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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024

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If a genuine Muslim upheaval was undertook in the west it would require millions of people to learn Arabic, something which is almost more ridiculous to imagine then swarms of white men wearing thobes.

I can assure you that people get by fine without learning Arabic. I honestly wonder if even the "high effort" types fully learn it (a lot of people burn huge amounts of time on phonetic memorization more than anything - the most annoying educational gauntlet with the least value).

In essence, it works on Harry Potter rules for most people: you don't need to speak Latin to cast the spells. The most important thing is to know enough to be able to pray and perform the common rituals. That can be a relatively light load (especially if praying in groups).

This can honestly be useful: you don't need to learn theologically problematic things directly.

There is also a strong semblance within Islam to have the government and religious system be thoroughly connected with one another, and even among most religious believers that does not seem to be a desire they have, and among secular people that is literally something i feel they would go out and die to prevent.

That is a real problem.

There's also the Problem of Mohammed. A person who actually had to rule combined with prophetic infallibility, so he cannot simply be hollowed out and worn as a skin by secular cosmopolitans like Jesus (who is basically just some hippie in modern Westerners' view), nor can he be treated like the fallible rulers and sometimes prophets of the Jewish and Christian tradition.