When even the pope has to whisper

[barb162]

(what I thought to be a provocative article with some fascinating insights)


http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HA10Ak01.html

Jan 10, 2006
When even the pope has to whisper
By Spengler

Islam is the unexploded bomb of global politics. US foreign policy - the only foreign policy there is, for the United States is the only superpower - proceeds from the hope that a modern and democratic Islam will emerge from the ruins of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Through democratic institutions, Washington believes, the long-marginalized Shi'ites will adapt to religious pluralism. Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's Islam, fixed in amber since the High Middle Ages, will metamorphose into something like American mainline Protestantism.

Alas, the available facts suggest that the opposite result will ensue: more freedom equals more fundamentalism. Not the secular Shi'ite parties but the pro-Iranian religious parties dominate the Iraqi polls. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood quadrupled its vote despite heavy-handed measures to intimidate its supporters; Hamas threatens to displace Fatah in the Palestinian elections this month; Hezbollah has become the strongest electoral as well as military force in Lebanon; and, most important of all, Mahmud Ahmadinejad crushed a more pragmatic opponent in last June's Iranian presidential elections.

Islam was founded as a theocracy, such that the Western innovation of church-state separation remains alien to its culture. Is it possible for Islam to reform? A negative answer implies that Ahmadinejad's January 5 call for world domination falls within the Islamic mainstream. He told an audience of religious students, "We must believe in the fact that Islam is not confined to geographical borders, ethnic groups and nations. It's a universal ideology that leads the world to justice. We don't shy away from declaring that Islam is ready to rule the world. We must prepare ourselves to rule the world." The previous day, the London Guardian leaked a European intelligence report detailing Iran's efforts to acquire technology required to build nuclear weapons. A very few writers, including this one, have rejected the possibility of Islamic reformation, to the stony contempt of universally accepted opinion.

Now Pope Benedict XVI has let it be known that he does not believe Islam can reform. This we learn from the transcript of a January 5 US radio interview with one of Benedict's students and friends, Father Joseph Fessio, SJ, the provost of Ave Maria University in Naples, Florida, posted on the Asia Times Online forum by a sharp-eyed reader. For the pope to refute the fundamental premise of US policy is news of inestimable strategic importance, yet a Google News scan reveals that not a single media outlet has taken notice of what Fessio told interviewer Hugh Hewitt last week. No matter: still and small as Benedict's voice might be, it carries further than earthquake and whirlwind.


snip

[Crunchy Frog]

1. If Islam can't reform, then what do people propose?

Genocide against 1/5 of the world's population? The fact is that there HAS been reform in Islam in the past, there are continuing reform movements now, and I don't see any reason why major reform should be precluded in the future.

It's also a fact that this country has often done what it could to stifle reform and to inflame Islamic radicalism. Our situation with Iran today can be directly traced back to our engineering the overthrow of their democratic government in 1953.

At any rate, I don't think Pope Rat has much room to talk. He doesn't want a democratic and modern Catholicism either.

[Darranar]

3. Most don't propose such drastic measures.

We don't slaughter the savages, we "enlighten" them, preferably by invading their countries, imposing puppet regimes, and extracting their natural resources.

See, that's worked so well in the past five decades, and they want to continue the policy.

:eyes:

[Darranar]

2. Orthodox Judaism holds that the Torah is the exact word of God.

Yes, trasmitted through Moses, but only in the sense that the Koran is trasmitted through Mohammed.

The "Oral Torah" was also trasmitted to Moses according to Orthodox Judaism; it was simply not written down until the Rabbinic Era.

The obvious parallels in Islam are the Koran and the collections of hadith, both of which have been subject to extensive interpretation, application, and dispute (by humans) in the body of shariah.

Judaism has most definitely "reformed."

Not to mention Protestant Christianity, which has no real extra-Biblical body of law and yet has neverrtheless reformed as well.

This piece is the product of bigotry, paranoia, and ignorance, not serious analysis of the situation.

[barb162]

4. Well I think there is some reform in the various religions too

and I had not read about the various Korans being discovered until I read this

[Colorado Blue]

11. I think when people discuss Islam, it's important to realize that

1.3 billion people, spread around the globe, aren't all alike. It's tempting to stereotype - this has happened to Jews, and similarly, Jews and now Zionists, have been and are, accused of trying to Dominate The World.

People shouldn't fall into these traps and horror stories about how Muslims Seek to Dominate The World remind me all too much of bigotry experienced by Jews.

On the topic of reform, though, this is in fact only recently been the subject of an "extraordinary" meeting in Saudi Arabia, a report of which I posted on DU.

Reform presents obstacles if the word of God, the true word, is already seen to be written down and if in fact it reflects 7th century regional values, then it can't be universally true. So there is resistance to seeing the Quran as a product of its time and place, and therefore open to serious change.

That's the conundrum faced by all religionists who believe that people can actually channel G*d, and write down "the truth" verbatim, and not merely be inspired by Him or try to interpret Her ideas. In the case of Judaism, thousands of years have elapsed already since the days of Leviticus, and there has been substantial, sometimes violent and schismatic change, within the Christian world.

But in fact, reform within Islam, concerning the roles of church and state, women's and gay rights, democracy, respect for the RIGHTS of other religious minorities and not merely their status as "tolerated", is important, in fact maybe it's a critical issue in today's world.

That said, it must come from within. Nobody can impose reform on another religion.

I too am concerned about the levels of fear generated by Islam per se, but also believe that some interesting problems are being confronted in societies, like France, or within Israel, where two worlds apparently interface and are struggling to accomodate each other on equal footing.

IF people can accept one another with at least civility, tolerance and respect, then we have hope. And it's vital that violence not be accepted as a means of gaining or regaining, honor, and that civil institutions, as in France, be accepted. The imposition of de facto sharia law on women living in Western states, for example, is a potential flash point. It's one of the key arguments against the bi-national state idea in Israel. How much tsuris evolved from the fact that the Mufti of Jerusalem couldn't deal with women in shorts? We'll never know - but I suspect it's been enormous.

And I don't see how France, land of Chanel and the bikini, is going in the end to be able to live with a type of "diversity" that walls off a large and growing number of its citizens - whether by virtue of French discrimination against "the other", or because of Muslim desire to keep their culture intact as it was in North Africa, and unchanging.

Already, there has been talk of putting electronic tracking devices on Islamists in Germany. That's very scary. But so are the imams' threats against the West, and against Western culture, and the frequent use of violent imagery.

[funflower]

5. What the Arab world needs is more people like Ibn Warraq.

He's the wonderful, rational, modern author of Why I Am Not a Moslem.

http://www.secweb.org/bookstore/bookdetail.asp?BookID=535

Appalled by the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, Ibn Warraq offers in response a reasoned examination of the world's second largest religion. Having been raised as a Muslim himself, Warraq has personal experience with Islam as well as a thorough knowledge of Islamic scholarship. Warraq presents a critical analysis of the life of Muhammad, the factors that influenced the writing of the Koran, the rise of Islam as a new religion, and its rapid spread by conquest.

Warraq is courageous in his criticism of the dark side of Islam, devoting whole chapters to the Salman Rushdie affair, the oppression of women in Muslim society, the enforcement of irrational taboos by Islamic fundamentalists, the authoritarian nature of Islamic law, the suppression of basic human rights in many Muslim countries, and numerous other controversial topics.

Warraq pleads for freedom of expression in Muslim society and the right to discuss and criticize the tenets of Islam without fear of death threats and other acts of terrorism. Fully documented with a complete bibliography, Why I Am Not a Muslim is a frank and long-overdue critique of Islam.

[barb162]

13. This looks very interesting and I am going to read the links

Thanks
:hi:

[trotsky]

6. If the Catholic Church can reform (and boy has it),

ANY religion can reform.

It's just that it takes the pressure of secularism to do so.

[barb162]

7. Sometimes there is reform from "piety" movements too

such as the Franciscans, other medieval monastic movements, the Reformation, etc

[trotsky]

8. True, but it could be argued

that movements like the Franciscans were a response to a perceived shift away from the orthodoxy - fearing the "corrupting" element of secularism.

[barb162]

9. could be

but I think they were really about going to what the teachings of Jesus really meant, that is, living a simple life, doing good, etc., probably due somewhat from a rise of secularism at that time

[Arianrhod]

14. Has the Catholic Church really reformed?

It continues to stand adamantly against birth control; it sought to excommunicate Kerry for his position on abortion. One result of this stance is that HIV continues to spread throughout the world, unchecked. Another is that a foreign entity meddled in American politics--in keeping with the Church's traditional kingmaker aspirations.

It continues to assert Augustine's concept of "just war", in which Christians are free to kill "enemy soldiers" who are threatening the State, in clear violation of the 6th Commandment.

John Paul II met personally with *, and failed to condemn him.

Ratzinger has such a dubious personal history that his appointment as Pope amounts to an abomination.

The Dead Sea Scrolls, from their discovery controlled by a coterie of Catholic Priests, remain to this day unpublished and inaccessible to scholars.

Somehow, I don't think things have changed all that much in the Church.

[trotsky]

15. I meant that only in the sense that...

now they no longer burn heretics at the stake, you can get an annulment, they can't sell indulgences anymore, etc.

You will get no argument from me that as a whole, the organization is still a regressive dinosaur that has no moral authority whatsoever.

[Arianrhod]

16. oh, okay.

I should recognize your British-style understatement by now. . . . :)

[trotsky]

18. Too much Monty Python as a teenager, I guess.

:crazy:

[Silent3]

10. To what extent does this apply to the US?

Alas, the available facts suggest that the opposite result will ensue: more freedom equals more fundamentalism.

While it's not a majority, we have a frighteningly large minority of fundamentalist Christians in this country who are quite happily trying to turn the US into a theocratic state -- and they're waving the flag and shouting "freedom!" as they go, without detecting in the slightest the sad irony of it all.

Then again. most of Western Europe has at least as much, if not more, freedom than we have in the US, yet apart from pockets of (mostly Islamic) discontent, religion, be it fundamentalist or not, has very little hold on the people.

What's the difference between the US and Europe in this regard? If we could figure that out, perhaps we could see the way towards a more moderate and tolerant Islam. There's clearly more to the answer than freedom by itself, or even freedom plus affluence.

[barb162]

12. A quick reply here

Actually in 200 years I can't think of a theocratic prez, including the Bushster, who doesn't go to church and who recently told Pat Robertson to bug the hell off with his dumb comments. But he sure does manipulate fundies well, throwing them bones every so often

[Arianrhod]

17. Well, there's never been a president before

who claimed that God told him to invade another country, either.

This one is quite different, and to whitewash over those differences is a dangerous thing, IMO.

[Dogmudgeon]

19. "Spengler"? You've GOT to be kidding me!

The guy isn't a rational philosophical critic of religious fundamentalism of the Moslem variety; he's a mouthpiece for right-wing anti-Islamists in Asia.

Reading the last two paragraphs in that very same article may be instructive:

My investigation of the causes of Europe's present decline was inspired by comments of then-cardinal Ratzinger in a book-length interview with the German journalist Peter Seewald published in 1996 as The Salt of the Earth. Nothing is really new in Benedict's present formulation except, perhaps, his sense of urgency as the hour grows late and the moment of truth approaches. In the cited essay, Benedict excoriates the pessimism of Oswald Spengler, who claimed to have discovered a deterministic pattern of rise and fall of civilizations. Instead, he argues that "the fate of a society always depends upon its creative minorities", and that "Christians should look upon themselves as just such a creative minority".

I agree with the pope, not with my namesake. My choice of nom de guerre is ironic rather than semiotic. The fact that the West still has such a leader as Benedict XVI in itself is cause for optimism. It might be too late for Europe, but it is not too late for the United States, and that is where the pope's mustard seeds may fall on fertile ground.

He's pro-Pope in a smarmy way, and vehemently anti-Moslem. The guy might as well be Jeff Rense expounding on the Jews ... er, I mean the Zionists, yeah, that's it. He's a fairly popular columnist, too, much to the disrepute of Taiwanese conservatives.

Don't believe me? Follow some of his links and check out a few of his other philosophico-historical waxings and wanings, then read some neo-Spenglerites. He's a modern version of the 1930s Spenglerites, tailored for the Asian Times' audience.

The philosophy of the original Spengler was deeply influenced ("informed" in modern crit-speak) by Hegel's dialecticism and Nietzche's existentialism. While Spengler is worth reading, his writings gave strong, though unwitting, "aid and comfort" to German Nationalists and the philosophies that would eventually fuel the Nazi Party. Spengler himself wasn't much of a Nazi. He criticized Naziism stongly, and managed to avoid being killed for it. The Nazis eventually repudiated him for lacking sufficient race hatred and failing to declare the idea of their "Thousand-Year Reich" as a winner; he was lucky not to have died in a death camp. Oswald Spengler may have been free from (pseudo-)scientificated hatreds of the "inferior races", but his followers weren't.

And they still aren't.

--p!

Mandatory (?) Reading:
(P! Recommends Dramamine™ brand diphenhydramine HCl for severe nausea.
"Dramamine™ -- Goodbye to Nausea, and Hello to Life!™")
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Spengler It's Wikipedia. (Sorry, it's not PeerReviewed™. But it's still good.)
http://forum.atimes.com/forum.asp?FORUM_ID=13 ("Spengler"'s Very Own Asian Times Forum. Be still, my beating heart!)
http://www.alphalink.com.au/~radnat/index.html (Australian Radical Nationalist Archive; much Spengleriana. Neo-Nazi. Read it for understanding, not pleasure.)
http://www.bayarea.net/~kins/AboutMe/Spengler/SpenglerDoc.html (Oswald Spengler's Uneven Legacy. Decent enough overview; i.e., I kept lunch down.)
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v17/v17n2p10_Oliver.html (Revilo P. Oliver and the Holocaust Hoaxers weigh in. For the strong of stomach only.)
http://www.spengler.org/ (Several Über-cute Spenglers to get your mind off the uglies.)