So first, Afghanistan is more Central Asia than Middle East, but also yes, it very much is. Even Iran is not even close to the shit the Taliban is doing. Women in most of the Middle East can and do seek education and employment and lead fulfilling lives. Source: Am from the region, the shit the Taliban is up to wouldn’t fly even in the most conservative parts of the Middle East, and I would be horrified for the women in my family if my own country’s leaders starting touting this stuff (which they wouldn’t because it’s literally unthinkable).

Edit: It’s easy to write off the Taliban as highly conservative Islamists, but that’s not the whole picture. For example, conservative Muslims believe that, from a gender segregation perspective, women should go to female doctors and vice versa, especially for invasive procedures such as giving birth. To put it bluntly, conservative Muslim men don’t want other men fucking with their wives’ pussies. Now compare this to the Taliban’s decision to bar women from working as doctors or midwives, meaning they need to go to male doctors for birth, surgery, etc. It’s a massive contradiction that’s not present in any Middle Eastern society I’m aware of.

So, why not deport afghan citizens to their homeland if they have committed a crime?

Because it’s an authoritarian hellscape where half the population has to follow nonsensical rules just so they can exist?

Fucking clsss traitors, man.

Okay I know history repeats itself, but this is way too on the nose.

The British, truly masters of the sea.

Yes, that is the only reason one would want to distinguish between violence in the interest of self-determination and violence in the interest of robbing from others self-determination.

First: Define “support”. Second: The Muslim Brotherhood stopped using violence decades ago. Third: Way to miss the point. The article is discussing imperial violence. I hope this doesn’t need to be said, but not all violence is equal.

We already have a model of this with Israel’s genocide in Gaza wracking up a climate footprint bigger than entire countries. Scale that up to a world war and… Yeah, not fun.

Okay that is literally not true. First, Ash’arism is also rationalist so yeah no. Like you do know many prominent Muslim scientists from the time period were themselves Asharite right? Second, the Islamic golden age didn’t die due to the power of religious figures; it died due to the sacking of Baghdad and continued right up until that moment. This happened more than two centuries after the creation of Ash’arism, and again many important developments happened in the Caliphate in the interim. Third, the Timurid renaissance came about a century later in a mainstream Sunni Muslim (so definitely not Mu’tazilite or some such) empire. In short:

It is inevitable that the religious mind either abandons their faith, or abandons science.

That literally didn’t happen.

Ultimately, if god existed and created everything… science would be another form of worship.

Yes, as clearly stated in the Quran, that is literally the point.

Sorry my people’s more than a millennium-long history doesn’t conform to your preconceived notions, but can you please not make shit up? Here’s a Wikipedia article. And in the first place, Arab distrust of science is a much more recent phenomenon that came after centuries of Ottoman neglect and is fading away right as we speak despite some of the most conservative mainstream theologies in the history of Islam.

Setting aside the obvious “Al Jazeera is not Qatari state media,” who has Qatar used religion to justify bombing?

EU foreign policy chief urges China to stop “harming European security”

How much are you willing to pay for that?

Given how well that worked with Russia, yeah don’t expect much help.

It was religion that got them there.

That’s… what? Like do you think the Assabids were atheists during the Islamic Golden Age?

Welp, goodbye Russia, you had a good run.

Because whenever a religious person or entity does a bad thing internet atheists are quick to say “see? This is PROOF that religion SUCKS! This would NEVER happen in an ATHEIST utopia,” sometimes coupled with a call to ban religion or something equally insane. Sometimes you gotta point out the hypocrisy. I wish I was making this up, but yeah.

Overall the Chinese are somewhat known for pragmatic approaches, why chasing illusions in this case? The total number of readers and writers can’t be that huge can’t it?

Probably enlightened despotism giving way to regular despotism. Facing economic problems, and having shed all pretense of being socialist, the Chinese ruling class likely needs a scapegoat for the country’s troubles.

That’s… hopeful…

I can’t stand that this piece of shit gets to dictate what most of the world does in their own fucking countries…

Eh, the only new thing to most of the world is how obvious he is about it.

Do we really need celebrity gossip here?

This isn’t the community for discussion-type questions. You have asklemmy and politics communities for that.