Thursday, September 11, 2008
STORM WINDS
It looks like hurricane Ike is headed this way, although the models have more spread of projected paths than I've seen lately. Which is a good segue into a link dump of some material about Islam that's collected in my browser as a result of a little online discussion I've been having in a forum I frequent:
- The Language of the Koran: This piece is a personal testament by a Muslim who grew up in Syria from a devout childhood to a loss of faith based on something one doesn't hear much about unless you dig pretty deeply, the linguistic difficulties of the Koran itself. This item is brief and, as I indicate, personal, but it points to two things that are, in my opinion, extraordinarily important. The first is the fact that the actual text (as opposed to the content and substance) of the Koran is itself extremely problematic. The language is not the Arabic spoken by any population today, and an honest approach to that fact opens the door to the second important point: That deep, scholarly understanding of that text outside of the world of believing Muslim scholars who work primarily from the accepted religious authorities on the issues raised by the problematic language is almost completely nonexistent. Over the last 200 years, Christian and Jewish biblical scholarship has been deeply enriched by textual analysis from a whole host of angles, from material created by deeply committed religious scholars, to completely secular researchers and analysts. Everyone but the most ignorant fundamentalists accepts that understanding of the Bible has been enriched by this process. Nothing even remotely like this has taken place in the Muslim world.
- A Culture of Darkness: And this brief item explains why. It reviews the objective evidence that demonstrates how Arab and Muslim culture is almost completely closed off to all learning from outside itself, and even from critical perspectives from within.
- With Predictable Results: Not surprisingly, this darkness, with an obscure hodge-podge of nearly incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo at its heart, leads to the rationalization of some pretty primitive and nasty things, like the systematic victimization of women. This item revisits just how bad things are for women in Iran, and how much worse they're likely to get. And this piece, making its way through the PC filters of The Guardian, casts just a little light on how terrible life is for women in Pakistan. Meanwhile, feminists in the West expend their considerable energies pitching fits of comical outrage about Sarah Palin. Now there's a sense of priorities for you.
- But We Keep paying for It: And while the world sleeps, we continue to pour our wealth into Muslim hands through the high-pressure fire-hose of our oil addiction. If you have any doubt, check out this short little snapshot of the economic life of Abu Dabhi, a nasty little medeival kngdom that produces nothing and whose people could not possible create anything -- except the oil to which we are addicted.
- And, Ultimately, We'll Have to Really Fight: Which finally leads to two book reviews. The first, about a recent book chronicling Israel's epic secret war against Iran that's been going on almost completely silently behind the scenes for 30 years, gives only modest hope that effective step against the genuine enemy of civilization are possible. And the second addresses that darling of the left, Tariq Ramadan, the "moderate scholar" who gets trotted out on a regular basis to exemplify the fruits of peaceful dialogue with Islam, and how superior that approach is to the bloody brutishness advocated by the likes of me. I have a particular personal animus toward Ramadan, because a few years ago, I basically lost a group of life-long friends over my refusal to agree to their assessment that he was a moderate. This was taken as evidence that I had become a neocon zombie. Which I take as evidence that Ramadan has been extraordinarily successful in deploying the Islamists most effective weapon against us -- our own open-mindedness, tolerance and desire to believe the best of other people and cultures.
OK, dark, rich Arabiya coffee break's over -- back on your heads!
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 5:06 AM
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