[MD] Muslim Mechanisms

[John Carl]

>
>
> [Khaled]
> I am wondering about something and hence my question. Didn't Christianity
> go through the same stuff, and they happen to have a 600 year head start
> to iron these problems out? Didn't the European monarchy see politics and
> religion as one. And when did they separate?
>
>
A good case could be made for the date when Martin Luther hammered his
intellectual thesis to the door of the Church.

I could wiki the exact date but the effect of the ease of gaining
information effortlessly is that I've become too lazy to utilize it at all.
</irony>  (Nice help, btw, DmB, I'm starting to figure it out)


Personally, I have a great deal of sympathy for a religious iconoclasm
arising to counter the image-based reality that has formed in the west.  It
just needs a bit more intellectual self-questioning and hey, I may even
convert!

Nah, that's not likely to happen.  But what do you think happened, Khaled?
 I mean, Islamic leadership in the golden age was guided by high quality
intellect, now it mostly seems to be centered upon demagoguery.

Perhaps today's Islamist is confronted with a certain reactionary impulse
due to being forced to live in a narrowing global village where the western
way seems so rich and successful and all-pervading and a sorta insecurity
sets in that brings with a reaction of stiffness and unyielding adherence to
the old ways, when all else in the world is being gobbled by the new.

And the new sucks.


Everybody knows.


[khaled]

> Well that's the golden ticket here. Do you have to believe in God in
> order for you not to steal, cheat and lie. Can you 'be good for goodness
> sake', and the yule tide song says, warning you that the Elf in the red
> suit is watching.
>



Nice.  "Goodness for goodness's sake" is about as good a definition of good
there is, I'd say.   If God was here, I'm sure he'd approve.




> The intellectual value. Now you are asking people to think for
> themselves, and that is the long journey ahead.
>
>
Ah, but maybe not.  I don't think anyone is being asked to think for
themselves.  That would be a long journey, and an impossible one.  But to
think along different lines, to change thinking, that's really just a voyage
of a moment in time.  It's just thinking about something good instead of
something bad.  Perhaps the right intellectual formulation could work.
Let's imagine what that would look like:

You first.  I'd go, but I only know a Roycean system of interpretation here,
so I don't think it'd be appropriate to impose it.  But somehow, somewhere
there might be an intellectual formulation which can make things better
rather than make things worse.

John the cock-eyed optimist