* THE CLOSED CIRCLE: AN INTERPRETATION OF THE ARABS – David Pryce-Jones [looks at Arab culture and history and demonstrates the endemic corruption and fecklessness of a people who have no concept of ‘civil society’ and have governed themselves generally very badly in the 60 years or so since the end of colonialism]

* THE CLASH OF FUNDAMENTALISMS – Tariq Ali [sometimes irritating but also often very honest, warts-and-all history of major parts of the Muslim world and how Islam has changed – generally for the worse – and has left a permanent state of misery. The author is a very leftist atheist intellectual of Pakistani origin who has lived for many years in London]

* THE ISLAMIST: WHY I JOINED RADICAL ISLAM IN BRITAIN, WHAT I SAW INSIDE AND WHY I LEFT - Ed Hussain [Outlines the frightening nature of the beliefs and objectives of British Islamists, and points to the criminal failure of the British establishment and "power intellectuals"in the face of a transparently professed intention to destroy the British state and Western civilization generally].

* THE POLITICALLY INCORRECT GUIDE TO ISLAM – Robert Spencer [pulls no punches; populist but generally quite truthful. Excellent focuser of why the West should not be so bleeding-heart ‘tolerant’ of Islam]

I still have to read
* INFIDEL - Ayaan Hirsi Ali

The great tragedy of Islam is that the Sunni stream "closed the gates of ijtihad [independent critical thinking]about 800 years ago. The retreat into fundamentalism (which affects Shia as well as Sunni) is not such an immediate worry where it affects only hellhole Muslim countries, but when imported into the West it MUST BE ROBUSTLY OPPOSED.

“Tolerance” of benighted, callous evil and violence is a crime and a gross stupidity.

Pericles’ belief he’ll never have to contend with Islam here ignores the demographic bomb – that Muslims are breeding uncontrollably while Westerners seem to have lost confidence in their own civilization. Too many of us have swallowed the bankruptcy of postmodernism, recognize no imperatives other than short-term economic, and have abandoned faith in absolute values.

Oliver,

Is the present issue of muslims being misunderstood only intelligible in terms of spans of time much longer than those implicit here?

Toynbee’s noteworthy contribution to the study of the rise and fall of civilisations does provide a prism for understanding the human experience over the entire historical record, however, if we limit the discussion to our immediate context then it feels like using the hubble telescope to examine a pea.

Offering a resume of our spiritual past (with some Arabian Fairy Tale as the starting point) as an attempt to repudiate belief in God today, may help you justify your unbelief but does not explain the spiritual dimension of faith.

“Maybe this small recognition can be leveraged to achieve more harmony?” resonates with George’s quote from the Pope.

This is the same Pope, that in a speech on September 12, 2006 (primarily defending the idea of Jesus Christ as the living God), raised the question (ref:Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus):

'Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...'
The Christian God is a reasonable God, he asserts, the Word made flesh.

The quote George chose may be evidence of the Pope’s increasing dhimittude, as those “differences” cited continue to be a major stumbling block for both sides.

A deconstruction of Muslim propaganda is not “attacking the muslim world”. But I take the point that this will “serve only those who want to rid our public (later also private) lives of any religion”.

Hi George,

Thanks for the clarification and the excellent Toynbee citation.

From my perspective, countering religious parties frequently defend by attacking their opponent. It happens “within” religions too. The Great Schism being one example. The Jewish faith also experienced internal turmoil from the sixteenth century until Napoleon’s time. Islam split over Muhammad’s line of succession, as you would know.

By centrism, I mean adherents bunker down and look inwards.

I do agree, “there were people among adherents to all sorts of world-views, theist as well as atheist, for whom “‘defence by offence‘... is like a drink is to an alcoholic“, of which this was an example”. Herein, many a Christian would have opposites in Islam proclaiming to be “inerrant in matters of Islamic faith”. All too often we see dualists, who each slip a silver bullet into their pistols, in the belief that that their opposite is evil. That is what I mean by centrism; that is what I mean by intolerance.

You have possibly read I have sometimes presented an anthropologist’s telling of Yahweh. Many Christian would deny history, sometimes, literally chiselled in stone, instead of placing these findings in the context of mythos, which is valid for a religion to do. Christian respondents seem provoked rather the challenged.

KateO,

Thank you. I think you a mellowing.

“Offering a resume of our spiritual past (with some Arabian Fairy Tale as the starting point) as an attempt to repudiate belief in God today, may help you justify your unbelief but does not explain the spiritual dimension of faith.” – KO

Yet, the account begs the question; when did the fairy tale become (for the believer) a reality? When did Yahweh cease to be fabricated jinn, to become God? Did God slip on the myth, as one might a shoe? Or, did the Hebrews clothe a new God with an old myth (new wine in old bottles)?

The “spiritual dimension of faith” exceeds Christianity and would have been known to animists, long before the higher religions. Spirituality might even transcend humanity, to the higher mammals.

Constance,

Thank you for your kind words, and the list of facts that I certainly do not dispute. I am only not sure what conclusion you want to draw from those experiences of yours (and many others)? There are over one billion Muslims in this world. They are not going to disappear, neither are that soon most of them going to loose their religious identity and become secularists (as our atheist friends might wish) or convert to Christianity (as we might pray for).

For a number of reasons (economic and cultural globalisation, demographic, even moral, decline of the West that is not their fault, etc.) they are going to prevail, they are going to mix with us as minorities in our traditionally Western countries as well as majorities in countries that are increasingly more important, economically and politically.

I do not have an answer to how to deal with the problem, I only maintain that attacking their religion, what is sacred to all Muslims, including the oppressed women among them, is not the way to go. I hope that at least some of them might respond, see my early experience on this OLO: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5968&page=0#85008.

So I agree with Pope when he acknowledges that “Allah the Merciful the Compassionate“ they pray to is the same God who is Love (“Deus Caritas Est”) that we pray to.

KatieO,

>>A deconstruction of Muslim propaganda is not “attacking the muslim world”. <<

I gather from the context that this refers to my recent post. However, please check that I not only wrote "attacking the Muslim religion" (not world) but in the next paragraph I explicitly emphasized the need to distinguish between their religion and other - political, cultural, societal etc. - manifetations of what can be called the Muslim world (see also http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2838).

We do not like when e.g those who are rightly upset by the Church’s pedophile scandals start attacking not only the practices in this or that diocese, or even the higher hierarchy, but resort to sweeping statements, attacking and ridiculing the very tenets of our faith. (ctd)

(ctd) We know that many passages in especially the OT can be variously interpreted, and so are those in the Koran. True, the vast majority of Muslim scholars do not accept this variety: the same as Christians just a few centuries ago.

>>The quote George chose may be evidence of the Pope’s increasing dhimittude, as those “differences” cited continue to be a major stumbling block for both sides.<<

When a Catholic priest in a Communist country of the 1950-s approached the political authorities, he had to accept their conditions, became a “patriotic priest“, and indeed lived in what you could call a “dhimmitude“. However, when later John Paul II approached the Polish and other Communist authorities, he spoke from a position of authority and power (albeit not military or even political), and you know what it led to.

So there is a difference between when an inter-faith contact is sought by a well-meaning (but often naive) Christian on a level where the counterpart might not be that “well-meaning”, and when e.g. 138 Islamic religious leaders and scholars write a letter to the Pope (and others) and the Pope responds. As you will know, some 300 Protestant leaders responded immediately and full of enthusiasm (c.f. NYT 18/11/2007), whereas Benedict took his time and responded appropriately but cautiously, exactly because he was aware of what you apparently mean by stumbling blocks (see http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=26009&page=2).

Oliver,

>>... countering religious parties frequently defend by attacking their opponent.<<
Sorry, but again, do you mean like calling the historica/anthropological roots of the opponent‘s world view “fabricated”, “fairy tales”? Will you ridicule e.g. chemists by pointing to alchemists as their predecessors, though without alchemy there would not be any chemistry?

Let me repeat, there are people -- Christians, Muslims, atheists or what - who need to reassure themselves in their world-view by “attacking“ those whose world-view they see as threatening their own. The need is understandable from a psychological point of view (I guess, I am not a psychologist) but is not very helpful for understanding the other’s point of view and thus enriching one’s own.

George,

KatieO mentioned that the Syriac account of Yahweh was an Arabian fairy tale. Yes, I did find that bit condescending, the Syrians of the time presumably believed in the Entity. Yes, KatieO is attacking the ancients. Likewise, centuries later, hypothetically, were an Arabian fairy tale teller to say, “Moses and the burning bushes is, ‘just a fairy story’”, believers in Moses event would be affronted. Again, we see intolerance.

If, a third party sees the panorama of the various Yahweh laid-out across the time, from a helicopter view, it begs; when and how were the transformations made?

If, one holds Yahweh is sometimes an “Arabian fairy tale” (KatieO) and other times genuine, we have two constructs. Here, assuming we do have two* constructs each with high discriminate validity, we must not forget to explain how the constructs converge. Here, what we review is not trivial:

If, one assumes that the character in a fairy story does not “become” a real god*: Buck Rogers doesn’t actually become Neil Armstrong; we are left with an interesting alternative: God communicates through the myths of “created by man”. If so, likewise-extrapolation, through other (human) myths, would seem less absurd. I appreciate the last sentence is at odds with the First Commandment. Yet, this is not-so-much the case, where God did not set the Law (of Moses); rather, God is known via the Earthly Framers of the Law (“new wine in old bottles”).

If, a., there is a God and b., God works through “our” myths, it is not the case God has a “Chosen People” and only their priesthood and scriptures are sacred and infallible; instead, God transmits across many channels tuning into different and multiple frequencies. God does not subsist in Arian fairy story stories and exist in the OT, no, (hypothetical)God inhabits both instances.

Alchemists were practitioners of technique and art to substances; chemists apply the theory of science to atoms. Edison was an artisan; Dirac was a scientist. No, I would not criticise the alchemists or Edison, as KatieO puts-down Arab fairy tales.

*Mythical Yahweh and true Yahweh