Jos massacres: the case for secularism
Posted on Monday 8 March, 2010
Filed Under International, Religion
IF YOU are even momentarily persuaded by the crazily mendacious thesis that ‘secular fundamentalists are the new totalitarians’, reflect for a moment or two on why 500 people were slaughtered in Nigeria over the weekend.
The victims were Christians, those who hacked them to pieces with machetes were Muslims, and it’s a safe bet that none of them had even heard of Richard Dawkins. The brutality was in retaliation for an equally grisly Christian attack on Muslims earlier this year. Now run that stuff about ‘interfaith dialogue’ past me one more time.
There’s a lot more to the story than that, of course, and some of it will be said below. But only the wilfully blind will seek to airbrush the undeniable truth out of the picture; believers in Allah perpetrated the mass murder of believers in God, seemingly oblivious to the recent Indonesian high court ruling that the two are in fact the same deity.
Violent clashes between adherents of different religions, and just as much between supporters of competing creeds within the same religion, have been a regular occurrence for well over a thousand years.
All of the world’s major belief systems are culpable, to the point where none has a meaningful claim to be more pacifistic than the next. You can more or less pick any combination at random, and find a bust up.
Catholics versus Protestants, Maronites versus Shias, Sunnis versus Shias, and even three-way Catholic-Orthodox-Muslim conflicts; there are many parts of the world where theological errancy comes with a price tag attached.
Numerous responses are available to thinking people. A range of internally consistent off-the-shelf theodicies are on offer, from St Augustine to Alvin Plantinga. Marxists stress that all religious doctrines are ultimately ideological refractions of class interest.
On the other hand, mainstream liberal atheists often intellectually limit themselves to the overly-simplistic assertion that ‘religion poisons everything’.
Many on both left and right will explain what occurred in Jos by reference to local disputes over land, thanks to a system whereby Hausa Muslims are classified as settlers rather than indigenes and therefore discriminated against.
My one brief visit to Nigeria was confined to Lagos. I have no expert opinion on the specificities of the latest round of fighting, although materialist accounts obviously make the most intuitive sense.
But at the very least, religion is once again seen to be perpetuating divisions that would be sooner healed without its baleful influence complicating the Nigerian political process.
This brings me back to the tell-tale giveaway mark of totalitarian secular fundamentalists everywhere, namely our support for the separation of church and state. The less input religion has into politics, the better things are for everybody, including believers themselves.
This idea is rooted in Locke’s observations of the sometimes bloody tensions between Protestantism and Catholicism in seventeenth century Britain, and typically comes in a buy one, get one free package deal with freedom of religion. There is simply no other way forward in the multifaith society.
Those countries where the principle obtains, even as incompletely as it does in the UK, are manifestly the better for it. What happened in Jos last weekend is a timely reminder of the default setting.
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This was obviously a response to the slaughter of 300 Muslims in January, which you should have mentioned. (Doesn’t make it right I know)
Also it reminds me of the violence in the Congo at the time our ruling class decided to invade Iraq and slaughter hundreds of thousands of their civilians in the same of god only knows what. (Maybe secularism)
Dean. Pope Blair and Bush the evangelical born again invade Iraq. And you think it could be secularism! The sunnis and shia of Iraq have been killing each other for decades. The vast majority of deaths in Iraq have been muslim on muslim. Secularism does not exist in this scenario. Religion in general has been involved in the culling of humans throughout history.
Poor Dean, so far from reality and so close to foaming.
As Jimmy says, it was voice of God that spoke to Bush and Blair.
Tendance Coatesy (ultra-secularist, according to a recent Islamophobia Watch post defending the genocidal Jamaat-I-Islami in Bangladesh) covered the earlier slaughter. Quite a few Christians perished as well btw.
I imagine that Dave is simply reacting to these murders (apparently the army stood away) with human horror, as most of us are.
What the bleeding hell the Congo has to do with this is a piece which passes all understanding.
For developments since Locke: http://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/2010/03/08/against-communitarianism/
‘Secular fundamentalists’ and ‘enlightenment fundamentalists’ might be well-represent in the groovier parts of London, Oxford, Cambridge and even Lancaster, but one can travel great distances in the wider world without encountering too many.
Where I am, my students kindly give me glossy well-printed pamphlets telling me that non-Muslims are bound for Hell for All Eternity.
What’s on the drinks menu in HEll, you may well ask. [This is a sketch worthy of the Pythons at their best]
Cleese [in a Satan suit]: Not much of a choice I’m afraid, sir. Pus and boiling water. No, sorry, no Glenmorangie or draught Guinness. Pus and boiling water, that’s it. You’d like them mixed together, did you say?
Was Dean dozing off in geography class? …
I keep having to do this so I will put in a disclaimer in future.
I think the Iraq war was about economic and strategic interests and was conducted by relatively secular nations. The US may be a country of grand religiousity but it is a secular state. Church and State are seperated, it is written in the constitution. Go read it Coates and then come back to me.
Nigeria has a Human Development Index of 0.470, and ranks 158 out of 177 surveyed countries.
Nigeria is a country bled dry by foreign capitalists and a corrupt ruling class pocketing millions. Nigerians were showing signs of solidarity, with campaigns for a minimum wage for example. The ruling class have been playing this game of divide and rule to very great affect. Of course the corrupt nations of imperialism see Nigeria has a close friend.
What the Congo has to do with this is the correlation between the events in both countries and it casts doubt on the idea if religion being the fundamental problem. It is also always worth reminding the pro Imperialists war lovers like Coates that while we were ‘liberating’ Iraq the Congo were slaughtering each other. I bet you were too busy cheerleading for Bush to be notice.
“I imagine that Dave is simply reacting to these murders (apparently the army stood away) with human horror, as most of us are)”
I didn’t see him or YOU reacting in horror to the January massacres!
Coates may be a pain in the bum on occasion but nothing he has ever said – nothing of which I am aware, at any rate – justifies him being called an Imperialistic war-lover or even a Jihadist-enabling newt-fancier or a capitalist lickspittle or a snake spirit or a cow demon.
Here endeth the lesson.
“The brutality was in retaliation for an equally grizzly Christian attack on Muslims earlier this year”
Dean, meet Dave’s words, Dave’s words, meet Dean. Cuppa?
Fair point Socrep. I stand corrected.
That particular massacre does seem to have gone by without a flicker of concern by many on the left though, wouldn’t you agree?
I’ve been exercising my limited intellctual powers recently with what it would take to bring about an Islamic Reformation. If we look at the Christian one, it took a couple of hundred years of agitation, principally over the issue of the Church apropriating the wealth of the countryside. This eventually worked itself into theological differences. I don’t see any anger in the Moslem world at the inequality of wealth distribution. If anything, the middleclassesin these countryies have a wonderful time, enjoying the bst of both worlds. They can flit between East and West easily, no probs. They can invest their money in the stable, corruption-free West, they can go to marvellous hospitals and yet, they can employ hosts of servants and enjoy the highest standard of living and prestige in their own countries. I don’t see them wanting a poitical or social change anytime soon. That is the fundamental solution to this violence, not seeking to apportion blame, as Dean is doing, the solution is to quite clearly state that redistribution of wealth and resources is the only answer. If that should happen all this metaphysical nonsense will fade away, because it only exists to give someone an advantage, however slight.
Another contributory factor towards the development of modernity in the West was the Black Death. It is generally believed that the loss of a third of the European population accelerated the breakdown of feudalism. I must say that I think ecological catastrophe may/will play that role in toy’s ‘Third World’. I think millions will die before things are sorted out, it will be Somalia on a huge scale, but what can we do? Remember: Socialism or Barbarism.
That should be ‘today’s ‘Third World’.’
When mentioning Locke, perhaps it’s worth recalling Locke’s argument in favour of the state suppression of Catholicism. See also Milton’s Areopagitica, where the great man breaks off from his defence of free speech to argue for exterminating papists.
Nor does separation of church and state come as a BOGOF with religious freedom. British secularists may not be on the verge of repeating the Jacobins’ genocidal Vendee campaign, but an awful lot of them are awfully keen for the Almighty State to tell religious people what to do. New Labour’s Orwellian “Equality Bill” being a case in point.
Sunrise. Historically it was the Church that was telling people what to do. Non religious people have the right to point out that relogion is based on indoctrinated faith and not reality. I suppose you agree with that!
Is this the same Jos (On the plateau) where South of the Old Hausa City there were still enclaves of Pagans wershipping the “old Gods”.
I can recall going on my travels around Jos and Kano in 1966/67.
There were still enclaves of Pagans there in those days.
Wot a pity things have moved on.
Colonial Boy
“When mentioning Locke, perhaps it’s worth recalling Locke’s argument in favour of the state suppression of Catholicism. See also Milton’s Areopagitica, where the great man breaks off from his defence of free speech to argue for exterminating papists.”
And Wot’s wrong with that? Seems sensible to me.
Dean
As do many such incidences, especially in a such a systemically tit for tat conflict i.e. Chechnya or Sri Lanka. Alas too many do seek out just the right massacre to bloster their weltanschuuang. No dig, merely lament.
My mum has a small connection to Nigeria so I’ve known about the almost continous sectarian violence that plagues the nation, not much in the way of expertise but realisation of the depths of animosity. Some what like India or on a differing scale, Northern Ireland. I would say that these sectarian almost institutional bloodbaths are part of a indiginous battle over (religious – and thus via the amazing human mind, actually real)identity, not solely or mostly based on the imperialism of the past or now.
Just as Englishness is a idea based on many a burnt Catholic, starved Irishman and raped Celt, so there are those who seek, in any human society, a collective loyalty and self-identification via violence aginst the other and the deviant within the flock. The Marian repression or the Elizabethian backlash was not due to Spanish control of the money supply. It was about control of the largest corporation within the land and the divergence of cures to a endemic spiritual hunger. Nor was the self destruction of the English Nobility between 1455 and 1485 the result of the rise of Antwerp, but rather the result of the collaspe of a war economy conbined with a weakened excutive with diminishing legitimacy
Societies and peoples even under the harshest imperialism still have independant agency. Limited it might be and informed by the wider situation, no doubt, but still an agency. This is no argument FOR the Imperial power, rather a reason not to excuse the brutalities of that “a-imperialist” agency
“On the other hand, mainstream liberal atheists often intellectually limit themselves to the overly-simplistic assertion that ‘religion poisons everything’.”
You haven’t read Hitchen’s byook have you? Go on — admit it.
Nigerian religous massacres:
Published on the 20th of January.
http://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/christians-and-muslims-fighting-in-nigeria/
splintered sunrise – British secularists may not be on the verge of repeating the Jacobins’ genocidal Vendee campaign, but an awful lot of them are awfully keen for the Almighty State to tell religious people what to do. New Labour’s Orwellian “Equality Bill” being a case in point.
I don’t know why the scare quotes around Equality Bill, because that’s what its about. And this “Almighty State” is still one with an established C of E last I heard. And “Orwellian”? Good God.
“The sunnis and shia of Iraq have been killing each other for decades”
The Ba’athist State was viciously oppressive to the Shia. But there was no history in the recent period of these populations engaging in violence against each other, and indeed levels of intermarriage and inter-communal interaction on all fronts were high. The sectarian divide in terms of population is very much the product of the last few years. Its really disgusting to see this attempt to blame the violence on ‘ancient hatreds’.
This exposes a wider problem with those who see the revival of both ethnic and religious violence as simply the product of a revival of ancient prejudices. Whether we are talking about ethnicity in Rwanda, about communalism in South Asia, or indeed communal and ethnic conflict in subsaharan Africa, the attempt to see these as problems of ‘tradition’ rather then ‘modernity’ is both sociologically and historically inept and politically mendecious.
Its the central flaw of those who believe that the world can be understood in terms of a battle between secularism and religion.
Its utter drivel.
Well, however chalk and cheese got on before, they are killing each other now.
johng
Nobody is arguing that the world can be understood in terms of a struggle between secularism and reaction. But that does not mean it is not a crucial faction, does it?
Well it depends where. In India the Hindu Nationalists claim to be consistant secularists on the basis that Nehruvian secularism involved ‘pandering to minorities’ in manner best described as ‘pseudo-secular’. The arguments are not dissimilar from those who argue the same about multi-culturalism (I’ve been struck in recent years by similarities between populist Islamophobia in Europe and South Asia). Here arguments about the supposedly medieval nature of Islam are tied to a ferocious bigotry supposedly connected to the defence of womens rights and modern nation-building.
But more generally the lense which see’s current communal and ethnic strife as involving a conflict between modernity and traditon (often also involving a welter of claims about “western culture” and its defence) are fundementally misconcieved. These are all problems within modernity and attempts to read them as conflicts between modernity and its others involves systematic distortions of actual historical and social relationships. The view that what is going on in the world today is fundementally a clash between secularism and its religious others is to me an example of systematically misleading concepts which are with little effort transformed into the very opposite of the values such a perspective claims to champion.
Of course there are bigots who simply don’t care anyway and simply want to hate religious minorities (see Sue R above) but in some cases I think there is genuine confusion.
AS Mandy Rice Davies said, ‘He would say that’. Johng and the ‘New Left’ tradition have to see the non-Western nations as anti-imperialist, it’s an updated version of ‘the noble savage’ thesis, vecause they want a counter-weight to capitalism. Unfortunately, Marx and Engles told us that the bourgoisie are tehir own gravediggers, so for revolutionary action, I suggest johng etc looks closer to home. Has anyone claimed that teh showdown is between modernity and tradition? Those jihadist. you adore johng. are more than happy to adopt modern technology ie mobile phones, nuclear devices, airplanes etc to further their cause and kill people. I don’t know if there is anything inherently ‘modern’ about sexual equality (men and women and gays) but I do know that I would rather live in a world or society that encouraged it than one that didn’t.
And on and on and on. Its just like India in the 1980s.
SueR said,
“the ‘New Left’ tradition have to see the non-Western nations as anti-imperialist,”
Total rubbish. The left don’t split the world between pro imperialist and anti imperialist but between imperialist and non imperialist. This is an ever changing landscape but a crucial piece of analysis if one wants to understand the world we live in. The imperialist nations can and do bribe the non imperialist nations to take a very pro imperialist outlook.
Try looking up the theory of uneven development if you want a Marxist view of all this.
Alternatively those who believe in this blogsphere tripe might try taking a look at Callinico’s “Imperialism and Global Political Economy” by Alex Callinicos.
Here he takes on Norman Geras:
“The implication of this diagnosis is that a reductive obsession with American imperialism morally and politically blinds much of the left to the existence of evils unassimilable to this ‘primary determinant’-for example the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussain in Iraq. But of course the contemporary anti-war movement never denied that these and other regimes like them were real evils (though they also pointed to the role played by the US in allowing these regimes to come into existence and to flourish). Their – our – main point, however, was that the unleashing of the military might of the United States on these countries was not the best way to remove those evils – and indeed much more likely to bring in its wake even greater evils. I think its clear whose judgement has turned out to be right. Maybe anti-anti-imperialism is a source of its own moral and political blindness. To misquote Oscar Wilde, a map of the world that does not find a place for imperialism is, alas, of little use to us.”
(p5).
In all the ranting on the internet about the left, the anti-war movement, and the SWP in particular, I often wonder why people don’t sometimes just sit down and read a book.
This sadly prophetic article from the 90′s by Partha Chatterjee, “secularism and toleration”, repays reading today in the light of debates in contemporary Europe:
http://74.125.155.132/scholar?q=cache:0PO_eoyexV0J:scholar.google.com/&hl=en&as_sdt=2000
Personally, I have nothing whatsoever to do with India or Hindu fantacism. So lay off trying to stick the blame for that one on me. Secondly, I just want to see the abolition of private property and teh redistribution of wealth. Religion, that can sort itself out once we have kicked out the bloodsucking capitalists. I remain to be convinced that any of these ‘brave’ resistance movements in neo-colonial countries actually have that aim. If they have, they are going a very strange way about it. And, as I said, cognitive dissonance is not a pleasant thing.
“I just want to see the abolition of private property and teh redistribution of wealth.”
Well SueR the USA spent the 20th century sending missiles and napalm down on anyone who attempted that out in the non imperialist world. So we shouldn’t be too harsh on them seeking another direction.
Indeed it is true that there did exist an active anti-imperialist movement in the non-imperialit world, or at the very least had some relationship with socialism the CPSU, the Chinese CP, the viet Cong etc etc, but we ain’t talking about them in the 21st century are we? What is this other direction?
Well Sue R read the article and you might learn something about yourself and about the modern world. Modernity isn’t something which just happens in the west. The arguments going on on the contemporary left in Europe about religion and its place in society are rather backward and undeveloped versions of arguments which have been going on in India over the last twenty years. Its possible we could learn something from them.
In the retreat from Empire, the Brits wanted Nigeria to stick together as a “nation” although the major ethno-cultural groups there had nothing in common other than the habit of calling themselves “Nigerians.”
Is anyone going to talk about ripping the place apart into sensible small countries?
The former Belgian Congo is in a state of *de facto* dismemberment and the various rival tribes in the South Sudan are squabbling over who gets the biggest take of the oil-’n-aid bonanza.
Actually, one can make a clear case for dismembering Belgium, too.
Yes but SueR, hidden in the message is the formula, Western intervention = Total fuckup. The USA war on communism was not just about missiles and napalm, it involved assassination, disappearances, covert operations, hard support for all sorts of reactionaries. And that war continues to this day! The USA is as fiercely anti communist as they ever were. We shouldn’t be fooled into thinking that the USA wouldn’t unleash hell on communism in the 21st century as they did in the 20th.
The idea that supporting the USA in their imperialism means we will get closer to socialism is absurd, the opposite is true. The left should only ever be anti imperialists.
Fnl. The USSR was Imperialist as is China. They were supposed to be socialist.
When the inevitable ecological collapse happens in the ‘Third World’ who are they going to call? Remember, there is no such thing as a nationstate, so how will they deal with the widespread dislocation, battles over water allocation, food shortages, failed harvests, the flood of people into the cities with no functioning government? Will they all on the international community? The fact that Europe has not been discussing religion and it’s place in society for the last twenty years may be a sign that we had learnt to live without it. Johng must see that as a drawback. I can’t understand anyone who claims to be a socialist wanting to spend their time on fruitless debates about aspects of human thought when there are people starving and homeless and the world teeters on the edge of catastrophe. As for former neo-liberal; at least he’s(?) former but quite frankly, what attracted him in the first place? Could he (?0 tell us why he supported such policies and why he changed his mind? Still, as it says in the Bible, ‘there is more joy in heaven over a sinner who repenteth than one who never strayed.’. Or was that Chris Harman who wrote at?
that?
Well SueR I’d be very happy not to discuss religion. Its you who seems to be obsessed with the subject. If you read the article you’d discover its an argument suggesting the opposite of what you seem to believe it is. Modernity does’nt just mean good things. It also means bad things. The discussion about how we get the good rather then the bad is a discussion for the whole of humanity. Much as you might deplore that fact.
As to the problems of ecological collapse. Take a look at this world map where the size of countries is related to the size of their carbon emissions:
http://www.worldmapper.org/images/largepng/295.png
I’m not surprised you were referred back on your Phd, johng. you seem to have basic problems of reading comprehension and understanding.
I’m not referring back to anything SueR. Certainly not to your preference for white culture for instance.
The miserable, pro-reloigious apologuist John “G” quotes Callinicos:
“The implication of this diagnosis is that a reductive obsession with American imperialism morally and politically blinds much of the left to the existence of evils unassimilable to this ‘primary determinant’-for example the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussain in Iraq. But of course the contemporary anti-war movement never denied that these and other regimes like them were real evils (though they also pointed to the role played by the US in allowing these regimes to come into existence and to flourish).”
But, of course the SWP and their “anti-war movement” *has* supported these tolitarian regimes, on the basis of their (the SWP’s) my-enemy’s-enemy” hatred of all things “Western” and “democratic”! They’re true 1939 Stalinists.
The fact that the US once supported theocratic regimes is, maybe an argument about hypocricy, but it doesn’t excuse the SWP’s appeasement of clerical fascism.
Or JMohn G’s pathetic attempts to justify religious intrusion into religion, and his evident hostility to elementary enlightenment values that are the very bedroick of Marxism.
On a more practical level, who will help this poor guy? Maybe Shiraz Stalinist can run a solidarity campaign.
Gameboy is a well known liar and apologist for religious crackpots and outright fascists of many a stripe.
Of this — there is no doubt.
When examining Gameboy’s stench and deluded deposits online, the approach must always be to survey and probe the ‘theoretical’ statements, see how they measure up and to what extent they are relevant today.
The next step is to research and interrogate his/their (his groupings) actions, which may or may not be in accord with their theory.
The next step is to dismiss his bluster and piss and shit and laff in the thick half-educated moron’s ugly fuckkIng dial.
The (one) problem — is Gameboy’s shitty little approach to everything — that it is all a fuckkING Game — a form of cheesy propaganda for its own sake, thus, undercutting a rational engagement with any ideas or some such shite under consideration.
He is a clown and dipshit — barely able to mutter half remembered fragments of shit that he has been told to memorise by his swp cadre in chief. In short — socialism is an intellectual tradition about which Gameboy is utterly uninformed of and bereft of knowledge in.
Him and his ilk need to be opposed.
JUSt SayIng Like.
Jim continues to rant and rave on the basis of no evidence that I can see at all. Its sad that he’s given up on Enlightenment values and Secularism.
Will is of course a touch mad.
“Or JMohn G’s pathetic attempts to justify religious intrusion into religion”
I think attempts to combat religious intrusion into religion really are taking secularism a bit too far, though it would be fair to say that nothing Jim Denham could say would surprise me (unless it was sober and sagacious).
Reading that item that Splintered Sunrise linked to, it would appear that Rob Johnson is a native American. And everybody knows that the aboriginal peoples of the world love a bit of spiritualism and mysticism. Bongo drums and those tambour-like things that the Tibetans go for. That’s right isn’t it Johng? Religion is the sigh of the oppressed. I don’t know what he is complaining about. he should enjoy finding himself. For us white Europeans though, it would never do, but it could well be the future if there is a growth in faith-based provision of services.
Sue, what are you on about, you make less sense than Denham.
Perhaps you don’t know what I’m on about because you understand fuck all about Marxist theory?
SueR said,
“I can’t understand anyone who claims to be a socialist wanting to spend their time on fruitless debates about aspects of human thought when there are people starving and homeless and the world teeters on the edge of catastrophe.”
Great example of enlightenment values SueR! I guess you could apply that to most of Marx’s work and the thinkers that followed and preceded him.
Though of course we should realise that science and Imperialism are related, or maybe more to the point science and empire are related. Those nations that control and profit from other nations resources (e.g. Falklands) can afford to pay scientists to indulge in what you could call non practical science (though in the long run this science can become very practical), whereas poorer nations (like the poor man) have to live by their means and can only afford science that serves a very practical immediate purpose. This is why the imperialist nations appear civilised and the non imperialist nations appear how SueR sees them. They forget that behind the civilised nations façade lies a barbarity all of its own. Marx said the true barbaric nature of the bourgeois is unmasked in its adventures oversees. It is also why the rich man appears civilised behind all his fine attire and expensive tastes, this is of course built on exploitation and theft.
In the medium term the only advance that would seem to make economic sense would be the creation of super blocks – the USA is already one, the EU is attempting to become one and in Latin America we see people like Chavez taking the first steps to build one. Of course in the Middle East this has been attempted and bombed back into the grave. No doubt these inter imperialist battles will not go away and there will be many on the left who will go by the philosophy, Whoever my ruling class invade next is a clerical fascist and whoever they shall install as a puppet shall be called enlightened. The rest of the left will take up the position of anti imperialism and more particularly anti global capitalism.
As for why I am a former neo liberal, well I was on my way to Damascus to see clerical fascism up close and suddenly from nowhere…..
Hooray for “Gumbyx3″ who commented:
This is unbelievable in this day and age when religion has been discontinued in our public school systems and science class rooms for good reason. It’s the difference between fact and faith; beating an addiction should be a science based exercise, exactly like a procedure in our hospitals. If they need psychological help then that should be in a professional forum as well. If you want to use voodoo, spirituality or faith then go to a church of your choice or pray to your own god for help, I hope this works for those that chose that route, and it’s free. Wanting help using facts and science shouldn’t be an alternative, it should be the norm.
This really shows me the credibility and professionalism of these programs.
Perhaps further aid could be elicited from Joe Queenan or the heirs of Allen Carr.
This isn’t quite as outrageous as when addicts are forced by courts to attend and complete such programmes, but the hold of religion (sometimes thinly veiled as ‘sprituality’ or ‘a higher power’) over those at their most vulnerable is not a liberating experience.
I’d recommend large doses of non-addictive mood-altering substances as a substitute, but then I’ve never been a heavy drinker or an expert on the subject.
The day that the Middle east stops killing each other over which end of an egg goes into an egg cup, I’ll believe that they can form a super block. But, say, Former Neo-Liberal, what would be the political and social basis of any super power in the Middle East? Would it be socialist, or capitalist, secular or divinely inspired? Do tell. Would it include Iran or not?