Category Archives: Religion

Aside

02 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Politics, Religion

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Assertion

“They will scream about their loss of freedoms.”

Response

And they will be told by a central power — ayatollah, caliph, king, or president-for-life — to shut up.

In many systems — not all! — unquestioning obedience to God (which is not sealed in the Jewish ethos) has been already conflated with obedience to a human claiming to represent the Almighty.

Get the habits going in behavior and language, keep the cruelty in punishment high for dissent, and it’s all over.

I have vacillated a long time about the nature of Islam, as have many within the Ummah and many would-be dhimmi and kaifir, but what we are seeing suggests that al-Qaeda to ISIS represents an “Old Islam” — a how to scrape up the criminal and dispossessed, bring in the powerful to become more powerful, and expand the enterprise while growing more powerful and wealthy on plunder. It’s been there in the Banu Qurayza legend, which some among the revolutionary — the real radicals are the moderates — try to dispossess, and it’s at play in Iraq with the internecine warfare culminating in the want of a unified system beneath a single authority.

Ambivalence within the communities mentioned may stem from consideration of the possibility that such as ISIS works (as a tip of the spear) and that as long as one is Sunni, one is safe, and, therefore, why be upset about the gung-ho armed with Qurans, Kalashnikovs, and great glorious dreams of empire?

An anti-Jihad friend from elsewhere provided the quoted material for this post: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2014/07/01/a-correspondents-observation-regarding-the-difference-between-real-and-radical-islam/

On both the true radical and Shiite angles, I would welcome Abbas Zaidi’s or Dean Mousavi’s comments.

Obama seems to want to leave this kind of warfare alone — consign it to the Middle East and North Africa (and the more Goons of the Dictator and Fanatics of Islam killed in Syria, the better, but, gosh, too bad about the people) — but I think most of humanity, and on this we too should be +95 percent want to see this evil and the excuses for its license with everyone else quelled and in any which way that works. The suffering is too much — and in the end, in displaced persons, in crime, in political anarchy, in disruption, the whole world pays the price for this deeply barbaric and medieval nonsense.

And the beat goes on.

So it goes.

Any old cliche will do for these days and issues that go on and on and on without substantial address nor an inch of change.

Also from the same conversation, my part preceding the above passage: “The silent may believe they will benefit ultimately from the political program in a system of expansion that strikes me as deeply bigoted, coercive, deceptive, and egregious on general terms.”

Related Reference

http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2014/07/02/growing-concern-in-muslim-world-about-islamist-militancy-pew-survey/ – 7/2/2014.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2014/07/its-not-occupation-its-islam.html – 7/2/2014: “I raised my children on the knees of the (Islamic) religion, they are religious guys, honest and clean-handed, and their goal is to bring the victory of Islam,” the mother of one of the Hamas killers said. Not a Palestinian nation. Not a Two State Solution. Not forty percent of this and sixty percent of that. The victory of Islam.”

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Aside

02 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philology, Political Psychology, Religion

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I invest in the idea that contemporary Jewish ethics are reinforced by two fundamental statements by Hillel the Elder, the family man 🙂 who lived ten years into the Common Era: “That which is distasteful to thee, do not do to another” (“That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study”). and “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, WHAT am I?” If not now, when?” Whether or not any Jewish action, conversation, or thought traces back to those statements directly, both would seem part of the Jewish spirit, and both would seem evidenced in the long, long history of Jewish social activism.

We do not know what we are dealing with?

Yes we do.

We’ve had a lot of experience since Pharaoh.

We’re getting better at comprehending the psychology involved with “monsters” who are, all said and done with every dictator ever vanquished and the worst among the same living, merely human after all. We may not be able to see what has set a “malignant narcissist” on his course, but we can label the type and take a hard look at how they work with language and how we (humans) are culturally programmed in relation to language behavior and content.

With the Haggadah with which I grew up, we cried, symbolically, for the Egyptian lives lost in the exodus and would go on to note that “with every generation, a little more freedom is won.” Lo these many years and laden with inexpressible costs and sorrows, we find those words still true.

From the sidebar of my blog:

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: “The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing.”

Indees, we are still “singing and dancing” and we will go on singing and dancing, but we are mindful of our neighbor’s suffering too, and however we might feel about it for a moment — say from Afghanistan to Gaza to Iraq — we’ll help them to greater freedom and greater lives too.

“If I am not for others, what am I?”

That’s what we’re about.

We can travel into the uptake of Jewish thought after Hillel into Christian and Muslim communities and related paths taken by Constantine and Muhammad, but “the base” — the authentic — has been and will be eternally Jewish. Perhaps the same in human thought needs to be dis-embedded from ethnic rivalry.

A Correspondent’s Observation Regarding the Difference Between “Real” and “Radical” Islam

01 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Philology, Politics, Religion

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I correspond off of Facebook as well (where do I find the time? It’s easy — I have no life), and this is what one from the anti-Jihad had to say about Islam in relation to the progress of the “Islamic State” (AKA “ISIS”, “ISIL”, “ISIS/L”) in Iraq and Syria:

I saw cars lined up. They were part of the death squads for Mosul. (Whilst perusing the jihad portal.) Now that we have rampant crucifixions and beheadings I await the public stoning of women. It is coming. M. allowed it. If it is good enough for him, it is good enough for them. I am determined to no longer reference these acts as “radical Islam”. They are the real Islam. This is real Islam, just as practised in the time of M. Radical Islam, would be an Islam that is moderate, philanthropic and kind. That is radical for Islam. What we are seeing, is the real Islam, based on texts, eyewitness accounts, primary source options from the era of the final Prophet.

With certainty, the entire Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda-type affiliates believe deeply that they are Muslims, never mind with what anomic and casual bents they kill others who believe they are Muslim too.  Of course, what my correspondent suggests with perhaps Christian insight is that those among the middle, mild, and moderate of Islam who stand up to terrorism and argue for a progressive modern society be considered the true radicals.

Why not?

What is it tumbling around in the Islamic Small Wars with a 1400 year old “road map” that tolerates no other instruction or thought but its own?

ISIS would call what it believes and pursues the true Islam, the only Islam, and bar the “radicals” from it.

So one may nod to the most radical of Muslims, “moderate, philanthropic, and kind”.

Related Reference

The Daily Star.  “Report: ISIS captures Syrian border town.”  July 1, 2014.

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Aside

17 Tuesday Jun 2014

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Philology, Philosophy, Religion

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We touched on this theme briefly at a synagogue planning meeting last night. In addition to reaching communities at the edges of our regional service area and bringing in also unaffiliated Jews, there was mention of the want of the passion to promote the distinctive wonderful qualities of the Jews as a community.

Not yet approached but on my mind very much as the very stamp of the “secularized” (in truth, I believe) American Jew: I want a Judaism and Jewish ethos more easily accessed and enjoyed on a more universalized basis. I’m not particularly Christian-friendly in this and also flatly reject Muhammad’s all-of-the-prophets-were-Muslim confusion, but as Judaism promotes a deep ethical and moral conversation between man and God and man and man, it may be a beacon beyond itself.

Generals Constantine and Muhammad built empires on the backbone of the Torah, but perhaps they did not build a better backbone in thought themselves.

With that said, “Jewish rejectionism” (of other faiths) also inspires anti-Semitic sentiment. A more welcoming religion might offset that.

A “beacon beyond itself’ — Judaism and the great conversation it invokes has been that, the basis for three great religions and inseparable from them.

No Moses?

No Muhammad.

It’s that simple.

Why not revisit the qualities of the base?

I’m a little more than half way through Fassihi’s book on Iraq — it seems I have mostly experienced the world through the technology of the the book, thousands of them — and when I’m done, I may well trim back to a second tour through the Torah.

In the process of this thinking out loud, I shared the draft with multifaith chaplain and writer Diane Weber Bederman,  who then responded in this way:

I don’t see Judaism as rejectionist. I see it as a religion that says, believe in your God. The Noachide laws. It is a trusting religion that trusts in your beliefs. Unlike others who demean other religions we accept them That is the revolutionary change that Jews brought out of the desert. Caring for the other. Not by changing the other but by accepting the other. Which must not be confused with moral and cultural relativism

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Aside

11 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by in Philosophy, Politics, Religion

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“Who is a Jew?” is a terrible question as it is answered so often by anti-Semites with a program for plunder (or conversion and taxation).

Apart from that, I’ve started my definition (so it’s not the pervasive definition, whatever that may be) with ” . . . a global ethnic commune . . . .” and at stake in determination is that linkage x language (!) x belief x calendar x customs x identity in self-concept. Jews could, I suppose, measure by Likert scale their own performance in each dimension (e.g., Hebrew 0=None, 5=Fluent) and that might tell something . . . but ask a Jew to embrace another faith and one is more likely to get Muhammad’s 1/0, black-and-white, you-in-you-out perspective on the matter.

The rest is a) demographics and b) invention sidelining the ethnic tie while endorsing and embracing, buying into, the dual Judaic concepts of the God of the universe and justice predicated on the gifts that are human awareness, self-awareness, and conscience predicated on awareness and good regard for the other, as Eve and Adam are to one another when they “cover” (leaving God, sigh, God) to sew the first real clothes.

I should like to have been around to see the first time a primate (or any other form) ever adorned, covered, or made a habit of wearing a loin cloth or anything remotely like it.

FTAC — There’s a threaded conversation around the above blip, if that, on the theological radars scanning for possibility.

🙂

The thread starter: Jonathan Tobin’s recent piece in Commentary, “The Problem with American Jewry” (the system’s fast enough to block-and-search a string while I hold on to my next seven free views of the publication, as funding subscriptions to key online publications becomes an issue here).

I might amend that to “fortunately by religion”, for there are more of us than there are of them, and we’re likely to find or highlight in our respective religions greater cause for defending one another as believers and, perhaps, exemplars of the next platform (which related to “coming forward of our respective positions) and thereby promoting in common values good in the sight of God, within the better graces of nature, and beneficial to mankind.

The above comes from another portion of the awesome conversation but with the same person on the same day.

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FTAC – On the Middle Against the Extremes

23 Friday May 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Politics, Psychology, Religion

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This showed up a few days ago from the CAIR-friendly side, I suppose, with a different slant but the same theme. http://time.com/104804/debunking-the-extremist-myth-that-islam-is-anti-jewish/ Narcissistic “tenderness” promotes this full-blown anti-defamation response when in fact the “anti-Jihad” writers like Steve Emerson, Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer have plenty of historic and current material with which to work.

In 2003, Daniel Pipes asked “How many Islamists?” That was the concern in the ranks of the watching back then. I would hope that after so many years with the growth of the social networks and development of a wondrously broad global intelligentsia that we may see states of affairs more clearly, and perhaps that to the effect that one may see the secular dictator and religious zealot as sharing similar personality features and the “middle, mild, and moderate” (I have my tropes) have to bond across many boundaries — economic, political, religious — to get the reins on them.

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Doing this “FTAC” thing is like Carson’s “Carnac” (I’m that old): you get the comment first, then the stimulus.  In this case, it was the Investigative Project on Terrorism’s latest, “Proving Our Point” (May 23, 2014).

Cultural grammar, language, political psychology, malignant narcissism — the themes come together.

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I’ve a hard time staying away from this blog.

🙂

May we find peace in opposition to those who foment dissension, injustice, and violence around the world.

Shabbat Shalom.

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FTAC – A Balanced Note on Religious Appropriation

22 Thursday May 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Politics, Religion

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The points of mutuality, as with the validation of the Torah, are also points of appropriation. The Jews, already hard forged in the crucible of history, rejected Muhammad in his day and Muhammad who had prayed toward Jerusalem turned about and prayed toward Mecca.

The central psychology, divinely blessed or crazed and gifted, places the “locus of control” in Muhammad, a presumptuous position from a Jewish perspective, an infallible stance from a Muslim point of view, for if Muhammad is the Prophet of God, then the defiant (rejectionist) Jews have erred. Pandered or true, the implicit political program — it hasn’t been much different with Christianity — places the Jews as backwards on the periphery of the Real Deal, and, whaddayaknow — the fighting begins.

I’d rather go back to being brothers, recast from Judaism after Hillel a neo-Judaism accessible to all (inclusive) and amenable to adaptation and favored labeling. Probably “ChriJewsLims” will not work but it would be good to get to about the same page without (!) getting to the apocalyptic end of each thread.

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It’s not hard living entirely offline.

It’s impossible.

We have to check our e-mail for business and domestic obligations, if nothing else.

Then we may check our blogs, Facebook presence, Twitter account.

We / I have followings.

We’re not going to disappear on our fans (if we can help it).

I thought yesterday’s observation up top worth repeating here.

It’s rich.

It certainly attacks the idea of one monotheist “true religion”, although it’s completely accurate and fair to note that without the Torah and the Jews, neither Christianity nor Islam have any other completely different and independent foundation.

As he did for Pharaoh, Moses proves unavoidable and powerful.

Today’s follow-up:

The power of poetry gives us our minds — many symbols, many arrangements, many perceptions, many interpretations x social grammar, normative language behavior . . . so ye poets 🙂 , let’s go and find the good together.

And with the help of God, nature, and the universe, build some things — a little at a time — for the mind more helpful, greater, wondrous.

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Shaykh Shpendim Nadzaku To Serve as Imam for the Islamic Association of North Texas

12 Monday May 2014

Posted by in Religion

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THE “COOL” WAHHABIS. A modernized, “cool” offshoot of the conservative Wahhabi-Salafi Dar-us-Salaam (in Maryland, USA) that later transformed into a full-fledged organization of its own, the al-Maghrib Institute and its affiliates now attract more followers by making Wahhabism look less closed-minded and more open-minded and “doable” in modern society (US, UK, etc.). Beneath the paraphernalia, however, is the same ugly accusations of “shirk” and “kufr” against the majority of Muslims . . . .

http://sunni1.wordpress.com/purpose-of-this-blog/ – circa 2012.

The “cool Wahhabis” must have won a round or two, for “sunni1.wordpress” appears to have stopped publishing about the al-Maghrib organizations in March of 2012.

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Shaykh Shpendim Nadzaku is an inspiration to all those who are starting their knowledge-seeking late. He did not grow up learning Arabic or the Qur’an; in fact he went to the Islamic University of Madinah with only a few short Surahs memorized.

http://ruhma.almaghrib.org/instructors/shpendim-nadzaku#profile – n.d.

Section Update – September 10, 2018

The above link has been discovered defunct, and so after so many years dimmed for viewing.  Nothing has been made up out of nothing, earlier or later, so BackChannels wishes not to send the section (in Orwellian fashion) down the “memory hole”.  This adjustment has been made because traffic has risen for this page, which has long pulled two to a few looks a day, and the editor thought to have a look at it.  It appears as much was done in 2015 as well.

In addition: the “sunn1.wordpress” page’s most “recent” post appears to have been published March 6, 2012 — “NEW! Yaser Birjas says: Muslims can eat chicken in fast-food restaurants in America”, so the blog appears also abandoned.  Its information was but two years old when this post was developed; it is now six years old. Moreover, Sunni1’s “About” page leads to an indeterminate “Muhammad”, so one shy BackChannels (in 2014) has no way today of reaching the source blog’s author for a chat.  😦

Finally, and now from “long ago” — a day on the World Wide Web can be a long day, and four years (is that all it has been?) may feel like a decade or more — BackChannels impression had been that Turkish imam Yusuf Kavakchi had “retired” from his mosque in a hasty manner without fanfare.  Who knows why?  Appointed in his place not too long thereafter: a Macedonian born American raised in New Jersey and for his profession educated at the Islamic University of Madinah. 

Section Update – October 21, 2015

The cited URL is defunct: this location, however, continues to provide a paragraph — search the page — about Shaykh Nadzaku: https://sunni1.wordpress.com/al-maghrib-institute-exposed/ —

“Shaykh Shpendim Nadzaku has an intriguing name that roots back to an intriguing country reflecting his even more intriguing character. Born in 1973 to Albanian parents in the beautiful city of Ohrid Macedonia, his parents immigrated to America when he was just a year old. He was raised in New Jersey and soon took to the UNIVERSITY OF MADINAH where he graduated from the College of Shariah in 2001. He was contemporary to our other instructors from Madinah, Shaykhs Mohammad Alshareef and Yasir Qadhi.” 

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Alhamdulillah! The Boards of IANT are pleased to announce that inshaAllah Sheikh Shpendim Nadzaku will be joining the IANT community as our Imam and Resident Scholar from mid-June. May Allah SWT bless him and his family and make their move to our community a blessed one.

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Related: Islamic Association of North Texas.

Related on BackChannels: Richardson, Texas – Imam Leaves Dallas Central Mosque, Quietly.

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My sources sometimes nudge me toward domestic events, and I remind right back that . . . what happens in America in the the imam’s / priest’s / rabbi’s office stays there, rattles around in there, makes waves or shakes it up in there, but outside of the church, mosque, or synagogue no one cares unless or until something really bad — worth going to jail for — happens in connection with it.

Add: and no smart imam / priest / rabbi should care today to play an Anwar al-Aulaki / Holy Land Trust  / Weather Underground, etc., role in his or her church / mosque / synagogue.

The Dallas Central Mosque’s former imam, the esteemed Yusuf Kavakci, returned without fanfare — actually, without public notice — to Turkey the week ending October 12, 2013 according to my then surprised and baffled source.   The Muslim pluralist universalist on the spot, Mike Ghouse, wrote of the event the following week as if it were happening as he composed the farewell.

Hmm.

The moment remains ever curious: after more than two decades of continuous service, why the swift flight to Istanbul by the former imam?

Be that mystery as it may, seven  month’s later: congratulations are due Shaykh Shpendim Nadzaku, whom it appears will pick up the reins at IANT come June.

Addendum

Mike Ghouse’s original has disappeared from its primary space at Blogger’s “worldmuslimcongress”, which is why I chose an alternative link; however, after some reading through that location and some searching, I found it appearing on Ghouse’s “The Ghouse Diary”: “Great Imam of Dallas, Dr. Yusuf Zia Kavakci Retires” (October 17, 2013).

The cute, well known, and naughty travel slogan, “What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas” applies everywhere in business of every sort in the U.S. until whatever has happened in Vegas has made its way into a report on a police blotter.

Count that a good thing.

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