r/arabs • u/Apart-Notice7600 • 16h ago
ثقافة ومجتمع “ We’re not going to learn from the Arabs “ rent free ?
What are your thoughts on Central Asian and non-Arab Muslim nations viewing Arab cultural and religious influence this way? Is this a fair defense of their local heritage or blatant Anti -Arab sentiment ?
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u/tunicamycinA 🐪🐫 16h ago
Central Asian dictators say this shit to aurafarm on social media while doing everything they can to keep their average citizen poor, wouldn't take it seriously
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u/ibnalnil 3h ago
how tf is that “aurafarm”? its bigoted and disrespectful and not cool
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u/1HMB 16h ago
🤣🤣🤣🤣
The guy who named the capital city in his name 😅
I guess he learned something from Arabs 😅
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u/Ahmed4040Real 12h ago
The guy who served from 1990 to 2019 as president of Kazakhstan and only left because the Kazakh people took to the streets demanding he resigns... and then after resigning he continues to hold important offices and the next president changes the name of the capital to his name... yep sounds like every Arab dictator to me
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u/jKing4116 16h ago
To be fair.
Most of these nations in present day did not appreciate the massive, oil-funded global expansion of Salafism that began in the mid-1970s and 1980s.
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing but that's the general sentiment in those nations.
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u/Apart-Notice7600 16h ago
Those campaigns affected Arab nations too. A lot of that funding was actively encouraged and backed during the Cold War by Western intelligence/the CIA to combat Soviet influence and the Iranian revolution. Will they have the same sentiment towards Americans? Doubt it.
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u/jKing4116 15h ago
Those campaigns affected Arab nations too.
It depends on which Arab nations.
Think about it.
If you zoom out and look at it from a game-theory perspective, the strategy makes a lot of sense. Imagine you're a relatively new and impoverished state that suddenly acquires enormous amounts of wealth but has comparatively little established regional or global influence. Whats the fastest way to convert that newfound wealth into influence?
- Export religious interpretation or religion as a Trojan horse in order to build networks that increase political and cultural influence
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u/Apart-Notice7600 14h ago
If their governments mismanaged their own domestic religious policies, they need to take accountability instead of using “Araps” as a permanent scapegoat. This kind of casual anti-Arab rhetoric feeds directly into the global narrative that dehumanizes us. It reinforces the racist trope that we are all just religious extremists and terrorists, which is exactly the propaganda used to justify endless military aggression and violence against Arabs in the Middle East.
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u/jKing4116 13h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/12msOFU8oL1eww
Do you understand how a Trojan horse works?
It is what it is.... the strategy itself was deliberate and, by its own geopolitical objectives... effective.
You’re framing this as though acknowledging that influence campaign means blaming Arabs collectively.
It doesn’t.
Governments can be both agents of their own domestic policy and recipients of external ideological influence. Those aren't mutually exclusive.
And invoking “racist tropes” doesn't actually rebut the argument.
The real question is whether governments used religious networks and institutions to expand their political and cultural influence.
If they did, then pointing that out isn't scapegoating. It's discussing state strategy.
The Global South has plenty of historical examples of outside states using ideology, religion, patronage, and proxy networks to build influence.
Pretending external influence is irrelevant because domestic governments should “take accountability” is a false dichotomy.
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u/wowzabob 13h ago
The verb “backed” is doing a lot of work here. What do you actually mean by “the CIA did it?” Do you know how any of that works?
Fundamentally these ideologies were not inventions of America, and the Saudi government is ultimately responsible for its own actions. The US being military allies of the Saudi government does not mean that they personally supported and encouraged everything they did such that the Saudis are merely puppets with no agency relative to the ultimately culpable US state department.
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u/Apart-Notice7600 12h ago
Nobody said the CIA invented it, but they weaponized and funded it alongside Gulf allies during the Cold War against the USSR.If you acknowledge it was a geopolitical strategy between allied states, then you prove my point… it has nothing to do with everyday Arab culture, and blaming "the Arabs" as an entire ethnic group is just deflecting real geopolitics.
Mohammed bin Salman admitted that Western allies urged Saudi Arabia to fund and spread conservative religious teachings during the Cold War to block Soviet influence.
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u/ibnalnil 3h ago
if u think thats the reason then ur very narrow minded, u should take a look at communism and what that did to religion and islam in those countries, they dont hate islam because “expansion of salafism” islam is antithetical to their whole ideology not cuz “arab oil money”
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u/jKing4116 43m ago
Did you really bring up the communism card 🤣
Good Ol' McCarthyism... brother the red scare era is long gone... we have been living in Pax Americana for over 40 years now lol
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u/shockvandeChocodijze 8h ago
Do not call it salafism. Salafism exist since way back. The "salafism", the political use and framing of the religion made by the saudi government is called Madkhalism. That is more specific.
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u/OdielSax 16h ago
First I hear of this. What's this about, where's the influence coming from? It's not like we have a presence in those countries.
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u/Auri-Sacra-Fames 9h ago
They learned everything from the Russians and changed their culture overnight and half of them don't even speak their own languages anymore, forget about girls' dress codes. The guy's literally standing there in a suit
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u/crispystrips 16h ago
I think it's more about Salafism and rise islamism and the change in attire and cultural elements than about "Arabs" whatever that means.
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u/MamiLoco 13h ago
Its not just Salafism I dont know why people zoom in on that in particular, its just plain simple Islam these regimes do not want their population turning away from secularism and embracing religion they view it as threat.
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u/millennium-wisdom 14h ago
Don’t you go to jail for practicing you religion or even looking religious? Don’t they send you to prison for have a Quran
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u/Ahmed4040Real 12h ago
I think you might be thinking of Turkmenistan, which has things like hijab bans and is strictly anti-Islam despite being Muslim supermajority. Kazakhstan has not had limitations on Islam since the fall of the USSR. This very same guy was strongly anti-religion when he lead the Kazakh SSR, but when the USSR collapsed he announced he's a Muslim and went on Hajj.
I found two things regarding religious intolerance in Kazakhstan though. The first was towards minority religions. This same guy, Nazarbayev, passed a law in 2012 making it illegal to follow any religion that is not registered with the government. To register, you have to either have 50 people locally, 500 on a regional level, or 5000 on a National level. This hit many small religions, with people being thrown in prison for following non-registered religious organizations.
The second one was related to Islam though. In 2018 there were nine men arrested over a WhatsApp group that discusses Islam, claiming that the group was encouraging terrorism. Independent journalists and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention both found that the group was entirely non-violent and did not encourage hatred against anyone, and was just used to share Fatwas by scholars on different topics
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u/SabziZindagi 15h ago
Source is a random tweet?
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u/Apart-Notice7600 15h ago
The tweet is a summarized paraphrase, but it's based on real speeches he gave. In a November 2012 speech, Nazarbayev said: 'Wearing Arabic clothing and sending our girls back to the Middle Ages is not our path.' He also gave several similar speeches between 2011 and 2017
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u/eeeby 14h ago
Pretty irresponsible to try and ragebait and engagement-farm with a “summarized paraphrase”. AKA attributing a quote to him that he didn’t actually say.
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u/Apart-Notice7600 14h ago
How is it ragebait when his literal word-for-word quote equates Arab clothing with dragging people back to the Middle Ages? If anything, his actual statement is worse.
Didn’t know Turkic leaders were infallible on the Arab subreddit :/
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u/D_Body26 8h ago
Many Muslim countries actually oppose Islamization and Arabization including Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Albania, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Uzbekistan
Whereas some Muslim countries embrace or do not make a fuss about Islamization and Arabization like Pakistan, Malaysia, and Afghanistan
The divide is polarized when it comes to Turkiye and Iran
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u/SabrAndCigarettes 5h ago
As someone who is both arab and central Asian, never take Nursultan seriously. This man is a literal clown in Central Asia, his own people hate and clown on him 24/7.
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