Posted on 05/07/2007 4:35:39 PM PDT by ventanax5
We [Arabs] have become extinct," said Syrian poet Adonis in a March 11 Dubai television interview transcribed by the Israeli media monitor MEMRI, [1] but ignored by the mainstream Western media. The prognosis by Adonis, the only Arabic writer on the Nobel Prize short list, for the Arab prospect has become more bleak over the years, and his latest pronouncement has a Spenglerian finality.
"We have become extinct ... We have the masses of people, but
a people becomes extinct when it no longer has a creative capacity, and the capacity to change its world ... The great Sumerians became extinct, the great Greeks became extinct, and the Pharaohs became extinct," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at atimes.com ...
I wish they were!
I assume he is excluding the ability to destroy the world...that seems like what they are intent on doing....
Yet a certain group of people who were their contemporaries survives, and have done so despite thousands of years of persecution and genocide. I'm sure this group of people will outlast the Arabs too.
Why are there no Arabs on Star Trek?
It takes place in the future.
/old joke
As long as they continue to adhere to the most violent religious practices of Islam, the sooner the better.
It they would get over the idea of programed ignorance via the literal interpretation of the Koran, they could be come a vital part of the living, growing world, instead of being a lethal part of the world...
Unfortunenately, they cannot survive their own who have turned to the Golden Calf, not there is no Moses to intercede for them.
Maturity is challenging for some.
Spencer replies:
Spengler weighs in on the Armstrong/Spencer kerfuffle in “Are the Arabs already extinct?” in Asia Times (thanks to James), and gets me all wrong:
As a poet, Adonis does not describe the spiritual state of the Arabs, but rather evokes it existentially. The available literature on Islam consists mainly of a useless exchange of Koranic citations that show, depending on whether one is Karen Armstrong or Robert Spencer, that Islam is loving or hateful, tolerant or bigoted, peaceful or warlike, or whatever one cares to show. It is all so pointless and sophomoric; anyone can quote the Koran, or for that matter the Bible, to show whatever one wants. With Adonis one gains access to the inside of the Arab experience of modernity. It is a terrible and frightening one, not recommended for the faint-hearted, but indispensable to anyone who wishes to get beyond the pointless sloganeering of the pundits.
As anyone knows who has ever actually read what I write, rather than second-hand characterizations of what I write, I do not use Qur’anic citations to show that Islam is hateful, bigoted, or warlike. In reality, I report on how jihadists use Qur’anic citations to justify hateful, bigoted, and warlike actions. And I show that in doing so, they can and do invoke Hadith and Islamic jurisprudence to support their points also.
I have never said, and will never say, that any view of Islam is correct or incorrect. That is because there is no central authority in Islam that can decide such matters. I do say, and have said many times, that jihadists recruit by presenting their version of Islam as pure, true, and correct Islam, and that this view is buttressed by passages from the Qur’an and Sunnah as they have been understood by mainstream Islamic commentators, and by all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence, which all teach warfare against unbelievers — as well as by the fact that peaceful Muslims have never formulated any effective theological/juridical response to any of this. Thus the only possible avenue for Islamic reform, against which are prohibitive odds, would be a rejection of Qur’anic literalism, and literalism in regard to Muhammad’s words and example.
But to reduce all this to Qur’an citation wars and to assert that “anyone can quote the Koran, or for that matter the Bible, to show whatever one wants” is, to borrow a phrase, pointless and sophomoric. There are no armed groups of Jews and Christians committing violence today and justifying that violence by reference to their Scriptures. And, as I show in my upcoming book Religion of Peace? Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn’t, a close examination of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures and how they have been interpreted, as compared to the Qur’an and how Muslims have interpreted it, shows that the texts are by no means equal in their capacity to incite to violence.
Spengler has been better in the past.
How do you have a creative society, when further thought is ahead of time known to be fruitless? Adonis argues that the Arab fears freedom. Freedom is too much of a burden, you must face reality and face the entire world in freedom. If you are a slave, you don't have to deal with all of that.
This guy takes pessimism to the nth degree.
Can’t we speed up the process to make them extinct?
At the rate they are breeding, hell no.
Arabs are about as extinct as cancer.
At least that part is correct for them. And that would be due to ____________.
It is dangerous to count your enemy out until he is really out.
What does a country export? Show me a list of export items and I can show you a gauge of "creative capacity". If terror or terrorists makes it on this list, chalk one for "negative creative capacity". If Iran exports terror and oil, one will cancel out the other - zero -- the amazing zero - they gave us zero once and have been giving us zero ever since.
LOL! They are doing their best all by their own.
Did you hear what one of these Leftie Liberal Tree
Hugging Death Culters said today???
He said that Humans should reduce their population to only 1 Billion people worldwide, because humans are a cvancer
to the Earth, and we should not be alloweed to have babies.
Only those committed to killing off 5 Billion Humans should be allowed to ghave children...
Is there any more proof needed that the DemoSocialists
Are Death Cult?
Nice to see a post that has thought behind it. Great summation of what he is saying. The implications are far reaching and it is something we are facing as a nation. The Arabs have made their choice, we are making ours now.
I saw that and figured that he should be first in line.
Oh, ok.
Islam Faces a New Era
Civilization magazine (via the Wayback Machine) | 1999 | Munawar A. Anees
Posted on 11/21/2004 2:51:23 PM EST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1285400/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1163046/posts?page=7#7
Very good article by Spengler. Thanks for posting.
He does: "He argues that Islam destroys the creative capacity of the Arabs, who in turn do not have the capacity to become modern."
Violent stupid belief systems create violent stupid civilizations.
And any Arabs, mostly Christians, are such a minority that their beliefs, and policies, are non-existent. Arab Christians have been fighting Arab Muslims for centuries and 30 years ago fought Islam in Lebanon, the one true democracy of Arab nations. They had no help, other than Israel, and were taken over by the PLO and Syria, and basically the so called radical islamists.
Believers of Islam, and I include the moderates since they’re doing nothing to counteract the radicals, are intent on destroying anything that isn’t Islam/Muslim. We’re all supposed to either convert or submit to Islam and the teachings of Mohammed. And either way, it’s ok to kill us because Allah says so. You know, the Allah that is the same God Jews and Christians follow. RME. Yeah, the “religion of peace” is nothing of the sort and never has been and it only takes reading the Koran to realize that.
I’ve been saying for at least a year that our enemies belong to one or the other of two deranged loser death cults, Islamofascism and liberalism. One has members willing to blow themselves up if they can take us with them; the other is determined to abort, sterilize and sodomize itself out of existence.
Screw the Arabs. The Turks, the Kurds, the Indonesians, the American Black Muslims are no where as bad as the “Arab Muslims are”.
High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]
----------------------------
Nice summation!
Precisely.
Profoundly different.
I regret Robert Spencer’s annoyance at my criticism, but I have to stick by my point: you learn a lot more about Islam by reading Adonis, who criticizes Islam from the inside, than you do from Spencer (or Fallaci, Bat Ye’or, and a dozen other writers) who attack it from the outside. There are a billion and half Muslims, of whom some hundreds of millions support violence against unbelievers. The Koran is not a self-help book, nor it is it a political manifesto; it is an existential stance with respect to the world. Adonis’ poetry as well as his criticism helps us to get inside the mind of Arabs. The sort of thing that Spencer does, despite his estimable intentions, is just not adequate to the task at hand. I hate to be harsh towards anyone, and I have a very high regard for Spencer, but we are in a crisis, and need to use the best tools available to deal with it. Muslims are not comic-book villains. They are human beings in profound anguish, many of whom turn desperate and destructive. I am not saying this can be solved with therapy! One has to meet violent force with superior violent force, period. But in order to defeat your enemy, you first have to get inside his mind, and that requires empathy. Ticking off the bad guy’s bad points doesn’t do the job.
One has to meet violent force with superior violent force, period. But in order to defeat your enemy, you first have to get inside his mind, and that requires empathy. Ticking off the bad guy’s bad points doesn’t do the job.Not sure why you replied to me, but anyway -- listing the bad guy's bad points is a necessity, precisely because there's a nutty tendency in politics to try to avoid harm by denying it is there. Listing the enemy's bad points isn't meant to be read by the enemy (nor will it be, other than in some distorted manner), it is meant to mobilize public support for the use of superior violent force.
This was a fascinating article. Thanks for posting.
Here is a link to the MEMRI interview:
http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP112106
Here is a quote:
Interviewer: “Mr. Adonis, how do you view the democracy in Palestine, which brought Hamas to power?”
Adonis: “I support it, but I oppose the establishment of any state on the basis of religion, even if it’s done by Hamas.”
Interviewer: “Even if it liberates Palestine?”
Adonis: “Yes, because in such a case, it would be my duty to fight this religious state.”
and
“Adonis: “That is our real intellectual crisis. We are facing a new world with ideas that no longer exist, and in a context that is obsolete. We must sever ourselves completely from that context, on all levels, and think of a new Arab identity, a new culture, and a new Arab society.”
[...]
“Imagine that Arab societies had no Western influence. What would be left? The Muslims must...”
Interviewer: “What would be left?”
Adonis: “Nothing. Nothing would be left except for the mosque, the church, and commerce, of course.”
[...]
“The Muslims today - forgive me for saying this - with their accepted interpretation [of the religious text], are the first to destroy Islam, whereas those who criticize the Muslims - the non-believers, the infidels, as they call them - are the ones who perceive in Islam the vitality that could adapt it to life. These infidels serve Islam better than the believers.”
http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm?blog_id=7626
Tuesday, 8 May 2007
Spengler & Spencer
“Spengler,” he of the portentous pseudonym (I’m toying between “Gibbon” and “Cassandra” myself) in the same article offers a silly symmetrical dismissal of the careful work of divulgation by Robert Spencer:
“The available literature on Islam consists mainly of a useless exchange of Koranic citations that show, depending on whether one is Karen Armstrong or Robert Spencer, that Islam is loving or hateful, tolerant or bigoted, peaceful or warlike, or whatever one cares to show. It is all so pointless and sophomoric; anyone can quote the Koran, or for that matter the Bible, to show whatever one wants.”
These two sentences are unforgivably silly. “Spengler” purports to place on the same level the apologetic nonsense of Karen Armstrong and Robert Spencer’s effort at lucid exposition of complicated texts – or texts that appear to non-Muslims to be complicated, an effort at mass pedagogy about the doctrines of Islam that, so far, deserves only praise, and not the hideously symmetrical dismissal (along with Armstrong) that Spengler offers. Of course Spencer is not an a right-wing ogre, manufacturing or teasing-out an Islam that does not exist except in his perfervid and presumably sinister brain. Spencer himself is a perfectly sane, humorful, Western man, who happens to have studied at great length, over two decades, the texts of Islam — Qur’an, Hadith, (those deemed authentic by most authoritative muhaddithin, Bukhari and Muslim) and the Sira — and to those texts has added the work Qur’anic commentators, further supplemented by jurisconsults of the four main Sunni schools of juridsprudence, as well as the most important historians of early Islam such as Al-Tabari, later historiographers such as Ibn Khaldun, and right up to the present, the widely-disseminated handbooks of Islamic doctrine endorsed by Al-Azhar, and such popular manuals as those of Al-Qaradawi.
Muslim apologists, unable to deal with Infidels who apparently know the Islamic texts too well, is to offer all kinds of apologetic nonsense to distract the Infidels (whether it be an audience of them in television-land, or an audience of hopeful innocents appearing at a mosque for one of those “Interfaith” gatherings or “dialogues” that are exercises in one-sided propaganda for Islam. There is outright lying about the faith, religiously-sanctioned Taqiyya (or its variant “Kitman”). There is the rhetorical defense of Tu Quoque (we do it, but you do it too, and even worse). There is the claim that Infidels cannot possibly have any opinion about Islam unless they know Arabic (which would imply that the 80% of the world’s Muslims who are not Arabs cannot conceivably have any just opinion of Islam, though this is seldom pointed out by Infidels in reply).
And then there is another favorite: Islam is “not monolithic” and Islam “is whatever Muslims want it to be.” The latter argument has even been picked up by Daniel Pipes, in his continuing search for evidence to support his mantra that “moderate Muslims are the solution.” (a mantra he ought to forthrightly abandon, but like supporters of the policy in Iraq who cannot give up without loss of face, he seems unwilling to do so, to admit it is flatly wrong, and not only wrong, but a dangerous idea at this point, among naïve Infidels, to promote given what will be naturally be made of it by Muslim apologists). Is Islam really just a case of this or that person showing, by Qur’anic quotation, “to show whatever one wants”?
It is “Spengler” who apparently thinks that Armstrong relies on copious Qur’anic quotation, on those Hadith deemed “authentic,” on details of the Sira that are quoted at length. In fact, Armstrong hardly quotes the Qur’an and the “authentic” Hadith (from Bukhari and Muslim), and from the Sira, at all. She refers, she summarizes. She here and there offers up the same thin gruel: Qur’an 5.32 without 5.33, the “inauthentic” Hadith, not in Bukhari or Muslim, about Muhammad returning from the “lesser Jihad” of war to the “greater Jihad” of domestic life and attempting to live the good, the Muslim, life. She has one or two other favorites – “There is no compulsion in religion” – but it’s the most obvious stuff. Compare this, say, to the copious quotation, from Qur’an, Hadith, and above all Sira, supplemented by Al-Tabari and others, including those who today rely on those very same quotations to justify, perfectly appropriately, their malevolent and murderous behavior today, that is presented, laid out without very much comment of his own, by Robert Spencer, whose main sin for Muslims, and possibly for an envious (or is it lazy, too lazy to go over the same material) “Spengler,” who apparently believes (for to be charitable one must assume he has not read) that Spencer is a mere enantiomorph of the deplorable Armstrong, or the more sinister Esposito. .
For “Spengler” to dismiss all of this, and to further claim that “Islam” can be made by Armstrong and Spencer to “mean” whatever they want it to mean, is absurd. How do we know it is absurd?
We know it in two ways. We know it from the scholars of Islam, and we know it from the defectors from Islam.
From about 1870 to 1970, the great age of Western scholarship on Islam (which had behind it many centuries of disinterested study by Western scholars, long before the age of imperialism, of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, and of Islam itself, however imperfect given the resources and contact available) of what Edward Said so tendentiously dismissed as a product of, and handmaid to, Western imperialism. For an unanswerable, and feline reply to Said, see Bernard Lewis’s “The Question of ‘Orientalism.’” And see, as well, the article on Said by Keith Windschuttle, the recent book-length rebuttal of Said’s knowledge of Western studies of Islam and the East, that is of “Orientalism,” by Robert Irwin, and the forthcoming full-scale assault, in “The Defense of the West” by Ibn Warraq, on Said for his baseless, ignorant, and semi-demented attack on the West, attributing to that West that need for a hostile “Other” that, in fact, is central to Islam, which divides the world uncompromisingly between Believers and Infidels. In other words, what Said accuses the West of, and which the West, Ibn Warraq so convincingly shows, has never been guilty of, but rather uniquely open, among the world’s civilizations, to other peoples and beliefs and mores and customs, are the very things which Islam and its adherents are guilty.
And along with Said’s baleful, and inexplicable influence (except that he provides justification for a jobs program for Muslims and other representatives of “others” who, presumably, are immune to the putative biases of all those Western scholars, those systematically-maligned “Orientalists” who need to be kept down and out, while the likes of Joseph Massad and Hamid Dabashi take over the tenured positions, and hire those just like them. The membership of the Middle Eastern Studies Association, thirty years ago 7% Muslim, is now 70% Muslim. And while the seemingly “left-wing” ideology of Said has contributed to this, so have the “contributions” – in a dollars-and-cents sense – of Saudi and other Arabs, buying up or founding whole “academic centers,” establishing chairs (the King Abdul Aziz this, the Guardians of the Two Holy Shrines that, not to mention the “Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding” and the “Center for Contemporary Arab Studies” – both Arab-funded and carefully placed right at Georgetown, the better to be near those government officials who need to be so disinterestedly influenced and instructed).
But before there was Edward Said, before there was such a disgrace as the MEALAC faculty at Columbia, before there was that output of books on everything under the sun in the Middle East except any mention of Islam (the “Construction of Palestinian Identity” was, and remains, a favorite subject, in tutte le salse), there was a Golden Age of Orientalism. It lasted for about a century, roughly from 1860 or 1870 to 1960, or 1970. There was Ignaz Goldziher. There was Sir William Muir. There was Theodor Noldeke. There was, later on, C. Snouck Hurgronje, and Arthur Jeffery, and St. Clair Tisdall, and Henri Lammens,and Edmond Fagnan, and Samuel Zwemer. There was the incomparable Joseph Schacht. There has been Franz Rosenthal, Gustav von Grunebaum, S. D. Goitein, even (at his best, as in “The Political Language of Islam”) Bernard Lewis, who for all of his failings is much to be preferred to those who hate and fear him, the assorted hirelings, directly or indirectly, of the Arabs and Muslims, such as the smiling jogging Esposito, and others, both Muslims (the class of Muslim apologists in academic life includes virtually every Muslim, for the mode is always defensive) and those non-Muslims who have found something that answers their emotional needs in the Belief-System of Islam, or possibly have convinced themselves of its wonderfulness, and are happy to present a bowdlerized version of the matter to their young and innocent charges – as with Michael Sells’s comical version of the Qur’an, “The Lyrical Suras,” which another professor, Carl Ernst, promoted and helped to inflict on naïve and trusting University of North Carolina students as required reading for entering freshmen, so that they could “learn about Islam.”
The reason for this seeming digression into the history of Orientalism, and attacks on it, is to remind readers that all of those great scholars of Islam came to conclusions about the subject that were far closer to those of Robert Spencer, and had nothing to do with those of Karen Armstrong. Indeed, in many cases they said, in ways not aimed at a wide popular audience, as Spencer does, the very same things he says, or rather allows Muslims themselves to set out (for whenever he can he simply lets them do the explaining, and no Western writer on Islam has been more intelligently self-effacing, allowing the texts and the Muslim commentators to speak for themselves) the doctrines of Islam. These scholars would not have found what Spencer does, for the audience he seeks, in the dangerous time, and imperiled place, in which we, Infidels all, find ourselves. Snouck Hurgronje’s studies, or those of Joseph Schacht, were meant for the learned, fellow members of a small society of students of Islam. Spencer has quite a different audience in mind, and that helps to explain why he cannot permit himself curlicues of style, but favors instead a plain dunstable prose for exposition, which, it turns out (and I have reason to know) is the most appropriate for the task of divulgation at hand. Furthermore, the amount of space that a Snouck Hurgronje could take is today, when one is trying merely to get people to read books, and in which nuances of every kind can be elaborated upon, an inconceivable luxury. Spencer is not quite Joe Friday’s “Just the facts, ma’am” for he understands that the texts must be supplemented by what commentators wrote about those texts, but he aims for a certain directness and simplicity. But no one should be fooled, as “Spengler” has apparently allowed himself to be fooled, into thinking that Arthur Jeffery, or Henri Lammens, or St. Clair Tisdall, or Samuel Zwemer, would find fault in the slightest with the presentation of Islam to be found in Spencer’s books.
And there is one other endorsement, a collective one, of Spencer’s work of which “Spengler” is apparently unaware. That is the endorsement of all those who, having been born into Islam, and having been raised up in Islam, in families and societies and usually, countries suffused with Islam, have mentally struggled to find their way out, and have managed to do so, and are now apostates. What do you think Ibn Warraq and Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Wafa Sultan and Nonie Darwish and Azam Kamguian and Ali Sina and thousands or tens or hundreds of thousands of others who have become defectors from the army of Islam, the Camp of Islam, think of Robert Spencer’s work? Do you think they, any of them, would think he has presented a false view, has simply plucked from the air a quotation here, and another there, and stitched them together to make, as “Spengler” charges, merely his own contribution to some silly back-and-forth rhetorical posturing by assorted know-nothings, each engaged in the same kind of “useless exchange of Koranic citations” which, according to “Spengler,” is all that the work of Spencer amounts to.
Someone here has been “sophomoric.” And someone, the same someone, has been essentially “pointless” – especially in his apparent use of a few quotes from Adonis, and from a March 11, 2006 interview, where Adonis locates the Arab paralysis, the Arab hopelessness, the Arab lack of cultural achievement, the Arab penchant for despotism, in something to do with the fact of being an “Arab” and, vaguely, the “wrong” use of religion, but never about Islam. Yet within the year, in a different interview, on November 26, 2006, Adonis is now willing to begin to discuss Islam. And what he said in that second interview is far more telling than the earlier one that “Spengler” relies on to provide so much insight – hold the Islam – into the moribund state of Arab culture, Arab intellectual life, Arab anything at all.
Here is that interview:
Following are excerpts from an interview with Syrian poet Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said Asbar), which aired on ANB TV on November 26, 2006.
Adonis: The difference between Europe and the Islamic world is in quality, not in degree. What I mean is that the Christian view of the world is not political, but humanistic. It is human beings who are the basis for politics. A Christian person has great liberty to separate his religious faith from his political activity. The mistake committed by the Church in the Middle Ages was rectified - obviously after a struggle and violent revolutions - and political rule was entirely separated from politics...
Interviewer: From religion...
Adonis: From religion, sorry. In our case, political rule was based... Ever since the struggle over who would inherit Prophet Muhammad’s place, political rule was essentially based on religion.
Interviewer: But there were great revolutions in the Arab and Islamic world. Take, for example, the ideology of Arab nationalism. This ideology may be connected with Islamic culture, but it is still a man-made ideology.
Adonis: But the ideology of nationalism, in all its forms, is a religious ideology, in the sense that it has never raised any cardinal question concerning religion.
[...]
The Arabs have managed to turn democracy or the revolution into a dynastic or monarchic regime, which is handed down. Most Arab regimes are monarchic regimes, one way or another.
Interviewer: Including the republics...
Adonis: Especially the republics. In my opinion, while it is true that colonialism has played a role, and the wars with Israel have played a role, the greatest responsibility is, nevertheless, on us Arabs.
[...]
The Arab individual does not elect from among people of different opinions who represent different currents. The Arab is accustomed to voting according to pre-determined concepts. Whoever represents this pre-determined concept... The nationalist will vote for a nationalist, and the communist will vote for a communist. These are all types of religious sects. The tribal and sectarian structure has not disintegrated, and has not melted down into the new structure of democracy and the democratic option.
[...]
There can be no living culture in the world if you cannot criticize its foundations – the religion. We lack the courage to ask any question about any religious issue. For example, as a Muslim, I cannot say a single word about the Prophet Moses. The Prophet Moses did not say anything to me as a Muslim, whereas the Israeli Jew can criticize Moses and all the prophets in the Torah, and he can even question the divinity of the Torah.
[...]
We, in Arab society, do not understand the meaning of freedom. We say that freedom means writing an article. Freedom is much deeper than that.
Interviewer: Even writing an article is not possible.
Adonis: True. Arab society is based on many types of invisible slavery, and the ideology and political rule conceal them with worthless slogans and political discourse. The underlying structure of Arab societies is a structure of slavery, not of liberty.
March 11, 2006 Interview
to view this clip: MEMRI TV Clip 1076
Adonis: “Words are treated as a crime today. Throughout history, there has never been anything similar to what’s happening today in our Arab society–when you say a word, it is like committing a crime.”
Interviewer: “True.”
Adonis: “Words and opinions are treated as a crime. This is inconceivable.”
Interviewer: “You can be arrested for writing an article.”
Adonis: “That’s one example.”
[. . .]
“In the Koran itself, it says that Allah listened to his first enemy, Satan, and Satan refused to obey him. I believe that Allah was capable of wiping out Satan, yet He listened to Satan’s refusal to obey Him.
“At the very least, we demand that Muslims today listen to people with different opinions.”
[. . .]
Interviewer: “How do you view the plan for democracy, the ‘Greater Middle East’ plan?”
Adonis: “First of all, I oppose any external intervention in Arab affairs. If the Arabs are so inept that they cannot be democratic by themselves, they can never be democratic through the intervention of others.
“If we want to be democratic, we must be so by ourselves. But the preconditions for democracy do not exist in Arab society, and cannot exist unless religion is reexamined in a new and accurate way, and unless religion becomes a personal and spiritual experience, which must be respected.
“On the other hand, all issues pertaining to civil and human affairs must be left up to the law and to the people themselves.”
Interviewer: “Mr. Adonis, how do you view the democracy in Palestine, which brought Hamas to power?”
Adonis: “I support it, but I oppose the establishment of any state on the basis of religion, even if it’s done by Hamas.”
Interviewer: “Even if it liberates Palestine?”
Adonis: “Yes, because in such a case, it would be my duty to fight this religious state.”
[. . .]
Interviewer: “What are the reasons for growing glorification of dictatorships–sometimes in the name of pan-Arabism, and other times in the name of rejecting foreigners? The glorification comes even from the elites, as can be seen, for example, in the Saddam Hussein trial, and in all the people who support him.”
Adonis: “This phenomenon is very dangerous, and I believe it has to do with the concept of ‘oneness,’ which is reflected–in practical or political terms–in the concept of the hero, the savior, or the leader. This concept offers an inner sense of security to people who are afraid of freedom. Some human beings are afraid of freedom.”
Interviewer: “Because it is synonymous with anarchy?”
Adonis: “No, because being free is a great burden. It is by no means easy.”
Interviewer: “You’ve got to have a boss . . .”
Adonis: “When you are free, you have to face reality, the world in its entirety. You have to deal with the world’s problems, with everything . . .”
Interviewer: “With all the issues . . .”
Adonis: “On the other hand, if we are slaves, we can be content and not have to deal with anything. Just as Allah solves all our problems, the dictator will solve all our problems.”
[. . .]
“I don’t understand what is happening in Arab society today. I don’t know how to interpret this situation, except by making the following hypothesis: When I look at the Arab world, with all its resources, the capacities of Arab individuals, especially abroad–you will find among them great philosophers, scientists, engineers, and doctors. In other words, the Arab individual is no less smart, no less a genius, than anyone else in the world. He can excel–but only outside his society. I have nothing against the individuals–only against the institutions and the regimes.
“If I look at the Arabs, with all their resources and great capacities, and I compare what they have achieved over the past century with what others have achieved in that period, I would have to say that we Arabs are in a phase of extinction, in the sense that we have no creative presence in the world.”
Interviewer: “Are we on the brink of extinction, or are we already extinct?”
Adonis: “We have become extinct. We have the quantity. We have the masses of people, but a people becomes extinct when it no longer has a creative capacity, and the capacity to change its world.”
[. . .]
“The great Sumerians became extinct, the great Greeks became extinct, and the Pharaohs became extinct. The clearest sign of this extinction is when we intellectuals continue to think in the context of this extinction.”
Interviewer: “That is very dangerous.”
Adonis: “That is our real intellectual crisis. We are facing a new world with ideas that no longer exist, and in a context that is obsolete. We must sever ourselves completely from that context, on all levels, and think of a new Arab identity, a new culture, and a new Arab society.”
[. . .]
“Imagine that Arab societies had no Western influence. What would be left? The Muslims must . . .”
Interviewer: “What would be left?”
Adonis: “Nothing. Nothing would be left except for the mosque, the church, and commerce, of course.”
[. . .]
“The Muslims today–forgive me for saying this–with their accepted interpretation [of the religious text], are the first to destroy Islam, whereas those who criticize the Muslims–the non-believers, the infidels, as they call them–are the ones who perceive in Islam the vitality that could adapt it to life. These infidels serve Islam better than the believers.”
So Adonis apparently does not agree with “Spengler” that Islam is “whatever anyone wishes to make it.” He does not agree that Spencer is playing merely some cheap game of selective quotation, and that all can play this same game with the same “sophomoric” and “meaningless” results. Adonis is saying something else: that Muslims today [and we can add: Muslims yesterday] have “an accepted interpretation [of the religious text]” and that they are the ones damaging Islam by refusing to, or perhaps – this Adonis does not dare to concede – being unable to, consider a different interpretation of Islam from the one that is, and has always, been generally accepted. For whatever the differences between Sunni and Shi’a, and whatever the differences between the four schools of Sunni jurisprudence, and whatever other minor differences there may be in outward and visible forms of worship, all Muslims share the same basic attitude toward the world, one of submission to Islam and to Allah, one of unquestioning acceptance of the desirability, the need, to accept the expressed will of Allah, with no further appeal to reason or consistency made necessary, and all share the same notion that the only division that counts in the world is that between Believer and Infidel, and between the two there can only be a permanent and uncompromising state of war, sometimes leading to open warfare, more often – especially when Muslims sense that they are too weak – to the use of instruments of Jihad to spread Islam, such as the money weapon, campaigns of Da’wa, and demographic conquest – that have proven in recent decades far more effective in spreading Islam than has the instrument of terrorism.
Not only does Adonis not suggest – far from it – that Islam is or can be “whatever anyone says it is” but it is clear that, despite his fears of directly discussing Islam itself as the reason for the political, economic, social, moral, and intellectual failures of Islam, he has come as close as any well-known Muslim, not an apostate, has managed to do so. And he further suggests that the only way there will be a way out will be not through Muslim apologetics and continued blindness, but through the intelligent scrutiny and discussion offered by non-Muslims unafraid to study the religion and subject it to critical scrutiny: “those who criticize the Muslims–the non-believers, the infidels, as they call them–are the ones who perceive in Islam the vitality that could adapt it to life. These infidels serve Islam better than the believers.”
I think this is correct, though I would phrase it differently. It is not that the Infidel critics necessarily “perceive in Islam” a “vitality” that “could adapt it to life” but that they keep appealing, openly, to Muslims to take the first step, by ceasing to refuse to recognize the nature of Islam, the “accepted interpretation of Islam” (as Adonis puts it), and to criticize it. And, adds Adonis, it is these keen Infidel critics who, in their attempt both to alert Infidels as to what Islam is all about, and in turn to make it harder, through their own efforts and those of other Infidels whom they help to educate about Islam, for Muslims themselves to continue to avoid locating the source of their failures in Islam itself. Perhaps in reading this description “Spengler” would have difficulty recognizing a description of Spencer and other Infidel students who do not hesitate to lay out its doctrines – but then, perhaps, it is only some parts of Adonis, and not others, that “Spengler” wishes to hold up for our inspection and instruction.
Let me state that one more time, more directly, so that even a “Spengler” relying on a few quotes from Adonis can understand: the political, economic, social, moral, and intellectual failures of Arab and other Muslim societies is directly related to Islam. That has to be understood by the Western world, the world of intelligent Infidels. And if the Infidels understand that, they will be in a better position to force Muslims, no longer able to avoid or evade the matter – to slowly arrive at the same conclusion themselves.
And in the campaign of mass divulgation that is being pursued by a handful of people in the West, no one has, so far, done more to make Infidels aware of what Islam teaches – and not by selective quotation but by the presentation of passages, and commentaries, that both the great scholars of Islam of the past, and the celebrated apostates from Islam of the present, would recognize and fully agree with – than Robert Spencer.
Someone in this whole brouhaha has indeed been “sophomoric” in his easy and ill-informed dismissal. And though his name is, orthographically, confusingly close, that someone is not Robert Spencer.
Submit Your Comment
Posted on 6:16 PM by Hugh Fitzgerald
I do not believe that anyone can make Islam out to be whatever what they want, but that the sophmoric method of pasting quotations into one’s copy-book is insufficient. I despite Karen Armstrong with a passion, and rather like Robert Spencer, but this is not personal: it is about the right and wrong way to go about a dangerous and sensitive and critical task. What he does is well intended, but it simply isn’t good enough.
Muslims do not check off a list of precepts, good or ill; they are Muslims for existential reasons. I made the same point at greater length here:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HJ03Aa03.html
Islam is a religion, that is, a spiritual act, not a set of doctrines that one agrees to or not. One has to get inside spiritual experience of the religion to understand the motives of its adherents. Among the leading living theologians only Benedict XVI has touched on the issues, albeit with great caution. Among the leading 20th century theologians only Franz Rosenzweig offered a thorough treatment of Islam’s problems. There are resources available for analysis of Islam, and they are ignored at our great peril.
I do not believe that anyone can make Islam out to be whatever what they want, but that the sophmoric method of pasting quotations into one’s copy-book is insufficient. I despite Karen Armstrong with a passion, and rather like Robert Spencer, but this is not personal: it is about the right and wrong way to go about a dangerous and sensitive and critical task. What he does is well intended, but it simply isn’t good enough.
Muslims do not check off a list of precepts, good or ill; they are Muslims for existential reasons. I made the same point at greater length here:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HJ03Aa03.html
Islam is a religion, that is, a spiritual act, not a set of doctrines that one agrees to or not. One has to get inside spiritual experience of the religion to understand the motives of its adherents. Among the leading living theologians only Benedict XVI has touched on the issues, albeit with great caution. Among the leading 20th century theologians only Franz Rosenzweig offered a thorough treatment of Islam’s problems. There are resources available for analysis of Islam, and they are ignored at our great peril.
From the link:
Westerners will assimilate this view only with great effort, for poetry of devotion is among the most artful and most complex in the literature. One thinks of Dante in Italian, John Donne and John Milton in English, St John of the Cross in Spanish, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock and Christian Fuerchtegott Gellert in German, and Yehuda Halevi in Hebrew.
Not only poetry,but music.
I have often that that the lack of adorative music is evidence that Islam is not inspired by God, but by the Other, the anti-God, the anti-Christ. To be filled with God, is to burst forth with Joy, with Worship, with Psalms.
To Christians and Jews, God is not a monarch who presents a final and indisputable truth, but a lover whose face is hidden - perhaps the most fruitful subject for poetry in human history. In the tradition of the biblical Song of Songs, St John conveys love for God in distinctly erotic terms. It is inconceivable for a Muslim poet to address Allah with the intimacy of a lover in the language of human passion. If poetry holds a mirror to our inner life, then the inner life of Westerners is profoundly different from that of Muslims, as different as the concepts of a God of Love who exalts the humble, and Allah who loves the strong and rewards the victorious.
There may be Muslims who contend that Allah has the characteristics of the Judeo-Christian God, but if they believe this, then they have found the true God, but he is not the God of the Koran.
Hence, Jesus' exhortation to Love Your Enemies.
If the Arabs are in spiritual crisis, then the resolution is rooted in a spiritual answer.
We would be most helpful if we would get out of the way, and like a good therapist, let them come to this discovery themselves.
Any role we do play would be to insist on truth, not Politically Correct accommodation to their need to deceive themselves, and us, in an effort to be included at the table of ethical, rational religious systems (the oft-cited "abrahamic tradition"). This was the effort that Pope Benedict undertook with his speech referencing a dialog between Islam and Christianity from the 14th century. We need to have confidence in our own worldview, and not back down or stand down when Muslims respond with feelings in lieu of arguments, or we ill-serve this process.
I think the nuclear situation is very dangerous, but let's not forget that Arab economies are hollow. They skim oil wealth, and that is it.
Until and unless they turn from primitive literalist religionism, they have no future as a civilization. And if Iran or a similar country manages to set off a nuke, I believe they will cease to exist as a country within a week.
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