confidence is the key to success.. it's a credit that we imagine ourselves to be better than average. 
 
the nature of man is to struggle against being ordinary. we like to imagine ourselves unique in some way or the other..

haha classic!

which is why the queue in the American embassy in Islamabad snakes round the corner to two streets away :-)  
 
anecdotally Pakistanis tend to have rather favourable impressions of India; bollywood, shared historical memory, cultural affinity and so on. if anything its the middle classes that tend to be the most rabid Islamic (neo-Islamic rediscovering Arabian customs) and anti-India. 
 
Where India may be a diverse society of thousands of sub-castes and regional inflects, Pakistan is simply a divided society on every strata.. for some reason though those divisions don't seem to be such an impediment as long as the army can quash an uprising every now and then

razib lemme know when ur in the boston-cambridge area ever..

Cross posting from GNXP Comments 
My hometown is London and my father called me to let me that my brother and his girlfriend were stranded in Heathrow because of this near tragedy (our residence is close to the connection of Central London to Heathrow). So instead of going to Italy they took the train and headed off to Bordeaux; smart buggers (my one grip since being in Boston these past two months is that domestic flights in America are so bleedin' expensive..) 
 
Anyway my thoughts on the issue; racial profiling is a necessary evil however it should be done fairly and quickly. The one thing I detested when coming to America was being singled for my Pakistani passport, made to wait in line and then taken separately for another two hours and then shouted at by the border guards; frankly that's just humiliating and unnecessary. It should be an expedited process and EFFICIENT, a separate queue for certain countries; hell certain colours whatever it takes. 
 
I don't know where I am on the political spectrum, all over I guess, however another take is that this dichotomy between Islam and the West is always self-serving and unnecessary. I don't want to sound clichéd but Islam is undergoing its own evolution, which unfortunately is rupturing onto the rest of the world. Like all civilisations growing up (the youngest at 1400; troubled teens I say) Islam's dynamic can only be fuelled within but that doesn't mean that swift and brutal responses to acts of terror (rather than invasion which as we can see in Lebanon just does not work). You kill one of our people and we'll get the heads of ten terrorists whatever it takes; swift, light and brutal. Why the hell not? 
 
And by the way it may have been my people "Pakistani Brits" responsible but it was also Pakistani intelligence that revealed what was happening. It's way too multi-faceted an issue and the blogosphere makes me wonder how we're able to boil it down to a single component. (one thing I've noticed in the evolution of both Razib's and I thought processes are the introduction of multi-variable complexity; parallel evolution in fact, Razib it's extremely distinct in your writings and this is coming from someone who's read you from the beginning so you can take my word for it :) 
 
Finally the reasons Muslims are different in both countries is economic empowerment. American immigrant culture (model minority immigrants anyway) are driven by the Ivy League; they want their kids to go to medical school, the North East etc and to do requires assimilation. And as yesterday someone pointed out to me that it's quite common to see cultural coherent first generation/second generation immigrant kids (very driven etc) but the second they come to college to "culturally survive" (his term which i found too apt) they mainstream within semesters. My long thoughts on this issues, thanks for bringin' it up Razib and I'm going to cheat by cross p
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Wrote a very long comment, which became more of a post so I decided to contribute to my weblog.

Anyways my final conclusion is that the Pakistani community was excessively demonised in the programme and great lengths were taken to portray it as the brown "other", steeped in mysterious rituals and speaking in incomprehensible tongues.

Though I was chuckling when the lil white girl was fluently repeated swear words in Punjabi.

I was just looking at the picture and then I suddenly realised that in the left picture you look quite like my oldest brother. I didn't recognise the resemblance at first but now that I have I'm quite convinced of the similarity.

Sigh I guess I should post a picture of myself but considering I'm still on blogger I'll have to wait for sometime. Actually there is a picture of me drifting round on the internet so I'll have to dig that link some time.

Genocide usually is the wholesale replacement\extermination and is in close leagues with demic diffusion. Variously it could be caused by men's capriciousness (executing the population after war), advantages in immunity, technological breakthrough or merely colonisation (Nepalis in Sikkim).

However it has been a rare occurrence in the history of settled population because of the aversion of conquerors of destroying their own economic base. Hence the imperial accounts of slaughter and wholesale massacres are often exaggerated because it would destitute the entire province.

Razib, I would believe that the Mongol destruction of Iranic Central is overstated to a great degree. Historians like Juvyani were keen to please their Mongol patrons with legends of their destructiveness (on the other hand Rumi's family did flee to Konya? from Afghanistan because of the Mongol threat, a case in point in the effectiveness of Mongol propaganda).

Notwithstanding the devastation of the qanats in Khorasan, Iran & Central Asia (incl. the affected regions) made a rapid recovery under the Mongols. After all to this day 50% of the population in Uzbekistan is estimated to be Tajiki, despite centuries of assimilation into the Turkic culture.

BTW I'm interested to see the sources on the Arab invasion of Sindh. If the population had been systematically exterminated then to this day Sindh would have retained a deep Arab character, which it does not have (Bin Qassam invasion in 711 notwithstanding Islam had an insignificant impact in Pakistan till the influx of the Ghaznavid-Ghoris).

I have yet to see convincing evidence of the "atrocities" of the Arabs during the Islamic invasions and the imperial nature of the early Arab rulers -hands off as long as the loot flows in- is a corollary for Muslim rule in India.

For instance the plunder of Somnath was a raid rather than an organised act of terror. If there had been systematic attempts at genocide, as in the Americas, one can be very certain that Hinduism would have been snuffed out of existence.

Moreso in a Sub-continent stratified by class, caste and creed it is counterfactual and divisive to continually highlight examples of "Muslim rule of terror in India". Yes there were wars, injustices perpetrated and intolerance but that would be expected after a millennia of imperial dynamics and rule (Hindu India has Kalinga). However the arrival of Islam was a catalyst for cultural achievements that have stood the test of time and unleashed a synthesis between cultures not to be seen for centuries. If there is a unitary South Asian culture, as is commonly asserted, it's framework was laid down during Islamic times.

As for British imperialism I retain a degree of gratitude for the positive acts instituted. However the Sepoy Rebellion, the Amritsar massacre and the Battle of Plassey are a blot in history, which built up the case for independence. It was not
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My post should be shorter but I don't have the time:) (which is actually true in that it is easier to write a long passage then a truly concise one).

Granted the Uzbek\Tajik ethnic dicothomy is quite artificial and in its stead ther were three categories of population in civilised Central Asia (modern day Uzbekistan). The first category is the "Sart", settled population (predominantly Tajik), followed by the two tribal groupings; Turki (Turkmen) and Qipchaq (the authentic Uzbek).

The imperial conquest of the 15th centuries replaced the dominant *Turkmen* culture with Qipchaq. Nevertheless the Tajik population of Uzbekistan (except in Bukhara-Samarkand and the southeast) merely give their ethnicity as Uzbek because they are bilingual and in the throe of assimilation. Therefore the population figures for Tajiks in Uzbekistan could be as high as 50% irrespective of CIA world factbook figures.

The shift in culture depends on what you mean by it. The Central Asian ethos, as distinct from culture, is distinctly Iranian as reflected by millenia of settlement and the fact that Uzbeks still eat pilov. Dari, till the end of the Khanate of Bukhara, was the language of court and high culture during the "Turkic" era. Furthermore it was Turks like Ghaznavid and Ghauri who were responsible for the dissemination of Persian imperial culture.

I believe that none can point to a specific break in history when Central Asia "Turkicised".

My query in Sindh relates to a deeper issue in that Muslims historically have never been complicit in genocide or wholesale population replacement as Europeans have. Debate there may be of the "Arabization" of the MENA region but that was an example of elite cultural dominance moreso than population replacement (Arab immigrants in North Africa had never been higher than 10%). The Spanish killed off the Gaunche, whereas the Muslims would have merely converted and steadily assimilated them to Arabic speaking culture:)

There is a qualitative difference between Muslim imperialism in the Sub-continent and European settlement of the Americas in that rustic Hindu culture wasn't eliminated nor substantially affected. Hindu culture found it's bastion in village life, which continued as it always had. Indeed it has been mentioned that the survey about Indian independence was killed in it's tracks after most Indian villagers had not even realised that the British had come to India in the first place.

"Indianisation" is a very nuanced topic and it depends on what is defined as an Indian. I define "India", more appropiately Hindustan (or neutrally, Sindastan), as a continent analogous to Europe. In times past Europeans had a deep affinity for Christianity and therefore it is no contradiction that the ties of Islam are stronger for some Hindustanis.

The Turkic Bulgars "Europeanised" and in the same way the Mughals "Indianised" through intermarriage, patronage of the arts
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I think it ultimately boils down to what is meant by Indianisation, Hinduism or even South Asian. The Mughals were heavily Indianised because it was during their rule that the medieval seed of a pan-continental culture was planted. If adherence to the Vedas and assimilation to the caste system are the criteria for Indianisation then of course the Mughals would have failed by that standard.

I am referring to the historical attitude of the imperials at the time. The Mughals, for better or for worse, recognised the Sub-continent as their bastion and identified with it through their courts in Delhi, Lahore (and a slew of other cities I can't recall). The British were alien, and considered to be invaders, because their allegiances and their ultimate source of loyalty was to a monarch on a distant isle. In the end the British may have done much more than the Mughals for the Sub-continent (and for India with Kolkatta-Calcutta, Mumbai-Bombay and Chennai-Madras owing their genesis to British forts and their names to an Anglicised transliteration of Hindu deities) but that distinction remained.

The decimation of the indigenous population of Hispaniola was caused by mass slavery *as well as disease*. To say most of the extermination in the Americas was because of disease is a significant overstatement because there were clear instances when the indigenous population was forcibly decimated or removed. A corrolary is the Aboriginals of Australia, who may have been vanquished by disease, but were furthermore blighted by relocations to the arid zones.

Just as this thread is dedicated to revising White Guilt I am keen to pursue the events for which Muslims should feel guilty for? The stereotype of them as invaders destroying lost cultures and peoples is wholly unfounded. Israel was Christian under the Ummayyads and the Jews had already dispersed.

In the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Gibbons movingly recounts the sacking of Constantinople by the Turks but does not mention the fact that Constantinople was being overrun and sacked by Crusaders time and time again!!! Excepting sub-saharan Africa and the tragic events of the Armenian genocide (which was committed by the secular Young Turks) Islamic cultures have never been responsible for genocide.

The BJP may moan the Islamic incursions but I feel no sympathy for the replacement of a high-caste elite with a Muslim one, which at least afforded the chance for upward advancement (even if it is at the cost of one's religion). A Dalit could never amount to anything in a Hinducracy but upon conversion and with luck & guile make something of himself under the Mughals.

Muslims are defined by a certain humanity arising from their belief that anyone can eventually convert to Islam. This humanises them to a great extent, which is why most of the ancient population and religious minorities of the Islamic Crescent linger on to this day. Of course there is the
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Naturally I have an interest in accelerated education having finished my Masters at the age of 18. I think that children can naturally imbibe concepts, which are conventionally taught at a later age.

Forty children cloistered in one classroom is hardly the way to fully exploit their varying skills and talents.

"Honour" (izzat, pukthunwalli) is a tribal cultural trait because of inter-tribal competition, "face" culture and marriage seen as necessary to cement (or break) alliances. When there are competing clans then honour and love tend to clash (Romeo and Juliet).

Islam's ethos was compatible with tribal societies and was assimilated rapidly by them because of the overlap. Hence Islam's distribution from Morroco to Pakistan and Uighurstan but the sharp "breaks" with Spain, India (Rajasthan, E. Punjab and Gujarat), Sinic China and northern agricultural Russia (all of whom were settled and continuous civilisations).

The unity of the Islamic lands is not so much because of Islam because their fundamental tribal matrix. Indeed it would not be a leap to claim that Muslims (at least Sunnis) are historically a coalition of tribes as evidenced that a mere century ago Iran's tribal population hovered around 25% and Pakistan was overwhelming populated by pastoralists*.

This explains the preponderance of tribal traits such as honour killings, cousin marriage and extended family kinships amongst Muslims. I would believe this trend is indicative of correlation not causation.

*Riparian West Punjab has no rain and was only suitable, prior to British irrigation works, for grazing. Incidentally there is a "barani" (rain fed) region around Lahore, which is where Partition was most contested and murderous because it was where the boundaries blurred.

I would agree that it is a matter of "sibling rivalry".

The Middle East and North African regions have been interlinked with Europe for most of their history. The prime constituent elements of Judeo-Christian and Islamic civilisation are similar save one is a faith found in the Western Mediterranean whilst the other has historically found strength in the eastern basin of the Mediterranean sea.

Oriental families tend to be more cohesive, regardless of endogamy. For instance Indians do not practise cousin marriages but their culture is anchored in the extended family.

Nepotism in government is tangential to development. Singapore, arguably Asia's most successful economy, Harry Lee's family occupies positions of power. The global financial industry is defined by nepotism whereby merit is disregarded for connections and networking.

In least developed countries money goes a very long way to determine the allocation of government contracts moreso than family connections itself.

The high consanguinity of Pakistan manifests itself most prominently in the phenomenally high rates of ovarian and breast cancer. The medical effects are being countered by the fledgling practise of undergoing medical tests prior to marriage.

Cousin marriage is not responsible for the low level of development rather Hernando De Soto's explanation is more apt. The societies of Islam are continually hindered by the lack of liquidity in the economy and the rigidity of the property market (in Pakistan it takes years to accumulate the cash to buy a house because we just don't have a developed mortgage market).

Partition helped solved the land titles problem because of the exchange of properties between East and West Punjab (approximately an equal exchange of Hindus & Sikhs with Muslim Punjabis).

In Pakistan ownership can be easily established but red tape, especially in the rural areas, is a hinderance. Anyway most of the Pakistani rural population are landless peasants and can't even concieve of owning property. Interior Sindh is an excellent example where the landless Haris are at the mercy of their Wadhera landlords (Punjab is slightly better because of the canal colonies, which armed the population with property rights).

Enfranchisement can only come when people have access to property and land ownership.

Hernando de Soto touches upon the more important issue, which is generating wealth by establishing property rights and generating wealth & liquidity. A government can print as much money as it wants if the wealth of the nation is rapidly growing.

Pakistan's black economy is phenomenally large and indeed the past few years have shown extremely high economic growth because it is being reintegrated into the economy. It is the systematic incorporation of property rights and the incorporation of the illegal economy, which is critical for development.

The impact of cousin marriages is rather limited and indeed everyone has extensive ties with the rest of society (a normal Pakistani family can have over 30 first cousins and innumerable second cousins). Our growth has been so explosive that though we now number 140mn our ancestry has been confined to a historically limited stock.

Naturally connections and "rishtidar", family ties, exist. Indeed the system of patronage is particularly apt for the Muslim model, perhaps an echo of the "mawali" being a client of the Arabs. It is arguable whether they are a hindrance or an aid to our societal development. Indeed there is a tolerance for intermarriage with other ethnicities and religions if cousins are few and far between. Some ethnicities, like the Muhajirs who don't practise cousin marriage, are rapidly absorbing into mainstream society because of extremely high intermarriage rates.

To be honest as for corruption it is favourable if it siphons funds from white elephant projects. The money is inevitably recycled back into the economy and has a multiplier effect.

South Asian and Islamic governments have had a trend toward extreme centralisation, which has been extremely harmful. This has been to compensate for the uneasiness of the state at the inception. Accountability just doesn't exist as a concept because of the removal of executive and legislative power from that of the people.

Development has always followed the European "top down" model rather than the "bottom up" path adhered to by the United States.

Randall,

Pakistan has the civil service examinations for graduates for the public sector.

Private industry is dominated by a highly successful and relatively large elite with family connections, networks and contacts providing avenues for employment (anyone who's anyone knows everyone).

This is similar to the financial industry in the City of London where contacts provide upto 50% of the jobs obtained.

Zack

From the article:

"The company said more than 150,000 people took part in the on-line survey, which was now in its seventh year."

London owes it's cosmopolitanism in part to its immigrant population. Virtually all my friends are foreigners; Lebanese, Indians and Europeans. My Masters class only had 3 people from the United Kingdom, the rest were from abroad, and it was an excellent lesson at diversity. The investment bank I work at is overwhelming Brit-European but there are a growing number of Asians. I love London in that parochialism and bigotry is hardly present and one feels as though one is residing in a global city rooted in a deep heritage. Cuisine wise we're second to none except for a few needed Taco Bells (there are no decent Mexican restaurants)

At any rate demographic trends in the case of the United Kingdom hold no particular relevance and there is an ethnic preponderance in urban regions and the South West. Rural England and suburbia are particularly strong demographically (Scotland is problematic since the Scots have a frighteningly low birth rate) since immigrants flock to the cities.

Finally 50million British people is quite a feat considering only a few centuries ago there were only 2million of them on these sceptred islands.

I detest bearish sentiments as to the course of global civilisation since I am reminded of the economists at my bank.

Fleeing Saddam's invasion of Kuwait at the tender age of 5 has lent me a natural optimism and taught me to appreciate my residence in the thriving metropolises of London & Paris.

The appropriate context for European demographic decline should take into account the historic population of the continent. There was a twenty five-fold jump in the population of the British Isles over the past few centuries, which is simply phenomenal. Europe, along with India and China, has an astoundingly dense population.

http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/007248179x/student_view0/chapter8/web_map_4.html

Europe’s advanced urbanisation and rapid dissolution of the nuclear family are responsible for the collapsing birth rate. From a historical perspective urban regions are not demographically sustainable, having required a continual influx of healthy young peasants to maintain the population (today’s influx are no different, merely of a darker hue).

If asked to draft policy on this matter I would encourage grass root programs targeted for the sustainability and growth of rural populations in Europe. The true embers of French and national cultures will be tenaciously preserved in the countryside and their future survival is critical.

Historically cities have been ethnically diverse and cosmopolitan whereas the outlying rural regions preserve the authenticity of their culture.

I believe that is the ideal, which should be strived for in a globalising and homogenising world. London can continue as the international capital of the world but at the same time English culture can survive and thrive in the green fields and forests of England.

I don't want to beat a dead horse so here's my take on the thing.

Immigration in Europe has been a historical phenomenon, since the 19th century France has been welcoming "hordes" of European immigrants (French demographic decline has spanned the last century and in the 1950s France had at least 4million immigrants).

The European Union implicitly accepts that free trade is dependent on open borders. Though they still have yet to grasp the concept of creative destruction or the culture of hire & fire yet but only when they do can they reassert any modicrum of influence on global events. However closure of the borders is tantamount to economic suicide.

I believe in the relevance and importance of nationalism yet that must be tempered by globalism and awareness of a wider community. A healthy approach to diversity will lead to a preservation of the local culture.

Take India, or rather more specifically Bombay, for that matter. The city is rooted in an Indian milieu, much as London has a deep Brit-English heritage, but it has a distinct international flavour to it that allows multi-culturalism to thrive. Global metropolises are defined by their culture hetrogeneity and the urban composite blends, which arise from them. Mass urbanisation, as we are experiencing today, is allowing members of the human race to live with one another when there had been no previous interaction.

Furthermore the defining characteristic of Western (Anglo-Saxon and to a certain extent Romance cultures) civilisation has been to create a framework independent of ethnic parochialism.

For instance America is fundamentally rooted in civic ideals and economic freedom.

As a student of Hernando de Soto's economic principles I believe the success of the Western economic experiment derives mainly from the interaction of freedom, regulation and liquidity as opposed to the particular ethnos of the population. The 19th century congressional Homestead act, which released the potential of the American continent and was critical in developing the anarchic West, illustrates the need for property laws adapted to local circumstance. Generating liquidity in third world countries is the task of the new century and I very much doubt the importance of demographics (except of coures when it comes age structure of the population) in this quest.

America and Britain are meritocracies and is transcending ethnic origin. One may have to be Han to be authentically Chinese but a love of freedom is the prerequisites to being America. Truly a radical concept in a world riven with strife.

My extended family, since dispersing from Pakistan, has dug deep roots in the Anglo-American sphere. All my cousins, on both sides, are American citizens (my brothers and I, alone of our generation, retain Pakistani citizenship) and are inculculated in the values that made America great.

My grandmother, born in Delh
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