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Igel

(37,530 posts)
12. Or, given the evidence later in the post,
Fri Mar 13, 2026, 06:20 PM
Mar 13

instead of mere beliefs beliefs, based on labels, they're so not wrong to the point of being actually quite correct.

One suspects (even if the one is just me) that communalism is a bad thing but is often endemic. The KKK was steeped in it; you see it in lots of Pakistani atrocities against vulnerable minorities and in a lot of Hindutva thinking. It's a red thread through PRC CP thinking. And you also saw it in the soviet socialist view of things, not just in the Hitlerian worldview, and its descent, Putinist thought. Everybody and everything goes in its box based on one or two features because only those matter as we caricature everybody but ourselves--talk about "thinking fast and (not) slow". Because then the world isn't composed of individuals, it's composed of 'boxes'.

The ummah-box was hurt by the Jewish-box and so the ummah-box needed to protect honor and dignity.

Long ago it must be now--before 2009, after 2004--I read this work on anthropology because I was bored and in dissertation denial. It discussed, among a lot of other things in its 300+ pages, not including endnotes and footnotes and references, Afghanistan and some shura decisions from the '40s through the '80s, among other things. In one case, there was balance between two tribes. One was closer to the Pakistani border and had easier access to Pakistan, hence to the West. Some of its men went off to earn more money than they could earn in Afghanistan and sent it home--so one tribe was suddenly wealthier. The balance was broken. And warfare broke out to wreak destruction on the wealthier tribe in order to restore the 'proper' balance, intermittent warfare that lasted decades, Hatfield/McCoy style (ahem). In another case, when a prominent clansman in one tribe raped a young woman/girl from another tribe, dishonoring the girl's tribe, the restitution was to have the tribe that did the wronging yield up a young woman/girl of similar status to be similarly raped by the wronged tribe. When a woman was raped and murdered, the wronging tribe was compelled to yield up a woman to be raped and murdered. "Bring the balance back" was a very strong motive, where everything is a Battle of Evermore.

Communalism. Bad. Really. Really. Bad.

"Jews killed my family. I must avenge by dignity and honor by killing Jews." Very KKKish, if you ask me. "That ____ assaulted a white girl, we have to restore our her honor!" One of the least likeable things about European medieval Southern US culture, and subcultures that descend from that un-Reformed view of things.

The Reformation helped to squash a lot of that thinking; sadly, many pride themselves on being post-Reformation: "Repay, do not forget."

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