Wow, that puts the anti Semitic and anti communist roots of Nazism way back in 1919. Such a long slow buildup, and nothing stopped it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_and_the_New_Testam...
Some inconvenient examples: Between 1290 and 1753 it was illegal for Jews to exist in England. Then until 1846 they had to wear special clothes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_England
And when you say "Semitic" you're probably not aware that the Arabs are actually Semitic too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_people
And the Muslim religon is very problematic because its founder was a warrior, and the religion texts actually promote the "war for religion" and also that other religions aren't "true."
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad
Finaly, Judaism is problematic too, as their belief is that they are "chosen people" by the God who assisted them in wars against all others.
Welcome to the world we live in.
Not so surprising that that Muhammed guy (peace be upon him! (0)) got inspired for his wars. Apparently he was illiterate, but it seems that somebody read him big parts of OT. Muslims believe it was an angel named Gabriel (3), not to be confused with Moroni (4) that appeared in the US. And when we're there, Americans should understand Muhammedans and vice versa, as the US president was directly instructed by God too (5) so much for the Separation of church and state (6).
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(0) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad
(1) http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Names_of_G-d/Adonai/adonai....
(2) http://www.bricktestament.com/judges/
(3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad%27s_first_revelation
(4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_Moroni
(5) http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/07/iraq.usa
(6) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_church_and_state
... and that is exactly what scares the shit out of me. This is why I consider history a mandatory reading, more so a critical reading of history, with an eye for the tell tale signs.
Playing with elements of hate and is playing with fire.
You might recall that India and Pakistan were the same country once. Geopolitically they look different now, but I blame that on the butterfly effect of a few good decisions that leaders of India chose to abide by during its formative period (and stupid decisions on behalf of the Pakistani statesmen). What scares me is that this threat of a fascist future in India is not as ludicrous as I would like it to be. A few bad decisions, few people not choosing to stand up and India could be a non muslim version of the state of Pakistan now.
Just for clarification, I bear no ill feeling towards Pakistani people, but they did really mess up their country and to me it seems for no good reason.
Yes very much so. The initial condition and the differential equation were not that different for the two countries. The trajectory however turned out to be drastically different. The statesmen in charge during its formative period did not take steps which would have otherwise made such a scenario less likely. Small changes in courses of their actions early in its history, a decision here and there had major influence on how the country would shape up. They were not thinking ahead.
It was a mistake to put religion in the center of politics. It was a mistake to cultivate this identity of the wronged population. Likewise for the now popular narrative of competing to be the better muslim, the roots of that narrative go farr back in time. Although Zia is the popular choice to ascribe the blame to, it had started way before. Bhutto (the father and the golden liberal boy) was for example very much in the business of deciding who is a true Muslim and who is not, deciding that Ahmadias are to be persecuted for not being pure enough Muslims, passing parliamentary laws to that effect. Check out why does Abdus Salam's grave in pakistan says
"...became the first <defaced> Nobel laureate for his work in physics".
If Indian politicians play the same game, the consequences would be no different. We would get a non-muslim pakistan.
> And still you are more worried about fascism in India!
Yes and for a reason, because history does rhyme.
> Muslims in Pakistan regularly kill minorities
Perhaps you have a very cherry picked view of Indian history... since when has Hindu's in India not killed minorities. It seems to be a mandatory right of passage to take charge of national politics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_riots_in_India
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_India
For those who are not very familiar with India, if you look closely you will see that some regions are regular and repeat offenders in post independence India whereas others are not affected.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_religion
And when a state has a lot of people who believe sharia law should be the law of the land, the courts and politicians have to grapple with what are essentially 6th century moral and legal ideas. And not just 6th century in fact, but made by one of the only prophets who commanded an army, and went to war, and wrote things like this:
http://www.islamawakened.com/quran/8/67/
"It is not fitting for a prophet that he should have prisoners of war until he hath thoroughly subdued the land. Ye look for the temporal goods of this world; but Allah looketh to the Hereafter: And Allah is Exalted in might, Wise."
You'd be hard pressed to find Old Testament prophets speaking this way or being described in this way. In fact, the Jews are admonished for "killing their prophets" who basically went around speaking.
So the "differential equation with initial conditions" analogy is very much a big factor.
Judaism formed to have an exclusionary character - it's hard to become a Jew, and so the Jews were always a minority, never ambitious to make the whole world Jews.
Christianity formed with a "peaceful proselytizing" character, for one thing because when it formed the apostles were the ones being persecuted and they didn't have the power to raise an army and convert people by the sword.
Islam on the other hand was formed that way and the political character of Islam is hard to defeat by populations full of sharia law-abiding, devout muslims. Disestablishment of the Church took a long time, but ultimately there is far less in Christianity that says the Church and Government must be one. In fact, statements like this emphasize the separation of Church and State:
http://biblehub.com/mark/12-17.htm
So yeah founding conditions matter, and I think that's why you see so many Islamic states and why there are more Muslims around the world living in democratic countries who truly believe that if their society was transformed from a democracy into an Islamic state, everyone would be better off.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYAcLudBbhg
Personally I think Islam is not alone. I think various forms of socialism (Communism, Nazism) are also like "mind viruses" or group memes that tend to want to take over the government. If you look at it epidemiologically, certain ideas simply take over the population (the vector of transmission is almost always primarily young men, especially in bad economies or situations, e.g. hitler youth, or hamas, or vietkong, etc.) and states built around these ideas are intolerant and squash dissent. In my opinion, the greatest political danger lies in ideologies whose proponents obtain power.
We wanted the situation to be fucked both in and between Pakistan and India as we are following from the Roman theories on empire that fostering group enmity makes it easier to impose control, the great game we are still playing today, like spoiled children furious that we lost our toys, despite the fact that these days the stakes are intolerable even if you win.
It used to be that murderous lunatics drunk on power could foster tribal warfare for relatively little long term risk to stuff other than screwing up their own empire if they miscalculated and generally pissing off a lot of people, these days you might end up with vast deserts of radioactive glass. And I suspect we may create a couple of them yet, if things carry on the current trajectory.
The British also helped establish the Saudi and Hashemite kingdoms etc. The Syrian King Faisal (someone I think was a really progressive guy) was also installed by the British in Iraq. And all of this happened after the fall of the Ottoman empire.
In that part of the world where religion is very strong, it's interesting to see that democracy always leads to a theocratic government (except in Indonesia where it's so far successfully been separated) and thus the constant struggle against violence, threats to usurp power and human rights oppression.
"It will form for England a little loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism."
I guess he was right about some of the similarity with Ulster, though perhaps not in the way he intended.
edit - as for democracy leading to theocracy in that part of the world, firstly Indonesia is almost 9,000 km away, and secondly I do not think there has been any recent time where external powers have not been massively fucking about round there, so you cannot really draw any conclusions about this being a feature of the local culture.
The Arab league policy is that granting Palestinians citizenship or otherwise integrating them in the population would effectively give Israel carte blanche to depopulate Palestine by driving the population into exile, and so it's strongly frowned upon, with the result that Jordan is the only country who have granted citizenship to a large proportion.