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Consider this (sort of paraphrasing Yuval Noah Harari). Nations are abstract. They don't weep. They don't bleed. They don't suffer. Neither do Empires. These a

by netcan 8y ago

Consider this (sort of paraphrasing Yuval Noah Harari). Nations are abstract. They don't weep. They don't bleed. They don't suffer. Neither do Empires. These are metaphors. People are subjigated, not nations. They can be equally subjugated by empires or nations, whichever happens to be in charge. Wherever you happen to live, it's probably a nation state. There were good and bad things about both. Im not suggesting a return to empires. I am just encouraging people to notice that nationalism and nation states is not The Natural And Eternal Way Of Things. It's a template we squeezed the entire world into over the last 100 years. One side effect of this has been an end to millennia of multiculturalism, often bloody. Europe needed genocide (eg Jews), mass forced migrations (eg Germany) and forced cultural conversions (eg Netherlands, Belgium..) before they arrived at ethnically homogeneous parcels of land. Turkey did this too. Genocide for Armenians, forced migration for Greeks, cultural conversions therapy for Kurds and arabs. Syria & Iraq are dividing into ethnicly homogeneous regions. If your ethnicity (eg yazidi, Greek, aramean..) Is too small for an enclave, you are probably leaving the region or converting. The ladino speakers of Bosnia are a remnant of the multicultural legacy of the ottoman empire.

emanreus 8y ago
> Nations are abstract. They don't weep. They don't bleed. They don't suffer. Neither do Empires. These are metaphors. I was not referring to a nation as political abstract but as a group of people sharing common descent/history/culture/language, inhabiting a particular territory. They do suffer, bleed and weep. > One side effect of this has been an end to millennia of multiculturalism, often bloody. You seem to be operating on the premise that caliphates were peaceful multicultural, almost utopian, societies. They weren't. All kinds of crimes against the subjugated people were the norm. And it's not just the massacres, slavery, and the usually stuff but also bizarre practices like the blood tax practiced by the Ottoman empire (young Christian boys taken from their families, converted to Islam, trained into Janissaries, and sent back to kill their own people) As for Syria/Iraq, it wasn't any pretty under Ottoman rule. Perhaps a quote from Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad describing Damascus massacre can help paint the picture. They say those narrow streets ran blood for several days, and that men, women and children were butchered indiscriminately and left to rot by hundreds all through the Christian quarter; they say, further, that the stench was dreadful. All the Christians who could get away fled from the city, and the Mohammedans would not defile their hands by burying the 'infidel dogs.' The thirst for blood extended to the high lands of Hermon and Anti-Lebanon, and in a short time twenty-five thousand more Christians were massacred and their possessions laid waste. How they hate a Christian in Damascus! edit: typos, formatting

by netcan 8y ago

emanreus 8y ago

> Nations are abstract. They don't weep. They don't bleed. They don't suffer. Neither do Empires. These are metaphors. I was not referring to a nation as political abstract but as a group of people sharing common descent/history/culture/language, inhabiting a particular territory. They do suffer, bleed and weep. > One side effect of this has been an end to millennia of multiculturalism, often bloody. You seem to be operating on the premise that caliphates were peaceful multicultural, almost utopian, societies. They weren't. All kinds of crimes against the subjugated people were the norm. And it's not just the massacres, slavery, and the usually stuff but also bizarre practices like the blood tax practiced by the Ottoman empire (young Christian boys taken from their families, converted to Islam, trained into Janissaries, and sent back to kill their own people) As for Syria/Iraq, it wasn't any pretty under Ottoman rule. Perhaps a quote from Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad describing Damascus massacre can help paint the picture. They say those narrow streets ran blood for several days, and that men, women and children were butchered indiscriminately and left to rot by hundreds all through the Christian quarter; they say, further, that the stench was dreadful. All the Christians who could get away fled from the city, and the Mohammedans would not defile their hands by burying the 'infidel dogs.' The thirst for blood extended to the high lands of Hermon and Anti-Lebanon, and in a short time twenty-five thousand more Christians were massacred and their possessions laid waste. How they hate a Christian in Damascus! edit: typos, formatting