Writing
his weekly column on economic issues in the Jerusalem Post, the business journalist
Pinchas Landau makes some original and worthwhile observations (in an accompanying note he calls them mildly apocalyptic) about Islam and the central role its plays in some relation to certain issues that you find surprising:
Looking back over the outgoing Jewish year, it is plain that the outstanding global events shared a common theme – they all involved radical Islam. These events were (a) the publication of and (belated – the fuss started two months later) uproar over the Mohammed cartoons in Denmark; (b) the Israeli campaign against Hezbollah; (c) the protests following the Pope's reference to Mohammed and his legacy in a lecture last week.
Of these, the last seems to me by far the most important, both in itself and because it confirms and extends the implications arising from the others. This conclusion is being borne out by the fallout from 'the Pope incident', as expresssed in every kind of communications medium – but most especially in the rapidly-growing 'blogosphere'. Whereas the response of the West, primarily its secular majority but also its religious minority, to the cartoons was dominated by confusion, embarrassment and ultimately surrender; and whereas the response of the West to the second Lebanon war was, overwhelmingly, to blame Israel and the Jews for causing trouble; this time is very different... The intensity of the response across the Moslem world tells its own story and reinforces the message from the earlier round of rage, inspired by the Mohammed cartoon.
Ironically, the secular world – from neo-liberals to Marxists to post-modernists – has been more shaken by the Moslem fury that followed 'the Pope incident', than it was by the backlash to the Mohammed cartoons. They and other neutral parties – such as Jews, Protestants and even Hindus – to this clash between Roman Catholicism and Islam seem to grasp implicitly that this is not funny, nor is their traditional dislike of the Catholic Church an excuse for some schadenfreude. On the contrary: people finally realised that there is a global war going on after all, and that, despite all protestations to the contrary, it is about religion.
Until this week, enormous efforts have been expended in 'the West' – a very loose term that in this context includes Japan, Russia and probably even China – to deny that the world has a problem with the extremist versions of Islam, which now dominate the Moslem world and agenda. This epiphanic moment is only partially due to 'the Pope incident' and is probably more the cumulative outcome of all the 'incidents' over the last year and indeed decade.
What has all this to do with the global economy? A great deal, actually. 'The Pope incident' may prove to be the turning-point for Europe, when it finally realises that it has a choice between seeking to preserve the culture it developed over the last 1000-1500 years – which is, at root, a Christian culture – and between rolling over and dying under a Moslem demographic and cultural onslaught. If so, everything now taken for granted by economists – such as the primacy of mainstream socio-economic issues in the political life of 'the West', and especially of European Union countries – goes out of the window. When you are fighting for your national, cultural -- let alone spiritual -- existence, inflation targets and debt: GDP ratios become less, dare one say, sacrosanct.
As for the Israeli economy, the idea that we are in peril has reasserted itself powerfully these last two months and is beginning to impact economic and social policy making. But if 'the Pope incident' proves to be the precursor to an anti-Moslem backlash in Europe, the continent's Jews will surely revert to their historic role of being caught in the middle. Expect, therefore, to hear a lot more French in your neighborhood soon.
The whole column's
here.
Writing his weekly column on economic issues in the Jerusalem Post, the business journalist Pinchas Landau makes some original and worthwhile observations (in an accompanying note he calls them mildly apocalyptic) about Islam and the central role its plays in some relation to certain issues that you find surprising:
I am a Brit living in France and I have a plan to emigrate to the USA when I can sell an apartment without being taxed.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I am concerned Europe is dying.
Benedictus XVI may not be right, but today's Muslims are islamically wrong!
ReplyDeleteThe wrong question is: "Did Benedictus XVI insult Islam and Muslims?" The correct question is: "Are today's Muslims entitled to protest, and to what extent can they be taken as the true 'custodians' of the system preached before 14 centuries by Prophet Muhammad?"
http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/9-16-2006-109009.asp
Less than a year after the deplorable 'Cartoons War', a false debate is reproduced in front of a multi-confused international community. The wrong question is: "Did Benedictus XVI insult Islam and Muslims?" The correct question is: "Are today's Muslims entitled to protest, and to what extent can they be taken as the true 'custodians' of the system preached before 14 centuries by Prophet Muhammad?"
Written by a Muslim, this protestation against the disreputable representatives of modern Muslim countries and against their pathetic attitude as regards Pope Benedictus' references to Manuel Paleologus may give to Western readership an insightful of the tyrannized societies of Islamic Terror. Few can protest, when Fear reigns and misinformation matches with detrimental lack of education and culture, behavioural barbarism, and political intolerance. Few Muslims live in (and therefore can appreciate) democratic societies in which reference to does not necessarily imply acceptance of someone,
Pathetic Muslim ignorance of Manuel Paleologus
This is the point to start with. Before speaking about the Pope's excerpts, idiots and quasi-illiterate politicians of the misery and the most immoral hypocrisy, like the Turk Salih Kapusuz, deputy leader of Premier Erdogan's party, and the Egyptian Ahmed Aboul Gheit, the Egyptian Foreign Minister, should have studied for an hour or two who Manuel Paleologus was. In Turkey there are specialized Byzantinists, so the task would be easier for the former: just ask before saying idiocies.
The latter should first remember that there are no Egyptian specialists in Byzantium (except those who got in the West a title "bon pour l' Orient", and work as taxi drivers in Cairo because of the economic failure of the successive dysfunctional governments of the Mubarak presidency); Aboul Gheit should remember that more than half of the population of the country he represents are miserable analphabets, plus that for about a century Western Egyptologists faced the threats of the semi-barbaric sheikhs of Egypt who did not wish to allow excavations to be carried out and ancient temples to be unearthed. Under such a heavy burden, About Gheit should present apologies for daring to comment.
Christian Orthodox, the Eastern Roman Emperor Manuel Paleologus reigned after the Latin rule of Constantinople; in his time the Eastern Roman hatred against the Pope of Rome had reached culmination after the two schisms, in 863 and (definite) 1054, had divided Christianity into Orthodox in the East and Catholic in the West. It is interesting to remember that Patriarch Michael Kherularius confiscated immediately all Latin properties in the Eastern Roman Empire in 1054 immediately after July 16, when three Roman legates entered Aghia Sophia church during mass on Saturday afternoon and placed the papal Bull of Excommunication on the Aghia Trapeza (the altar).
Manuel II Paleologus lived 300 years after the schism and 100 years after the Eastern Roman liberation from the Crusaders, who reproached for treachery invaded Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade (1204), instead of just crossing the land to reach Jerusalem. The Roman envy for the New Rome – Constantinople was running high for centuries, even before the days of Pope Nicholas I, who anathematized Patriarch Photius in 863!
At the times of Manuel Paleologus, little could save the ailing Eastern Roman Empire from falling to the Ottoman sultanate (this happened indeed 30 years after the Emperor died); it is also useful to remember that at those days the Eastern Roman, in their majority Greek speaking, populations were politically divided into two groups: the pro-Latins, who thought the Pope would mobilize Western Europeans armies to save Constantinople, and the pro-Ottomans, who knew that the Pope's worst enemy was not Islam but Christian Orthodoxy, and that for this reason help would never come from the West. Many top Eastern Roman theologians were far closer to political Islam (the Ottoman sultanate, empire after 1453, and caliphate after 1517) than the Frankish supremacy over Vatican and Western Europe that they considered as initiation to the Antichrist's Age. Cosmas the Aetolian, after many centuries of Ottoman rule over the Greek speaking Christian Orthodox populations of the former Eastern Roman Empire, found the clamor to attack the Pope as the ultimate reason for the … long awaited Antichrist, saying (or foretelling) that we should blame the Pope for the Antichrist's rise. The Sheikhulislam (religious head of Islam at the times of the Ottoman Caliphate) was not a matter of concern for that Orthodox monk of the late 18th century.
All this is to briefly say that Benedictus XVI quoted a declared enemy of Catholic Christianity. Whether the present Pope accepts the Eastern Roman Emperor's attacks against Islam has little importance. If we refer to News Agencies, the Pope insisted on that he was quoting; he was however quoting the emperor whom previous occupants of the Holy See did their best to destroy, an emperor whose people preferred Islam to Catholic Christianity.
We should in our turn ask why Benedictus XVI did not quote the extremely rich Catholic anti-Islamic literature that antedates the Eastern Roman Emperor. Probably, his choice was based on the consideration that even those who rejected Catholic Christianity and preferred political Islam, had negative opinion of Prophet Muhammad. This does not add much, and can hardly be taken as insult, It is well known that negative opinion of the 'other' was common place among all.
Islamic reaction against the Pope bears witness to Absolute Ignorance of Islam
What matters in 2006 is whether a negative opinion can be taken as an insult. If we reached this level, then communication has ended, this is what many of my coreligionists seem to forget; every one is entitled to a negative opinion of Muhammad, the Coran, Islam in its entirety, God Himself. Muslims should always remember that the Supreme Sentence within the Coran is
- There is no Compulsion in Religion.
As Muslim, I do not believe that Benedictus XVI has to apologize because I believe he is not obliged to accept Islam. If he insulted Islam, communication with Muslims would be difficult, but we cannot afford to take a negative opinion as an insult.
Only people with severe complex of inferiority would take a negative opinion as an insult; it seems that the vast complex of inferiority of political representatives of Modern Islam has no limits; for Turks it is due to a false interpretation of History and to deviation from the political ideology initiated by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. For Egyptians and others, it is due to terrible long centuries of French and/or English Cultural, Economic, Political Colonialism against which they never had the courage to fight. The altered face of the so-called Arabic speaking peoples, their distorted cultural and historical identity, their lack of interest to assess their – absolutely non-Arabic – national identity (Coptic for Egyptians, Berberic for Libyans, Tunisians, Algerians, Moroccans and Mauritanians, and Aramaic for Lebanese, Syrians, Iraqis, Jordanians, Palestinians and others), and their false Islam are the reasons of this complex of inferiority.
The first thing all critics of Benedictus XVI should bring in mind is the extent to which they represent Islam, the definite lack of knowledge of Islam, their miserable misinterpretation of a religion that has truly no followers anymore. These screaming and inane people should ask themselves to what extent they, and the execrable and totalitarian societies and countries they represent, would be have been accepted by top Muslim philosophers, if they had been back to life.
Ruling these states where Islam became a religion limited to few acts of practice and lack of basic thought, representing these societies where the hatred of the better reigns in all forms of the daily life, and daring to attack a scholar who was elected Pope are all contradictory. Trivial politicians should first correct inaccuracies and inconsistencies in their own countries before attacking others. Whatever Benedictus XVI said, what matters is how many Muslim beggars enter filthy (with dirty gallabiyas tope up and with black coloured foot – since they a re barefoot) in the mosques to pray and ask money from the people around.
When outside your mosques there are hills of trash tore up by rubbish eaters, you have nothing to defend. When in your schools your schoolboys do not study a single page of original text of Ibn Sina, Mohyieldin Ibn al Arabi, Maqrizi, Tabari, and Ibn Rushd, you have no Islam to defend.
When you do not know the most important Islamic monuments beyond the borders of your country, and when you need Western organizations (like the Rotary's) to restore your country's Islamic monuments, you should rather shut up.
The only thing Bendictus XVI has to say to his bogus-Islamic critics is that "since there is no compulsion in religion" all the Muslim countries should turn secular, and all those who are ready in these countries to reject Islam must be allowed by law to do so without facing consequences".
When you impose Islam, you destroy Islam; no one would respect a destroyed religion fallen to the hands of ignorant and illiterate sheikhs.