11 posts tagged “islam”

One of my projects in the last few weeks has been to read the Middle East and Islamic World Reader edited by Marvin Getterman and Stuart Shaar. It would be IMPOSSIBLE to discuss each and every primary source in this anthology (Just the question guide I created yesterday was seven pages). I could, I suppose make a brilliant attempt to solve the various conflicts in the Middle East myself. One idea I had was to take all the people who feel like they have been deprived of hearth and home in some Middle Eastern War in the last 2000 years and let them put up a homestead somewhere in the Green Mountain National Forest. Not that I have anything against the Green Mountain National Forest but ... if it can save the world a bloody nuke job, I am willing to make a sacrifice. I would love to have them solve their problems by themselves but, as Catbert says "It would be nice to eat candy and poop emeralds". It just seems like the Middle East cannot seem to escape its tribalism (can any of us?) Whether it expresses itself in religious forms, national forms, ethnic forms, or economic forms there is this fierce identification with tribe that assumes a limited supply of whatever it takes to survive and a commitment to solidarity.

One excerpt from a speech by Richard Falk comes to mind:

“America badly needs another kind of patriotism, what I will call cosmopolitan or worldly patriotism, a sense of country that blurs the boundaries between the self and others and that is aware that in an era of globalization, all of us have multiple identities based on nationality, race, religion, gender, age, and professional and vocational activities.  The physical boundaries of the state never were, and are less and less the source of meaning for our collective selves.  To adapt to a world of the Internet in the global market and media, we need to soften the exclusivity of our tribal attachments to a single national narrative.  We need to adjust to increasingly post-sovereignty world that is richly diverse and grossly uneven in wealth and influence, and we need to address the injustice is that this unevenness of wealth and power has produced over the centuries, and recognized the dangers of these widening disparities between rich and poor.  We cannot dispense with patriotism in such an emergent world, but what is needed are collective attachments that are not tightly tied to an outmoded and myopic national ethos.”

Richard A. Falk, “patriotism and dissent after 911, The Frederick Ewen Memorial Lecture, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, November 7, 2001. Found in the Middle East and Islamic World rRader, edited by Marvin Gettleman and Stuart Schaar.

My question is ... "WHY?" Why do we "need" to change the way we identify ourselves? Why do we need to "soften the exclusivity" of our various tribes? Why do we need to address the injustice that we regard as injustice only when we change the way we think about tribes? The following comes from something H.G. Wells wrote in the early part of WWI:

“Mars [the god of war] will sit like a giant above all human affairs for the next two decades, and thespeech of Mars is blunt and plain. He will say to us all:

‘Get your houses in order. If you squabble among yourselves, waste time, litigate, muddle, snatch profits and shirk obligations, I will certainly come down upon you again. I have taken all your men between eighteen and fifty, and killed and maimed such as I pleased; millions of them. I have wasted your substance contemptuously. Now, mark you, you have multitudes of male children between the ages of nine and nineteen running about among you. Delightful and beloved boys. And behind them come millions of delightful babies. Of these I have scarcely smashed and starved a paltry hundred thousand perhaps my way.

‘But go on muddling, each for himself and his parish and his family and none for all the world, go on in the old way, stick to your “rights”, stick to your “claims” each one of you, make no concessions and no sacrifices, obstruct the fresh harvest of live I have spared, all those millions that are now sweet children and dear little boys and youths, and I will squeeze it into red pulp in my hands. I will mix it with the mud of trenches and feast on it before your eyes, even more damnable than I have done with your grown-up sons and young men. And I have taken most of your superfluities already; next time I will take your barest necessities.” -  H.G. Wells, What Is Coming

But Americans by and large avoided that whole experience. We sent soldiers to Europe but its been sometime sinse we lived with War on our own turf. Maybe that is why we are still fans of it as a solution to global problems? And maybe that is why we are slow to move away from the sort of patriotic tribalism that has seeminly served us well.

Question for Comment: Do you find yourself agreeing with H.G. Wells and Richard Falk? Even if it means a reduction in the privileges that you enjoy as a member of a successful "tribe" in the world stage? Or is there something greater to be gained by thinking of ourselves as part of a human family?

Movie of the Day was Blood of My Brother, an insiders look into the fight for Sadr City. On the whole, it wa s afairly apolitical movie that just basically went into the mosques, the funerals, the night raids, the families, and the heart of the conflict and then let you as a viewer make up your mind. The American position obviously is that the elected government of Iraq was the legitimate government of Iraq and that Muqrada Al sadr's Mahdi militia was therefore A) unnecessary and B) dangerous. He clearly was both anti-American and anti-Israeli, and anti-coalition government. In the eyes of his followers, he clearly was the leader Allah wanted them to have and if an election was the means, that would be fine but I can't see any good coming from an Iraqi state that adopted a sectarian government controlled so entirely by one sect's "televangelist".

Muqtada Al Sadr is not Al Qaeda but from listening to him preach, it is hard not to see him coming out of the same batch of cookie dough. He believes in the need to forsake this world for the next and the need for Muslims to dissolve their national borders and unite into one unified Islamo-fascist state with black robed clerics listening to Allah for State policy. He would certainly not be good for Israel and in so far as he defines America as a disunifying force in Islam, he would be no friend. This video was enlightening in that regard.

Still, I couldn't help but watch these house raids looking for weapons without thinking about Lexington and Concord. Apparently Iraqi law allowed each family a machine gun but that's all. The only difference between what was going on in Sadr City and Lexington and Concord is that Iraq HAS a democratically elected government and the minutemen are following a deputized Ayatollah. Further, the minutemen, to my knowledge were not hiding their weapon's caches in their homes.

Unmistakably, innocent people are being hurt and kids are  getting the crap scared out of them in these house raids. I just have a hard time visualizing my hiding weapon stashes in my kids' bedroom. The thematic resemblance to the episodes of Battlestar Galactica that the boys and I have been watching is unmistakable though. These are not easy issues.  I don;t mind praying for Iraq's peace and saftey. I hope I can be forgiven for doubting that it would come in the form of a Muqtada al-Sadr government. Just calling it like I see it. don;t anyone shoot me.

Question for Comment: When you see large crowds of people chanting for a leader who they associate with the will of God (be it G.W. Bush or Muqtada al-Sadr, what reaction does it evoke in you?

Tonight's movie was The Beauty School of Kabul. I guess I don't have a lot to add to the movie. It is a way to meet women of Afghanistan and to think about the relationship between beauty and self-image and the relationship between one culture's ideas about beauty and relationships and another's. One sees, throughout the movie, how women can empower themselves and yet at the same time limit themselves. The most powerful weapon in the arsenal of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed. And what people think they can have is not always exactly what they begin wanting. But to begin wanting to have something is a first step.

I ordered a copy for my collection of documentaries on the Middle East in the hopes that it will come in handy for upcoming courses I am teaching.

Motherland Afghanistan follows the efforts of an American-Afghan gynecologist as he returns to Afghanistan to apply his skills and knowledge to the service of Afghan women after the demise of the Taliban. After watching the movie, I ordered a copy for my Middle East collection in the hopes of including it in my class this summer among other things. Afghanistan just seems to me to be a place where a population simply cannot afford to grow. I can't see where they grow food. And  yet there are all these people there in absolute need of basic water, medical services, and education.

This movie takes you into the pain in people's faces. The anxiety in their hearts. It is hard, no impossible for me to imagine really. How does one love a woman so much that they wish to have children together with her, knowing that the childbirth process has such a high risk attached to it? How do you say to someone "I love you so much I want to send a copy of you into another generation" when the process by which that happens is a minefield ... and the world the child is born into is as well?  Movies like this leave me wondering,

Question for Comment: "Is the world my family? Or is my family my family?"

Among the numerous papers I got to hear and discuss at the 2008 ASMEA Conference in Washington were the following:

The Tribal Foundations of Middle Eastern Islamic Culture: By Philip Salzman:

Essentially, Salzman argues that Islamic  tribal Politics are based on security and on collective security arrangements.  It is essential to know who is on your group or NOT in your group. Thus patrimonial  lineage. The tribal system can be calibrated to threat. Balanced opposition. Families are aligned and can be organized at the level to meet the challenge. Honor is essential to make sure that no one betrays the group.

 

Outsiders are seen as fair game for predation. High obligation to the tribe, clan, family means low obligation to those outside … even the State.

War and Peace: Negotiating Meaning in Islam By Dr. Robert Barnage Jr.

 

Huntington's argument is that Islam has a self-perception of predetermined superiority and present inferiority and that this creates instability. There are those who insist that Islam is categorically a religion of peace. Others that it is categorically a religion of w ar. Al-Zawahari puts non-fighting Muslims outside the fold of Islam. How is this possible? Should one take a strict constructionalists position?   Is Islam what it was at the beginning? Barnage mentions the Report on Islamophobia that may be worth looking into? http://europa.meccahosting.com/~a0002ba3/Islamophobia-report.htm

General S.K. Malik's The Quranic Concept of War and Today's Jihadism by LTC Joseph C. Myers Army Advisor to the Commandant Air Command and Staff College

 

This paper was conceived by someone who wanted to study the military campaigns of Muhammad and the Koranic Conept of War. Essentially, the study of Malik's book, published in 1979, is a study of what the presenter argues is a classic text in islamic "threat docrtrine". he says The Quranic Concept of War is a central text in the cannon of jihad studies.  It is mandatory reading in the Pakistani army.  "It is like Clausewitz for Muslims."

See Meyer's article HERE.

Malik writes:

“In war our main objective is the opponent’s heart or soul, our main weapon of offence against this objective is the strength of our own souls, and to launch such an attack, we have to keep terror away from our own hearts… Terror struck into the hearts of the enemies is not only a means, it is the end itself. Once a condition of terror into the opponent’s heart is obtained, hardly anything is left to be achieved. It is the point where the means and the end meet and merge. Terror is not a means of imposing decision on the enemy; it is the decision we wish to impose on him.” (p. 59)

"It (terror) can be instilled only if the opponent's faith is destroyed...To instill terror into the hearts of the enemy, it is essential, in the ultimate analysis, to dislocate his Faith" (p.60)

SEE HERE for article.

Legal Terrorism in the Name of Islamic justice: the Case of Iran by mark Jones and Hamid Kusha

These presenters argued that iran justifies internal terrorism on religious grounds. To expedite the appearance of the hidden Imam, the iranian state gives its leaders the power to create an Islamicly "perfect state" . Thus, the state has power to apply force to the populace to elicit behavior calculated to bring about the "millenium". Islamic "justice" is thus of a religious nature. The Constitution is a religious document. Articles 2, 4, and 5 in the Iranian Constitution are crucial and would probably exist in an Iraqi Constitution under Iranian Shiite influence.

Reading Tehran in Washington: The Problems of Defining the fundamentalist Regime in Iran by Dr. Ofira Selitar

Dr. Selitar talks about the complexities of Irans power structure ... a structure that she says not even holders of power in iran totally understand. "Weber says legitimacy is based on three different things. One is sentimental. Another is based on exchange. We get something for what we give and if we don’t, we revolt. The third thing is the perception of threat." 

"We never know who is in charge totally." Dr. Selitar said.  Many powerholders can continue to buy their power in Iran. In iran there is an army and there are revolutionary guards and within them are th eAl Quds and then there is an internal police and there is the social police, making women abide by the law. One never knows who is in control.

Economic Justice in the Middle East by Dr. Patrick Clawson

Dr. Clawson outlines the statistical data that suggests that Middle Eastern economies have stagnated. He argues that political issues prevail in the Middle East over economics. "Economics is for donkeys" the Ayatollah Khomeini once said. The goal of achieving economic justice - Nassarism - socialism, etc has not served middle Eastern economies in a global market. Many Israelis and Palestinians COULD benefit from collaboration for example but don't because they do not want to see their political opponents profiting in any way.

These were just some of the many papers. Some of them were written and presented with passion. Others seemed almost like formalities for resume padding. Life in higher academics I guess.

Question for Comment: who would you rather be taught by? Someone with lots of experience and education or someone who can think about what experiences they have had?

The following quotes come from the 1995 introduction to Edward Said's book, written 15 years earlier, Covering Islam. I think they reflect the mission of Edward Said to defend Islam, Palestinians, and Arabs in general from ignorant stereotyping.

“Malicious generalizations about Islam have become the last acceptable form of denigration of foreign culture in the West; what is said about the Muslim mind, or character, or religion, or culture as a whole cannot now be said in mainstream discussion about Africans, Jews, other Orientals, or Asians.” P. xii

“A massive United Nations effort at humanitarian relief in Bosnia was a novelty, given that everywhere else Muslims were seen and treated as aggressors for whom the best treatment was abusive talk, threats, sanctions, quarantines, and, on occasion, airstrikes.” P. xiv

“Islam” defines a relatively small proportion of what actually takes place in the Islamic world, which numbers a billion people, and includes dozens of countries, societies, traditions, languages, and, of course, an infinite number of different experiences.  It is simply false to try to trace all of this back to something called Islam, no matter how vociferously polemical Orientalists, many active in the United States, Britain, and Israel -- insisted that Islam regulates Islamic societies from top to bottom, that dar al Islam is a single, coherent entity, that church and state are really one in Islam, and so forth.” P. xvi

“The deliberately created associations between Islam and fundamentalism ensure that the average reader comes to see Islam and fundamentalism as essentially the same thing.” P. xvi

“in short, fundamentalism equals Islam equals everything we must now fight against, as we did with communism during the Cold War.” P. xix

“I am not saying that Muslims have not attacked and injured Israelis and Westerners in the name of Islam.  But I am saying that much of what one reads and sees in the media about Islam represents the aggression as coming from Islam because that is what “Islam is”. Local and concrete circumstances are thus obliterated.  In other words, covering Islam is a one-sided activity that obscures what “we” do, and highlights instead what Muslims and Arabs by their very flawed nature are.” P. xxii

“At the very least, one should say that in the contest between the Islamists and the overwhelming majority of Muslims, the former have by and large lost the battle.” P. xxvii

The world, it seems is always interested in simplifying things ... and thus conflating things. The content of what one learns is being driven by the need for efficiency in learning. There is too much to learn and therefore we do not feel we can afford the luxury of accuracy or complexity. And thus expediency drives the curriculum. I think maybe the world needs to slow down and rebuild its knowledge base ... one member of one sub-community at a time.

Question for Comment: What is a group that you think you know? Who do you actually know from that group?

Today, the boys and I were talking about Oscar Wilde's book The Picture of Dorian Gray 
and the following passage in particular: 

"I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream -- I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of mediaevalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal-- to something finer, richer than the Hellenic ideal, it may be."

 I thought I might share a few selections from a textbook I used to use when teaching Western Civilizations to illustrate Lord Henry's attitude toward religion and reason. The authors' opinions are fairly evident in their treatment of the text and I thought it might serve as an interesting example of how history and contemporary bias interact. As you read, ask yourself, "are these historians telling students what happened in the past or are they just using their interpretation of history to argue for a philosophical position they hold in the present?" Here are the selections:

From Western Civilization: Ideas, Politics & Society, 3rd ed., p.137.

“During the second century AD., Greco-Roman civilization lost its creative energies, and the values of classical humanism were challenged by mythic-religious movements. No longer regarding reason as a satisfying guide to life, the educated elite subordinated the intellect to feelings and an unregulated imagination. . . . The application of reason to nature and society, as we have seen, was the great achievement of the Greek mind. But despite its many triumphs, Greek rationalism never entirely subdued the mythic religious mentality, which draws its strength from human emotion. The masses of peasants and slaves remained attracted to religious forms. Ritual, mystery, magic, and ecstasy never lost their hold on the ancient world – nor indeed have they in our own technological and scientific society. During the Hellenistic age the tide of rationalism gradually receded, and the non-rational, an ever present undercurrent, showed renewed vigor.

. . . Seeing themselves as isolated souls wandering aimlessly in a social desert, people sought refuge in religion. Reason had been found wanting. The time for faith and salvation was at hand.  . . . A spiritual malaise had descended upon the Greco-Roman world. Among the upper classes, the philosophic and scientific spirit withered; rational and secular values were in retreat. . . . Stressing the intellect and self reliance, Greco Roman thought did not provide for the emotional needs of people. Christianity addressed itself to this defect in the Greco Roman outlook

. . . The triumph of Christianity was related to a corresponding decline in the vitality of Hellenism and a shift in cultural emphasis – a movement from reason to emotion and revelation. Offering comfortable solutions to the existential problems of life and death, religion demonstrated a greater capability to stir human hearts than reason did. Hellenism had invented the tools of rational thought, but the power of mythical thought was never entirely subdued. By the late Roman Empire, science and philosophy were unable to compete with mysticism and myth. . . . Christian truth ultimately rested on faith not reason.”

Clearly, Secular people reason and therefore are never wrong and will never believe something just because it comforts them or serves a psychological need. Religious people refuse to reason and therefore are never right and are susceptible to believing things because they make them feel good.

I have been reading Edward Said's book Covering Islam  recently, and it is his contention that this sort of patronizing bias is reserved for Muslims, but I tend to think it is directed toward all people who make use of faith somewhere in their epistemological systems.

Question for Comment: Is it ever reasonable to have faith? Is it ever irrational not to?

A controversial new anti-Koranic video was recently produced and banned in Holland. It demonstrates the problem that Islamic people are having everywhere.  It is called FITNA. I will let you go find it if you want. It essentially superimposes specific verses from the Koran advocating violence against unbelievers with images and sound files of Islamic extremists advocating the same in contemporary society.

Interestingly, the film was mentioned by a student in the Netherlands who is taking one of my online classes right now. This week, we are studying McCarthyism.You can, I think, see the connection:

"Take a walk down the street and see where this is going. You no longer feel like you are living in your own country. There is a battle going on and we have to defend ourselves. Before you know it there will be more mosques than churches!" Geert Wiliders.

This guy so reminds me of Dr. Pfander in my Masters Thesis:

"AMSTERDAM – Faction leader for the Freedom Party Geert Wilders is not considering making any apology to Saudi Arabia for his recent comments on the Koran. He said this on Sunday in response to a report in the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan, which wrote that the Islamic country has complained to the Dutch government about the comments.

A spokesperson for the ministry of foreign affairs in The Hague said on Sunday that the Saudi ambassador had in fact done so “informally.” There has not been any official complaint however, he said.

The newspaper claims that the Saudi embassy in The Hague demanded that Wilders recant his comments and apologize to Muslims. The MP said he would not even consider it.

“Are they completely mad? It is scandalous that a country that does not recognize freedom of speech is telling me what to do. They had better learn that as an MP here you are allowed to say what you want.”

Wilders said earlier this week in an interview with newspaper De Pers that Muslims should tear out and discard half the Koran if they want to live in the Netherlands."

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1787609/posts

Would the Dutch tolerate the forced censoring of large portions of the Christian Bible in the Netherlands? W hat is the difference? I suspect that Christians have, whether they admit it or not, come to the place where they no longer think that King  David's conception of God was entirely accurate. Muslims are still, apparently having that argument. I suspect that it is very unfair to produce a video that pretends that they are not and FITNA may be that video.

Questions for Comment: have you ever read the Qur'an for yourself? How does one balance its advocacy for jihad with its advocacy for peace? Is it in a different category altogether from the scriptures that Christians appeal to?

I am presently involved in online discussions with Jordanian Students in Amman and one of them shared a video with the class that just moved me to tears. I suspect that the reasons will be self-explanitory.

 

 

"A writer's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it from going to sleep."  ~Salman Rushdie

It seems ironic that I would post a quote from Salman Rushdie on the first day of a new global module discussion with Jordanians about the topic of cultural boundaries. Few people can claim to have had as polarizing an effect on the boundaries between Islam and the West as Salman Rushdie. The Ayatolla Khomeini issued a fatwa declaring it a religious duty to kill him 20 years ago and has since only backed off far enough to insist that it will neither support nor inhibit someone in doing so. Religious communities define themselves, not by geographical boundaries but by ideological ones. to maintain these borders, so that they know who and what is INSIDE and who and what is OUTSIDE, they must be able to provide a sense of certainty, be it real or imagined. It is simply how ideological boundaries are protected. People must know why they are right and others are wrong. Few things serve the purpose better than an assurance that a certain text can be regarded as uncorrupted and incorruptible. Some call it "faith". Others would call it "epistemological arrogance". either way, Salman Rushdie is a Trojan horse to an ideologically based boundary protector like the Ayatolla Khomeini.

In a Washington Post article in 2005, Rushdie writes:

"What is needed is a move beyond tradition, nothing less than a reform movement to bring the core concepts of Islam into the modern age, a Muslim Reformation to combat not only the jihadist ideologues but also the dusty, stifling seminaries of the traditionalists, throwing open the windows to let in much-needed fresh air. (...) It is high time, for starters, that Muslims were able to study the revelation of their religion as an event inside history, not supernaturally above it. (...) Broad-mindedness is related to tolerance; open-mindedness is the sibling of peace."

When I have dreams about being chased by enemies, I wonder if they are chasing me to give me a gift. Salman Rushdie may be one such enemy. But one has to ask, what will the human community have for Truth when it rids the world of it. 

Question for Comment: How would one go about establishing what the core concepts of a religion are in a liberal way when the assertion of its infallibility is one of the first of the core concepts? i.e. "There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet." Is Rushdie just asking the whole religious community to fly itself into a metaphorical building?