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talkpolitics2015-10-27 02:40 pm
htpcl.livejournal.com) wrote in talkpolitics2015-10-27 02:40 pm
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Is this a clash of civilizations?
Greetings, ma'fellow indifferent procrastinators concerned citizens of the world! First of all, Im'ma throw this in here:
Richard Dawkins says 9/11 hijackers weren't evil, prompts angry response from religious right
First off, the right-wing, quite predictably, seem to have (intentionally?) misunderstood what he was actually saying. To me it reads that he's not saying the 911 attackers are not evil - but that they were not born evil, only they became evil under the influence of religion. Hardly inconsistent with what he's been, ehm... preaching, for quite a while.
That said, to put this into my local perspective, we here in my country have long prided (sic?) ourselves of our so called "ethnic model", i.e. our religious and ethnic tolerance - usually citing our centuries of relatively peaceful cohabitation with other ethnicities and religions as an example (among other, more heroic manifestations of that model). Which is probably why part of our society was so stunned by the "un-Christian" position of our nationalists about the Syrian refugees who've come knocking at our doorstep.
This makes me think that we're actually misunderstanding the very essence of religious tolerance. For many, who believe religion goes hand in hand with fanaticism, religious tolerance is inherently impossible to exist. And in the other extreme, those who do allow for its existence tend to translate "religious tolerance" in most cases as complete lack of criticism to any religious doctrine. For them, religiously tolerant people, despite their differences in dogmatic and ethical principle, are supposed to pray together, worship together, and refrain from questioning the other's religious beliefs lest they offend somebody, because what matters is to just have some set of moral principles, be they a result of their religious upbringing or not, no matter which particular religion they adhere to and how moral those moral principles are - because all religions are somehow supposed to teach of good morality, i.e. they're inherently a good thing.
For most people of faith, this might seem like a compromise with their own consciousness and religious convictions, but from a pragmatic standpoint, quite a necessary one. The essence of the tolerance between the representatives of two religious communities is exactly in their mutual respect of the right of a free choice of religion - and that sounds fine, until we get back to the real world.
But the question is, are Christianity and Islam actually doing this step towards each other? On paper, they're supposed to. In practice, not so much. And that's been the case ever since their inception. See, Huntington was recently cited around here (and duly bashed for being a partisan hack; heh...), but he may've had a point about the symbols of cultural identity: people are now looking to rediscover their identity, and they've started marching under the same old banners towards the frontline of confrontation - maybe the flags have slightly different colors nowadays, but under the surface, they're still made of the same cloth. The enemies are the same, the divisive lines are similar, and the clash is the same or similar like in the past.
Many are seeing in the refugee wave that's been washing onto Europe, apart from the long hand of Soros the evil illuminati, also a remake of the old clash between the Christian and Islamic civilization. They may or may not be right, but just in case, it'd be useful to get to know the purported "enemy" a bit better. And here, again, ideas prove far more powerful than actual weapons - in this case, as in many others, religion being those ideas. This identity clash comes with a good baggage of history, territory, myths, symbols, and it encompasses entire societies just as it used to in the past.
The attempt to either create or at least tolerate a so called "Euro-Islam" (enlightened, modernized, secular Islam) seems to have failed spectacularly now (something that even the major European leaders are beginning to acknowledge), because it was clear that in order for it to work, either Islam had to be Europeized, or Europe had to be Islamized. The two meeting somewhere in the middle turned out neither realistic nor desirable by either side. At the end of the day, the latter process may've already become a fact - and now actively enforced by those same European leaders. Supported by friendly politicians and advocates for a new wave of cheap guest labor as a condition for the sustained growth of the European economies, a whole new element has been introduced into the European civilization - which would've been fine, had it actually taken the extended hand, and stayed true to its part of the deal. The hopes were that it would be integrated peacefully into the "superior" host culture - but in reality, this newcomer element always remained deeply entrenched in its own past, so what it actually did was to do its best to guarantee its own future as a capsulated, unchanged entity within the larger culture, and ensure that it would remain favoritized and immunized to accountability. It didn't establish a new, reformed identity in its new home, Europe - what it did was to create islands of its own culture within the larger host continent. This has prevented its inherently theocratic nature from being transformed in the conditions of the inherently secular environment it had arrived to.
The everyday folklore Islam has become "globalized" today. It has turned itself into a militant Islamic indignation, an actively violent reaction to Western civilizational superiority; it has adopted the principles of anti-imperialism, but one that was inspired by religion. In result, as a reaction the Europeans have started perceiving every type of Islam as fundamentalist, and that every type of fundamentalism as terrorism - therefore anyone professing Islam is perceived either actually or at least potentially as a terrorist. And not surprisingly, the divisive lines were sure to come back gaping soon.
Well, tell you what. This is wrong. It is categorically untrue that Islam=fundamentalism=terrorism. But it's also true that the jihadists from the Islamic State aren't doing anything different from what their proud (and equally brainwashed) predecessors were doing at the time of Muhammad. They're browsing their sacred texts for a religious pretext for their otherwise inexcusable actions, no matter how monstrous they are from any normal human's standpoint. As Egyptian writer and journalist Hamed Abdel-Samad recently stated (himself having been sentenced to death in absentia by ISIL for his book The Islamic Fascism), ISIL is the rightful successor of Muhammad - both in word and action.
The thing is, political Islamism is much more a policy than a religion (Islamism != Islam). It's rather based on Marxism than being a religious doctrine. It may nominally derive its principles from the Quran, but in practice it's very much akin to the militant left-wing organizations of the near past (and believe me, as a East European, I know those things). In result, it has rendered the long-term peaceful cohabitation between Islam and other religions (not just Christianity) impossible. And that'll remain so, until Muhammad's successors figure it's time to come out of their self-imposed Dark Ages, and in the meantime Europe radically reforms its welfare state, and rethinks the way it perceives its own identity and principles. It has got to become more assertive in that respect, and stop shying away from enforcing its own rules more stringently - otherwise, over time, it's going to be increasingly threatened with transformation into something that's inherently hostile to its own stated identity and principles.
Richard Dawkins says 9/11 hijackers weren't evil, prompts angry response from religious right
First off, the right-wing, quite predictably, seem to have (intentionally?) misunderstood what he was actually saying. To me it reads that he's not saying the 911 attackers are not evil - but that they were not born evil, only they became evil under the influence of religion. Hardly inconsistent with what he's been, ehm... preaching, for quite a while.
That said, to put this into my local perspective, we here in my country have long prided (sic?) ourselves of our so called "ethnic model", i.e. our religious and ethnic tolerance - usually citing our centuries of relatively peaceful cohabitation with other ethnicities and religions as an example (among other, more heroic manifestations of that model). Which is probably why part of our society was so stunned by the "un-Christian" position of our nationalists about the Syrian refugees who've come knocking at our doorstep.
This makes me think that we're actually misunderstanding the very essence of religious tolerance. For many, who believe religion goes hand in hand with fanaticism, religious tolerance is inherently impossible to exist. And in the other extreme, those who do allow for its existence tend to translate "religious tolerance" in most cases as complete lack of criticism to any religious doctrine. For them, religiously tolerant people, despite their differences in dogmatic and ethical principle, are supposed to pray together, worship together, and refrain from questioning the other's religious beliefs lest they offend somebody, because what matters is to just have some set of moral principles, be they a result of their religious upbringing or not, no matter which particular religion they adhere to and how moral those moral principles are - because all religions are somehow supposed to teach of good morality, i.e. they're inherently a good thing.
For most people of faith, this might seem like a compromise with their own consciousness and religious convictions, but from a pragmatic standpoint, quite a necessary one. The essence of the tolerance between the representatives of two religious communities is exactly in their mutual respect of the right of a free choice of religion - and that sounds fine, until we get back to the real world.
But the question is, are Christianity and Islam actually doing this step towards each other? On paper, they're supposed to. In practice, not so much. And that's been the case ever since their inception. See, Huntington was recently cited around here (and duly bashed for being a partisan hack; heh...), but he may've had a point about the symbols of cultural identity: people are now looking to rediscover their identity, and they've started marching under the same old banners towards the frontline of confrontation - maybe the flags have slightly different colors nowadays, but under the surface, they're still made of the same cloth. The enemies are the same, the divisive lines are similar, and the clash is the same or similar like in the past.
Many are seeing in the refugee wave that's been washing onto Europe, apart from the long hand of Soros the evil illuminati, also a remake of the old clash between the Christian and Islamic civilization. They may or may not be right, but just in case, it'd be useful to get to know the purported "enemy" a bit better. And here, again, ideas prove far more powerful than actual weapons - in this case, as in many others, religion being those ideas. This identity clash comes with a good baggage of history, territory, myths, symbols, and it encompasses entire societies just as it used to in the past.
The attempt to either create or at least tolerate a so called "Euro-Islam" (enlightened, modernized, secular Islam) seems to have failed spectacularly now (something that even the major European leaders are beginning to acknowledge), because it was clear that in order for it to work, either Islam had to be Europeized, or Europe had to be Islamized. The two meeting somewhere in the middle turned out neither realistic nor desirable by either side. At the end of the day, the latter process may've already become a fact - and now actively enforced by those same European leaders. Supported by friendly politicians and advocates for a new wave of cheap guest labor as a condition for the sustained growth of the European economies, a whole new element has been introduced into the European civilization - which would've been fine, had it actually taken the extended hand, and stayed true to its part of the deal. The hopes were that it would be integrated peacefully into the "superior" host culture - but in reality, this newcomer element always remained deeply entrenched in its own past, so what it actually did was to do its best to guarantee its own future as a capsulated, unchanged entity within the larger culture, and ensure that it would remain favoritized and immunized to accountability. It didn't establish a new, reformed identity in its new home, Europe - what it did was to create islands of its own culture within the larger host continent. This has prevented its inherently theocratic nature from being transformed in the conditions of the inherently secular environment it had arrived to.
The everyday folklore Islam has become "globalized" today. It has turned itself into a militant Islamic indignation, an actively violent reaction to Western civilizational superiority; it has adopted the principles of anti-imperialism, but one that was inspired by religion. In result, as a reaction the Europeans have started perceiving every type of Islam as fundamentalist, and that every type of fundamentalism as terrorism - therefore anyone professing Islam is perceived either actually or at least potentially as a terrorist. And not surprisingly, the divisive lines were sure to come back gaping soon.
Well, tell you what. This is wrong. It is categorically untrue that Islam=fundamentalism=terrorism. But it's also true that the jihadists from the Islamic State aren't doing anything different from what their proud (and equally brainwashed) predecessors were doing at the time of Muhammad. They're browsing their sacred texts for a religious pretext for their otherwise inexcusable actions, no matter how monstrous they are from any normal human's standpoint. As Egyptian writer and journalist Hamed Abdel-Samad recently stated (himself having been sentenced to death in absentia by ISIL for his book The Islamic Fascism), ISIL is the rightful successor of Muhammad - both in word and action.
The thing is, political Islamism is much more a policy than a religion (Islamism != Islam). It's rather based on Marxism than being a religious doctrine. It may nominally derive its principles from the Quran, but in practice it's very much akin to the militant left-wing organizations of the near past (and believe me, as a East European, I know those things). In result, it has rendered the long-term peaceful cohabitation between Islam and other religions (not just Christianity) impossible. And that'll remain so, until Muhammad's successors figure it's time to come out of their self-imposed Dark Ages, and in the meantime Europe radically reforms its welfare state, and rethinks the way it perceives its own identity and principles. It has got to become more assertive in that respect, and stop shying away from enforcing its own rules more stringently - otherwise, over time, it's going to be increasingly threatened with transformation into something that's inherently hostile to its own stated identity and principles.
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Look how utterly shocked I am.
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^That's why I said it's surprising that he missed yet another chance to say that the brown people of the Middle East are inherently inferior to Europeans.
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Now, say it with me:
"A religion is not a race."
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When it comes to, for example, formal logic, he can substitute his own prejudice in place of reasoned application. Anslem's ontonlogical proof of the existence of God, and the formalisation by Gödel in the mid C20th springs to mind. He rather missed the point: but at least he eventually admitted such.
But Lalla loves him, dammit.
BTW, he's an aristo too.
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You mean "Anselm", right? I find that "proof" to be astoundingly weak. I can conceptualize an immovable post, and I can conceptualize an irresistible cannonball. And yet, if both were to exist, neither could. Disproof by contradiction, that ontological proofs of "perfection" impart existence. QED.
That took me all of twenty seconds.
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I may just point you towards the definitions of necessary and contingent in the ontological argument, and thereafter the modal variations of the argument. You seem a bright spark, and you might find them entertaining.
As for the reading list, it is some thirty years old. But I still read, albeit more sporadically. And I read Dawkins sometimes, sympathise with him occasionally, and am irritated by him often.
I admit to being a deist of the mathematical fundamentalist/omega theory persuasion. But only after a few drinks.