'My research demonstrates that this is a very old problem, and it must be confronted now.'

What say you to this, kt? A very old problem? Sounds like the extremism you claim to oppose in all religions has had hold of islam for a very long time. To the point where it holds All Of Islam, Everywhere..

Which is exactly the point of this site, and exactly why people around the globe are confronting it now, in part thru this site.

Posted by: Gary at June 12, 2005 7:55 AM

But if the Administration had its wits about it, and left Iraq (to sink or dogpaddle, it hardly matters, we Infidels can only come out ahead whether Iraq stays, or dissolves into three vilayets) and concentrated on diminishing Muslim, chiefly Saudi, oil revenues, and interdicted the flow of Saudi money to support mosques and madrasas all over the Western world, and turnted its attention to Europe, where voters have recently, in confused but not entirely incoherent fashion, in both France and Holland demonstrated the gulf between the elites and the people who are sick of those elites, and above all sick of the kind of "enarques" (as Dominiique de Villepin) in France who have been responsible for unlimited Muslim migration and also for the policy of appeasement and cultural suicide (see "Eurabia") that have left many worried, some furious, others vaguely ill-at-ease and still others inclined, for the moment, to blame phantom foreigners (le plombier polonais, the famous Polish plumber who supposedly would come and take a job away from a plumber in France) rather than the growing unpleasantness, expense, and danger from the hideous hijabbed women and men who walk about the streets of Europe as if they owned these places, and talk about how they "are here to stay" not with a tone of pleasant accomodation to the local ways, but rather: this land belongs by right to us, as the people of Allah, the Believers, and it is only a matter of time (much the same tone can be found in the statements made by Muslims and Muslim groups in this country: not "we are loyal to this country and love it" but "we are here to stay" and "this is our country" uttered in a way that is much more aggressive and while superficially unobjectionable, uttered with a tone, and bearing a meaning, that is: no one can dislodge us, and we have a right to remake this as we do all the Infidel lands. That is quite different from the normal "this-is-our-country sentiment of the immigrant eager to assimilate, and not bearing an ideology that flatly contradicts the American system, as Islam does).

Concentrate right now on Europe, and the islamization of Europe. Iraq, having been disarmed, is now trivial, and it is not for the Americans to sacrifice its own men and money to do what 25 million people, who have been aided in every possible way (not least by the removal of a monstrous regime that had been in power for 35 years and gave every sign of ruling for another 35) by the Americans who are met not with overwhelming and permanent gratitude, but largely with murderous hatred, or non-murderous hatred, or among a very few, a temporary gratitude that will vanish with the morning dew, whenever Americans stop dolling out the tens of billions and give signs of leaving.

Just as Iraq provides the perfect opportunity to exploit, by leaving and letting nature take its course, the two most important natural fissures within Islam -- that between Arab Muslim and non-Arab Muslim (in Iraq, that means Arab and Kurd) and that between the Sunni and Shi'a, so now the time is right and ripe to turn again to Europe. Chirac is mortally wounded, and his appointment of the much-mocked author of doggerel and potted history, the absurd D. de V., will only drag him, and that D. de V., further down and permanently out of politics. And even those running dogs of the system will find that others -- Sarkozy who so thoroughly humiliated and took apart Tariq Ramadan on television (a performance that has not been forgotten), once he gives up this idea of government-funded mosques (ridiculous) to solve the unsolvable problem of Muslim doctrine, will be much better. And Philippe de Villiers is coming into his own. And others, who read not Le Monde but Figaro, and Yvan Rioufol, and Bat Ye'or, and Anne-Marie Delcambre, and Alain Besancon, and others who have gone far beyond the predictable absuridites and apologeticds of the sociologist Gilles "Never Right" Kepel and the sur-de-lui-meme but equally appalling Olivier Roy. Their days could be numbered -- if only we would get cracking -- and show, by leaving Iraq (and how will those who have howled for America to leave now be able to turn on a dime and, once they realize that real Realpolitik, and not the baseless and innocent kind, is here to stay, react? Will they able to demand that "you Americans must stay" because "you owe it to the Iraqi people"? Govno. Betises.Stupidaggini. Nonsense.It won't wash.

But it will be fun to see them howl, nonetheless.

Posted by: Hugh at June 12, 2005 8:06 AM

Ye God. I think I'd actually want KT to come speak to this 'zundel' idiot. KT, can we at least agree on that?

Posted by: Gary at June 12, 2005 12:11 PM

The troll spews words like vomit,
like mohammed,
like the evil moon god,
there is no good here,
only a rancid, rotting,
mind that raves on
due to IGNORANCE and fear.

Posted by: the poetess at June 12, 2005 12:26 PM

I wish Bush would put down the Sharansky and pick up the Bat Ye-or.

Posted by: scaramouoche at June 12, 2005 1:02 PM

BigSleep: I'm angry at you for making me go to the trouble of tapping my middle finger on my "PageDown" button over 50 times just to get past your grossly obese post.

Posted by: metaxy at June 12, 2005 1:53 PM

metaxy-

"BigThief" you mean.

Since this microenphalic cut n' paster has hijacked my screen non de guerre BigSleep by 'cleverly' adding a little pidgin German "ist kaput" after it. (Are we seeing "ia666" or "King Tolerance" having a fugue state episode here?)

What he means by: "The beginning of the end of your spurpemacy is near..." I can't quite fathom.

If he thinks I'm a Jew/Zionist, I'm afraid he's barking up the wrong "Hannukah Bush".

Although I'll fight side by side with my Hebrew brothers and sisters against dismal doofuses like him. (Just so I am able to listen to Offenbach and read Heinrich Heine and laugh at Freud's analysis of humor with a clear conscience later.)

I'm hoping a copy of "Mein Kampf" falls off a high shelf, strikes his medulla oblongata, and knocks him back to reality. Or, barring that, at least starts the clot that eventually sends him to Valhalla, where he can dance with Nazi nixies and pixies in Aryan glee for eternity. Inshallah.

Pax vobiscum, unless your a Nazi.

Posted by: BigSleep at June 12, 2005 3:16 PM

Bat Ye'or's work remains for me almost fantastic reading. I almost get a feeling of being outside myself, and, even after having checked some sources, and having been persuaded by her arguments, I have to pinch myself. Can this really be true?

Just reading the news from major European news outlets, like the BBC, can be transformative. Consider this recent story from the BBC on the upcoming trail of Saddam Hussein, written from the point of view of Saddam's attorneys.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4079248.stm

Humiliations, violations of Saddam's rights, and even judicial procedure, like the lack of sharing of evidence against him, are issues for the article: a veritable 'BBC Watch' aiming at protection of the dictator's human and civil rights.

Of course, the BBC is all over other 'human rights stories', like Gitmo, and will not hestitate to report on rumors and even the slightest hint that something is amiss.

Where was BBC concern for the hundreds of thousands of people who were murdered by Saddam's regime? But where is BBC concern for victims of the Sudanese government? Where is BBC concern for atrocities by the State and Jihadist groups in any Muslims country?

Here is a portion of the Bat Ye'or interview, which explains her interpretation of the background for this kind of 'Eurabian' news coverage. Every word rings absolutely true:

"JW: If it is merely the European elite that is imposing a Judeophobic attitude on the public, then how do you account for the growing anti-Semitism in Europe? For example, in your book, you write: “The year 2001 saw a six-fold increase in acts of violence in Europe against Jewish people and property. More than 70% of the violent racist acts reported to police, as well as other racist deeds such as threats, insults, and graffiti, were against Jews.”

BY: These aggressions were generally attributed in the reports to neo-Nazis, Arab immigrants and the Left and extreme Left pro-Palestinian groups. This source is the reason why anti-Semitism was first denied and the report on anti-Semitism later was hidden by the European Commission, which promotes Palestinianism. The report was only made public on the repeated demands of influential American politicians. Its conclusions conform exactly to the pro-Palestinian anti-Israeli propaganda conducted within the EC/EU. In fact, the anti-Semitic peak that started in 2000 was integrated into the European Commission policy intended to show Europe’s solidarity with Arafat’s terrorist intifada. This is why the guilt of the aggressors acting in Europe against European Jews was transferred onto Israel, as if Europe has renounced to apply its own laws punishing crimes on its own soil against its own criminals if the victims were Jews. The intention of this hate campaign was to terrorize European Jews, to force them to adhere to the European-Arafat policy of terror.

JW: How was this hate campaign conducted?

BY: The aggressors were encouraged by a media campaign in the Eurabian press of the whole EU, with incitements and caricatures similar to the Nazi period and by unfounded accusations of prominent politicians. Many Christians tried to oppose those slanders, but the censorship on any favorable view of Israel silenced them. We see now the same policy in Britain’s main university teachers’ union to agree to a Palestinian request to boycott two Israeli universities. The British Association of University Teachers (AUT) General Secretary Sally Hunt, announcing the boycott (April 22, 2005), said members are asked to avoid all academic or cultural cooperation with Haifa University and Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv. We see here how Palestinianism is a revival of Nazism. The aim of Euro-Palestinianism is to criminalize the birth of the State of Israel in order to create an Israeli guilt toward the Arabs, similar to the European guilt for the Holocaust, while in fact Israel represents the liberation of the Jewish people from the yoke of the jihad-dhimmitude rules imposed over all the Islamic empire, including the Land of Israel. This Eurabian policy endorses the legitimacy of jihadism, including against Christians.

JW: You indicate that there is such a negative attitude by the European elite against Israel that their position is to actually do away with the state of Israel. Is this even possible?

BY: Absolutely. The Euro-Arab policy attributes to Israel the causes of Islamic terrorism and of all the world’s problems. I reproduce in my book several quotations. It is assumed that the disappearance of Israel would bring peace to the world and Muslim-Christian reconciliation, which is clearly the continuation of the Nazi mentality. The EC, which has continually supported Arafat and the PLO, cannot recognize Islamic terrorism or the terrorism of Arab dictators like Assad of Syria and Saddam Hussein, with whom it had a privileged relationship. The recognition that Islamic terrorism threatens Europe would be tantamount to assessing the failure of the policy of collusion and close association conducted since 30 years ago with Arab dictators. Hence–it is said–Israel must be the cause of terrorism. This allows the obfuscation of the jihad and dhimmitude doctrine conducted against the Christians in Muslim countries. The “old Europe” boasted privileged relations with the Arab and Muslim countries and pretends that Arab-Muslim populations hate only Israel and America because of their own evilness."

Posted by: JTF at June 12, 2005 3:23 PM

Kaput,

Get a website and put your extended diatribe there and reference link to it. Don't be an ass by pasting ridiculously long posts.

Posted by: reset at June 12, 2005 3:28 PM

Any Brits here see 'Don't Panic, I'm Islamic'??

If so, didn't it make you want to spit?!

Posted by: Interested at June 12, 2005 5:41 PM

I know I have posted these quotes before, but I think anyone new to this site needs to reminded of the time when Europe was dominated by real intellectuals and truly insightful artists:

"It is a misfortune to human nature when religion is given by a conqueror. The Mahometan religion, which speaks only by the sword, acts still upon men with that destructive spirit with which it was founded." Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) "The Spirit of Laws: Book XXIV, Chapter IV" (1748) http://www.constitution.org/cm/sol_24.htm#004

"I studied the Kuran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. As far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world, and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion infinitely more to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself." Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) "Letter to Arthur Gobineau," October 22, 1843

"Come down, O Son of God! Incestuous gloom Curtains the land, and through the starless night Over Thy Cross a Crescent moon I see! If Thou in very truth didst burst the tomb Come down, O Son of Man! and show Thy might Lest Mahomet be crowned instead of Thee!" Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) "On The Massacre Of The Christians In Bulgaria" (1881) http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/513/

We need to also be reminded of what kind of Europeans endorsed Eurabia before it became a reality:

"Had Charles Martel not been victorious at Poitiers -Already, you see, the world had already fallen into the hands of the Jews, so gutless a thing Christianity!- Then we should in all probability have been converted to Mohammedanism, that cult which glorifies the heroism and which opens up the seventh Heaven to the bold warrior alone. Then the Germanic races would have conquered the world. Christianity alone prevented them from doing so." (August 28, 1942) "Hitler's Table Talk; 1941-1944" translated by N. Cameron and R.H. Stevens, Enigma Books (1953)

Posted by: Andrei Rublev at June 12, 2005 5:41 PM

Interested, I left my observations on 2 threads, the one above "Woman dies from acid burns" and one below UAE 1 year jail. I won't repeat it here, there is enugh space being taken up tonight with identical spam from Shicklegruber is a pratt.
Hope to see you and Zico in due course.

Posted by: Granny Weatherwax at June 12, 2005 6:02 PM

BigSleep -- sorry about the confusion.

Andrei Rublev -- those quotes bear frequent repeating.

Posted by: metaxy at June 12, 2005 6:14 PM

metaxy-

No sweat.

(Although the real confusion is going on in the wide open spaces between BigThief's ears.)

I just didn't want anyone to get the impression I had suddenly started marching around in my attic with my underwear on backwards and a chocolate syrup "Iron Cross" painted on my chest mumbling:
"Das is eine kleine schnitzel..." over and over.

Three cheers for Bat Ye'Or, (of course).

She and Hirsi Ali deserve to speak to Congress together.

I think I'll now go listen to "Hey Jude" just to annoy any Aryan eavesdroppers.

(May they each drop a 'potato masher' down their pants and have an unexpectedly exciting evening.)

Posted by: BigSleep at June 12, 2005 7:49 PM

"Those churches follow an arcionist theological line which separates the Gospels from the Hebrew Bible."

There's a typo in the article; It's "Marcionist" (not arcionist). I looked it up a month ago. Marcion lived around the second century CE and created a doctrine whereby the God of Jesus was not the same as the "evil" God that created the Earth. He was declared a heretic, but the Cathars were promoting a similar belief system in southern France during the Middle Ages.

Modern day Gnostics and Theosophists still believe this bizarre doctrine. I have even heard that "The Matrix" was inspired by this (the similated world no doubt symbolizing the evil material world).

Posted by: Andrei Rublev at June 12, 2005 10:12 PM

Andrei,

One could construct a cogent argument that Islam is a Judaeo-Christian heresy strongly imbued not only with Marcionite flavors, but also more generally Gnostic currents. Indeed, Islam could be historically the most successful of Judeao-Christian heresies (unless one can argue that certain spectacular pathologies such as Nazism, Fascism, and Communism also owe their ideological provenance to Gnostic currents -- at any rate, if so, one could see why Leftists, neo-Nazis, and Muslims all find so much common bed-space to snuggle together with in their 3-way Axis).

The philosopher Eric Voegelin remarked that Western anti-Semitism has stronger roots in Gnoticism (precisely because it identifies the God of the Old Testament with Satan) than it does in orthodox Christianity. The Gnostic aspects of Islam from its beginnings could explain its fundamental anti-Semitism: I don't know enough, but I suspect that Muslims consider the Israelites (with some exceptions, like Moses and certain prophets) to have been wicked corruptors of Allah's truth and thus it's not too far for Muslims to regard the Israelite God YHWH as in fact Satan, not Allah -- a very Gnostic viewpoint.

Posted by: metaxy at June 12, 2005 10:26 PM

Metaxy,

Here's what I found on Voegelin (who I never heard of until you mentioned him). It's quite interesting:

"Voegelin identified a number of similarities between ancient Gnosticism and those held by a number of modernist political theories, particularly Communism and Nazism. He identifies the root of the Gnostic impulse as alienation, that is, a sense of disconnectedness with society and a belief that this lack of concord with society is the result of the inherent disorderness or even evil of the world. This alienation has two effects. The first is the belief that the disorder of the world can be transcended by extraordinary insight, learning, or knowledge, called a Gnostic Speculation by Voegelin. The second is the desire to implement a policy to actualize the speculation, or as Voegelin describes to "Immanentize the Eschaton", to create a sort of heaven on earth within history."

In other words, Gnosticism is the utopian impulse (at least according to Voegelin). This may not be the original definition of Gnosticism per se, but there is a lot of truth in this interpretation. It certainly explains why leftists are more inclined to take in New Age beliefs, Plato, and Kant.

BTW, Hitler's Gnostic impulse may have been even more specific than Voegelin had imagined. Hitler is reported to have been an avid reader of the works of Guido von List, who used to publish his occult theories in a magazine called "Die Gnosis."

Posted by: Andrei Rublev at June 12, 2005 11:33 PM

Hey everyone,

I don't know it it's just me, but I find it increasingly difficult to post. My Apple computer doesn't let me do it at all for the last two weeks (I can never get the comments box to appear). I have to post comments from my wife's PC (and she's already annoyed at how much time I spend on my OWN computer!).

Would it be much trouble or expense were JW to take up the same registration system they use at LGF, where the comment box is always there (and you have to login every time you comment)? Just a thought. Then again, JW might be better off with less of my self-aggrandizing promos of my latest articles at Sixth Column ;-)

Posted by: Andrei Rublev at June 12, 2005 11:46 PM

The "Unholy Alliance" between the Far Left and Islam is also a source of worry in the UK. The recent ban by academics (now, thankfully revoked) on discourse with Israeli universities is an example of just how far the left/pro-Palestinian axis has gone on UK campuses.

Posted by: londongirl at June 13, 2005 1:11 AM

Andrei,

"This may not be the original definition of Gnosticism per se, but there is a lot of truth in this interpretation."

Voegelin's rather flexible use of the term "gnostic" has been the subject of lots of debate over the years. As you correctly intuit, Voegelin didn't merely appropriate a term from the ancient world that he liked and slap it onto modern movements: he studied late ancient and medieval European history for years (reading all the original languages) and concluded that the pathology of ancient Gnosticism survived or incubated throughout European history in the form of heretical sects, magic, alchemy, Kabbalism, etc., and he traced many threads of it right up into early modern European thought which directly or indirectly influenced Marx, Nietzsche, Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler. Unfortunately, he did not choose, before dying in 1985, to focus his breadth of scholarship on Islam (though he had some brief remarks that were fairly right on the money in that regard).

"It certainly explains why leftists are more inclined to take in New Age beliefs, Plato, and Kant."

Many Leftists dismiss Plato as a "right-wing fascist" (usually based on his plan of an ideal polity in his Republic dialogue, the offending passages of which sound rather Islamic, though if these same Leftists read a Muslim philosopher writing the same things, they would bend over backwards to defend him and "explain" him)! By the way, Plato was Voegelin's paragon of philosophy.

"BTW, Hitler's Gnostic impulse may have been even more specific than Voegelin had imagined. Hitler is reported to have been an avid reader of the works of Guido von List, who used to publish his occult theories in a magazine called "Die Gnosis." "

I would bet that Voegelin knew all about that. Voegelin wrote an entire volume on the Nazis -- he even personally had to flee Germany because the Nazis were about to arrest him for supporting a Jewish colleague at the university where he taught.

Posted by: metaxy at June 13, 2005 2:38 AM

Andrei,

If you'll permit me to post a rather long post, this is from something I wrote at the Eric Voegelin forum way back a few days after 911 happened (it will be after the asterisks *** below).

What I wrote generated a little debate, then a Muslim professor member of the forum chimed in with the usual veiled references to the blame which Israel and American policies "in the region" must share, etc. Interestingly, this Muslim prof. revealed that she was attracted to Voegelin's thought because he analyzed and diagnosed spiritual diseases in the West. When I shot back that it would be nice if there were a Muslim thinker who spent as much time diagnosing the spiritual disease of Islam as Voegelin and countless other Western philosophers & historians have about their own Western civilization, the manager of the forum kicked me out (not so much because he's pro-Muslim, but because he's a rigid stickler for utmost polite behavior on the forum).

****************

[Quoting another forum member] "Many of the heterodoxies which arose in the first century of Islam and were in themselves a veiled protest against the victorious religion of the Arabians, gradually gravitated to the bosom of the Shi`ah as the representative of opposition to the established order."

It is quite possible, as this implies, that Shi'ah is historically one main source of a culture of dogmatic literalism tied to an
eschatologically parousiastic militarism geared to usher in the eschaton and transfigure the Ecumene. Three considerations in
this regard:

1) Osama bin Laden is a Sunni Muslim, as are the wealthy businessmen in Saudi Arabia who send him extra money;

2) The re-interpretation of symbolisms by certain radical Muslims, including terrorists: [ordinary] "suicide" and "murder" are condemned by the Koran, but "death in holy battle" is not so condemned: who is to say, and on what basis, that the "suicides" and "murders" of
September 11 were not "deaths in holy battle"?

2) A reading of the French historian Benoist-Méchin's book "Ibn-Séoud", a history of the roots and rise of the Saudi dynasty (particularly the first chapter), points to original Islam of the 7th century -- indeed to Arab culture preceding
Mohammed -- as perhaps also a signficant source of such eschatologically driven militarism. Voegelin's brief remarks in Order and History IV 143-144 also point in this direction (indeed, I noticed that Benoist-Méchin often quotes the same passages from the Koran that EV quotes).

a) The pertinent Voegelin observations are:

"...Islam was primarily an ecumenic religion and only secondarily an empire. Hence it reveals in its extreme form the danger which beset all the religions of the Ecumenic Age, the danger of impairing their universality by letting their ecumenic mission slide into the acquisition of world-immanent, pragmatic power over a multitude of men which, however numerous, could never be mankind past, present and future." (143)

Then, after quoting from the Koran -- "We hurl the truth against falsehood, and it smites it and, lo! it shall vanish." -- EV goes on: "The militancy of the passage is not metaphoric. The struggle between truth and falsehood has to be conducted on the battlefields between the armies of Mohammed and his adversaries. The realm of God
in history is difficult to distinguish from a closely knit community of warriors." (144)

b) Benoist-Méchin's study helps to flesh EV's perspective out. Besides adumbrating the truly astonishing military feat of Islam in its first century after Mohammed formed his "Ikwan" (or fraternity of warriors which was the initial nucleus of the subsequent military legions) -- conquering land from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Spain to Indonesia (and we mustn't forget the great Belgian historian Henri Pirenne's observation that, had the Muslims not been defeated at Tours in 732 by Charles Martel, most or all of Europe might have become Muslim in the 8th century) -- Benoist-Méchin's book also provides insight into a not merely un-metaxic but positively anti-metaxic pathos perhaps at the heart of Islamic theology (here speaking of the Arab mind/heart at the time of Mohammed's appearance on the scene) (the following from pp. 21-22):

"Habituated to the violent contrasts of the desert, the Arabs have a simplex and razor-sharp vision of things. For them there exists nothing but truth and non-truth, belief and non-belief, devoid of the indecisive continuity of intermediate nuances."

Benoist-Méchin goes on to quote T.E. Lawrence (whom one may or may not take with a grain of sand):

"This people doesn't go beyond primary colors, especially white and black: it ever sees the world following a straight line. A people filled with certitude, despising doubt -- that modern crown of thorns of the Western man. An Arab isn't capable of comprehending our metaphysical difficulties, the questions that we pose for ourselves. The Arab knows not but that which is true, and that which is not, that which one believes, and that which one doesn't: all our
hesitations, our reservations, are foreign to them. It is not only the Arabs' view that abides in the black-and-white; it is also their interior equipment. Their thoughts pass with the greatest facility from one extreme to the other. They move spontaneously among superlatives. Sometimes, the greatest inconsistencies seem, by them, to be seized EN BLOC. They exclude all compromise and follow the logic of their ideas to the absurd conclusion, without seeing anything incompatible among their opposed conclusions. Their serene judgment oscillates with sangfroid from asymptote to asymptote so imperturbably that they seem hardly conscious of their vertiginous leap from the one to the other."

Benoist-Méchin goes on to describe the eschatologically militarist fervor in the early Mohammedan milieu (7th century):

"The cosmos that Mohammed brought to them corresponded to this psychology. Men were divided in two clearly distinct categories: on one side, the Arabs, believers and trustees of divine truth; on the other, unbelieving pagans who deny the existence of Allah, the immortality of the flesh and the mission of the Prophet. The obligation of every Muslim in regard these latter was simple: he had to strive to rally them to Islam and exterminate without pity those who refused to convert. Every war was therefore holy and one with an eye to propagate the "true religion", and God reserved special favors
for those who thus consacrated their lives... All should participate in combat, even the blind and lame. Only very young children, the insane and women were exempt. Every Muslim who tried to flee from combat were to be put to the sword. For, of all sins, fleeing from the sacred duty to fight was the most abominable, one which had the
consequence of eternal damnation. All the Koranic prescriptions, decreed to inflame the zeal of the Arabs, culminated in this affirmation which became their rallying cry:

'Paradise is before you, and Hell is behind you!' "

Readers might find this last quote familiar from the closing pages of Eric Voegelin's SPG (113-114), where EV invokes Islamic prayer exercises based upon this, which serve "as the final example of a high demand in spiritual tension." EV goes on to say: "When I want to pray, says
the rule, I go to the place where I wish to say my prayer. I sit still until I am composed. Then I stand up: the Kaaba is in front of me, paradise to my right, hell to my left, and the angel of death stands behind me. Then I say my prayer as if it were my last. And thus I stand, between hope and fear, not knowing whether God has
received my prayer favorably or not."

Of the symbolism of this spiritual exercise, Voegelin presciently remarks: "Perhaps for the masses, this high spiritual clarity is made bearable through a connection with the neither high nor especially spiritual extension of God's realm by force of arms over the ecumene."

Posted by: metaxy at June 13, 2005 3:20 AM

londongirl:

The recent reversal of the Israeli university boycott by the AUT is a phyrric victory at best. See MelaniePhillips.com's diary section for what is going on. She points out that the reversal was for the wrong reason -- "academic freedom" -- and not because Israel has been unfairly maligned, which it has. She also details the likelihood of the AUT being swallowed up by the more radical NAFTE.

Posted by: waterdragon52 at June 13, 2005 9:05 AM

Metaxy,

From what I could understand around the jargon it looks like it was an interesting and provocative exchange. Even though there is nothing uncivil about your tone, I am not surprised you were expelled. It reflects poorly upon the cowardice of the intellectual cowardice of humanities departments. Wear your ostracism as a badge of honor.

I am a bit disappointed that Voegelin liked Plato so much. Too bad he isn't alive now to defend this seemingly contradictory stance AGAINST utopianism but in favor of the the most infamous pioneering utopian. In the final analysis, we can't win them all!

Other than extrapolating the leftist admiration for Kant's subjectivistic navel gazing to Plato (not much to go on),I got the impression leftists liked Plato when I took an introductory philososphy class 26 years ago. I recall being much more impressed with the philosophy of Aristotle. When I expressed this to a radical leftist friend of mine, he disagreed; He said that Plato is "literature" and Aristotle is like a boring "medical textbook." Anyway, that message stayed with me, even though it didn't change my negative attitude towards Plato.

Posted by: Andrei Rublev at June 13, 2005 2:06 PM

I had to look up eschatology on Google. This site was helpful.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05528b.htm

Here's an excerpt..

. Islamic eschatology contains nothing distinctive except the glorification of barbaric sensuality.

....

I think that sums it up quite nicely.

Posted by: reset at June 13, 2005 9:42 PM

Andrei,

Thanks for your encouragement. I didn't include the offending post that got me kicked out, where I rhetorically asked the Muslim prof. to name some Muslim intellectuals who have devoted their lives to the pathology of Islam as much as Voegelin (or countless other Westerners) has devoted HIS life to (constructively but mercilessly) diagnosing Western pathology. Still, I agree with your assessment.

I'd encourage you to at least read Voegelin's treatment of Plato (and Aristotle) in his 3rd volume of "Order and History" -- he devotes a whole chapter to The Republic and nicely counter-argues all stock criticisms of Plato there -- that he was a proto-fascist, a utopian, etc. The key part to him was where Plato's Socrates declares that the ideal Polis does not, and never will, exist on Earth, but exists only in the well-formed individual soul, and from there can radiate a measure of order in society, but can never expect to perfect society.

Posted by: metaxy at June 13, 2005 9:54 PM

reset,

Certainly, a barbaric sensuality is at the heart of Islamic eschatology. But for purposes of sociopolitical order and sanity, the main question is not WHAT the eschatology looks like at the end of time, but HOW the fanatics who believe in it plan to get there. The vast majority of Christians who believe in eschatology have been rationally educated by their religion (and, to be frank, chastized by modern Western secularists who had enough of theocracy and wars of religion during Christendom's Middle Ages) to simply put their trust in God's own time, no matter how many centuries or millennia it might take, and in the meantime try to love and do good and obey "Caesar's laws" (i.e., the legal political order of the secular state) -- and if some of this vast majority of Christians fail to love and do good, it won't be because they are insanely and viciously seeking to usher in the Eschaton (the goal of eschatology) on Earth, as too many Muslims do.

A very important comment by a journalist (Nir Rosen) was made on August 12, 2004, on the PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer. He was commenting on the Shia Muslim terrorist and military leader in Iraq, al-Sadr. By all accounts, al-Sadr has tens of thousands of Shia Muslims who follow him:

"Many Shias believe the Mahdi, who is like the Shia messiah disappeared in the ninth century from Najaf and they're expecting his return to Najaf. And one of the reasons why they're fighting so bitterly is because many of Muqtada al-Sadr's followers believe that the Mahdi, the Shia messiah, is about to return.
They say this often, he's going to return to kill the Americans, to defeat the Americans and the Jews who are occupying our country. You hear that statement from Muqtada al-Sadr's associates very, very often. It's unthinkable he would damage the shrine, although he would probably not mind if he could provoke the Americans to do some damage to the shrine."

Posted by: metaxy at June 13, 2005 10:45 PM