today, on the 1st anniversary of the madrid train bombings, spains islamic council has issued the world's first fatwa against osama bin laden. quoth cnn.com (*http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/03/10/spain.fatwa.osama.ap/index.html*):
The fatwa said that according to the Quran "the terrorist acts of Osama bin Laden and his organization al Qaeida ... are totally banned and must be roundly condemned as part of Islam."
It added: "Inasmuch as Osama bin Laden and his organization defend terrorism as legal and try to base it on the Quran ... they are committing the crime of 'istihlal' and thus become apostates that should not be considered Muslims or treated as such."
The Arabic term "istihlal" refers to the act of making up one's own laws.
about time, am i right?
i would like to heartily welcome the muslims of spain back to the western civilization they have helped shape. the civilization which respected literature above any other, which gave us algebra, which preserved the knowledge of greece and rome when those of my culture were running around burning witches, is taking a big step back towards rationality today.
Your optimism is certainly admirable, but to me that's nothing more than lip service being paid. I'm far from arabophobia, but simply slinging fatwas around will change very little. Sure, it is a nice gesture that is to be appreciated, but in the end, that's it.
I also disagree with your view of "leap[ing] towards civilization". Where is this supposed "western civilization"? No matter how hard I go looking for it, I can't see it anywhere.
> simply slinging fatwas around will change very little
bubu, what more could you have hoped for? besides, even though this is just a small step, that's how all long marches begin, neh?
i think it will change things. once you publicly excommunicate osama bin laden, you can't then go and privately rationalize what he does without looking like a hypocrite. hypocrisy is universally vilified; even if they did this out of fear or some less-than-honest intentions, it is still beneficial, because it makes them less likely to contradict themselves.
as far as "what is western civilization", i refer mostly to an amalgam of attitudes up until recently rarely found east of the caucasus and south of the mediterranean. there are probably less than i think and more than i can list, but the one that come to mind off the top of my head is a prolific belief in the binary nature of truth. i can't tell you how many times in my life i've argued with people touched by eastern civilization who see the entire world in shades of grey, and refuse to admit that anything is ever true or false. our thought comes from plato and aristotle, theirs comes from confucious and buddha.
i'm starving now, but if you're interested, i'd love to talk about this. please do clarify what you mean by you cannot identify western civilization though.
>besides, even though this is just a small step, that's how all long marches begin, neh?
I agree with you that even a small step may aswell be a good start for a long march.
However, the chosen date, and the ultimate lack of meaning of this step leave a bitter aftertaste: Those issuing this fatwa and those they claim to represent (the est. 70% of secular muslims in Spain) never agreed with Usammah ibn Ladin's methods in the first place, so there was no need to convince those with a fatwa; that was merely preaching to the choir.
The est. 30% of muslims who aren't represented by the council won't be influenced by it and therefore it is ultimately useless.
Also, after the incidents in other parts of Europe, I can't help but cynically remark that they were probably scared into paying lip service.
Like you said, long marches begin with a small step, but this is no step at all to me. The moderate muslims already have been moderate and thusly rejecting fundamentalism before, nothing [needed to] changed here; the very fervent ones don't feel represented by nor bound to the word of the islamic council, which they often regard as treasonable.
>i think it will change things. once you publicly excommunicate osama bin laden, you can't then go and privately rationalize what he does without looking like a hypocrite. hypocrisy is universally vilified; even if they did this out of fear or some less-than-honest intentions, it is still beneficial, because it makes them less likely to contradict themselves.
Please bear with my antagonism, but I beg to disagree. To extremists, it is perfectly all right to outright lie to a non-believer. Even if a fundamentalist were to publicly condemn "Abu Abdallah", it not constitute a problem of any sort to them to then "privately rationalize what he does". Looking like a hypocrite to humans matters little when you are convinced that your loyalty is to Allah Taala and Allah Taala only. And I think it actually matters what these fundamentalist few think and do in this matter, not what the majority of moderates, that most have gotten along with anyways, does.
>i'd love to talk about this. please do clarify what you mean by you cannot identify western civilization though.
I have huge issues with the word "civilization", especially when used in conjunction with "western". It's historically contaminated and I reject it. Furtherly, the notion that the muslims are "coming back" to civilization insinuates that they somehow (yes, how?) had at some point left civilization. I'm sorry, but this reeks of traditionally western delusions of grandeur and superiority complex.
I conclude from your elaborations that you probably used it synonymously to "western culture", which makes things clearer, although I'm not sure as to what extent I share your concept of an apparently rather uniform "western culture" and they key characteristics you attribute to it.
It is an integral part of my personal conviction, that there are numerous cultures which are incomparable in terms of quality (i.e. none is inferior to any other). This, however also means that the idea of a group "arriving" at another culture has to be obviously handled with a certain care.
> Please bear with my antagonism
oh no, not at all, this is fun.
i'll get around to the rest later, but for now let me ask you this:
are there differences between cultures? (by the way, when i say civilization, i mean the edifice that remains when generations pass-on. when i think of culture, i think of the superficial decorations which adorn it. but i think what i say when i say civilization is what you say when you say culture, so all is well).
if there are differences between two things, then one is a preferable choice in one situation, while the other may be the preferable choice in other instances.
so i disagree that "there are numerous cultures which are incomparable in terms of quality". differences guarantee the rational, unbiased option for preference, in all things!
>are there differences between cultures?
naturally, the plural implies that.
>if there are differences between two things, then one is a preferable choice in one situation, while the other may be the preferable choice in other instances.
Ah, excellent. No matter how much time I spend pondering this objection, it's waterproof; when arguing culture it's invincible. I stand corrected (and delighted). I was (as you pointed out, illegitimately) thinking of an absolute, generalized comparison of cultures, which in the end makes no sense.
>(by the way, when i say civilization, i mean the edifice that remains when generations pass-on. when i think of culture, i think of the superficial decorations which adorn it. but i think what i say when i say civilization is what you say when you say culture, so all is well)
When I say "culture", I mean the classical graeco-humanist definition ("the entirety of human creation"), which prevails in science and politics to date ("a set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group and that it encompasses, in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, rites, traditions and beliefs"--UNESCO) - sharply opposed to the 18th-19th century concept of culture antagonizing and suppressing the barbaric and sinful human nature.
I knew that somewhere, someone out there would hear about this and try to argue that it's not a very important and positive thing. I just didn't expect to find that person here.
Muslim clergy, leaders of a religion soiled by violent "followers," are speaking out against wanton violence. No matter how many words you try to put to this, there's simply no arguing that this is a positive thing.
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it'd be easier for bubu to see that if he believed that everything , when broken up into small enough elements as to be able to be understood completely, was either good or bad, preferable or non-preferable, positive or negative.
i'd bet my shoes that he's one of those other sorts of people though. =)