The integration crisis in Europe is continuing, both in France and Germany. The absurd and arbitrary nature of French clothing "restriction" has already been covered in this blog, but the most striking recent comment came from Germany's Angela Merkel, who claimed that the Turks in Germany must assimilate to Germany's Christian culture. The failure of assimilation or cultural synthesis is not in doubt, but what was most astonishing was this: that she claimed Germany's culture was Christian. Everything I have experienced and read about European culture suggests that Germany is not Christian, but secular. The Swiss incident earlier this year involving the minarets reinforces this impression. The French, of course, have turned secularism into a religion, although they have mellowed a little since the days of the Revolutionary calendar.
Recently I had a discussion with a friend, who is very religious and seeks the same. One of the attitudes which drives her batty is "culturally religious", in which the alleged member of a particular religion or sect does not hold the associated beliefs, but even ignores the practices. One cannot look into another heart, but one can examine the deeds.
When Merkel refers to German Christianity, she is using "Christianity" as code for "secularism". Although this secularism does not mesh well with the radicalizing form of Islam which the previously rather secular Turks have adopted, using the term "Christianity" is facile misdirection and as intellectually dishonest as American preachers who use "Christianity" as a term for the insidious "Gospel of Wealth".
Showing posts with label islam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label islam. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Last Trial of the Templars!
The hills are not alive with the sound of muezzin. The Swiss have voted against the further construction of minarets in their tidy little country. This vote applies not just as a regulation, but as an amendment to the Swiss constitution. The Swiss Constitution, based on what I have learned about Confederate govenment, probably does not possess the sanctity of that of the United States of America, but it is no doubt a serious matter to amend it if it requires a majority vote by population and canton. The resident right-wing party celebrated, as one might expect, and the media have forgotten that Swiss neutrality never meant Swiss tolerance or niceness.
What do the Templars have to do with this matter? There is no doubt that the Templars vanished quickly and quietly away in the aftermath of their dissolution, since many of those that did not were slaughtered by their creditor, the King of France. One possible destination of the missing Templars was the Alpine mountain range, a region whose importance derived from the limited number of passes between Germany, France, and Italy thorugh which armies and merchants traveled. I would never equate probability with certainty, but the presence of Templars in that region would explain the sudden appearence of a local sophisticated and secretive banking industry and a sudden rise in regional military success, both of which were specialties of the Templars. The military successes of the Templars, however, were never long-term, and their history was a series of stepped strategic retreats.
If the Swiss hypothesis be true, then the growing presence of Muslims in the last redoubt of the Knights Templar indicates the final defeat of the order which started in a Christian Jerusalem, an ultimate insult after the recent breaking of their banking secrecy under American pressure.
What do the Templars have to do with this matter? There is no doubt that the Templars vanished quickly and quietly away in the aftermath of their dissolution, since many of those that did not were slaughtered by their creditor, the King of France. One possible destination of the missing Templars was the Alpine mountain range, a region whose importance derived from the limited number of passes between Germany, France, and Italy thorugh which armies and merchants traveled. I would never equate probability with certainty, but the presence of Templars in that region would explain the sudden appearence of a local sophisticated and secretive banking industry and a sudden rise in regional military success, both of which were specialties of the Templars. The military successes of the Templars, however, were never long-term, and their history was a series of stepped strategic retreats.
If the Swiss hypothesis be true, then the growing presence of Muslims in the last redoubt of the Knights Templar indicates the final defeat of the order which started in a Christian Jerusalem, an ultimate insult after the recent breaking of their banking secrecy under American pressure.
Monday, November 9, 2009
I Am Curious (Green)
The intriguing premise of Loren Rhoads' now-defunct annual magazine Morbid Curiosity and , more specifically, my attendance at the Friday reading of the magazine story collection Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues at the Castro Books, Inc. inspired to write up this incident, since it would have been both suitable and has never been told in a well-composed style.
I had taken a course at Carleton called Introduction to Islam with Professor Khalid, on the theory that I should know more about the Abrahamic faiths I was likely to encounter during my earthly sojourn: since I already belonged to one, I decided that I would take both Introduction to Judaism and Introduction to Islam. I greatly enjoyed Khalid's course, and still have the textbooks on a top shelf for reference. I am afraid that certain people in this post-9/11 environment do not appreciate my attempts to refine their distinctions between Muslim groups, clothing, and principles. I don't do it as a bleeding liberal, either, but as an academic who requires some degree of accuracy - I am not knowledgeable enough to make the finest distinctions of Islamic doctrine.
Khalid's course had created in me a thirst for knowledge about Islam. I must stress, again, that my interest in non-Christian religions arises not from a desire to convert, but rather a determination to acquire accurate and relatively unbiased information about each faith tradition. So I signed up for a e-mail list about Islam - this was in the late nineties, so I do mean e-mail list, nothing more. It had no profile section, and certainly no place for identifying pictures (although that last feature would have caused some problems for certain Muslims).
After a short time on the list, I received some spam from the Nation of Islam. I had not (yet) visited the University of Chicago and therefore been near the Nation of Islam headquarters, but I had seen Malcolm X (where I shouldn't have bought a large soda because of the long run time) and I had gone to high school with a Muslim girl.
I was a bit baffled and bemused by the spam. I find that there are two kinds of spam: that which is spam in the truest sense, and that which rises above spam by virtue of the recipient's expectation of it. I was not surprised that a list dedicated to Islam would receive such spam, and I was amused at the (necessary) assumption that the members of the list were African-American. Here I feel I must remind those much younger than I that effective google-stalking did not exist at this point and Friendster happened post-millenium (I should have taken up the jobbing erotic maid's offer to get in on that trend). I did google my name, however, and discovered that the only people who shared my name and appeared in the news were African-American petty criminals; this onomastic statistic (which is by no means a commentary on race and law) suggested to me that it was not unreasonable to assume someone with my name who was interested in Islam had West African ancestry. It also seemed to me that if I had been African-American and they had asked my race, I would have been more offended. I briefly considered signing on their list, but quickly came to my senses and refrained. As a last note, I have to say that even an organization that boasts Louis Farrakhan scares me less than the "Church" of Happyology, whose test I once took from a public computer where I did not have to sign in.
I had taken a course at Carleton called Introduction to Islam with Professor Khalid, on the theory that I should know more about the Abrahamic faiths I was likely to encounter during my earthly sojourn: since I already belonged to one, I decided that I would take both Introduction to Judaism and Introduction to Islam. I greatly enjoyed Khalid's course, and still have the textbooks on a top shelf for reference. I am afraid that certain people in this post-9/11 environment do not appreciate my attempts to refine their distinctions between Muslim groups, clothing, and principles. I don't do it as a bleeding liberal, either, but as an academic who requires some degree of accuracy - I am not knowledgeable enough to make the finest distinctions of Islamic doctrine.
Khalid's course had created in me a thirst for knowledge about Islam. I must stress, again, that my interest in non-Christian religions arises not from a desire to convert, but rather a determination to acquire accurate and relatively unbiased information about each faith tradition. So I signed up for a e-mail list about Islam - this was in the late nineties, so I do mean e-mail list, nothing more. It had no profile section, and certainly no place for identifying pictures (although that last feature would have caused some problems for certain Muslims).
After a short time on the list, I received some spam from the Nation of Islam. I had not (yet) visited the University of Chicago and therefore been near the Nation of Islam headquarters, but I had seen Malcolm X (where I shouldn't have bought a large soda because of the long run time) and I had gone to high school with a Muslim girl.
I was a bit baffled and bemused by the spam. I find that there are two kinds of spam: that which is spam in the truest sense, and that which rises above spam by virtue of the recipient's expectation of it. I was not surprised that a list dedicated to Islam would receive such spam, and I was amused at the (necessary) assumption that the members of the list were African-American. Here I feel I must remind those much younger than I that effective google-stalking did not exist at this point and Friendster happened post-millenium (I should have taken up the jobbing erotic maid's offer to get in on that trend). I did google my name, however, and discovered that the only people who shared my name and appeared in the news were African-American petty criminals; this onomastic statistic (which is by no means a commentary on race and law) suggested to me that it was not unreasonable to assume someone with my name who was interested in Islam had West African ancestry. It also seemed to me that if I had been African-American and they had asked my race, I would have been more offended. I briefly considered signing on their list, but quickly came to my senses and refrained. As a last note, I have to say that even an organization that boasts Louis Farrakhan scares me less than the "Church" of Happyology, whose test I once took from a public computer where I did not have to sign in.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
TV Review: Little Mosque on the Prairie
Although the current state at the cabin at Lake Tahoe is a dearth of channels, my TV-watching habits for series (as well as webcomic-reading) can be described as short-term addiction. This tendency also appears when I read books in a series. I watch a lot of episodes at once, and then lose interest; if it is sufficiently compelling, I may return. So it has been with the CBC series Little Mosque on the Prairie. I watched Season 1 a while ago, and then lost interest, but I have been watching many episodes recently, and now have reached another lull.
For those of you unfamiliar with the series, I could just post the Wikipedia link. That, however, would be lazy. The series' viewpoint character is a Toronto lawyer who decides to become an imam (more like a rabbi than a priest) for the Muslim community of the small western Canadian town of Mercy. Presumably the creator of the series used this (standard literary) structure in order that she could have an outsider thrust into the midst of key religious disputes. One must admit it makes more sens than the ordinary child who becomes the key to the salvation of the universe. The Muslim and non-Muslim characters span the entire political range, although it is true that the show privileges the Muslim characters. I can forgive this imbalance, since the other movie and TV roles for Muslim characters and actors of Middle Eastern descent are very frequently terrorists.
It's a very Canadian show, eschewing the Manichaean dichotomy of culture warriors and favoring the portrayal of individuals with personal motivations for faith or lack thereof. Each week there is a crisis that pits at least one character's Islamic beliefs or cultural tendencies from the Islamic part of the world against "western" traditions. The first season is especially interesting in that regard, since specific concepts needed to be introduced; the third season is closer to a soap opera, if soap operas were rigidly episodic and chaste to the point of no kissing. The westernization of the Muslim characters has angered many Muslim watchers, but I doubt the show would be able to spread its message of goodwill and ecumenical harmony if it showed the most rigid segments of the Muslim population.
I'm certainly not a follower of the Prophet, and perhaps I think this way because my formative political experience was the fall of the Berlin Wall rather than 9/11 or the Cold War, but this series does a good job of introducing Islam in a setting which will not frighten westerners.
For those of you unfamiliar with the series, I could just post the Wikipedia link. That, however, would be lazy. The series' viewpoint character is a Toronto lawyer who decides to become an imam (more like a rabbi than a priest) for the Muslim community of the small western Canadian town of Mercy. Presumably the creator of the series used this (standard literary) structure in order that she could have an outsider thrust into the midst of key religious disputes. One must admit it makes more sens than the ordinary child who becomes the key to the salvation of the universe. The Muslim and non-Muslim characters span the entire political range, although it is true that the show privileges the Muslim characters. I can forgive this imbalance, since the other movie and TV roles for Muslim characters and actors of Middle Eastern descent are very frequently terrorists.
It's a very Canadian show, eschewing the Manichaean dichotomy of culture warriors and favoring the portrayal of individuals with personal motivations for faith or lack thereof. Each week there is a crisis that pits at least one character's Islamic beliefs or cultural tendencies from the Islamic part of the world against "western" traditions. The first season is especially interesting in that regard, since specific concepts needed to be introduced; the third season is closer to a soap opera, if soap operas were rigidly episodic and chaste to the point of no kissing. The westernization of the Muslim characters has angered many Muslim watchers, but I doubt the show would be able to spread its message of goodwill and ecumenical harmony if it showed the most rigid segments of the Muslim population.
I'm certainly not a follower of the Prophet, and perhaps I think this way because my formative political experience was the fall of the Berlin Wall rather than 9/11 or the Cold War, but this series does a good job of introducing Islam in a setting which will not frighten westerners.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Prête à Portmanteau
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090812/ap_on_re_eu/eu_france_burquini_banned
So this 'Carole', a convert to Islam, wanted to go for a swim, but also wanted to remain modest. So she bought a burquini, a burqa-bikini portmanteau, and tried to go swimming. But French laws about wearing 'possible street clothes' while swimming prohibited her.
This seems to me typical French ideological overreaction, combined with the usual legislative blindness and resistance to future complications. Any gym or pool I have ever entered has hygienic requirements, usually mandating that one bring a change of clothes and shower both before and after using the pool. The problem here could easily be solved by Carole and other similarly inclined women changing from their non-revealing street clothes to their non-revealing burquini, which presumably has a design intended for la plage et la piscine (although, if I were a woman, I'd hesitate to wear it in a known undertow area). If you've seen photos of 19th century bathing suits, the burquini design doesn't seem at all outrageous, and has an absence of hideous carny stripes to recommend it. After all, the bad on nude swimmers is at its heart a matter of modesty rather than hygiene – swimming trunks or a bikini aren't going to keep a filthy person from polluting the pool, as various “accidents” in our client associations' pools have demonstrated this summer.
So this 'Carole', a convert to Islam, wanted to go for a swim, but also wanted to remain modest. So she bought a burquini, a burqa-bikini portmanteau, and tried to go swimming. But French laws about wearing 'possible street clothes' while swimming prohibited her.
This seems to me typical French ideological overreaction, combined with the usual legislative blindness and resistance to future complications. Any gym or pool I have ever entered has hygienic requirements, usually mandating that one bring a change of clothes and shower both before and after using the pool. The problem here could easily be solved by Carole and other similarly inclined women changing from their non-revealing street clothes to their non-revealing burquini, which presumably has a design intended for la plage et la piscine (although, if I were a woman, I'd hesitate to wear it in a known undertow area). If you've seen photos of 19th century bathing suits, the burquini design doesn't seem at all outrageous, and has an absence of hideous carny stripes to recommend it. After all, the bad on nude swimmers is at its heart a matter of modesty rather than hygiene – swimming trunks or a bikini aren't going to keep a filthy person from polluting the pool, as various “accidents” in our client associations' pools have demonstrated this summer.
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