by Smitty (h/t Proof Positive)
Not if it’s Andrew Klavan, picking through the cultural, i.e. non-pure-Libertarian, angles.
This blog approves Klavan’s thoughtful, moderate take on the the issue.
Update: the Daley Gator has a Dr. M Zuhdi Jasser, who is a moderate Muslim, anti-GZM post linked. Let’s hear more from Jasser and his crowd.
Sarah Palin looks in at Richard Trumka. Sends down 2 sweet tweets high and tight. Count is 0-2. Then winds and delivers Facebook Knockout
http://www.conservatives4palin.com/2010/08/governor-palin-union-brothers-and.html
Trumka swings and falls down in a cloud of dust. Murky your’re still on deck?
As Michael Jackson said “got to be there in the morning” or something like that, spicoli.
Stacy, billy-joel would be envious since I too, will be putting bread in your jar!
Go man go!
-TR
Sarah Palin looks in at Richard Trumka. Sends down 2 sweet tweets high and tight. Count is 0-2. Then winds and delivers Facebook Knockout
http://www.conservatives4palin.com/2010/08/governor-palin-union-brothers-and.html
Trumka swings and falls down in a cloud of dust. Murky your’re still on deck?
As Michael Jackson said “got to be there in the morning” or something like that, spicoli.
Stacy, billy-joel would be envious since I too, will be putting bread in your jar!
Go man go!
-TR
Sorry, above comment meant for story below on Alaska.
Sorry, above comment meant for story below on Alaska.
Klaven did a very good job and did not suck.
Klaven did a very good job and did not suck.
He’s bald, he’s baritone, he’s badass!! Indeed, the good “Mr. K does not suck!
He’s bald, he’s baritone, he’s badass!! Indeed, the good “Mr. K does not suck!
Klaven is the anti-suck.
Klaven is the anti-suck.
Some people have the need to go to temples, some have the need to go to strip clubs. Different subjects worshipped in a different manner by different consumers in a society demanding a different service. As someone who grew up in a muslim country, I know that there’s very little room for tolerance in islam.
My family was a non-practicing Alevi (Turkish) branch and I grew up hearing insults about Alevi people. We kept our identity secret even though we didn’t practice any religion and we were like most other secular middle-class families whose father worked for the government and minded their own business. I just find it ironic that for a religion that has not gone through a reform and renaissance period, stuck in the middle ages, muslims expect tolerance even though they don’t practice it. I never read or heard any muslim expressing apology for the way they treated Alevi people…ever.
If it is like this even in (nominally) secular Turkey, what can we expect in more theocratic societies? It’s interesting that sort of secular societies were evolving, (with whatever other, perhaps greater, faults) under Saddam in Iraq and the so-called Shah of Iran there but both got undermined by the USA.
Dr. M Zuhdi Jasser is indeed a moderate muslim and his vocal opposition to the GZM is not new. From a June 6 Boston Globe op-ed:
More interestingly, Imam Rauf claims to be a Sufi mystic and yet…
Here’s an example of imam Rauf’s Friday sermon according to The Daily Beast:
Here’s a verrry niiiice roundtable discussion with spiritual leaders from several different traditions. One of the panelists is Imam Feisal (of the proposed Islamic center). The discussion itself is over an hour long, but 2 parts were notewothy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFMdb8u59Tw
First, is a short talk given by a Rabbi beginning at 26:00 minutes. (I couldn’t catch the Rabbi’s name, and he appears to be inaccurately cited in the description.)
The other quite striking thoughts were by the Imam beginning at 36:57 in which he borrows from a Rumi quote to suggest that there are really only two categories of the religious: those who have been touched by the vision of god, and those who haven’t.
(Of the second category he puts all those who use religion for selfish or political gain.)
Rumi(aka the western world’s most quoted Sufi mystic): “The lovers of ritual are one group. And those whose hearts and souls are aglow with the love of God are another.”
I don’t know why in the western world the sufis are often mentioned. True Sufis with universal spiritual/nondual values are as rare and scandalous as say Gnostic Gays in Vatican. Even Rumi whose works are translated in a nondual manner was mostly rooted in dualism. He and his master/lover Shams were very much against some of the famous nondual sufis of their time. In fact in their first encounter this was the topic they discussed. Nondual sufism survived because this was really what made them different from the rest and dualistic sufis never understood or accepted nonduality and they are more like mystical than nondual.
There’s always a bias in the west to interpret Islam and some of the Islamist sufis as nondual, the religion of peace but this is only a good tactic if one was influencing the other group by redefining them.
Sufis are a complex structure. In fact being called a sufi is an umbrella term, just like in christian mystical groups… and under the umbrella there are even opposing groups though the diversity is no where as rich as in hindu schools.
Although my family came from Alevi background, i didn’t practice it and i didn’t even know much about it till i read it about it years later in my 30s…but it was important that when i was growing up even my best sunni friend didn’t know about it. There was nothing to be gained. So in that sense i was not advocating the rights for a large and persecuted ethnic group in Turkey but I’m making a case of how a religion like islam, which was revolutionary for its time, is so outdated nowadays that I’m afraid that in the name of “tolerance” we are giving them a free pass and accommodating them in the west. People in the west who went through the Protestant and other reform movements to liberate themselves from religion should not give in to them. People who demonstrate for the near-the-ground zero mosque are so naive and don’t realize that the literal interpretation of Islam, in fact any organized religion, has no room for liberty and the modern concept of civil rights is a foreign concept. Each religious group believes in its own superiority to others and will use wheatever means to assimilate…like the Borg in the Star Trek Next Generation with the motto that “resistance is futile.”
Some muslim countries in the middle east like Turkey are secular not because of a ground up organization. It’s because of military. When there are more than one sects in a muslim country, usually military power is needed to keep them together…otherwise they’ll be killing each other (Pakistan, another case in point). Of course military can’t be looked upon as saviors of the secular system because there’s a very high cost of getting saved by military since it’s not an efficient organization designed for civil service. With this logic, one does not have to be a psychic to predict that once the Americans leave Iraq only a military power can keep them together.
Berk
Some people have the need to go to temples, some have the need to go to strip clubs. Different subjects worshipped in a different manner by different consumers in a society demanding a different service. As someone who grew up in a muslim country, I know that there’s very little room for tolerance in islam.
My family was a non-practicing Alevi (Turkish) branch and I grew up hearing insults about Alevi people. We kept our identity secret even though we didn’t practice any religion and we were like most other secular middle-class families whose father worked for the government and minded their own business. I just find it ironic that for a religion that has not gone through a reform and renaissance period, stuck in the middle ages, muslims expect tolerance even though they don’t practice it. I never read or heard any muslim expressing apology for the way they treated Alevi people…ever.
If it is like this even in (nominally) secular Turkey, what can we expect in more theocratic societies? It’s interesting that sort of secular societies were evolving, (with whatever other, perhaps greater, faults) under Saddam in Iraq and the so-called Shah of Iran there but both got undermined by the USA.
Dr. M Zuhdi Jasser is indeed a moderate muslim and his vocal opposition to the GZM is not new. From a June 6 Boston Globe op-ed:
More interestingly, Imam Rauf claims to be a Sufi mystic and yet…
Here’s an example of imam Rauf’s Friday sermon according to The Daily Beast:
Here’s a verrry niiiice roundtable discussion with spiritual leaders from several different traditions. One of the panelists is Imam Feisal (of the proposed Islamic center). The discussion itself is over an hour long, but 2 parts were notewothy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFMdb8u59Tw
First, is a short talk given by a Rabbi beginning at 26:00 minutes. (I couldn’t catch the Rabbi’s name, and he appears to be inaccurately cited in the description.)
The other quite striking thoughts were by the Imam beginning at 36:57 in which he borrows from a Rumi quote to suggest that there are really only two categories of the religious: those who have been touched by the vision of god, and those who haven’t.
(Of the second category he puts all those who use religion for selfish or political gain.)
Rumi(aka the western world’s most quoted Sufi mystic): “The lovers of ritual are one group. And those whose hearts and souls are aglow with the love of God are another.”
I don’t know why in the western world the sufis are often mentioned. True Sufis with universal spiritual/nondual values are as rare and scandalous as say Gnostic Gays in Vatican. Even Rumi whose works are translated in a nondual manner was mostly rooted in dualism. He and his master/lover Shams were very much against some of the famous nondual sufis of their time. In fact in their first encounter this was the topic they discussed. Nondual sufism survived because this was really what made them different from the rest and dualistic sufis never understood or accepted nonduality and they are more like mystical than nondual.
There’s always a bias in the west to interpret Islam and some of the Islamist sufis as nondual, the religion of peace but this is only a good tactic if one was influencing the other group by redefining them.
Sufis are a complex structure. In fact being called a sufi is an umbrella term, just like in christian mystical groups… and under the umbrella there are even opposing groups though the diversity is no where as rich as in hindu schools.
Although my family came from Alevi background, i didn’t practice it and i didn’t even know much about it till i read it about it years later in my 30s…but it was important that when i was growing up even my best sunni friend didn’t know about it. There was nothing to be gained. So in that sense i was not advocating the rights for a large and persecuted ethnic group in Turkey but I’m making a case of how a religion like islam, which was revolutionary for its time, is so outdated nowadays that I’m afraid that in the name of “tolerance” we are giving them a free pass and accommodating them in the west. People in the west who went through the Protestant and other reform movements to liberate themselves from religion should not give in to them. People who demonstrate for the near-the-ground zero mosque are so naive and don’t realize that the literal interpretation of Islam, in fact any organized religion, has no room for liberty and the modern concept of civil rights is a foreign concept. Each religious group believes in its own superiority to others and will use wheatever means to assimilate…like the Borg in the Star Trek Next Generation with the motto that “resistance is futile.”
Some muslim countries in the middle east like Turkey are secular not because of a ground up organization. It’s because of military. When there are more than one sects in a muslim country, usually military power is needed to keep them together…otherwise they’ll be killing each other (Pakistan, another case in point). Of course military can’t be looked upon as saviors of the secular system because there’s a very high cost of getting saved by military since it’s not an efficient organization designed for civil service. With this logic, one does not have to be a psychic to predict that once the Americans leave Iraq only a military power can keep them together.
Berk