Article

2010-07-25 -Short Attention Span Theater-

What happened to the MidEast's cosmopolitan intellectuals?

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Posted by Pappy 2010-07-25 00:00|| || Front Page|| [5 views ] Top

#1 this fellow is writing a book and this post is from what will be an chapter

IMO the writing is horrible. The premise in fuzzy. The logicall flow is non existent.

Typically scholarly work.

Posted by lord garth 2010-07-25 01:05|| 2010-07-25 01:05|| Front Page Top

#2 It's cultural.

I tried to mentally summarize the excerpt into tightly-stated bullet-points using everyday language.

Failed.

Posted by Free Radical 2010-07-25 08:42|| 2010-07-25 08:42|| Front Page Top

#3 Summary:

There's a running narrative that's commonly used to explain the current conflict in the middle east. It goes something like this:

There are deep, natural ethic and religious divides in the middle east. These were suppressed and/or caused to some degree by imperial rule: first the Ottomans and then the Brits/Euros. Western leftist intellectuals agitated for the dismantling of the colonial empires. Their ideology took hold among many intellectuals in the region, with the result that thuggish regimes like the Baathists (and Nassar and others before them) were enabled to take power. Those intellectuals at least in theory worked toward a wider unity among the Muslims. In practice, however, the result has been fragmentation which feeds more violence.

Meanwhile, the intellectuals who didn't drink the Baathist/pan-Arab/etc. koolaid fled to the West, which is why there aren't any moderates in the middle east any more.

It will be interesting to see whether the author agrees with that common narrative or pokes holes in it. Can't tell without publication of the book as a whole.

Posted by lotp 2010-07-25 10:02|| 2010-07-25 10:02|| Front Page Top

#4 I blame Abraham and Hagar.

Posted by Besoeker 2010-07-25 12:06|| 2010-07-25 12:06|| Front Page Top

#5 Intellectuals that didn't flee are probably keeping their heads down and their mouths shut and I don't blame them.

Posted by rjschwarz 2010-07-25 14:14|| 2010-07-25 14:14|| Front Page Top

#6 What happened to the MidEast's cosmopolitan intellectuals?

They came over here and bought gas stations and convienience stores...

Posted by tu3031 2010-07-25 14:16|| 2010-07-25 14:16|| Front Page Top

#7 And are sending their kids to engineering and medical school, mostly to our benefit.

Posted by lotp 2010-07-25 14:29|| 2010-07-25 14:29|| Front Page Top

#8 I ran into a worldly Egyptian ex-pat selling women's designer clothes at one of our suburban mall Macy's, recently... It's like the French aristos who descended on England and the American colonies during the Revolution. Does anyone know what happened to their children?

Posted by trailing wife 2010-07-25 23:13|| 2010-07-25 23:13|| Front Page Top

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