Tag Archives: religion

FTAC – Answering the Promotion of Islam as Regards a Woman’s Place – An Excerpt

21 Sunday Jul 2013

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

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I have altered the provocative voice to maintain only the line of thought pursued.

The answering voice, and more at length here, enough so to justify my noting that I have Martin Pembroke Harries’ permission to reprint his views here, takes an atheist’s stance in the formulation of ethics.  We’ve had some back-and-forth about circumcision, Abraham, obedience, and conscience, but here the topic around which the notes weave is grrrrrl power, which he defends well.

Other editing: I’ve added line breaks for readability and italicized the “point” voice to Pembroke’s counterpoint.

* * *

Women are shy in the Koran and won’t perceive the crime the way a male would.

Is this a wind-up? I can’t decide whether you’re serious or a master of sarcasm.

If you are being serious, when you suggest to, say, Sheikh Hasina the prime Minister of Bangladesh, or Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the prime Minister of Argentina, or Hilary Clinton, the former US Secretary of State, that their testimony would be worth half that of yours simply because you are a man, you would be well to stand well beyond their swinging fist distance!

While the Koran authorizes beating a wife after other steps have been tried, it tells us not to maim them.  In the west, it seems there are no rules.about how to beat one’s wife.

Again, is this for real?

If so, this is what religion can do to a nominally decent man, it forces him to justify the indefensible.

Do you think that because Sharia states that you can’t break her face when you beat your wife, that is some how a reflection of the nobility of Islam?

That is so sad first of all, but monstrously embarrassing soon afterward.

And let’s be honest, there is nothing in the Quran that states you can’t break your wife’s face when you’re beating her – If you actually read the Quran 4:34, you’ll find that there is no restriction at all.

Please don’t tell me I can find on the book shelves of my local mosque library “101 Halal ways to beat your wife!”, or “How to lovingly protect your wife from the shame of her disobedience through the use of a good timely thrashing” or “Sharia Wife-beating made simple and with a Smile – avoid the face, and Carry On!”

A woman in Islam may be a wife, mother, sister, or daughter.  There is no disrespect in that.

I’ve read numerous Muslims state that there is this nominal respect for one’s OWN mother and one’s OWN sister, but once your average MENA Muslim male leaves the house, that’s where respect for women, in general, ends.

Women lead in the percentage of Muslim reverts in the United States.  If the religion was so bad for them, why would they revert?

Yes, This is the case because non-Muslim females are marrying Muslim males – for love no less!

It’s probably to please the groom’s parents more than actually believing Mohamed’s story; whereas Muslim females are forbidden to marry non-Muslim men – often at the threat of her life. Again, this a shameful example of not giving equal rights to women. If Muslim men were forbidden to marry non-Muslim women the number of ‘converts’ would plummet.

Lastly, have you got the statistic of how many ‘converts’ have subsequently unconverted? Or how many have converted only nominally in order to facilitate the marriage? Those numbers would be far less flattering wouldn’t they?

Islam disallows Muslim daughters from marrying non-Muslims.  If you have a problem with that, it’s your problem.

Well, first of all it’s the daughters’ problem.

I respect your atheism.  I want you tor respect my belief in Allah.

No. I respect *your right to believe* what you want, but there is no way you should expect me to automatically respect *what you believe*. Nor should you expect me to automatically respect your right to practice your religion if the tenets of the religion are anathema to rational social harmony – and on those grounds masking the face would be contrary to those ideals. I’ll respect what you believe with respect to Mohamed’s story and social mores only if it reflects justice, morality and rationality – and there is your problem. But it shouldn’t be a big problem, it’s only unsubstantiated religion – folklore – after all.

There are probably a number of non-religious issues upon which we might agree. For instance, I reckon chicken biryani is a food of the gods!

* * *

Harries is entitled to his opinion, but I myself never regard folklore as trivial: language is always (always) a cultural tool and what is invented in it, whether out of necessity and the need for useful signals or out of desire or play or the want of excitement and greatness (even if only in our own heads), each language and its lore and literature becomes a suspension for cultural self-concept.

With that, I’ll take this post a little further.

* * *

Surat 4:34:

“Men are in charge of women, because Allah has made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah has guarded. As for those from whom you fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High Exalted, Great.” (Pickthall’s version of the Koran, Quran, 4:34)

The first commentary I’ve opened from web search: A Commentary on The Qur’an 4:34 By Dr. Ahmad Shafaat

Dr. Shafaat gets into the matter of entangled loyalty well with this statement on the violence involved:

“Beat them”. If even separation fails to work, then it is suggested that men use beating. To this suggestion of the Holy Qur’an there have been two extreme reactions on the part of some Muslims. The first reaction is being apologetic or ashamed of the suggestion. The second is to use it as a justification for indulging in habitual wife battering. Needless to say that both these reactions are wrong. The Quran as we believe is the word of God and is thus every word in it is full of wisdom and love. To be apologetic about any part of the Quran is to lack both knowledge and faith.

For every word to be “full of wisdom and love”, some additional exegesis seems necessary, for Dr. Shafaat continues:

In regard to the suggestion about beating, the following further points should also be noted:

a) According to some traditions the Prophet said in his famous and well-attended speech on the occasion of his farewell pilgrimage that the beating done according to the present verse should be ghayr mubarrih, i.e. in such a way that it should not cause injury, bruise or serious hurt. On this basis some scholars like Tabari and Razi say even that it should be largely symbolic and should be administered “with a folded scarf” or “with a miswak or some such thing”. However, to be effective in its purpose of shaking the wife out of her nasty mood it is important that it should provide an energetic demonstration of the anger, frustration and love of the husband. In other words, it should neither seriously hurt the wife nor reduce it to a set of meaningless motions devoid of emotions.

That power continues to reside in the man (this is a locus-of-control issue) and not in the woman (how should one of the fair sex respond to or treat a “rebellious man”?) seems less an issue than the management of the degree of violence expressed, either physically or symbolically.

* * *

In working with thought as language behavior subject to modification by context in time plus the relative insularity of minds and the language-inventing cultures that create content and self-concept as well as a righteous sense of both license and prohibition, there’s much conversation needed about what I’ve started calling the “humanity of humanity”, i.e., mankind’s better potential in character, and in relation to that, a reconciled psychological outlook.

I have recently promoted Fazeela Siddiqui’s article in the Huffington Post, “10 Muslim Women Every Person Should Know” (March 24, 2012) on this blog and on Facebook.

It’s worth a look, especially to men who may have doubts about how tough may be the “rebellious” woman they have been otherwise so licensed to beat, they themselves having been so pandered to as to have been granted by power on high exclusive control over what many other humans might as fervently and justifiably believe ideal as an equally empowered and inclusive love and partnership.

* * *

One more note on the laying on of hands by either partner in a marriage: when it has come to that, somebody, one or the other, please, leave the home, call a lawyer, and arrange for a separation.

* * *

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A Glimpse of Qatar’s Generational Transition and Portent for The Middle East Conflict

27 Thursday Jun 2013

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Qatar, Regions, Religion

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These days, the term “middle east conflict” would seem to refer to conflict and unrest in every state in the region but Israel.

Nonetheless, while Egypt roils and Syria burns and the King of Jordan fends off the seeding of perhaps a new class of secular Palestinian politico*, Qatar’s new head of state, Sheikh Tamim has this to say of the refugees of numerous Arab-led wars since 1948:

One day when our “Blue Dot” of a planet is a little more gathered together — that as opposed to riven with war — we may find common ground in five language principles:

Compassion

Humility

Integrity

Justice

Security

Of the four, the most difficult term and the one most relevant to autocracies seems to me to be “integrity” — just the power to be honest about ourselves and with others.

This is not as easy as it may sound.  If it were, we would not have the fairy tale that is “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, which is in essence and for the ages a story about lying and power.

*****

It may be noted that God placed two trees in the Garden of Eden: the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  When the snake entices Eve to eat of the forbidden tree, only mention is made of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, effectively hiding the other tree through omission.

You know the rest of the story: Eve eats the apple, becomes conscious or comprehending, also self-conscious, and, with Adam joining her, possessed of conscience, out of which reaction, perhaps, come the fig leaves, a courtesy, each to the other, and practical too (God, a few sentences later, provides clothing made of skins — one imagines chamois — lending perhaps dignity and protection to their introduction to life as men and women would experience it forever after).

The “Middle East Conflict” — which is never about conflicts in the middle east but only about the creation of the Jews and Israel (or, lost in the Pharaohnic dawn, the gathering together beneath the unrestrained ego and violence of a tyrant)l — seems to me to be always about two things not at ease with one another: 1) the possession of good conscience in light of the knowledge of good and evil; 2) the testing of God for favor when the relationship needs to be the other way around.

*****

Where kings are concerned, I suspect there may be more to the story than meets either eyes or ears.

When God, being God, and with Torah received as divine message, hides the second tree — the Tree of Life that we are told is there but when it counts is not mentioned by the snake and, later, will be barred from access (by cherubim and an eternally revolving sword guarding the Garden left behind) — the sin of omission becomes a virtue: to have eaten of the Tree of Life also would have been too much, for God forbids it, and so protects His children.

*****

To be as gods, lower case that term, with nuclear capabilities, among other extraordinary but still human capacities, one might counsel also a prudent humility.

Carl Sagan’s clip about the “Pale Blue Dot” that is our planet viewed from space, has many renditions on the web — and there’s an entire film available too (somewhere — I’m going to be lazy here) — but this may do for essence.

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ISW – Comment on Saudi Arabia’s Heightened Profile in the Syrian Theater

17 Monday Jun 2013

Posted by in Asia, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Iran, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Qatar, Regions, Religion, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey

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(Reuters) – Saudi Arabia, a staunch opponent of President Bashar al-Assad since early in Syria’s conflict, began supplying anti-aircraft missiles to rebels “on a small scale” about two months ago, a Gulf source said on Monday.

Bakr, Amena.  “Saudi supplying missiles to Syria rebels: Gulf source.”  Reuters, June 17, 2013.

For those who value stability in the middle east, the least honest and most ruthless appear to be winning.

As the above quote suggests, Big Sunni Money plus the cultivation across many years of strategic and trade relationships in Great Britain, Europe, and the United States have put King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia not only into the fight in Syria but remarkably behind the NATO wheel.

Of course, this recent news (surfacing in the news) isn’t news at all to the businesses and states involved in Syria’s civil war, and it should be apparent to all onlookers that this double-track, double-story business of telling the public one story while facilitating another in private has brought us to the brink of a NATO vs. Russia confrontation in which Russia may now present a devilish gambit: better Assad and the continuing misery to be imposed by the dictatorship than the expansion of either Al Qaeda or Wahhabi Islam and the certain diminishing of nascent democracy, human dignity, and secular values in Syria accompanied by the heightening of tensions in Lebanon and,somewhere in the future, with Israel and the Jewish People.

To offset that impression, King Abdullah may have to back up the money with some combination of reassuring mouth and evidence of cultural and social evolution toward the contemporary in the Kingdom, certain injunctions of the Quran either notwithstanding or interpreted or aligned with a more free and liberal and greater western world.

Outlook

For the moment, if Iran’s nuclear program and global ambitions are the true target of the conflict in Syria, then the conflict and the human suffering plus political confusion driven by it, have yet some months to years to go.

In fact, the focusing of issues in the Syrian theater of a great portion of the drivers of the Islamic Small Wars  — i.e., rivalries of various sort: Al Qaeda and Wahhabi Islam; Sunni and Shiite Islam; democracy, secular dictatorship and theocracy; Iranian and Saudi Arabian competition for greater spheres of influence; even Putin’s possible issues with aggrandizement, control, and wealth on one hand and his own humanity, moderation, and strength in restraint on the other– bodes ill for constituents — worldwide — whose concerns may be more with family, security, and employment scaled down to a common denominator in the common humanity than with the triumph of a king or an ayatollah.  

It has been said that with the onset of war, nobody wins, and nowhere else across the killing fields of the Islamic Small Wars does that cynical sentiment seem more likely to be proven true than in Syria this day.

Reference

Al Arabiya.  “Saudi King Abdullah cuts holiday short due to ‘events in the region’.”  June 15, 2013.

Chulov, Martin.  “Threat of sectarian war grows in Syria as jihadists get anti-aircraft missiles.”  The Guardian, June 15, 2013.

Deasy, Kristin.  “Al Qaeda in Iraq defies global leader over relationship with Syria’s Al Nusra: Reports.” Global Post, June 15, 2013.

Henderson, Simon.  “Bahrain Rounds Up Organizers of Antigovernment Violence.”  Policy Alert, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, June 14, 2013:

Initially emulating uprisings elsewhere in the Arab world, the protests quickly divided along sectarian lines, pitting members of the majority Shiite population against the Sunni ruling family’s security forces. Since then, February 14 members have apparently engaged in near-nightly clashes with police, resulting in more than 100 dead and 2,000 injured among civilians and security personnel.

Osborn, Andrew and Amena Bakr.  “Putin, Obama face off over Syria; rebels get Saudi missiles.”  Reuters, June 17, 2013.

Reuters.  “Russia says it will not allow Syria no-fly zones.”  June 17, 2013.

Starr, Barbara, Holly Yan, Chelsea J. Carter.  “Analyst: Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria now best-equipped of the group.”  CNN, June 17, 2013.

Wintour, Patrick.  “Syria: Putin backs Assad and berates west over proposal to arm rebels.”  The Guardian, June 16, 2013.

FTAC – Another Dollop of The Wisdom . . . .

04 Monday Mar 2013

Posted by in A Little Wisdom, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Religion

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Responding to an assertion having to do with the civilizing effects of one of the monotheistic religions on a remote indigenous people:

They were always human and will be always regardless of what they believe.

Monotheism has helped a large portion of the world simplify the relationship between the existence of the ego and of the cosmic and has freed energy to attend to better and other than mere survival.

Like the search for gold.

And slaves.

Forgive me for having been arch.

The post-Soviet Left goes perhaps too far with ditching religious mysticism, which includes the concept of a God.

Or gods.

We should not mind the imagination so much but rather the want of the destruction of it in myriad others.

Guest Blog: “Banning the Burqa”

12 Tuesday Feb 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics, Religion

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In more than half the Muslim countries women wear skirts.

By Waseem Altaf

In December 2011 Canada banned wearing of “burqa” within its territory.

Earlier on France, Tunisia, Turkey, and Syria did the same.

The Canadian ban was meant to ensure that those taking the oath of Canadian citizenship were actually reciting the oath.

The fact remains that wearing of clothing that completely or almost entirely covers the face is fundamentally at odds with public life.

Is wearing the “burqa” a religious obligation?

Perhaps not!

Women do not wear “burqa” when they perform Hajj.

Does it have to do with culture?

Yes, but which culture?

Is this Culture of tribal areas where women wear shuttle cock “burqas”, or Punjab where we find those black “burqas?”

If the objective is “show of chastity” then for those women who are not allowed to leave their houses, the ones’ wearing shuttle cocks are immodest. To the ones’ wearing shuttle cocks, those wearing the black “burqa” are essentially culpable. To the ones’ wearing black “burqa”, the ones wearing a “chadar” are downright unchaste. To the ones wearing a “chadar”, the ones wearing a “dupatta” are promoters of obscenity.

So on and so forth.

In more than half the Muslim countries women wear skirts. But typical Pakistani women would prefer wearing a “shalwar kameez” worn by Hindu women, than wear a skirt put on by a Muslim Tajik or Turkish or an Iraqi woman. So local cultures determine the dress code and it is not appropriate to set universal standards of so called chastity; as every culture has its nuances and niceties, these have to be respected.

We find female visitors from the West coming to Pakistan and India wearing “shalwar kameez” or jeans while rarely visible in skirts or shorts.

Similarly the Western culture has its own values which should be respected by those who have opted to live there. Those who get remuneration in dollars, francs, pounds and liras; who enjoy full social security benefits in the West; who have sought asylum in there while their lives were not secure in their own countries.

Those who enjoy the Western lifestyle should also have respect for Western values and should try to assimilate them or should abandon the West and come back to Gujaranwala or Kabirwala and put on “burqas” of any color or texture.

From a purely scientific perspective “burqa” is not suitable to wear in hot climates. It obstructs peripheral vision. It also deprives you from the positive effects of nutrients you get from sunlight.

It also seems bizarre when we find pictures of “burqa” clad women on passports and NIC’s.

One should also remember that numerous acts of terrorism in many parts of our country were committed by women wearing “burqas”. Hence “burqa” is also a security threat. It also imprisons you and isolates you from your surroundings and distances you from those around you, creating a trust deficit. It also reminds of medieval constraints where despotic monarchs would hide their concubines from others lest they were exposed to an outsider, endangering their absolute ownership of the “live object”.

As “satti” was banned by the English which did have sacred connotations, banning of “burqa” by Western countries should also be welcomed.

Finally, if you have opted to settle in the West while begging for citizenship, you have no right to contaminate the West with nonsense.

Or if you think it is good to wear a “burqa” put it on in your own country — that is Pakistan or if at all you want to enjoy the civil liberties and social security benefits and human rights and special allowance for the jobless and pizzas and burgers and Western standards of health and education and lavish housing and entertainment and sights of bikini clad babes on the beach then please for God’s sake respect the cultural niceties of those who are providers of all this stuff which you cannot have here in Pakistan or for that matter from the so called heartland of Islam.

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Reprinted by permission of the author, Waseem Altaf; lightly edited for visual impact and heightened verbal sensibility.

Related Reference

Sherwood, Deborah.  “World Exclusive: Spooks Unmask Burka Death Squads.”  Daily Star, June 12, 2011.

Guest Blog: “Were There Any Great Muslim Scientists?”

08 Friday Feb 2013

Posted by in Politics, Religion

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By Waseem Altaf

As we remain enamored by our past achievements in the sciences, we forget that there is very little “original” we as Muslims can celebrate and be proud of.

It was during the reign of Abbasid caliphs, particularly Mamun-ur-Rashid (around 813 CE) that in his Dar-ul-Hikmah (the house of wisdom) in Baghdad, the Muslim scholars would begin translating the classic Greek works, primarily toeing the Aristotelian tradition.

In addition, they were heavily relying on Persian and Indian sources.

They also penned huge commentaries on works by Greek philosophers.  However, the Muslim translators were small in number and were primarily driven by curiosity. More than ninety nine percent Arabic translations of works of Greek philosophers were done by either Christian or Jewish scholars.

It is interesting to note that Islamic astronomy, based on Ptolemy’s system was geocentric. Algebra was originally a Greek discipline and ‘Arabic’ numbers were actually Indian.  Most of these works were available to the West during 12th century when the first renaissance was taking place. Although Western scholars did travel to Spain to study Arabic versions of classical Greek thought, they soon found out that better versions of original texts in Greek were also available in the libraries of the ancient Greek city of Byzantium.

However, it would be unfair not to mention some of those great Muslim scholars, though very few in number, who genuinely contributed in the development of philosophy and science.

Al-Razi (865 – 925 CE) from Persia, the greatest of all Muslim physicians, philosophers and alchemists wrote 184 articles and books, dismissed revelation and considered religion a dangerous thing.

Al-Razi was condemned for blasphemy and almost all his books were destroyed later.

Ibn-e-Sina or Avicinna (980-1037CE), another great physician, philosopher and scientist was an Uzbek. Avicenna held philosophy superior to theology. His views were in sharp contrast to central Islamic doctrines and he rejected the resurrection of the dead in flesh and blood. As a consequence of his views, he became main target of Al-Ghazali and was labeled an apostate.
Ibn-e-Rushd (1126-1198 CE) or Averroes from Spain was a philosopher and scientist who expounded the Quran in Aristotelian terms. He was found guilty of heresy, his books burnt, he was interrogated and banished from Lucena.

Al-Bairuni (973-1048 CE), the father of Indology and a versatile genius, was of the strong view that Quran has its own domain and it does not interfere with the realm of science.

Al-Khawarazmi (780-850 CE) was another Persian mathematician, astronomer and geographer. The historian Al-Tabri considered him a Zoroastrian while others thought that he was a Muslim. However nowhere in his works has he acknowledged Islam or linked any of his findings to the holy text.

Omar Kyayyam(1048-1131 CE), one of the greatest mathematicians, astronomers and poets was highly critical of religion, particularly Islam. He severely criticized the idea that every event and phenomena was the result of divine intervention.

Al-Farabi(872-950 CE), another great Muslim philosopher, highly inspired by Aristotle, considered reason superior to revelation and advocated for the relegation of prophecy to philosophy.

Abu Musa Jabir- bin- Hayan or Geber (721-815 CE) was an accomplished Muslim alchemist cum pharmacist. Although he was inclined towards mysticism, he fully acknowledged the role of experimentation in scientific endeavors.

Ibn-ul-haitham or Hazen (965-1040 CE) was an outstanding physicist, mathematician, astronomer and an expert on optics. He was ordered by Fatimid King Al-Hakim to regulate the floods of the Nile, which he knew was not scientifically possible. He feigned madness and was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life.

As we go through the life history of these great men we find that they were influenced by Greek, Babylonian or Indian contributions to philosophy and science, had a critical and reasoning mind and were ‘not good’ Muslims or even atheists. A significant number of them were reluctant to even reveal the status of their beliefs for fear of reprisal from the fanatics.

They never ascribed their achievements to Islam or divinity.

And they were scholars and scientists because of a critical mind which would think and derive inspiration from observation and not scriptures which set restrictions on free thinking and unhindered pursuit of knowledge.

Hence bringing in Islam to highlight achievements of Muslim scientists is nothing but sheer rhetoric as these men did not derive their achievements out of Islam or flourished due to Islam.

And we find that whatever little contribution to science was made can be owed to ‘imperfect Muslims’.  In fact, It was the ‘perfect Muslim’, the Islamist, from the 12th century who was to give the biggest blow to scientific thought in the Muslim world: Imam Ghazali (1058-1111 CE) who still occupies a center stage among Muslim philosophers openly denounced the laws of nature and scientific reasoning.

Ghazali argued that any such laws would put God’s hands in chains. He would assert that a piece of cotton burns when put to fire, not because of physical reasons but because God wants it to burn. Ghazali was also a strong supporter of the Ash’arites; philosophers who would uphold the precedence of divine intervention over physical phenomena and bitterly opposed the Mu’tazillites; the rationalists who were the true upholders of scientific thought.  In other words Ghazali championed the cause of orthodoxy and dogmatism at the cost of rationality and scientific reasoning.

Today we find that all four major schools of ‘Sunni’ Islam reject the concept of ‘Ijtehad’ which can loosely be translated as ‘freedom of thought’. Hence there is absolutely no room for any innovation or modification in traditional thought patterns.

We also find that as Europe was making use of technology while transforming into a culture of machines, the acceptance of these machines was extremely slow in the Islamic world. One prime example is that of the printing press which reached Muslim lands in 1492; however printing was banned by Islamic authorities because they believed the Koran would be dishonored by appearing out of a machine. As a result, Arabs did not acquire printing press until the 18th century.

It also stands established that science is born out of secularism and democracy and not religious dogmatism. And science only flourished in places where religion had no role to play in matters of state. Hence there is an inverse relationship between religious orthodoxy and progress in science.

Rational thought in the Muslim world developed during the reign of liberal Muslim rulers of the Abbasid dynasty who patronized the Mu’tazillites or rational thinkers.  After the religious zealots’ compilation of the Ahadis and the rise of scholars like Al-Ghazali that all scientific reasoning came to an end in the 13th century.  As a consequence the Muslims contributed almost nothing to scientific progress and human civilization since the dawn of the 13th century. And while science and technology flourish in the modern world, a vast majority of Muslims, engulfed by obscurantism, still find solace in fantasies of a bygone era——the so called ‘golden age’ of Islam.

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Reprinted by permission of the author, Waseem Altaf; lightly edited for visual impact and heightened verbal sensibility.

FTAC – Questions God Only Knows

08 Thursday Nov 2012

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

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I understand the reluctance to move more deeply into the theological discourse between the Abrahamic religions and to skirt the recorded history preserved or recovered from the earliest days of the Common Era. So many question come up . . .

Who was Abram before God called to him and would go on to call him Abraham?

As none of us are prophets ourselves, should we behave as if we were prophets, prophetic, and empowered both to judge and sway the lives of others?

Among the believing collectively, God has made, preserved, and heard — and hears — the children of Isaac and Israel both: what are we fighting if we fight on behalf of the descendents of one or the other?

Jesus, rabbi, produced his following, and Constantine, who has just been introduced in this thread by way of reference to the Council of Nicaea, consolidated that base, or leveraged it, turned it to war, and established Christian Rome. Has not God made Jesus and Constantine both?

Enlarge that last question: are others not chosen, important, included in God’s world?

Who was not created by God?

Who has been left out?

IF we are to judge the passage of ancient Jewish custom and thought through time and even suggest corruption, should not others having participated in the creation and transmission of behavioral, ethical, and moral guidance not also be examined?

Who would be immune from such questioning? Or above and beyond criticism?

If we set out to spare feelings while failing to spare lives, what, really, has been spared and kept?

In America, we no longer burn witches in Salem, generally doubt that witches exist at all, and we don’t condemn those who grow differently in their nature as somehow being beyond either God or nature, nor do we provide license for murder on so benign and trivial a basis. In Iran, the Ayatollah, believing himself directly the avatar of God, hangs the same from cranes. God made the Ayatollah too, I suppose, but what is that figure really and seen clearly before those cranes, ropes, and robbed souls?

The thread topic had to do with wine, halal in Islam, inseparable from Jewish custom and the Jewish appreciation of life and of God.  Another party voiced the Protestant, so it seemed to me, of judging indepently whether wine was a bad or good thing.

Wine is wine and is neither conscious nor possessed of conscience: it hasn’t the power to be either bad nor good, to be ethical or unethical, to be joyous and righteous or sorrowful and malign.  The one who abstains from wine and the one who partakes have all those powers: might not the badness and goodness reside instead in  the manners of both?

A part of the last questions and points fielded, stated, more or less: “Who has done the world good while drinking?”

Done good while drunk or between bouts: scores of beloved artists, musicians, and writers, famously. However, what I believe artists, musicians, and writers do — and there are more than a thousand of those here with me in spirit — is provide windows into many worlds and mirrors about the nature of our existence. Such are a little bit of everyone and everything, including God, and ecstatic or depressed, troubled in their private lives, they are ourselves with a creative spirit working through them.

The prophets depicted were themselves not angels — not one Prophet was Gabriel — but they to in depiction or historical acclaim or record live as men before becoming prophetic (e.g., Abraham had had a life as Abram before God called him, and text suggests he left behind and consigned to the past some wealth as he responded to that call; Moses enjoys not only depiction as an infant abandoned in the reeds but also as a shy fellow, a poor speaker — in his own words — and one not deserving, equipped, nor prepared to represent God, but God being God knows that and makes of Moses the Moses who leads the Jews and the mixed multitude into the desert and toward the Holy Land).

In Leviticus, Moses’ partner Aaron receives this instruction: “And the LORD spake unto Aaron, saying, 9Do not drink wine nor strong drink, thou, nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the tabernacle of the congregation, lest ye die:” — “when ye go into the tabernacle . . . .” The rule has context (Leviticus 10:5) and perhaps the context contains the principle: i.e., if one is to judge others, one should prepare for that work clean and sober.

The value of life, thankfulness for it, the pleasure to be had in living has in Jewish custom a relationship with wine, but in good episodes and households, even the sip comes with obligations to ourselves and others, and drunkenness, the lost of self-restraint, the taking of license or licentiousness, all of these things are discouraged.

Finally, with Noah, who plants vines and gets drunk first chance, we might also acknowledge a faulted humanity.

Although I feel I have been put to work on this thread — with thanks, for there has been a lot for looking over –I shall nonetheless stop here.

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FTAC – A Note to Pakistan on First Principles

07 Wednesday Nov 2012

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

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Whether confined to ethics — the realm of interpersonal behavior or behavior involving others and other entities, including the living earth with all of its creatures and wonders — or expanded in the spirit and a part of religion, a rule is not a principle, and rules in customs and law are the ropes flowing down from either bad or good principles.

That thought may be abstract, but it is not complex.

The modern conscience worldwide – not west or east, kosher, not kosher, haram, halal, not confined to Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, or Muslim – wants for guidance in first principles, not rules, which come next.

The world has at hand — and it has had them at hand a while — its best first principles. http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml Are such principles inherently eastern, western, aligned with or against any of the great religions or myriad other pathways in the way of beliefs or ethics?

If so, how so, and why?

If not, good.

History begins with the principles embraced within each individual heart.

If the principles have been ensnared in out-of-bounds hubris, narcissism, and vanity, they will fail because such principles would adhere not only to the cult of the person but consign all others to misery. As I believe in God, I believe that God hears the cry of the abandoned, lost, and unhappy, and He — or nature, and our collective gregarious nature — trends against exclusion. However, if you live in South Sudan or Syria or have been the refugee of sectarian violence in Iraq or have been toughing it out in Evin Prison, Iran, in relation to any number of cooked up political accusations, God and nature may be taking more time than wanted as regards the embrace of really bad — anomic, criminal, inhuman, lunatic, sadistic (especially) — principles.

Pakistan has somehow encouraged within itself, or allowed within itself, the distinction of finding a bogey — e.g., The Great Satan — in the “west” — or the “Zionist Entity”, assorted kafir, and such — but always, this only in its conflict aspect, something outside of itself when, in fact, it is itself it’s greatest challenge in transferring power away from persons and perhaps away from bad principles — you decide — toward sustainable good principles.

The really cool thing in humans is 1) we have choices to make individually and communally about how we live, and 2) these choices may be argued and determined first and principally in language in the mind, or, abstractly, in the heart and in the spirit.