Watch The Linguists, a documentary about two really smart men who travel across the world to record dying languages because they cannot save them. They feel, express and implore, we should have: We should have tried to preserve the many different ways in which people perceive the world, the means to translate disordered affairs into stories, philosophies and motivations. As the world becomes more and more alike, that is an impulse I wish more of us had, a regret we may in decades come to be pained by. But how can such great differences be preserved, let alone considered? Who will pay for their maintenance? Who will house them, protect them and, dare I suggest, advance them?
This all comes to mind because I'm reading Melanie Thernstrom's The Pain Chronicles. Thernstrom is a fantastic writer. Her descriptions of suffering, of agony and of torment are beautiful, horrible, surprising and captivating. It began with a day of unusually vigorous swimming, provoking a fierce and persistent pain. From there she explores her attitude to pain, her fear and distrust and confusion about it. She records how across history humans have sought to understand, accept and deal with pain. She talks about how modern medicine upended religion and ritual and set us on a new path toward pain not as mystery but as conquerable enemy.
Except her own pain, which would not be subdued. Acute pain, we're learning, is not the same as chronic pain. For me, it cuts a little too close to home. I've often faced a range of illnesses, a stream of assaults, finding new flaws in my prematurely aged body (I remember feeling old in high school and not thinking that particularly troubling) with calendrical regularity. So I can sympathize with the impulse to ask "why?" In the past (or, at least, not in her non-religious present), we might have asked: Is God punishing us? Elevating us? Purifying us?
Hating on me? I'll confess I've asked the same. When one is (comparatively) energetic, but then feels a decline, it takes longer to get back to normal. It is flummoxing. It is, after all, a message of mortality, and I imagine very few people either contemplate it extensively or have the courage to. But, as the great narratives that elevated the cosmos over the individual have given way, there is an aspect to pain that is especially terrifying. That is for me and for Thernstrom, when the body breaks down just because it does, and no doctors or specialists can tell you (or her or me) why it is that one system isn't working like it should. Like it did.
Thernstrom explores the different ways in which the world's peoples perceived pain, and how pain was often at the core of piety. Often, pain was redemptive, transcendent -- it marked an opportunity for improvement or potential for salvation. So it is too bad that she barely talks about Islam. Doesn't Islam, its texts and histories, have something unique to add? At one point, she quotes from the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), but in the footnotes we find the reference is from Donald Meichenbaum's Cognitive-Behavior Modification. Somehow, I imagine, she could have done better. Muslims feature twice in the index, the last Prophet of Islam just that once and Islam not at all.
Thernstrom presumes the empirical attitude was born with Western science, and emerged against religion -- prior to the 1700s, there was almost no attempt to systemically understand the world outside us -- in part because she's only looking in one place. Can we, in this day and age, set out to write a story about the science and spirituality of suffering and not include a serious perspective on the lived culture of a huge number of the world's inhabitants? Are we still writing as if our narrative is the narrative of Judeo-Christian tradition? (Mostly the latter). But is it her fault? Where would she turn? Should she know to do so? I see the fault, but do not know where it begins.
Her very rich, and all the same very enjoyable title, lacks a perspective that could have tempered or challenged many of her conclusions. Muslim scientists pursued advances in math, chemistry, neurology, immunology, optics, opthalmology, physics, architecture, agriculture and myriad other fields. Their mentality cannot be assumed to mimic Western empiricism, but nevertheless one could fairly make the case that Islam's burst of creative inspiration helped feed Europe's revival. Of course, Islam was not, in and of itself, only on Earth to prepare the ground for another civilization. But cultures, like bodies, are interconnected systems. Too often we have refused to learn that when one part of the world is in pain, others are forced to share the misery. (The leg bone is connected to the hip bone...)
And this is why we must do more to preserve the contributions and perspectives of other religions and philosophies. By "we," I mean those of us in the humanities, if the humanities haven't been fatally undone by coldly economic utility. But I also speak to Muslims (these days, I suppose, I also have no choice but to speak for Muslims). We must make sure our heritage does not go missing from the wonderful histories of ideas, concepts and emotions of which The Pain Chronicles is one very excellent example. Because, at the heart of it, Melanie Thernstrom is asking a question about suffering -- an existential concern that is, not surprisingly, individualized. She and I are products of a time when individuality is far different even from what it was when our country was born.
We process pain through the lens of our self-perception.
How did empiricism exist without romanticism? Science without modernity? But they did, and perhaps we can mend some rifts by understanding how. The question of suffering appears in cultures and across places in different forms, shaped by the environments of the times. For the survivors of the Holocaust, those who perished in the camps and suffered pogroms in the centuries before, the question of God's abandonment of His people must have come up. Suffering is often collective. The question of black suffering is of course a deep one (for a Muslim perspective, Professor Sherman Jackson must be read).
And for Muslims more broadly, the question might be: What has gone wrong with the Muslim world, with Muslim communities and societies? Why have they, of late, been faced with so many trials and hardships, and achieved so many ostensible failures? Can Muslims even suffer individually, when the temptation is to assume our rigid, practically necrotic homogeneity? Partially, this is an absence of accurate information, a reliance on sources unfamiliar with Islam, sources thus unable to resist the simpler, uglier or more depressing narratives. Sources that may guess we have nothing to offer the world and so make us, like pain, invisible.
But there's also a rebuking reality about this question: What God is doing to us? With us? For us? Because there are many different kinds of pain: the pain that wears away at our bodies, or the pain that wears away at our selves, grinds us down and makes us wonder if we are somehow less than whole, flawed, doomed and cursed, left behind and watching the world move on and ahead. The pain of many little cuts, blows to the ego, to pride and to self-respect, a constant barrage of miniscule or muddled slights. These are the worries that continue to plague and sap too many Muslims, and many other minorities, and while it may not be easy to offer answers, we should preserve what thoughts the faith once produced and still offers. Or Muslims shall remain as they are: out of the conversation, past consideration and in agony to be so excluded.
Follow Haroon Moghul on Twitter: www.twitter.com/hsmoghul
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themuslimbutterfly.blogspot.com
If it hurts, stop doing it.
No religion, no belief, no action should bring you pain.
If it does, that is your first clue that you are doing something wrong.
Re-examine your beliefs, not your soul.
^^^
What's wrong with a Western writer doing that for a mostly Western audience? Maybe Muslims should lead by example and start accommodating non-Muslims.
That is incorrect. Rephrase so it is more specific and accurate.
Your right to fight for freedom is called terrorism while these governments and PUPPETS control you OIL and your freedom. Your wealth from that OIL goes the the PUPPET Governments and not to the people.
I akin the extreme Muslims to freedom fighters, not fighting for the fun of it, but sacrificing their lives and the lives of others for a freedom the Muslims have rarely had, but surely deserve. That is the pain Muslims and World are feeling now and until that pain is stopped
This only demonstrates your ignorance of history. These extreme muslims have been in power in the past, and there was nothing that even slightly resembled freedom while they were in charge.
i'm a little unsure of what you mean by "these extreme muslims". the current ones, or the extreme ones from the past? which ones specifically? i mean just a couple so we can all be talking about the same thing.
btw, calling someone out for ignorance is really a conversation killer. just demonstrate to him/her why you think they have their head up their ass, but don't tell them you think they have their head up their ass.
"And We will surely test you with something of fear and hunger and a loss of wealth and lives and fruits, but give good tidings to the patient", 2:155
"Ye shall certainly be tried and tested in your possessions and in your personal selves; and ye shall certainly Hear much that will grieve you, from those who received the Book before you and from those who worship many gods. But if ye persevere patiently, ..." 3:186
"And if it were Our Will, We would have [destroyed you (mankind) all, and] made angels to replace you on the earth". 43:60
American invasions and killings in our lands and the funding and support of Muslim governments that run on their platform of secular law has cause an insurgency ten fold.
There would be no Al Maghrib Al qaeda or Al Shabaab; or Yemen and Saudi Al Qaeda or Pakistan Taliban if the Americans would have not funded, trained and educated our leaders to become secular and use brutal tactics to suppress us.
Now, with these insurgents have gain many areas and each is calling their terrorities emirates.
If the Americans would leave and we vote out the despotic leaders and bring in the shari'ah, there would be peace.
The American gov says no to the shari'ah, no to Islamic states and there goes the war between America and Islam.
The UN reports states that the most brutal govs are in Muslim lands under secular law. Women and human rights issues are massive and the people in our lands are fed up with this! We see these corrupted leaders with American agents, and our Islamic schools closed, masjids curtailed, secular schools and night clubs are being built, these are some of the causes of the wide spread insurgencies in Muslim lands and the Americans are there with there Africom and terror programs and the insurgents are fighting to restore Islam!
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Your view of the agenda of the West is paranoid. Pay more attention to what Muslims are doing to Muslims and the role of Islamic dogma in that.
Mahmoud Taha, a Sudanese civil engineer, studied Islamic texts and came up with a solution for the problematic jihad definitions in the Medinan Koran. He published his peaceful and egalitarian interpretation of the Koran in a book, "The Second Message of Islam." He was hanged by the Sudanese government for his effort.
There is your problem. The gates of ijtihad are being kept closed by lethal force. By Islamists, not the West. As long as Islamists can get away with killing reformists, Islam will be in trouble as it is now.
Islam is not in any trouble whatsoever per se - the West would like it to be the focus of hatred and abuse, because it is well known that if Muslims did agree to overcome their differences and joined together as one, there would be no power on Earth who could overcome them. That's what they're afraid of, and have been doing their best for decades to sow trouble and seed and support dictators among them. Islam is perfect - Muslims are not.
YEE with no sins, throw the first STONE
Christians have lost the WORD of Christ. Churches have dulled the essence of Christ to teach everyone to become HIM and not believe just in his name.
Now, when you are asking the reader to watch "The Linguists" are you implying that other cultures are not letting Islam take a hold?
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/islamism
Again, looks like you are not good with words, concepts or ideas which is blurring your thinking.You don't have to be a terrorist to be an extremist Islamist.
This kind of addresses the rest of you post in a nutshell....I think it is sad, but I also think it is inevitable. Pandora's box has been opened, which is lightning communication, global trade and cooperation.....no culture can stay isolated for long, and no culture in the global net can remain unaffected. The eventual product of this is very very predictable.
It isn't like, say, biodiversity. There will be no world shattering destruction when the cultures blend together. In many ways, it will solve a lot of problems.
Spanish/Castillian is only very poorly spoken Portuguese and vice versa. Someone sad that a language is only a dialect with a flag. Take Dutch and Flemish. There's no difference whatsoever.
This may give the impression that the languages are mutually intelligible, which I don't believe is the case. Bilingual education and/or interpreters are necessary in order for Portugese speakers and Spanish speakers to communicate. If we're going to frame things that way we could say that Castilian, Catalan, Portuguese, French, Provençal, Sardinian, Romansh, Italian and Romanian-Moldavian are all just very, very poorly spoken Latin.
Or should I have said "Romanian and Moldavian" instead of "Romanian-Moldavian"? Should one refer to "Serbian and Croatian" or "Serbian and Croation"? In each case the major thing separating the two is that one is written in the Latin alphabet and the other in the Cyrillic alphabet.
Some would assert that Catalan is a Spanish dialect and Provençal a French dialect, others would counter that such assertions are not justified linguistically and that they reflect political tyranny of majorities within Spain and France.
"Take Dutch and Flemish. There's no difference whatsoever."
There are differences -- very minor ones, I will grant you that. Greater than the differences between American English and Canadian English, and smaller than the differences between American English and British English.
http://thewrongmonkey.blogspot.com/
God does no wrong to any of His creations it is humanity (irrespective of faith) that brings upon itself suffering. The poor's due is with the rich, the oppressed must assert themselves against their oppressors, the ignorant must be raised by the educated. THIS is our test from God and we have only to struggle to enjoin with anyone to do good and to end that which is evil during our brief time here on earth.
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Outstanding. Now multiply that by 1.4 billion Muslims and the Islamophobia will go away.
Multiply it by 6 billion, and the rest of our political and religious phobias will go away, too.
on a more serious note to the author ---- I'd like to say that - sorry for the candor - this was not a smooth read in that I understand - I believe - what you were trying to say but it was a struggle to to get to the main point. Without going into detail I wanted to get to at least this question that I believe will take care of the rest:
"What has gone wrong with the Muslim world?"
imho the central problem is in essence 2 things: 1) that we have lost touch with the Qur'anic teachings and principles and rather than truly understanding and following to the best of our ability that magnificent source of guidance directly, we defer to those who write *about* the source or to other sources that are peripheral. For the muslim who by definition believes in the authenticity of the Qur'an and chooses to act on/ actively understand its teachings then their view of this world will isA be seen through its prism.
continued
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Excellent post.
It is refreshing to read Muslims looking at their problems with an eye to improvement, rather than looking for someone else to blame.
More and more of them, like you, are coming to the conclusion that the Koran is the only reliable guide for Muslims. That the Sharia law is a poisonous interpretation of the Koran which at once offends non-Muslims and shackles Muslims to an outdated view of the world that promotes ideas they no longer believe in:
1) Inequality between the sexes
2) Restrictions on freedom of speech and conscience
3) Supremacy of Islam through jihad
4) A political role for Islam
Professional Islamists, mainly clerics, scholars and politicians, are fighting hard to maintain control of Islam through Sharia law. More Muslims every day realize that this effort is not in their best interest.
Join the anti-Sharia law reformers.
http://www.aifdemocracy.org/
However, Jan, I think you might like to watch this video:
http://www.rethinkingislamicreform.co.uk/video
sharia law is an abstraction, so to speak. the goal of islamic jurisprudence is to interpret what sharia (God's law for humanity according to muslims) should look like in the world. there is no nebulous of sharia anywhere. muslim scholars for the most part do not fight to maintain control of islam. non-experts toss the word 'sharia' around, but need to realize that they've been played for fools by professional liars...eh hem...politicians. the 4 points you made are arational guesses.
Chinese? are you saying the Chinese culture is extinct? The people in Shanghai would be interested to hear more about that.