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Tag Archives: Islam

FTAC: A Short Note on “Returning” Jerusalem to Muslims

12 Wednesday Sep 2018

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, A Little Wisdom, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Philology, Political Psychology

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Islam, Israel, Jerusalem, Muslims

Jerusalem is not even Israel’s to “return” to anyone but the Hebrews who created her 5,778 years ago. It cannot be returned to the Canaanites who melded with the Hebrews; it cannot be returned to the Romans who burned and sacked it early in the Common Era; it cannot be returned to the Nazis or the Ottomans who no longer exist but in the fantasies of a few bigoted Germans and Turks; and it cannot be returned to an “Ummah” that did not even think to exist until the 7th Century and that today finds itself bullied, controlled, slaughtered by its own zealots.


In the medieval mode, the evil demands property . . . just because.

Jerusalem-GMap-180912-1014v1-900x

Screen capture – Jerusalem-GMap-180912-1014v1-900x.

–33–

FTAC – A Note on Ethno-Cultural Philosophy and Islam

09 Monday Apr 2018

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, A Little Wisdom, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Philology, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Religion

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cultural self-concept, Islam, Islamist, Muslim, The Good, Virtuous Humanity

Are the Abayudaya Jewish?

Are the Pashtun, who are Pashtun while referring to themselves as “B’ni Israel” both a little bit Jewish and Muslim?

There are ethnic elements in the invention, uptake, and adaptation of Islam that may not be separated from “Muslim” — not “Islamic” — self-concept and volunteered description. When for tribal business, independence, security, or survival one civilization accepts the overlay of another, it becomes difficult in time to pry apart that melding. At the same time, an ethos that drives against the grain of humanity, i.e., as that possessed by the “Islamists”, needs must be ejected at least in part.

There is an argument to be had about the character of Muhammad and that of Islam with some who would put all Muslims in the al-Qaeda (or similar) box even though Muslims appears the first victims (and warriors against) that efflorescent fascism that has no place among good people.

We are born with our identities: culture and its customs and laws, our parents, and our families, our names.  God (Nature and the Universe) provide us with no choice in those earliest matters.  However, as we are not fixed as characters in books and much less in place and time, we as adults may confirm our cultural self-concept or change it.  Over time, change is what we do because “back there” in time includes ideas and practices that become for each “new world” — a generational concept — maladapted.


–33–

FTAC: Political Islam and the Persistent Past

24 Sunday Sep 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology

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intellectual evolution, intellectual history, Islam, medieval vs modern, modern field-of-view, religion

The prompt: in relation to anti-Semitism, a statement suggesting Muslims, in general, know little about Islam, and anti-Semitic sentiment in Islam relates directly to the conflict in the middle east.


Religious identification serves as a powerful discriminator and tool for the purposes of leadership in the medieval world, and for some portion of the “Ummah”, small or large, the bond of Muslim identification against the Jew serves to sustain anti-Semitic thought wherever that may be promoted to serve the interests of leaders or spoilers for power.

While the notion that in some general way Muslims know nothing about Islam would seem to confront multiple cultural histories of written clerical thought largely expounding on Qur’an, Hadith, and Sunnah, much of which may indeed have been self-serving — or serving the subscriptions of noted institutions or scholars. In the medieval world, much of power would be suspended between the church (mosque, or temple), then seats of education, and political authority whose legitimacy rested on convincing clerical validation (predicated on beliefs installed).

The “Educated Modern” has a much widened field of view as regards phenomenology associated with psychology, religion, and spirituality. We’re aware of the world’s approximately 7,000 living languages and associated ethnolinguistic cultures; we’re aware of the histories of religions “across the campus”; perhaps most importantly, we’re aware of our own foibles. 🙂 The modern may face some puzzles as regards the perpetuation of the medieval suite of opposed and similar philosophies, but first on the agenda should be the question of how to bring forward those living in the medieval world.


One may practically skip church with that kind of Sunday morning sermonette.

🙂

However,the world’s educated and dedicated or leisured may support their “team”, the same have also access to a sophisticated awareness of their rivals plus awareness and knowledge sufficient to sink everyone’s ship: the good must ask wherever there is conflict what the fighting is about.

BackChannels simple answer to that question: power.

And there follows a question: medieval or modern?

“Medieval v Modern” has been chatted up quite on this blog, so I’ll spare ye another ramble.


Or not.

Appended

The prompt involved a legalistic reinterpretation about respect for Islam (should be equal to that given Christianity and Judaism) that I penned — the addition is italicized: “Jews, Christians, Muslims should accept the validity of each other’s legal interest in their chosen faith.”

I would accept the validity of the interest in religion, not the laws, policies, or practices promoted in the interest of its related fascism.

Even Pakistan has differentiated itself from Islam in its “realpolitik” law.

https://tribune.com.pk/story/1366268/man-interfaith-parents-wins-right-religion-choice/

As regards reform — i.e., an end to Islamic supremacism, supersession, bigotry regarding others, barbaric advisement — YES!

However, note the paths and leaders, including this conversation’s original poster:

Intellectualized Islam — e.g., Qanta Ahmed and others who bring a modern sensibility to Qur’anic ambiguity and move away from the supremacist mark, much preferring “no compulsion”.

Heretical Islam — e.g., M. Zuhdi Jasser and others in the Islamic Reform Movement who prefer contemplation and worship to “political Islam” and related militancy.

Renewal Through Reinterpreting Translation (goodbye Pickthall) and narrowed focus on the Qur’an — the claimed “word of God” — so as to diminish the merely mortal factor in the receiving of the Qur’an.

If any should think up other Islamic Reform options, let me know.

There is a greater and more challenging anachronism in the persistence of medieval worldviews about God and about power in a modern day that requires for greater wealth and security and the wider distribution of both plus justice a greater cooperation and integrity in global social relationships.

–33–

FTAC: On Arrogance, Religion, and Related Political Rhetoric

04 Monday Sep 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philology, Political Psychology, Politics, Psychology, Religion

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21st Century Feudalism, 21st Century Neo-Feudalism, absolute power, anti-Semitism, Christianity, Islam, medieval worldview, medievalism, political absolutism, political power, Quranic anti-Semitism, religion

The prompt came also from the Qur’an (“5:82-83”) as presented this way: “You will surely find those closest in friendship to the believers to be those who say, “We are Christians.”  That is because among them are priests and monks who are not arrogant.”

Response —

“O you who have believed, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies. They are [in fact] allies of one another. And whoever is an ally to them among you – then indeed, he is [one] of them. Indeed, Allah guides not the wrongdoing people”. – https://quran.com/5/51-61

Apparently, if one is not close to a monk or priest (or perhaps a recluse with a library), one may be in danger of trusting an untrustworthy friend.

Note: one might ask whether caliphs, kings, and emperors are not inherently arrogant in their assumptions of power over all others, and therefore particularly sensitive to arrogance in those whom they would subjugate.

Compact between shaman and chief and cleric and king spans the ages but may not be a permanent feature in humanity’s intellectual and political evolution. That may be something to think about in the experience of language, both in political rhetoric and in scripture (no matter to whom the words belong), and that of power as dominion over others.


The region of the Qur’an cited, 5:82 and 5:83 presents in English through several well-remarked translations — and of a standard four — Asad, Malik, Pickthall, and Yusuf Ali — the conveyances of none would seem as sweet as the statement quoted as the prompt.

Here is the presentation of the verse as translated by Yusuf Ali:

“Strongest among men in enmity to the believers wilt thou find the Jews and Pagans; and nearest among them in love to the believers wilt thou find those who say: “We are Christians:” because amongst these are men devoted to learning and men who have renounced the world and they are not arrogant.”

Source: http://www.alim.org/library/quran/ayah/compare/5/82/disbelievers-among-the-children-of-israel-were-cursed-by-the-tongues-of-david-and-jesus-and-christians-are-closer-to-muslims-than-the-jews-and-pagans

One thought attending the description of “men devoted to learning” and “who have renounced the world and are not arrogant” is that such men would seem less than challenging to martial or political power and therefore dismissible by any speaker intent on monopolizing and wielding such power.

Qur’an 5:83 although cited in the prompt appears not present in the statement at the top of this post.  Here is that verse in the Yusuf Ali translation from the Alim library URL noted:

“And when they listen to the revelation received by the Apostle thou wilt see their eyes overflowing with tears for they recognize the truth: they pray: “Our Lord! we believe; write us down among the witnesses.”

If thou woulds’t be apostle, caliph, king, or emperor would though not note the sweetness of the complete and grateful surrender of thine greatest potential resistance?

Given that question and thought, one might appreciate attempts at transitional revisionism.

–33–

FTAC: Islam, God, Nature, the Universe, and 7,000 Languages: A Note and Declaration

11 Friday Aug 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Philology, Political Psychology, Religion

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American Secular Humanism, equality, humanism, Islam, religion, religion and language, secular humanism, Torah, validation and invalidation of scripture

” . . . remember that I have bestowed favours upon you . . .”

Is that God?

Is that God and the Prophet?

” . . . remember that WE have bestowed favours upon you . . . .”

Mohammed will proclaim that the Jews perverted the Torah, but the Jews — and let’s acknowledge that the Torah has been “set” in history (okay, it was a committee) and then transcribed by hand on parchment in Hebrew for every living Torah letter by letter by scribes devoted to that extraordinary and regimented art — may claim that not one letter of the Torah has been altered through the ages . . . through the ocean of time between finality and what is read today.

What is “supersession” but a political attempt to “one-up” the Torah and claim final authority in the interest of personal aggrandizement and enrichment?

No Moses?

No Muhammad.

No Constantine?

No Church of Rome.

Frankly, I blame Hillel the Elder for striving to make Judaism accessible to the “restive of Rome”.

He succeeded.

But the Romans, whatever they were, were not necessarily Jewish in soul. They could and did abandon the Pantheon of the Gods (good thing), but they needed the symbols of the divine as Divine.

And oh ye Muslims . . .ye cannot brag the slaughter of the Banu Qurayza on one hand and convincingly tell of “no compulsion” on the other.

It doesn’t wash.

I’m an American of Jewish descent — an American Secular Humanist.

I appreciate the full range of thought about God, nature, and the universe, and much the appreciate today the fewer than 7,000 living languages into which our thoughts have been packed, each language representing an isolated People’s way of inventing responses to their own environmental and social challenges.


If I were drawing salary as an academic or writer, I would embark on a lengthy period of research and discussion about “modernity”, humanism, comparative religion, and multiculturalism.  However, unpaid, occasionally validated, I may leave the above to stand as it stands.

Here is the renowned but under-publicized Daniel Everett on his experience with Christianity, primitives, language, and faith:

Everett’s terrific, a capable scholar of unquestionable integrity.

–33–

Also in Media: “Can Ayaan Hirsi Ali Liberate Islam from Islamism?” | by Andrew Harrod | Religious Freedom Coalition | July 20, 2017

21 Friday Jul 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, American Domestic Affairs, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Religion

≈ Leave a comment

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books, Dawa, Hirsi Ali, Islam, Islamism, reviews

“Dawa is to the Islamists of today what the ‘long march through the institutions’ was to twentieth-century Marxists,” writes Ayaan Hirsi Ali in her latest monograph, The Challenge of Dawa:  Political Islam as Ideology and Movement and How to Counter It.  In it the Somali-born political activist accurately analyzes the threat of, and necessary response to, Islam’s faith-based political ideology, yet the feasibility of her desire to reform this “Islamism” out of Islam is questionable.

Analyzing dawa’s call to Islam, Ali calls for a “paradigm shift that recognizes how violent jihad is intertwined with the ideological infrastructure of dawa,” the “subversive, indoctrinating precursor to jihad.”  Reflecting a commonplace myopic focus on jihadists, President George W. Bush “often referred to a ‘war on terror,’ but terror is a tactic that can be used for a variety of ideological objectives.”  Accordingly, “nonviolent and violent Islamists differ only on tactics; they share the same goal, which is to establish an unfree society ruled by strict sharia law.”

Source: Can Ayaan Hirsi Ali Liberate Islam from Islamism?

–33–

Also in Media: “UPenn Professor Rejects Islamic Supremacism” | Jihad Watch | March 31, 2017

01 Saturday Apr 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Islamic Small Wars, Religion

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anti-supremacist, Islam, Islamic reform, moderate Islam, reinterpretation, rejection

“We don’t only want to be Muslim and eradicate anything before or after,” stated the University of Pennsylvania’s Lauder Arabic Language and Culture Program Director Amel Mili about the historical Muslim conquest of her native Tunisia. She and a fellow Tunisian offered a refreshing rebuttal of the hackneyed Islamic supremacist dogmas dominating Middle East studies at a conference in Washington, DC earlier this month.

Mili addressed a small breakout panel at the Policy Studies Organization’s Middle East Dialogue 2017. Her lecture examining a 1982 Tunisian court decision denying a woman her inheritance on the basis of sharia law shed light on the difficulty of reinterpreting Islamic scriptures for the modern world.

Source: UPenn Professor Rejects Islamic Supremacism

FTAC: Slammed: Disingenuous Speech and Political Confusion and Violence

25 Saturday Mar 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Extreme Brown vs Red-Green, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Philology, Politics, Religion, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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21st Century Neo-Feudalism, disingenuous rhetoric, Islam, Islamic terrorism, political language, political philology, red-green alliance, terrorism

Premise: my conversational partner had shared with me a video: “2016 NPS Finals – San Diego – “Islamophobia” – and it was a perfect piece suited to interpretation as old Soviet “Active Measures”.


 

You should know this history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Peace_Council

The argument in the above video is disingenuous in many regards.

For starters, Dylan Roof has been condemned as a white supremacist nutcake whose targets also believed in Jesus.

Next: in conflict and military terms, absolutely yes, the White Supremacist movements are absolutely a threat to America’s “domestic tranquility” and the same are tracked by the FBI and followed by a number of anti-hate organizations, from the ADL to the SPLC.

Adam Lanza (I don’t wish to look up the spelling) was an autistic rule-based child whose mother had told him something that he had misconstrued in line with his disability or alternative way of formulating his social reality. The poets have in fact used a mildly afflicted child as an emblem for their political cause.

I find that execrable verbal behavior.

How about you?

Timothy McVeigh, if you do your homework, may have had through his partner a Philippine connection with Islamic Jihad and the building of fertilizer bombs. With a little imaginative sleuthing, you will find the data for that story online.

You know my theory: Moscow promotes chaos for various reasons, including that of making itself look strong against . . . Islamic Jihad. It would work if western analysts and perhaps an increasing number of journalist were not so aware of “Active Measures“, false-flag operations (“Moscow Apartment Bombings“), “Reflexive Control“, and other concepts associated with KGB and Russian State behavior.

Do you see democracy, freedom, peace, and prosperity in the above video?

I don’t.

I see vultures who have figured out how to make a lot of money for themselves by creating and exploiting conflict.

The KKK has been asked to remove their robes, and they have been deeply marginalized in America’s political culture to about this day. This day seems to be a little different as the New Nationalism appears to appeal to the white supremacist community (by the way, the KKK was no friendlier toward Jews than it was African Americans).

The three poets are lying by way of the misrepresentation of political history — and you’re helping them.

Regarding Islam and Islam in America, it really doesn’t take much energy to locate anti-American / anti-State rhetoric in the mosque and the conflation of submission to God with obedience to the guidance of the imam.

“Stop letting the fear . . . .”?

Again: Moscow, Moscow-Tehran. They have got a good thing going with Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIL, and so many others.

Political Absolutism and Totalitarianism vs Open Democracy and Checked Power

Which side are you on?

Peace be upon you, but please consider the role of disingenuous rhetoric in getting a British driver to plow into pedestrian innocents.


–33–

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Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"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."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.

Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

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."

Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.

Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Malala Yousafzai
“The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

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