[lit-ideas] Re: Ahmadi-Nejad's Letter to Bush

  • From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 23:22:05 -0700

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

Other related posts: