I never called them stone-age but their social structure and laws were developed in medieval times and they want to return to them. The absolutes prescribed by Mohammad remain valid. Sharia law came from Allah through Mohammad and applies today the way it did in the 7th century. Also, the Arabs didn't invent all the things you gave them credit for. The Islamists have made such claims, but they aren't true and are easily disproved. Many of the scholars I've read have taken the trouble to disprove them. There was a period when Arabic learning was more advanced than anyone else's, but this was a result of their translating Greek texts. Albert Hourani also refers to Indian and Persian texts but Arabs didn't go beyond what these earlier civilizations had developed except in very minor ways. Hourani refers to some advances in astronomy and surgery. Western enlightenment began with the "discovery" of the Greek texts handed on by the Arabic scholars, but what these scholars had done and were doing wasn't in keeping with the Sharia and so was discontinued. These scholars were in violation of the Sharia and not exemplars of it. They were shut down. The Arabs returned to the medieval teachings of the 7th century while the West advanced. As the West became increasingly enlightened, the Arabs entered their own dark ages - not because they were conquered (although they were by the Turks) but because they felt Sharia Law demanded it. The Arabs did not invent the West. Western Society began with Greece, continued through the Roman period and on into a medieval decline where some knowledge was preserved. There were various high points in various cities and then there was the European Enlightenment. So not only did the Arabs not invent the West but the Arab scholars who were congenial to Western thinking were repudiated by the Arabs. The Fundamentalist brand of Islam that we are contending with isn't pure 7th century Islam but as close as the Fundamentalists can make it - sort of -- it is their conception of it. It began with Wahhab in the 18th century was advanced by the Salafists, carried on by the Egyptian Muslim Brothers, picked up by Maududi, Sayyid Qutb & the Ayatollah Khomeini. And they believe the medieval crusades are still in effect. They have declared war upon us. I see no good reason for not taking them at their word. Lawrence -----Original Message----- From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mike Geary Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2006 10:26 PM To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Ahmadi-Nejad's Letter to Bush PE: > Except for the Revolution which forced a very particular understanding > of Sharia on the whole of Iran. And their brutal persecution of the > Bahai. All inside Iran, yes. And I too hate fascism. But they have not invaded any other country nor invaded by proxy any other country to enforce their "vision" on others. >And their support for Hekmatyar and other warlords in > Afghanistan. And Hezbollah in Lebanon. And now Hamas. And in Iraq. Oh, Christ, please, Paul, let's not get into a tit-for-tat on criminals that the U. S. has supported compared to criminals Iran has suported, you would slink away in shame. I like you, I don't want to have to do that to you. > Yeah, I think Ahmadi-Nejad is a threat and I think the > Bush administration also represents a threat. The two are different and > I don't feel that the one requires that I can't say anything about the > other. Agreed. But from my perspective, my call to duty is to defuse the rush to attack Iran. Iran is not a threat to the U. S. or any nation as I see it even with nuclear weapons -- no more so than Israel or Pakistan or India or France or Great Britain or Russia or China or North Korea. LH writes of Islamists as if we're dealing with Stone Age peoples -- God, in heaven, they invented mathematics and astronomy and science, they made monotheism rational, they preserved Egyptian and Greek intellectual life for us Westerners through our Dark Ages, they basically fucking reinvented us. But because they're not now a wealthy society, we wealthy societies (mostly Western at the moment) denigrate their ability to understand and deal rationally with the world. If you don't have money, the reasoning goes, you must be stupid or at least inconsequential. Well, yes, within our capitalist value system, I guess that's true. But there are other value systems at work in the work, and many of them see us as vicious, greed-driven, imperialistic warmongers. I don't see us that way, on reflection, but I know why they do. I know why most of the world despises us. I would too, were I not one of us, did I not know so many loving people. I know we're not our military-corporate presence in the world. That we're decent people caught up in a culture that demands economic things of us that can't be met without screwing our fellow man. We're forced to relate to people as sources of income. A pernicious existence, yes, but that's capitalism, we deal with it as best we can, trying to survive both economically and humanistically. Iran is forced to live in a world with us -- we who basically spit on all their values. They seem to have managed to go on with their lives with amazing equanimity over the past 1300 years compared to our dealings with those with whom we've disagreed just over the last 230 years. Islam has a vision of God and of how humans should relate to God and consequently how society should be organized in the furtherance of that relationship to God -- so do we in the Christian West. We have our ways which we revere, which we see as ways of identification. In that I think we're not very different from anyone else. My advice: accommodate. Honor be damned, accommodation, I am. Mike Geary Memphis