As noted earlier I’m on the look out for local liberals who want to contribute articles to this blog. This week I’m going to work on a little outreach to recruit contributors and also put out the blog e-mail so people can request to be added.
Here’s the e-mail address (in anti-spam format): culiberal at gmail dot com
You can be anonymous or non-anonymous. I think it’d help if you already blog so include a link if you’ve already got a blog. If you don’t have a blog that’s okay, especially if you’re involved with local politics or the community somehow (even if the details are kept general for privacy’s sake). If none of the above applies then just send me a sample of writing, a rant, or something of that nature.
The way wordpress works you’d have to set up a wordpress user account with a valid e-mail address and then I can add you.
August 5, 2007 at 12:45 pm
Lazing on a Sunday afternoon… this will eventually tie into my attempt to tear down the brick wall that exists between people on the whole Iraq issue, but I’m going to need to take a very roundabout way towards getting there. Comments are very welcome, as I’m still hammering out my stance on these issues.
I just finished a profoundly disappointing online course on World Religions at Parkland (teacher=fabulous, students=not-so-very), and I wanted to toss down one of the posts that I did there (which resulted in crickets chirping) to see what the C-U consensus was on this. It was inspired by a line in the lecture on Islamic Beliefs and Practices:
“It is good to keep in mind that Islamic terrorists are to most Muslims as those Christians who bomb abortion clinics are to most Christians”
Yes, certainly… and no, not at all. I think this analogy is misleading. Islam is a religion defined by belief that the Qur’an must be infused in every aspect of life in order for a believer to be close to Allah. Not thinking about how to apply it to the modern issues of economic and social change on a daily basis is simply unthinkable to a Muslim! Christianity, on the other hand, is a religion that does not demand close study or adherence to the Gospel from its followers. So, a part of my problem here is that we’re comparing apples to oranges. You have one group that approaches its understanding of the actions of the fringe through moral relativsim fueled by a general spirit of fellowship even in the face of disagreement, and another group that understands the actions of the fringe through an intimate awareness of the revealed Word of God through the Prophet, Peace be Unto Him, and a vocal and spirited rejection of the false doctrines of those who take the inherently unjust role of aggressor and pretend that it is the will of Allah that they do so.
It says something significant about precisely how far understanding can (and, more importantly, cannot) take us when combating militant fringes. How can Christians who are not certain in the application of their faith hope to succeed in their attempts to denounce violence from fundamentalists if Muslims who are certain in the fundamentals of their faith cannot convince their own wayward brothers?
What I do want to say is that fundamentalist Christians who bomb abortion clinics have some strong statements in the Bible that inspire their actions, but they do not have specific rules of engagement on what to do with those crazy abortionists. Muslims, put simply, do have rules about infidels and what to do when they are under attack. Lots of them. The whole question about whether or not the infidel who disagrees with the Prophet, Peace be Unto Him, and then has the audacity to seek to convince others of his reasons why can be tolerated in the midst of a pious Muslim society strikes me as an enormously important question. It’s an unpopular thing to say, I know. I expect (and hope) that I’ll get a little resistance here.
(Surah 2:176) “Allah revealed the Book with truth and those who differed in the Book have drifted away from it.” (2:191-193) “You may kill those who wage war against you, and you may evict them whence they evicted you. Oppression is worse than murder…[I]f they attack you, you may kill them. This is the just retribution for those disbelievers. If they refrain, then GOD is Forgiver, Most Merciful. You may also fight them to eliminate oppression, and to worship GOD freely. If they refrain, you shall not aggress; aggression is permitted only against the aggressors.”
My thoughts here are that Western secular values could be seen as very oppressive to a culture that does not have the concept of a separation between church and state. Does the Western demand that Islam find its own expression of democracy in a unity between mutually exclusive factions of Islam constitute aggression? Is our presence in the Holy Land with our Western ways oppressive to the traditional way of life as Allah commands his people to live?
Something to consider… if the Muslim is justified in defending Islam when it is under attack, isn’t this an exponentially greater battle than the preservation of an innocent life (or even many innocent lives) through the destruction of an evil abortionist?
August 5, 2007 at 6:35 pm
Religious extremism infiltrating government is a problem regardless of whether it is Christian, Muslim, etc. This is certainly true in the United States and seems (without trying to sound too ethnocentric) to be fairly true elsewhere in the world too.
With issues of sovereignty to contend with I’m not sure how much of this we can apply outside the United States. We certainly don’t like it when they tell us how to live. I’m sure it isn’t appreciated in the other direction either.
With the militant extremists who want to do us harm it certainly presents a compelling interest to intervene. On social issues we can probably strongly encourage using trade negotiations and other diplomatic bargaining tools.
August 9, 2007 at 1:45 pm
Ah, the WordPress account set up finally worked.