Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

"In China today, what is now referred to as 'socialism with Chinese characteristics' looks a lot like plain old capitalism, in which the vast majority of people in the society work, and their labor is exploited by a tiny minority who own. Xi Jinping earned a PhD in Marxist ideology, and can therefore  speak loquaciously  commemorating Marx’s two hundredth birthday, but still say nothing of substance in regards to how China is actually run. The Western media still treats the country like the old bogeyman of Communist dictatorships, but the opposite is true: the country is a capitalist dictatorship. China reports lifting 750 million people out of poverty, and there is no denying that living standards have increased significantly since 1949. Despite this, inequality is massive..." Indeed. How odd the word socialism is in "socialism with Chinese characteristics"! The Chinese Revolution at Seventy

Foreign Powers and the Syrian Calculus

"The Arab world’s main problem is dictators who continue to be supported by foreign powers, and foreign powers bombing them when they cease to be useful. The problematic Western interventions, past and present, will remain controversial and dangerous. When they are financed by Saudi petrodollars, they are even more problematic, serving the interest of a lethal repressive regime rather than the suffering people of Syria." — Madawi al-Rasheed "Problematic" and "controversial"? This is what I call liberal academic correctness; not calling a spade a spade.

"Muslims were always ready to learn from other cultures, and in the late fifteenth century they did so from the heirs of Genghis Khan. The Ottoman Empire in Asia Minor, the Middle East, and North Africa, the Safavid Empire in Iran, and the Moghul Empire in India would be created on the basis of the Mongol army state and become the most advanced states in the world at the time. But the Mongols also unwittingly inspired a spiritual revival. Jalal ad-Din Rumi (1207–73) had fled the Mongol armies with his family, migrating from Iran to Anatolia, where he founded a new mystical Sufi order. One of the most widely read Muslims in the West today, his philosophy is redolent of the refugee’s homelessness and sense of separation, but Rumi was also enthralled by the vast extent of the Mongol Empire and encouraged Sufis to explore boundless horizons on the spiritual plane and to open their hearts and minds to other faiths. But no two people will respond to the same trauma identically, howev...