Just as long as we don’t have a friggin’ Muslim Pope- they can have the dresses and funky hats, but we don’t need any more folk deemed infallible, let alone given the authority to deem someone to be an apostate.

And you thought the Raj was dead. I have a ground-breaking idea: how about we let Middle Easterners draw the map of the Middle East.

Willow, the white man’s burden dictates we must draw arbitrary lines on a map, and present it to our compliant brothers and sisters in the Middle East.

This article does not bode well in the Muslim world, and even though the administration has made it clear that his opinions are not that of the administration or the White House, Muslims already distrustful of Western intentions in the region, will use this as proof against the “Crusaders.”

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This map looks more like Eastern Europe with all these "ethnically and religiously homogeneous nations"!

OmarG, your line of reasoning does seem reasonable at first glance, considering that many of the nations that now occupy the map of the Middle East and much of the Muslim world did not exist prior to European colonialism and empire.

Much of the sectarianism plaguing the Middle East and adjacent areas like Afghanistan and Pakistan has been due to the presence of large minorities, or in some cases majorities who were oppressed by the hands of a native minority which is the case in Iraq.

Even Winston Churchill noted that one mistake made by the British “Raj” was not creating a separate Kurdistan.

But reality in the Middle East is much more complicated, and the malignant Islamists are anti-nationalists. Any moves to redraw the borders of the Middle East in this manner, would face stiff and fierce resistance not only from the Islamists but the ruling local elites and oligarchies. Plus, there would be no international mandate to initiate such a move, such actions are confined to the past now, they are simply not politically correct.

PS, Pakistan should get the Pashtun regions of Afghanistan while Tajikistan would get the North East and Uzbekistan the North-Central, and to Turkmenistan went the North West and the west to Iran/Persia. Niether Afghanistan or Iraq should be states. I also gave the Iraqi Sunni areas to Syria, but I never thought of breaking up Saudi Arabia; in fact, I figured on putting Kuwait into the Arab Shia state and Qatar to Saudi, but the Asir region to Yemen as did Peters. Unlike Peters, I proposed establishing Turkey as the Kurdish state by giving Northern Iraq and the Kurdish region of Syria to Turkey. That way, Turkey and Iran would be the regional superpowers as they have been for 2,500 years under different names: the Near East has been dominated by an Anatolian empire versus an empire based on the Iranian Plateau. I think my version is better.

- A Salafi in worship, a Sufi in society, a Secularist in government.

According to Afghan expansionist nationalism, Pushtunistan and Pakistani Baluchistan would go to Afghanistan while Afghans have no claims to Kashmir, Pakistani Kashmir could either remain part of Pakistan (Punjab and Sindh) or decide it’s own political fate with independence.

Afghanistan has been around since the 18th century, prior to Europeans making any serious incursions in the region.

So I would have to disagree with you Omar concerning the fate or disbanding of Afghanistan.

The Pathans (Pushtuns) of Pakistan are not Desis like Sindhis or Punjabis or Kashmiris, they are simply not “Indian” or Indic peoples.

This is the problem we encounter with partitioning people along sectarian lines, look at the mess that is the subcontinent.

Thoughts about Muslim Vatican?

“That way, Turkey and Iran would be the regional superpowers as they have been for 2,500 years”

Turkey, a regional power for 2500 years? Where did you get that?

2,500 years ago, coastal Turkey or Asia Minor as the Greeks labeled it was the center of Greek city-state power.

I forget when Alexander the Great introduced Hellenistic culture to much of the Near East minus the Arabian peninsula.

Hasan, OK maybe 2,000 years, circa 500BC, Anatolia wasn’t a coherent empire. So, my understanding of the progression is a series of competing empires: one in Anatolia and the other in the Iranian Plateau.

Anatolia Iran
———— ——
Rome Parthia
Byzantium Sassanians
Ottomans Safavids

Iraq was usually the borderlands between the two superpowers listed above. The Ottomans and Safavids fought major wars from the 1500’s until the late 1600’s. Even today, Turkey and Iran are the industrial and modern powers of the Near East. Egypt is possibly the third, but it has little industry and is very vulnerable in its territory.

Heck, the Near East is pretty foobared as it is; a little reordering couldn’t hurt any more than the present status quo.

- A Salafi in worship, a Sufi in society, a Secularist in government.

“a little reordering couldn’t hurt any more than the present status quo.”

Isn’t that the rationale followed by the Bushies in their attempt to reorder Iraq, the reason for the current “coundn’t hurt scenario.

As for Turkey being the regional power for 2000 or whatever odd years, I see you are talking about in terms of geographic area rather than the ethnic makeup of the region or the state of the power-status-quo.

That would be a bit odd considering that the talk is about reordering the area along ethnic lines. In terms of ethnicity I would say the Turks were a regional power only for about 800 to a thousand years. Is their any reason to believe that if the Turks were seperated from every other ethnic group within their midst they would be able to return to any sort of industrial or technological might. This can be asked of any single nation-state in the world.

More over the question can be asked, is seperating each other on the basis of what is skin deep the real way forward. Can it be argued that the whole reason most of these nations are foobared is because they are unable to accept other people who look different and by extension are unable to accept different thought and ideas.

At the end of the day I believe the more you seperate yourselves from each other on the basis of skin tone the more you are liable to fall victim to the ‘flag-politics’ of others.

Anybody read The Onion? They’ve proposed creating ‘Ethnicklashistan’

Turks think they’re Europeans! Turks don’t see themselves as Near Easterners anymore. Hells, they look Slavic now, they don’t even look like the Turcomens in Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, or Central Asia anymore with all the miscegenation with the conquered Christian “dhimmis” in the Balkan Peninsula.

It seems the way political discourse and politics goes in that country, even under a benign Islamist regime right now, they want to be a part of Europe desparately.

But I honestly don’t think that Europe is prepared to allowed 62 million Muslims into the European fold, they already have issues with their indigenous populations and Pakistani dual citizens who seem to like making lengthy trips to Pakistan and visiting Peshawar for the puproses of military/bomb-making training.

HI PETTER STUPID
THIS IS WHAT U R DREAMING FOR. IT WILL REMIAN UR DREAM FOR EVER.......INSHALLAH

Alas Willow the raj is alive and well with the key words being compliant
brothers and redrawing boundaries even as we celeberate our love of freedom and liberating others. Hmm? what about humans as moral agents
and historical actors actively engaged in shaping their destinies? Who will
wean us off the delusion that we can control the world and the unintended
consequences of our desire to dominate or impose our will.

Notice the desire to banish difference from within those boundaries in the
quest for homongenous entities where the menace of multiculturalism shall
be banished. and not a hint of irony to be found.

Because turnabout is fair play:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=403522&in_page_id=1770
What I’d like to see: a redivision of the US, giving choice spots back to Native Americans, and a blackAmericastan. (Not as a serious venture, that last part, but I’d love to see how folk would take it.)

INSHALLAH IN NEAR FUTURE MUSLIMS WILL MAKE THE MAP OF THEIR OWN FOR AMERICA AND EUROPE......52 SSTATES OF AMERICA WILL BE 52 MUSLIM COUNTRIES.......INSHALLAH THE WORLD WILL SEE ALL THIS BECAUSE IT IS FORECASTED BY ALLAH AND PROPHET MUHAMMAD (SAW) THAT ONE DAY WIL COME WHEN THERE WILL BE ONLY ISLAM ON EARTH AND NO OTHER RELIGION...POPE IS VERY NERVOUS ABT FAST GROWING OF ISLAM...THATS WHY HE HAS TALKED RUBBISH.