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Comment by umeshunni | Hacker News Reader

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Historically many (predominantly muslim) places in near and middle east have been very diverse, though maybe not exactly the kind of diversity usually conceptualised in the west. If anything, the idea of homogeneous nation states is more like rooted in the enlightenment.

> the idea of homogeneous nation states is more like rooted in the enlightenment.

More precisely the Peace of Westphalia, which was a deal between the crowned heads of Europe to stop rocking the boat, and the absolute opposite of what the Enlightenment wanted since it was designed to consolidate royal political control.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_of_Westphalia

The striving for a linguistically homogeneous nation state in Europe is strongly associated with the French Revolution, which was one of the major expressions of the Enlightenment. It was then that a centralized government began strongly sanctioning regional languages that the monarchical regime had largely left alone (albeit out of any official use).

After that, the next big wave was the revolutions of 1848, which were inspired by national romanticism, but it’s valid to see that as an evolution of ideas that first arose in the Enlightenment. It certainly wasn’t out of any belief in royal absolutism.

I think you make an too easy argument: Compared to e.g. Christian places in Europe where people still the same tongue like before the Christianisation (roughly speaking), Aramic, Demotic or Berbic languages, once majority languages are now minority languages in Arabic enviroments. Ironically Aramic and Demotic are spoken mostly by Christian minorities.

Also I see the Islamic movement in recent years pushing for Islamic homogeneous countries and driving ethnic, religious, language and sexual minorities out of their homelands (mainly into Europe).

Compare to today (often secular) European counterparts Arabic nations are homogenous and root cause was Anti enlightenment ideologies.

> If anything, the idea of homogeneous nation states is more like rooted in the enlightenment.

The seeds were planted during the enlightenment period but I believe the raise of nationalism is generally considered post-enlightenment

While this was definitely true historically, it's becoming much less the case. Plenty of minorities have had to flee the Near/Middle East from persecution or genocide. The Middle East has become massively more (orthodox) Muslim in the last hundred years.

I'm fairly sure they were referring to the americans that this post is about

And in the US you can see so many different cultures in one place

This culture they inherited from the British that annihilated the indigenous population compared with the Spanish or Portuguese that breeded with the native population

No, the Spanish did plenty of genocide as well.

Im not denying that but still the they had a higher offspring with the native comparable to the approach of the British of removing most of the indigenous population

You’d be surprised how much radical Islam and the American far right have in common.

You look around the world, including the rise of far-right parties across the Western world who talk about the "great replacement" conspiracy theory, and the first example you reach for is Islamic cultures?

Considered that there are organizations like the Taliban and Boko Haram that rule entire countries and regions and have anti-education as a principle, yes it's those cultures that I reach for.

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