Tag Archives: secularism

FTAC: A Comment on America’s Deep Polarization

03 Thursday May 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Politics

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The Left is the achievement of Western enlightenment.

Recall the authoritarian and reactionary governance in place that involved hundreds of years of warfare between politically absolute monarchies and the development of a mercantile class powerful enough, eventually, to stand up for their own interests and security.

The Soviet / post-Soviet Far Left indeed continued the Russian historical experience with paternal authoritarianism — and, of course, it built on the secret police organization established by Nicholas II (the Okhrana). The rest is more or less KGB history and a long history of motivating or driving politics based on the amplification of the victimization of numerous groups thrown beneath the wheels of history — or believing themselves so.

The formerly moderate Left’s — or “cultural left’s” — embrace of humanism, secularism, the broadest freedom possible for persons (as opposed to, say, impersonal “headcount”) is echoed in our Constitution and Bill of Rights. We were raised to believe in Man and Reason and great possibilities. It’s from the Russian side and, in part, the 19th Century and earlier portions of the 20th that we seem approving of authoritarianism and thuggery, frankly, in now polarized Left and Right camps.

One may suppose the center has not held — and we have forgotten many of the good things we as Americans were to embrace.

Related on BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/02/02/united-states-of-america-basic-training/

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FTAC: “Is there an ‘American’ cemetery somewhere?”

08 Wednesday Nov 2017

Posted by in American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, North America, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Politics, Religion

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Abraham Lincoln Statue, Gettysburg National Military Park Visitor's Center, November 8, 2010

Abraham Lincoln Statue, Gettysburg National Military Park Visitor’s Center, November 8, 2010, (c)2010 James S. Oppenheim

I’m an American of Jewish descent and the last name tells of a small wine-making town on the Rhine. Perhaps growing up the proper noun-based cultural infusions in the development of self-concept shaped whatever it is I’ve become, but had those details been missing, would I have gravitated toward writing, music, photography, and, later, blogging?

In the democratic modern mode, there’s a lot more going on in the “mixing” of the person — multiple influences and variables — and in many ways we choose our character and if not for better — I’ve been handed some things . . . haven’t made a good life or at least picket-fence-and 2.5 children template of the “American Dream” — then at least for the possession of integrity, an authentic existence, which I think ultimately a good thing.

In other modes — authoritarian, medieval, Orwellian — legacy may indeed fix in place the future.

On the left sidebar of my blog are in essence listed my values —
https://conflict-backchannels.com/

We should be able to enjoy our respective ethnolinguistic and other legacies in heritage by finding for ourselves what is noble in survival and scrapping and shrugging away and tucking in the miseries of the past. For everyone: something happened back there — so what needs to happen to produce a better experience in living, personal and community-wide, tomorrow?

I don’t know where I want to be buried anymore.

Is there an “American” cemetery somewhere?

Who are your people?

My people are Americans.

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Also in Media: Dailytimes | “Defiance” | Tammy Swofford | December 9, 2016

09 Friday Dec 2016

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

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Defiance! The word is not a bad one when it comes to religion. Because it is on the heels of many, an act of defiance that religion has become healthier, stronger, more tolerant, and certainly more enjoyable. Martin Luther hammered his edict into a wooden door, and the empire of the Catholic Church was shaken. Colonists fled Europe. Their defiance against the belief that the state had any right to meddle in the private worship of the citizen proved a powerful motivation to escape. Resistance against government constraint of private acts of worship caused them to load onto their wooden ships and set sail. The Mayflower Compact sprang to life at Plymouth Rock, and the giant-hearted turned their faces into the harsh wind. Some shivered and died from the cold, while other starved to death in Jamestown. But the strength in their bones carried fires of conviction into the marrow of their future generations.

Defiance.  America remains a powerful societal example today because of acts of religious defiance.

Source: Dailytimes | Defiance

Also in Media: “A wake-up call: Jews challenged in the UK” | Noor Dahri | The Blogs | The Times of Israel | November 10, 2016

11 Friday Nov 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Anti-Semitism, Great Britain and United Kingdom

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As a former anti-Semite and anti-Zionist campaigner, I am very worried about the recent wave of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel incidents happening across the UK. I know anti-Semitism, I practised it and I can smell the threat which is on its way to the Jewish community of the UK.

Source: A wake-up call: Jews challenged in the UK | Noor Dahri | The Blogs | The Times of Israel

Note:

“When I look at the flag of Israel, I realise the true meaning of this flag is as the symbol of those six million Jewish martyrs who sacrificed their most valuable lives for the future of their race and religion, for the future of their children and for the future of the only Jewish nation in the world.”

The true meaning of Israel’s flag isn’t about the Holocaust, which is just one event, however horrifying and ultimately ineffable it may have been, but signal of more than 5,000 years of the survival of Jewish culture, ethics, language, and law — and perhaps today signal as well of the survival of the influence of the same in others, much including Christians and Muslims, for without Moses in the hagiography, there would be neither Jesus nor Muhammad.  There have been always other possibilities, but the lore and intellectual adventure of the Hebrews appears to have served the formation of the two great contemporary religions.

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FTAC -Islam – A Comment on Sophisticated Interpretation / Reform

28 Tuesday Jun 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Religion, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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I’ve never doubted Jasser’s sincerity but I have questioned the power of modern sensibility to “re-map” scripture. We’re beyond the age of miracles but not of religious sentiment, and to approach the updating of the legacy in scripture and related literature of Islam involves first overriding Muhammad’s warnings about tampering. On the part of modern and sophisticated people, I’ve seen two channels organizing effort to either interpret the Qur’an as a multilayered exercise in thought — and who is to say it’s not? — or, as Jasser and others have done, question the instructions and have the great conversation, and may both tracks lead away from the barbarism on display in Baghdadi’s emulation (so he believes) with ISIS in Syria-Iraq.

Related

ISIS – BackChannels supports the idea that ISIS was incubated by Damascus with the support of Moscow and Tehran, and that the method used we “de-selection” for combat and bombing early in the process that has become the “Syrian Tragedy”.

Chief in evidence: http://www.newsweek.com/us-accuses-assad-aiding-islamic-state-through-airstrikes-338582

More recent and related to the above as regards Moscow’s predictable style:  http://www.newsweek.com/russia-has-killed-more-syrian-civilians-assad-or-isis-last-month-report-426775

As interpreted by BackChannels: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/02/syria-assad-vs-the-terrorists-how-isis-defends-assad/

Islam

Mention is not endorsement, but as much may help move the conversation farther away from consideration of Baghdadi’s 7th Century display as immutable.

American Islamic Forum for Democracy

Center for Islamic Pluralism

Ex-Muslims of North America

LibForAll Foundation & International Institute of Qur’anic Studies

Muslim Reform Movement

New Age Islam & Rethinking Islam

Plain Islam & Islamic Society of Britain

Qanta Ahmed – National Review — BackChannels considers conservative American and Muslim physician and writer Qanta Ahmed a force of nature sufficient for mention as a figure representing a modern pluralist stance in Islam without reform and opposite the Muslim Brotherhood as regards leveraging concession from the rest of the world.

Wasatia

I have not subjected the list to scrutiny beyond the declared penchant of each for moderation and good.

Those who obsess on fundamental core tenets and advisements and hadith and sunnah may be expected to continue to condemn an unreformed Islam by way of its reflection from the past — the Religion of Peace web site conveys the tough critic’s perspective.  Whether the religion, which hundreds of millions of Muslims have assumed perfect from the start, has strength to weather genuine moderation and updating remains to be seen.

Political Psychology

“Cults of personality”, “dictatorship”, “fascism”, “feudal political absolutism”, “idolatry”, “malignant narcissism” — such terms revolve around the construction of feudal space and the will and rule of a single overwhelming and ruthless personality that through the carrot and stick of patronage and intimidation creates and manipulates a universe around itself.  On BackChannels, the great struggle with the past has been presented this way:

Feudal Absolute Power vs Modern Democratic Distribution

For Islam and for Muslims to integrate with the cultural complexities of modern, pluralist, and secular democracies, which may then develop stronger capitalist economies with social welfare attachments, may require some reconsideration of Muhammad’s conflation with God, whether generated originally or by clerics or others promoting their own power in supposed emulation.

Addendum

http://www.danielpipes.org/17792/why-islams-reformers-are-vitally-important – 7/18/2017.

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Aside

04 Friday Jul 2014

Posted by in FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Religion

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“Secular” does not exclude religion or considerations related to religion: what it does is contain all with policy appropriate to predominant population while in fact endorsing all to the limits possible.

The effect of this “all for all” thought in contemporary western theological communities has been to foster a host in variety of ecumenical dialogues and related scholarly research. The fruits of that research, in turn, inform the educated that care, dip into so much material, or run into the same over the course of a lifetime. In the famed “melting pot”, we are all a little bit of one another, starting with the influence of the indigenous before the first landing. Perhaps that goes on — e.g., reading _The Masks of God_ or William James and _The Variety of Religious Experiences_ — to relax our grip on any single religious basis for the creation of law.

Fans of America may be reminded that some of our colonialists also burned “witches” at the stake in their day. In this age, we have a few who play with rattlesnakes to prove their relationship with God. Sadly, some die that way (and perhaps are thought less deserving, sigh, for not having been truly protected . . . or they’re on their way to heaven).

Imho, we’re a wild species possessed of great intelligence, language, and imagination, and perhaps more of all three than is good for us, but that’s the condition. We’re not all alike. Sometimes cultures, sometimes persons become destructive in nature as their boundaries collapse or as they seek to expand themselves much against others, and they confuse the space they get into and make a mess of everything they touch. Those we need to recognize sooner and deal with in various ways.

Blah blah blah, blah blah, blah.

I may have to settle down with fiction.

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FNS – “Not By Religion Alone” — Pakistan, Reference Ghazi Salahuddin

21 Sunday Oct 2012

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Pakistan

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Secularism is deemed to be a dirty word in Pakistan. But it is an idea whose time has come. In fact, it may already be too late. We now stand effectively disconnected from the freedom movement that was led by Mohammad Ali Jinnah and his associates.

Article: http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-9-138736-Not-by-religion-alone