The U.S. is a secular country – but one where religious holidays like Easter and Christmas define the rhythm of the year, and where religious institutions are richly woven into the fabric of society. It took Western-style democracies hundreds of years of bloodshed and trial-and-error to arrive at this balance, and yet the Muslim attempt to find this balance in their own societies is often called “terrorism.”


steve:

I know almost nothing about middle eastern history - and I know even less about the Muslim Brotherhood... but for some reason this sentence seems a little.... lazy to me. (Maybe lazy is too strong of a word)

    The last time the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood was outlawed and driven underground by a Soviet-backed Egyptian strongman, a faction broke off and produced the raw material that eventually became al-Qaida

It feels like “this happened, and then yada yada yada the worst thing ever happened”. It’s not that I disagree that it happened, I just don’t understand what happened... and it seems like that’s the part the author is warning me about, so I’d like to understand it a little more.


posted 1815 days ago