#MyJihad on Chicago bus: Crazed hatemonger threatens jihad bombing

He should. and once he sees his image, he will see prophet muhamad on the other side. May Allah be with him.
M

Sometimes, LL, I don't know if you are, in commendable objective fashion, describing the best of the Judeo-Christian assessment of the human condition or you do so because you personally believe in this assessment and thus convey things from a faith perspective first and foremost. Understand, either way it's a good job you do. I'm just curious whether you are a believing Christian or Jew. You can tell me if you like, but I would understand if you don't want to do so. It's your call.

On another but somewhat related matter, I've long wondered about an educational approach to black Americans, and for that matter to blacks all over the world, which would, with many historical facts, show blacks that though the Judeo-Christian Caucasian world wronged the Negroid race by way of slavery and Jim Crow type initiatives, it did so for far shorter a time than the Islamic world did and, as well, has apologized many times over for its treatment of the black race which is something the Islamic world has never done, incapable as it is of apologizing for anything even though it has much to apologize for.

Hope you had a fine Christmas season and will have a productive 2013. Take care.

Both ' jihad' and its close companion the cry 'allahu akhbar' are, I suspect, rapidly becoming *the* triggers for the 'DANGER! oh sh*t I better take cover/ get the hell out of here if I possibly can' response among ordinary non-Muslim citizens *all over the world*.

In certain types of confined spaces, such as planes, however, they are *also* becoming triggers for a different kind of response, among that subset of the population whom one might call 'sheepdogs'; a response that involves 'nobody can get out of here. lives are imminently at risk, so we better take out this b*st*rd like, now'.

[bold emphasis added by me: I'd suggest a "moreover" rather than a "however" -- but that's not why I called... hang on, let me get out of these square brackets...]

Okay. As I argued in an old essay of mine from my blog a little over three years ago (Yelling "Allahu Akbar" in a crowded theater), we are already past the point where we should consider the public ejaculation of the takbir to be tantamount to waving a gun around (or worse) in a public place which, as we all know, should be met with deadly force, with questions asked later.

Thanks Wellington for your wishes, and I return the favor. As far as the symbolisms I use drawn from the Judaeo-Christian mythologoumena and their relation to belief, I'm thankful to the aforementioned philosopher Eric Voegelin (whom quite a few Christians considered to be "not a Christian") for helping me, years ago, see the issue is not so neatly cut-and-dried; and that Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle (just to pick a few of the more known from among hundreds one could adduce) shared the same belief about the mysterious (yet luminous) meaning of life and humanity as do Jews and Christians. This includes a sensibility more insouciantly forgiving of religious symbolisms, and consequently less phobic about their needless hypostatization into literalism (Voegelin coined the term hypostatization to denote what Alfred Whitehead, in a somewhat different context, referred to with his phrase "misplaced concreteness").

One doesn't want to push this too far, however, in the sense of a glibly promiscuous Joseph-Campbellesque cafeteria of religions sort of way; but on the other hand, the lines drawn by the dogmatists of the end of Christendom, anxiously erected in order to stave off tremors and premonitions of precisely that type of promiscuity which leads further to nihilistic skepticism (or its worse cousin, the legless skeptic who claims he's "not nihilistic") while understandable, given what they were up against, are no more tenable than relativism. The modern era seems mostly dominated by two mirror-image camps: the Dogmatists, who are afraid of agnosticism because they think that only Certitude can save them from the mystery of life; and the Modernists, who are afraid of faith because they think it commits them too much to certitude. Both are champions and defenders of flawed half-truths.

LemonLime,

Peter Berger, in his book, The Heretical Imperative, stakes out a Protestant faith position in the difficult and mysterious realm between relativism and absolutes, a position he calls "mellow certainty," (as against absolute certainty) and which he says is based on accumulating and ongoing experience, including religious experience, (following on the tradition of the theologian Schleiermacher) as against dogmatic adherence to the doctrinal authority of any tradition.

Hmmm. Well yes, the wonder that there is anything should make us wonder a lot, irrespective of certitude.

...one rots the brain the other your teeth.

Surely he is aware he needs "dental" as well as "mental" work -Soon..

"Peter Berger, in his book..."

Years ago, I used to like Berger.

However, I found out he has serious flaws.

From part of an essay on him I wrote on my blog almost a year ago:

I recall Peter Berger, a professor of religion and sociology, from my college days, when I took a lot of courses in history, philosophy and comparative religions, and also became a bibliovore on these and related subjects.

Berger's seminal study The Sacred Canopy was part of my curriculum...and figures as one among the many books that have been formative for my philosophical odyssey over the years...

...

But wouldn't you know it, when it comes to the problem of Islam, suddenly Prof. Berger turns into a blithering idiot.

(To see why I say that, see Professor Emeritus Peter Berger: A scholar, gentleman, and imbecile.)

As for the problem of relativism, I think it's more helpful to see the terms "relative" and "absolute" as terminological poles denoting two vectors of a single paradox, which is the mystery (The Mystery) about which all philosophies and religions are trying to fathom -- and for which none of them holds the exhaustive key that dispels what disturbs about it, even if many of them help to illuminate its chiaroscuro contours.

Woops.

"...about which all philosophies and religions are trying to fathom..."

No need for that "about".

I liked your blogpost on Peter Berger. I guess he never responded to your comment? I doubt he could. Unanswerable. Sorry to hear that he's conveniently relativizing, where it comes to Islam. He's done some brilliant work in the past.

Wellington wrote:

On another but somewhat related matter, I've long wondered about an educational approach to black Americans, and for that matter to blacks all over the world, which would, with many historical facts, show blacks that though the Judeo-Christian Caucasian world wronged the Negroid race by way of slavery and Jim Crow type initiatives. . .
.............................

Absolutely true, Wellington.

But it is also worth noting how much Christianity—with strong reference to both the "Old Testament" and the New—figured in *ending* slavery in the West.

Many Negro spirituals are also freedom songs, and religious free blacks in the northern cities were instrumental in the "underground railroad".

This was true of whites, as well.

After being a victim of the press gang himself, John Newton entered the slave trade. He came to rue his actions, and wrote the great hymn "Amazing Grace" in atonement. His becoming a devout Anglican following a terrible storm at sea led to his leaving the slave trade, and the beginning of his work against it.

"Amazing Grace" later became one of the great songs of the civil rights era, as well.

William Wilberforce was a devout Evangelical Christian. He worked tirelessly for *decades* on ending the slave trade in Britain, which he was finally successful in doing.

In the US and Canada, Unitarians, Quakers, Lutherans, and other Christians were all heavily involved in abolition.

Of course, not every Christian was anti-slavery, but Christianity—with its sympathy for the prisoner and the slave—was absolutely key in ending slavery.

Of course, there was never any such movement in Islam. To the extent that slavery ended—or at least went underground—in the Muslim world, it was due to the efforts of Infidels—almost entirely Westerners.

And, of course, the *only* group today calling for the revival of slavery and sex slavery are pious Muslims.

Wellington, despite this grimness, I hope your year is getting off to a great start.