Candice, I don't know why you seem to continually misunderstand what I'm
saying...
Reading the Koran and such texts is always worthwhile; why would I think it
pathetic? I'm told in Arabic it has a striking intellectual beauty which
is hard to carry over into English; but you can see the attractions of
Islam quite clearly, just as (for me) the attractions of Christianity are
very clear in the Gospels. I would never dream of suggesting disrepect to
any of the people shocked by what has happened in the name of their
religion.
But if Islam is going through pain at the moment, then shouldn't Christians
equally be shocked by the massacres which occurred in the Balkans in the
90s, say, which were committed by Christians of various kinds, or the
slaughters by priests in Rwanda, or those religious murders which are now
occurring in Indonesia? Why are these totally different phenomena? I
really don't understand; it is as if you're saying that Islam is somehow a
fundamentally different phenomenon to the other great monotheistic
religions, and I don't believe it is. If you're looking for a point to
begin understanding, surely it's in the similarities?
My point was the crude one that religious texts of all kinds have been used
as justifications for many bloody actions in the bloody history of human
beings, and I can't see how this action is, in that way, any different.
The real shame of the current manifestations of Islamic fundamentalism seem
to me that they destroy the wide tradition of tolerance which is preached
in Islam, that all gods are aspects of the one God, and that others worship
God in their own ways which must be respected - a teaching notably absent
from Christianity.
The really necessary understanding, it seems to me, lies not in these
traditions - although of course they may illuminate some cultural aspects
of it - but in the phsyical, economic and political conditions which make
apocalyptic actions seem the only possible recourse, and which infect young
men especially with this suicidal glamour.
I also think there is not much to understand about human violence. It's a
terrifying absence, that's all: the most brutal assertion of power by one
human being over others.
> Yes, absolutely--to your last statement. But that position is exactly
>what has to be accepted and respected by those who see the complexity--the
>desirable complexity--as you and I do, among many others. If we don't grant
>another's fundamentalism as having any place in the complex perspective we
>bring to our views and visions of that other, then we start from the same
>non-negotiable, absolutely certain-of-rightness position, and we have
>nothing but stalemate before us.
>
There's a danger in this cultural relativism, despite its undoubted
well-meaningness. I'm all for respect for the Other, however constituted,
and nowhere was suggesting that such respect be dismissed. At the same
time, in our anxiety to understand I don't see why we should throw away our
our own perspectives. There are for example people who defend genital
mutilation on the grounds that another culture's traditions should be
defended against the imperialistic notions of the west: I simply can't
accept that such human suffering can or should be glossed in such a way.
Interestingly, a lot of these arguments revolve around questions of gender.
Best
A
Alison Croggon
Home page
http://users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
Masthead
http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
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