QUOTE (Raiki @ Apr 30 2012, 06:51 AM)
You make some very valid points, however my statement was in no way meant to be "The middle east has no history of intellectualism, global contributions to knowledge and peace, philosophy or substance." Instead it was meant to say "When you have an entire geographical area united by a common distrust and disregard for reason, when you have a region where the very governments embrace superstition and wield bureaucratic power as a weapon against their theological rivals, when you have a region where two mutually exclusive philosophies each call for the destruction of the other, when you have acolytes of these philosophies convinced that the death of their bodies will send them on to a life of unlimited pleasure, and when you add Phenomenal-Cosmic-Power completely at random to this perfect storm of strife and human misery, do not be at all surprised when the house burns down."
I agree that religion is used by/as authority, along with finance, education, law, violence, technology etc. as a method of control and to drive specific agendas and disenfranchise populations. I objected to the idea of "belief in no consequences" applied indiscriminately and in the context of genocide. I don't believe as some do that religion is the source of ethics and empathy, those things respectively are culturally developed (by a wider range of factors than region and/or religion) and biological. With that opinion in mind, I hope you can tell that my objection is an entire continent being likened to or lumped along with violent xenophobes.
I'll admit this is slightly personal, because this brand of generalist rationale has reached as far as Australia and been harnessed by politicians in my own country to justify the contravention of UN refugee conventions and pander to racist voters. Also, I don't want to or mean to accuse you (or Emrak) of such thinking, but when your point was confined to a really, really simple equation, and followed a post where I read the words "Wipe the slate clean" in this context... That might make it easier to understand.
Bringing it back to magic, it's the old less than one percent problem. So, taking in mind that the Muslim Brotherhood's rather particular ideas on violent martyrdom do not represent Islam or the regions where it is a dominant religion, add the awakening to the mix, and I can't see the quota being filled on magical psychopath artillery, at least not enough to flatten a continent. With all the corp/military/government intelligence eyeballs on those sorts of groups, you would imagine that those very fleshy pieces of magical weaponry would be... neutralized.
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...Also, I hate to be *that guy*, but decimate means "to reduce their numbers by one tenth". In that regard, you are correct, as I have a hard time believing the the casualties would be anywhere near so low.
Ave Decimus Maximus. Mea Culpa.
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All that being said, I'm beginning to think more and more that the middle-east would be a very interesting location to run a game.
That's why I'm thrilled to have this thread here on DF. We can develop the setting into something a little more complex and interesting that we can use as for runs or background. Even if it's just a sound bite on a media ARO, or a comment made by your hacker contact in the IRM when you ask him "how's things?"
Otherwise, we might as well be playing 50 cent: Blood on the Sand.
Here's a hilarious Charlie Brooker review.QUOTE
From what I've read, Islamic extremism (which is a pretty new thing actually) was severely compromised in SR4: not only Aden obliterated Teheran (and I believe that would trigger a revolution against the theocracy), but also the leader of the Islamic Jihad was proved to be a Shedim. Then there's that problem with more fundamentalist Muslims considering practicing magic a sin, which would put them at a disadvantage against Kabbalists (looking at the insane power of FORCE TEN STUNBOLT I think that magic can easily trump tech in combat). Also, thanks to globalization, people living in Islamic states can be inspired by Western democracy (like they do now), downplaying the fundamentalist trend. This way, in the Sixth World you might have both moderate, more democratic states and fundamentalist, totalitarian theocracies (IIRC in SR Saudi Arabia is still a totalitarian, fundamentalist state).
Another point is that there are a lot of mujahideen lying in mass graves all over Europe.
Although, on the flipside. Aden would have killed a staggering amount of Iranian civilians, increasing fear and hatred of the awakened. Ibn Eisa's Shedim puppeteer? probably the same story, although, I've been wondering how much the average sixth world citizen knows about that. I've always figured they just think the Shedim are zombies (lower Shedim) and may not know or understand the threat the higher Shedim pose. Then we have outside interference in the middle east perpetrated by everyone from the Soviets, The US, Ares, S-K and dozens of other corps, not to mention whatever the Atlantean Foundation and DIMR are digging up or fiddling with and how they go about it. So I don't think they'd be super convinced about the benefits of western democracy.