{"id":2993,"date":"2010-06-04T09:37:54","date_gmt":"2010-06-04T15:37:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/?p=2993"},"modified":"2010-06-04T09:37:54","modified_gmt":"2010-06-04T15:37:54","slug":"afghanistan-long-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/?p=2993","title":{"rendered":"Afghanistan Long Ago"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you read nothing else on the internet today, read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foreignpolicy.com\/articles\/2010\/05\/27\/once_upon_a_time_in_afghanistan?page=full\">this story<\/a> about what Afghanistan used to be like before the country plunged into the depths of radicalism. I remember seeing pictures like this in the Helmand restaurant in Baltimore (an astonishing restaurant run by the Karzai&#8217;s brother).<\/p>\n<p>The amazing thing about Islamic countries is that, up until fifty years ago, they were much more secular than even parts of the west. As Ayaan Hirsi Ali pointed out, a decision was made to plunge the region into the abyss of Wahabism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you read nothing else on the internet today, read this story about what Afghanistan used to be like before the country plunged into the depths of radicalism. I remember seeing pictures like this in the Helmand restaurant in Baltimore (an astonishing restaurant run by the Karzai&#8217;s brother). The amazing thing about Islamic countries is &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/?p=2993\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Afghanistan Long Ago<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-terror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2BzKF-Mh","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2993"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2994,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2993\/revisions\/2994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}