Why aren't the Arabs helping their brethren?

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Lance:
I did not say you are a racist but your statement is most certainly racist. Let the chips fall where they may.
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I very much object that you introduced racism into the discussion and, worse, judged me to be racist. To say my statement is racist is absurd. I merely raised the possibility that someone about whom we knew nothing, but who had a Jewish name, might have a bias in her criticism of Muslims or Arabs. I believe my hunch is confirmed by her website. She is a passionate Israeli columnist with a clear bias against Arabs. I don’t know about your education but mine taught me to be skeptical until I had sufficient information to assess someone’s viewpoint.
 
La Chiara:
I very much object that you introduced racism into the discussion and, worse, judged me to be racist. To say my statement is racist is absurd. I merely raised the possibility that someone about whom we knew nothing, but who had a Jewish name, might have a bias in her criticism of Muslims or Arabs. I believe my hunch is confirmed by her website. She is a passionate Israeli columnist with a clear bias against Arabs. I don’t know about your education but mine taught me to be skeptical until I had sufficient information to assess someone’s viewpoint.
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What if I made a statement about Hispanics being anti-Israeli based on your name and the fact that you equate being pro-Israeli with being anti-Arab, would that be racist? I think so. You seem put a lot into a person ethnicity to determine their bias.
 
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Lance:
What if I made a statement about Hispanics being anti-Israeli based on your name and the fact that you equate being pro-Israeli with being anti-Arab, would that be racist? I think so. You seem put a lot into a person ethnicity to determine their bias.
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Well, Lance, if you made such a statement, I would think that you are not a student of foreign languages! 😃
 
La Chiara:
Well, Lance, if you made such a statement, I would think that you are not a student of foreign languages! 😃
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And you would be 100% correct.
 
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Lance:
And you would be 100% correct.
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Thought so! (I usually am! 😃 )

Could we have a truce, please, Lance? Or must it be a fight to the death? C’mon please?

Maybe, just maybe, you overreacted to the point I was making. And I defended myself against being called a racist when there was no racism whatsoever intended.
 
The wealthy oil sheikdoms aren’t doing enough. So far their tsunami aid has been stingy.

Their governments are corrupt, undemocratic, and without moral authority.

Our government really ought to shun them, if it weren’t for our own greed for cheap oil we would.
 
La Chiara:
Thought so! (I usually am! 😃 )

Could we have a truce, please, Lance? Or must it be a fight to the death? C’mon please?

Maybe, just maybe, you overreacted to the point I was making. And I defended myself against being called a racist when there was no racism whatsoever intended.
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As I said in a previous post I never called you a racist. In my opinion your statement was racist. Big difference. I have no desire to fight with you but just as you do I stand up for what I think is right. We can have differing opinions and not fight, if you do not like what the writer said just say so, there is no need to point out whether someone has a Jewish, Hispanic, English, German, or what ever name. Names mean almost nothing, my son-in-law has an Arabic name because he is an Arab, he is also a Maronite Christian. I do agree that we have beat this to death so I agree to a truce. Let’s both pray for the victims of the tsunami and just for kicks let’s throw in the rest of the world. OK?
 
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walter.gonzalez:
The wealthy oil sheikdoms aren’t doing enough. So far their tsunami aid has been stingy.

Their governments are corrupt, undemocratic, and without moral authority.

Our government really ought to shun them, if it weren’t for our own greed for cheap oil we would.
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According to the CIA Factbook, Saudi Arabia is exporting about 9,000,000 barrels of oil a day. The current price is something like $42.00 a barrel. That is 378 million dollars a day they are receiving. And they want to contribute 30 million?

But wait.

Before the Iraqi war started, oil was selling for about $30 a barrel. That means that Saudi Arabia is making $108 million a day in excess profits. And they want to contribute $30 million?

But wait, again.

That $30 a barrel price was about 600 days ago or more. So actually, Saudi Arabia seems to have made 600 times $108 million, or in excess of six billion (that’s $6,000,000,000) dollars in excess profits. And they want to contribute $30 million?

Well, they can’t you see, they have about 5,000 princes and princesses on allowance and they don’t dare cut their allowances. There would be a revolution. And they’ve got a 30% unemployment rate for Saudis in their country. If they don’t pay those people lavishly, there will be a revolution. And they generally are responsible for building all the mosques and paying the salaries of the Mollahs in the infidel West they despise so.

If you want to see where those 5,000 members of Saudi royalty are, just travel to the luxury spots of the world. You’ll find them there and can ask them why they let infidels save their Moslem brothers. They’ll be drinking and whoring with the best of them.

But don’t you dare do that in their country.
 
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gilliam:
By the way, the Turks and Egyptions are not Arabs.
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This is somewhat inaccurate. It is true that the Egyptian population wasn’t really displaced during the Muslim conquest, when Muslim Arabic language and culture became dominant. Most Egyptians are thus descended from the non-Arab population prior to Muhammed. So one could argue that Egypt isn’t really Arab, just as one could argue Guatemala isn’t really Spanish.

However, as the word “Arab” is used today both inside and outside the Arab world, it is an accepted convention that Egypt is an Arab country, and Egyptians are Arabs. For instance, there was a Zogby poll of six Arab nations, including Egypt. John Zogby, of course, is president of the Arab American Institute, so I expect he would know.
 
Last night on Nightline Ted Koppel and a Journalist who specializes in Muslim issues were discussing how the Arab countries haven’t been giving their fair share to the Tsunami victims. They also mentioned that Eastern European countries and some South American countries need to start helping with international aid in general. The West shouldn’t be the only ones to pony up.
 
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digitonomy:
This is somewhat inaccurate. It is true that the Egyptian population wasn’t really displaced during the Muslim conquest, when Muslim Arabic language and culture became dominant. Most Egyptians are thus descended from the non-Arab population prior to Muhammed. So one could argue that Egypt isn’t really Arab, just as one could argue Guatemala isn’t really Spanish.

However, as the word “Arab” is used today both inside and outside the Arab world, it is an accepted convention that Egypt is an Arab country, and Egyptians are Arabs. For instance, there was a Zogby poll of six Arab nations, including Egypt. John Zogby, of course, is president of the Arab American Institute, so I expect he would know.
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I wasn’t talking about heratage when I said a country was an Arab country or not. I was talking geography. Parts of LA would be considered Spanish by your definition, however, geographically, it is still a part of the US, not Spain. I didn’t think we were talking about the Muslim Mid-East. If we were, we probably should also include Lybia, Morocco, Sudan and Algeria.
 
This is the usage for “Arab” that I’m familiar with,
which would include the Arab Republic of Egypt.
As adjectives, Arab is used mainly of the Arabs and their modern countries, Arabian of Arabia (the peninsula between the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf), and Arabic of the languages and literature of the Arabs: The Arab nations now include countries outside the natural limits of the Arabian Peninsula, and the Arabic language has adopted many forms in those countries.
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Egypt was formerly part of the United Arab Republic, with Syria - another Arab country that isn’t properly part of the Arabian peninsula.
 
Washington: The “anaemic” financial effort made by Muslim countries towards tsunami relief has been criticised in a hard-hitting critique published on Saturday.

Peter Bergen of the New America Foundation, who is CNN’s expert of terrorism, and who also visited Pakistan recently points out in a New York Times column that “this anemic effort on the part of the richest countries is emblematic of a wider political problem in the Islamic world. For all of the invocations by Muslim leaders of the ummah, or the global community of believers, they typically do little to help their fellow Muslims in times of crisis. Arab leaders and their toothless talking shops like the Arab League and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference are excellent at denouncing problems in Palestine and Iraq, but most stood silent as a million died in the war between Iraq and Iran during the 1980s. When President Hafez al-Assad of Syria massacred some 20,000 people after an Islamist uprising in the city of Hama in 1982, there were no expressions of outrage from the Islamic Conference. Egypt routinely tortures political prisoners, untroubled by fears that other Arab leaders will seriously condemn such actions.”

Bergen writes that it is “common currency” in the Islamic world that Muslims are perpetual victims of Western and Zionist conspiracies. This charge-sheet includes the handling of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Israel’s inequitable treatment of the Palestinians, and the deaths of thousands of civilians in Iraq. The most articulate spokesman of such views is, of course, Osama bin Laden. Yet when Muslims are suffering, it is usually the West, and often the United States, that takes the lead in helping,” he notes, recalling that it was the US that came to the aid of Afghans after the Soviet invasion and it was the US that overthrew the Taliban regime. Washington again it was that sent 25,000 troops to help relief efforts in Somalia and came to the aid of the Bosnians being massacred by Serbs. He points out that other than Turkey, no Muslim nation has sent troops to Afghanistan to help stabilise the poorest country in the Islamic world.

According to Bergen, “Now the same pattern - action by Western countries and inertia from Muslim states - can be seen in the efforts to provide relief for those hardest hit by the Indian Ocean tsunami. While 100,000 of the victims are from Aceh, the most Islamic of Indonesia’s provinces, Muslim countries are contributing a relative pittance. Oil-rich Saudi Arabia is contributing the most: a paltry $30 million, about the same as what Netherlands is giving and less than one-tenth of the United States contribution. And no Arab governments participated in the conference in Jakarta on Thursday where major donors and aid organisations conferred over reconstruction efforts.”

dailytimes.com.pk/print.asp?page=story_9-1-2005_pg7_57&ndate=1/9/2005%205:54:33%20AM
 
I remember reading somewhere that they couldn’t risk letting their money fall into the hands of the infedials(?)! In other words for those who don’t understand, this means the hands of non-muslims. I just wish I could remember where I read that story.

Linda H.
 
Linda H.:
I remember reading somewhere that they couldn’t risk letting their money fall into the hands of the infedials(?)! In other words for those who don’t understand, this means the hands of non-muslims. I just wish I could remember where I read that story.

Linda H.
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I read it too and that, coupled with the post I made on Caste left me shaking my head - how long before we “get it” - what IS wrong with the human heart?
 
The much maligned TV station Al Jazeera has issued its own appeal (english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres). It also carries a report about a telethon in Saudi Arabia which raised by 7 January $67m. Donations included diamond and gold jewellery, clothes, tents, blankets a car and a students daily allowance. Most ordinary Saudi’s like most ordinary Arabs are poor by Western standards.
 
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