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French minister compares veil wearers to ‘negroes who accepted slavery’: France’s women’s rights minister has sparked fury by comparing Muslim women who choose to wear the headscarf to “negroes who accepted slavery”.(r/worldnews)
Incidentally, during the ’50s and ’60s Western governments were against the secular, nationalist, and socialist movements that were laughing off religious ideas and trying to modernize their countries, and sided with the Islamic monarchies.
Arguably the primary reason why monarchies like Saudi Arabia didn’t get overthrown by the various labor movements, progressive technocrats, and nationalist military officers that emerged against them during the ’50s and ’60s was because of the massive amounts of military and economic support given to these backwards, totalitarian monarchies by Western governments (mainly the US and the UK).
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Here are some good books on the very interesting and complex subject of the Middle East, Islamic fundamenetalism, and US foreign policy
- America’s Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier (2006)
- Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (2004)
- Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States (2011)
- Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil (2011)
- The Battle for Saudi Arabia: Royalty, Fundamentalism, and Global Power (2003)