[lit-ideas] Re: Ahmadi-Nejad's Letter to Bush
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 12 May 2006 08:44:01 -0400
What you're doing by threatening military action and by our having taken
military action, is taking all the people in the center of the bell curve and
giving them a reason to give the fringes another look. You say they've
declared war on us. What do you call what we did and want to do to them? The
oil spot approach is more effective than war, which is ineffective, as Iraq has
shown. Just as most Americans are not political, neither are most Muslims.
Instead of giving Joe Muslim Average a reason to give the Islamic fringes
another look because they're terrified of the Americans, who are terrified of
the Muslims, why not give them a reason to not hate us and not be terrified?
There are always going to be fringe groups. A fringe group in the U.S. bombed
Oklahoma City. But most Americans don't support them. Most Muslims don't
support the fringes of Islamism either, all they want is to survive and have a
bigger house in the suburbs, just like everybody else. Give them a
reason to come to your side of the fence. Up until the Iraq invasion,
Americans were the cultural leaders of the world. Iraq changed that. By
advocating barbarism and acting like barbarians, we're driving ourselves deeper
into the Middle Ages, where the US. already is anyway in this age of
anti-Darwin and pro-apocalypse.
I've asked you this before and I'll ask again, if you were King of the World,
what would your world look like, and what would be your game plan for making it
look that way?
Catch you later. (And please answer my question about being King of the World.
Not something you read in a book, but your ideas.)
----- Original Message -----
From: Lawrence Helm
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: 5/12/2006 2:22:06 AM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Ahmadi-Nejad's Letter to Bush
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
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