Total number of comments: 63 (since 2011-10-28 06:57:53)
aiman
I am a student and writer. Interested in Jewish-Muslim peace scholarship and collaborating with right-minded individuals from various traditions who are encouraging the flowering of ethics-based, non-reactionary discourses.
The persecution, rape and murder of sub-Saharan Africans in Libya, the abysmal treatment of South Asians and Africans in Arab countries must be fiercely talked about and acted upon. What I don't get is when anyone, whoever, chooses to do comparisons. This is clear violation of Judaic and Islamic ethics or basically any form of decency. Georgetown University Israeli Alliance is committing a second, non-physical violence against the victims by not acknowledging them, and ideologically perpetuating the physical violence as well.
"the test for [all] nations is how they deal with their most extreme fringe. And there is a growing fringe in Israel whose values are out of sync with those of the Jewish community broadly and whose actions are undermining their country's interests."
Actually the extreme fringe is not a good enough analysis, though it is better than the argument that moderates are sheathing the extremists. Hannah Arendt showed that the possibility of fascism is pretty ordinary. Any population facing socio-economic and political constraints, unfortunately, can be harnessed to express such abominable hatred and violence, if not through action than through complacence. In his extensive study of suicide terrorism, Riaz Hassan writes: "Suicide bombings are carried out by motivated individuals associated with community based organizations. Strategies aimed a finding ways to induce communities to abandon such support would curtail support for terrorist organizations. Strategies for eliminating or at least addressing collective grievances in concrete and effective ways would have a significant, and, in many cases, immediate impact on alleviating the conditions that nurture the subcultures of suicide bombings."
Good piece by David Sheen. The working class can be and has been used to whip up hatred and malice again and again. It provides the most fertile ground in both democracies and autocracies to slur and abuse vulnerable members of society, externalising its frustrations which should have been taken up with the political elite.
The only fact not emphasised enough are the figureheads of the dominant class who undoubtedly instigated these rioters, and this does not have to be recent but can occur over an extensive period of time.
Even then the working class should know better and abide by moral principles instead of committing gratuitous evil. These scenes are cruel and disgusting.
What's interesting is that Bernard Lewis who really worded "the clash of civilisations" is endorsed as a historian! I am disappointed when even Ian Buruma in an otherwise critical piece on Lewis asserts Lewis's "superior mastery of Islamic history" over Edward Said, and shoots ridiculous lines such as: " I doubt, in any case, that Zionism quite explains Lewis’s role as a cheerleader for the war in Iraq. Nor does his supposed contempt for the Arab world do so. On the contrary, perhaps he loves it too much." Yes, in the same way as al-Qaeda and Islamism's earliest inspirators like Abu Ala Maududi love(d) "the West" and the vulnerable in their own society too much!?
I hope Bernard Lewis is exposed for what he is but guess we will have glorious eulogies in his name in all the conservative and liberal publications when he kicks the bucket. The real historians are silenced. The media, eloquent fascists like Christopher Hitchens (who claim to be fighting fascism), and the political establishments write the news both before and after it happens. They make the wrong history and promote the wrong historians.
Perhaps Australia's PM Julia Gillard adopted the "moving forward" slogan from Brand Obama:
link to youtube.com
I reckon Obama's "moving forward" reference is centred on the economic rationalist position which, like any other position, can constrain and disfigure reality when expressed especially by elite human institutions. It's the neocons and the full-time role of Obama as a brand that does not really think of morality and accountability like we ordinary mortals do.
John Pilger, enlightening as always. Also people may be interested to learn how Pilger has been smeared and boycotted by the liberal establishment, both in Australia and in the United States. Chris Hedges' The Death of the Liberal Class in action.
In Australia: link to antonyloewenstein.com
In the US: link to allvoices.com
Very beautiful and heartfelt. Thanks.
"These ancient people were DOING holocausts and pogroms and saw nothing wrong with it."
Yes and no. Even Genghis Khan felt the need to make calls for virtue. I think civil society has endowed human beings with better sensitivity to the human condition, but the establishment does not flinch outside those confines. Take the example of liberalism which articulates respect and diversity within the borders and is good for the native population but employs imperialism abroad without moral insight. There has been no moral progress in human history. The face of power as it snarls at the meek has always been scary. As you rightly point out, the face of power wears a mask of enlightenment these days.
Interesting. Thanks for sharing, Marc B.
Oops, I meant PeaceThroughJustice. My apologies.
"... the only reason the neocons got away with it is because the so-called “liberal” Jewish community insulated them from attack."
That's a point on target, PeaceThroughTarget, for to take away liberals from the equation makes it rather moot. Liberals, like conservatives, enforce the boundaries of discourse. Chris Hedges has done some great work on this topic.
"an important aspect of the strategy of turning american minds, something coupled with the promotion of islamophobia, is creating a personal fear in the minds of americans, an actual threat..of criticizing anything jewish. there is a psychological component embedded thru pr. remember that the rise of psychoanalysis and public relations and the state of israel was all on the rise last century. (watch the movie ‘the century of the self’ about Edward L. Bernays)."
I was introduced to Bernays while attending a John Pilger lecture. In his doc The War on Democracy, Pilger talks about how Bernays got social debutantes in London to start smoking by calling it "torches of freedom" and manipulating feminism. PR runs through the modern life, from advertisements about "the good life" to all countries, both democratic and otherwise, using propaganda to control the public mood. Saudi Arabia runs this PR in how it translates religious texts even. You're right about how Israel uses it, there's the usual talking point about a democracy surrounded by barbarians (dehumanising entire people living in the region), promoting Islamophobia (even Amos Oz is not exempt, perhaps relying on Bernard Lewis), and talks about a Western axis (routinely stated by conservatives and implied by liberals).
Phil gets to the heart of the matter here. There is nothing anti-Semitic about pointing this out, in fact it is necessary and brave because these facts are instrumental to making the change. The neocons do not represent Jewish morality, they are more like heretics. Also I think Phil's critique is specific to how he sees his role in the world, this has always been how thinkers operate, tilling their own fields.
Some Muslim thinkers have pointed out and labelled the upper echelons of the Islamist movement for who they are, that does not make them anti-Islamic. Thinkers like Abduh and others spent their lives in the service of good, and were even labelled as infidels.
Chomsky's conspiracy theory is too broad. He has done some good work, but I don't take Chomsky without applying my own brain, which is what we are all gifted with. The cult of intellectuals on the Israel-Palestinian conflict is wearing thin, and people are taking control of a non-hierarchical movement that wants to make this world a better place for all people.
Seafoid, what I don't know is if it's moral or political. Either the language of morality is being used to "save Israel" from the right-wingers not because the right-wingers are cruel but what they might do in their haste, or that graphic news events (post-9/11) have opened up a reality of Israel to the world (which liberal Zionists cannot defend and risk losing their liberal status) or that in fact liberal Zionists have themselves been shaken up psychologically and are protesting from a genuine moral depth.
"Since when does an atheist or a liberal considers religion as something above reproach."
Particularly since atheism itself has lurched to the right and speaks in the language of violence these days as Jeff Sparrow explains in this timely critique:
link to counterpunch.org
"Why condemning communism or fascism is ok but religion especially Islam is a new tabu for the modern liberal?"
The same rhetoric was used by the liberal-left supporters of the Iraq War. Many liberals condemn Islam, don't know where you're coming from. Also you fail to distinguish between critique, condemnation and hate-mongering. I have no problem with anyone critiquing Islam (a critique can be done when you know the subject, you can criticise God, heaven, hell all you want). Condemnation, on the other hand, is an advocacy, often shrill, against a generalised subject as it appears in the medium of news. Hate-mongering and fear-mongering, such as this example which you mistake for condemnation (incriminating your own ideology in consequence), is a tactic shared by fundamentalists of all creeds, from Sam Harris and Hitchens to Qutb, Maududi and Meir Kahane.
"Iris Murdoch once said that all art seems to be aspiring to the condition of pornography, and it’s certainly come to pass in this country."
I like this one by Elizabeth Jennings: "Human failings may be forgivable, but if lack of compassion, meanness of spirit, envy or cowardice are present in the poet's nature they will be evident in his verse. You cannot fake anything if you are trying to write serious poetry."
I think there are some pretty mean, cruel writers and directors up there in Hollywood. Writers in general are not good people. They need to have a moral philosophy to first lower themselves to the dust where everybody walks instead of waltzing in their high towers from which they look down on people.
The word "establishment" speaks for itself. It has nothing to do with sympathy for people of colour. It controls discourse to maintain its foothold on the pedestal. The media, in both is liberal-left and right-wing variety, espouses values of the establishment. Your example is an exception.
seanmcbride,
I would agree with you here. I think when Hedges and other writers such as Adorno talk about the Enlightenment, they refer to its time period and the implications that it created with systems of thought and reason that had rarely come to man before, and what are blessings and opportunities to some can be used as curses by others.
Modernity has had both positive and negative impacts on human society and nature as in the proliferation of factory farms. I subscribe to the positive elements myself, but think of those more in terms of general human virtues which found fertility in the European Enlightenment because of the brevity and righteous anger of many thinkers. Many of these thinkers were depressed at wanton injustice and hypocrisy and took up the pen.
Just as bad ideas did. The Enlightenment, like any age, was host to two strands of thoughts and actions: bad and good. There are always moral and amoral actors and authorities in every tradition and age, and their victories over each other tell us the story of the world. Like you, I am on the pro-egalitarian, pro-universalism, anti-tribalism, pro-knowledge (that is used for the good) side but believe that we share this space and context with others who oppose these.
Citizen,
This link goes into it further: link to powells.com
Chris Hedges writes quite accurately:
"The Enlightenment was a curse and a blessing. Its proponents championed human dignity and condemned tyranny, superstition, ignorance and injustice. Because French philosophers including Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot, who influenced the ideologues of the French Revolution, called for social and political justice, the Enlightenment led to the emancipation of Jews in Western Europe, freeing them from squalid ghettos. But there was a dark side to the Enlightenment. Philosophers insisted that the universe and human nature could be understood and controlled by the rational mind. They saw the universe as ruled exclusively by consistent laws such as Isaac Newton's law of gravity or Galileo's law of falling bodies. These laws could be explained mathematically or scientifically. The human species, elevated above animals because it possessed the capacity to reason, could break free of its animal nature and, through reason, understand itself and the world. It could make wise and informed decisions for the betterment of humanity. The disparity between the rational person and the instinctive, irrational person, these philosophers argued, would be solved through education and knowledge.
"The Enlightenment empowered those who argued that superstition, blind instinct and ignorance had to be eradicated. Kant, in Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, published in 1798, asserted that Africans were inherently predisposed to slavery. Thus the Enlightenment gave the world the "scientific racism" adopted as an ideological veneer for murder by nineteenth- and twentieth-century despots. Those who could not be educated and reformed, radical Enlightenment thinkers began to argue, should be eliminated so they could no longer poison human society. The Jacobins who seized control during the French Revolution were the first in a long line of totalitarian monsters who justified murder by invoking supposedly enlightened ideals. Their radical experiment in human engineering was embodied in the Republic of Virtue and the Reign of Terror, which saw 17,000 people executed. Belief in the moral superiority of Western civilization allowed the British to wipe out the Tasmanian Aborigines. British hunting parties were given licenses to exterminate this "inferior race," whom the colonial authorities said should be "hunted down like wild beasts and destroyed." The British captured many in traps and burned or tortured them to death. The same outlook led to the slaughter of the Caribs of the Caribbean, the Guanches of the Canary Islands, as well as Native Americans. It justified the slave trade that abducted 15 million Africans and killed even more. And it was this long tradition of colonial genocide in the name of progress in places like King Leopold's Congo that set the stage for the industrial-scale killing of the Holocaust and man-made famines of the Soviet Union.
"Reigns of terror are thus the bastard children of the Enlightenment. Terror in the name of utopian ideals would rise again and again in the coming centuries. The Nazi death camps and the Soviet gulags were spawned by the Enlightenment. Fascists and communists were bred on visions of human perfectibility. Tens of millions of people have been murdered in the futile effort to reform human nature and build utopian societies. During these reigns of terror, science and reason served, as they continue to serve, interests purportedly devoted to the common good — and to vast mechanisms of repression and mass killing."
seanmcbride, I agree with your emphasis on the cult of personality but find the Dialectic of the Enlightenment to offer the most plausible explanation toward the roots of the Holocaust.
link to amazon.co.uk
The Holocaust was an Enlightenment project.
Chris Hedges speaks here: link to dailymotion.com
Olmert is a figure who reveals the jaded morality of Beinart and Liberal Zionism. Beinart excuses Olmert and slams Netanyahu for the same crime. Fanya Oz-Salzberger criticises Israel's internal climate but lent her words in defence of Livni's bombing of Gaza. This also reveals the schizophrenia of liberalism, and liberal Zionists, so well described by the anthropologist Talal Asad, both compassion and cruelty coexist in modern liberalism without any iota of introspection. Obama is another example. The only thing liberals love are other liberals irrespective of what other liberals do. Thankfully moral-centred journalists and activists like Chris Hedges and John Pilger, who earlier tracked the ugliness of conservative politics, have stepped up and exposed the myths that liberals share.
OlegR, I was responding to you within the context of the discussion you kick started. Of course it's a similar story in the Arab World and anywhere else where the production of knowledge is impeded and people experience feelings of alienation owing to socio-economic factors. There's a critical sociology text by Riaz Hassan called Inside Muslim Minds which explains this point. In the case of the Occupied Territories, Israel plays a significant role in how people produce knowledge and discuss issues. Also homophobia as it is described has become more trenchant in modern times so your reference to "indigenous" culture is factually incorrect.
"Nothing to do with the indigenous culture and religion that as we all know
loves and accepts gay people."
Glad that you unwittingly recognise that there is an "indigenous" culture. And who are you again? And how high is your pulpit? Homosexuality in past times was tied to power relations and conflict, with the sodomisation and abuse of vulnerable men tied into it. It is convenient for you to preach from the confines of a civil society in the age of consent. Let's not forget that martial rape was considered legal in many western democracies a few decades ago, but with the production of knowledge and women's movements led by women it changed. The fact that Palestinians have not yet recognised gay rights does not make it an "indigenous" problem, it depends on socio-economic factors and the production of knowledge, both of which are hindered by Israel and bolstered by of the identification of imperialism by conservatives in Palestine.
"Therefore, Pakistan tries to use Taliban as a political tool in the region to put forward their internal interest in the region."
That's true. RAWA has an article out which, although slightly roughshod in a few places, correctly points out on how the Taliban are the proxies of Pakistan's army.
link to rawa.org
There's global hegemony and then there's regional hegemony, both of which are incredibly destructive.
This lady does know how to light herself up. She has the shrewdness of my neighbour's cat that rolls on its back and swipes at your hand when you go to pet it.
Awesome piece.
Add to this video games like Call of Duty that glorify military violence and war. I recently watched a Youtube clip of Blackwater mercenaries driving over a passing Iraqi woman with relish. The comments were extremely shocking. I remember John Pilger once stating how PR began with Edward Burneys who under the guise of feminism got women to start smoking, called it "torches of freedom". Media does play a role in shaping attitudes.
Jonrich, working toward equal right for all human beings, abolishing religious compulsion, removing the threat of wanton violence, and providing universal education -- none of these are utopian ideas. These all deal with worldly concerns. I am not speaking of "light unto nations". These ideas are no more utopian than wide scale discrimination, wanton violence, ethnocentric and religious nationalism, and lack of universal education. Some of these human rights are already legislated in many countries of the west. I have read that when universal education was introduced in Iran it even allowed women to decrease their fertility rates from 6 to 2 children and made them have more control over their lives. I do not believe that the condition of man is to be resigned to the powers that be, but rather to the good that can be achieved. I don't believe in revolutions or earthly utopias, but change that is possible, one step at a time as long as you know where you're going.
"I still say these two words are complete opposites of one another. Zionism is exclusive and racist at its roots."
Liberalism is also exclusive and is often implicitly or politely racist. Conservatism is overtly racist. Egalitarianism has critiqued liberalism because liberalism privileges those with wealth and status. This is because liberalism cannot exist without capital. Even with liberalism, I'm afraid, the Israeli discourse will be privileged.
What we need to emphasise I think is liberality of thought and experience. This could sow seeds of co-existence and mutual aid even among people who do not have access to material and educational privileges. Liberalism, at least as it currently stands, (in my opinion) is compatible with Zionism.
"Liberal Zionism is a national liberation struggle of the Jewish people. In a world of nation-states, Zionism is struggling for Jews to have a nation-state."
Like liberalism, liberal Zionism is predicated on privilege, and additionally burdened with paranoia. Liberal Zionists are far removed from the reality on the ground. This in an elite identity, composed of largely well-to-do people living comfortable lives with access to media spaces. It has no strategy or method in how to deal with the ultra-Orthodox settlers. Liberal Zionism offers little self-reflection, it externalises evil on to the Right, excusing the actions of people like Tzipi Livni. I agree with Phil that it will not "have any effect on Israel and Palestine, but it will help to reform American Jewish identity". This may be a good thing for American Jewish identity but it will not affect the site of oppression.
"Liberal Zionists would probably argue that Israel can and should be a “light unto the nations” and will ultimately facilitate the end of the nation-states in favor of a cosmopolitan world community. The ideal is expressed as “nation shall not lift up sword against nation; they shall learn war no more.”"
These appear to echo the sentiments of Amos Oz, but what the devastating process of New Atheism, the Christian Right, "Islamisation" and "Zionism" have taught us is that there is no Utopia on earth, it is mythology. The best way to move forward is grant each human being in every nation equal rights, abolish religious compulsion, abolish terrorism and the "just war" theory, provide universal education, through rights and education deconstruct the cult of intellectuals, usher in a new vocabulary to replace the Enlightenment export of "the chain of being", and criminalise abuse to animals and nature.
Ah, liberals and their pretences. It's time for those of us who care about equality and justice to separate ourselves from this most wounding ideology. As Hywel Williams wrote in The Guardian: "It's a nice and convenient myth that liberals are the peace-makers and conservatives the war-mongerers. But the imperialism of the liberal may be more dangerous because of its open-ended nature - its conviction that it represents a superior form of life."
Perhaps Beinart and paranoid liberal Zionists should read this, because this liberalism is entirely compatible with Zionism.
Time to move on to egalitarianism and bring a firm end to the language of oppression that I think is embedded within liberalism itself.
Bernard Lewis is the living example of how Zionism and Islamophobia are completely related. Even liberals like Amos Oz get their ideas about "the threat of Islam" from him. This is the "academic" who put "Eurabia" on the map. He shaped an entire discourse and way of thinking, his hate drips from minds like that of Sam Harris and Dick Cheney. All in all perhaps the most damaging and malignant thinker to come out of the western world (for at least the last two centuries), which he ideologically shaped into the "Judeo-Christian" world, to meet present socio-historical ends.
"Evidently not strong enough for him to emigrate from New York to Jerusalem, Beinart has a deeply emotional relationship with Zionism."
This is the heart of the matter. Brushing aside the liberal gloss, inherently this is no different from the position of an ideologue belonging to another diaspora who defends the ethnocentric status of his homeland. He or she may condemn the mistreatment of a minority group but still believe in the Fairytale and Happy Ending. This does nothing to alleviate the suffering of that minority group. The other argument, perhaps optimistic, is that change is incremental and we should take what we can get. But I think progress is only an illusion, change is indeed incremental but only if you're driving on the right side of the road.
These are Indigenous people. Can no world leader hear their story? Human beings, particularly those professing humane values, are a backward lot. This is a historic chance to act against injustice, the injustice that wracked Australia with the Intervention. This also indicates the impotence and schizophrenia of modern day liberalism that expresses compassion and cruelty simultaneously. Gillard talks about "peace" for Indigenous people we slaughtered and oppress and Gillard talks about Israel making the desert bloom: link to theaustralian.com.au
"Decades after the desert was first made to bloom, Israel is a place where ideas still bloom."
Undoubtedly Judeophobia must be tackled by Muslims. Aside, there has been no Judeophobia in Islam or hatred toward any religion or people, unless one is reading the Muslim equivalent of a Zionist like Maududi or Qutb whose ideas gained momentum in vulnerable circles following political tumults just like the base of the Christian Right is made up of vulnerable (in some ways) working-class white males as Chris Hedges has documented. The Qur'an's criticism of Judaism and Christianity is totally consistent with the critiques made of former worldviews in both the Torah and the New Testament. The message is not to repeat those mistakes, and Muslims like the ancient Israelites have made many mistakes. Even in Muhammad's term, Jews were only one of several tribal communities in conflict over the birth of a new faith community. There is no inherent conflict between Judaism and Islam. This is the problem: Zionism and Maududism. Morris's Zionism is itself anchored in Islamophobia.
This is an eternal myth that writers and artists are above the multitudes. In ancient Greece, in the seat of "civilisation", poets and writers were the masters of state xenophobia. In our generation we have liberals like Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie whose status is wedded to "the clash of civilisations". Writers are like everybody else: good, bad, opportunists, vain, apathetic, brave, etc. etc. There is nothing inherent "goodly" in either art or aesthetics. Art is capable of being self-worship or a fount of joy and moral ethics.
Yes that was my larger point, that the Muslim Brotherhood must eschew a monocultural vision for Egypt in favour of complete equality and justice for everyone, particularly Copts and Baha'is, and among men and women. This would mean the dissolution of the Muslim Brotherhood and something akin to the embrace of people of all religions and walks of life. That would go a long way, whatever the influence of the US, when change finally arrives. I don't believe US policy has a hundred per cent control over anybody, people can rise over any obstacle through a bottom-up egalitarian approach and challenge the hierarchies of power.
Perhaps to some extent. Are you saying people have no agency without the US? The first problem is the approach of the Muslim Brotherhood. It would have more going for itself as Egyptian Brotherhood instead of Muslim Brotherhood, the dissolution of identity politics, by including Copts and all sectors of society. It would be a start, a bottom-up approach, if nothing more and sow the seeds for a united, egalitarian society when finally power does change hands. There would be a consensus, people would know who to elect. This bottom-up strategy would not require a revolution, merely a serious joust and the tyrants would scatter.
The Muslim Brotherhood is making a mistake by playing on "revolution". They would have much better standing against scums like Omar Suleiman by outlining a bottom-up justice and equal rights movement, alongside other groups, in the example of Muhammad Abduh, where all sectors and groups are invited in an embrace of unity and the dissolution of pious tags. This would spare no room for Suleiman and put him in gaol or the gallows where he belongs. "Revolution" is like a tide that ebbs and flows, it is not constant. Pan-Islamism is not the answer as Abduh learned and showed, separating himself from Al-Afghani's politics. We must always align ourselves with justice first, for everyone.
I will. But my point was to shed doubt on that Cohen was "universal admired" much less known widely. Perhaps it would be true in the United States.
Second that. Had never heard of him. There are as many gentlemen as falling stars, so it is a wonder...
Awesome. May Judaism, its true universal core expressed by these rabbis, prevail.
Marc LeVine on Beinart and liberal Zionism: link to aljazeera.com
Excellent stuff.
“One reason I admire Beinart is he is a reflective man who has done penance for his Iraq mistake.”
This only shows us that there is no cost or reprisal for writers, operating within the state apparatus, when it comes to pushing the state to war. There are some on the left who even dignify "this difference of opinion" without realising that supporting a war is not an opinion, it is tantamount to supporting a crime. To do penance Beinart would have to undergo tortuous self-reflection coupled with actions, including paying for damages and summoning the full depth of his humanity. Personally I don't like to read writers whose work does not allow for expressions of empathy and feeling which is crucial in understanding the world. Political journalism severely lacks this in general , it's all about "interests". Beinart has only shown flashes of this feeling and empathy, here's hoping he comes around to the full blaze with allegiance to humanity. We all operate within tribes but tribal partisanship is different. Muhammad explained this: He is not of us who proclaims the cause of tribal partisanship, and he is not of us who fights in the cause of tribal partisanship, and he is not of us who dies in the cause of tribal partisanship. When asked to explain what he meant by tribal partisanship, Muhammad answered, It means helping your own people in an unjust cause. Muslims, Jews, Christians and all human beings can learn from this I believe.
This is all good, but like other critiques of Zionism it paints a too rosy picture of liberalism. It is fair to say that Zionism is entirely compatible with the liberal establishment. Yes equality and Zionism are incompatible, but liberalism for the last century has not been on the side of equality. Liberalism is not what it is made out in dominant discourse. Liberals overwhelmingly belong to a class of privilege. What Beinart should have asked in his 2010 essay is: Is Zionism or even liberalism compatible with egalitarianism? No. Liberalism is certainly an improvement over Zionism, but it falls short when contrasted with the real equality as enshrined in egalitarianism.
"i don’t care, the world is full of people supporting nato intervention. i’m just not one of them."
Me neither. I don't get how liberals can support "intervention" on so-called humanitarian grounds. We live in a world of mind-blowing (literally) bombs and a cruel hyper-masculinity (a trait also shared by Samantha Power and Susan Rice and other women in power) and it is with these weapons "humanitarian intervention" is supported? I don't support megalomaniacs like Qaddafi but neither do I support those who executed him in such a cruel fashion. It tells us a lot about how power works, how cruelty usurps cruelty.
"the basic truth that nation states and ruling powers do not protect human life unless it is politically necessary. "
How true!
"Like all religions, Christianity professes an inherent inequality between believers and non-believers. And like the other Abrahamic religions, the treatment of women is barbaric."
I agree that the treatment of women by religious discourses has been abysmal. I personally fiercely criticise the building hyper-masculinity in Middle Eastern nations. But you appear to excuse how many secularists, including liberals, view women.
Yes the opposite is also true, which was my point. Everyone believes. I choose to believe in God, which I consider to be the highest, truest and most romantic of feelings, rational processes and the whole meaningful sum. There is no division in its parts and it cannot be expressed. It makes the world coherent because that's what made the world, I know the purpose of the sun, or how the leaf got on the tree, and what man's moral purpose is on earth.
Muhammad Asad betters me: link to youtube.com
To you your way, to me mine.
There is no such thing as non-belief. You can only come to a conclusion if you believe in something in the first place, even a conclusion against religion is the end product of a belief in materialism or earthly utopia. Simple logic.
"Tribal rivalry – non-religious vs. religious. The latter steals people and power from the former. No surprise there."
That does not come close to how the word "tribal" is used. Before the formation of nation states, human beings were naturally divided into "tribes". The word is no more crude or vulgar than the word "nation". The Amazon rainforest hosts a number of "tribes" which is very different from the tribalism elsewhere. It is close to how the word "tribe" was used before. Religions like Islam and Christianity transcended the tribe, joining tribes into an ethical community. One God, one humanity: it can't get better than that. It is to accept that people come from different places but only as far as presenting an opportunity for them to get to know each other and live as brethren.
"Human ethics were created by humans and have evolved over time. Not surprisingly, religions – also created by humans – reflect the ethics and knowledge available to their inventors around the time they were created, and require “re-interpretation” in order to (attempt to) remain relevant.
"Religions are a form of tribalism. They developed out of tribalism and they encourage tribalism."
The idea that we are morally progressing is called a Whiggish sentiment and it is very much a "sentiment". In fact, we have utilised research theories and new surroundings to construct and shape behaviour we deem suitable.
A book you might find interesting is the anthropologist Talal Asad's Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam.
Additionally, there is a lot of evidence which shows that early religious communities were persecuted for opposing tribalism. The Christian libertarian Henry Grady Weaving writes in his book The Mainstream of Human Progress (1947):
[Abraham insisted] that man is free and self-controlling and responsible for his own acts; that each person is free to do good or evil, as he may choose, but that any wrong act will result in punishment to the evildoer.
Chris Hedges has also stated:
This individualism—the belief that we can exist as distinct beings from the tribe, or the crowd, and that we are called on as individuals to make moral decisions that at times defy the clamor of the tribe or the nation—is a gift of the Abrahamic faiths. This sense of individual responsibility is coupled with the constant injunctions in Islam, Judaism and Christianity for a deep altruism.
"And our religions are outmoded and encode the worst impulses in tribal society."
I disagree. It depends on the theologians who shape religious practice. Religions, in their pristine form, actually endowed humanity with ethics. Examples like equal rights for women, a historically persecuted half of humanity, have to be ongoing. When the prophets disagree with homosexuality, it is in the context of violence in which homosexuality was considered immoral and indeed was, e.g. sodomy was perpetrated against vulnerable men in the context of war and conflict. The problem is when people refuse to think and attach themselves to understanding that do no apply in new contexts. The religion which I know best (Islam) is opposed to tribalism but tribalism is widely practiced by Muslims. In fact, terrorism committed by Muslims is chiefly a tribal act. As Chris Hedges noted: "The problem is not religion. The problem is the human heart." But I would argue that it is actually many human hearts that have failed to lift themselves up. There is good in some men and women that I believe will always last.
Miko is one fine human being, finer than many, whom I had the pleasure of seeing in Melbourne give a talk. Even in his bearing he appeared humble and without pretensions. He is one in a few male ethicists (there have been far too many unheard-of women) who have graced the past centuries. The others being Gandhi, Muhammad Abduh, Leo Tolstoi and Rabbi Elmer Berger.
Fukuyama's ego-driven book title may have inspired Sam Harris's "The End of Faith". Extremists love such fatalistic titles. Compare that to Chris Hedges's morally excellent "Empire of Illusion" which counters such propaganda in its own tongue.
Nice one. In the establishment some of the intellectuals/pundits who are complicit in "enormous crimes" include a large chunk of the media, Bernard Lewis, etc. Among Muslims you have Qutb and Mawdudi. Hindus have their Hindu atheist Savarkar. It also often amazes me how Bernard Lewis can quote bin Laden while exercising his own rapacious and morally vacuous intellect. Fundamentalists do that. But it also amazes me how fundamentalists who call themselves secular get a free pass for being "intellectual", permitted in empire's hallowed halls, whereas Qutb becomes the "godfather of terrorism". The Saudi establishment gives refuge to dictators and fundamentalists and persecutes those who ask moral questions. What is the difference between a liberal and a Puritan murderer?
"Many anti-semites have cherry picked the Talmud available to them to show how racist is Jewish tradition, but who reads all of it and can tell if this is so as a net offering? I imagine the Koran is the same way in terms of Arab tradition and net offering?"
The Qur'an can be compared to the Torah and the New Testament. The Talmud, if I understand correctly, is not a book of revelation. It can be compared to collections of Muslim legal opinions and exegesis which should be open to dispute. I think anti-Semites choose to completely ignore problematic notions in their own ethical environs. It is the duty of Muslim and Jewish ethicists to address these. For the Muslim equivalent of Rabbi Berger, check out Muhammad Abduh whose egalitarian message has also been sidelined by the "strident voice of exclusivist nationalism", the sort that has led to the slaughter of the sub-Saharan community in Libya.
"I sometimes wonder how these cringing slobbering politicians are not like normal people, they have no self respect, none"
Most politicians suffer from megalomania. It is this personality type that advantages them in the realm of power though with a cruel relish. History is a duel between megalomaniacs and moral prophets.
"and who cares what he thinks in private because it’s an election year and he’s got to keep up with the Republicans"
Not too sure if there is a difference between Obama's public and private views unless he lives in a constant state of cognitive dissonance on fundamental questions of morality and humanity. It is possible to dilute one's belief to win public approval or as a step toward reform but even if one grants Obama the benefit that he is a better man it only lingers as far as the thought for the truth would be that Obama lacks common decency and integrity which is the one and only qualification for corporate presidency. Chris Hedges said it best: Obama is a brand.
"I learned to dislike liberals when I lived in Roxbury, the inner-city in Boston, as a seminary student at Harvard Divinity School. I commuted into Cambridge to hear professors and students talk about empowering people they never met. It was the time of the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Spending two weeks picking coffee in that country and then coming back and talking about it for the rest of the semester was the best way to “credentialize” yourself as a revolutionary. But few of these “revolutionaries” found the time to spend 20 minutes on the Green Line to see where human beings in their own city were being warehoused little better than animals. They liked the poor, but they did not like the smell of the poor. It was a lesson I never forgot." - Chris Hedges, 'Liberals are Useless'
"If you carry a multi-generational grudge, you are not going to be able to reach a peace agreement."
The word "agreement" in the phrase "peace agreement" is superfluous and blinding. Peace does not require agreement and certainly not when one side holds much of the power, feels it is entitled to that power and spends its agency in pursuit of further power. In this scenario agreement can only be coerced. Although the generation that did not directly create dispossession is not responsible, it is ethically obliged to consider the past and as in the case of this the proof of the past, actual breathing human beings, are PRESENTLY being affected with the new generation not merely present but in command of the dispossession it is their moral duty to fight for equal rights of fellow human beings and condemn the past. This has never happened before in human history because right-minded people have always been trodden upon by those who do not wish to relinquish or temper that power. This is why you cannot reach a "peace agreement" in this scenario and it is also dominant power that creates factory farms and sweatshops. This applies to not just Israel but all political oppressions. Power can be swayed both by the agency of the oppressed and those around the world who are not corrupted by the comfort of silence or apathy.
eee,
"Pointing out Islamic hatred by Jews is fine I guess, but pointing out Jew hatred by Islamic Palestinians, let alone their leaders is censored. Why is that?"
Perhaps you should phrase it better. I know it is in vogue to say "Islamic" this and that. We don't say "Judaic" this and that. "Jew" relates to "Muslim" not "Islam". Also "Islamic Palestinians" buys into the thesis of a separate humanity as distinct from "Judaic Israel". These ideas are entrenched in the writings of Bernard Lewis, motivated by political capital for Israel's image as a member of the Judeo-Christian tribe following the new location of the diaspora amid new people and unfortunately many on the western left have failed to challenge them and have been appropriated in our media and cultural discourse. Even liberal Zionists like Amos Oz believe in it as did the reactionary and shallow Muslim theologians like Maududi and Qutb who conveyed very similar ideas for Muslims that Zionists do for Jews, as a form of aggressive identity following some great political upheavals.
Am_America: The difference is that Islam is theology like Judaism. Zionism, like other reactionary anti-ethical discourses, cannot be redeemed. One cannot compare theology to ideology.
Qutbism/Maududism which are reactionary anti-ethical discourses by Muslim figures following the tragedy of colonialism, on the other hand, can be compared to Zionism.
People in Asia, Africa and South America have their own experiences with colonialism and are more likely to support Palestinians. In countries like India though it depends on the government. The former right-wing government would have likely abstained. It is a shame about Australia where Julia Gillard is in power. She even justified the air strikes against Gaza in 2008.