Not sure I would call Algeria ‘Arab’, or that the civil war all that decisively ended. The whole country is still tense, violent, heavily armed, and under severe martial law with plenty of military actions against ‘terrorists’. There are ethnic Arabs there, and they do hold some financial power, but the various Berberish populations tend to despise them.

(And they are having parlimentary elections today – eek. Will be miraculous if nobody gets killed.)

“Christianist” is a term that’s been gaining usage, especially in the leadup to this election. I can’t remember it being applied to Romney, but it’s definitely been slapped on Santorum and his ideological cronies in blogs like Andrew Sullivan’s The Dish. I don’t know what the final definition of “Christianist” will be, but it seems to be evolving into a label for a militant and intolerant strain of Christianity that feels entitled to wield political clout.

I assume you include Turkey in the Middle East as you wrote:

“when middle eastern states are ‘modern’ (or attempt modernity) they do try and ‘force’ it just like european states did. e.g., turkey during the early years of ataturk.”

You know, I avoid using the term “Middle East”. I do that because I find the term too Arab or Islam centric. For this reason I prefer the much more neutral term “West Asia” (I know this excludes North African countries, but at least does not have the political and cultural connotations the Middle East has). Also, just like the Caucasus states, Turkey is a country that is transitional between Europe and West Asia rather than a purely West Asian country.

Back on the first quotation, I don’t know how Turkey is seen from the US, but Turkey is a country that attracts both tourists and permanent settlers (whether seasonal or throughout the year) from Europe (including Western Europe). This has been so for the last two or three decades and does not seem to change in the foreseeable future.

this is a reasonable argument. whether you accept its validity really rests on whether you accept the ‘power of ideas.’ in general i’m kind of skeptical, and i guess i end up sounding marxist a lot of the time (as in, excessively materialist). i need to think on this more, because however it came about, iran’s political system is very strange.

The real issue isn’t religious as much as it is an ethnic one between Persians and Arabs but that’s another topic.

can you elaborate on this? i’m moderately skeptical. after all, azeri turks have been powerful cultural shapers in modern iran. if you are specifically pointing to ethnicity rather than sect, you need to take this counter-point into account. my personal experience with iranians is that they express casual personal racism against arabs, but it seems unorganized and ad hoc.

And again, Europe’s very bloody wars have no real equivalent in the ME. The other point was that a lot of minorities survived Arab conquest, but how many were practically wiped out by the Europeans? Technology can’t be the only factor, if you have better weapons that doesn’t really explain the impetus for wiping out native populations or completely destroying their culture.

which populations were wiped out by europeans? be specific, i need to know what you’re talking about. my own working model is that ethnic homogeneity in many societies emerges more through assimilation and absorption of minorities rather than genocide. e.g., the spread of french or italian identity and language from being a small minority in the 19th century to a majority in the 20th (more in france than italy) had little to do with physical elimination, and all to do with co-option of local elites and the promulgation of centralized standards. the drive toward homogeneity than is a function of economic advancement as well as superior political organization. the same process occurred, though more haphazardly in pre-modern times all across the world.

the persistence of many minorities in the muslim world is a function of the backwardness of the muslim world, to be frank. genuine industrial genocide, e.g., of the armenians and of the assyrian christians in iraq (those who descend from the persian church), in the middle east emerges only with the rise of a semi-modern state and bureaucraticization. but even if genocide did not occur assimilation would have resulted in the elimination of differences. were the syriac speakers of syria in the 20th century forced to abandon their language by the government of syria for arabic?

one can see this process outside of the islamic and western world (to remove the freight of rooting for/against “team”): the rapid decline in chinese ‘dialects’ (really separate languages) in a place like singapore in favor of english and mandarin. over time it seems likely that ‘taiwanese’ in taiwan will also give ground to standard mandarin, all without ethnic cleansing. similarly, i expect that as the 21st century processes standard mandarin will begin to threaten cantonese and the other languages of southeast china.

Cultural and linguistic homogeneity is an actively pursued government policy and has very real and direct results, this isn’t comparable to the ME.

when middle eastern states are ‘modern’ (or attempt modernity) they do try and ‘force’ it just like european states did. e.g., turkey during the early years of ataturk. if the libyans had german efficiency they would have succeeded. in fact, if you read closely the history of world war 2 you will note that the lack of cohesiveness and group-oriented solidity of the italian armed forces, which made them relatively ineffective, also resulted in greater latitude for moral action which we would find redeeming in hindsight.

No one calls Romney or Santorum ‘Christianists’, they’re all different strains of conservatism and it’s the same for the Middle Easterners.

good point.

About the Sunni-Shi’a distinction, indeed both are subservient to political authority as well as each being influenced by the other, but my thrust was in another direction; I wanted to stress that the potential for friction between secular and religious factions is greater in Iran than it is in Arab countries.

The Sunni position is officially that the people choose their governor, and some accept him if he takes command by force, the Shi’i standard position is that of wassiya or bequest from the prophet to Ali etc. Neither sect follows this and in fact both turned to hereditary types of government fairly quickly.

That’s the historical flow of events, when it comes to current events though, no majority Sunni country has what Iran suffers from since Khomeini’s revolution: A nation with two entirely incompatible systems for government vying fro control, as on the one hand you have clerics who truly believe in a type of theocracy the world hasn’t really seen in a while (Vilayat-e-faqeeh) and on the other hand you have a deeply Westernized elite (remnants from the last two Shah’s time and onwards) who are diametrically opposed to the clerics.
In this sense the differences between the Imami’s and the Isma’ili’s for example are not that important, I’m talking about a religious elite that holds actual political power and believes to some extent or other in a theocratic model of government. This dynamic is not repeated in any Arab country, and that’s why I said the struggle between secularists and religious conservatives -what I meant by a catch all ‘theocratics’-will be a much greater issue for Iran than it will ever be for the Arabs.

The closest the Arabs came to what Iran currently suffers from was the Algerian civil war in the nineties and that has decisively ended. In fact Iran might very well go through a worse experience before its situation is resolved as the failed ‘Green Revolution’ shows.

Additionally, Iran in a sense uses Shi’ism as an ideological tool in it’s struggle with the Arabs, as seen when it used both Iraq and Lebanon, the original seats of Shi’ism and where the actual spiritual Shi’a leaders -descendants of the prophet- reside as playgrounds for it’s regional rivalries. If they were ‘true believers’ they wouldn’t have been so cynical. Again, The real issue isn’t religious as much as it is an ethnic one between Persians and Arabs but that’s another topic.

As for theocracy, I did make an assumption and you’re right, except about the separation of church and state in the US after the 18th century. What happened and not just in the US was more of the state taking the functions of the church except for preaching, I’m talking about the transfer of responsibility for things traditionally run by the church from taking care of the infirm to the confession booth -replaced by the psychiatrist’s chair- etc. But that’s a minor point.

About Europe and the world wars specifically, the Italians and Germans had reached two similar ideological conclusions hence their alliance; in other words Nazi and Fascist ideology trumped ethnicity in that particular instant. This bearing in mind that the Fascist Party had a turbulent reign -see the Matteotti affair for example- and a rocky relationship with Hitler’s Germany, furthermore Mussolini survived multiple assassination attempts not to mention his arrest near the end of the war then execution by his fellow countryman. And again, Europe’s very bloody wars have no real equivalent in the ME. The other point was that a lot of minorities survived Arab conquest, but how many were practically wiped out by the Europeans? Technology can’t be the only factor, if you have better weapons that doesn’t really explain the impetus for wiping out native populations or completely destroying their culture.

In that vein, I wasn’t pointing to the specific numbers for ethnic and linguistic diversity as much as to the state enforced unity in Europe as opposed to that in the ME. Of course France has a linguistically diverse population but try putting a trendy English name on your shop’s sign in Paris and see what happens. Cultural and linguistic homogeneity is an actively pursued government policy and has very real and direct results, this isn’t comparable to the ME. Qaddafi for example might have forced the Tuaregs to speak Arabic but that didn’t work very well and most importantly he was a dictator, on the other hand French language policy is minted in a democratic system.

On using conservative vs. Islamist, I’ve been consciously using ‘conservative’ of late, seeing as the Islamists have been slowly splitting and taking sometimes contradictory positions on the board. No one calls Romney or Santorum ‘Christianists’, they’re all different strains of conservatism and it’s the same for the Middle Easterners.

and if they mention Islam or Shari’a in their constitutions, well so what? Upper and lower houses write & pass legislation, not some cleric on a pulpit, i.e. the interpretation of what Shari’a means is up to elected representatives in countries with diversity -and yes, even tolerance- sometimes greater than that found in Europe.
You mention Egypt and the connotation is that bad conservatives will kill minority rights etc,

on the point about shariah, i specifically state: “The provisional constitution of Egypt states that sharia is the source of legislation. As a practical matter these dictates can’t be followed literally.” also, i didn’t use the world “conservative” in my original post. there was a reason for that. don’t worry about connotations. you aren’t very good and inferring what i’m trying to say. no idea why, but that’s just how it is. i don’t think that islamists are really “conservatives.”

do a control-f for the term “theocracy.” first, you notice i don’t use it in my post. second, you see how i react when people use the term “theocracy” in a broad and general fashion in the comments? i specifically did not use the word ‘theocracy’ in my post. so again, i have to deal with the fact that you are arguing against an interpretation of me, one which i tried to avoid by being cautious about the terms i used.

the division between secular and theocratic is not dichotomous. for example, ‘church-state separation’ really doesn’t make sense in an american way before the 18th century. even in cases where religion was subordinate to the state, and there was little specific sponsorship, such as east asia, there were cooperative relationships between religious institutions and the powers that be. so ‘secularization’ in a modern sense is uniquely western, though the idea is spreading because i think that ‘westernization’ is in many ways simply a particular evolution toward individualism and dismemberment of the power of corporate entities over the lives of individuals.

just compare the linguistic/ethnic diversity of Syria to that of say, France or Germany and you’ll see my point.

have you done a calculation? (e.g., ‘index of diversity’) i mean, do you know that 1) the local dialects of france and germany are actually close to unintelligible. 2) that france has genuine linguistic minorities outside of the dialect continuum like celtic, basque in gascony, as well as the rather large difference between the southern romance languages such as occitan and the french dialects? similarly, in england you have welsh and scottish nationalities, and in the case of wales 25% still speak welsh with some fluency. in spain you have multiple regional languages. to a great extent the homogeneity of europe is somewhat real, because the nation-states were created to produce them. and the ME is very diverse on the scale of small exotic micro-ethnicities (e.g., yezidis, druze, mandeans). but the homogeneity of italy and france are also somewhat artificial projections of an educated elite who share a common language which was ‘invented’ in the 18th or 19th century (e.g., french = derived from parisian dialect, italian = derived from florentine dialect).

the main problem is that you throw a lot of detail at me. that’s normally something i encourage, but unfortunately i don’t think you grasp all of the detail very well, which prompts me to have to respond and explain the greater nuance or even falsity in assertion.

Europe on the other hand had to first go through it’s centuries of conflict culminating in the two world wars before it’s major ethnic groups learned to live in peace with each other, where and when has something like that ever happened in the ME?

the general argument is that the world wars in europe were vicious in part because of the technology brought to the enterprise, not that europeans (aside from hitler perhaps) were uniquely psychopathic. a better argument would be to point out that the wars of religion in the 1630s were particular vicious, and freighted with sectarian and ethnic conflict. that being said, one can immediately point to a similar occurrence in the conflict between the ottomans and safavids during the 16th and 17th centuries. but i think that it is a bit too neat and reductive to simply say that the ottomans and safavids fought over sectarian differences, just as it is too reductive to say that the french and germans fought during world war ii for ethnic reasons (latinate italy aligned with germanic germany against latinate france and germany england).

now, if your point is that europe was, and to some extent is, savage. sure. but by western standards europe is certainly far less barbaric than the middle east. by many middle eastern standards europe is decadent and lacking in proper morals. that’s all fine, as long as everyone knows where they stand. the main problem though is that middle easterners want to go to europe for economic reasons, while europeans do not want to go to the middle east, except dubai (and unless you count israel, but that’s a peculiar case).

it isn’t uninformed. rather, it’s just informed enough to reassure and individual that they are informed, and that they have a good enough grasp of the social & historical context to be about to write for the new york times. i chose my words there carefully, i didn’t say ‘uninformed,’ though that’s an implication you could make. but if you want to have a more productive discussion with me you should try and read closer, rather than between the lines, often because in this domain i do try and use words and concepts as carefully as possible (i.e., this sort of thing does not lead to quantitative discussions).

so let’s go back to what you said. you didn’t say that the shia are more catholic, though i understand that that was part of your thrust, but you said: Iran which is pretty Catholic and even has a a mini-pope more than it does the Arabs. on paper the usuli twelver shia are ‘more catholic,’ in reliance on a clerisy, than ‘sunnis’ (as a catchall term). but the analogy is superficial, and a lot of the crap about clerical supremacy was literally made up by khomeini within his lifetime. the shia clerics were, like clerics the world over, utterly subservient to the temporal power of the safavids. they were initial brought from the arab world, because despite the presence of holy cities like qom iran was in the 16th century a sunni realm by and large. additionally, with the decline of the safavids, and the weaker rule of groups like qajars, the clerics did rise to become more powerful, but from what i recall there was still a division here between the iranian usuli and iraqi akbari in terms of emphasis on the autonomy of the clerisy vis-a-vis the temporal powers. the idea, which i presume you were attempting to impart, is that in the shia world the religious authorities exhibit some independence, perhaps even supremacy, in relation to the state, as is the case in catholic europe. in contrast, like the protestants, the sunnis tend not to have such a superstructure, or where it exists the religious authorities are servants of the state. but the role of the iranian shia is not something fundamental to shia at all, but an artifact of the last 30 years, due to very specific conditions. in other words, couching it as a shia-sunni distinction totally misleads in terms of causality IMO.

there is a major qualification in this narrative because there is one segment of the shia where the analogies for a highly clerical religion is very strong: the ismailis. in terms of characteristics it can be argued that ismailis are more distinct from the twelver shia than the twelver shia are from the sunnis. the ismaili dai or imams have an authority on religious matters which is supreme in a way which is genuinely similar to the roman catholic pope. such is not the case in the vast majority of the shia, who are twelvers, let alone the zaydi, who have even less distinction from sunnis.

but about that distinction: the reality is that sunnis and protestants who deny the power of the clerisy only do so on paper. the reality among sunnis and protestants is that shayks and preachers had a greater deal of personal power, and command enormous followings. additionally, the innovation of offices such as the mufti (an ottoman bureaucratization of religious function) imbued sunnism with a more official clersiy, despite its lack of sacramental power. though sunni “clerics” are not officially clerics, they are so in all but name. similarly, jewish rabbis are not priests, but they serve the same role as priests for all practical purposes (though some priestly functions are reserved for the genuine priesthood, the cohens). institutional religions always seem to converge upon very similar priesthood-laity relationships, even if notionally a religion lacks a priesthood (e.g., radical protestantism, sunni islam).

The Arabs might be generally backward and support religious conservatives and whatnot, but their societies also have developed a pretty tolerant informal social contract despite what their governments did or do.

Europe on the other hand had to first go through it’s centuries of conflict culminating in the two world wars before it’s major ethnic groups learned to live in peace with each other, where and when has something like that ever happened in the ME?
That’s why I say that comparisons like that are to a great degree moot when comparing these two areas.

Let’s consider the differences and similarities between democracy and oligarchy etc a tangential point for now, what’s so uninformed about comparing the Shi’a model for government to the Catholic one in general?
If you have specific evidence and arguments then do present them, but a naked claim isn’t enough, and before you jump to any conclusions I do genuinely like your posts and want to know your opinion, I wouldn’t have written that very long comment or this one if I weren’t.

Perhaps that stuff about popular revolution & conservatives wasn’t worded that well but I don’t think it’s wrong either.
To clarify my position further; It seems to me that Egypt, Syria and even Libya sometime in the foreseeable future will become more like Tunis in terms of the spread of secular/conservative/third way parties, and that the current overwhelming majority that the conservative’s are enjoying is a temporary result of their secularist opponents being for the most part allies of the regimes the people revolted against in the first place.
Assad for example is a staunch secularist at least in his speeches, in reality it’s a bit more complicated than that, and his secularism might be seen as a defense against the overwhelming Sunni majority etc but for the purpose of my argument it’s enough that he outwardly and practically supports secularism. Ben Ali was even more secular than Assad is, and Mubarak to a lesser extent but he continued repressive policies against the conservatives. As for Gaddafi, the first thing his heir Saif did when the revolt broke out was to accuse the demonstrators in a very long rant on TV of being fueled by drug addicted religious extremists.

In short all of them repressed conservatives except when it suited them, and were generally supported by a lot of what I call militant-secularists; a foreign educated/influenced elite who simply didn’t feel they belonged in their societies and who furthermore sought state protection and sponsorship, and were in turn used as peons in ideological struggles with conservative opposition groups like the MB and so on by the state.
I believe the election results skewing conservative are a direct translation of that link and only that, let things calm down a bit in Egypt for example and in a couple of years the urbanized youth who make the majority of voters will display voting patterns similar to the Tunisian ones, Right now the only nominally untainted opposition group is the MB.

Now, about Syria, why would the Brotherhood there wish to regress minority rights? Would they be even capable of such a feat? I very strongly disagree with you on this one, just look at who’s doing the daily killings and for the most part it’s regime thugs plus an army led by an overwhelmingly Alawi officer corps, with the majority of victims being Sunni. Let’s say the Assad family flees Syria tomorrow and elections are held and everything is back to semi normal in a year or so, how and more importantly why would the Brotherhood want to regress Alawi/Kurd etc rights? The country is on the brink of shredding itself apart because of the sectarian nature of the current regime’s makeup and response and the Brotherhood would crack down on those same people who own most of the firepower and have every reason to fear a backlash?
And again, Iraq is a special case, people there were pretty secular before the last invasion and will return to it as soon as the shenanigans of the current government -the most recent being the Shi’i PM accusing the Sunni VP of being a terrorist- are too much for the voters.

If any of the above is still NYT in your opinion then I think it’s common courtesy to at least explain why.

(follow up comments by you will result in banning if you take the same tack of condescension toward someone who has a better grasp of history than you do [me])

Now Razib, your model better describes Iran which is pretty Catholic and even has a a mini-pope more than it does the Arabs, who are majority Sunni -as you know-, I’m stressing this because to me you seem to suggest that what’s happening in the Arab world is a struggle between the forces of secularization against theocracy, which is misleading.

Iraq is a special case seeing as it barely scraped it out of a brutal dictatorship that lasted for decades plus the heavy toll from the American sanctions and let’s not forget the 3 Gulf wars. It’s only natural for a strongman to emerge from that kind of environment, and he’s Shi’a because Sunni influence was weakened and Iran allowed pretty much free rein to do its thing by the typically clueless Yankee.

Moving on, Conservatives are winning elections in the ME because those countries just came out of revolutions against militant secularists. Or even more simply put: Successful popular revolution brings populists (duh?) to power, and conservatives are populists and hence the MB + Salafi’s win in elections.

and if they mention Islam or Shari’a in their constitutions, well so what? Upper and lower houses write & pass legislation, not some cleric on a pulpit, i.e. the interpretation of what Shari’a means is up to elected representatives in countries with diversity -and yes, even tolerance- sometimes greater than that found in Europe.
You mention Egypt and the connotation is that bad conservatives will kill minority rights etc, but Egypt has Copts with religion and culture intact after over a millennium of the Muslim conquest.
A recent example of that society’s tolerance can be seen during recent rioting and clashes, as members of the Muslim Brotherhood stood guard over churches, another e.g. would be the Copts who fought alongside their fellow Egyptians against the British occupation. Meanwhile Spain doesn’t have anything of its previous Moorish population except pretty architecture, location names and some genes, but not religion/culture.

Final point, there is no such thing as Democracy in actuality, rather all democracies are practically Oligarchies, this is relevant because Elites are practical people, especially elites in democracies, and the impractical ones lose elections or get toppled, and so again, the simplistic secular vs. religious is a caricature and barely reflects anything of what’s going on in the Arab world.

Also, the bread is fantastic in the middle east.

So current middle eastern populations are not “normal” human populations, but rather arificially bread for religion.

Well, Ancient Greece! Socrates was condemned, by a democratic system, in part because of his impiety. Alcibiades had to swiftly escape due to some blasphemous prank. OTOH philosophers were not exactly slaughtered en masse, despite their notorious heterodoxy, so clearly there was some grudging toleration.

If you want a “conservative” contemporary view of Socrates and his ilk, and what the conservative Athenian-in-the-street thought of these God-denying ne’er-do-wells, you can simply read Aristophanes – the original paleo-conservative!