Why was the medieval African armies incredibly inferior to the Euroasian medieval armies?

[NoAngst]

The data we have clearly shows that Europe, on eve of their colonization of much of the world, was already more economically developed than the regions they conquered.

Obviously. Thanks to the Islamic golden ages.

I don't follow your argument. What does "Islamic golden ages" have to do with Western Europe (Germany, Belgium, Holland, France, the UK, etc)? You do know that the Islamic Caliphate did not occupy Western Europe to any significant degree, right? And if "Islamic golden ages" had accrued so much benefit to the West, why are Muslims/Arabs of today deprive of that benefit? Why are Arabs/Muslims so backward and underdeveloped if the "Islamic golden ages" were so "golden?"

European civilization has been continous since before the rise of the greeks to fall of the roman empire, to the beginning of Dark Ages and throughout.
Don't you even try to exclude various periods within European history to make it seem like Europe began with progress and not a decline. Are we going to act like the greeks and Romans didnt progress without the help mesopotamia,Phoenicians etc and most of all by Ancient egyptians. Are we going to act like the European Dark ages grew out of a vaccum they built from and not with the help of Islamic civilizations which introduced many of the things that laid foundations to our modern world. For 7 whole centuries Islam was leading the world in science & technology. Similarly to English, back then Arabic was the lingua franca.

The Greeks and Romans were Mediterranean civilizations not Western (Western Europe). Just because Eurocentrists have usurped the history and achievements of these mediterranean peoples doesn't mean you should also. But you know that because you're not Eurocentrist nor do you feel inferior to Europeans, right?

It's true Islam was more open to science and reason during its heyday but that changed with the publishing of Incoherence of Philosophers by Al-Ghazali. He, Al-Ghazali, argued that everything that happens is the Will of Allah and prominent Muslims scientists and philosophers like Ibn Sina and Al-Farabi were wrong in their believe in natural causes. After the publication of that book, Islamic science and free-thinking was snuffed out and strict orthodox Islam took over.

What this demonstrates is the so-called "Islamic golden age" was not so "golden" because of Islam but in spite of Islam.

They did this especially by methods of neo-colonialism. Japan which you keep mentioning was one nation who could seek its own destiny outside of the contructions of Europe. They were not colonized by Europe and any influence or technology they adopted was via their own agency.

Like have said before. Each society must go through its own intelligent processes to figure out what is best for their interest. Europe has always been free to find its own path, and so to must Somalia and the Muslim world. And success can never be measured by us all meeting up at the same conclusions because that would be an assault on diversity and plurality.

You're missing the point. To avert colonization by Europeans, the Japanese were prepared to examine every aspect of their society. Unless you're willing to put all issues on the table - culture, tradition, religion, customs, taboos, myths, etc. - for critical scrutiny in order to ferret out bad ideas and practices, you'll never improve. In other words, you need honest self-criticism. And I don't see that in Somalis or Muslims in general. It's always criticizing other people.

One of the greatest contributions they made was the Arabic script which was used to intitutionalize all this accumulated knowledge and give life to scholarship & intellectualism to the average layman.

This is demonstrable nonsense. Intellectualism in the Middle Ages was confined to the very few not the average layman because the average layman, until modern times, was illiterate. Written knowledge is useless to the unwashed masses.

BTW Arabs arabized the whole middeleast which was vast areas were not Arab to being with. From the nabateanians to assyrians to the Sassanians etc(more than i can recall). Including Egypt. If technology was reflected on culture this would not have happened.

How can that be? Even the Armenians still retained their language. Ditto for the Kurds, Greeks, Berbers, Persians, Afghans, Hindus, etc.

<< It is reflected in our customs, attitude, beliefs, behavior, and so on.>>

Here you are indirectly saying that modern technology implies superiority of western cultural values. How does that make sense when modernity innit of itself has been a Global effort and is not of any ethical construction.

Cultural values of Somalis can exist in the most technologically advanced settings just as any other.

No, YOU are making that inference due to your blinkered perspective. I was responding to this quote of yours:

"TheMightyNomad wrote:

Furthermore modernity is a technological state and has zero ethical considerations in its construction. Modernity has nothing to do with degrees of civilization, in the humane usage of the term. "

In which I responded with this:

"How exactly do you become modern without becoming civilized (civilized here means: Economically Developed). Somalis are uncivilized and therefore not modern. It is reflected in our customs, attitude, beliefs, behavior, and so on."

Nowhere did I mention the West. I simply stated demonstrable fact that to become modern you must first civilize (i.e. develop economically).

I didnt mention it to brag, but to highlight if modern Technology was birthed out of western culture, then how do you explain away the fact that Persians, Arabs,African, Turkish muslims introduced , advanced and invented vast amount of sciences that impacted European development and gave birth to the foundation of this modern world.

Islamic colonialism did not hinder the west in progression infact it sparked them into it. Islamic colonialism did not oppress and deny & rob the Western world of their ressources & self determination & culture.

Now ask yourself what type of civilization,progression & technological & economic development did European colonialism bring Africans & Muslims.
Islam gave birth to great rich indepedent states like Mali,Adal, Ajuuran, Benin, Ottoman etc and even the great libraries of Timbuktu in empires where intellectualism and scholarship was developed. The contributions of several africans ( including Somalis) to the Muslim world is very documented.

All European colonialism did was handicap,loot & deny africans & muslims not only of their own cultural heritage but their own economic & technological destiny.

This is Islamist propaganda not history or even logically defensible argument. Because if Islamic heritage was so instrumental in shaping modern Western superiority, why hasn't it benefited Muslims/Arabs as well? The West was, at best, on the margins of Islamic/Arab civilization whereas Muslims and Arabs core subjects. So, why are modern Arabs/Muslims backward and underdeveloped but even non-Western people like East Asians are modern and developed?

Your defense of Islamic colonialism is truly appalling. I'll be cheritable and chalk it up to your youth, if you are indeed 17 year old as some intimated on these fora.

All colonialism is evil because the ultimate goal of colonialism is the usurpation of the rights and resources of the colonized for the benefit of the colonizer. You wax indignant about "All European colonialism did was handicap,loot & deny africans & muslims not only of their own cultural heritage" but early you boasted about how Arabs "arabized" peoples of the Middle East. What is "arabization" if not to "handicap, loot and deny" Middle Eastern people their own cultural heritage.

Early I said you're confused. I didn't mean it in the pejorative sense but I think you're genuinely intellectually confused. You can't be for colonialism the Arabs/Muslims but against that of the West.

If you agree that no one has a monopoly on Knowledge and technology then you must concede to the fact that there is no cultural values attach to modernity or technology, it is always relative.

But cultural values are relative not absolute and they vary across space and time. So, as a nation becomes modern its cultural values must, perforce, change. Take FGM among Somalis as an example. As Somalis become modernized aided in no small part by modern science and technologies which show that there are no medical benefits to FGM, the "cultural values" argument of FGM is fast losing allegiance.

Why, must we spend all our time, energy and resources studying only the western man, who has never bothered to study us except for some anthropological or exploitative purposes? Has the West the monopoly of wisdom? Are we conceding that we have nothing to contribute to humanity? What have we benefited from this subservience all this while? What chance do we have in a world which is increasingly shaped and dominated by the western man? This, I hardly need to add, is not to say that knowledge from the west is necessarily evil, far from it, a lot of it is not only useful, but is even Islamic or Somali in essence. The point is the that epistemological basis is largely atheist and the knowledge and culture so produced will continue to undermine rather than strengthen us

The Japanese was never handicapped by the European colonial & neo-colonial yoke, naturally when they adopted new technologies and systems from the outside they filtered it through their own cultural lens. Reshaping every influence that came in, into their own interpretations that was reflective on the needs & demands of their society( i.e Interests).

Thus beyond the over reaching hand of Westernization many cultures put their foot down in the monocultural stream of globalization to take ownership of their spaces. The Japanese practices Japanese culture in the modern workplace. They did not completely base their work ethos on Europe just because Europe brought technological gifts to Japan in the 19th century (Convention of Kanagawa)

You keep attacking positions I don't hold or things I didn't say. Why refute what one says when you can attack imaginary positions?

Actually, I say we should study from everyone. The recently industrialized East Asian tiger economies have a lot more to teach us then the West.

You're the one who has chip on your shoulder about the West. But your problem with the West is the fact they're not Islamic. You believe modern knowledge and science is Western and therefore "atheistic." You could've saved a lot of bandwidth by saying: "My beef with the West is they're infidels."

I don't believe that, so try again. What you're describing is called Eurocentrism.

Demonstrate to me that you don't believe it. Everything you have said soo far has been European centered were you give sollace & precedent to Europeans alone and them alone.

I don't need to demonstrate anything. You're the one who has a chip on your shoulder about the West and peppers every discussion with unwarranted broadsides against the West. If you think the West is so evil, why do you live in it?

What part of history did you read? So when Nazi Germans developed into a technological powerhouse they didnt spark a World war and genocide millions. They didnt become immoral & unethical by wiping millions of jews & exhorting them the most horrendous treatment.

And what came of the Nazis? Ruin! They were destroyed by other highly advanced countries. After the Nazis were defeated, the world got the Geneva Convention, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, etc. Modern ethical and moral values are far superior to what existed in the past.

Social and economic inequality, weakening of the family unit and the crisis of values, were to unleash series of unprecedented consequences that continue to suffocate the life of the modern man. In the words of a prominent Western scholar, "the modern era had put its enthusiastic hopes in the mastery of nature and society. For more than two centuries man believed that the continued perfecting of rationality would have as a result the unceasing growth of his power and, consequently, an increase in well-being and happiness, freedom and equality among people. Now, not only has he experienced the limits of his power, but he has discovered that the rational and technological civilisation creates new problems and that it endangers the balance between man and nature, individual and society. The deception", he added, "is all the more painful because the progressivist had exalted people's desires and confidence." Such was the tragic end of modernism. In the eloquent words of Erich From, "in the nineteen century the problem was that God is dead, in the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead."

This is postmodernists claptrap. Economic inequality is a real problem but the solution is not to reverse economic development. There is no "crisis of values." Values are relative, so they change.

The "master of nature" is something man has been doing ever since our ancestors left the caves. What do you think a house is?

What kind of scholar laments "the continued perfecting of rationality?" Are we now supposed embrace irrationality?

So i cannot understand how you can think moral degeneration and decay is not a bad thing when some historians hold that the fall of Rome can be attributed to internal decadence.

That's because what religious folks and conservatives mean by "moral degeneracy" is moral nuance. They hate wading through tough moral dilemmas and making informed decision. They believe in moral absolutism and would prefer someone else tell them what's moral and what's not.

Those majority who believe in Qur'an and Bible, Talmud and Gita may seek their moral root in the teachings of those faiths. We have no business to interrogate peoples moral anchor, because it has always been rooted in some tradition. Some people quote Bible, Some Quote Qur'an some may quote ancestors. [/quot]

You're conflating things. It's not that morals and believes should not have tradition as a source. The problem is arguing some practice or belief should be maintained because it's part of our tradition and for no other reason then it's part of our tradition. You're making no judgement as to whether the practice or belief is any longer valid or even useful. You're simply arguing it ought to be kept. That's a prescription for social stagnation.

Tomorrow human rights could say the death penalty is "inhumane" this is not an absolute truth just because Amnesty says so. Torture was once an unthinkable violation of our basic humanity, US has new laws which say it isnt.

Exactly! Morals and ethics ARE relative no matter how much you delude yourself that they aren't. Morals are the product of community consensus.

This is why moral absolutists, religious or otherwise, are so dangerous as they try to impose their values on others without first reaching consensus.

And there's no US law that permits torture, stop making shidh up.

I support modernity and social change from the Islamic and Somali context, infact i am a first year science(BsC) major myself studying information technology ( which is alot of programming,coding, hardware engineering etc.) and i study culture,history ,humanities, media ,politics as a hobby and islamic philosophy and Somali philosophy. (self-study).

Good for you. Stay in school and stop coming to the cesspool that is Somalinet.

But i dont want materialism to be the overriding factor of our being, as much as i love technology & science i do not believe it should come at the expense of our communities social well-being. And our social well-being took a huge blow every since the civil war, adding more to it would be suicidal.

Unfortunately, the world is material so you can't escape "materialism." Food is material. Clothes are material. Housing is material. Land is material. See, materialism is abound.

Thats why we need Religion and culural values. To prevent us from descending further into decadency.

You display very conservative and traditionalist mindset which is troubling. As a young person you should be questioning received wisdom.

All societies have cultural values. Hell, even animals have cultures. So, the need for cultural values is superfluous.

Why do we need religion? And if we need religion, which religion and what aspects of religion?

How do we know if our religion, values and traditions are amenable to social and economic progress? What if they are? What should we do? How do we discern the bad aspects of tradition from the good ones?

These are the kind of questions that should be had.

You need intellectual flexibility not rigidity.






May Allah have mercy on your wretched soul!

[TheMightyNomad]

I don't follow your argument. What does "Islamic golden ages" have to do with Western Europe (Germany, Belgium, Holland, France, the UK, etc)? You do know that the Islamic Caliphate did not occupy Western Europe to any significant degree, right? And if "Islamic golden ages" had accrued so much benefit to the West, why are Muslims/Arabs of today deprive of that benefit? Why are Arabs/Muslims so backward and underdeveloped if the "Islamic golden ages" were so "golden?"

Of course you don't follow seeing how biggoted you are. European renaissance didn't grow out of a vaccum of nothingness. Most of what laid foundation to this modern world was introduced by muslims into europe during medieval time.

You don't have to physically occupy the whole of europe for your influence to have any outreach. Point being if Modernity and technology was western invention made out of western culture than how do you explain away this? How do you explain away how most of the foundation advances , inventions and introduksjon was made by Muslims?

What is backward or not is relevant to what cultural view point you speak from.

All empires go through a rise ,decline and then a period of self assesment. This period of self-assessment was interrupted by european colonialism and neo-colonialism. Which prevented these communities from seeking out their own technological destiny.

Wether or not Muslims have low scientific advancement in contemporary time , has no say on Islam or cultural values. Which is history disproves

European civilization has been continous since before the rise of the greeks to fall of the roman empire, to the beginning of Dark Ages and throughout.
Don't you even try to exclude various periods within European history to make it seem like Europe began with progress and not a decline. Are we going to act like the greeks and Romans didnt progress without the help mesopotamia,Phoenicians etc and most of all by Ancient egyptians. Are we going to act like the European Dark ages grew out of a vaccum they built from and not with the help of Islamic civilizations which introduced many of the things that laid foundations to our modern world. For 7 whole centuries Islam was leading the world in science & technology. Similarly to English, back then Arabic was the lingua franca.

The Greeks and Romans were Mediterranean civilizations not Western (Western Europe). Just because Eurocentrists have usurped the history and achievements of these mediterranean peoples doesn't mean you should also. But you know that because you're not Eurocentrist nor do you feel inferior to Europeans, right?

Greeks and Romans were European civilizations and had profound impact on European development. Mediterranean is a sea surrounding all of southern europea it is not a continent you dumbass.

Nice try with your redherrings. My point stands you are trying to dance away , purposely annexing and excluding parts of European history that is inconvient to your argument. Dark ages no longer exist, the rise of fall of many european empires no longer exist according to you

Simply untrue that Europe was birthed out in to progress out of nothingness and not through the contributions & influences of other cultures.

Look how you try to misrepresent the golden age of islam and how it was the reason for the rennaisance to begin with. Because it dessimates your argument that technology and science is due to european culture.

It's true Islam was more open to science and reason during its heyday but that changed with the publishing of Incoherence of Philosophers by Al-Ghazali. He, Al-Ghazali, argued that everything that happens is the Will of Allah and prominent Muslims scientists and philosophers like Ibn Sina and Al-Farabi were wrong in their believe in natural causes. After the publication of that book, Islamic science and free-thinking was snuffed out and strict orthodox Islam took over. What this demonstrates is the so-called "Islamic golden age" was not so "golden" because of Islam but in spite of Islam.

Everything happens is the will of Allah? Muslims have been saying this since this begin of Islam and as well as during ''heyday'' as you say. , science was simply seen as a tool that could help us understand the natural world which in turn would lead to a greater appreciation for the creation of Allah. They saw scientific research as a form of worship so there was never a strict separation between science and religion.

Most advances in science during the golden ages was deeply motivated by Islamic

Certain advances made by medieval Muslim astronomers, geographers and mathematicians were motivated by problems presented in Islamic scripture, such as Al-Khwarizmi's (c. 780-850) development of algebra in order to solve the Islamic inheritance laws,[34] and developments in astronomy, geography, spherical geometry and spherical trigonometry in order to determine the direction of the Qibla, the times of Salah prayers, and the dates of the Islamic calendar

Then take that to the account with the revelation of Islam unlike Europe at the time, made literacy & education mandatory for every man and every child.
The script that came with the religion contributed immensely to the institutionalization of knowledge and the spread of knowledge.

Infact the increased use of dissection in Islamic medicine during the 12th and 13th centuries was influenced by the writings of the Islamic theologian, Al-Ghazali, who encouraged the study of anatomy and use of dissections as a method of gaining knowledge of God's creation.
http://ghazali.org/books/md/gz101.htm

So it debunks your argument, that it was in spite of islam. No it was because of islam and the biggest motivator of all to make scientific advances.

To illustrate this more on how Islam encouraged and inspired medical scientific advancement. In al-Bukhari's and Muslim's collection of sahih hadith it is said: "There is no disease that Allah has created, except that He also has created its treatment." (Bukhari 7-71:582).

This motivated the likes of Ibn al-Nafis (1213–1288), who discovered the pulmonary circulation in 1242 and used his discovery as evidence for the orthodox Islamic doctrine of bodily resurrection. Also the Arab physician Al-Zahrawi who is considered the father of surgery and invented plenty of surgical tools still in use in modern time.

You're missing the point. To avert colonization by Europeans, the Japanese were prepared to examine every aspect of their society. Unless you're willing to put all issues on the table - culture, tradition, religion, customs, taboos, myths, etc. - for critical scrutiny in order to ferret out bad ideas and practices, you'll never improve. In other words, you need honest self-criticism. And I don't see that in Somalis or Muslims in general. It's always criticizing other people.

No i am making the point. The point that other groups would by their own independent thinking and choice (agency). Determine their own technological and economic destiny. Europeans didnt have any intention of colonizing them , they brought them technological gifts during the Kanagawa Convention. Suffice to say colonialism never interrupted their technological development as people and handicap them.

So you are literally comparing apples and oranges.

Like have said before and will keep saying. Each society must go through its own intelligent processes to figure out what is best for their interest. Europe has always been free to find its own path, and so to must Somalia and the Muslim world. And success can never be measured by us all meeting up at the same conclusions because that would be an assault on diversity and plurality.

One of the greatest contributions they made was the Arabic script which was used to intitutionalize all this accumulated knowledge and give life to scholarship & intellectualism to the average layman.

This is demonstrable nonsense. Intellectualism in the Middle Ages was confined to the very few not the average layman because the average layman, until modern times, was illiterate. Written knowledge is useless to the unwashed masses.

That is the European medieval experience. Not the islamic medieval experience. Islamic world had the highest literracy rates in the pre-modern world. (Look it up)

Islamic empires had the highest literracy rates in middel ages due the importancy of seeking knowledge and reading the quran. Infact the whole idea of making education and litteracy mandatory for the average layman in Europe was inspired by the Islamic world.

Europe was destitute ignorant ,illiterate while Islam was highly litterate society, where intellectualism was extended far and beyond.

BTW Arabs arabized the whole middeleast which was vast areas were not Arab to being with. From the nabateanians to assyrians to the Sassanians etc(more than i can recall). Including Egypt. If technology was reflected on culture this would not have happened.

How can that be? Even the Armenians still retained their language. Ditto for the Kurds, Greeks, Berbers, Persians, Afghans, Hindus, etc.

Because large parts of Saudi arabia, some parts of Yemen, Iraq,Syria,Lebanon and palestine, were not Arabs to begin with. They got Arabized during the islamic era. Most of their empires nabateanians to Syrians to Sassanians, etc etc. most which were supremely more technologically advanced then Arabs.

The point being civilization is not reflected on technology.

No, YOU are making that inference due to your blinkered perspective. I was responding to this quote of yours:

I am not making an inference , only simple deducation based off your words . You said technology is reflected on peoples inherent values. But from which context do you determine what type of values are incompatible for modernity? The european context? As we know modern technology is not European invention but rather a one shaped by global effort.

No matter how you phrase it or look at it. You will only concede to a superiorty on the part of the ''Other'', which is fallacious. Pluss you are conceding to the fact that other specific cultures have nothing to contribute, anything of any value is simply from the ''other''.

TheMightyNomad wrote:

Furthermore modernity is a technological state and has zero ethical considerations in its construction. Modernity has nothing to do with degrees of civilization, in the humane usage of the term. "

Which is true technology has no correlation to peoples moral or ethical values. Its only the tools which people use to cope with their daily lives.

I didnt mention it to brag, but to highlight if modern Technology was birthed out of western culture, then how do you explain away the fact that Persians, Arabs,African, Turkish muslims introduced , advanced and invented vast amount of sciences that impacted European development and gave birth to the foundation of this modern world.

Islamic colonialism did not hinder the west in progression infact it sparked them into it. Islamic colonialism did not oppress and deny & rob the Western world of their ressources & self determination & culture.

Now ask yourself what type of civilization,progression & technological & economic development did European colonialism bring Africans & Muslims.
Islam gave birth to great rich indepedent states like Mali,Adal, Ajuuran, Benin, Ottoman etc and even the great libraries of Timbuktu in empires where intellectualism and scholarship was developed. The contributions of several africans ( including Somalis) to the Muslim world is very documented.

All European colonialism did was handicap,loot & deny africans & muslims not only of their own cultural heritage but their own economic & technological destiny.

This is Islamist propaganda not history or even logically defensible argument. Because if Islamic heritage was so instrumental in shaping modern Western superiority, why hasn't it benefited Muslims/Arabs as well? The West was, at best, on the margins of Islamic/Arab civilization whereas Muslims and Arabs core subjects. So, why are modern Arabs/Muslims backward and underdeveloped but even non-Western people like East Asians are modern and developed?

Complete redherrings in one set. "islamic propaganda'' , Its funny you just showcase how bigotted you are with all the ad-hominems and logical fallacies. Your stance is not based on what is true or what is right. But rather what fits with your own preconcieved belief system.

The West was in the so called ''Dark Ages'' on the margins of islamic/Arab civilizations. Destitute ,underdeveloped illiterate. While Muslim civilization were expanding progressing and highlighy litterate.

Ask yourself the correlation if Islam and the cultural values of muslims are incompatible to science and economic progress, then why wasn't it that case a couple of centuries back?

Wether or not Muslims have low scientific advancement in contemporary times , has no say on Islam or cultural values. Which history disproves.

Your defense of Islamic colonialism is truly appalling. I'll be cheritable and chalk it up to your youth, if you are indeed 17 year old as some intimated on these fora.

Everything i say is all backed by history and historian,scholars & such. The burden lies on you to disprove it.

If i am wrong you could just show me and respond like a reasonable & rational person. The fact that you can't even do that shows you lost the debate.

All colonialism is evil because the ultimate goal of colonialism is the usurpation of the rights and resources of the colonized for the benefit of the colonizer. You wax indignant about "All European colonialism did was handicap,loot & deny africans & muslims not only of their own cultural heritage" but early you boasted about how Arabs "arabized" peoples of the Middle East. What is "arabization" if not to "handicap, loot and deny" Middle Eastern people their own cultural heritage.

History proves otheriwise Al-Andalus was safe haven, tolerant where many people of different faith culture lived together. Islamic influence is what sparked them into progress and development. This is history my friend.

Arabization just means people adopting arabic language by their own will, because people find the language & script convenient during which it was the lingua franca. Not sure how that is any sort of handicap and this was not true for Most muslims around the world from Horn Africans,West Africans,Asians,Kurds,Turks,Albanian,Bosnian etc etc. Where they were only islamized.

Where they benefitted immensly from islam in terms economic development,higher literracy with the use of arabic script. Better living standards. Urbanization it brought gave rise to great independent muslim empires.

While post colonialist world today puts people around the world in a eurocentered world. Where it denies people from developing themselves at their own rate, seeking out their own destiny. Excercizing their own free will,capacity and choices (Agency).

Early I said you're confused. I didn't mean it in the pejorative sense but I think you're genuinely intellectually confused. You can't be for colonialism the Arabs/Muslims but against that of the West.

Who said i was for colonialism of any kind? I was just comparing the conditions within the two seperate entities. Under muslim influence the empires of Europe rose out of the Dark Ages out of desitute ,illiteracy underdevelopment.

But cultural values are relative not absolute and they vary across space and time. So, as a nation becomes modern its cultural values must, perforce, change. Take FGM among Somalis as an example. As Somalis become modernized aided in no small part by modern science and technologies which show that there are no medical benefits to FGM, the "cultural values" argument of FGM is fast losing allegiance.

There is no such thing as Somali monolithic purity, cultures smash through deserts, cross trade routes, travel through immigration borders, disregarding our notions of geography and race. Throughout history, names, foods, cultures, religions, genetics have jumped between Asia and Somalia from the dawn of humanity with blatant disregard for our social constructions.

But as much as culture drifts on the open ocean of human interaction and technological development, pushed on by the winds of globalization. The ethics of culture are pretty much static.

And where Somalia is concern, the centrality of life-systems and functionality have always been at the root of Somali culture.

For 2000 years in Somalia the ethics and ethos of Somali culture have not altered, even though rituals attached to those ethics may have come and gone. So we might change dowry from Cows-to-Coins but the function of dowry (Mahr) remains the same.

So one might say technology changes the practices of a culture but not its function.

Actually, I say we should study from everyone. The recently industrialized East Asian tiger economies have a lot more to teach us then the West.

I agree we can learn from people. as i have said before all knowlege is shared and advanced & no culture has monopoly on it.
The prophet had a saying which goes like ''wisdom is the lost property of the believer'' You take knowledge from wherever you can find it irrespective of if the person is muslim,hindu, atheist whatever. If they have knowledge it is yours.

So i am not taking beef with learning from others. What i am arguing for is to not deny people their agency( their free will, their capacity to do something and make their own choices for their own interests.)

Every sociey puts in place systems that are compatible to their social & political/societal structure. You cannot compare Apples with Oranges. Everyone has to implement systems that what fit with them and go their own path.

When Japanese adopted capitalism, they modified it to suit the needs , demands and culture of their society. Out of that came ''Collective Capitalism''. Which created a collection of industrial groups known as the kigyo shudan, and a further 30% are owned by the network of cross-shareholdings known as the keiretsu.

But how would they do this if they based their values on western values and not Japanese values?

You're the one who has chip on your shoulder about the West. But your problem with the West is the fact they're not Islamic. You believe modern knowledge and science is Western and therefore "atheistic." You could've saved a lot of bandwidth by saying: "My beef with the West is they're infidels."

I take issue with the fact that you are implying that for us to adopts systems,technologies ,methods and knowledge we have adopt the values of the ''other''.

All knowledge is shared and then advanced. No one has monopoly on knowledge and nor does it grow from a vaccum.

Sure i think the west have alot of usefull knowledge plenty of things we can learn from as do Japanese,koreans,jews etc etc, we can do so without adopting their values. A societies values are what allows for diverse contributions into the world and for them to take influences shape them into their own interpretations.

What we do adopt or learn from is left to our choices. We decide which path to go and how to shape it. Self determination is never decided by what Arabs like,Asians like or Europeans like. It is a inalinable human right that allows people to seek their own path.

I don't need to demonstrate anything. You're the one who has a chip on your shoulder about the West and peppers every discussion with unwarranted broadsides against the West. If you think the West is so evil, why do you live in it?

I have nothing against the West. I just dont believe their values are universal & superior and it should be imposed on other countries. In general i believe that cultural values of a specific society can exist in the most technologically advanced settings. Its false dichotomy to say otherwise.

Try harder to divert the topic back at me ''You have a chip''bla bla. How is that an argument pertaining to the topic? . You could have conceded that no one has any claim or monopoly on modernity and peoples values can exist in modernity.

What part of history did you read? So when Nazi Germans developed into a technological powerhouse they didnt spark a World war and genocide millions. They didnt become immoral & unethical by wiping millions of jews & exhorting them the most horrendous treatment.

And what came of the Nazis? Ruin! They were destroyed by other highly advanced countries. After the Nazis were defeated, the world got the Geneva Convention, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, etc. Modern ethical and moral values are far superior to what existed in the past.

Defeat of the Nazis was the consequence of the world war which they sparked. During that time Germany experienced a leap of technological and scientific endevour over other countries.

The point being did all this scientific & technological advancement make them moral or ethical or even civilized considering the atrocities they created? No! it did not . So it is wrong to imply technology is civilization.

Social and economic inequality, weakening of the family unit and the crisis of values, were to unleash series of unprecedented consequences that continue to suffocate the life of the modern man. In the words of a prominent Western scholar, "the modern era had put its enthusiastic hopes in the mastery of nature and society. For more than two centuries man believed that the continued perfecting of rationality would have as a result the unceasing growth of his power and, consequently, an increase in well-being and happiness, freedom and equality among people. Now, not only has he experienced the limits of his power, but he has discovered that the rational and technological civilisation creates new problems and that it endangers the balance between man and nature, individual and society. The deception", he added, "is all the more painful because the progressivist had exalted people's desires and confidence." Such was the tragic end of modernism. In the eloquent words of Erich From, "in the nineteen century the problem was that God is dead, in the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead."

This is postmodernists claptrap. Economic inequality is a real problem but the solution is not to reverse economic development. There is no "crisis of values." Values are relative, so they change.

You mean a post modern dillemma. Which it is, technologicall development has created new issues lik economic and social inequality which is what the author was referring to.

Do you even understand what you are saying or reading? Values being relative means that all beliefs, customs, and ethics are relative to the individual within his own social context. In other words, “right” and “wrong” are culture-specific; what is considered moral in one society may be considered immoral in another, and, since no universal standard of morality exists, no one has the right to judge another society’s customs.

The "master of nature" is something man has been doing ever since our ancestors left the caves. What do you think a house is?

What he is talking about is human nature and the degeneration of the environment around us , pollution, tree hugggin,waste dumping, global warming, climate change etec. As we advance technologically we become nihilistic and indifferent to our degeneration to nature.

What kind of scholar laments "the continued perfecting of rationality?" Are we now supposed embrace irrationality?

He is not implying that people should become irrational. He is saying there are other aspects of human nature that escapes reasoning like social, psychological, emotional and spiritual that should not be neglects or peddle to the side.

So i cannot understand how you can think moral degeneration and decay is not a bad thing when some historians hold that the fall of Rome can be attributed to internal decadence.

That's because what religious folks and conservatives mean by "moral degeneracy" is moral nuance. They hate wading through tough moral dilemmas and making informed decision. They believe in moral absolutism and would prefer someone else tell them what's moral and what's not.

Do you need a dictionary or something? Degeneration means to fall below a normal or desirable level in physical, mental, or moral qualities; deteriorate: It doesnt mean moral nuance it means moral deterioration.

How can a society survive without any morals nor any ethics? Whats stops people from killing eachother, raping eachother,stealing murdering and spread disease? total chaos and anarchy?

What kind of nihilistic thinking are you trying to convey? The fact that rome fell to moral degeneration is the proof why technology does not imply civilization.

You're conflating things. It's not that morals and believes should not have tradition as a source. The problem is arguing some practice or belief should be maintained because it's part of our tradition and for no other reason then it's part of our tradition. You're making no judgement as to whether the practice or belief is any longer valid or even useful. You're simply arguing it ought to be kept. That's a prescription for social stagnation.

All human values(morals) are rooted somewhere, we cannot prove "right" and "wrong" by mere logic, because even those values at some stage must be anchored in some fundamental truths unique to the user.

Centralizing ethics meant that people could live in harmonious and productive relationships with each other: Thou shall not kill people of your own group, thou shall not steal, and thou shall not break ones marriage vows. And these are not laws exclusive to the Bible, but from Ancient Egypt 1000s of years before the Judeo-Christian world emerged.

Tomorrow human rights could say the death penalty is "inhumane" this is not an absolute truth just because Amnesty says so. Torture was once an unthinkable violation of our basic humanity, US has new laws which say it isnt.

Morals are the product of community consensus.

This is why moral absolutists, religious or otherwise, are so dangerous as they try to impose their values on others without first reaching consensus.

Don't you see how you contradict yourself in the same breath. If morals are the product of community consensus how do you impose it without reaching consensus? You cannot impose something created and maintained by concensus.

Do you think before you write?

And there's no US law that permits torture, stop making shidh up.

Check it for yourself.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2340

But i dont want materialism to be the overriding factor of our being, as much as i love technology & science i do not believe it should come at the expense of our communities social well-being. And our social well-being took a huge blow every since the civil war, adding more to it would be suicidal.

Unfortunately, the world is material so you can't escape "materialism." Food is material. Clothes are material. Housing is material. Land is material. See, materialism is abound.

I am not telling people to run away from materialism. I am saying that you shouldn't make that the totality of your being and worth. There are things in life that aren't material.

Thats why we need Religion and culural values. To prevent us from descending further into decadency.

[/quote]

You display very conservative and traditionalist mindset which is troubling. As a young person you should be questioning received wisdom.

You dont tear down a fence before you know why its was put their in the first place. Just because someone wants to peserve something doesnt imply one does it out of romantics or ignorance without reasoning.

What sense is it to take what did not/does not work? What sense is it to take blindly?

A true nationalist is also not afraid to overthrow tradition when tradition is unproductive. He is not one who just gives obeisance to Somali tradition out of some blind ignorance. He is one who says: "Even though I revere the Somali past and I revere the African tradition, that tradition can be built upon. I have a right then to use the legacy of that tradition to confront the realities of my current times and thus modify that tradition and see to the survival of my people."

And even that will vary depending region, religion, politics, and culture.

All societies have cultural values. Hell, even animals have cultures. So, the need for cultural values is superfluous.

Animals do not have human rational or reasoning . Culture is the repository of human traditions; long and tested solutions for living in a meaningful way.

Culture is the core of our Somali humanity and holds some of the secrets to life's purpose. There is no authentic autonomous identity outside of the culture that cradles it.

Why do we need religion? And if we need religion, which religion and what aspects of religion?

How do we know if our religion, values and traditions are amenable to social and economic progress? What if they are? What should we do? How do we discern the bad aspects of tradition from the good ones?

Religion is an instictive aspect of human nature with survival benfits. Spiritual systems are found, without exception, in every indigenous society; independent of geography, independent of ethnicity and independent of time.

For example Islam a spiritual technology which codifies a way of life and dictates relationships between God, the environment and other human beings. The code of Islam serves to create cohesion among its members by propagating principles which solidify this unity through communal activities in the form of ibadats that apply to self in peaceful relationship with God such as those found in faith (iman), prayer (salat), pilgrimage (hajj) and fasting (sawm) and alms giving (zakaat).

You need intellectual flexibility not rigidity.

the irony of you talking about intellectual fllexibility.

The fact that you cannot entertain a single thought that contradicts your own shows that you dont have educated mindsett. Your whole post is riddled with ad-hominems and strawmans. "You are confused'' , ''You are traditionalist'' bla bla.

Immature people like you cannot handle disagreement, even if that disagreement was over what shade of black to paint the roof. Your mind lacks a way to rationalize disagreement and likewise your response is a base animal like either or reaction.

[Raganimo]

On the topic of Islamic "colonialism", here's a Jewish perspective:

http://www.thejc.com/comment-and-debate ... ms-do-jews

[Raganimo]

No-Angst's argument is not logically sound or coherent. On one hand, he agrees that European colonialism is very destructive and thus hardly conducive to technological advancement, yet in the same breath he is blaming the backwardness of colonised nations solely upon the cultural and religious values of the colonised.

So the ongoing colonisation of the Muslim world is not to blame for its backwardness. It's all because of Islam. Forget the fact that most countries are ruled by Western backed dictators, if it wasn't for Islam, these Muslim nations would be technologically advanced superpowers in spite of Western colonialism. All they have to do is renounce their faith and they will suddenly transform into super advanced civilisations.

Fact is, western colonialism never really ended. But these airhead somali atheists live in this weird twilight zone where everything can be reduced to "religion is the source of all evil" and other such hyperbolic nonsense that they get brainwashed with by the likes of Harris and the Reddit neckbeards.

[Musa26]

things would be alot simpler if the athiest stuck to blaming us muslims instead of our religion islam. this is the mistake that no-angst is making

[TheMightyNomad]

Well said Raganimo.

Someone should explain to Dawkins that without "religion" and its influence he might be writing his next atheist book on the wall of a cave while chewing semi-cooked meat and playing with deer bones for toys. The very paper he writes his atheist diatribes on came to Europe via Islamic hands, the Greeks he builds his arguments on was preserved via Muslim philosophy. And the garbage can he should throw his work into came via the Islamic impetus that gave birth to the European renaissance. Religion built the pyramids in the sands of the Nile Valley and the wonderful libraries of Timbuktu.

The history of the atheist is the history of nothing useful for humanity.

[Raganimo]

Well said Raganimo.

Someone should explain to Dawkins that without "religion" and its influence he might be writing his next atheist book on the wall of a cave while chewing semi-cooked meat and playing with deer bones for toys. The very paper he writes his atheist diatribes on came to Europe via Islamic hands, the Greeks he builds his arguments on was preserved via Muslim philosophy. And the garbage can he should throw his work into came via the Islamic impetus that gave birth to the European renaissance. Religion built the pyramids in the sands of the Nile Valley and the wonderful libraries of Timbuktu.

The history of the atheist is the history of nothing useful for humanity.

Indeed. And let us not forget algorithms. If it wasn't for algorithms, much of modern technology would simply not have been possible.

Another thing is, most of these people do not understand the actual implications of what they're propagating. The Romans benefited from the scientific advancements that were made in Mesopotamia and Egypt without losing their own indigenous culture or religious beliefs. The Arabs learned a lot from the Sassanians, the Hindus, the Greeks etc, yet they still managed to keep their own unique identity. Why did none of those people simply try to mimick the technologically superior civilisations? Because they understood that material advancements and cultural/religious identity are two separate things. Material advancement does not necessarily indicate moral/cultural advancement.

[TheMightyNomad]

Yeah that is what i was arguing. The prophet said ''Wisdom is the lost property of the believer'' you take it wherever you find it. So learning from others is never an issue.

No we are never arguing for the fact that culture is perfect or static. That one should not challenge tradition if its innefective or useless.
But one is arguing that the ''ethos'' of culture is static.

The ethos of culture allows people to take knowledge and technology from others and shape them to their own interpretation. This is what allows for diverse contributions to the world.

The Japanese took capitalism from the west and created ''Collective capitalism'' a different type of capitalism structured and modelled after japanese society & culture. With its own terminology like ''kigyo shudan'' and ''keiretsu''. This is what sparked the economic boom they made in the late 20th century.

Another example to look at is how Somali culture is fueling business in Africa and Middle east. There are systems we have taken from others with our culture underpinning from our social structure and religion. Which gave life to our own business model.

Similarly we should do this with the technology and political system. Find applications and models to put culture in.

[gurey25]

The Greeks and Romans were Mediterranean civilizations not Western (Western Europe). Just because Eurocentrists have usurped the history and achievements of these mediterranean peoples doesn't mean you should also. But you know that because you're not Eurocentrist nor do you feel inferior to Europeans, right?

It's true Islam was more open to science and reason during its heyday but that changed with the publishing of Incoherence of Philosophers by Al-Ghazali. He, Al-Ghazali, argued that everything that happens is the Will of Allah and prominent Muslims scientists and philosophers like Ibn Sina and Al-Farabi were wrong in their believe in natural causes. After the publication of that book, Islamic science and free-thinking was snuffed out and strict orthodox Islam took over.

What this demonstrates is the so-called "Islamic golden age" was not so "golden" because of Islam but in spite of Islam.

blaming Al-ghazali is common among eurocentrist "scholars" who expect the world to operate like their experiences in europe.
Another common misperception is that muslim achievement was only the preservation of knowledge from the ancients and transfering it to europe where it bloomed into european acendency.
The truth is allot of progress happened when muslim scholars who were students of neo-platonicism rejected it, and discovered new knowledge.
The debate between Alghazali and ibn sina was hundreds of years after that happened and it was an argument about neo-platonicism in the realm of theology, it was nt about the will of god as opposed to natural causes,
Alghazali destroyed their arguments in his incoherance of the philosophers , but was this the cause of decline?
Did the muslim scientists continue to work well after al ghazali , of course they did, you have the giants ike Ibn rushd and Omar khayam 50 to 100 years later.
but what happened shortly after, in the mid 1200?
you had civilization collapse, mass starvation and genocide, irreperable destruction of irrigation systems that took hundreds of years to build, disease.

To have intellectual pursuits you need stability and wealth, scholars were publicly funded from the state,
therewere universities and observatories and hospitals were research took place,
what do you think will happen when they are ruins?

The decline of the islamic civilization was due to political stability and economic upheaval , due to invasions of turks and crusaders and the balkanizatin of the muslim world, which coincidently reachs a peak around the lifetime of Alghazali.
Around the time of Alghazalis death you have the seljuks, the fatimids and a brief period of stability in andalusia brought by the murabitun and the almohads.
Around this time you have a resumption of intellectual progress, and you have ibn rushd, and Omar khayam as prominent examples.
The period between 1100 and 1250 is the peak of the economic, cultural and intellectual development of the muslims world.
You had the highest literacy rate on earth only rivaled by Southern Sung china.
You had the largest middle class in human history , also rivaled by Southern Sung.
(Syria, Iraq, eastern persia and ferghana valley, and andalusia).

Then you have the mongol catastrophe, which also destroyed the sung dysnasty china, but not as severe as The muslim world.
Iran, Iraq and Syria only reached their pre-1250 AD population levels in the late 1970's.
The environment has not recovered at all, there was new new soil reclaimed, and low fertility , only modern fertilizers have enabled food production to keep up with population.

Now imagine economic collapse and political upheavel in the West, in the future.
Wont this impact technological and scientific progress?
Lets go further and imagine a limited nuclear war, lets say a few dozen megaton warheads make it though.
you will not have the end of the world, but you will have the end of civilization.
and when people crawl back and piece together a new civilization generations later, do you think they will be of the same technological level as today?
definetley not, people will have to tech down before they tech up, so we are looking at hotchpoch of technologies, generally of
1930's level at least.

[gurey25]

When Japanese adopted capitalism, they modified it to suit the needs , demands and culture of their society. Out of that came ''Collective Capitalism''. Which created a collection of industrial groups known as the kigyo shudan, and a further 30% are owned by the network of cross-shareholdings known as the keiretsu.

But how would they do this if they based their values on western values and not Japanese values?

The japanese were fortunate because they made the correct choices, and they were already in a takeoff pre-industrial level.
What you collective capitalism was the right choice, they had a very large class of artisans, and guilds some of their production was of an industrial level.
They also developed their own native financier class of bankers, so they understood the western rules of the game quickly.
Bankers are usefull tools, but are also dangerous weapons.
The oligharchy that ran japan during the meiji restoration understood this, this is why taking foriegn loans was illegal,
and only government agencies could do so.
They also kept loans to the bare minimum and promptly paid them back to maintain their independence.
The chinese and even the koreans were also in the race but they sadly took the top down approach.
During the same period 1870-1900 the chinese built larger and more advanced factories, more railways, telegrapg lines.
There was no synergy with small and medium businesses , and they were dependent on spare parts from overseas.
Chinese industrilization was pretty much like how allot of african and middle eastern countries attempted in the 60's and 70's.
When the money for imports runs out, spare parts run out and the factories come to a close.

The japanese took the opposite approach, bottom up.
They depended on small scale businesses that used a combination of tradition and modern machines/tools,
that they copied on their own.
Then they teched up, by buying and copying more advanced technology as they grow.

These grew into giant mega corporations called Ziabatsu, which were integrated laterally and vertically integrated.

When the Americans banned ziabatsu's and broke them up, the japanese simply repackaged them into a slightly looser structure and called them kiertesu.
They are still paranoid about foriegn borrowing.


to sum it up, the japanese succedded because they
1) protected native industries and built on top of them instead of building fancy new industries.
2)Well ordered financial structure that was native, and they had extreme paranoia towards foriegn banks.
( Sweden, Finland where also showed the same attitude, Finland in the 1930's discouraged foriegn loans and the state intelligence aparatus spied on anyone taking loans, even shareholders hwere not spared, and any company that had at least 40% foriegn ownded were deisgnated "dangerous entities) and also spied on.

[Raganimo]

When Japanese adopted capitalism, they modified it to suit the needs , demands and culture of their society. Out of that came ''Collective Capitalism''. Which created a collection of industrial groups known as the kigyo shudan, and a further 30% are owned by the network of cross-shareholdings known as the keiretsu.

But how would they do this if they based their values on western values and not Japanese values?

The japanese were fortunate because they made the correct choices, and they were already in a takeoff pre-industrial level.
What you collective capitalism was the right choice, they had a very large class of artisans, and guilds some of their production was of an industrial level.
They also developed their own native financier class of bankers, so they understood the western rules of the game quickly.
Bankers are usefull tools, but are also dangerous weapons.
The oligharchy that ran japan during the meiji restoration understood this, this is why taking foriegn loans was illegal,
and only government agencies could do so.
They also kept loans to the bare minimum and promptly paid them back to maintain their independence.
The chinese and even the koreans were also in the race but they sadly took the top down approach.
During the same period 1870-1900 the chinese built larger and more advanced factories, more railways, telegrapg lines.
There was no synergy with small and medium businesses , and they were dependent on spare parts from overseas.
Chinese industrilization was pretty much like how allot of african and middle eastern countries attempted in the 60's and 70's.
When the money for imports runs out, spare parts run out and the factories come to a close.

The japanese took the opposite approach, bottom up.
They depended on small scale businesses that used a combination of tradition and modern machines/tools,
that they copied on their own.
Then they teched up, by buying and copying more advanced technology as they grow.

These grew into giant mega corporations called Ziabatsu, which were integrated laterally and vertically integrated.

When the Americans banned ziabatsu's and broke them up, the japanese simply repackaged them into a slightly looser structure and called them kiertesu.
They are still paranoid about foriegn borrowing.


to sum it up, the japanese succedded because they
1) protected native industries and built on top of them instead of building fancy new industries.
2)Well ordered financial structure that was native, and they had extreme paranoia towards foriegn banks.
( Sweden, Finland where also showed the same attitude, Finland in the 1930's discouraged foriegn loans and the state intelligence aparatus spied on anyone taking loans, even shareholders hwere not spared, and any company that had at least 40% foriegn ownded were deisgnated "dangerous entities) and also spied on.

Very good post

Japan implemented protectionist economic policies. African countries and other colonised nations were forced to implement free market policies that decimated their local economies.

[gurey25]

Japan implemented protectionist economic policies. African countries and other colonised nations were forced to implement free market policies that decimated their local economies.

protectionism alone will not work, you will plateau and you will hit diminishing returns, unless you are have large resources and a large population. Ofcourse a closed economy will stagnate technologically as well.

The developing countries faced external forces that led to their economic failure.
They were forced to do this in the late 70's and early 80's.
Industrialization across the world( except for east asia, and countries with their own energy resources like India, China and Syria, Iraq, and Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia) came to halt and started reversing very quickly, as IMF asuterity and liberalisation was imposed.
Latin america and Africa were severly affected.
The period between 1945 and 1975 was the golden age for most of the world.
This is time of European boom, and US prosperity before deflation hit ,
The US was competing with the Soviet Union and both offered economic aid and generous trade terms for developing countries.
They were also not concerned too much if you practiced protectionism, and industrialised.

but after the boom years ended the markets of the third world were even more important and had to be pried open for the benefit of multinationals.
This is also when the petro-dollar came into existance.
The 70's was also when commodity prices rose steeply due to the oil price also rising sharply, then they crashed .
all o er the third world commodities fell while oil rose.
If you had to import oil, you needed more dollars which you could not get because your exports like bannanas, sugar, cocoa,coffee, tea, cotton, wool etc fell.
You had to borrow more dollars to pay for oil imports..
Then paul volkers head of the fed reserve , raised interests to 27%, from 3%.
everyone who was borrowing was totally fucked.
countries like Argentina, costa rica , and basically anyone that did not have their own oil wells, had to go to the IMF/world bank
for help, and with it came the rest.

Countries like Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Iran continued like before and had industrial growth, even with corruptionand mismanagement.

The tiger economies and countries like thailand that kept a positive balance of payments through export oriented strategy always
did well. Malaysia and Indonesia had their own oil reserves and were unaffected.

[Bill2]

You know that they had chainmail and such in medieval Africa Google Sudanic warriors