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Adventurer
Joined: 28 Jan 2006
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 Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2006 8:05 am Post subject: |
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[quote="BJWD"]By your logic, it is "hypocritical" to speak of how rotten apples don't taste good while at the same time "ignoring" that rotten bananas don't taste good either.[/quote
I appreciate your choice of words. You are saying, in essence, that responding that other religions have violence in their texts does not change that Islam contains it in the Quran. The reason I said that was because I think interpretation is important and the evolution of society. We have evolved in the West from the thinking regarding women in Aristotle, St. Paul, and the Old Testament. The Islamic scholars and too many of the followers haven't reached that. That is what I am saying; that is why I brought up the presence of violence in other holy books. I am saying many Muslims interpret things differently, and I don't embrace the idea that if someone embraces being a religious Muslim they embrace Muslim. You can disagree with that. I think my thinking opens doors rather than shutting them. Pope John Paul II spoke of dialogue and bridging the divide between Catholic and Orthodox and Muslim and Christian. So did Ghandi, a-religious scientist Albert Einstein and former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben Ami. |
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Adventurer
Joined: 28 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2006 8:13 am Post subject: |
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| BJWD wrote: |
| So the answer is yes, then, eh? |
The answer is a big no. My response was: "Saying I am fresh out of college would be like saying a wine that is somewhat aged is fresh from the field". Did you like that response? It was kind of like you when you used the analogy of the rotten bananas and apples; I used an analogy, too. I didn't get yours initially, either. *smile* |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2006 8:17 am Post subject: |
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| ddeubel wrote: |
| Also, don't know of many Muslim armies in Christian states other than Darfur but that is another matter... |
Ddeubel: make no mistake: if they could, they would. I defy you to look at the larger pattern of human history and tell me otherwise.
By the way, on the question of how people (including Arabs) take an active role in shaping their own identities, including stereotypes and other classifications, there is a better reference than Stern and his work on Peruvian Indians. See Foucault's work on sexuality and his concept "subjectification..."
I, again, do not object to people pointing out that this also occurs in the West and the United States. Indeed, these areas have been the focus of Foucault and his followers' work.
Rather, my objection pertains to this absurd tendency to refuse to even discuss for a moment how such forces are also at work in the peoples and cultures who inhabit the Middle East. Why must the discussion remain centered on the West and the U.S. at the expense of creating accounts like Said's where only Arab wounds and sufferings are discussed? And why must Arabs be portrated as passive and indeed pacifistic victims of a West who is at fault for all of it?
Last edited by Gopher on Fri Oct 13, 2006 5:23 pm; edited 3 times in total |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2006 9:03 am Post subject: |
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Apple lovers and armchair social scientists alike were quick to the draw with their criticisms of the Muslims who were allegedly offended by the Cube. The �issue� has just started an all-out flamewar.
What really makes me angry is that under the guise of news about Apple (which we all love), a blatant flat-out lie was perpetuated. The reality of the matter was that it was a random post on a random website, without a single supporting name or organization to reflect the �muslim community�s outrage.� The MEMRI article did not even link to, nor identify, the Arabic news source it was supposed to be citing or translating!
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I hate to sound like a shill for Old Media here, but it's always a good idea to wait until something gets mentioned in a newspaper, magazine, or on the TV news before you treat it as an actual event. I know I've been burned myself a few times, repeating as gospel something I read in the blogosphere, only to find out later that it was either a complete fabrication or a gross exaggeration, which had never actually made it out of cyberspace. |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2006 3:45 pm Post subject: |
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| Rather, my objection pertains to this absurd tendency to refuse to even discuss for a moment how such forces are also at work in the peoples and cultures who inhabit the Middle East |
Gopher, nobody here is refusing for a moment to discuss what happens in other cultures. I think we do , do some of that. You are reaching here.......
At the end of the day, it is up to Muslim's to have that discussion, about their own responsibilities and their own society. We can encourage it but don't expect us to have that discussion here. One, we lack insider knowledge and only would come out with what is termed in anthropology as the "tortilla" effect. Meaning, we would say what they think when really we don't know "dick". Big problem. Two. It is natural that we talk of our own culture, its culpabilities and responsibilities , its future and its potential. This is our duty and contributes in some small way to a better functioning society.
Believe me, Islamic society IS having the discussions I mentioned above. Flat wrong as so many here seem to think, that they are static and a monoculture, authoratative to a T.
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| Ddeubel: make no mistake: if they could, they would. I defy you to look at the larger pattern of human history and tell me otherwise |
This statement about how Muslims would take over the world, "if they could" is just poppycock. Have you become Nostradamus? Please.......
| Quote: |
| By the way, on the question of how people (including Arabs) take an active role in shaping their own identities, including stereotypes and other classifications, there is a better reference than Stern and his work on Peruvian Indians. See Foucuault's work on sexuality and his concept "subjectification..." |
I try to stay away from both Foucault (for various reasons, mostly the absurdity of connectiveness in his thought -- everything is responsible for everything else....thought I do pay hommage to his Madness and Civilization which touches on much of what we are discussing here...namely cultural relativism. I am not familiar with Stern (is he an anthropologist???) but I don't believe the proper term is subjectification but rather how we see and judge morally through the lens of our own culture. Cultural relativism. Kluckholm really is the founding father of this -- crystallizing the thought of Boaz and students. Personality in Nature, Society, and Culture, (1953) is a necessary read on the subject.
It isn't easy to walk in someone else's shoes or see the reasoning behind the behaviour of another culture. I quote him at length.
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| The principle of cultural relativity does not mean that because the members of some savage tribe are allowed to behave in a certain way that this fact gives intellectual warrant for such behavior in all groups. Cultural relativity means, on the contrary, that the appropriateness of any positive or negative custom must be evaluated with regard to how this habit fits with other group habits. Having several wives makes economic sense among herders, not among hunters. While breeding a healthy skepticism as to the eternity of any value prized by a particular people, anthropology does not as a matter of theory deny the existence of moral absolutes. Rather, the use of the comparative method provides a scientific means of discovering such absolutes. |
I do think there are moral absolutes. I do believe not just in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the U.N. Charter. Not an either or situation. Someone for example brought up the case of genital mutilation and also honour killings. Abhorrent and we would be well to stand outside the relativistic box and condemn them..... a good read on this dilema by a person whose work I know well, Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban can be found at ;
http://idcs0100.lib.iup.edu/~tconelly/Africa/Reading/CulturalRelUnivRights.htm
But this is far from the situation of the burqa. Those crying out about this are very very culturally ethnocentric and should be condemned. the world has changed and so should they.
DD |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2006 4:23 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks for that Smee. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2006 5:28 pm Post subject: |
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| Ddeubel wrote: |
| Gopher, nobody here is refusing for a moment to discuss what happens in other cultures. I think we do , do some of that. You are reaching here... |
No, I am not "reaching" at all. But you are apparently not "reading."
This is the typical response to any criticism of any Middle Eastern peoples and cultures...
| Adventurer wrote: |
| What about the stereotypes regarding people of the United States? Are they warranted...? Are you aware that 20-40,000 Lebanese were killed by Israel in the 1980s using American made weapons...? |
Don't forget the inevitable parrying of anything that sounds the least critical of any Middle Eastern society with "what about weapons of mass destruction!" as if this charge will undermine and destroy any and all argument for the rest of the history of the universe...
| Ddeubel wrote: |
| Believe me, Islamic society IS having the discussions... |
Show me. Show me where there are any people in the Middle East comparable to the bitter ant-West critics we have seen emerge in the West since the 1960s.
_______________________________
By the way, I thought Madness focused on "dividing principles" and "classificatory schemata" and not "cultural relativism," which I do not think was ever his bag at all.
Stern is an ethnohistorain, recently interested in memory and its workings... |
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Adventurer
Joined: 28 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2006 6:29 pm Post subject: |
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Gopher, I think you are being fairer and more judicious in this post. I think we all should do that. I hope I am being so, too. A slugging fest is not what we need. It is not a win-win situation.
I think, Gopher, when the British Empire exploited the people it colonized it created a lot of resentment. That, we can all say, is wrong. Of course, if you are talking about part of the response to the British by those rebelling maybe went too far like the IRA, then you would be right.
But it would not change that subjugating a people is part of the problem and should be looked at. The IRA was not simply passive sufferers of subjugation, but you can argue neither were the people who led the American Revolution. However, their grievances as English colonists were real. Can we agree on that?
You seemed to hint that some of the animus felt towards Americans and others in the West, for example from England, has to do with behaviour as well. The same with Muslims. A violent reaction to the cartoons reinforces the idea in the minds of some that there are so many fascist elements seeking to harm Western interests. We should consider during those violent protests Danish interests were attacked, not Swedish. So we have to look at cause and effect from the side of the West and East and build the bridge, cantilever between the West and East, because we have to interact and live with one another. A very bad reaction on the part of some Muslims does not absolve us from responsible, ethical behaviour.
The West came into this because Apple is an American, Western corporation. At any rate, what was said about Apple were rumours. Apple did not insult Muslims. It did not name the building Mecca; there is no bar there. It is paranoia emanating from a certain Islamic website similar to the hoax that was spreading that McDonalds was donating money to Israel when it was false. I found it implausible that Apple would do this as an MNC. I think Muslims should be flattered and a cube is just a design. |
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SirFink
Joined: 05 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2006 6:55 pm Post subject: |
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| On the other hand wrote: |
| So if a Sony building in downtown Tokyo had a statue of Jesus getting butt-banged by a donkey, American Christians shouldn't complain about this because Japan isn't a majority-Christian country? |
Christians would complain. You'd see some protests and pickets. Calls for boycotting Sony. You wouldn't see frothing at the mouth and burning of effigies. You wouldn't see Christians blowing themselves up in Japanese embassies.
This minority of violent, frothing-at-the-mouth Muslims needs to grow up and stop seeing their faith as an ugly little sister that gets picked on on the playground and needs defending via AK47's and bombs. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2006 11:59 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
On the other hand wrote:
So if a Sony building in downtown Tokyo had a statue of Jesus getting butt-banged by a donkey, American Christians shouldn't complain about this because Japan isn't a majority-Christian country?
Christians would complain. You'd see some protests and pickets. Calls for boycotting Sony. You wouldn't see frothing at the mouth and burning of effigies. You wouldn't see Christians blowing themselves up in Japanese embassies.
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Well, no. But remember, this thread wasn't about Muslims blowing themselves up at embassies. It was about Muslims complaining peacefully about the design for a building. And in any event the number of Muslims involved in making these complaints now seems to be miniscule indeed. |
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ChuckECheese
Joined: 20 Jul 2006
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| Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 1:18 am Post subject: |
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Jesus, Allah, Budda, etc.....
You guys still bull-sh1tten about this thread?  |
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Nambucaveman
Joined: 03 Aug 2006
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| Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 1:22 am Post subject: |
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I'm warning everyone in this thread now:
1) The flaming has to stop.
2) Any racist remarks will be removed. That stuff is not tolerated.
3) If any of the two above continue, the thread will be locked and the discussion will be over.
NC |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 11:33 am Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| ddeubel wrote: |
| Also, don't know of many Muslim armies in Christian states other than Darfur but that is another matter... |
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I was a bit surprised at this quote (and also somewhat surprised that a stickler like Gopher hadn't picked it up).
Perhaps I've misunderstood what DD is saying, but I was not aware that Darfur was a christian state. The conflict occuring there is between two muslim groups. I didn't think that there were many christians in Sudan and so I doubled checked with the CIA factbook:
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/su.html
| Quote: |
Religions:
Sunni Muslim 70% (in north), indigenous beliefs 25%, Christian 5% (mostly in south and Khartoum) |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 12:41 pm Post subject: |
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| Ddeubel wrote: |
| At the end of the day, it is up to Muslim's to have that discussion, about their own responsibilities and their own society....Believe me, Islamic society IS having the discussions I mentioned above. Flat wrong as so many here seem to think, that they are static and a monoculture, authoratative to a T... |
These assertions are not consistent with actual ground conditions, Ddeubel. I think I brought that up, above, but you have not responded.
Let me elaborate.
A colleague of mine is writing his diss. on Egyptian affairs, from another century entirely. To get into their national archives, he had to get a clearance from Egyptian Intelligence and, not only that, they assigned him a minder to watch over his shoulder as he read. (I kid you not.)
And when Egyptian authorities first read his proposal, they made him sign a pledge, because he had referenced newspaper accounts that treated a specific divisive element in Egyptian history (and I am only talking newspaper accounts from another century, not govt dox, which, as I hope you know, are simply not available to anyone), that he would not write about anything that had anything to do with "politics" or "religion."
He signed it and then moved on. Otherwise they never would have let him in.
Nationalistic hypersensitivity and, indeed, insecurity. In any case, a complete and obstinate unwillingness to put all of the chips on the table and let them fall where they may.
Please do not lecture me, then, on how things are in the Middle East and how people are talking about the issues like we are, etc., when I know it is entirely different on the ground there.
And that was just Egypt, by the way, not Saudi Arabia, not Afghanistan, not Iran, not Syria. |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 1:01 pm Post subject: |
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Gopher,
You are COMPLETELY wrong and in this case, utterly ethnocentric and brainwashed.
To beleive there are no muslim scholars or ardent people in ALL muslim countries, trying to find the truth is utterly intolerant and ethnocentric of yourself.....get off your high chair.
I will respond tomorrow (today) , spent a night out with many Muslim friends and at times discussing these things ....they freely send info. home and discuss all aspects of this debate and other things.
I will write more after a little sleep. Please tell your poor lost friend to look in the BNL and also tell him about the problems, still unresolved, of me, getting a library card for the National Congress.
You are a dupe....sorry but I call this as it is.
DD |
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