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New Civilization News: The Now Vision |
Category: Spirituality 2 comments 27 Oct 2004 @ 03:24 by astrid : Ohhhh Al........ how much do we really know???? Well let's just look at this simple Question: Why are the Oceans salty? NOBODY KNOWS!!!!!!..... We talk about Nano Technology; all these clumpsy robots "creeping, crawling, hopping around.... when Nature is FULL of PERFECT Nano Technology that has kept MILLIONS of Species of little Critters functioning in Perfect Harmony in and with their surroundings. Etc etc etc... SYMBIOSIS. OK, so you think we have done some PROGRESS??!!??? ... and what exactly would that be? What is a telephone compared to foolproof TELEPATHY? What's an Airplane ride compared to foolproof TELEPORTATION? What is cruelty and "ability" to destroy eachother (and the rest of Nature) compared to deceny -even- kindness and dignity? The TRUTH is, Al, let's face it: Humans have DEVOLVED the last 9000 years or whatever -depending your source of "scientific" ( Mainstream or even more MAINSTREAM )Info What is a BIG FAT EGO compared to a true Magician?... not to mention Master!... "ME" ( The Christ-consciousness, available to all who so desire. Provided the RULES and GRADES are met!) is given all the Power in Heaven and on Earth WITHOUT ANY OUTER ( = 3D) TECHNOLOGY! 27 Oct 2004 @ 09:43 by swanny : Article By Ginan Rauf The gruesome beheading of Paul Johnson marked a new low in Al Qaeda terror tactics and a further descent into barbarism. Yet there are hopeful signs that the spectacle of violence may be alienating more and more people in the Arab world. Hopeful signs, however, are not assured outcomes, and that means much creative work remains to be done. An article in the Guardian notes the following: Few people noticed the statement by two Saudi Arabian clerics denouncing attacks on locals and Westerners alike, by Islamic militants. It came not from the usual tame clerics, but from Safar al-Hawali and Salman al-Auda, two rabble rousing prayer leaders imprisoned several times for their hardline views. The statement is significant not simply because it was made by hard-line clerics but also because it couples the category of Westerners with local Muslims; as such it opens the way for deconstructing the rigid dichotomy on which holy crusades thrive. A space is opened for intermediary positions from within the religious establishment itself. Former rabble rousers can and must be engaged insofar as they can swell the ranks of the repentant in this war of ideas. The Western is not to be eternally conflated with the infidel, the master signifier of otherness in the Muslim world and some parts of the Western. Terrorists stage spectacles of violence to drive expatriates from the Kingdom and to ultimately cleanse the region of all foreigners. Theirs is a war on diversity, and you can be certain that once the Christian infidels are purged and power tasted, the category of the killable will only continue to proliferate. The foreign infidel easily slips into the apostate, the foreign woman into the Muslim adulteress and so forth. The culture of death feeds on bloodlust. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Yet the spectacle of violence creates its own unintended effects, and they cannot be controlled indefinitely by the purveyors of terror. The holy crusade scenario is at times subverted by its very victims. So Paul Johnsons family made a crucial distinction between the barbaric extremism of Islamic militants and the people of Saudi Arabia, the country that the American expatriate often wrote home about. The one is not necessarily representative of the other; a gentler side is recognized. That story of a gentler place reaches the Johnson family via a trusted intermediary and it reaches us despite the customary demonization of Islam. At the same time, Paul Johnsons kidnapping prompted other interventions and brought another intermediary to the forefront. This time it is a Saudi colleague identifying himself as Al-Mumin, a pseudonym that means the believer in Arabic. The Believer makes a public plea on behalf of Paul Johnson, an American friend and protected person. He cites a Prophetic tradition that the intermediary category of protected person may be lifted out of the killable infidel: If they were granted Muslim protection, then killing them or taking their money or harming them is forbidden. Al-Mumin then implicitly re-activates the intermediary category known as The People of the Book that includes Jews and Christians in order to spare the life of an American hostage and friend. People of the Book are protected under Islamic law and are to be carefully distinguished from the more problematic category of infidels. This intermediary category is circulated on extremist websites where binary oppositions reign supreme and shore up what Jessica Stern terms a nihilistic worldview. Al-Mumin used the Internet in order to reach hardened terrorists and to distinguish himself as an advocate for civilian hostages in a country with a sizable population of expatriates. There he declared himself a protector of an American colleague rather than a slayer of infidels. I declare that I pledge to protect this man, he wrote to Johnsons captors. Yet this letter is not exclusively addressed to Johnsons captors, for it charts a shift in sensibilities that coincides with the clerical denunciation of anti-Western violence. The letter links Al-Mumin to an even wider global sphere where a coalescing movement for saving innocent civilians can be dimly discerned. After all, Al-Mumins active intervention on behalf of Paul Johnson dovetails with the televised pleas made by the abducted mans family. Johnsons son, for instance, went on CNN and made a direct appeal to his fathers abductors. While that appeal may have failed miserably, it became a living and circulating example of how media can be used to establish a direct rapport between ordinary Arabs and ordinary Americans bent on sparing the life of a civilian hostage. For a brief moment, then, one could discern the outlines of a common cause and perhaps a growing awareness that the struggle against indiscriminate violence requires cooperation between common people determined to boldly confront the vengeful tendencies in their respective cultures. The bring em on rhetoric of retaliatory violence generates an alliance of innocent bystanders. It is quite telling that the Saudi colleague refers to himself as al-Mumin insofar as his use of the word directly challenges the jihadi monopoly of Muslim righteousness. The captors are explicitly told that al-Mumin will curse them in his prayers should Johsnon be executed, for he has pledged himself a protector. The word believer begins to lose its seemingly exclusive association with an anti-Western militant and to shed its stubbornly conflictual connotations. The word believer begins to retrieve buried meanings, to surround itself with variant association including an ability to exercise ones individual conscience, to protect, befriend and converse with an American. Al-Mumin carefully distinguishes himself from the mass militant retaliatory machine and he is equally careful to maintain a distinction between Paul Johnson and the illegal invasion of Iraq. America begins to lose its exclusive association as a sworn enemy of Islam and the monolith dissolves into a plurality of views. A believer can consequently take an active stand against a fanatic brand of Islamic terrorism, maintain a principled stand against the illegal invasion and engage in active dialogue with Americans. In that regard the believer can join global public opinion in its overwhelming and unprecedented opposition to the illegal occupation of Iraq while remaining attentive to the real grievances in the Arab/Muslim world. The Arab interlocutor doesnt have to be a Chalabi or a reactionary tyrant. It is a stance of which Edward Said often spoke and wrote. Still, al-Mumins letter comes up short in its more problematic tendency to convert the foreign other, to erase rather than actively engage with difference. In trying to make Paul Johnson more palatable to his hardened captors as a potential convert to Islam, he unwittingly exposes the limitations of Islamic tolerance, a tendency to welcome the stranger by effacing his cultural distinctiveness in a country scandalously lacking in churches and synagogues, to say nothing of other infidel associations. Yet this letter must also be seized as an opportunity to de-escalate violence and pre-empt the recruitment of other jihadis. The response of the Johnson family to the gruesome beheading may be regarded as yet another variant of de-escalation. Speaking on behalf of the Family, an FBI agent stated that the slaying hadnt dampened their respect for Johnsons adopted country. During this moment of excruciating pain and unimaginable suffering the family maintained a crucial distinction, remained sensitively attuned to how a peoples wounded dignity can fuel endless cycles of retaliatory violence. To refrain from demonizing is to focus the mind on the human cost exacted by the self-appointed defenders of Islam. Nick Bergs fatheran American beheaded in Iraqsimilarly engaged in an act of de-escalation and solidarity as reported in the New York Daily News. We hope they will find the strength to endure the pain of their loss, said Bergs father, Michael. We also extend our sympathies to all the families and friends of all the victims of this war, including United States military, contractors and the 11,000-plus innocent Iraqi victims. The allusion to civilian casualties focuses the global mind on the disappeared cost of waging war and it stands in stark contrast to the we dont do body counts macho rhetoric so characteristic of the lean killing machine. Now it would be all too easy to conclude that bodies simply dont count in America, and in some quarters they dont. Consider OReillys recent solution to Iraqi recalcitrance and ingratitude; namely, bomb the living daylights out of them. One may want to point out, Been there, done that. The OReillys of the world are probably not overly concerned about the safety of hostages or unpatriotic Americans who easily slip into the infinitely bomb-able category of un-American traitors or enemy combatants. Still, there is another America and it has shown itself infinitely capable of honoring the civilian victims of war. September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows and the Peace Abbey will sponsor a walk from Boston to New York that commemorates the unknown civilians killed in war. The participants plan on pulling a 1400 pound granite memorial that honors the unknown civilian. This ritual reenactment of a proper mobile burial constitutes a restorative act, one that restores human dignity for the despised and discounted. It is reconciliation in circulation. Such conciliatory acts, then, confirm al-Mumins sense that not all Americans are sworn enemies of Islam or sadistic torturers bent on humiliating Arab prisoners like those at Abu Ghraib. Think of the ad sponsored by a new progressive faith movement called Faithful Americans; the ad was an apology aired on Arabic television for the Abu Ghraib scandal. It is another America deconstructing America the crusading monolith for an Arab audience. Taken together these scattered expressions of reconciliation can become the basis for a transnational alliance united by a common causethe active and passionate waging of peace as an alternative to the perennial wars that have become a lose-lose proposition for the vast majority of human beings. Waging peace involves the recognition that our tightly inhabited space and demographically diverse cities can hardly sustain the toxicity of militant cultures that divide humanity into winners and losers, the former generally being equated with good and the latter with evil. Cultural bravado aside, moral certitude and self-righteousness have taken a beating. Mullahs are apologizing, religious leaders repenting and soldiers exposing their own brutality. Shame and repentance are back on the radar screen. Cultural pride is on the retreat, and that is not a bad thing at all. After all, there is little to celebrate and even less to be proud of. Saudis see terrorists behead civilians only to be shot down hours later. Americans see toppled statues mark the fall of Baghdad and the rise of Americas quagmire. Victory is a sham, and the spectacle of victory an elaborate farce quickly fading from memory or lingering on as a haunting specter of mendacity and human failure. Only the living suffer and they are beginning to figure out that the defenders of freedom and the defenders of the faith are often the destroyers of life, the purveyors of human misery. That is the message we must work to circulate. Ginan Rauf is a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard University currently completing a dissertation in comparative literature focusing on Arab migrant communities, including the Mizrahim. She is an Arab-American worried about the direction of her country. 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