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The Iconoclast

Monday, 1 September 2008

Societies Suffused With Islam Seek Their Own Level

by Hugh Fitzgerald (Sept. 2008)

The Arab states of the Gulf – the little teeny ones, and even the great big one, that famous Gated Estate (houses and messuage) that the Al-Saud family, whose members, upon takin g full possession of Arabia, promptly renamed as "Saudi" Arabia -- are, as the famously dismissive but accurate phrase has it, little more than "tribes with flags." For "Saudi" Arabia in particular, the deeds of forced sale, from the Hashemites for the Two Noble Sanctuaries in the Hejaz, and those for most of the rest of the real estate, in Nejd and, in soon-to-be-oil-bearing Hasa, turned over to the Al-Saud by the defeated Shammar tribe round about 1920, are of course non-existent. The Al-Saud simply defeated their enemies, and their legitimacy as rulers, even owners, of “Saudi” Arabia, such as it is, is not even a century old. Though it has been deemed impolite in the West to discuss “tribes” in reporting on what really goes on in “the Arab world” or in sub-Saharan Africa, in a part of the world where loyalties are either greater than the nation-state (a Western invention), to a trans-national umma, or smaller than the nation-state, to sect and to tribe, the failure to think or analyze in such terms is unwise. more...

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Posted on 09/01/2008 6:34 AM by NER

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8 Sep 2008
neil

Hugh,

Great article again. I worry now that our democratic elites can be fooled all the time, even if the people can't. With the EU getting a death grip on the continent and now infesting the UK with its corruption, i am none too sanguine about the future there. However, i note today that the UK is looking at proper restrictions on immigration so the people-pressure is beginning to work on the stinking elite. However, PC being what it is - Gramsci-inspired marxism working under the radar - i am not sure that the elite will ever really get it so i truly feel that we will see another war across the continent, courtesy of yet one more "Betrayal of the Intellectuals".

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