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What can I say? All things considered they're a bit strict for my taste, but they do what they say on the tin, which I tend to consider strictly superior to the vague and fluent rules of the west. The way of life they want to impose might not quite be my of tea either, but I recognize it as humane, while the western seems to aim for abolishing humanity.
They do what they say on the tin, meaning rule over an unproductive peasant economy that is one of the poorest nations in the world? No, it is clear modernity is still better than the Taliban if the goal of organized human society is some kind of technological or industrial advancement.
And the Taliban haven’t even been able to stop ISIS terror attacks, which continue regularly under their authority. The first duty of any state is to order; the Taliban cannot even accomplish this. You may wish to be ruled over by illiterate, destructive tribesmen descended from Buddhists converted by Arab conquerors in the distant past. That opinion may not be widely shared in the West, though.
I don't know how much clearer I can make it that they're not my first choice, but if western elites expect me to fight for them in any conflict with radical Muslims, they're in for a surprise. If they don't like that, maybe they shouldn't have imported so many of them back when people like me were saying it might not be a great idea.
Isn't that cutting your own nose off to spite your face? Your opponents finally come around to your position, to the extent they are now willing to violently oppose the Islamic people/world you also dislike and wanted to keep out, which was one of the key disputes you had with them...
And you switch sides to side with the people you were against in the first place?
Why would you expect to be taken seriously? I hate that you won't go along with my position so much, that I would side with the people that we had opposing views on? That seems like simple spite. At which point despite being correct you can't be taken seriously in any kind of political coalition. If you don't get your own way, you side with the people you were against?
Setting aside any moral issues, pragmatically there is no reason for your opponents to ever consider your ideas. If you hate them when they disagree, and hate them when they agree, then you aren't leaving much space for change, even when you are actually right.
For one, they haven't actually come around, they're still importing them wholesale.
Right back at you. I don't believe the only reason we have all this promotion of "diversity" is to foment conflict in society. The fact that the progressive elites are siding with the Muslims (for example) right up until the point I decide I won't fight them in progressives' name, is proof positive I was being taken for a ride. It's your fight now, have fun.
Sure, if they don't change their mind then that makes sense. But this is predicated on them doing so.
That said I understand now I think. I'd suggest the elites wouldn't be changing their minds BECAUSE you decided you won't fight the Muslims. In fact, given I have worked with what might be called the elite in the UK, I can almost guarantee they aren't thinking about you (and your peers) at all, or that they are trying to take you for a ride at all, because they don't think about people like you or me much at all. (Which to be clear is a big problem, hence why I quit politics, its just not the same problem you think there is).
As for me, I don't think it will come to a fight at all. At least due to internal Muslims. I have extensive experience with Pakistani communities in the UK and they are being "corrupted" by western secular values quite substantially.
To be clear Islam is in my opinion a terrible religion and globally a much bigger problem than Christianity. But I expect it to lose power as its main countries advance and modernize. Reducing birth rates even in Islamic countries show it is not immune. To me the West is clearly the strong horse here. You can bribe native Pakistani and Afghani muslims with Man Utd strips. We've won so hard a tiny Westernised nation can essentially hold off the whole of the Middle East on its own.
Islam is dying. Just as Christianity is. Sunnis and Shi'ites in fight, Pakistan has problems with the Taliban. They are not united.
it makes sense that they do not think about people they do not consider significant.
curious. what they are thinking about?
Birth rates are reduced in Islamic countries, but birth rates of Muslims in countries where they are not a majority are high.
If the nation put this as a goal, maybe.
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I don’t have an opinion on the future of Islam, but the end of this paragraph seems to contradict the beginning. Islam is disunited precisely because it isn’t dead. The Shiites and Sunnis, and ISIS and the Taliban, all care so deeply about their religion and about the proper interpretation of it, that they are willing to physically fight and die for it. Citing that as evidence that Islam is dying is like citing the Thirty Years’ War as evidence that Christianity was dying 400 years ago.
And is Christianity as strong now as it was 400 years ago? Would it have been stronger or weaker without schisming?
Schisming that is not quickly and decisively dealt with is an ongoing fracture point.
In the past 400 years, Christianity became practically the universal religion in two new continents and made massive gains in a third. If by “Islam is dying,” you mean that it will thrive as a major force for the next half millennium before eventually weakening, it seems to me that your claim is pretty much meaningless. On a long enough time scale, every religion, ideology, and nation could be said to be dying, since none will survive the eventual heat death of the universe.
Now, I don’t think you mean that Islam will thrive, grow, and eventually decline, but instead that it’s already on its way out. If my understanding of your claim is correct, it seems to me that Islam’s divisions are actually a clear point of strength. For comparison, look at all the mainline Protestant churches in the US. Almost all are in fellowship with each other despite their doctrinal differences, and almost all are in absolute free fall in terms of membership and attendance, much more so than their more cantankerous theological cousins, who take their confessional distinctives seriously.
My viewpoint is probably a minority one, but I actually think it was a strength, sociologically-speaking, as the divisions fostered a competitive zeal among the different church bodies. This is most obvious in America, where Christianity is, despite its decline, still doing undeniably better than in Europe.
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Only someone who has never experienced the direct influence of the Taliban would think that way. The Taliban are like fire, they make good servants but bad masters (in the sense that they keep the overton window open for moderate Islam by taking all the attacks which would have come upon moderate Islam otherwise). Putting them incharge of other human beings or in general handing them any power at all ends badly (see how they commit terror attacks when handed power etc., they're even planning on bringing back stoning for adultery!). They work best as zoo specimens, not wild animals.
I remember talking to someone from Pakistan about life in a part of that country where the Taliban were active. He was threatened by armed men on the train because of a little Western apparel. He also once saw a dead man in the street, but just ran away, in order to not instigate a feud between the dead man's family and his own. Presumably the dead man stayed on the street and fed the flies, until someone from his family found his rotting corpse.
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You haven't really said much about what bothers you about their way of life, and the way you talk about them seems more like a point in their favor than anything else.
I admit to not keeping up with Afghanistan, I mostly associated terror attacks with ISIS than the Taliban...
What are you waiting for? The Taliban state has been founded. Move to Afghanistan today, while you still see things clearly.
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I like the people close to me having basic freedoms like my wife not needing to wear a niqab. I like being able to argue using reason and being able to counter "The good book says X, therefore you are wrong when you claim not X" without being denounced as a heretic. I like being clean shaven (yes, the Taliban imposed a beard requirement on all men the last time they were in power), I enjoy dancing and music etc. etc.
I can go on and on...
Oh boy, if you don't like me you really won't like the Taliban. When I say they are my coethnics I don't just mean they have the same skin colour as me/come from the same part of the world, I mean that I, like a very large portion of them, am Pashtun (complete with tribal affiliation and all that). The values they grew up with are the same as those my parents instilled in me as a child and from where I derive my belief system today, except that I've become extremely westernised (people call me a coconut back home - brown on the outside, white on the inside - and I can't really say they are wrong). I'm like the grown up version of Kamal's son from Kipling's Ballad of East and West after the British system has completely laundered him.
Think me but fundamentalist Muslim when you think of the Taliban and then reconsider whether you want someone like that to rule over you.
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