One of the things that we learned here in the last five hundred years is the game of good guy / bad guy. For example, Emerson was a good guy while Jackson was a bad guy. No matter how it ran we still got screwed. It was the Christian Cherokees who made the illegal treaty that made it possible to murder 4,000 Cherokees on a Bataan style death march which still reverberates through our communities. And yet it is the Christian Ministers and the Christian's "Amazing Grace" hymn that is associated with that march. (They sure had good PR.) It was a White Methodist Minister who made the Treaty for the government while our good guy White Methodist Minister Worchester went to jail for refusing to obey the state of Georgia to stop "helping" Cherokees, but when he won in the Supreme Court and he could have stopped it all, the good guy refused.
Basically you have to accept responsibility for the effects of your philosophies and religions. If there are bad things that happen as a result then the whole group must make recompense. You may call it an eye for an eye or we may just call it tit for tat but avoiding zero -sum and the helplessness of the victim in the good guy/ bad guy scam is an important and even terminal issue. No one talks to me these days. Have I gone so far out that you just ignore it or have I offended anyone with my passion? Oh well. Just thought I'd ask. REH ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jan Matthieu" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "pete" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, September 18, 2002 5:14 PM Subject: Re: Non-fundamentalist Muslims > The most famous example was Akbar the great of India. There is also allaudin > Rumi more recent. > As you say sufism is known as tolerant. > > Jan > ----- Original Message ----- > From: pete <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sent: Wednesday, September 18, 2002 5:20 AM > Subject: Non-fundamentalist Muslims > > > > > > On Mon, 16 Sep 2002, Ray Evans Harrell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > >Only in the ideology of the fundamentalist Christian and Moslem sects > > >does this all or nothing attitude make dialogue a sin. I would like to > > >hear a Moslem speak on the Universality of all faith and the value of > > >each culture in the great quilt of the Creator's humanity. > > > > I have been trying to remember the name, and I'll take a stab at it: > > the Amihddayyah(?) sect of Islam, one of whose spokesmen in North > > America was listed as an assassination victim in that list of terrorist > > crimes that went by here a week or so ago, has a reputation for > > tolerance of other faiths. I have never looked deeply into it, but > > it is my understanding that there are many of them in the west, > > as they get a hard time at home from their fundamentalist countrymen. > > I presume that would have been the reason behind the assassination, > > for example. Islam is not a monolithic entity, as I'm sure you know. > > You can find some moslems who are somewhat the equivalent of unitarians, > > or christian scientists, or presbytarians, etc., not just the hard > > line fundies. They just don't seem to get a lot of press. And there > > are quite a lot of sufis, whose mystic practices are reminiscent of > > those of zen or yoga, and who I seem to recall were described by > > one western commentator as "extraordinarily sane", or some similar > > phrase. Why we don't hear more of their flavour of Islam, I don't > > know. > > -Pete Vincent > > > > >
