I've taken this up with Alison back-channel and will have no more to say
about it here--Candice
> 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/
|