Revolutions in the Arab world!
Well, as I live in a country with plenty of Arabic heritage and plenty of muslim inmigrants from countries such as Morocco (25% of my hometown citizens are from Morocco or descendants of Moroccan people) I'm very pleased with all the events in Tunis, Egypt and now Bahrein and Lybia (despite that some blood is being spilled).
I belong to the masses of Europeans who feel uncomfortable with Islam. I recognize that I have an ambivalent feeling because I both accept them as people and reject them for their religion. As I've said, I think that we've been through too much religious bullshit to have new people with more religious bullshit (we could discuss this for a long time, but I kind of accept that my mild catholic background helped me become a good atheist). However, I try to be at least aware to see things from a social and economic perspective which most people around me tend to ignore. See, nobody speaks bad about a rich Sheik coming to Marbella on holidays with his fully clothed wife and 15 children while it's difficult to accept the fully clothed mother of six doing her shopping at the fruit shop.
Anwyay. What these revolutions have shown, and I think that we, as neighbours of those people have to learn, is that these people are not what we think that they are. They are not ignorant and they are opressed. While full democracy and rights are not really equal to economic prosperity, they're more likely to be together. Seeing how western countries have all helped their corrupt governments (and Spain and France's support of Muhammed VI of Morocco is a real scandal, seeing how many people are in jail and killed for political reasons there), they are completely right in their protests. I really hope that they succeed as they did in Tunis and Egypt. I have high hopes for them.
By the way, if I didn't study my degree as a second Bachelor of Arts, I would be able to choose a credit called "Islamic world". I just downloaded all the course materials. It won't be the same, but I'm reading more about the history of Islam. Morocco is just 21km away from Spain
I belong to the masses of Europeans who feel uncomfortable with Islam. I recognize that I have an ambivalent feeling because I both accept them as people and reject them for their religion. As I've said, I think that we've been through too much religious bullshit to have new people with more religious bullshit (we could discuss this for a long time, but I kind of accept that my mild catholic background helped me become a good atheist). However, I try to be at least aware to see things from a social and economic perspective which most people around me tend to ignore. See, nobody speaks bad about a rich Sheik coming to Marbella on holidays with his fully clothed wife and 15 children while it's difficult to accept the fully clothed mother of six doing her shopping at the fruit shop.
Anwyay. What these revolutions have shown, and I think that we, as neighbours of those people have to learn, is that these people are not what we think that they are. They are not ignorant and they are opressed. While full democracy and rights are not really equal to economic prosperity, they're more likely to be together. Seeing how western countries have all helped their corrupt governments (and Spain and France's support of Muhammed VI of Morocco is a real scandal, seeing how many people are in jail and killed for political reasons there), they are completely right in their protests. I really hope that they succeed as they did in Tunis and Egypt. I have high hopes for them.
By the way, if I didn't study my degree as a second Bachelor of Arts, I would be able to choose a credit called "Islamic world". I just downloaded all the course materials. It won't be the same, but I'm reading more about the history of Islam. Morocco is just 21km away from Spain