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The Forum > Article Comments > On understanding Muslims > Comments

On understanding Muslims : Comments

By Teuku Zulfikar, published 15/6/2009

The media often misrepresent the true nature of Islam and Muslims, holding them responsible for the crimes of a minority.

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Constance.

I’m not keen on Karen Armstrong's attitude toward Islam in some later books. But A HISTORY OF GOD (1993 – half-read) and THE BATTLE FOR GOD (2000) are good reads. I have bought but not started THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION: THE WORLD IN THE TIME OF BUDDHA, SOCRATES, CONFUCIUS AND JEREMIAH (2006).

I can understand Ayaan calling Armstrong ridiculous, if Armstrong is "tolerant" of the religion behind a crap culture like that of Somalia. [No apology to cultural relativists.]

I’ve heard Wafa Sultan on the internet. Her debate on Al-Jazeerah in 2006 about Samuel P. Huntington's Clash of Civilizations theory was edited down and subtitled in an excellent video at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1296126090432829344 .

The end paragraphs of this say:
"The Jews have come from the [Holocaust], and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge and not with their terror; with their work, not their crying and yelling. Humanity owes [many] of the discoveries and science of the 19th and 20th centuries to Jewish scientists...

"We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people. The Muslims have turned three Buddha statues into rubble. We have not seen a single Buddhist burn down a mosque, kill a Muslim or burn down an embassy. Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people and destroying embassies.

"This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them."

She can be heard also at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYB4pG3kHIY .

According to Wikipedia, Sultan’s new book A GOD WHO HATES: THE COURAGEOUS WOMAN WHO INFLAMED THE MUSLIM WORLD SPEAKS OUT AGAINST THE EVILS OF RADICAL ISLAM is to be released on October 13, 2009.

I've heard of Dr Tanveer Ahmed and read a piece by him in The Australian in October 2006. Good to see there are people like him in Australia, but sad to see so very few of them both willing and safely able to speak out from inside the majority-Muslim world.
Posted by Glorfindel, Sunday, 5 July 2009 3:21:13 PM
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KatieO,

"Postmodernists are dismissive of history as it is based on the personal interpretation of sources... They may have a point...
If history could be constructed as a single narrative then it would be a true social science, a discipline. But in reality, history is a series of competing views or theories, not constrained by the power of the imagination." - KO

I am a little unsure why you bring discourse on Postmodernism into the threat. In general I would agree with the critique you state, but would only add that the above is the radical pole of the genre.

"If there is such a thing as historical untruth, there must also be such a thing as historical truth. And if there is such a thing as a biased, tendentious historian who tried to support preconceived ideas about the past by a selective use of the evidence and by doctoring the documents, there must be such a thing as an objective historian who puts preconceived ideas about the past to the test of whether or not they are supported by the evidence, and modifies or abandons them if they are not." Richard Evans [Online]

The "single narrative" is something to be avoided, I posit. We need to test history and triangulate sources. Where personal interpretations interfer with the object anaylsis of events it is problematic: Story telling say "Moses" of the Exodus or "The Artful Dodger," may and do represent fiction, respectfully. The Art of the story teller places the fictional Actor on a non-fictional canvas. Facts are hard to elicit, when accounts are written centuries (OT) or decades (NT), after the event.

Cont...
Posted by Oliver, Monday, 6 July 2009 8:56:39 PM
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...

KatieO,

I am not saying that mythos and "storey telling" doesn't have a place. Americans rarely present an historical Washington or Lincoln and tried the same on JFK. Storytelling important to tradition.

On the other hand, a Church would find it hard to deny more recent physical evidence that seem to support Toynbee:

"Relatively recently, startling archaeological discoveries in modern Israel have strengthened the arguments that Asherah was the Israelite god's consort (Hadley 2000: 86-102). One dig was in the heartland of Judah, the other in the northern Sinai. Several blessing inscriptions from the sites contain a controversial phrase 'possibly' (emphasis added) to be translated as "Yahweh and his Asherah." Even more exciting are drawings that accompany the inscriptions, especially those from the Sinai site (Toom 1998:88-89)." Stuckey [Online]

Do archaeology, physical records* and anthropology support the Death of Christ to the same degree, as the Assassination of Julius Caesar or Wellington defeated Nepoleon at Waterloo.

My General Histories cited in recent threads are from Gibbon, Toynbee, Wells, McNeill and Carroll. I think you would find few readers who would not think these authors mainstream.

It might suprise you that I have been in churches and, I know priests and ministers, as fiends. Yet, I don't recall any Church or minister discussing the Latinization of proto-Christianity following Hadrian expelling the Jews to Pella. I would have thought this event most significant (Gibbon, Wells). Have read Gibbon
Posted by Oliver, Monday, 6 July 2009 9:50:18 PM
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Hi KatieO,

Bad, bad typo above. Sorry. Should read that I have priests and ministers as fRiends. Well, more accurately, I have some relatives in Catholic Church (clergy) and held some work assignments working with the RCs. At one time, I was even cc'd some Vatican correspondence. I have some friends who are FT Protestant ministers and some PT like Sells.

Also, lost in my poor typing is the question, "Have you read Gibbon"? I asked this in context of his remarks on Hadrian and the first fifteen Christian (his words if I recall) being Jewish. The sixteenth bishop being Marcus (?), so the Jews from Pella could feign being another, non-Jewish faith to go back to the Holy Lands. The account is in a few History books, as you probably know, yet never mentioned by religionists.

Regards,

O.
Posted by Oliver, Tuesday, 7 July 2009 10:05:41 PM
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Oliver,
Thank you for the quote. I presume it is from the Parker-Taylor's book, and is more or less what you can find in the Catholic Encyclopaedia (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03776b.htm).
Posted by George, Wednesday, 8 July 2009 12:34:49 AM
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Hi George,

Yes, the quotation is from Parker-Taylor's book. I may originally had a longer quite and truncated the post to fit OLO, perhaps?

Thanks for the Catholic Encyclopaedia link. I have come across before the proposition that murders and persons of craft guilds wandered the country-side disenfranchaised in Biblical times, giving some support to Moses and the Exodus, even if, story telling or neumonic devices were added to sustain oral lore.

O.
Posted by Oliver, Wednesday, 8 July 2009 2:21:24 PM
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