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Old 07-15-2016, 07:17 PM   #241
Flash Walken
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This is predictable blowback from keeping a region largely impoverished and without the material benefits of modernisation.

Praying east just doesn't hold a candle to Coke, if the people of the middle east had been invited into the material benefits of modern society they would abandon religion like every other modern society has.

If Middle Eastern countries had been invited into economic prosperity in the 70s and 80s (or the 50s) like eastern europe religious extremism would be a minor issue. Unfortunately for the people of the middle east, a big part of western prosperity that the Eastern Europeans came into enjoying came off the backs of keeping the people of the middle east impoverished under dictatorial rule.

What is uncommonly credited with an decrease in religiosity is the emancipation of women. The economic need of women to participate in the labour force has an immediate emancipatory impact on the population. The romantic vision is of Rosie the Riveter but it also takes the form of the 17th century wet nurse.

Unfortunately, most Islamic countries missed the era of industrialisation of the 70s and 80s that Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America enjoyed. This industrialisation brought women into the workforce and lead too a general improvement in standard of living and less reliance on traditional norms and strict religious observance.

Now that we are in an era of labour depression combined with de jour austerity, immigrant populations from these regions once again find themselves ghettoized without economic opportunity. Although they are often facing similar economic disadvantages as their national brethren, as minorities they have less economic and cultural agency, sometimes just perceived and sometimes real, than their 'native' peers.

As western society continues to have less and less need for conventional labour this problem is going to get worse and worse. As climate change makes traditional agricultural labour harder and harder in the region these impacts will also accelerate.

You can trace a lot of this back to Eisenhower and Dulles and their relationship with Nasser. Choosing a status quo relationship in the middle east of economic colony status to empower western europe against the soviet union was ill advised policy.
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