not willing to give up their religion dude. Their land, their rules!

And Muslims were present in larger numbers during partition, but still they could not live with us!

On top of that, I will give you more clear picture. First answer these questions:
- What % out of educated are terrorists?
- What % out of all terrorists are educated?
- A very small sum, but then again the % of uneducated who are not terrorists are also high making this point fairly baseless!
- A very large % specially the ones involved in sophisticated attacks, which eludes the sophisticated Intelligence bureaus

Also, when giving education brings down 20 terror attacks to 10 terror attacks, it is still terror attacks!

When you quote those figures distinction has to be made for west and India or for a country in discussion.
Again- Figures huh? Read my previous line

Then there are others who fight because they think they are the best, Islam is the best, Kafirs need to be wiped out. But such fringe elements exist everywhere in every religion. The idea is to engage everyone else in normal and peaceful dialogue and social life, which is only possible if people are educated and can think for themselves.
Really? Last time I checked a Nation of 80% Hindus produced a fraction of "Hindus are best type of kind of terror strikes" compared to the 14% of the other community!

Lets not rationalise terrorism and equal-equal a shitty religion calling other religions as shitty? Please, dont use the equalisation, I see it with a lot of lefty loons in the west.

And no, going on parades regarding religion is not the same as blowing up the parades!
 

Yusuf

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Extremist ideologies are peddled by educated people with vested interests. Others become foot soldiers for the educated lot who use their "Shab d" Jaal to win over the foot soldiers. People like Kasab are not the elitist educated lot.

Like I keep saying extremism seems to "attract" many people those days cutting across religious, ethnic, racial divide.
 

Mad Indian

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Extremist ideologies are peddled by educated people with vested interests. Others become foot soldiers for the educated lot who use their "Shab d" Jaal to win over the foot soldiers. People like Kasab are not the elitist educated lot.

Like I keep saying extremism seems to "attract" many people those days cutting across religious, ethnic, racial divide.
I dont care who does what , be it a educated elite or educated middle class!

What I really care about is its effect on me!
 

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