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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   21623 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026

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Malaysia’s wealth and development is almost entirely due to the non-Muslim Chinese community.

The Gulf’s is due to oil money and incentives for Westerners to come and do business there.

Turkey’s is due to the uniquely strong tradition of secular, Westernized institutions, enforced by regularly-scheduled military coups whenever the backwater Islamist yokels start getting uppity.

Turkey’s is due to the uniquely strong tradition of secular, Westernized institutions, enforced by regularly-scheduled military coups whenever the backwater Islamist yokels start getting uppity.

While I agree Islam is less conducive to wellbeing than Catholicism, you could make the same argument that the unique cultural and historical conditions of France/Belgium was why they kept up with NW Europe while the rest of the Catholic countries were varying degrees of poor relative to Protestant Europe.

Malaysia is funny in that you've kind of got 4 side by side comparisons in the form of Singapore/Malaysia/Brunei/Indonesia where when you crank up the level of Chinese influence you see notably higher affluence.

Also Malaysia's politics are a mess where the Malays get significant advantages enshrined in the state and can't even maintain parity with them despite also having a de facto racial monopoly over Malaysia's oil wealth etcetera. Also frankly the Malay population was kind of off on a branch of fairly weak and superstitious Islam until relatively recently and they tend not to like it when Arab immigrants come in and question their lack of piety

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