> ritu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >Robert J. Chassell wrote: <snippage throughout> > > > Is the theological-political connection right? Is > it fair to say that > > many people do wish to behave with the same > qualities as their God? > > If so, and if the qualities are as stated, does > this predefine the > > attributes that Americans seek in their > presidents, on the one hand, > > and that Eqyptians and others seek in their > leaders, on the other? > > I don't know what to think of this theory....he has > very carefully refrained from mentioning what the > muslims look for in their leaders - the only thing > he says is that the > kind of leaders muslims like evoke only revulsion > among Americans....And what is so very > different between the > Americans and the Arabs/Muslims/Islamic world that > no muslim leader > could ever hope to win the adulation of both his > people and the west? > And where do the 5 million American muslims fit in > Spengler's analysis? > > I know Spengler at least believes in an unbridgeable > gap between the > American and the Islamic world view - what I don't > know is why...why does his entire article > seem to hinge on the > premise that the Islamic world view is bad, > repulsive and nasty?....the entire article contains > just one sentence, > by a jewish theologian, on the nature of Allah. The > rest are blanket > assertions to the effect that more details wouldn't > help, familiarity > would only breed further contempt and that there are > so many fundamental > differences between the two faiths/cultures that > most Americans > understand why Boykin has cast the war on terror in > religious terms.
While I _understand_ why Boykin* has done so, I strongly disagree with him; all who cast this "war on terror" in a religious frame invoke Crusade on the western (which Boykin has equated to 'fundamentalist Christian') front, and jihad on the Muslim. That is a recipe for bloodshed. It is wrong-headed, divisive, and arrogant; it invites, nay demands! further extremism and absolutism. *IMO he ought to be demoted, retired or least sidelined to a non-sensitive administrative position, and he should _never_ be allowed command of a fighting unit or missile site. I came across this in a search for sites on the Enlightenment (which I wanted WRT America's founding principles); the article is much longer. While the author, Abdal-Hakim Murad, clearly believes in the moral superiority and universality of Islam, he also calls for tolerant engagement and for Islam to be a "prophetic, dissenting witness within the reality of the modern world." http://www.themodernreligion.com/ht/faith-future.html "...I want to talk about religion - our religion - and address the question of what exactly is going on when we speak about the prospects of a mutually helpful engagement between Islam and Western modernity. I propose to tackle this rather large question by invoking what I take to be the underlying issue in all religious talk, which is its ability both to propose and to resolve paradoxes. "We might begin by saying that theology is the most ambitious and fruitful of disciplines because it is all about the successful squaring of circles...what we call universalism...Islam does not limit itself to the upliftment of any given section of humanity, but rather announces a desire to transform the entire human family. This is, if you like, its Ishmaelite uniqueness: the religions that spring from Isaac (a.s.), are, in our understanding, an extension of Hebrew and Occidental particularity, while Islam is universal..." [He overstates his case here, as most Christians consider Jesus 'given for the sake of the world' and I think there is a Jewish concept of 'being a light unto the world' also.] "...This will demand the squaring of a circle - in fact of many circles - in a way that is characteristically Islamic. Despite its Arabian origins, Islam is to be not merely for the nations, but of the nations. No pre-modern civilisation embraced more cultures than that of Islam - in fact, it was Muslims who invented globalisation...It also demonstrates the divine purpose that this Ishmaelite covenant is to bring a monotheism that uplifts, rather than devastates cultures...Perhaps the greatest single issue exercising the world today is the following: is the engagement of Islamic monotheism with the new capitalist global reality a challenge that even Islam, with its proven ability to square circles, cannot manage? "...The current agreement between zealots on both sides - Islamic and unbelieving - that Islam and Western modernity can have no conversation, and cannot inhabit each other, seems difficult given traditional Islamic assurances about the universal potential of revelation. The increasing number of individuals who identify themselves as entirely Western, and entirely Muslim, demonstrate that the arguments against the continued ability of Islam to be inclusively universal are simply false...Palpably, there are millions of Muslims who are at ease somewhere within the spectrum of the diverse possibilities of Westernness. We need, however, a theory to match this practice... Can Islam really square this biggest of all historical circles, or must it now fail, and retreat into impoverished and hostile marginality, as history passes it by?... "...I take the case of the Netherlands because it was, until very recently, a model of liberalism and multiculturalism. Indeed, modern conceptions of religious toleration may be said to have originated among Dutch intellectuals. Without wishing to sound the alarm, it is evident that if Holland can adopt an implicitly inquisitorial attitude to Islam, there is no reason why other states should not do likewise...Fortuyn, a highly-educated and liberal Islamophobe, was convinced that Islam cannot square the circle. He would say that the past genius of Islam in adapting itself to cultures from Senegal to Sumatra cannot be extended into our era, because the rules of that game no longer apply. Success today demands membership of a global reality, which means signing up to the terms of its philosophy. The alternative is poverty, failure, and - just possibly - the B52s. "How should Islam answer this charge? The answer is, of course, that ‘Islam’ can’t. The religion’s strength stems in large degree from its internal diversity. Different readings of the scriptures attract different species of humanity. There will be no unified Islamic voice answering Fortuyn’s interrogation. The more useful question is: who should answer the charge? What sort of Muslim is best equipped to speak for us, and to defeat his logic?... [He points to Sufism.] "...Even in the medieval period, one of the great moral and methodological triumphs of the Muslim mind was the confidence that a variety of madhhabs could conflict formally, but could all be acceptable to God. In fact, we could propose as the key distinction between a great religion and a sect the ability of the former to accommodate and respect substantial diversity. Fortuyn, and other European politicians, seek to build a new Iron Curtain between Islam and Christendom, on the assumption that Islam is an ideology functionally akin to communism, or to the traditional churches of Europe...The great tragedy is that some of our brethren would agree with him. There are many Muslims who are happy to describe Islam as an ideology. One suspects that they have not troubled to look the term up, and locate its totalitarian and positivistic undercurrents... "...the irony remains. We are represented by the unrepresentative, and the West sees in us a mirror image of its less attractive potentialities...[Yet] Islamic universalism is represented by the great bulk of ordinary mosque-going Muslims who around the world live out different degrees of accommodation with the local and global reality...From our perspective, then, it can seem that it is the West, not the Islamic world, which stands in need of reform in a more pluralistic direction. It claims to be open, while we are closed, but in reality, on the ground, seems closed, while we have been open... "...The second dangerous consequence of ‘Enlightenment’, as Muslims see it, is the replacement of religious autocracy and sacred kingship with either a totalitarian political order, or with a democratic liberal arrangement that has no fail-safe resistance to moving in a totalitarian direction...The humanistic revolt for the ‘liberation’ of humankind from centuries of dependence upon God and nature has been shown to sustain a capacity for demonic evil. Twentieth-century European civilization, in part the product of the Enlightenment and liberal culture, was a Frankenstein that authored the German monster’s being...Muslims surely have the right to express deep unease about the demand to submit to an Enlightenment project that seems to have produced so much darkness as well as light... "...the liberation promised by the Enlightenment did not only lead to the explicit totalitarianisms which ruined most of Europe for much of the twentieth century, but also to an implicit, hidden totalitarianism, which is hardly less dangerous to human freedom. We are now increasingly slaves to the self, via the market, and the endlessly proliferating desires and lifestyles which we take to be the result of our free choice are in fact designed for us by corporation executives and media moguls... "...Islam, as I rather conventionally observed a few minutes ago, speaks with many voices. Fortuyn, and the new groundswell of educated Western Islamophobia, have heard only a few of them, hearkening as they do to the totalitarian and the extreme. Iqbal, I would suggest, and Altaf Gauhar, represent a very different tradition. It is a tradition which insists that Islam is only itself when it recognises that authenticity arises from recognising the versatility of classical Islam, rather than taking any single reading of the scriptures as uniquely true...to use my own idiom...The immutable Law, to be alive, even to be itself, must engage with the mill-wheel of the transient... "...Extremism, however, has been probably the more damaging... Al-Bukhari and Muslim both narrate from A’isha, (r.a.), the hadith that runs: ‘Allah loves kindness is all matters.’ Imam Muslim also narrates from Ibn Mas‘ud, (r.a.), that the Prophet (salla’Llahu ‘alayhi wa-sallam) said: ‘Extremists shall perish’ (halaka’l-mutanatti‘un). Commenting on this, Imam al-Nawawi defines extremists as ‘fanatical zealots’ (al-muta‘ammiqun al-ghalun), who are simply ‘too intense’ (al-mushaddidun)...Attempts to reject all of global modernity simply cannot succeed, and have not succeeded anywhere. A more sane policy, albeit a more courageous, complex and nuanced one, has to be the introduction of Islam as a prophetic, dissenting witness within the reality of the modern world... "...We need a form of religion that elegantly and persuasively squares the circle, rather than insisting on a conflictual model that is unlikely to damage the West as much as Islam. A purely non-spiritual reading of Islam, lacking the vertical dimension, tends to produce only liberals or zealots; and both have proved irrelevant to our needs." So this Islamic scholar does not illustrate Spengler's viewpoint that "the Islamic world view is bad, repulsive and nasty." While he points out some of the failings of Western society, to be sure, they have been discussed by Western scholars as well! I disagree with his belief in 'Islam for all' and 'sacred kingship,' but his approach of tolerance and moderation is, I hope, the voice of the Muslim majority. Debbi who can tolerate arrogant tolerance ;) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Exclusive Video Premiere - Britney Spears http://launch.yahoo.com/promos/britneyspears/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
