In the early 1900s, urban Sunnis in the Levant identified with the Ottoman upper class, hence were readily “Westernized”

http://skrs.vidrio.org/sbe/v-ideos-esae-fc-v-tas-casablanca-v-fr-fr-1zrn-7.php

http://agro.ruicasa.com/vtm/Video-atalanta-v-parma-v-yt2-1dha-12.php

http://old.cocir.org/media/fxa/v-ideos-Uniao-Desportiva-Do-Songo-Napsa-Stars-v-en-gb-qeo-.php

http://m.dentisalut.com/omy/Video-santiago-wanderers-v-colo-colo-v-es-cl-1log-21.php

http://svt.munich.es/fmi/videos-kirsehir-belediyespor-v-kardemir-karabukspor-v-tr-tr-1ylx-10.php

http://old.cocir.org/media/fxa/videos-Uniao-Desportiva-Do-Songo-Napsa-Stars-v-en-gb-cof30122020-.php

http://agro.ruicasa.com/vtm/v-ideos-atalanta-v-parma-v-yt2-1mee-5.php

http://skrs.vidrio.org/sbe/v-ideos-esae-fc-v-tas-casablanca-v-fr-fr-1ymp-28.php

http://m.dentisalut.com/omy/Video-santiago-wanderers-v-colo-colo-v-es-cl-1qgl-6.php

http://svt.munich.es/fmi/v-ideos-kirsehir-belediyespor-v-kardemir-karabukspor-v-tr-tr-1qya-15.php

http://svt.munich.es/fmi/v-ideos-kirsehir-belediyespor-v-kardemir-karabukspor-v-tr-tr-1mfu-8.php

http://agro.ruicasa.com/vtm/Video-atalanta-v-parma-v-yt2-1qye-24.php

http://skrs.vidrio.org/sbe/v-ideos-esae-fc-v-tas-casablanca-v-fr-fr-1qcp-18.php

http://old.cocir.org/media/fxa/video-uniao-desportiva-do-songo-v-napsa-stars-v-pt-pt-1crv2-7.php

http://svt.munich.es/fmi/video-kirsehir-belediyespor-v-kardemir-karabukspor-v-tr-tr-1vku-10.php

http://skrs.vidrio.org/sbe/video-Uniao-Desportiva-Do-Songo-Napsa-Stars-v-en-gb-1fcq30122020-.php

http://old.cocir.org/media/fxa/video-uniao-desportiva-do-songo-v-napsa-stars-v-pt-pt-1cgj2-14.php

http://agro.ruicasa.com/vtm/videos-sassuolo-v-dzhenoa-v-yt2-1izn-24.php

http://skrs.vidrio.org/sbe/videos-Uniao-Desportiva-Do-Songo-Napsa-Stars-v-en-gb-1bfh-12.php

http://agro.ruicasa.com/vtm/v-ideos-sassuolo-v-dzhenoa-v-yt2-1orv-1.php

reMarkable 2 because I’ve found writing things down by hand helps me remember them, and it improves my focus. While paper has worked well enough for this throughout its long history, I often forget my notebook or don’t have it close when I need it.

And, of course, Sunni Islam’s attitude towards Christianity has changed over time: a rise in intolerance since the late 18th C. Consider the continuous drop of Christians in the Levant.

Amin Maalouf, another Christian Lebanese, understood the problem rather instinctively and saw the contradictions in the current historical accounts². How come Islam is the one currently associated with intolerance, when it was the Catholic Church that’s traditionally held that role. Just consider the obvious evidence: you find many more Christian minorities in the traditional lands of Islam than the reverse. It was Catholic groups that did the (viciously murderous) Albigensian crusade, the Great Inquisition, the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, and others. Catholicism has not changed; people and their culture did. Last time I checked, the scriptures have not been modified; they were the same during the Inquisition, before the inquisition, and now.

1) Religions map to highly differentiated belief clusters and mentalities that have little to do with their theologies, 2) Heresies are separatist movements, often ethnic, and have little to do with religious doctrine.

The robust alternative, that people imitate the (contagious) mores of those of their group, tradditionally defined by religion, makes vastly more sense. People like to dress, act, even think in broad terms within the style of others members of their group, people they identify with — what we tend to loosely call “identity”. We will see further down that schisms and heresies look theological but, typically, in an inverse manner: group invent theological differences in order to separate — heresies have the attributes of ethnic or cultural separatist movements.

So, it matters, for economic development, who you identify with. You embrace their appetite for boring, repetitive tasks, a focus on industrial growth and working in a hierarchy, the extraction of an individual from her or his family, the appetite to wait in line for hours without beating anyone, virtues (or defects) that allowed for the West’s industrial revolution.

This identity-mentality business is responsible for many other things. Suicide bombers in the East Mediterranean and the Middle East weren’t initially Salafi Muslims; it was in the late 20th Century that the practice (reintroduced almost two millennia after the sicarii) started spreading, with Greek Orthodox Pan Levantine followers of Antun Saadeh. Nothing to do with the virgins one meets in heaven, the kind of ex post attribution one hears today.

So my point here is that the Weberian narrative built on the notion that religious transformations (say, as with the reformation) determine attitude and culture fails historical logic. And trying to change the theologies and doctrines makes absolutely no sense. You need to change the mentalities, and cultural norms — if you can.

“This city,” [Constantinople] says he [Gregory of Nyssa], “is full of mechanics and slaves, who are all of them profound theologians; and preach in the shops, and in the streets. If you desire a man to change a piece of silver, he informs you, wherein the Son differs from the Father; if you ask the price of a loaf, you are told by way of reply, that the Son is inferior to the Father; and if you inquire, whether the bath is ready, the answer is, that the Son was made out of nothing.”, via Gibbon, Hist. of The Decl.