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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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The Saudis burned a lot of their goodwill with the umma

The Ummah doesn’t give a fuck about Yemen, certainly not if both sides fighting are Muslim. The Saudis backed out because lightly armed bands of roving Houthi militias could stage devastating cross-border drone attacks on Saudi oil facilities in the middle of the desert, thus threatening the central means for the continuing existence of the Saudi state AND because the US made it clear that it wanted peace and forced them to the table with the Houthis.

The Houthis can absolutely be starved to death by continuing the attacks Israel is doing on port facilities, which even the Saudis did only to a limited extent due to a fear that human rights enforcers in ‘the West’ (not the Muslim world) would get mad. To a greater extent the Mullahs in Tehran are able to maintain power only because, for all the general discontent among the domestic upper-middle class, they have still been middle income and safe for 30+ years.

USA was in a mood to punish Saudi Arabia following the Kashoggi slaying, and Biden made it a point to undo the designation of the houthis as a terrorist group once he came into power. I should clarify that the houthis had been unimaginably successful against the equally unimaginably incompetent Saudi forces, and continued support of the Saudis did not seem to be worth the pain. There was no indication that the Houthis would be inclined to further destroy themselves by pissing off more people. Saudi failures to engage in worse attacks on the Yemeni population largely stem from their support of the Hadi government (or what is left of it) who demand preservation of vital economic assets for the eventual potential of a government restoration.

The ummah DESPISES the saudis. The saudi government is barely able to keep a lid on its own clerics who espouse antiamerican hatreds, and the exported salafi clerics compete with deobandi and diyanet clerics who all espouse the same conservative rhetoric of 'the kuffar has subverted the arab governments'. Fervent dreams continue to exist whereby the ummah restores islamism to the political center of all their lands and expels the traitors who collaborated with the west, therefore being free to keep the spoils of their lands for themselves.

Arab politicians are happy to let the USA and Israel be the bogeyman responsible for starving out islamist terrorists because the governments are held back by their own populations eager to do Arab Spring 2.0 and cause new Syrian Civil Wars. The maghreb has been happy to export all its young aggressive shitheads to europe because europe spread its doors wide open, but the saudis and egyptians have no such easy means to let its young angry shitheads flow into other lands. The only western land rich with plunder and exploitable human rights is Israel, and the Israelis are happy to call an invasion for what it is and take appropriate action.

Islamists have mixed views of Khaleejis (although even there there’s a lot of deference). I agree that there’s a general dislike for almost all extant Muslim governments, certainly in the Gulf but also in North Africa, Jordan, Pakistan, whatever. At the same time, the vast majority of the Ummah is not even-marginally-scholarly young Islamist men with views of any substantial kind on KSA’s adherence to Islamic values. Most of the Ummah continues to practice deference to Gulf Arab wealth, takes their money, and asks few questions. I don’t think the Saudis paid too much heed to the demands of the Yemeni government during the war, I think they were on ever-thinner ground in general and they were worried about oil facilities and fields getting bombed in a war the Americans didn’t seem to care about anyway.

Some years ago I was exposed to the idea of a wild frontier transaction trying to arrange the sale of Yemeni pipeline construction rights for land under Houthi control that were being sold off cheap by the internationally recognized government. We didn’t end up having anything to do with that deal for obvious reasons, but I do feel some measure of sympathy for anyone who ended up buying in.

Thats some South Sea Trading Company shit: I am selling you stuff I do not have rights to.

For the khaleeji the ummah envies their money and their access to western whores, but despises their unislamic hedonism and fundamental immorality. In general southeast Asians want to be arab in looks and money and respect, and do not want to be arab in conduct and disposition - although cars and whores will not be rejected if offered.

I am close to the malay muslim communities because of roles I engage in, and I am confident that muslims are not particularly concerned about theology and doctrine save for what their ustaz tells them to believe. All anger at the west for humiliating the muslim world is just deflection, with the angry young men being upset that the lives of plenty and excess they see in their social media being denied to them due to a perceived conspiracy of jews and whites out to subjugate the browns. Why there is general incapability in the broader Muslim world is different, but suffice to say the gulf arabs are respected only for their excess visible consumption not their morals or conduct, people or governments.