Ahmadinejad condemns religious crack down

reply to post by Illusionsaregrander

The Taliban did nothing good for Afghanistan. They "lowered crime" by committing even more heinous crimes. Overall crime was not lowered, it was simply legitimized and enacted "officially." It is time for humanity to grow up and stop resorting to hiring or electing psychopaths to protect them, and to continue to figure out how to do it without resorting to fascism or tyranny.

I think we can agree to disagree on this subject because only time will tell.

But I'll throw this anyways, the Taliban did achieve the things people desperately needed in that lawless country, I know because I was there.

Once upon a time corruption was so high, that every militant group would setup checkpoints in their own area which they controlled and then ask for bribes to pass.

Corruption in Afghanistan has become so entrenched that the population is being forced to pay out the equivalent of a quarter of the country's GDP in bribes, according to a UN report published yesterday.

Six out of 10 Afghans view corruption as a bigger problem than violence, the dossier, compiled by the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC), found.

www.independent.co.uk...

Crime was so high that war lords would kidnap girls and rape on sight, with the knowledge of the public without any justice.

War Lords would kill, rape, steal land by force, torture etc without any justice.

The most credible and often-repeated story of how Mullah Omar first mobilized his followers is that in the spring of 1994 Singesar neighbors told him that a warlord commander had abducted two teenage girls, shaved their heads and taken them to a camp where they were raped repeatedly. 30 Taliban (with only 16 rifles) freed the girls and hung the commander from the barrel of a tank. Later that year two warlord commanders killed civilians while fighting for the right to sodomize a young boy. The Taliban freed him.

These were the acts which made the Taliban infamous, not their hard line views on Tradition/Islamic Laws.

Over the next three months this hitherto unknown force took control of twelve of 34 provinces, disarming the "heavily armed population". Warlords often surrendered without a fight.[21] By September 1996 they had captured Afghanistan's capital, Kabul. In newly conquered towns hundreds of religious police beat offenders (typically men without beards and women who were not wearing their burqas properly) with long sticks.

WIKI
See in bold, that is what ticked people off, in spite of that, most people were happy that the horrible situation of hopelessness was over, a new beginning with a little brighter end in sight.

The Taliban was one of the best governments Afghanistan had since the Marxist government, which once again America orchestrated a coupe against.

> The bulk of Afghanistan's people in the 1970s were
> farmers, but the landholding system hadn't changed much
> since the feudal period. More than three quarters of
> the land was owned by landlords who comprised only
> three per cent of the rural population. The king was
> deposed in 1973, but no land reform came about and the
> new government was autocratic, corrupt and unpopular.
> On April 27, 1978, to prevent the police from attacking
> a huge demonstration in front of the presidential
> palace, the army intervened, and after firing a single
> shot from a tank at the palace, the government
> resigned. The military officers then invited the
> Marxist party to form the government, under the
> leadership of Noor Mohammed Taraki, a university
> professor.
>
> This is how a Marxist government came into office -- it
> was a totally indigenous happening -- not even the CIA
> blamed the U.S.S.R. for this. The government began to
> bring in much-needed reforms, but with restraint and
> prudence. Labour unions were legalized, a minimum wage
> was established, a progressive income tax was
> introduced, men and women were given equal rights, and
> girls were encouraged to go to school. On September 1,
>
> 1978, there was an abolition of all debts owed by
> farmers. A program was being developed for major land
> reform, and it was expected that all farm
>
> families (including landlords) would be given the
> equivalent of equal amounts of land.

wsarch.ucr.edu...

And Taliban abolished drugs, right now Kabul is the Capital of druggies, not the Capital of Afghanistan.

I'll give you another example, Somalia.

You see Somalia and Afghanistan is very similar, they have warlords with similar mentality, and corruption/lawlessness was everywhere until the hard line Muslims came and brought laws/order.

That law and order brings stability, that stability will allow the people to use their resources, and to live life normally.

That normality will make people normal, if you don't believe that then we just have to wait and see.

Why do you suspect the West doesn't want any of these hardliner governments to stay in power? Unless they are fake American hardliners, hence Saudi Arabia? If the Saudi Prince were hard liners they wouldn't sit in castles, and surely they wouldn't be that fat:


It is because hard liners tend to work for the people, they are not materialistic, you can't bribe them, you can't make the devil's deal with them.

reply to post by LittleSecret


We may have to agree to disagree. If your assumption is correct, then humanity will be nothing more than small groups of violently warring tribes killing others in times of between group conflict, and torn by civil war in times of relative peace between "tribes." If my assumption is correct, there is the possibility of a future for humanity that is not marked by constant war and struggle.

The region commonly referred to as the "middle east" is not marked by war and conflict because of the west. The "west" may not be helping matters at this point, but the situation in the middle east is what it has been for thousands of years. Nothing has changed fundamentally, except the weapons of war and the labels for those being warred upon.

If you look with an analytical eye, rather than a devote eye, at the religions of the middle east, (Islam, Judaism, Christianity) they are all commandments from "God" that you should stop slaughtering one another within your tribe so that you may present a more united front when slaughtering those outside your tribe. They are religions of war, intended to foster the internal harmony needed to facilitate victory against those not in your group.

And even that fails. The "commandments" are interpreted by some as further excuse for infighting, and civil conflict. Not only in your region, but in ours in places as well, as the Catholic/Protestant wars will attest. The one thing that both the middle east and the parts of Europe most prone to religious war have in common is several thousand years of violent inter and intra tribal conflict. What is now England was so divided the Romans made short work of her, pitting warlords against one another and then conquering wile they were weakened from their own struggles with one another.

Nothing has changed in thousands of years. You cant blame the "west" for the state of your nation. The "west" cant even blame the import of your War God into Europe. People are fighting like animals because we refuse to see what we are doing, use our intelligence to find another way, and then use our SELF discipline to enact it. In other words, we ARE animals. Unintelligently warring on over resources just like any dog would, just like any chimp would, our intelligence only evident in the rocks we throw at one another which now go "boom" and ignite in glorious spectacles to honor the War God of the middle east.

Moderation itself is not a "new" concept. For thousands of years there have been lone and lonely voices calling for it, from Plato, to Siddhartha, to Lao Tzu, and even Jesus. And those voices are roundly ignored in favor of remaining warring packs of dogs fighting viciously over power and goods.

Extremism NEVER leads to moderation. Moderation leads to moderation. We have thousands of years of known history to look at to elaborate that principle. There are pockets of humans who are rising above their animal nature. Small bands of them. The Scandinavian countries stand out for their moderation and cooperation. Some of us have managed some semblance of following the War Gods commandments and direct our aggression and warlike tendencies outward, rather than inward, and some have failed in both endeavors.

You cant blame the west for the plight of the middle east. It is weak and easy to mess with because they cannot leave each other alone within their own group in times of relative peace. The religious there have focused so intently on the specific words of "the law" that they use the Law itself to violate the intent of the law. Internal peace and union. Which weakens them to outside predation, just as the War God knew it would.

The middle east was the cradle of modern civilization. Had things run their natural course, had the people there used their intelligence to follow the commandments of their God, it would today rule the world. The head start that region had would have been hard to overcome. The oil there would have sustained its supremacy. It is extremism itself that has led to the middle east being where it is today, and the constant internal conflict that it promotes. Extremists dont arise to fight an enemy, you can direct them against an enemy perhaps, and use their violence and fanaticism for the benefit of the whole, but they do not disappear of change when the war is over. And if left to fester, they begin to attack the more moderate within the group, and open the whole group up to outside attack.

There is a reason the War God said that you had to eliminate them from among you.