Western Imperialism to Blame or Islam? – Niall Ferguson on the ME

At last. Someone has enough humility to admit that the European empires were not the cause of the middle east’s woes.

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

8 Replies to “Western Imperialism to Blame or Islam? – Niall Ferguson on the ME”

  1. He speaks a lot of sense, I mean Nial Ferguson of course. I am optimistic that the West will continue the dominance but will compete with that dominance with the Asian economises. So there will be an economic change. However, the point he forgets to make is that the Oil will have run out for the brown man of the desert. A crucial point. Demographically they will grow and with no money in the oil well left they will try to plant some seeds in the desert. Oil money is like money in the bank once it is gone it is gone for good. No luck there with the agriculture of the desert.Plus to proud to ask Isreal for help. They will then raid their treasury to pay for grain from America, India etc. Finally, the treasury built up from the oil rich years will dry up. They will start to borrow money. They will borrow it from China to pay for the wheat imports. A lot of real estate will collapse meaning businessmen from china, the west and india will buy up lots of it cheaply. Already plenty of indian billionaires own quite a bit of the real estate and they will just keep on improving their empire. With the Middle East starving and owned by the West and the Asians we will see a more docile ME. Sunk in illiteracy, poverty and hunger and finally neglected by the West they will look back at this time of flag burning and rioting and jihad as a golden age. Another point Nial forget was why has the Far East and Asia prospered when they too were dominated by the west in the colonial phase. Two crucial points not dealt with.

  2. The fact of the matter is this. Economics dominates. With the petro dollar jihad sapped of funds the ME will sink back into its inherent backwardness. Mentally, it will be the same as today with islam, racism and conspiracy theories and “the white man keeping us down……” Black prisoners in America will be symphatic as usual. The change is already happening. The per capita incomes of the large states of the ME namely Iraq and Saudi and Iran are a fraction of what they were in their heydey. We can thank Bush for destroying Iraq. Iran has destroyed itself with a GDP per capita of 12, ooo dollars and the Saudis have about double that. The micro gulf states do not matter too much and are wary but secretive. It is the big three. Two down and two to go before the petrodollar jihad dries up. Saudi is the big one. Now no longer top dog in oil as that honour goes to Russia, what happens in Saudi is crucial. Iran has been stopped by a virus, stuxnet, in attempting to gain a nuclear advantage. They have destroyed themsleves economically and continue to do so. Watch as the iranian economic meltdown contues. Watch that rather than their usual bluster. It is all bluster from them now but the Saudi Arabs still pack a petr0dollar jihad punch.

  3. Me again. I am stuck here today rather than organising the weekly wet burka contest which would be more fun. My wife is sorting that out as I speak. Still not to worry. I will focus on weightier concerns. My point now is to do with art galleries. A lot of people are not aware of the fact that the ME is probably the number investor in Art galleries in the world. Why is that. It is because they like the tourist dollars of art buffs as they spend more than the sun and sea tourists. Quote from the Guardian:”Dubai’s art scene is booming, even if the city is not. Its art fair is now in its fifth year and has 82 galleries – up from 72 last year – “Now this shows the future of the ME in some places. Art galleries are popping up all over the wealthy micostates of the gulf. When the oil runs out these states will in be tourist resorts. In north africa Egypt will have of course have its beautiful kuffar culture from the mighty Pharonic age. Tunis will have the cheapy holdays, that is, once it is stable again as will Turkey that Europe hating “European” which will soon to be more islamic. The micro states will do the high end of the tourist industry and will keep the costs down with imported slave labour. Saudi will of course have its haj tourist revenue. With so much tourism, the new ME post oil will be a docile stable place so as not to frighten the tourists away. Iran will of course retain its traditional racism and not want the filthy kuffar anywhere near them but the Arabs have become more fat and relaxed due to their greater oil revenues and Dubai is a show case of that with a dark side of course which we know as slavery and the occasional horror story from women who spread the word of what Dubai does to unfortunate rape victims. The future for the ME is poverty, illiteracy, islam, conspiracy theories and a muted racism due to tourism. Check out an art gallery, soak up the sun and mingle with the locals to hear their latest theories of how the world and the universe works. An interesting combination but be protected at all times (especially women).

  4. The west needs to stop aborting its own children!

    No, that does not mean that we should try to compete with the muslims in taking over the world with a tsunami of babies. Abortion just has got to go, PERIOD!
    It has demoralised us as much as multiculturalism and will continue to do so as long as we keep it.

    The muslims on the other hand are on the highway to hell, with their overgrown populations and the revival of islam. In the end they will dominate no one with their senseless killing and useless hate.

  5. I could not help but cringe when the Arab (?) “analyst” made the comment that the Kurds “moved to Syria, Jordan and Iraq”.

    Hello, Mr. “Big Shot”, they were there long before Islam was even a blip on the horizon. The fact that they are now in those countries was the direct result of the creation of those countries when the British left. Despite Kurdish requests for their own land, the British didn’t see much value in them having one, thinking that the Arabs were the “better bet” to secure oil and gas.

    How wrong they turned out to be.

    Mr. Ferguson is right about the Europeans not being the cause for unrest in the Middle East, but for more reasons than he outlined.

    The period when the colonial powers held much of the Muslim world was a period of relative peace for all concerned. With the imposition of European style courts and laws over these areas, tribal in-fighting over land was minimized. And the people actually had opportunities do do what the Ottoman, Moorish and Caliphate Empires (Ferguson neglected to mention these, concentrating on the Turks) ever allowed: to be educated and emigrate.

    Furthermore, when western technology was introduced to the Muslim world, it enabled the people to become more aware of the outside world, which they had never known before.

    The Europeans created an ironic “oasis” of calm for around two hundred years after the long periods when Moors, Turks (Ottomans), Saracens and other Muslim-based empires ruled. And there was also the Mughal Empire which swept out of Persia to strike terror and fear into the Indian Sub-continent and beyond.

    All of these empires had one thing in common; mass slaughter of non-Muslims and the attempted total eradication of evidence that there was a pre-Muslim past where they conquered. And their leaders never let the cat out of the bag by telling their followers that what they were following was purely political in nature with the aim of building those empires.

    One thing that neither analyst (though in the case of the Islamic apologist I use the term loosely) mentioned was that around 40 years ago OPEC was formed which has given Muslim despots in the Middle East ample financial resources to keep hold of their power. The Saud family, currently the leaders of Saudi Arabia, for instance, have billions to play around with and they do; building mosques all over the world, building madrassa schools, etc.

    Taken as a whole, the Europeans left the Middle East in pretty good shape, for what it was. Since then, Muslim rulers have impoverished their people, created entire regions where hatred of non-Muslims are the norm (think Palestine and Iran) and financed terrorism all over the world.

    I wish that western media would focus more on the money trail, though. Where are the terrorists getting their money from? Where are they getting their supplies to make bombs? Where are they getting their weapons?

    I think that these trails will lead right back to our gas tanks, courtesy of OPEC’s vast reserves and output.

    These questions are more important than “Will the Middle East ever get democracies?” (I don’t think so.)

    May the truth prevail.

  6. RRWest once again you provide a good historical education to the victims of the modern educational systems. Niall Ferguson did a good job and the Moslem did the usual whitewash, I just hope that most of the people who saw this understood which was lying. I hope they did but doubt that they did.

  7. The mughal empire was founded by a central asian, a descendent of Timur called Babur. His was a shortlived empire and was consistenly fought by the hindus and sikhs and was more in name than reality. Shivaji the hindu warrior and t he Sikh soldiers brought it to its knees. When the British arrived they were better organised and so took over after the final sikh war after which they were victorious. That area of history is little understood because of the islamophilia of the west. Everything a muslim does is wonderful according to westerners. That love of islam is something that never ceases to amaze me. After all the jihads against Europe and the taking of one million european slaves by the muslims and the blocking of the routes to Eastern trade with China and India by the muslims the love for the muslim remains so strong. It remains in many history books and is a positive note in so many history books. Even the excellent A World History by William Mcneal, which is better than most histories has this strain of thinking. Niall Ferguson may be a new breed of historian who takes a more sober view of things than the former fashionable islamophilia allowed.

  8. In my previous post when I said two down two to go I forgot to mention Turkey. Turkey and Saudi are the jihad threats of today of the most note. Iran is really too poor along with iraq now to do anything much nowadays. It is all bluster from Iran but Turkey is more capable of doing some real damage and the turks are experts at playing their cards unlike the Iranians and iraquies are out of the main action now.