Relatedly, recall that a key empirical study by the Princeton academics has this to say, " ... Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence."
[https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...]
Anders Behring Breivik had a long manifesto that was meant to provide conceptual landscape behind his killing of 77 people. Unsurprising is the appearance of Geert Wilders, Pamela Geller, Daniel Pipes et al. in there, but its remarkably instructive that the likes of the respected George Orwell are also cited.
Part of his worldview (and not necessarily his course of action) is shared by a substantive part of the people coming from ethnic-European origin. Much of the less-than-graceful themes in the manifesto were from the doctrinal elements that contributed to the unprecedented carnage across Europe during the WWII, particularly symbolized by the horrific sufferings of the hapless humans of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (There are similar aspects pertaining to the thoughts of Dylann Roof et.al). I wonder whether these affairs and the associated ideological terrains have been examined as widely and with as much interests.
The recent horrific criminal acts in Paris have connections with France's colonial past with Algeria (https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/reflections-on-the-recent-pari...). And Daesh, the brutal group implicated, has its genesis in other brutalities, not unlike other similar affairs in the past (http://johnpilger.com/articles/from-pol-pot-to-isis-anything...). In different settings with reduced level of invasions and imposed/incited sufferings, such as in Malaysia, things have remained at least as decent as any other.
If one says "keeping up the articles of Magna Carta, rather than resort to catastrophic violence on the part of the powerful outlawed states, would likely help lessen some of the chaos in today's world", does it imply that one is physically calling to go back to the thirteenth century? Similarly, Americans calling to restore the fourth amendment may not mean taking the clock back to the nineteenth century. Salafism in essence doesn't mean any different within the relevant conceptual framework.
In the world of Fukuyama et al, rather than a basic religious worldview with precise tenets, is there a solid framework of meaningfully defining/determining good/triumph/progress? How/why does it matter in the long run whether or not a bunch of Amoeba get transformed into more complicated organisms, or hot elementary particles end up forming heavy atoms and structures, or killing and chaos spreads among the humans a la world war II? From a materialistic/nihilistic standpoint, everything -- or nothing, for that matter -- can be viewed as triumph or end of some (part of) history (or not).
Islam in the 19th century was no more and no less than what it was before, but the Muslims were (and still are) trying to come to terms with the colonial destructions and ensuing effects.
I don't understand what you're getting at but I'll try to explain.
Fukuyama said that Capitalist Democracy was the pinnacle of civilisation.
In the same way Salafi / Wahabbi ideology says that we must as much as possible live like the prophet and his contemporaries. Any innovation is derided as Bida/Heretical.
So its not possible to reform certain laws in response to changing circumstances. Eg: Women can inherit only half of what men do. Now I'm not justifying this but this might have been pragmatic (socially acceptable??) for a time where women were subjugated and men were often the sole breadwinners for the entire family.
However in the 21st century noone can really argue that its relevant. But if anyone tries to reform laws such as these you'll have the Wahabbis and Salafis going ape and branding everyone heretics.
There was a cleric in my part of the country who had a very unorthodox interpretation of the scriptures. He was a brilliant orator and a scholar who could hold his fort against the traditionalists. He began gaining a lot of followers however one day he just disappeared and was never found again.
Well, the key tenets of beliefs and the legal outline laid down in the revealed texts are essentially immutable, per what a Muslim is meant to subscribe to. If this core idea is not there, that is logically equivalent to not subscribing to the religion (whoever wants to change whatever at wherever renders any belief fundamentally void, let alone what one believes to be God's guidance). But the jurisprudential framework ('usul al-fiqh') encompasses the principles to formulate specific course of action according to the immutable legislative guideline (formulated from authentic texts) in the specific circumstances. An example, harming oneself is prohibited in the text, so smoking has the ruling of being impermissible as its harms are largely known now while earlier academics used to deem it disliked based on another textual principle.
In short, there are constants and there are variables; without any constants, it all becomes tendentious whimsy.
The ideas related to the roles, responsibilities and respectability of the individuals are different in the Islamic creed. Yes, a woman gets half from her father (her husband owes her, legally), and she is exempt from the basic responsibility to become the breadwinner. Any Muslim is meant to respect and care for his/her mother more than the father. Historically many Muslim women were scholars (https://archive.org/download/AlMuhaddithat/al%20-%20Muhaddit...) and rich (in the old Muslim heritage, many of the large endowments for public welfare are known to be from women). Besides, a merely demographically Muslim territory may not embody much of the Islamic ideals though.
In the other part, I was referring to the epistemological basis regarding the concepts of triumph/progress; in particular, in a framework where basically, "we are from nowhere, we are going to nowhere and we are here for nothing", nothing really signifies anything.
Yes, you can reply directly. Beyond a certain depth HN may not show a reply link when you view the whole thread, but you can still directly reply by clicking the direct link to the specific comment (the one that has the "5 minutes ago" or whatever the time interval is), and then the reply box will be shown.
I think this is intended to make people think before replying to a very deeply nested comment as a way of curbing unproductive Ping-Pong discussions, but it seems mostly to get people to post lateral replies (that is, replies attached to a comment somewhere upthread from the comment they actually respond to), invariably complaining about the inability to reply directly, which is worse for the flow of discussion than if they just posted direct replies.
Whatever a woman earns -- after taking care of her primary/general responsibility of largely being the minister/secretary of (informal) education, cultural and internal affairs within the realm of a budding family -- remains with her and is not obliged to spend for the basic subsistence of the family. She still gets her inheritances. Besides, as the last of the Abrahamic religions today, Islam presents itself as the continuation of the basic common messages that the prophets came with. The prophets came with robust messages to fix social reality (not necessarily every single aspect of it though), and they themselves were not primarily trying to fit-in and win mere popularity contests at any cost.
They were the last to be visited by god, and had the most-recent prophet, according to whom their mortal leaders speak ex-cathedra. Mormonism is even growing faster than Islam. It is the ultimate(1) Abrahamic religion.
Mormonism is even truly a religion of peace. Its leader was under persecution at the time and he does not speak out for killing and injustice.
1) Judging all religions objectively by the same standard of proof.
Mormon religion is a case in point given the timeline of its emergence.
It's not clear what objective standard you have in mind, and whether any consensus can be reached on that purely through an exercise of argumentation where a lot of predispositions and other factors quite often lurk behind (it's rampant even in sciences, more so probably in soft/wet sciences: http://www.nature.com/news/how-scientists-fool-themselves-an...).
The only objective standard possible, the words of the religions themselves, combined into one greater piece of theology. Everything is assumed true unless it conflicts a greater set of doctrine.
Thus we know mormon leadership speak ex-cathedra because Smith said so, and so forth. Where things conflict however, like Mohammed's statement that he's the last prophet, obviously he's wrong because Joseph Smith, etc, meet the same criteria.
Going by the truth revealed in each document, Mormon's are the closest to god - the latest, most direct, pipeline to the divine. It's essentially religious science.
Say, I claim Prophethood today, and therefore there is n+1 religions meeting the said 'objective standard' now. Well, that number is not quite correct 'now' that you are reading it though; it has to be n+k given other potential claims made in the meanwhile, and k remains effectively indeterminate due to the impossibility of a distributed synchronization.
The details of n+k don't matter as much. It's not just the latest, it's the latest that self-claims to be in a certain lineage, etc. Ultimate Abrahamic religion... And it has to make a non-self conflicting claim to be the definitive text.
Once you meet the rigorous standards of 1) writing it down and 2) claiming to override all previous prophets, yes. I'd count you. (However, this will void your membership in the CotFSM.)
I believe I, or anyone else for that matter, can do meet "your objective" standards 1. and 2. fairly easily (; you can help with clear points/texts and without cryptic acronyms). I mean there can be literally a billion 'fork' at will, which renders the whole thing meaningless.
I don't claim to know much of mormonism; however the conflicts in such notions as 'ultimate', 'objective' here are difficult to reconcile: mormonism conflicts with Vatican/pope with respect to the core of any religious thoughts, namely, the identity of God; hence it is quite strange to insist on a notion of non-conflicting ideas, which is both logically impossible and non-existent. If mormonism was not correcting some ideas, which necessarily implies that there are conflicts, why Mr. Smith bothered to bring mormonism in the first place? Isn't it redundant, as long as it is not claiming to fix something (=>conflict)?
And if you concede the possibility of other valid new prophets and religious claims possible in the future following this Mr. Smith, how can you even choose to use the word "ultimate"? You see the logical contradiction there is too glaring to work out, no?
Please make sure that the reasoning remains reasonably sound. Thanks and bye.
Sure you can. It's a low bar. That's the point. In the absence of any possible evidence we have to work with what we've got. As for cryptic - if you can google it I don't consider it too cryptic. lmgtfy
And I only mean ultimate, now. Compared to the other religions we could be squabbling over. In a future religion, god could be all that + offer you a pony. We'll never know. But for now, of the choices, they're all obvious losers compared to Mormonism. Literally, you could upgrade a catholic or a muslim by giving them Mormonism.
As for Smith's motivations, who's saying he wasn't fixing things. He just didn't feel the need to get all stabby and make killing a sacrament.
And it conflicts nothing - it tells it how it is. The pope is god's voice, there's no conflict. Perhaps the pope is the missing element in islam. As the ultimate religion we can only assume it has not just a point, but a great one.
>In the world of Fukuyama et al, rather than a basic religious worldview with precise tenets, is there a solid framework of meaningfully defining/determining good/triumph/progress?
Fukuyama himself considered capitalist democracy to be the End of History, so yes.
Though Fukuyama reportedly distanced himself from this later, I appreciate your answer. But don't you think it's redundantly tautological and circular/self-referential to approach it like "Fukuyama himself considered capitalist democracy to be the End of History, so it is the supreme progress/triumph (end of history?) to have that".
Besides, I was coming from a philosophical perspective to the point where the basis of the things transcend the transient notions; that is, from a materialistic viewpoint (which I presume is Fukuyama's and many of the fellows' here), how/why does having an oligarchy or a corporate tyranny or a state with social welfare somewhere at some point in time is any more significant than some predator somewhere making some species extinct or some big wave scattering across in the ocean a million year ago or after (or any other event, such as a massacre by some of the humans, in the universe, for that matter).
>But don't you think it's redundantly tautological and circular/self-referential to approach it like "Fukuyama himself considered capitalist democracy to be the End of History, so it is the supreme progress/triumph (end of history?) to have that".
I had considered you to be asking about Fukuyama's views. In my views, history doesn't have an end, except possibly for everyone dying out.
>Besides, I was coming from a philosophical perspective to the point where the basis of the things transcend the transient notions;
The what now?
>how/why does having an oligarchy or a corporate tyranny or a state with social welfare somewhere at some point in time is any more significant than some predator somewhere making some species extinct or some big wave scattering across in the ocean a million year ago or after
It's significant to the people living through it! How's that supposed to not count as significant?
Daesh have no more relation to salafism than what Bush and Blair's murderous excursions have to do with WMD or democracy.
Daesh apparently attracts two categories of people:
1. people suffering from PTSD who have lost much of their capacities to think clearly; specifically, part of butchered Sunni community in Iraq following the sectarian war fuelled by US invaders after years of deadly sanctions (they also include former members of Saddam's secular stasi-equivalent http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/islamic-state-file...), and some of the Syrians going through Assad's butchery.
This is no different from how a bunch of peaceful villagers turned into brutal group that was Khemer Rouge (http://johnpilger.com/articles/from-pol-pot-to-isis-anything...).
On a different note related to welfare, Saudis are probably not that worse off in certain ways: any (poor) Saudi is eligible to receive funding/stipend from his/her government for studying in world's top universities, unlike many rich capitalistic states that are effectively no less of an oligarchy.
Oh, I agree that it would be naive to think that the force behind IS is merely some form or interpretation of Salafism, and I'm aware that there is a strong voice against IS among Salafis around the world (not just in Saudi Arabia). My point was that Saudi clerics denounciation of IS has little to do with them being the "good guys" or with religious reasons. Islam, in whatever form, here is being used by all nominally Islamic sides as an ideological gift wrap for various political and economic power struggles in the region the way that suits them the most.
There are apparently religious reasons for the clerics' positions that go back to as early as the Prophetic statements regarding the emergence of the Khawariz, the passionately brutal yet religiously clueless group of newcomers that emerged within the broader Muslim community and caused chaos. There are pertinent religious texts regarding keeping up with the legitimate rulers (without taking part in their misdeeds) and the general obligation on shunning anarchy, militant rebellion and chaos.
The jurisprudential rules of wars regarding prohibition of killing women, children, non-combatants, priests are widely studied in the academically oriented circles, and I haven't come across evidences that suggest that prominent/mainstream salafi academics of the past or present have remarkably contradicted on these issues.
Given the turmoil that has lately (and long been) transpired in the form of militant experiments and perceived revolutions around the region (and the globe), the tradition that promotes mass-education, deeply-rooted revival and collective rectification doesn't seem to be a bad idea as the feasible choice for societal betterment.
This is a defensive 'just war', in view of some of the perpetrators, as articulated by one here: "...If the United States does not get out of Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries controlled by Muslims, he said, "we will be attacking U.S.," (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06... also http://www.salon.com/2010/06/22/terrorism_22/)
There are very similar statements from the likes of bin Laden, Aiman al-Jawahiri, and even the brutal crazies of Daesh also reportedly made similar claims.
In my brief explorations, I found that Jews found shelter in the Muslim Spain in an era when Europe was in full force to get rid of the 'Jewish problem'. Fair share of the likes of Andrei Breivik and Dylann Roof are also in the present Muslim world, especially in this neo-colonial era.
