Islamic Information

2003-01-12T02:21:00.000-05:00

Islamic Social Thought

18 November 1971

University of Georgia; Department of Sociology

Sociology 621; Early Social Thought;
Prof John Drinan Kelley

MOHAMMED (MUHAMMAD)
b.570AD; d.632AD; m.(c)595AD Khadijah (he 25; she 40)
Tribe of Koreish (Qureysh)
Father died before his birth; mother died before he 6 months old
M. protected first by grandfather (Abd el Muttalib); then by uncle
Abu Talib, who took him in northbound caravan where M. earned name
Al-Amin (trustworthy) at age 12 c.582; M. m. widow Khadijah (wealthy
owner of caravan) c.595 when he 25, she 40;
M. was Hanif (anti-Idol), religion of Nature, agnostic; first
revelation Mt. Hira 610; Angel Gabriel ("READ"); preached in Mecca,
first converts: (1) wife Khadijah; (2) Ali (first cousin, adopted
son, son-in-law); (3) freed slave Zeyd; (4) best friend Abu Bakr.
M. persecuted in Mecca; called to Yathrib to mediate feuds between
tribes of Aus and Khazraj; upon success Yathrib renamed Al-Madinah
(Medina); Hegira took M. to Medina in 622; the tribes rebelled and
M. won batle of Badr (623); lost battle of Mt. Uhud (624); and won
War of the Trench (627) which was turning point: M. d.632.
Muslim = "One Who Submits" - Mohammad only a prophet (not Divine),
last of a line of prophets incl. Moses, Elijah, Abraham, Jesus, etc.

FIVE ARTICLES OF FAITH(CREED)=belief in (1) One God; (2) Angels; (3)
The Revealed Books; (4) The Prophets; (5) The Day of Judgement

ZAKAT TAX (purification) cleanses and legitimizes possessions; it
varies by categories: Grains and Fruits watered by rain=10%; Grains
and Fruits irrigated=5%; money=2.5% -Sadagat (Charity) is in
addition and varies with ability to pay

FIVE OBLIGATORY DUTIES
1) Reciting Profession of Faith (Once during life must say
forthrightly, with full faith and understanding "There is no
god but God(ALLAH) and Mohammed is His Prophet".
2) Prayers - five a day (Dawn/Noon/MidAfternoon/Dusk/After Dark)
(One must face toward Mecca; Imam sets the direction)
3) Paying of Zakat Tax - One must go beyond minimum (Sadagat)
4) Must keep Ramadan (During daylight no food, drink, or sex -
from time one can distinguish white thread from black until one
cannot distinguish white thread from black)
5) Pilgrimage to Mecca (Kaa'ba) - One approaches Mecca between
the 7th and the 10th days of the month of Dhu 'l Hijja; at 6
miles distance one says prayers and changes to 2 seamless
garments; visits the sacred mosque; kisses the Black Stone;
makes 7 circumambulations of the Kaa'bah (3 running and 4
slowly); visits the sacred stone; ascends and runs between (7
times) Mt. Safa and Mt. Marwa (like Hagar); visits Mt. Arafat
and hears sermon; spends night at Muzdalifa; throws stones at
three pillars of Mina; and makes sacrifice on last day of Irham
(cf. Abraham)

Development of Shari'a and foundations, incl Law (FIQH) - started
out all knowledge, and ended up theology
Sciences of Shari'a - Prophetic Tradition/Hadith and Koranic Exege-
sis/Tafsir are materials for theology and law; Theology/Kalam
and Law/FIQH (four schools of Law=Hanifi; Maliki; Shafi'i; Hanbali)
Foundations of Shari'a
1) Koran (Qu'uran)
2) Sunna (Way) of Prophet - anecdotes and apocraphae; recorded
in tradition, six collections
a) Kitab al-Jami' al-Sahih -al-Bukhari(d.870)/most
celebrated and most scrupulously compiled
b) Sahih - Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj(d.875)/ a & b best works
the others are weaker
c) Kitab al-Sunan - Abu Dawud (817-886)
d) Jami' al-Sahih - al-Tirmidhi (d.892)
e) Kitab al-Sunan - al-Nasa'i (830-915)
f) Kitab al-Sunan - Ibn Maja (824-886)
3) Ijma - belief legitimated by wide or long consensus/practice
has given Islam: a) catholicity of view; b) constant
unity with past; c) continuous flexibility
"Conversion by the sword is no conversion"
"My community will never agree in an error"
"The difference of opinion in my community is a Divine mercy"
Moslem does not distinguish between Faith and Works;
both are indispensible - mutually supplementary
4) Qiyas (Analogical reasoning) - base of interpretation and
original thought (Ijtihad) in Islam; in modern usage this has
come to mean Democratic Institution as opposed to Traditional
Authority - Earlier form (Ra'y) criticized as arbitrary/
Ibn Taimiya ideas foundation of Wahabi sect, a puritanical
sect.
There are four rites of Islamic Law
1) Hanafite - Abu Hanifa (Moslem Asia)
2) Malikite - Malik Ibn Aras (d.795) (Western and Northern
Africa)
3) Shafi'ite - Ash Shafi'i (d.820) Egypt/Eastern Africa/Middle
East/East Indies
4) Hanbalite - Ahmed Ibn Hanbal - Narrowest and most
literalistic; not widely accepted

Islam is the principal religion of much of Asia (incl. Phillipines
and the provinces of Kansu and Shensi in China), Pakistan, Iran,
Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, Tunisia, Morrocco,
Algeria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Arab States, and Asiatic
U S S R; 450,000,000 Muslims - Aga Khan is spiritual leader
THE CALIPHATE (Caliph = successor; Mohammed died 8 June 632)
632 - 634 Abu Bakr (friend and 3rd convert)
634 - 644 Omar (Meccan companion; whipped Greeks and Persians;
attacked Egypt
644 - 656 Othman
656 - 661 Ali (last elected Caliph; Mohammed's 1st cousin,
adopted son, and son-in-law)
Sunnites and Shi'ites divided at the beginning of the Omayyad
Caliphate in the "1st Century" - because of his closeness to the
Prophet, Ali was seen by his descendants as IMMACULATE and
INFALLIBLE, and they became the Shi'ite party who desired a
totalitarian theocracy: the Caliph was a true Ruler, both Temporal
and Spiritual; theoretically all Islam should be united
under One Supreme Caliph - the closest approach to this is Aga Khan
IV, Spiritual Ruler of only the majority of Muslims

THE OMAYYAD CALIPHATE (*=sons of Abd Al-Malik)
660 - 680 Mu'awiya
680 - 683 Yazid I
683 Mu'awiya II
684 - 685 Marwan I
685 - 705 Abd al-Malik Established Arab Navy; Reformed
administration, established Postal service
and Islamic coinage; Financial
administration now in Islamic hands and
conducted in Arabic
705 - 715 *Al-Walid I Established control over all Asia Minor
and Armenia; Freedman of Al-Walid's
uncle, Governor Jubal Tarik (=Gibraltar)
conquered Tangier 708, defeated King
Roderick (Visigoth King) and overran
Spain 711; Best General al-Hajjaj
715 - 717 *Suleiman Total hedonist; hated al-Hajjaj, and in
persecuting of his followers lost the
momentum of conquest
717 - 720 Omar II Universal reputation for sanctity and
piety; Established rights of ALL Muslims
and his policies encouraged mass
conversions; Sent new Governor (Samh) to
Spain & distributed Spanish land among
troops
720 - 724 *Yazid II Violent outburst of Yemenites marked
beginning of end for Omayyad Dynasty
724 - 743 *Hisham Puritan; Kept factional spirit within
bounds; had omni-support of Syrians; The
bureaucratic system Hisham founded was
taken over and developed by the Abbasids
after they defeated the Omayyads in their
civil war
743 - 744 Al-Walid II Hated Hisham; Sold Khalid al-Rasni, Hisham
Governor of Iraq, to Yusuf; al-Rasni's
murder incensed Yemenites
744 Yazid III
744 - 750 Marwan II Defeated by Khurasanian forces, who
who slaughtered most Omayyad adherents;
Among the few escaping the Abbasids was
the grandson of Hisham, Abd al-Rahman,
who fled to Africa, and thence to Spain,
and founded the Omayyad Dynasty a few
years later at Cordoba

THE ABBASID CALIPHS The fact that the power of the dynasty rested
upon two provinces of Iraq and Khurasan
(with most mingling of Arab and Persian)
favored development of common Muslim
Civilization without Arab predominance;
Mu'awiya (first Omayyad Caliph) had moved
capital from Medina to Damascus, and under
the Omayyads the Empire had been dominated
by Syria
750 - 754 Abu 'l-Abbas All campaigns against a succession of
rebels; Governorships to uncles and
brothers, except that Khurasan was
retained by Abu Muslim
754 - 775 Al-Mansur Could not dislodge Omayyads from Spain,
but put down Muslimiya, Hashimiya, and
Shi'ites; Founded new capital at Baghdad
Reorganized administration; Introduced
Wazir (Visier=Prime Minister) and Diwans
(Divans=Ministries of Government)
775 - 785 Al-Madhi Administrative services expanded and
improved; Prosperity laid base for marked
development of intellectual and cultural
pursuits
785 - 786 Al-Hadi
786 - 809 Al-Rashid Brother of al_Hadi;made Yahya ibn-Khalid
(al-Rashid's tutor) Wazir, under whom
(and son Fadl) Abbasid empire reached
apogee of power and prosperity
809 - 813 Al-Amin
813 - 833 Al-Ma'mun Turbulence until 819; then entered
Baghdad; gave patronage to science and
literature; founded kind of Academy
where Greek works on math, astronomy,
philosophy, and medicine were
translated; extended official patronage
to Mu'tazilites school of theology
833 - 842 Al- Mu'tasim Moved capital to Samarra; finally whipped
Greeks; added regiments of Turkish slaves
to Army as light-horse; They were Armed
with sword, lance, bow (effective)
842 - 847 Al-Wathik Lost control of Turks
847 - 861 Al-Mutawakkil Could not regain control of Turks, spent
whole reign trying; Foolishly divided
empire among three sons; eldest murdered
father and whole empire went to pot
861 Al-Muntasir SONS TURKISH
862 - 866 Al Musta'in OF GENERALS
866 - 869 Al-Mutazz MUTAWAKKIL REAL
869 - 870 Al- Mu'tadi BUT POWER
870 - 892 Al-Mu'tamid Son of Mutawakkil;real power was brother
al-Mu'waffak; situation slowly retrieved
Capital/government moved back to Baghdad
892 - 902 Al-Mu'tadid Son of al-Mu'waffak who forced
al-Mu'tamid to disinherit his son;
Al-Mu'tadid reorganized administration
and reformed financial system
902 - 908 Al-Muktafi
908 - 932 Al-Muktadir Effective end of Caliphate; Empire
fragmented and consensus impossible
THE OMAYYAD DYNASTY IN SPAIN
755 - 788 Abd al-Rahman Established centralized power, based on
Imperial Guard of Berbers and European
slaves (Slavonians)
788 - 796 Hisham I Muwallad revolts(Spanish converts)during
this and succeeding reign
796 - 822 al-Hakam I Affirmed Omayyad power; laid foundations
of material and literary culture developed
under his son
822 - 852 Abd al-Rahman II Magnificently developed Father's works
852 - 886 Mohammed I Peace broken again; Muwallad and Berber
revolts
886 - 912 Abdallah Forced to temporizing and defensive
strategy
912 - 961 Abd al-Rahman III Lifted Kingdom to apogee of culture,
power, and magnificance; Cordoba now
metropolis with immense reputation and
prestige in Europe; mastered Ibn Hafsun
(917) and in decade reunited Moorish
Spain; collected tribute from Christian
Princes
961 - 976 al-Hakam II Also brilliant reign
976 -1013 Hisham II Weak and allows rise of military dictators
Ibn abi'Amir (981 - 1002) and Abd al-Malik
al-Muzzaffar (1002 - 1008)
1031 CHAOS Last Omayyad Prince dethroned and Republic
established

The Great Peak of Islamic thought covered the Ninth through the
Eleventh Centuries (cf. End of Caliphate in 932 and the end of
the Omayyad Dynasty in 1031) with great universities at Damascus,
Baghdad, Bukhara, Seville, Cordoba, and the later development of
great universities at Alexandria and Cairo, where Ibn Khaldun was
Supreme Malikite Qadi (Cadi).

935 Firdausi (Poet) Baghdad
980 - 1036 Avicenna (Ibn Sin) Baghdad
1050 - 1123 Omar khayyam (Poet) Baghdad
1058 - 1111 Al-Ghazzali Baghdad
1126 - 1198 Averrhoes (Ibn Rashd)Cordoba
- 1291 Sadi (Poet) Baghdad
- 1320 Hafiz (Poet) Baghdad
1200 - 1280 Albertus Magnus
1225 - 1274 Thomas Aquinas
1452 - 1519 Leonardo diVinci

Omar Khayyam wrote in the "Rubai" form, and Hafiz in the "Ghazal"
forms of Persian Poetry
Other notable Islamic thinkers were al-Farabi, al-Kindi, and
Avempace

FIFTH CENTURY Most of Aristotle, and some of Plato,
translated from Greek to Persian, Syrian,
and Armenian
EIGHTH CENTURY Passed on to Muslim Caliphate at Baghdad (cf.
al-Ma'mun 813-833 ff), thence with Muslims
to Spain(cf. Abd al-Rahman III 912-961ff -
Spain)
TWELFTH CENTURY Largely from Latin translations of Arabic
translations Christian thinkers were
introduced to Aristotle (METAPHYSICS;
PHYSICS; PSYCHOLOGY; ETHICS); translators
of Arabic at Toledo; also Courts of Manfred
and of Frederick II in Sicily; also Hebrew
renderings of Arabic in Thirteenth Century

All this necessitated attempts to reconcile results of reason with
KORANIC revelation; Mu'tazilites - Ibrahim ibn Nazzam, al-Kindi
(encyclopaedist), al-Farabi (Baghdad)

930 - 1036 Avicenna (Ibn Sin) Philosopher and MD; read METAPHYSICS
40 times until he chanced upon essay by al-Farabi
solving difficulties; divided Philosophy in six
departments; practical which are Ethics, Economics, and
Politics; both pure and applied which are Physics,
Mathematics, and Theology
1058 - 1111 al-Ghazzali (Sufi) RESTORATION OF THE SCIENCES OF
RELIGION; demanded surrender of reason to truth,
submission to KORAN; mystic; severely damaged Muslim
science (Baghdad)
1126 - 1198 Averrhoes (Ibn Rushd) Philosopher and MD; Cordoba;
two kinds of truth, the reason of philosophy and the
faith of theology; succeeded no better than Aquinas
1332 - 1406 Abd al-Rahman Ibn Khaldun (b. Tunis - d. Cairo);
Descendent of a Seville family; Supreme Qadi of
Malikite Rite in Cairo - Entered service of Sultan of
Fez in 1352; imprisoned 1356-1358 because his integrity
was suspected; emigrated to Grenada, thence to Africa;
entered service of Sultan of Tlemcen in 1364; further
vicissitudes and further imprisonments; went to
monastery; then to service of Sultan of Tunis; While on
Pilgrimage to Mecca Sultan of Cairo persuaded to remain
in Cairo where he became Supreme Qadi of Malikites; he
was removed from, and reinstated in, that Office five
times; in 1400 he was taken with Egyptian Army to treat
with Timur (Tamerlane); had several interviews with him,
but was unsuccessful - his KITAB AL-'IBUR (A Universal
History) is prefaced by one volumn, the MUGADDIMAH, which
which is more important than the history itself, for in
it he tries to explain the pattern of history; he takes
a scientific view (of great insight and originality) of
the rise and decay of human societies; he argues that such
phenomena obey certain laws which can be discovered
empirically, and that the basis of society is "group
feeling". There was a change in attitude in Egypt;
the wise leader was replaced by "The Law". The contents
of the PROLEGOMENA fall into 6 sections:
1) Human society in general; King and geographic
distribution
2) Nomadic societies (tribes and savage peoples)
3) States (spiritual and temporal powers; political
ranks)
4) Sedentary societies (cities and provinces)
5) Crafts, means of livelihood, economic activity
6) Learning, and the ways in which acquired

APHORISMS:
" When the Arabs conquer a country, ruin quickly
descends upon it."
"Scholars are, of all men, those least fitted for
politics and its ways."
"Prosperity is best insured by moderate prices and
quick turnover."

University at Cairo established by Fatimid Caliphs in Twelfth
Century; The most celebrated early college was Nizamiya founded in
Baghdad in 1067 by Nizam al-Mulk, Wazir for Alp Arslan, founder of
the Seljuk Sultanate Dynasty; al-Ghazzali was on faculty, and Nizam
al-Mulk was protector of Omar Khayyam

NON-SHARI'A DISCIPLINES

SUFISM; strong mystical current; yearning for ineffable communion
with God made externalities of Law, divorced from Theology,
unsatisfactory; only non-Sufi poets were Khayyam and Ibn 'Arabi

NEOPLATONIZED VERSION OF ARISTOTELIANISM arose as philosophical
movement in Ninth Century: al-Farabi (10th Cen), Avicenna, and
Averrhoes constructed out-and-out rationalist systems of thought
conflicting with the dogmatic bases of Islam; cf. Averrhoes truth of
philosophy and faith of theology as complementary, but unsuccessful;
the attack of al-Ghazzali damaged the movement irreparably

IMAM is spiritual leader; originally Caliph: End of Caliphate
resulted in seperation of sacred and secular (religion from
politics) resulting in Sultanates (political) and Imamates
(religious); Aga Khan spiritual head of Isma'ili branch of Shi'ites;
Imam given title by Persian ruling house in 1800. Present Imam is
Aga KhanIV. State was Caliphate, then Sultanate

REMEMBER: ISLAM IS A TOTAL WAY OF LIFE, AND ADMITS OF NO
DIVISION BETWEEN RELIGION AND STATE. ALL INSTITUTIONS ARE, IN
THIS WAY, RELIGIOUS. ZAKAT TAX IS SOCIO-ECONOMIC MEASURE ENFORCED
BY STATE, BUT IT IS ALSO A PRIME RELIGIOUSDUTY
ADMINISTRATION (cf. Wazir and Diwans) adapted from Persia and
Byzantium; Secretarial Class (Bureaucracy) arose and remained
throughout all contingencies; Two most famous Wazirs Barmecides
(for the Abbasid Harun al-Rashid) and Nizam al-Mulk (Seljuk Sultan
Alp Arslan).
Tasks: (1) Collect and distribute revenues
(2) Administer Law a)Muhtasib(moral police - preventative)
b)Cadi (Judge/Legal)
c)Mufti (Authoritative Interpreter of
Law; Religiously higher ranking than
Cadi)
(3)Perform JIHAD (Holy War)

Previous social organization was tribe; clan differential prestige
The smallest unit was "tent" or "household"
1) BASIC CONFLICT: Mohammad had revelation that prestige
inconsequential; only reason for invidious distinction was
Zeal for Faith, Submission, Egalitarian Community Ideal; "Verily,
the most honorable of you in the sight of God is the most pious."
Yet, after the death of the Prophet differential prestige
accrued to his descendents and relations; no Qureyshite female
could be a slave, or Qureyshite male a bondsman.
2) MAJOR SCHEME OF PRESTIGE - Establish community "Umma" 150
years after Muhammad's death
a)Qureyh
b)All Arab Muslims irrespective of tribe, ranked by Hegira,
Zakat Tax, etc.
c)non-Arabs (if father and grandfather Muslims, equal to Arab
if could provide marriage endowment
d)Protected peoples - Zoroastrians, Jews, Christians
3) Four Classes + low classes
a)Rulers; Caliphs; supposed to have been elected because of
their qualifications
b)Wazirs -personal/prime minister (wise Men) appointed
c)Upper Class (Wealth)
d)Middle Class (Culture)
e)Base cattle; filthy refuse; torrent of scum (Infidels)
f)Slaves - no enslavement of Muslim Arabs; not supposed to be
cruel but had Eunuchs as necessary adjunct to Harem (Purdah);
Slaves inferior beings, not responsible (as Freedmen);
punished as child, not adult; children of both slaves and
Freedmen could be free; All Caliphs except the first three
were sons of slaves

2003-01-12T02:18:00.001-05:00

"WHO TEACHETH BY THE PEN"

A Study of Islamic Social Thought

Emory L. Warrick, Sr.

A Paper for
Sociology 621
Early Social Thought
Prof. John Drinan Kelley

Fall Quarter 1971

T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S

Table of Contents * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 2

Historical Background * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 3

Muhammad * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 4

The Caliphate * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 6

Al-Islam * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *10

Muslim Secular Thought * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *13

Bibliography * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *16

Appendix * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *17

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

In the book of GENESIS in the Christian OLD TESTAMENT (and in the
Judiac TORAH) we find the story of the Patriarch Abraham.
According to this story Abraham was the progenitor of all semitic
peoples. When Abraham and his wife Sarah became aged, and it
appeared that Sarah was barren, Sarah prevailed upon Abraham to
impregnate their maid Hagar so that the line might survive.
Hagar was duly impregnated by Abraham, and in the fulness of time
was delivered of a son named Ishmael. Sarah later became gravid
and was herself delivered of a son who was named Isaac. Sarah
then prevailed upon Abraham to transport Hagar, and his son
Ishmael, into the wilderness and to abandon them, which the story
indicates was done.

Isaac was reputed to be the progenitor of all Jews, while Ishmael
(who survived) was reputed to be the progenitor of all other
semites except the Edomites. Isaac had two sons, Esau and Jacob
(whose name became Israel after he had wrestled the angel
Gabriel). Their mother was Rebecca who had borne them as twins
with Esau being the first-born. Rebecca favored Jacob and
through skulduggery and deception secured for Jacob the Blessings
and Rights belonging to Esau by right of Primogeniture. The
Edomites descended from Esau and were the only semites who seemed
able to relate to both Jews and Arabs (i.e., the descendents of
both Issac and Ishmael). The Lebanese apparently are a melding
of the Edomites and the ancient Phoenicians.

In the Judiac tradition the Diety was worshipped in the guise of
Elohim and el Shaddai (among others) until in the Mosaic
tradition came the religious insight culminating in the Jewish
monotheism whose worship was directed to Yahweh. Among the Arabs
this insight was not to develop for millenia. In the Arab line
of descent religion developed into an idolatrous polytheism. By
the latter half of the Sixth Century A. D. the place to which all
Arabia made religious pilgrimage was the Kaa'bah, a temple at
Mecca. The guardians of this temple were the Tribe of Qureysh.
The Meccans claimed descent from Abraham through Ishmael and
tradition held that the Kaa'bah had been built by Abraham for the
worship of the One God.

The Kaa'bah was stilled called the House of Allah, but the chief
objects of worship were a number of Idols called Intercessors and
the Daughters of Allah. Mecca was not an agricultural community.
Mecca's chief sources of income arose from its position on the
caravan routes. The tourist and pilgrimage trade based upon the
Kaa'bah and the theological doctrines associated with it served
to make the Kaa'bah an economic stimulus. All this served also
to make the Meccans very conservative with regard to any changes.
Proper economic influences can foster extreme religious
conservatism.

MUHAMMAD

In the year 570 A. D. there was born to Abdullah of the tribe of
Qureysh, the family of Hashim, the son of Abdul Muttalib, a son
named Muhammad. Abdullah died prior to the birth of his son, and
the mother of Muhammad died when he was six. The boy came under
the guardianship of his grandfather Abdul Muttalib, and upon the
death of Abdul he came under the guardianship of his uncle Abu
Talib. At 12 (c.582 A D) he travelled north to Syria in the
company of Abu Talib in a merchant caravan. He earned the name
Al-Amin (i.e., trustworthy) in Mecca and was apparently quite
respected. At age 25 (c. 595 A D) he made this journey again in
the service of Khadijah, a wealthy widow in her early forties.

Her aged servant who accompanied Muhammad on the long caravan
made such an enthusiastic report of his services that Khadijah
subsequently married Muhammad. She thereby conferred upon him
her wealth and rank among the notables of Mecca. During the
twenty- six years of their marriage he remained monogamous and
faithful to her, but married other wives after her death. There
had grown up at Mecca a small group known as Hunafa (i.e., those
who turn away) who were dissidents from the prevalent idolatry.
They could be termed agnostics because each sought truth in the
illumination of his own inner consciousness. Muhammad was a
Hanif.

Muhammad formed the habit of making a month-long retreat each
year during the month of Ramadan. He took his family along on
these retreats and went usually to a hill named Hira in the
desert near Mecca. It was here where, at age forty and near the
end of this month of meditation, that he was possessed of his
first vison or revelation. It was his impression that he was
asleep, or in a trance, when he was aroused by a loud and
terrible Voice. The Voice said:

"'Read!'
He said: 'I cannot read!'
The Voice again said: 'Read!'
He said: 'I cannot read!'
A third time the Voice, more terrible, commanded: 'Read!'
He said: 'What can I read?'
The Voice said: 'Read: In the Name of the Lord Who
Createth.
Createth man from a clot.
Read: And it is thy Lord the Most Bountiful
Who teacheth by the pen,
Teacheth man that which he knew not!'"

This quote is from the Surah XCVI, and is here used to indicate
the strength of the impetus from the very begionning of Islam -
from the first Revelation - toward study and learning.

In the Islamic tradition the Lord did teach most bounteously by
the pen. It must be remembered that Muhammad was illiterate.
Because of the insistence of the Angel that he read these
Scriptures are know as Al Qur'an (i.e., The Koran), literally
"The Reading" of an illiterate. The vision of Muhammad was of
the Archangel Gabriel, in human likeness, in the sky above the
horizon. We are told that this experience was most distressing
to him because as a Hanif what passed for mysticism in his
society was anathema to him. He confided his distress to
Khadijah who tried as best she could to reassure him.

History pictures Muhammad throughout his life as a quiet, humble
man of massive insight and intelligence. Feeling thus singled
out from all mankind to be the receptacle of Revelation, which he
must preach, apparently was an absolutely appalling experience.
After much soul-searching he became convinced that his experience
was indeed a valid one and he undertook to preach the Word. His
first convert was Khadijah. His second convert was Ali, his
first cousin whom he had adopted and who was destined to become
his son-in-law through marriage to Fatima, the daughter of
Muhammad and Khadijah. His third convert was his freed slave
Zeyd, and his old friend Abu Bakr was his fourth convert.

For a while things went well, but as he spread his gospel he
generated antagonism and persecution soon forced him to flee
Mecca with his converts. A group of pilgrims from Yathrib - an
oasis city 250 miles north of Mecca and 650 miles SSE of Damascus
- came into contact with Muhammad about this time. The Aus and
the Khazraj tribes were disputants for primacy in Yathrib and the
situation was complicated by the presence of three Jewish tribes
of contentious disposition. The need was felt for a
disinterested arbitrator and the group was much taken with
Muhammad, and so the Islamic group (i.e., those who submit to
God) settled in Yathrib - which became Al-Madinah, or Medina.
This flight to Medina was the "Hegira" which began on 20 June 622
and ended on 24 September that same year. At Medina Muhammad
proved himself to be an able administrator, and the Surahs of
that period assume a socio- political character as opposed to the
devotional character of the Meccan Surahs.

The Meccans forced him into fighting. His forces won the Battle
of Badr (623), lost the Battle of Mt. Uhud (losing much face
thereby), and won the War of the Trench (627). Arab battle
tactics were simply hit and run. Muhammad with his gift of
insight conceived the plan of trenching completely around Medina.
When the Arabs got to the trench they knew not what to do and so
they sat down and waited; they got bored, the weather got bad,
and they just left. This was the turning point for Al-Islam.

In combining astute administration with devout religious practice
Muhammad established the pattern for the Caliphate. The
Caliphate as an institution endured for nearly five hundred years
during which a truly great empire was created. Muhammad made no
claim to divinity; one who worships Allah and follows the Koran
is not a Mohammedan. One who submits fully to the One God is
Islamic. On 8 June 632 Muhammad died in Medina and Abu Bakr was
elected Caliph (i.e., successor). The Caliphate had begun and
the course of human history was forever changed.

THE CALIPHATE

When Muhammad died he left no instructions for the governing of
the Muslim community. Predictably various parties began to form,
among the most active of which was the Kjazraj clan of Medina.
Among the Meccan companions taking part in these deliberations
were Omar and Abu Bakr. Abu Bakr came to be elected successor to
The Prophet, taking the title of Caliph. This form of government
was, in essence, a theocracy; the Caliph was the true ruler,
being both the spiritual leader and the political administrator.
In theory all Islam should be united under one Supreme Caliph.

Upon his election as Caliph Abu Bakr was faced with revolt. Some
of his opposition collapsed in the face of his firmness, but the
Nejd tribes had to be suppressed. Khalid ibn al-Walid completed
this task, secured the Arabian Peninsula, and began to move
against Iraq. At the same time Amr ibn al-As moved against
Palestine and the trans-Jordan. Khalid defeated the Greeks at
Ajnadain. With the reign of Abu Bakr (632-634) the empire was
begun.

Upon the death of Abu Bakr the new Caliph Omar (634-644) was
elected without opposition and extended the conquests to Iraq,
Mesopotamia, and Egypt. Khalid conquered Damascus, lost it, and
conquered it again. He then proceeded to subjugate all of Syria.
In 639 the Omayyad Mu'awiya was appointed governor of all Syria.
There were continuous attacks from the Greeks and Persians. Omar
was stabbed to death by a workman in the mosque at Medina, but by
the time of his death Iraq and Egypt were beginning to be secure.

Upon the death of Omar the aging Othman (644-656) was elected
Caliph. Omar had been successful in keeping control of the
conquests, armies, and empire. Othman was weak and not so
gifted. The conquests continued from their own momentum, and he
did organize Syrian and Egyptian fleets. Othman was finally
killed in a mutiny and rebellion and Ali (656-661) became the
last elected Caliph. Ali was first cousin, adopted son, and
son-in-law to the Prophet and this was to cause much trouble in
Islam.

Ali held out for five years in a rapidly worsening situation, but
was finally assassinated in 661 by Omayyads seeking revenge for
the murder of Othman. Ali was seen by his descendents, because
of his closeness to The Prophet, as being Immaculate and
Infallible, and his descendents became the Shi'ites. The
Shi'ites and the Sunnites, therefore, divided at the beginning of
the Omayyad Caliphate with the Sunnis being the largest and
dominant group throughout Islamic history. The new Caliph was
the first of the Omayyad Caliphs and established the dynastic
principle of succession. This was Mu'awiya (660-680) who had
been governor of Syria, and he moved the Capital from Medina to
Damascus. The next truly noteworthy Caliph was Abd al-Malik
(685-705).

Until 696 Abd al-Malik was kept totally occupied by the
restoration of order to Syria and the rest of the empire. A
strong General emerged during this period - al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf -
who was made governor of Iraq. When the empire was fairly
settled down Abd al-Malik began expanding in Africa and reached
Tunis. He also reorganized the Imperial administration and
established a navy. He established a regular postal service
which helped immensely in the centralization of power. He
established Islamic coinage and reorganized the financial
administration, putting it into Muslim hands to be conducted in
Arabic.

Abd al-Malik was succeeded upon his death by his son al-Walid I.
Building upon his father's foundations al-Walid (705-715) had a
brilliant reign. Control was established over all Asia Minor and
Armenia. Tangier was taken in 708 by Musa ibn Nusair, who made
his freed slave Jabal Tarik governor of Tangier. In 711 Jabal
Tarik (for whom Gibraltar is named) defeated the Visigoth King
Roderick and overran Spain. Al-Hajjaj had by this time
thoroughly subdued Iraq and moved on to a great deal of further
conquest.

Concurrently there was intensive agricultural development. Much
of this was in Iraq under the direction of al-Hajjaj where canals
were constructed, marshes drained, and much land reclaimed for
arable usage. The Church of St. John the Baptist was converted
to a mosque at Damascus while the Dome of the Rock was completed
at Jerusalem. Four sons of Abd al-Malik became Caliph; after al-
Walid I came Suleiman, Yazid II, and Hisham. Sulieman (715-717)
was a hedonist who through his hatred and persecution of al-
Hajjaj lost the momentum of conquest. Omar II (717-720) was
universally respected for piety and sanctity.

Omar II established the rights of all Muslims, encouraging mass
conversions. He sent Samh to Spain as the new governor with
orders to distribute Spanish land among the troops. Yazid II
(720- 724), the third of the sons, suffered a violent outburst
from the Yemenites which was the beginning of the end for the
Omayyads. The fourth son Hisham (724-743) was a puritan who
founded the bureaucratic system of which the Abbasids made such
good use after they won the civil war. The Syrians were the
omnipotent support of the empire, and he kept factional
contentions within bounds. Marwan II (744-750) was defeated by
Khurasanian forces and his adherents slaughtered by the Abbasids,
who were able to accomplish this by means of alliance with the
Shi'ites.

One of the few who escaped was Abd al-Rahman, the grandson of
Hisham who fled to Africa and thence to Spain where he founded
the Omayyad Dynasty at Cordoba. With the advent of the Abbasid
Caliphs the power of the caliphate was based upon the provinces
of Iraq and Khurasan where there was maximum mingling of Arabic
and Persian influences. This favored the development of a common
Muslim civilization without Arabic predominance. Mu'awiya had
moved the capital from Medina to Damascus and the empire had been
dominated by Syria under the Omayyads. The first Abbasid Caliph,
Abu 'l-Abbas (750-754), faced the same problem faced by virtually
all revolutionary regimes - that of the consolidation of power.
Upon his death his brother took power under the title of al-
Mansur (754-775).

Al-Mansur could not dislodge the Omayyads from Spain but he did
put down revolts by the Muslimiya, the Hashimiya, and the
Shi'ites. He founded the new capital at Baghdad and reorganized
the administration, introducing the Wazir (i.e.,the visier, who
was a combination private secretary and prime minister) and the
diwans (i.e., divans, or ministries of the government). His
successor al-Madhi (775-785) expanded and improved the
administrative services. The prosperity of his regime formed the
base for the impressive development of intellectual and cultural
pursuits which followed. The next Caliph was al-Hadi (785-786)
who was followed by his brother al-Rashid (786-809). The tutor
of al-Rashid was Yahya ibn Khalid whom al-Rashid made visier with
full powers.

Under Yahya and his son Fadl the Abbasid empire reached its
apogee of power and prosperity. After al-Amin (809-813) was
slain in a civil war with his brother al-Ma'mun, al-Ma'mun (813-
833) assumed power but remained at Merv. The civil war had
fragmented the empire and there was turbulence until 819. At
that time al-Ma'mun removed the capital again to Baghdad. There
he extended his patronage to science and literature, going to the
extent of founding a kind of Academy where Greek works on
mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, and medicine were translated.
He extended official patronage to the Mu'tazilite school of
theology.

Al-Ma'mun was succeeded by his brother al-Mu'tasim (833-842) who
moved the capital to Samarra and finally whipped the Greeks and
his own rebels. Al-Mu'tasim also made an innovation which was
fatally to weaken the Abbasid Caliphate; he introduced regiments
of Turkish slaves into the army as light cavalry and armed them
with sword, lance, and bow. They were very effective. The
successor to al-Mu'tasim, al-Wathik (842-847), lost control of
the Turks and his successor, al-Mutawakkil (847-861), spent his
entire reign trying to regain power from the Turkish generals.
Al- Mutawakkil foolishly divided the empire among his three sons,
the oldest of which finally joined the Turkish generals and
murdered his father. The Turkish generals were the real powers
during the next four Caliphates, lasting until 870 when al-
Mu'tamid (870- 892), another son of al-Mutawakkil, took power.

The brother of al-Mu'tamid, al-Muwaffat, was the real power and
began slowly to retrieve the situation. The government was moved
back to Baghdad. The Shi'ites were beginning to agitate again,
and the Caliphate came to an end as a viable institution with
the reign of al-Muktadir (908-932). There would henceforth be an
Imamate with spiritual responsibilities and held by the Abbasids
who would still hold the title of Caliph, and a Sultanate wherein
resided true political power - the most notable of these being
the Seljuk Dynasty. Concurrent with the Abbasid Caliphate was
the Omayyad Dynasty in Spain. Abd al-Rahman (755-788) had
established the dynasty after escaping the Abbasid purge and
finally arriving in Spain.

Abd al-Rahman established centralized power, basing it upon an
Imperial Guard of Berbers and European slaves (Slavonians).
After Hisham I (788-796) came al-Hakam I (796-822) who affirmed
Omayyad power and laid the foundations for the material and
literary culture developed under his son Abd al-Rahman II (822-
852). Abd al-Rahman III (912-961) was the primus inter pares of
the dynasty. He lifted the kingdom to its apogee of culture,
power, and magnificance. Cordoba was now a metropolis which
enjoyed an immense reputation in Europe. He mastered ibn Hafsun
in 917 and in the following decade he united Moorish Spain.

Abd al-Rahman III even collected tribute from Christian Princes.
This period of magnificance continued through the reign of al-
Hakam II (961-976). The successor to al-Hakam II, Hisham II
(976- 1013), was weak and allowed the rise of the Military
Dictator ibn abi 'Amir (981-1002). Ibn abi 'Amir was followed by
Abd al-Malik al-Muzzakar (1002-1008). The last Omayyad Prince
was dethroned in 1031. A Republic was declared.

AL-ISLAM

Al-Islam (which translates as "Those having peace with God) is
the community of Muslims (which translates as "He who fully
submits). Islam is, therefore, a total way of life. We have
already noted (cf. Caliphate) that there is no division for the
Muslim between religion and politics - or any other institution.
Ideally a Muslim is a Muslim in every facet of his life. A
Muslim is not a Mohammedan (cf. Koran: xxvii) for Muhammad was
simply the Prophet of Allah. Muhammad was last in a long line of
Prophets including Adam, Abraham, Moses, Zoroaster, and Jesus.

Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians were protected people in the
Muslim empire. Christians cannot generally make such a claim of
tolerance for people of differing beliefs. The Muslim creed has
five (5) articles of faith (Rahman: 663):

(1) The Muslim is required to believe in Allah, the One God;
(2) The Muslim is required to believe in angels;
(3) The Muslim must believe in the revealed books;
(4) The Muslim must believe in the Prophets (including
Muhammad); and
(5) The Muslim must believe in the Day of Judgement.

There are in addition five (5) obligatory duties for the Muslim
(Columbia Encyclopaedia: 979):

(1) As a profession of faith one must at least once during
one's lifetime say forthrightly, with full faith
and understanding: "There is no god but God (Allah)
and Muhammad is His Prophet.";
(2) One must pray the five (5) mandatory daily prayers; while
facing toward the Kaa'bah at Mecca, the direction
being determined by the Imam, one must kneel and
pray at dawn, noon, mid-afternoon, dusk, and within
two (2) hours after sunset.
(3) One must pay the Zakat tax and the sadaqat; the word
"zakat" means purification and the payment of the
Zakat tax cleanses/legitimizes one's possessions;
the tax varies by categories (i.e., 10% for grains
or fruits watered by rains, 5% for irrigated crops,
2.5% for money); in this theocracy the state will
collect this tithe whose payment is a religious
duty (Koran: 42); the sadaqat (i.e., charity
contribution) should voluntarily be given in
addition.
(4) One must keep Ramadan; from dawn to dusk during this
month one is prohibited from partaking of food,
drink, or sexual gratification; Ramadan was the
month set aside by The Prophet for his annual
retreat to Mt. Hira and during Ramadan the first
revelation occurred.
(5) One must at least once during one's life, should Allah
permit, make a pilgrimage to Mecca to the Kaa'bah
toward which one faces to pray.

There are more than four hundred fifty million (450,000,000)
Muslims; Islam is the principle religion of much of Asia.
Muslims are found in the Phillipines, the Provinces of Kansu and
Shensi in China, Asiatic U. S. S. R., India, Pakistan, and
Afghanistan, as well as in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Egypt,
Sudan, Tunisia, Libya, Turkey, Morocco, Algeria, and the Arab
States and Emirates (Columbia Encyclopaedia; 979). The
pilgrimage is a prime uniting factor for world-wide Islam. This
pilgrimage is made only during one month of the year. The
experience of meeting strangers from over the entire world on the
same mission gives one a tremendous sensation of solidarity, as
well as the effect of participating with all in the same ritual
observance. One approaches Mecca between the 7th and 10th day of
Dhu 'l-Hijja.

At a point six (6) miles from the city one says the proper
prayers and changes to two seamless, white garments. One visits
the sacred mosque (the Kaa'bah) and while there kisses the Black
Stone. One then makes seven (7) circumambulations of the
Kaa'bah, 3 of which are made running while 4 are made slowly.
One visits the sacred stone, and afterward ascends Mt. Safa and
runs between the peaks of Mt. Safa and Mt. Marwa seven (7) times
as did Hagar while hunting water for the infant Ishmael. After a
visit to Mt. Arafat where one hears a sermon the night is spent
at Muzdalifa; there forty two (42) stones are selected to be
thrown at the 3 pillars of Mina. A sacrifice is made on the last
day of Irham in commemoration of the provision of the ram by
Allah as a substitute for the sacrifice of Ishmael.

The total way of life of Islam is exemplified in its application
by the Shari'a (i.e., path to the watering place). In Islam this
path includes both the doctrinal belief and the practice (i.e.,
the law - the fiqh). There are four (4) foundations of the
formulation of the Shari'a (Rahman: 664):

(1) THE KORAN, the revealed truth of God;
(2) the Sunna (way) of The Prophet as recorded in the Hadith
(i.e., the tradition, which are collections of
anecdotes and apocraphae concerning The Prophet); there
are two very carefully complied collections, and the
other 4 proceed on what might be characterized as a "it
might have been" basis (Columbia Encyclopaedia: 979);

the best collections are Kitab al-Jami' al-Sahih by
al-Bukhari (d.870), and Sahih by Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj
(d.875); the other 4 less reliable collections are Kitab
al-Sunan by abu Dawud (817-886), Jami' al- Sahih by
al-Tirmidhi (d.892), Kitab al-Sunan by al- Nasa'i (830-
915), and Kitab al-Sunan by ibn Maja (824-886).
(3) the Ijma, which can be summarized by three quotations
from The Prophet: 1) "Conversion by the sword is no
conversion"; 2) "My community will never agree in an

error", and 3) "The difference in opinion in my community
is a Divine mercy" (Columbia Encyclopaedia: 980).; Islam
does not distinguish between faith and works for both
are indispensible and both are mutually supplementary.
(4) the qiyas (i.e., analogical reasoning) which is the
basis of interpretation and original thought (i.e.,
Ijtihad) in Islam.

Ijtihad has come to mean in modern usage a democratic institution
as opposed to traditional authority. The earlier form of
reasoning with respect to Shari'a interpretaion was the ra'y,
based upon personal thought and opinion. Even though there were
strong pressures toward orthodoxy - and fear of original thought
(Ijtihad) - in the early days of Islam there were nonetheless
still rebels like ibn Tiamiya whose ideas were the foundation of
the puritanical Wahabi movement.

There are in addition four sciences of the Shari'a. They are:

(1) the Hadith, the prophetic tradition;
(2) the Tafsir, the Koranic exegesis;
(3) the Kalam, the theology; and
(4) the Fiqh, the law.

The Hadith (i.e., prophetic tradition) and the Tafsir (i.e., the
Koranic exegesis) provide materials for the Kalem (i.e., the
theology) and the Fiqh (i.e., the law). The Fiqh, which
originally meant an understanding of the full range of faith, now
applies to the law alone (Rahman: 665). There are four schools
of the law, which are:

(1) the Hanafite, prevalent in Muslim Asia, whose founder
was Abu Hanifa;
(2) the Malikite, prevalent in western and northern Africa,
arising from Malik ben Aras (d.795);
(3) the Shafi'ite, a rite in Egypt, east Africa, the Middle
East, and the East Indies, arising from
Ash Shafi'i (d.820); and finally
(4) the Hanbalite, founded by Ahmed Ibn Hanbal.

The Hanbalite rite is not widely accepted and is the narrowest
and most literalistic of the schools. Ibn Khaldun was the
Supreme Qaid (i.e., Chief Judge) of the Malikite rite when he was
in Cairo, and yet the Chief Judge had the Fiqh (i.e., the law)
religiously interpreted for him by the Mufti - again the
pervasiveness of the religious.

MUSLIM SECULAR THOUGHT

In the very first revelation the emphasis was on literacy - and
the Lord "Who Teacheth by the Pen". It is not surprising to find
then that education has occupied a fundamental place in Muslim
life, the more so since it is supported by the Hadith and THE
KORAN. However, the actual development of the system of
education was bifurcated. The upper and lower levels did not
mesh, and there was no steady channeling of able students from
the primary to the upper level. There is evidence of school
education in the first century of Islam and we find mention of
the "majlis" (i.e., a hall for teaching). As in so many facets
of Islam in their first century al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf played a part
here too (Rahman: 668).

Instruction was mainly in the traditions and in training for
integrity and moral character - with some reading, writing, and
arithmetic. Technical subjects were taught by the guilds which
became very powerful as time passed. Apprenticeship was used.
The Sufis later started orders throughout the empire which
included academics along with the spiritual exercises. With an
eye toward "Jihad" (i.e., Holy War) there was even some military
training. The crowning glory of Islam, though, was its
university system.

The great period of Muslim thought came in that period embraced
by The Ninth and The Eleventh Centuries. There were great
universities at Baghdad, Bukhara, Cairo, Alexandria, Cordoba,
Damascus, and Seville, to name a few (Columbia Encyclopaedia:
980). Some metropolii had more than one. The Abbasid Caliph al-
Ma'mun (813-833) had founded a quasi-Greek academy at Baghdad
(Gibb: 650). Nizam al-Mulk, the great visier to the Seljuk
Sultan Alp Arslan had founded Nizamiya at Baghdad in 1067
(Rahman: 668). Mirjan ibn Abdullah, governor of Baghdad,
founded another college there in 1358 (Oates; 1035).

In the Fifth Century some of Plato and most of Aristotle was
translated from the Greek to Persian, Syriac, and Armenian
(Fuller: 286ff.). In the Eighth Century these translations
passed on to the main Muslim Caliphate at Baghdad where al-Ma'mun
was shortly to establish his academy. From Baghdad the
translations moved to Spain where Abd al-Rahman II and Abd al-
Rahman III in their reigns provided the invigorating
encouragement and the political serenity necessary to the growth
of a literary culture. By this time Baghdad had produced the
poet Firdausi (d.935). Already one of the major Arabic
philosophers, al-Kindi (c.790-870), had been moving actively
through the reigns of al- Ma'mun and al-Mu'tasim. Al-Kindi said
that one ought to recognize truth and welcome it from whatever
quarter it may come (Walzer: 190).

Al-Kindi maintained that natural and revealed philosophy reach
the same truth, but he subordinated reason and philosophy to
revelation and prophecy. He resembled the neo-Platonists. Al-
Kindi was followed by al-Farabi (c.870-950) who subordinated
religion to philosophy. Al-Farabi had an awareness of the
political philosophy of Plato which was not exhibited by al-
Kindi. Al-Farabi seems to have been the first Arabic thinker to
introduce the Aristotelian "active intellect" as a metaphysical
catalyst between "First Cause" and human intellect. The physical
world is to be understood along Aristotelian lines.

Avicenna (ibn Sin; 930-1026) was not Iraqi but was Persian and
never stayed in Baghdad as did al-Kindi and al-Farabi. For
Avicenna philosophy was the only way to the understanding of
Islam. He was a philosopher and a medical doctor. Avicenna read
THE METAPHYSICS of Aristotle forty (40) times until he chanced
upon an essay by al-Farabi that resolved the difficulty.
Avicenna divided philosophy into two regions of six parts.
Economics, ethics, and politics are practical; physics,
mathematics, and theology are both pure and applied.

At this time there came one of the greatest of the Arabic poets
who was at the same time the only great Arabic poet who was not a
Sufi - Omar Khayyam (1050 - 1123). Omar was contemporary with
the Battle of Hastings which provides an excellent contrast for
the comparison of the level of Muslim and Christian cultures.
Nizam al-Mulk, who was the great visier of the Seljuk Sultan Alp
Arslan, wrote for posterity his WASIYAT (i.e., TESTAMENT) in
which he told of being schoolmates with Omar Khayyam and Hasan
ben Sabbah. They made a pact that should one of them succeed
then that successful person would share with the other two.
Surely enough, when Nizam became Wasir he was approached by Hasan
and Omar. Hasan wanted political preferment and received it -
but tried a coup and was ousted.

Hasan fell in with the Persian group of the Isma'ili sect of the
Shi'ites which through his nefarious influence became the
Assassins - his name lives in infamy in western languages even
today. It is not certain whether the name derived from "Hasan"
or from the hashish they used habitually, but they illustrate the
disturbing effect of the Shi'ites - and particularly the Isma'ili
Shi'ites of Persia - in the course of Muslim history (fitzGerald:
xxvff.). Nizam tells that Omar asked simply for a secure corner
in the courtyard where he could pursue his studies. This he was
granted along with a comfortable income which enabled his
becoming not only a great Persian poet but also a world-renowned
scholar as well in algebra and astronomy. Omar was one of the
eight scholars who devised the Jalali calendar. Contemporary
with Omar was al- Ghazzali (1058-1111) whose THE INCOHERENCE OF
PHILOSOPHERS is credited with sending Arabic philosophy into its
decline and ineffectuality.

Al-Ghazzali was a Sufi (i.e., mystic) and denied any validity to
natural theology or philosophy, reestablishing the primacy of
religion and prophetic inspiration. His mysticism proved to be
more in harmony with the spirit of Islam than the rationality of
the philosophers - which was essentially Greek in spirit rather
than Arabic. Al-Ghazzali was on the staff of Nizamiya (Rahman:
668) and was therefore in Baghdad. Spain was an empire away and
Spanish Arabic philosophy was just coming to fruition
contemporaneously with al-Ghazzali, as represented by Avempace
(d.1138), ibn Tufail (d.1185), and most of all Averroes (ibn
Rushd; 1126-1198). Averroes was another combination philosopher
and doctor of medicine. His scrupulous and scholarly
commentaries on Aristotle would seem to have had very little
impact on Arabic thought, but a great many of them were
translated almost immediately into Hebrew and Latin and passed
from Moorish Spain to pre-Renaissance Europe.

We are told (Fuller: 286ff.) that during the Twelfth Century
Christian thinkers were introduced to Aristotle (i.e., ETHICS;
METAPHYSICS; PHYSICS; psychology) largely through Latin
translations of Arabic translations of Aristotle and commentaries
on his work. These came from translators of Arabic at Toledo,
and from the courts of Manfred and of Frederick II in Sicily as
well as from other sources. Averroes tried to posit two kinds of
truth - the reason of philosophy and the faith of theology - and
succeeded no better than did Aquinas. When one pauses to reflect
upon the implications of the centuries of Islamic civilization
for social thought and the influence of Islam upon the course of
history - and particularly that of Western Civilization - one is
struck by the openness of Islamic civilization in comparison with
other societies. The First Revelation is a sermon on the need
for literacy. There is no Surah on creation so there is no
Cosmology to defend at all costs.

Revelations seem to have come when they were needed and to have
had very practical import. Where the Christian tradition was
saddled with a three-tiered geocentric Cosmology in combination
with exposure to the strain of inductive Idealism from Greek
thought without its correlative corrective of deductive
empiricism, the Islamic tradition had the vector of deductive
empiricism without inductive Idealism. The Christian tradition
produced much better theologians and philosophers than did Islam,
but Islam produced mathematics and science - as well as some of
the best poets in the world. Because of the educated upper-class
resulting from the Koranic and Hadith emphasis upon literacy and
education the Muslims were better governed than almost anyone
else at the time - certainly better than the Christians. The
Muslims protected Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians. No other
contemporary civilization even tolerated dissenters, to say
nothing of protecting them.

The thought occurs of Ying and Yang. Inductive Idealism leads to
sterile speculation without reference in reality. Deductive
empiricism leads to myopic vision and lack of "transferability".
As Kant pointed out: "Concepts without percepts are empty;
percepts without concepts are blind." The fusion of the two
traditions probably triggered the Renaissance and Industrial
Revolution - just as capitalism and trade hinged upon the
introduction of the concept of ZERO, and science awaited the
introduction of arabic numerals permitting tabular longitudinal
and latitudinal scientific observations. One wonders: WHAT IF
THERE HAD BEEN A THIRD FAMILY LIKE THE OMAYYADS AND THE ABBASIDS?

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Anderson, J. N. D.
1968 "Islamic Law" ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA v.12.

Arberry, A. J., (ed.).
1963 SELECTED POEMS OF HAFIZ (Tehran, Iran: Y. Jamshidi
pur)

Bammate, Nadjmoud-Dine
1968 "Mohammed" ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA v.15.

Bridgewater, William, and Elizabeth J. Sherwood (eds.).
1956 "Islam" THE COLUMBIA ENCYCLOPAEDIA (Morningside
Heights, New York: Columbia University Press)

Farnum, G. C., (ed.)
1960 "Mohammedanism" GROLIER ENCYCLOPAEDIA v.14.

fitzGerald, Edward (tr.)
1937 RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM (Garden City, New York:
Garden City Publishing Company, Inc.).

Fuller, B. A. G.
1945 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY (New York: Henry Holt & Co.).

Gibb, Sir H. A. R.
1968 "Caliphate" ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA v.4.

Humphrey, Edward (ed.).
1960 THE BOOK OF KNOWLEDGE vs.1; 3; 5; 4; 7; 9; 13; 14; 15.

MacDonald, Duncan Black
1968 "Imam" ENCYCLOPAEDIA BTITANNICA v.11.

Oates, Edward E. D. M.
1968 "Baghdad" ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA v.2.

Pickthall, Mohammed Marmaduke (tr.).
1956 THE GLORIOUS KORAN (New York: New American Library).

Rahman, Fazl'Ur.
1968 "Islam" ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA v.12.

Walzer, Richard R.
1968 "Arabic Philosophy" ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA v.2.

A P P E N D I X

THE CALIPHATE

632 - 634 Abu Bakr
634 - 644 Omar
644 - 656 Othman (Omayyad)
656 - 661 Ali

Omayyad Caliphs

660 - 680 Mu'awiya
680 - 683 Yazid I
683 Mu'awiya II
684 - 685 Marwan I
685 - 705 Abd al-Malik
705 - 715 al-Walid I
715 - 717 Suleiman
717 - 720 Omar II
720 - 724 Yazid II
724 - 743 Hisham
743 - 744 al-Walid II
744 Yazid III
744 - 750 Marwan II

Abbasid Caliphs Omayyad Dynasty (Spain)

750 - 754 Abu l'Abbas 755 - 788 Abd al-Rahman
754 - 775 al-Mansur
775 - 785 al-Madhi
785 - 786 al-Hadi
786 - 809 al-Rashid 788 - 796 Hisham I
809 - 813 al-Amin 796 - 822 al-Hakam I
813 - 833 al-Ma'mun 822 - 852 Abd al-Rahman II
833 - 842 al-Mu'tasim
842 - 847 al-Wathik
847 - 861 al-Mutawakkil 852 - 886 Mohammed I
861 al-Muntasir
862 - 866 al-Musta'in
866 - 869 al-Mu'tazz
869 - 870 al-Mutadi
870 - 892 al-Mu'tamid 886 - 912 Abdallah
892 - 902 al-Mu'tadid
902 - 908 al-Muktafi
908 - 932 al-Muktadir - 935 Firdausi 912 - 961 Abd al-Rahman III
961 - 976 al-Hakam II
EFFECTIVE END OF 930 -1026 Avicenna 976 -1013 Hisham II
CALIPHATE - THE 1050 -1123 Omar Khayyam
IMAMATE HENCEFORTH 1058 -1111 al-Ghazzali
-1138 Avempace
-1185 ibn Tufail
1126 -1198 Averroes (ibn Rushd)
1200-1280 Albertus Magnus -1291 Sadi (poet)
1225-1274 Thomas Aquinas
1320 - Hafiz

2003-01-12T02:18:00.000-05:00

2003-01-12T02:06:00.000-05:00

Five part series on Islam
by George W. Cornell, AP Religion

Writer, published April [Easter] of 1979 in VALDOSTA DAILY TIMES

Quietly, in stocking feet, they slip into the sunlit room,
Ambassadors, Deputies, and Clerks from many lands, from Kuwait,
Pakistan, Malaysia, Egypt, Nigeria, and elsewhere, bowing and
prostrating themselves toward the East. "Subhana Rabbiy-al-
A'ala." they murmur in the Arabic language of worship, on their
knees, bent low, their foreheads touching the plastic-covered
floor, repeating the words three times. "Glory to my Lord, The
Most High." It is a Friday noontime service on the sixth floor
of the tall, slablike Secretariat building of the United Nations,
the windows looking out over Manhattan's East River and beyond -
toward Mecca. There, toward that Eastern shrine, is the focal
direction, the qibia, of Islam, a faith whose force has gripped,
and sometime shaken, the powers of the earth. "My dear brothers"
says Imam Aia' Edm Kharofa, President of the Moslem League of
North America, beginning a brief sermon to about 100 diplomatic
personnel, white, black, brown, pinkish, young and grey-haired,
business suited, a few turbaned, of sundry races, tongues and
nations. That transnational religious solidarity - "assabiya" -
is manifested regularly by U. N. followers of Islam, but there is
no parallel devotional congregation of U. N. envoys from mostly
Judeo-Christian countries; it is an indication of Islam's
particularly cohesive strength.

"This Holy Book," Kharofa says, holding the KORAN, will bring the
world's people to the best way. It is not the speech of a human
being." He points a finger upward: "It is the speech of God."
It is also the heart and mind of Islam, meaning "submission" to
God, an allegiance involving 750 million Moslems around the
globe, second in scope only to the world's billion Christians, a
religion which is surging with new zeal and determination. After
slumbering for centuries, it is displaying the pentup "power of
religious vision, joined with the Islamic sense of social
justice," says William A. Graham, a specialist in the field at
Harvard University Divinity School. "It's a grass roots movement
in many countries."

Not just oil has fired the revival, although that has added to
it. "Oil provides the leverage, the clout," says New York
University Islamic Scholar Francis Peters, "but the motivation is
in the challenge of Western secularization." That underlying
passion has been to shore up the faith against a modern tide of
materialism and moral-social disintegration. "It is the whole
danger of modernization which makes human life meaningless," says
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a noted Islamic scholar of Temple
University, "that's what has heightened Moslem dedication to the
essential values of religion." The new stirring comes as
Moslems, meaning "those who submit" to God, mark the beginning of
the 15th century of a faith which affirms deep kinship with older
Judiasm and Christianity. For Christians, too, it's a time of
celebrating fresh beginnings, the Easter renewal of life, of a
resurrected Christ.

Unlike Islam, Christianity and its ancestral Judiasm have long
grappled with the secularizing, standards-toppling trends of
Western industrial culture, often losing ground to it. "Jews and
Christians see the tides as against them, that rationalist
reductionism has won the day in the West over religious values,
at least in the centers of power," says Graham, "but Moslems have
confronted it in a compressed period of time which has sharpened
the conflict." "We faced it gradually, piecemeal," adds Peters,
"but they're up against it for the first time. They've had a
tremendous dose of it, and its a totally new phenomenon for
them." It has mobilized an Islamic resurgence in many areas, not
against technological-scientific development itself, but against
the tradition-shattering ways which have accompanied it.
Obviously, political-economic factors also have contributed to
the awakening, including the sudden oil wealth in Islamic
countries of the Middle East, galvanizing European-American
interests, and also injecting external influences, and sometimes
manipulation, seen in those areas as eroding religious ideals.

The "Westernizing classes" have brought "a naked and frightening
form of materialism which recognizes hardly any moral demands
whatever," writes Fazlur Rahman, a Pakistan-born Islamic scholar
of the University of Chicago Divinity School in his book ISLAM.
This is the "primary cause" of the Islamic upsurge he adds in an
interview, "and it came from outside, from the West. The West is
so secularized that all life is devoid of belief in any values
whatever. For Judaism and Christianity this is endemic. But for
Islam, it's a new and alien threat to the integrity of life." He
maintains that only a rejuvenated educational system among
Moslems, imparting genuine Islamic values, theology and Law in
terms "acceptable to and meaningful for a modern mind" can "save
modern man and society from the nihilistic, demoralizing effects
of crass secularism."

In any case, the confluent causes - the global contagions of
modern communications and commerce, the rivalry for resources,
the spread of Western techniques, films, pop-songs and vogues,
the collision of cultures - have kindled a rising fervor in
Islam. It "seems destined to redraw part of the world's
political map in the next few decades," writes Talat Sait Halman,
a Moslem scholar of Princeton University. Calling Islam a
"configuration of power to contend with," he says "superpower
hegemony is bound to shrink as we go into the next millenium."
Islam, the fastest spreading of the world's major religions,
already prevails over a broad swath of earth stretching across
three continents from Morocco through the northern two-thirds of
Africa, the south-east flank of Europe, much of southern Asia and
into the islands of the Pacific. At the end of World War II
there were only four independent Moslem nations - Turkey, Yemen,
Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan - but with the collapse of Western
Colonialism there are now 46 of them among the 152 members of the
United Nations, many of them churning with pressures and sporadic
upheavals to fortify Islamic principles. In Iran, dominated by a
minor segment of Islam, the Shi'ites, who accord overruling
authority to a dominant religious figure in contrast to the
consensus-by-the-people code of the prevailing Sunni branch, the
revolution took on a stridently anti-U. S. tone.

"Despoilers, oppressors, corrupters," the Ayatollah Khomeini
denounced past U. S. effects on the country; "the superpowers act
against the ways of the prophets and teaching of Jesus Christ."
But the holding of U. S. Embassy hostages was condemned by other
Moslem nations and Iran seemed settling into calmer restoration.
Some Moslems criticize Khomeini as giving Islam a bad name, even
flouting its tenets. "O ye who believe! Enter not houses other
than your own until ye have asked permission and saluted those in
them," directs "Sura 24:27-28" of the KORAN; "...Enter not until
permission is given." The teaching, regarded as protectinng
embassies, was laid down hundreds of years before the concept was
forged into international law. Unlike the Sunni branch of Islam,
however, the Shi'ite minority dominant in Iran have a special
theory of multiple interpretation of the KORAN, and also of
dissimulating belief, "taqiya," in hostile circumstances.

But in other settings, through other means and diverse forms, a
revivified Islam showed its impact, straining between secular
ideologies and religion striving to integrate Moslem codes into
contemporary situations, debating how far religious values should
control states. Pakistan last year put the Islamic code of
justice, the Shari'a, ito law; oil-rich Kuwait did so to some
extent. Simmering pressures for it are carried on in Egypt and
Turkey, particularly by the brotherhoods, the "tarikas". Such
demands are tightly suppressed in Soviet-leaning Iraq and Syria
and by Soviet arms in Afghanistan; Libya and Saudi Arabia have
Islamic legal systems. Some Moslem lands are autocratically
ruled, contrary to Islamic teachings. "They are not following
the Islamic ideal," says Kharofa, adding that the representative
U. S. system is more in accord with Islam.

"Our religion demands mutual consultation, but these principles
are not being applied in many Islamic countries" asserts Kharofa.
Islamic premises for government reject dictatorships, insisting
that the community, the "umma", has the right to choose
leadership and to remove it. Muhammad-abd-el-Rauf, a director of
Washington's Islamic Center, says the monarchical regimes in some
Islamic countries are the "cause for much of the discontent and
disillusionment, and why some of the Islamic resurgence is
opposed to the goverments." Yet a common misassumption that
Islam upholds autocracy is one of many Western prejudices,
muddled notions and stereotypes about a faith linked to Judiasm
and Christianity and which is burgeoning not only abroad but here
in the U. S. "Distortions and misconceptions about it abound"
says Willem Bijlefeld of Hartford Seminary, one of the foremost
Christian experts on Koranic exegesis. "There's a serious lack
of openness to Islam and refusal to take seriously its intent and
originality.

Citing the widespread idea that early Islamic expansion was based
on use of the sword Bijlefeld says it's "an absolute distortion
of history, both of the facts and of Moslem intentions." But
nowadays Americans, Europeans and others are being drawn into
closer encounter with Moslems both at home and abroad. The walls
come down between cultures as peoples of the world increasingly
rub shoulders, sometimes abrasively, but needing to know each
other better. "We can no longer ignore Islam the way we used to"
says Peters; "greater understanding is important on both sides
and we need to realize that Moslems have a sophisticated culture
which once rivaled our own, and now they have power. But they
also need to catch up in knowing us. They only see us as we're
portrayed in the movies."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"La ilaha illa Allah!" The cry rose amid rank idolatry and spread
with sweeping force; "There is no God but God!" - that definitive
monotheism, the oneness of an all-embracing, just and merciful
God, is the core and sinews of Islam. The clarion proclamation,
the shahadah, was sounded by a contemplative but heartily
prepossessing 7th-century Arab merchant, Mohammed, in protest
against rampant polytheism at Mecca, a city profiting richly from
devotions to about 360 "gods", mythical birds, females, and other
creatures. "God! There is no God but He - the Living, the Self-
Subsisting, the Eternal" declares Surah 2:255 of the KORAN,
transmitted through Mohammed; "No slumber can seize Him, or
sleep; His are all the things in the heavens and on the
earth...". This central affirmation of Islam proposed no new
Deity nor even a new religion, but sought to vivify the older
Judaism and Christianity, the "People of the Book", incorporating
their lineage of sages and prophets, Noah, Abraham, Ishmael,
Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and Jesus. "We chose them and guided them
to a straight path" assures Surah 6:87, the words attributed to
God, and Surah 3:84 enjoins Mohammed to say of his Biblical
predecessors: "We make no distinction between one and another
among them, and to God do we bow our will." But Mohammed,
through his solitary visions, is accredited with a finishing
role; "The Seal of the Prophets" he is called, "a bringer of glad
tidings and a warner."

"O People of the Book" pleads Surah 5:16-18, referring to Jews
and Christians, "There hath come to you Our apostle...a new
light...wherewith God guideth all who seek His good pleasure to
ways of peace and safety...to a path that is straight." As
Christians observe their Easter Season, celebrating Jesus'
triumph over crucifixion, followers of Islam are marking its
start of a new era pulsing with vigor and drive to transform past
setbacks into strength. Across the United States at
universities, art museums, on television, through traveling
exhibits, religious workshops, seminars, and other affairs, the
spotlight is on Islam as it enters its 15th century [18 March -
16 April 1991 is Ramadan of 1411]. Included are events, held or
scheduled, at universities in Arizona, Tennessee, Utah, and
Washington, D. C., and at the Smithsonian Institution, the Aspen
Institute and and at next fall's Convention of the American
Academy of Religion at Dallas. The aim is to "raise the general
level of American understanding of Islam as a cultural force in
world history and its role in today's rapidly changing
international situation" says a national committee on Islam's
14th centennial, headed by former U. S. Middle East Ambassador
William E. Crawford. Citing the West's past hostile view of
Islam the committee says vestiges of those misperceptions remain
and that greater understanding is needed "between the U. S. and
those who adhere to the world's second largest and fastest
growing faith...a vital element in the world community."

In the face of all the stepped-up attention Imam Hosny Gaber, the
scholarly director of Manhattan's Islamic Center, remarks: "It's
as if we had been standing behind a veil, being recognized
because we appeared; but Islam was there all the time." Its
convictions have not changed, he says, "nor is it that Islam has
been sleeping and woke up, but it resists the modern attacks on
moral values. Circumstances have made you look at it; all over
the world you find the cry from everywhere, from people,
preachers and in mosques, against the Western tide of irreligion
and ethical rules; Islam will not stand for it." In any case
Islam's rising stature in the world, its desert prizes of oil,
its aroused energies, the latter-day emergence of mostly Moslem
lands into independent nationhood after 150 years of colonial
domination, the rapid expansion of Islam in the United States and
in other countries, prompt reminders of a Pan-Islamic power of
old and a one-time "golden age". That remarkable, majestical
period, long neglected in Western education, stands as an epoque
of unquestioned Moslem superiority in learning and the arts,
roughly from the eighth through the 11th centuries while Europe
stagnated into the Dark Ages. The empire of Moslem Caliphs
reached from India to Spain, blanketing the Middle East, covering
Persia, Syria, Jerusalem, the fallen Byzantine capital of
Constantinople, Cyprus, Egypt and the rest of North Africa, and
Islamic culture reached heights reached only centuries later in
Europe.

Literary and scientific achievement flourished with major strides
in art, medicine, mathematics, navigation and astronomy; Moslem
scholars plotted the planetary orbits 700 years before Galileo
was forced to recant his heliocentric theory of the solar system;
the Arabian TALES OF A THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS and the Persian
RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM remain literary masterpieces of the
period. The "House of Wisdom" at Baghdad outdid Constantinople
with Jewish and Christian scholars there collaborating in the
intellectual and philosophical ferment. Through their Arabic
translations of Aristotle and other Greek classics Europe first
regained access to those works; Arabic numerals are still used in
the West. Moslem shipping developed trade with China and planted
Islam in the Pacific; Moslem architecture with its stucco
carvings, brilliant ceramics, flowing arabesque lines, bulbous
domes and elaborate minarets bequeathed monuments of that time
ranging from the great mosque of Cordoba to the Taj Mahal.
Tragically the ensuing series of European Crusades of the 11th
through the 13th centuries stamped harsh, lasting scars between
East and West, and then came the Mongol ravages which ended
Islam's classical age by throwing it into prolonged relapse and
stagnation. European colonial takeovers began by 1800,
disrupting Islamic education and replacing it with secular
models, and the foreign domination was not to be generally lifted
until the 1940s.

Whatever the course of Islam's present potentialities its
astonishing early sweep had sprung from the dynamism of its
progenitor, Mohammed; born c. 570 A. D. and orphaned as a child,
a shepherd in the flinty hills outside Mecca, he later as a man
developed the habit of withdrawing regularly to a cave in that
desert solitude to meditate. "Recite!" a mysterious, urgent
command came to him there, the voice identifying itself as the
Archangel Gabriel; "Recite in the Name of your Lord, the Creator,
who creates man from a clot." Like Moses of old and the biblical
prophet Jeremiah Mohammed demurred, protesting he was
unqualified, unable either to read or to write, but the awe-
inspiring voice persisted: "Recite! Your Lord is most merciful,
for He...teaches man...that which he knew not." Mohammed was
about 40, a prominent tradesman with social status and family,
known for a compulsion to help strangers and the poor. He had
met Jewish Rabbis and Christian Monks on trading caravans into
Syria, both in his youth in company with a uncle, Abu Talib, and
later as caravan overseer after his marriage at 25 to a wealthy
widow [Kadijah] 15 years his senior, and now this stabbing vision
in the sky and the command, "Recite!...O Mohammed, thou art God's
messenger." The experience left him shaken, but in wrestling
afterward with distress over it, the words burned in him.

His wife encouraged him, as did an elderly cousin, Waraqu, versed
in the Scriptures of Jews and Christians, but Mohammed continued
to receive the mystical messages and initially kept discussion of
it guardedly among household members, relatives and close
friends. When he finally went public with it on the streets of
Mecca he met amused jeers, but as he gained followers the
ridicule turned into fierce hostility since Meccan revenues
depended on the polytheistic shrines at the Kaaba, and a civic
plot was devised to slay the "mad man" insisting on one sovereign
God. Mohammed's associates learned of it and after getting most
of about 150 followers to slip gradually and unobtrusively away
to the oasis town of Yathrib [now Medina] Mohammed and a close
companion, Abu Bakr, made the famous nighttime flight - the
Hegira, traveling unused trails on fast camels as armed bands
hunted them. The time of the Hegira, the "breaking of the
bonds", in A. D. 622 marks the start of the Moslem lunar
calendar; in Medina Mohammed became political and military leader
as well as religious leader, and set about building his model
theocratic state. Attacked by an army out-numbering his own by
three-to-one his small force routed the attackers and his
prestige swelled; without combat he regained Mecca which accepted
his monotheistic standard. Swiftly thereafter, by military force
or diplomacy, his realm spread; by the time of his death in A. D.
632 nearly all of Arabia was under his sway, an explosive
expansion in a single decade in which Mohammed intermittently, in
trance-like moments, received those mystical messages recorded by
scribes annd which became the KORAN, the "Recitation".
During the ensuing century Islam took over a transcontinental
empire, stopped only in Europe at the Battle of Tours south of
Paris in A. D. 732, and the Moslem realm thrived for more than
three centuries. Of five major Patriarchates of ancient
Christianity - Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and
Jerusalem - only Rome remained outside the Moslem sphere; Western
resentment afterward portrayed the domain as built by the sword,
by the much-condemned "jihad", holy war. Much of the
geographical growth came through Islam's esoteric missionaries,
the Sufis; when preponderant the faith did demand Moslem
governments, and certainly the sword also played a part as it did
with Christian "holy wars", but the KORAN itself limits war to
defense, saying in Surah 46:27 that the righteous "defend
themselves only after they are unjustly attacked." "Fight in the
way of God against those who fight against you, but begin not
hostilities" says Surah 2:190; "God loveth not aggressors." The
word "jihad" basically means effort, and to Moslems it denotes
the continuing inner struggle against baser impulses, to refine
motivation in self and to spread the faith; in doing that forced
conversions are forbidden. "Let there be no compulsion in
religion" says Surah 2:256; "Truth stands out clear from error."

"Islam, by legislating war, limited it" writes Islamic Scholar
Seyyed Hossein Nasr of Temple University in his book IDEALS AND
REALITIES OF ISLAM. Islamic law elaborates complex restrictions
on war. Noting that Islam encompasses life's entirety, both
temporal and spiritual, Nasr says war is among the harsh human
realities. Similarly, Christianity also recognizes that fact with
its "just war" theory for defense or when war's potential for
preserving good outweighs the destructiveness. Historically, to
say the Moslem world has been no more violent than the Christian
is, if anything, an understatement writes Nasr. "The stereotype
of Islam as a 'religion of the sword' was forged in animus as
much as ignorance."

* * * * * * * * * *

Atop the white dome of American University's Spiritual Life
Center in Washington, D. C., the sculpted form of a curling, gold
flame stretched skyward symbolizing humanity's reach for God
while in the auditorium below Moslem scholars were seeking that
Divine tracery in the affairs of earth. It is a characteristic
hallmark of Islam, that intermeshing of the spiritual and the
mundane, other-worldly and this-worldly, business, professions,
government and God; the "religion embraces the whole of life
besides just the cultic, all modes of thought, all fields of
activity" says Temple University Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr.
In that recent Washington conference on "Islam in the Modern
World", for instance, examining the faith's application in
science, technology, art, economics, literature, politics and law
in a paper about the natural sciences Nasr observed: "A stone is
a stone but it is not just a stone because it is related to a
greater whole within whose context it possessed a meaning in
addition to its crystalline structure, its specific weight." To
Islam all existence from the stone to the heavens is inextricably
intertwined, a Divine intent suffusing every dimension, private
social, moral, legal, visible and invisible; it makes no
dichotomy between sacred and secular, seeing all being as a
unity, a "tawhid", a totality. "Whithersoever ye turn there is
the presence of God" says Surah 2:115 of the KORAN "for God is
All-pervading, All-Knowing"; there is in fact not even an
appropriate word in Arabic, Persian, or other Islamic languages
for temporal or secular as distinct from religious. The Islamic
perspective sees no seperation between government and duty to
God, between church and state. Sharp seperation is "the basic
mistake of modern Western liberalism" says Islamic scholar Fazlur
Rahman of the University of Chicago; "It has been carried to the
extreme. The American Founding Fathers saw it differently."

Although both Judiasm and Christianity see their faith as
applying in all realms of life, they express an inexorable rift
between the world and the ideal, the profane and the Holy;
"Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God
the things that are God's" said Jesus, and Greek-Oriental
influence deepened the demarcation. Although it sometimes
erroneously is assumed among Westerners that Moslems worship some
special God called "Allah", that simply is "God" in Arabic, the
prayer language of Islam which specifically affirms its God as
that identical One of the biblical prophets and Jesus. "There is
no God but He - it is He Who sent down to thee step by step in
truth, the Book, confirming what went before it" says Surah 3:2-3
"and He sent down the law of Moses and the Gospel of Jesus before
this as a guide to mankind." The Arabic "Allah" is related to
"Elohim", a word for "God" in biblical Hebrew, a sister Semitic
tongue, and some of the best English translations of the KORAN,
such as those by Indian scholar Abdullah Usuf Ali and British
scholar A. J. Adberry, consistently use the word "God" though
another respected English translation by Muhammad M. Pickthall
switches to Arabic for "Allah". "It's simply the Arabic word for
God" says Hosny Gaber, the turbaned, dark robed scholar who
directs Manhattan's Islamic Center; "Moslems believe God is the
God of all nations and tongues, 'Allah' is used in worship as a
matter of blessing, otherwise it doesn't matter." Insofar as
terminology goes Islam records a lavish roll of designations for
God, the 99 "Beautiful Names" such as the Beneficent, the Loving,
the Omniscient, the Exalted, the Forgiving, the Forbearing, the
Pardoner, the Mighty, the Wise, the Provider, Subduer, Helper,
Protector, Evolver, Sustainer, Truth, The Everlasting, The
Creator.

"To Him is due the primal origins of the heavens and the earth"
says Surah 6:101-103: "No vision can grasp him...He is above all
comprehension, yet is acquainted with all things." It's
offensive to Moslems to be called "Mohammedans", once common
among Westerners, since it implies worship of their prophet,
Mohammed, which is utterly contrary to their faith; Islam greatly
honors Mohammed, meaning "highly praised", considering him a
model example, and his tomb, Islam's third most sacred spot, is
in Medina, but he is regarded as strictly human, a mortal who
lived and died, and worship is ardently reserved to the one,
universal God. "Set up no rivals unto God" enjoins Surah 2:22,
and Surah 22:73 adds "Those on whom beside God ye call cannot
create even a fly, if they all met together for the purpose."
Islam's basic credo is short and pungent, "La ilaha illa Allah,
wa Muhammadun rasulu Allah"; "There is no God but God, and
Mohammed is the prophet of God"; sometimes "prophet" is rendered
"messenger", but to make that succinct confession is considered
becoming a Moslem. "Anyone who accepts Divine revelation is a
'Moslem' in its most universal sense, be he a Moslem, Christian,
Jew or Zoroastrian" says Nasr, citing followers of the only four
historic, monotheistic faiths. Basically Moslem "refers to that
human being who through use of his intelligence and free will
accepts a Divinely revealed law" Nasr adds in his book IDEALS AND
REALITIES OF ISLAM.

After the confession, the second of the five "pillars" to which
practicing Moslems adhere is a steady round of prayer, prescribed
five times a day facing Mecca - at dawn, noon, midafternoon,
sunset and after dark, preceded by certain washings and reading
of the "Fatiha", the brief opening chapter of the KORAN. In
their prayers Moslems alternately stand, bow and go on their
knees, foreheads and noses touching the prayer rug; "Allahu
akbur!" - the phrase recurs repeatedly through the cycles - the
"raka's" - of prayer; "God is great!". The other pillars are
charity [giving 2.5 percent annually of total income to the
poor]; fasting from sunrise to sunset during Ramadan [the ninth
month of the Moslem lunar calendar], and finally, if a person is
physically and financially able, making a pilgrimage at least
once in his lifetime to Mecca, Islam's most sacred place. It is
the site of the "Kaaba", a small cubic building housing the
"Black Stone", an aging meteorite, said to have been part of an
ancient altar to God erected by the biblical Abraham and his son
Ishmael, symbolizing the covenant between God and Humanity; the
annual pilgrimage - the "Haj" - produces the largest
multinational gathering on earth, about 1.5 million people in
recent years from more than 70 countries. Islam's second most
sacred site is Jerusalem, from whence Mohammed in a vision is
said to have ascended through the seven heavens on a lightening-
swift white horse, Baraq, conferring with Jesus, Moses, Abraham,
and other prophets. "Welcome to the righteous brother" each
greeted him, recounts the "Hadith", the traditions; at length on
that mystical "night journey" he is said to have met God behind a
veil.

Islam has no ordained clergy, but looks to learned men for
leadership; "Imams" simply are those who lead religious worship,
"Mullahs" are religious teachers, and even "Ayatollahs" of the
minority group dominant in Iran, the Shi'ites, are only those who
have gained wide prestige for religious wisdom, but in that
minority branch, however, they can be accorded almost divine
status as emergence of the hidden "Madhi". The KORAN, a book of
"Surahs" or chapters, is regarded not only as the supreme
literary glory of Arabic language but as the explicit
comunication of God, conveyed by the Archangel Gabriel; Mohammed,
being illiterate, did not write it but in intervals of trance
recited its passages to be recorded by followers - "The
unlettered prophet" says Surah 7:157 "follows the light which is
sent down with him." Unlike the BIBLE, which was recorded over
thousands of years by many sages and prophets and whose
revelations are couched in events, the KORAN was produced in a
swift 23 years; it is largely exhortative, its appeals and
admonitions pouring forth molten-hot. Moslems say it is
impossible to capture its artistic grandeur in translations from
the Arabic, but it has been rendered in most major languages;
much of it, especially its graphic descriptions of heaven and
hell, are regarded as highly metaphorical. While the KORAN is
Islam's supreme authority, there are also three other sources for
it, chiefly the voluminous traditions, the "hadith", recording
the personal acts and sayings of Mohammed, six collections of
them totaling about 30 volumes, making up the "sunna" - the path
of the prophet. In addition there is a vast, intricate system of
laws, the "shari'a", legal interpretations laid down by four
slightly varying schools of jurisprudence in early centuries of
Islam, with such interpretations, the "iztihad", mostly regarded
as closed since the 10th century, although reformers press for
reopened flexibility.

Beyond that the "ijma", the consensus of the Moslem community,
constitutes a fourth avenue of Islamic decision making; although
Westerners often criticize Islam for allowing stoning of
adulterers or cutting off the hands of persistent thieves, Moslem
laws emphasize that these laws are so surrounded by limitations
and protections that they are rarely carried out - for instance,
four eyewitnesses are required to convict for adultery so "it
would have to be in the open on a public street" observes
Muhammad abd el Rauf, director of Washington's Islamic Center.
Regarding theft, under numerous conditions such as family need or
if not habitual nor involving housebreaking the harsh penalty is
not applicable, and has only been applied in Saudi Arabia about
30 times in 40 years; "There you can leave your house open for
weeks in your absence and nothing is bothered" says Gaber, and
Ala' Edin Kharofa, President of the Moslem League in America,
says "it's for the protection of the community...there you can
walk the streets at night in safety." Although the KORAN permits
polygamy, as was the case in some biblical times, it is
discouraged as morally almost impossible and the KORAN says if a
man can't do justice among wives then marry only one, and Surah
4:129 makes it tough: "Ye are never able to be fair and just
among them." As for the Islamic law allowing a man to divorce a
woman by declaring it three times, that law and also the KORAN
insists on family efforts at reconciliation, financial provision
for a divorced woman and children, and also allow a woman to seek
divorce for various reasons such as cruelty, no-support or
desertion; "Divorce is the most hateful things to God of the
lawful things" says Mohammed in the "Hadith". "Religiously
speaking, if a person says 'I hate You' they should be divorced
says Sohair Saukkary, a young Egyptian woman who works at the
United Nations. She says that although Islamic laws are at times
unfairly applied or interpreted against women.
* * * * * * * * * *
Out of the same soil came the Star of David, the Cross of Christ
and the Crescent of Islam; they emerged from the same ancient
Middle Eastern region, among kindred semitic peoples of kindred
tongues, and they pointed to the same God, and yet they differ
about approaches to Him even though Jews, Christians and Moslems
all affirm belief in the One God of the biblical prophets and the
Commandments. "We have no basic quarrel with Judiasm and
Christianity" says Islamic scholar Eqbal Ahmad, senior fellow for
Washington's Institute for Policy Studies; "Their God is our God,
their prophets our prophets, and our history is one of religious
collaboration." That history, however, has also been one of much
misunderstanding and sometimes polemics, exacerbated in modern
times by the Arabic-Jewish conflict over Israel, but Moslem
scholars insist that this is strictly a political struggle not
bearing on the elemental fraternity in religion. "Those who
believe in the KORAN and those who follow the Jewish Scriptures
and the Sabians and the Christians, any who believe in God and
the last day and work righteousness, on them shall be no fear,
nor shall they grieve" assures Surah 2:62 of Islam's sacred book,
the KORAN. Research indicates the "Sabians" were a group of
white-robed agnostic Christians in Iraq at the time the KORAN was
transmitted through the Arab Mohammed, six centuries after the
rise of Christianity out of the still older Judiasm. Both Jews
and Arabs trace their ancestry to the biblical Patriarch Abraham
with the Arab lineage seen as coming from his first-born son
Ishmael, born to the Egyptian servant girl Hagar, and the Jews
stemming from the second son Isaac born to Abraham's wife Sarah.

Divine promises were made to each of the sons, as recorded in the
biblical book of "Genesis", to make both founders of great
nations; "We're cousins" says Muhammad abd el Rauf, of
Washington's Islamic Center, speaking of Moslems and Jews, and
"We have great respect for Judiasm and Christianity for they are
related to Islam through God Himself." A young Jewish girl
serving as a page at an Islamic Conference at Washington's
American University, student Shari Boyer of Cheltenham, PA,
remarked of the true believers after listening to the Arab
discussions "So I'm okay...we're accepted by Moslems as followers
of Allah"; Assistant Director of Washington's Islamic Center
Rahman Osman observed "It's the same religion in different forms,
a matter of different names." Over and over again the KORAN
asserts that the one, true God is that of Adam, Noah, Abraham,
Moses, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob and other biblical prophets, citing
28 of them at different times, as well as Jesus; "These were the
prophets who received God's guidance" says Surah 6:92, "Copy the
guidance they received." Stories of their experiences with God
are retold in the KORAN, of Adam and Eve eating from the
forbidden tree, of Noah warning of the flood, of Moses leading
the children of Israel out of Egyptian slavery, but the details
are usually scanty compared to the biblical accounts, and often
differ in details. "O People of the Book" appeals the KORAN in
Surah 3:64 referring to Jews and Christians "come to common terms
as between us and you: that we worship none but God"; but there
are also scrappy critiques and rebukes of Christians and Jews,
reflecting keen tensions, and family disputes are often the
hottest as many have noted. "Ye People of the Book! Why do ye
clothe truth with falsehood and conceal the truth while ye have
knowledge?" demands Surah 3:71, and Surah 7:169 deplores "They
inherited the Book but they chose for themselves the vanities of
the world."

Regarding Jesus, he is portrayed as being born of a virgin,
bringing the Gospel, healing the blind and diseased, raising the
dead and finally ascending directly to God, but Islam rejects
basic Christian doctrines about Him, His human incarnation of
Divinity and His crucifixion death because of human sin. That
culminating, atoning event is commemorated by Christians at
Easter, along with Jesus' resurrection victory - keystone of
Christian faith, but in Surah 4:157 the KORAN says "They said in
boast 'We killed Jesus Christ, the son of Mary, the apostle of
God'; but they killed Him not nor crucified Him, but so it was
made to appear to them...For of a surety they killed Him not."
Moslems hold that an image or kind of effigy of Jesus remained on
the cross, making it appear He had died there, but "Nay, God
raised Him up unto Himself" contends Surah 4:158; regarding
Christian belief in Jesus as fully human yet fully manifesting
God Himself in human dimensions, Moslems consider such a belief
as a blasphemous detraction from the one, unmatchable God. "To
set up partners with God is to devise a sin most heinous indeed"
says Surah 4:48; referring to the Christian concept of God as
expressed in three forms, Father Son and Holy Spirit, Surah 5:76
adds "They do blaspheme who say: 'God is one of three in a
Trinity...there is no god but God." Yet despite differences
Moslems are "nearest among them in love" to Christians says Surah
5:85; the KORAN ascribes special mysterious characteristics to
Jesus, His virgin birth, His miracles and direct ascension to God
- mystical qualities not attributed to Mohammed, who lived and
died a natural death and is not credited with miracles. But
Jesus Himself is portrayed in the KORAN as disputing Divine
Sonship; asked by God if He told people to worship Him in
"derogation of God" Surah 5:119-120 reports Jesus as saying:
"Glory to Thee! Never could I say what I had no right to say.
Had I said such a thing, Thou wouldst indeed have known it. Thou
knowest what is in My own heart...Never said I to them aught but
what Thou didst command me to say, to wit, 'Worship God, My Lord
and your Lord'."

Concerning Jesus birth Surah 3:45-47 says an angel appeared to
Mary and told her God had "chosen thee above the women of all
nations" to bear a special Son; "O Mary! God giveth thee glad
tidings of a word from Him; His name will be Jesus...held in
honor in this world and in the hereafter and of the company of
those nearest to God." Mary protested, as she did in the NEW
TESTAMENT accounts of the annunciation, "O my Lord! How shall I
have a son when no man hath touched me?" and the angel replied
"Even so: God createth that which He willeth; When He hath
decreed a plan, He but saith to it 'Be" and it is." Another
account in Surah 16:23 says she later withdrew to a remote place,
the pains of childbirth driving her against a palm tree; "Ah!
Would that I had died before this!" she cries out, but but a
voice assured her and fresh dates fell from the tree to soothe
her eyes and to eat for strength. In telling of Jesus calling of
his disciples the KORAN says they affirm themselves as Moslems;
"We are God's helpers" they say in Surah 3:52, "We believe in God
and do thou bear witness that we are Moslems." There are also
apparent allusions to Jesus' last supper with them but with
spectacular overtones; in Surah 5:115-118 they asked Him if the
Lord would "send down to us a table set with viands...We only
wish to eat thereof and satisfy our hearts and to know that Thou
hast indeed told us the truth, and that we ourselves may be
witness to the miracle." Jesus prayed for the table to be sent,
the account says, and God acquiesced.

Among Moslems the "person of Jesus is very tenderly regarded, as
the Word of God" says Islamic scholar Fazlur Rahman of the
University of Chicago; "Moslems see Jews as emphasizing the law,
Jesus as emphasizing love and Mohammed as synthesizing the two.
Although the KORAN refers repeatedly to biblical stories, usually
only in fragmentary form, orthodox Islam maintains that none of
the material is derived directly from the BIBLE or from
Mohammed's conversations with Jews or Christians he encountered;
contents of the KORAN "did not derive from Judiasm or
Christianity" says abd el Rauf, "each religion came directly from
God through Divine communication - Moses received the TORAH
directly from God and Jesus received messages from God Himself as
did Mohammed, and because the source was in God there are many
similarities since they are connected through God Himself." Some
reform-minded Moslem scholars question the view that there was no
input from Judiasm and Christianity but Rahman says: "That
position is untenable...There are other obvious sources, other
Arabs knew a great many of the biblical stories, but Moslem
attitudes toward the KORAN generally are mythical, not
realistic." In the KORAN's account of Abraham's willingness to
sacrifice his son in obedience to God the son is not identified,
though Moslem tradition regards the son as Ishmael, not Isaac as
identified in the BIBLE, but in both cases the boy is saved at
the last moment by God's intervention after Abraham's action to
carry out the sacrifice had demonstrated his faith. "This was
obviously a trial" says Surah 37:106, and verse 109 adds a
blessing: "Peace and salutations to Abraham." While Moslems
affirm the validity of the BIBLE - the Jewish Scriptures and the
Christian Gospel - they maintain that the contents have been
adulterated through processes of the years; "deformed" a typical
word for it goes, although specific exceptions are rarely cited.

Islamic scholars are thoroughly acquainted with the BIBLE and
refer to it regularly in commentaries and explanatory notes on
the KORAN but rank-and-file Moslems generally are not familiar
with the BIBLE itself, regarding the KORAN as sufficient and the
last, superior word. Despite the KORAN's occasional thunder at
those who reject it, it also makes repeated appeals for unity,
sounding a kind of early-day ecumenical note. Surah 3:110 says:
"If only the People of the Book had faith, it were best for
them"; Surah 5:21 says "O People of the Book! Now hath come unto
you, making things clear unto you, Our apostle [Mohammed], after
the break in the series of Our apostles." But as for "those who
divide their religion and break up into sects, thou hast no part
in them in the least" advises Surah 6:159; "Their affair is with
God: He will in the end tell them the truth of what they did."
Faith in one God calls for a "single brotherhood" says Surah
23:52, "but people have cut off their affair of unity between
them into sects, each party rejoiced with that which is with
itself." Surah 42:15 assures that, nevertheless, "God will bring
us together, and to him is our final goal."

* * * * * * * * * *

Both Moslems and Christians envision a "second advent" of Jesus
Christ in the world at the end of time, ushering in a righteous
reign of peace and justice; the concept also resembles Jewish
intimations of a longed-for messianic kingdom. In the midst of
earthly chaos, greed, depravity and plunder Jesus will "descend
among you as a just judge" says authoritative Islamic tradition,
the "hadith"; "Not one of the People of the Book [the BIBLE] will
fail to believe in Him...Spite, mutual hatred and jealousy of one
another will certainly depart, and when he summons people to
accept wealth, not one will do so." The climactic eschatological
events are variously viewed among Moslems as veiled inklings,
necessarily couched in limited human imagery, just as most
Christians similarly regard NEW TESTAMENT passages about the
close of the age; "But of that day or that hour no one
knows...but only the Father" Jesus says in "The Gospel of St.
Mark" 13:32, and Surah 7:187 of the KORAN says of that final
stage: The knowledge thereof is with God alone." "It's a matter
of the unseen things" says Imam Hosny Gaber, director of
Manhattan's Islamic Center, but nevertheless both religions
conceive a culminating return of Jesus and while portrayals of
the particulars differ, and while Moslems do not share the basic
Christian view of Him as the utmost human mirroring of God to
humankind, both accord Him a special transcendent role. "Christ
has a unique place in Islamic eschatology" says Moslem scholar
Eqbal Ahmad of Washington's Institute for Policy Studies, while
Francis Peters, a New York University specialist on Islam,
observes that "Jesus is seen as the prophet who didn't die." The
KORAN calls Jesus "a Sign", a "Word and Spirit of God", the "Al-
Masih" [Messiah or Christ], referring to him in 15 of its 114
Surahs [chapters], always with reverence, never with criticism.

Of the effort to crucify him the KORAN says He ascended directly
to God without dying, leaving only a "likeness" on the cross, in
contrast to the Christian teaching that He died, was resurrected
and ascended everliving to God; that is the triumph celebrated by
Christians at Easter signifying the ultimate destiny for
humanity. In their own way Moslems also see Jesus as overcoming
a crucifixion attempt through "occultation" into the heavenly
dimension; "The unbelievers plotted and planned, and God too
planned, and the best of planners is God" says Surah 3:54-55,
"Behold! God said 'O Jesus! I will take Thee and raise Thee to
Myself..."; interpretations vary as to whether in body or in
spirit but Surah 43:62 adds: "And Jesus shall be a Sign for the
coming of the hour of judgement." That vision of final
"parousia" is mutually held by Moslems and by others in the
predominantly Judeo-Christian United States, a nation which not
only faces rising needs for knowledgeable reciprocity with a
resurgent Islam abroad, but which also has a rapidly swelling
Moslem population within its own borders. David Assad,
secretary-general of the Council of Mosques in this country, says
the number of U. S. Moslems has quadrupled since 1960, now
totaling 2.5 million. Much of the growth, half or more, has come
through immigration but a high rate of conversions, including
such notables as the forthrightly devout boxing champion Muhammad
Ali, also has boosted Moslem ranks. There are now about 420
Islamic centers in U. S. cities and about 80 mosques, buildings
with prayer rooms; major centers include those in Washington, D.
C., Detroit, Toledo, Los Angeles, Chicage, St. Louis, San
Francisco and New York, where a new $20 million blocksquare
Manhattan mosque is planned, financed by contributions from
Moslem countries, and where construction is expected to start in
the summer of 1979.

The overall total of U. S. Moslems includes the Community of
Islam in the West founded by American blacks, formerly called
"Black Muslims" or "Bilalians" and once considered heretical by
orthodox Islam because of anti-white policies and viewing the
late founder Elijah Muhammad as a "prophet"; both positions have
been dropped since his death in 1975, and the ensuing leadership
of his son, Wallace D. Muhammad, has brought racially inclusive
policies in accord with regular Islam, and acceptance by it. The
organization, estimated at 150,000 members, has workers active in
many cities, white-turbaned white-robed young men, seeking
donations for various projects, recruiting and circulating their
beliefs verbally and in publications sold on the streets.
"Numerous circumstances are forcing the churches to take Islam
seriously after centuries of ignorance, prejudice and stereotypes
accumulated about it among Christians" says the Rev. Mr. Byron
Lee Haines of Hartford, CT, director of a task force on Moslem-
Christian relations set up in 1977 by the interdenominational
National Council of Churches, who adds: "It's a matter of
understanding our world"; the United Presbyterian notes that
Christian-Moslem dialogue sessions are now held regularly around
the country and says: "Our first responsibility is to rectify
our mistakes, but there also are difficulties in their
misimpressions of Christian teachings." On an international
level both Roman Catholicism and the National Council of
Churches, embracing most major Protestant and Eastern Orthodox
denominations, have also established liaison groups carrying on
conversations with Islamic representatives to further better
understanding. William A. Graham of Harvard University, a
specialist on world religions, says Jews, Christians and Moslems
"have more in common than they realize; they share a common
monotheism, a common prehistory mythology, a common historical
heritage." There are also those concordant intimations about the
"last things", the transforming conclusion of historical time and
emergence of a new world out of the old, pictorially indicated
and variously interpreted in Jewish, Christian and Moslem
teachings.

"It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of
the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the
mountains" says "Isaiah 2" of Jewish Scriptures "...and peoples
shall flow to it...and the Lord alone will be exalted in that
day". "Then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully
understood" says 1st Corinthians 13:12 of the NEW TESTAMENT, and
in the KORAN Surah 6:60 says: "Then will He [God] show ye the
truth of all that ye did." That decisive, revealing day, laying
bare the self-determined sum of human lives in the brilliance of
full truth, is called the final judgement; scriptures of the
three interconnected faiths picture it as preceded by tremendous
world turmoil. Moslem teachings of the prophet Mohammed recorded
in collections of his sayings and acts called the "hadith", or
traditions, describe that concluding era as submerged in
confusion, deceit and bewilderment; it will be a time of "flight
and plunder" say the accounts, resembling descriptions in the NEW
TESTAMENT of "commotion after commotion", of "civil strife" when
"the killer will not know why he killed or the one who was killed
why he was killed", when many "will summon men to error", when
people are "blind and deafened to the truth." Other Moslem signs
recited include a "removal of true knowledge, the abundance of
ignorance, the prevalence of fornication, the prevalence of wine-
drinking, the small number of men and the large number of women",
a collapse of trust, the shrinking of "swifthurtling time" so
that a "year is like a month, a month like a week, a week like a
day" and wealth so abundant that it is poured out "without
counting it." "But at that very moment God will send the
Messiah, the son of Mary, who will descend at the white minaret
in the east of Damascus wearing two garments dyed with saffron
and placing his hands upon the wings of two angels" says the
"hadith" collected by a compiler named Muslim in the time of
Mohammed's contemporaries.

Paralleling NEW TESTAMENT references the Islamic traditions say
Jesus will seek out and slay the "anti-Christ" called "Dajjal", a
one-eyed, woolly-haired liar, so massively deceiving people that
Hell is made to seem like Paradise and Paradise like Hell; "and
people whom God has protected from him will then come to Jesus
who will wipe their faces and tell them of the ranks they will
have in Paradise." The Moslem traditions, again resembling those
in the Christian "Book of Revelation", describe a devastating
onslaught by evil armies from East and West, "Gog and Magog", but
Jesus beseeches God who wipes out the stormers of earth and
heaven. Then God sends a rain to "wash the earth till it is like
a mirror", bringing forth abundance and Jesus will bring an era
of goodness, justice, love and serenity. Two "hadith" collections
- by both Muslim and Bukhari, another compiler - cite that
righteous finale under Jesus, making it doubly authenticated.
Technically, some Moslem jurists see the meaning as that the
spirit of Jesus will prevail over the world in its closing
stages, not a literal return, says Manhattan's Imam Gaber, "but
mostly Moslems believe that the prophet Jesus will come at the
end of the world." Some accounts say he will marry and have
offspring; after his history-closing reign says Muslim's "hadith"
God will send a "pleasant wind" carrying believers, including
Jesus, to earthly death, leaving only the wicked who will be as
"unstable as birds", as "disorderly as asses", worshipping
falsehoods.

Then a trumpet blows, says the account, signaling an overwhelming
"rain like a torrent" and sweeping transformation of nature, as
from "drought" to "greening"; a second trumpet blast and
humanity's dead are raised, including Mohammed and Jesus, for
Judgement Day, the "day of requital", blazing forth the reality
of everyone, bent for heaven or hell. God's "Day of Sorting Out"
as Surah 68:17-40 puts it is when everyone will see precisely
what they have become, and then finally, notes Gaber, all will
also know the truth about Jesus, removing differences about his
personality; "one of the most controversial things in the world
has been who He really is." In pursuit of fuller collaboration
among Jews, Moslems and Christians Muhammad abd el Rauf of
Washington's Islamic Center says the first need is for greater
mutual understanding. He adds: "All religious people now see
more clearly the dangers of corrosive materiality and loose
conduct in the world, the forgetting of God; we're not just
animals, but body and soul and we must take care of that." Gaber
says that moral-ethical systems are almost identical for the
three faiths in resisting the foes of religion. He adds:
"Whether Moslem, Christian, Jew, we have been given belief in
God, that we are not animalists and materialists who deny God and
do anything; we are believers who can cooperate against the
atheistic movements of the times and defend the laws of human
conscience without which every destructive force is let loose in
the world.

2003-01-12T02:05:00.000-05:00

Muslims in America
by Lynne Duke, Washington Post Staff Writer

THE WASHINGTON POST NATIONAL WEEKLY EDITION NOV 1/7 1993 P.31.

The veiled Muslim women battled beneath the volley-ball net,
cheered on by similarly clad sisters in the gymnasium stands.
Outside, on a sports field in Teaneck, NJ, Muslim men competed in
track, soccer, and flag football. At the appointed times of day
during the Seventh Annual Islamic Games last summer, the
assemblage of a thousand turned toward Mecca to pray. "The KORAN
does not in any way tell us as Muslims that you can't go out
there and have fun" says Meraj Khan of the Bronx, the emir - or
ruler - of the sporting event, which grows larger each year and
draws Muslims from up and down the East Coast. The games are a
symbol of how Islam is thriving in America. Mosques are
springing up around the country.

Muslims, be they pious or secular, are becoming more active in
civic and political affairs. The U. S. military, for instance,
is about to welcome its first Islamic chaplain. There are other
less sanguine signs of life of this American religious minority,
as reflected in a cynical comment by Salah Obeidallah, an
executive in Paterson, NJ, after the 26 February 1993 explosion
beneath the World Trade Center: "If the damage was a little more
severe and you had thousands of casualties, the Muslims might as
well go to the sea and swim; Americans have a tendency
immediately to label a minority .. I mean, look what happened to
the Japanese in the 1940s." While Muslims are growing in number,
diversity and visibility in America, there remains among them a
strong undercurrent of anxiety about living in a culture that
many say treats Islam as foreign, mysterious, or worth of fear.

These sensitivities became pronounced, particularly for immigrant
Muslims who constitute a majority within the religion here, when
U. S. hostages were held in Iran in 1979 at the height of that
country's Islamic revolution. The anxieties emerged anew during
the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when an anti-Arab, anti-Muslim
backlash flared in some parts of the country. Now, with four
alleged Muslim terrorists on trial for the trade center blast and
several more, including a Sheik, awaiting trial in a related
conspiricy case, Muslims are again concerned that media
portrayals only add to popular stereotypes of them as terrorists,
or, at the least, fundamentalist fanatics. "This notion of all
of us being orthodox and sort of fanatic is totally off the mark"
says Mervat Hatem, an Egyptian-American professor of political
science at Howard University in Washington, D. C. "In this
country there seems to be the assumption that all of us are like
that," she says. "It is certainly a simplistic representation of
Muslims, and it denies us the diversity which exists in any other
group.

Muslims in the United States comprise a diverse blend of
ethnicities. To some, Islam means the practice of religious
rituals such as fasting and attending mosque; to others, Islam
means a cultural or ethnic affiliation which has little to do
with religion, but interviews with Muslims across this spectrum
suggest that the concern about anti-Muslim bias is strong. A
national survey conducted three weeks after the trade center
blast shows there is basis for their fear. At a time when
suspects in the case had been identified as Muslim
fundamentalists, twenty percent of survey respondents said the
blast and its aftermath "will impact negatively" on their views
of Muslims. Forty-two percent agreed with the statement that
"there should be restrictions upon the number of Muslims allowed
to immigrate." Among a select list of religious groups, Muslims
received the lowest favorable and highest unfavorable ratings,
according to the survey by the John Zogby Group International, an
Arab-American research firm.

In a statement released at its Thirtieth Annual Convention in
Kansas City in early September, the Islamic Society of North
America, which indirectly represents 200,000 Muslims from mosques
around the country, condemned the trade center bombing. It also
complained that such an act of violence is "absolutely no excuse
for politicians and media to drag an entire American religious
community through the mud." With the demise of the Soviet Union,
the search for a new American enemy has stopped at Islam's door,
says Yaser El-Menshawy, an Egyptian-American computer engineer.
"There's definitely a push to create a new enemy" says El-
Menshawy, President of the Newark based Public Affairs Council,
created recently to try to counter what Muslims there feel is the
prevalence of negative images about Islam. Shabbir Mansuri,
Director of the Council on Islamic Education, an Orange County,
CA, based group which helps textbook publishers present accurate
information on Islam says one of the most negative portrayals of
Muslims is that of "Muslim Fundamentalist." The term is used so
broadly, in such pejorative contexts and void of any explanation
that its use, to him, amounts to "racist bias" against Muslims.

Such bias is the subject of Mansuri's work which he began in 1988
when his daughter, then a sixth-grader, read him a passage in her
schoolbook which confused her about what Muslims are to do when
they kneel to pray. "According to the textbook she was supposed
to rub her face in the sand when she was praying" says Mansuri,
who is from India. "She was saying: 'Daddy, we've got to get
some sand in the house.'" About eighteen percent of the world's
population is Islamic, but Muslims in the United States are only
a fraction of the nation's 250 million residents. Tje American
Muslim Council estimates there are five million Muslims here,
although some scholars place the number below four million. The
U. S. Census does not ask residents for religious affiliation and
demographers consider pinning down a precise number difficult.

Fifteen years ago there were 500 incorporated Muslim mosques, or
masjids, compared with nearly a thousand today, according to the
council's senior research analyst, Fareed H. Nu'man. About 56
percent of U. S. Muslims are immigrants, but contrary to the
popular perception only 12 percent of Muslims here are of Arabic
origin - a figure which parallels the small percentage of Arabic
Muslims worldwide. About a quarter of American Muslims are of
Indo-Pakistani origin, 5 percent are African, 4 percent Iranians,
and smaller, relatively equal numbers of Turks, Southeastern
Asians, and Caucasians. African-Americans constitute the largest
single segment, forty-two percent of the total, according to the
council. Although the racially separatist Nation of Islam has
received the most media attention in recent years, most U. S.
Muslims who are black adhere to the more universalist concepts of
Islam, not the narrow racial focus of the Nation, says Nu'man.
Says Asad Abukhalil, a Muslim and research fellow at University
of California (Berkeley) and Middle Eastern specialist: "There
is a great diversity in Islam; to the shock and dismay of a lot
of people who are phobic about Islam, Muslims in the U. S. mirror
all the diversity and colorfulness of American lifestyles.

"Although it is true that some Muslims try to insulate themselves
from those aspects of American culture which conflict with their
religion, it is not fair to call them isolationist" says Siraj
WahhaJ, African-American imam of Masjid At-Taqwa in Brooklyn. He
says: "On our jobs there are non-Muslims. We are not isolated
from them." For Muslims concerned with following the strictures
of Islam "the challenge is to interact without assimilating into
the values with which we interact." Two years ago Wahhaj became
the first Muslim to deliver the opening prayer for a session of
the U. S. House of Representatives.

Islam began in the Seventh Century in the region now know as
Saudi Arabia when followers believe that ALLAH (i.e., GOD, the
Hebrew ELOHIM) revealed the faith to the prophet Muhammad. That
revelation is written in the KORAN as the Word of God. The
message conveyed through Muhammad essentially was the same as the
messages of Abraham, Moses, John the Baptist and Jesus, but Islam
considers the message of ALLAH to be faith in its perfect form.
Islam is distinct also because the KORAN holds a relatively more
important place in Islam than do the Scriptures in Judaism or
Christianity. The practice of Islam consists of five
obligations, or pillars; (1) A profession of faith that ALLAH is
the one and only GOD; (2) Prayer five times a day; (3) Charity to
help the poor (ZAKAT tax); (4) Fasting during the month of
Ramadan to mark the revelation of the KORAN to Muhammad; and (5)
The pilgrimage to Mecca, the holy city where Muhammad was born.
Mervat Hatem asserts: "There are different degrees of adherence
to these pillars which creates different kinds of Muslims."

Hatem, for instance, does not pray five times daily, nor does she
adhere to the Koranic injunction that women cover their heads.
"I think that I am a good Muslim even though by some standards I
would not be. Judged by orthodox standards, I would not be."
Nahida Fadli Dajani, 60, of Annandale, VA, hosts an Arabic "talk
show" and says she follows the principles of Islam but not the
practices she feels are unfair to women. Dajani does not attend
mosques, where men and women are segregated, nor does she cover
her head. "As a secular Muslim I ask for new interpretations of
the KORAN; for her Islam is a "humanistic culture".

El-Menshawy, on the other hand, attempts to keep his daily life
in line, not only with the spirit but with the letter of the
KORAN as well. He says: "There are certainly questions about
how to live in this society. Do you go out and buy a house and
take a loan, knowing that paying interest is a sin? Do you shake
a woman's hand? If you own a store do you sell pork, or not? If
you own a newsstand do you sell PENTHOUSE, or not? I mean, I
stay away from beaches totally; not only are we not supposed to
have our women exposed, but we're not supposed to look at women."

Scholars say that adherence to Islam is as much a social and
cultural act as a religious one. Many of the differences between
Muslims stem from national customs of their countries of origin,
or from differences in social class or political outlook. Some
Muslims adhere to religious customs out of cultural solidarity as
much as faith according to Yvonne Haddad, University of
Massachusetts expert on Islam in America. Haddad, a non-Muslim,
asserts: "Its sort of like the Jewish identity. Even a non-
practicing Jew who never attends synagogue still considers
himself Jewish. Nobody rules him out of the community.

2003-01-12T02:03:00.000-05:00

IRAN AND THE ISLAMIC WORLD:

Bruce Laingen (Hostage/Embassy Chief of Staff) on Iran,
a superb analysis of the Iranian character:

circa 1980

"Underlying cultural and psychological qualities that account for

the nature of these difficulties are and will remain relatively

constant...The single dominant aspect of the Persian psyche is

(perhaps) an overriding egoism. Its antecedents lie in the long

Iranian history of instability and insecurity, which put a

premium on self- preservation...(The result is) an almost total

Persian preoccupation with self leaving little room for

understanding points of view other than one's own..Thus, for

example, it is incomprehensible to an Iranian that U. S.

immigration law may prohibit issuing him a tourist visa when he

has determined that he wants to live in California...unease about

the nature of the world in which one lives (leads to Iranian

paranoia)..The Persian experience has been that nothing is

permanent and it is commonly perceived that hostile forces

abound...In such an environment each individual must be

constantly alert for opportunities to protect himself against the

malevolent forces that would otherwise be his undoing... This

every-man-for-himself 'bazaar mentality' (produces a) mind-set

that often ignores longer term interests in favor of immediately

obtainable advantages, and countenances practices that are

regarded as unethical by other norms. Added to the Iranians

faith in the omnipotence of God these psychological quirks blind

even Western-educated Iranians to the inter-relation of

events...(Foreign Minister Ibrahim Yagdi was) resisting the idea

that Iranian behavior has consequences on the perception of Iran

in the U. S., or that this perception is somehow related to

American policies regarding Iran.. ..(other Iranian character

traits were) an aversion to accepting responsibility for one's

own actions.... a proclivity for assuming that to say something

is to do it...the Persian concepts of influence and obligation...

(Iranians) are consumed with developing 'parti bazi' - the

influence that will help get things done - while favors are only

grudgingly bestowed, and then just to the extent that a tangible

quid pro quo is immediately perceptible...one should never assume

his side of the issue will be recognized, let alone that it will

be conceded to have merits."

2003-01-12T02:02:00.000-05:00

THE TREATMENT OF WOMEN
BY THE SONS OF ABRAHAM

A Comparison of Attitudes of Christianity and Islam Toward Women

A Paper

for

WOMEN'S STUDY CONFERENCE
Valdosta State University
1-3 March 2001

T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S

CHAPTER I ABRAHAM'S DEFINITION OF WOMEN* * * * * * * 3

CHAPTER II CHRISTIAN ATTITUDES TOWARD WOMEN * * * * * 8

CHAPTER III ISLAMIC ATTITUDES TOWARD WOMEN * * * * * * 11

BIBLIOGRAPHY * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 15

CHAPTER I

ABRAHAM'S DEFINITION OF WOMEN

If the status and treatment of women in the traditions and
cultures of Islam and the status and treatment of women in
Christian cultures and traditions are to be compared, it seems
necessary to begin with Father Abraham, the progenitor of both
peoples involved. Abraham migrated from Ur of the Chaldees to
Canaan four millennia ago (Armstrong, 1993:11). He got involved
in a war between two alliances when his nephew Lot was captured
with all his family and goods. He pursued the malefactors and
defeated them, recovered Lot and all the property and returned
them home. Upon his return home Abraham sought out Melchizedek
(King of Salem, reputed site of Jerusalem; Armstrong,1996:30).
Melchizedek was Priest of Baal El-Eylon (i.e., The Most High
God), to whom he paid a tithe of tribute (Genesis 14:18ff).

Certainly it is possible to take the view that the crucial point
of the Old Covenant comes when Abraham and Lot arrive at the
plains of Jordan after Abraham has realized that their
respective entourages have grown too large and unwieldy to meld
together. Abraham offers to Lot the first choice of options and,
encouraged by his wife, Lot chooses city life in Sodom and
Gomorrah. Abraham departs for the mountains of Palestine to
become a pastoral patriarch. The religions of Sodom and Gomorrah
are baals (i.e., fertility cults) worshiping women as divine
beings, equating their fertility with the fertility of the
earth. Abraham's reaction to this turn of events was to define
women as "chattel" and as "brood stock", though it was not
expressed in those precise terms. This definition has permeated
all the religions espoused by all the physical and spiritual
descendents of Abraham, including the Judaic, Islamic, and
Judeo-Christian traditions.

It seems probable that Abraham's values and ideas were strongly
tempered and influenced by his experiences. The Pharoah at that
time was probably one of the Hyksos (EB,8:38). Abraham, faced
with the necessity of a trip to Egypt, had told Sarah to tell
everyone that she was the sister of Abraham, not his wife
(Genesis 12:13ff). Sarah was told that should the Pharoah find
that she was Abraham's wife that the Pharoah might well take her,
have Abraham murdered, and rob all Abraham had for himself. The
Pharoah indeed took Sarah to bed. The Lord (ELOHIM) visited all
manner of plagues upon Egypt, and Hyksos, realizing something was
sorely amiss, sent both Abraham and Sarah out of the
country. .

According to the Old Covenant Hyksos realized that Sarah must,
indeed, be the wife of Abraham - which motivated him to deport
them. Abraham, having to go to the Kingdom of Gerar, tried the
same ruse upon Abimelech (Genesis 20:2ff), who did the same thing
as Hyksos and bedded Sarah thoroughly. Abimelech was warned in a
dream that he was to die if he kept this up, and so he also
deported the pair. Sarah led quite an interesting life. If it
is desired to research these events, the relevant material can be
found in the Twelfth through the Twentieth Chapters of Genesis.
Abraham's response to all this was to define women as chattel
property and brood-stock.

This definition of women meshed perfectly with the religious
development of the Hebrews. During one of the many Hebrew
sojourns in Egypt one of the pivotal authors (i.e., bards) of the
Pentateuch seems to have come in contact with the ideas of
Ikhnaton (Amenhotep IV, BCE 1379-1362), the eighteenth generation
of the Ptolemaic Dynasty (as was Ikhnaton's wife Nefertiti).
Ikhnaton abandoned the Theban god, Amon, and accepted the Aton.
The Aton, the Sun God, was above all gods, and under Ikhnaton the
term gods was abandoned in favor of God, a monotheistic concept.
The rays of Aton fell upon noble, commoner, slave, Egyptian, and
Asian alike. The personal relation between the Aton and the
royal couple was emphasized, and the Aton was depicted as a
golden orb shedding rays of life upon the royal couple, each ray
ending in a tiny hand proffering the ANKH, the sign of life, to
the royal pair (EB,11:1074).

Unfortunately, even though Ikhnaton was not a warlike pharaoh,
the rest of the pharaohs were, and they were possessed of
defective egos; they must have been vengeful, angry, jealous,
capricious, warlike, vain, and so unsure of themselves that they
found clouds of courtiers necessary (e.g., cherubim and seraphim)
bowing and scraping before them all the day long to boost their
egos. This being the only precept and example of Majesty known
to the ancient Hebrews, they (in their literal, anthropomorphic
fashion) modeled JHWH in this image - causing untold misery until
receptivity to a superior revelation brought a more functional
and accurate insight into the nature of the divine - and the
revelation brought the crucifixion of the Messenger of ABBA and
the rejection of the message of ABBA. All this process of
religious maturation culminated in the Hebrew concept of Jehovah
as a war god, and His priesthood (the embodiment of both the
political and religious institutions - like unto the Caliph of
Islam) promulgated the "revealed" mission to conquer and dominate
the whole world for Jehovah. Every religion of the descendents
of Abraham shares this fanaticism and lack of toleration,
compassion, understanding, love, and forgiveness essentially
characteristic of Christ. Essential to the conduct of this Holy
War (e.g., Crusade, Jihad) are population factories (i.e.,
broodstock) and fertile males (i.e., males who have not
experienced coital frequency sufficient to render them sterile,
pacifistic, and unwarlike) to supply the factories - but without
any pleasure - as a duty, for pleasure in this interaction is a
sin!

Educational level of the world population, ease and
comprehensiveness of communication, and the overcrowding
pressures of cancerous overpopulation growth have all combined to
force a pervasive value shift that anguishes all those ideologues
who need the status quo as a security blanket. A truly major
value shift being forced by these changing social conditions
involves a changed perspective of the status and value of women.
Because of technological advances growing out of the rising
educational level women can perform successfully virtually any
necessary job existent today - hydraulic and electrical power
substitute for brute strength. That sexual interaction is no
longer valued solely for procreation of soldiers, but is coming
to be valued primarily for its recreative and tranquilizing
functions, is an outgrowth of these changed perceptions of the
status, roles, and value of women - and is fomented and
precipitated by scientific and technological advances in birth
control (e.g., the pill) and abortion (e..g., vacuum aspiration)
which obviate the mortality dangers of gestation and child-
birth. The need for the Equal Rights Amendment and the startling
advances in female athletics under Title XX are exemplary
effects. The self-contradictory value that God made women less
valuable than men can never stand the test of enlightened
questioning growing out of being better educated. No male
absolutely certain of his masculinity has ever been threatened by
any change in role models, masculine or feminine.

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz told us that one cannot experience
that which is unintelligible, which means that divine revelation
must not exceed the limits of experiential socialization. Father
Abraham was a nomadic shaikh, a good God-fearing man for his era,
who slaughtered his enemies, stole women and children, as well as
cattle and booty, and sowed salt in the arable lands so that
nothing would grow. Abraham was essentially a polytheist,
recognizing "Elohim" (i.e., an agricultural God), and el-Shaddai
(i.e., a war God) as well as other deities. It is vital to
recognize that the "God-concept" of Abraham arose out of
particular circumstances at a particular time under particular
conditions, and the "God-concept" of Abraham was more ethical and
reflective of the qualities of ABBA than were any other "God-
concepts" of other peoples of his era. Given the socialization
of Abraham, it was impossible for him to assimilate any "God-
concept" closer to that of the ABBA of Jesus of Nazareth. His
definition of women followed from his anthropomorphic "God-
concept".

The whole basic concept of the fertility of woman as a sacred
thing was turned over and reversed (a' la Marx to Hegel) by
Abraham in the Judiac tradition (and, by extrapolation, in the
Judeo-Christian tradition - cf. Paul). Abraham reacted and
rebelled against the whole idea of fertility cults, and seemed to
see the status and position of woman, as far as he was concerned,
as being a chattel property and a brood-stock. It seemed
imperative, under the conditions of four millennia past, that
Abraham needed an heir to inherit his sizable demense (Genesis
15:2: "I have no standing among men, for I have no heir") and
with Hagar, the slave-girl bought for him in Egypt by Sarai, he
brought forth a son named Ishmael (Genesis 16:11ff). Elohim
(ALLAH) showed Hagar a spring near Mt. Marwa, and where to get
food, and they survived. All Arab peoples descended from Ishmael
and all Hebrew peoples descended from Isaac. It is obvious that
even after the passage of more than four millennia the family
feud between the two semitic mamas - Sarah and Hagar - is no
closer to resolution than it was a year after the birth of Issac.

The outgrowth of this came in the fact that Abraham was extremely
devout in his religious practices. He was, in fact, intensely
dogmatic. Abraham saw the necessity of fast population growth
for both religious and political reasons. He also, because he
was a very rich man, saw the need for legitimate inheritance of
property. So, to provide a population factory combined with the
means to provide legitimate inheritance of property, and
additionally to provide a safe and secure milieu in which to
shape and fashion replacements and additions to society so that
such growth could express itself in political and religious
imperialism, he came to see woman (as heretofore pointed out) as
chattel property and brood stock. His conception has been
transmitted and maintained in the Judeo-Christian tradition to
the present time.

Robin Fox (1980:8) asserts that every emergent government
undertakes as virtually its first order of business coopting the
regulation of marriage and the supply of sex. The "marriage and
the family" institution structures the social mechanism through
which replacements for society are manufactured. Through it most
social replacements are created and shaped so as to fit the
social structure, and to perpetuate the group. Through this
mechanism social values, norms (i.e., behavioral expectations),
thought patterns, language usage, patterns of intergenderal
(i.e., sexual) relations, social roles, and culture are
transmitted and absorbed by new recruits. This mechanism
functions through relationships on the primary, as opposed to the
secondary, level; one relates here to significant, as opposed to
generalized, others; to primary and peer individuals and groups.
The religious institution in western culture has been influenced
powerfully by the Judeo- Christian values, particularly as those
values relate to females.

Values relating to females owe tremendously more to affect than
to cognition. The sexual drives of woman are considered by every
culture deriving from any influence of descendents of Abraham as
being a danger to the survival of the culture (i.e., a Capital
danger, if you will) which can be controlled only by the
suppression of women. Because the universe is a system (i.e., a
change ANYWHERE in the system is a change EVERYWHERE in the
system) a change in the status of women anywhere has implications
for every culture in the world. We do need to recognize that
Abraham saw very clearly the need for cohesiveness of home and
family in an otherwise hostile world. The Judaic tradition
specifies "Ten Commandment" sanctions against adultery, envy,
lust (gr. epithemia), and all other social dynamics which cause
conflict. The OLD COVENANT inveighs also against masturbation;
the "Douay Version" states: "It is better to spill your seed in
the belly of a whore than to spill them on the ground."

The fixed submissive position of women within such small, rural
societies, coupled with the suppression of this powerful force,
blighted all the lives involved - both male and female. So
long as a woman stayed in her place she was treasured by the
Hebrews. There are numerous occassions in the OLD COVENANT where
a woman is praised for being such a marvelous exponent of such
values - the Ancient Fathers would have loved Phyllis Shafley.
The compensating factor for this position [which amounted to
slavery] was that woman was absolutely and irreplaceably integral
to the continued survival of the home and the family. Marriage
in this kind of social structure was seen to be simply a
politico- economic union between two families, thereby forming a
unified unit of defense against the outside hostile world
(Fox,1980:140,205). So long as the woman carried her load things
were well - the loss of a woman/wife constituted a total disaster
for the household. .

This situation obtained until the "Industrial Revolution" and the
resultant restructuring of the social system dispossessed woman
from her integral position in the home, and distributed her
functions to other social institutions (Tannahill, 1980:353-4).
When the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini succeeded to power in Iran
his first governmental pronouncement mandated that all women were
to don their chadors, hie themselves back into purdah, and to
produce for the Ayatullah twenty millions of vigorous, healthy,
enthusiastic, aggressive soldiers so that in the next generation
He might smite the Infidel!!! ALLAHU AKBAR!!! (Chronicle, 1987:
1155) This is simply one more example of the Priestly attitude
toward women which has been passed down unchanged in the Judeo-
Christian tradition and in the Islamic tradition from the
Patriarch Abraham to his present day spiritual descendents. It
is the function of the Priest to provide the justification, and
the function of the Ruler to provide the enforcement, to suppress
the sexual drives of woman so that the world might be conquered
for Jahweh/Allah and to reflect Glory and Virtue upon the Priest
and The Ruler for accomplishing this. In SEX IN HISTORY Reay
Tannahill covers intensely the equivalent practices in all other
cultures; her research is thorough and scholarly. In THE SEX
CONTRACT Helen E. Fisher recasts the anthropological restatement
of evolutionary theory by Donald Johanson, David White, and
Richard Leakey arising from the discoveries in Olduvai Gorge (and
in other places) of members of Australopithecus Afarensis;
Fisher's anthropological evolutionary hypothesis is structured
from the perspective of woman rather than from the male
perspective always hitherto employed. ..

CHAPTER II

CHRISTIAN ATTITUDES TOWARD WOMEN

The christian church teaches that CHRISTIANITY began with the
RESURRECTION. Haskins (1993:4ff) points out that only women
first witnessed the resurrected Christ (Mark 16:1ff; Luke
23:55ff, Mary of Magdala, Mary mother of James, Salome or JoAnna;
John 20:1, Mary of Magdala alone), and Mary was charged to go and
tell the eleven disciples that "He is risen"; she thereby became
the first Apostle (proclaimer of the Resurrection of the Lord).
The eleven didn't believe her because she was a woman, and by c.
CE 100 the church has developed the dogma that Peter had been the
sole witness to the Resurrection, not Mary of Magdala (Haskins,
1993:55,215). The treatment of women by Jesus of Nazareth
flouted the social mores and conventions of his day because they
travelled as part of his retinue, and he paid no heed to class or
caste differences. The Samaritan woman at the well, who would
have been stoned by the Pharisees, became the first Apostle to
the Gentiles, and the term for followers used by Mark (15:40;
16:1) was used technically to imply women were full participants
in belief, teaching, preaching and other activities of those
itinerants (Haskins,1993:13). It was Gregory the Great (c. CE
540-604) who consolidated Mary of Magdala, Mary of Bethany, the
Samaritan woman at the well, and some putative prostitute into
the unitary stereotype of Mary Magdalene, and since both the
adulteress and the Samaritan woman are epiphanies of female
aspects of sexuality feared and despised by both rabbis and Early
Church Fathers there arose a theory of salvation predicated upon
absolute virginity which necessarily would inflict deleterious
effects upon the status of real women as a result of its utter
incompatibility with human sexuality (Haskins, 1993:26,95,141).

To Severinus of Gabala (d.c. CE408) "woman as a whole, and man
from the waist down, were creations of the devil" (Eusebius,
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IV); Augustine stigmatized intercourse as
fundamentally disgusting, Methodius as unseemly, Jerome as
unclean, Tertullian as shameful, Arnobius as filthy and degrading
and Ambrose as a defilement. There was an implicit consensus
that God should have found a better way of dealing with the
problem of procreation, and Augustine concluded that the fault
lay not with God but with Adam and Eve (Tannahill, 1980:140ff).
It was incumbent upon those too weak to be celibate to strive to
recapture the original, blameless physical instinct of God's
purpose, using sex without passion to beget the next generation
of Christians; some Victorian medical men recommended sex with
prostitutes as less harmful than sex with wives, sex without
passion being better than sex with passion - c. CE 1800 one out
of six houses in London was involved in prostitution (Tannahill
1980; 354). Augustine went further: Adam's sin not only caused
human mortality but cost humans their moral freedom, irreversibly
corrupted our experience of sexuality (which Augustine tended to
identify with original sin) and made humans incapable of genuine
political freedom. Augustine's theory of original sin proved not
only politically expedient, convincing (male) contemporaries that
humans had a universal need for external government - implying in
their case both an imperially supported church and a Christian
state - but promulgated an analysis of human nature. This
analysis became the heritage of all subsequent generations of
western Christians and the major influence on their political and
psychological thought (Pagels, 1988:xxvi).

Tertullian was impressed by principles of equal access, equal
participation, and equal claim to knowledge, but took this as
evidence that heretics "overthrow discipline" requiring proper
degrees of distinction between community members, particularly
participation of "those women among the heretics" sharing with
men positions of authority: "They teach, engage in discussion,
they exorcise, they cure" and might even baptize - which meant
they might even act as bishop (Pagels, 1979:42). Augustine
asserted that Adam and Eve had been created to live together in a
harmonious order of authority and obedience, superiority and
subordination, like soul and body, and that a husband is meant to
rule over his wife as the spirit rules the flesh. Woman's
formation from Adam's rib established her as the "weaker part of
the human couple", and being closely connected with bodily
passion, woman became man's temptress and led him into disaster.
Augustine maintains that in GENESIS God reinforced male authority
over wives, and divinely sanctioned legal, social, and economic
structures of male domination (Pagels, 1988:113f). Gnostic
Christians were scandalous because they revered Eve, or the
divine spirit she was assumed to represent, and accorded their
women members respect and participation (Pagels,1988:77). The
author of Ephesians, congruent with Paul's statement (I
Corinthians 11:3) that "the head of every man is Christ, the head
of a woman is her husband, mandates that since the man, like
Christ, is the head, and the woman is his body, "so husbands
should love their wives as their own bodies", and wives should
submit to higher judgement of their husbands (Ephesians 5:28-33).

Modern churchmen consider "the family" to be a Christian
invention, but their predecessors usually blamed it on the devil.
Methodius and John Chrysostom considered children "a most bitter
pleasure, and defined wives as weak and frail, slow of
understanding, emotionally unstable, light-minded, deceitful, and
wholly untrustworthy insofar as public affairs were concerned.
Marriage need not be an insuperable obstacle to salvation so long
as spouses rationed their embraces. One marriage should supply
enough companionship for any man, second marriages were adultery,
third fornication, and fourth "swinish" (Tannahill,1980:145).
Tertullian observed that it was quite splendid a Priest's
blessing could transform a sinful act into a sanctified one
(provided moderation and procreative intent were present). St.
Paul pointed out bluntly that woman had been created for the
benefit of man and must defer to him in all things, and must not
teach in church (1 Corinthians 14:35).

Jerome considered every attractive woman a threat to male
salvation. By treating women as an important converts the church
was able to make public use of women in works of evangelism and
charity while privately keeping them in their place. Clotilda of
Burgandy was sent north to convert the Frankish King Clovis in CE
496, and their granddaughter Bertha was sent to England to marry
(and convert) Ethelbert of Kent. In DE CUSTODIA VIRGINITATIS
Jerome venomously assserted that promiscuous women who took
potions in order to bring about abortions sometimes died as a
result and descended to Hell as "threefold murderesses: as
suicides, as adulteresses to their heavenly bridegroom Christ,
and as murderesses of their unborn child." Men and women with
normal sexual appetites were, consciously or subconsciously,
possessed by guilt. Sex might not be their only sin; the Church
held it their greatest, and women were irretrievably to blame.

By some mysterious alchemy, sexual purity came to neutralize
other sins, so that, when compared to the mortal sins of sex and
heresy, even the moral oppression and physical barbarity
characteristic of the medieval and Renaissance Christian church
seemed inconsequential. "A husband having intercourse with his
wife so ardently in order to satisfy his passion that even had
she not been his wife, he would have wished to have commerce with
her, commits a sin" (Jerome, quoted in LA SOMME DES PECHEZ). Our
modern heritage stemminmg from this "churchly attitude" is our
"Whore-Madonna Syndrome"; since sex had become filthy, then a
woman was either a "Whore" or a "Madonna". A "Good Wife" and a
"Pure Mother" (translate as SEXLESS) was a "Madonna"; a woman who
enjoyed sex was a "Whore" (Tannahill, 1980:271). We see the
fall-out all around us in sexual discrimination in employment,
religion, politics, the armed services, rape and assault, and in
marriage. The traditional marriage expectation of the male is
that his spouse is his possession, while education has led most
females to view marriage as a "partnership" or "companionate"
relationship of equality, resulting in divorce, domestic
violence, murder, and the loss of generations of children. .

CHAPTER III

ISLAMIC ATTITUDES TOWARD WOMEN

Baghdad was built c. CE 763 almost on the site of Kish, assumed
to be the first capital of Sumer, the World's first civilization,
and the accumulated wisdom of three millenia of civilization in
Sumer and Egypt, Greece and Rome, Syria and Persia, and India and
China for a few brief illuminating centuries poured into that
melting pot. The arabs discovered durable paper made from flax,
and were able to correlate and diffuse all this intellectual
enlightenment to all the civilized world of that day. The
intellectually acquisitive Arab mind and adaptation of ancient
Chinese techniques and decimal system Hindu numerals, including
the concept of "zero, (now known as Arabic), forever changed the
intellectual landscape of the human mind (Tannahill, 1980:229f).
This enlightenment did not extend to attitudes toward women, and
Arabs took more in discriminatory attitudes from the West than
they gave in illumination. It is ironic that two of the great
religious traditions of descendents of Abraham should largely
have ignored the attitudes toward women of their greatest
teachers. Neither Jesus of Nazareth nor Muhammad would have
recognized or tolerated the attitudes held by many of their
followers - a conservative is one who worships a dead liberal who
cannot defend himself.

Before Al-Islam women had no standing in Arabia; the KORAN gave
them legal rights and an assured position, which some of them
were inclined to exaggerate. The Prophet never identified
sanctity with celibacy, while for Christendom the strictist ideal
has been celibacy, even though monogamy already is a concession
to human nature. Al-Islam did not institute polygamy (i.e.,
polygyny), but restricted an existing institution by limiting the
number of a man's legal wives, giving every woman a legal
personality and legal rights which had to be respected, and
making every man legally responsible for for his conduct toward
every woman (Pickthall, 1956:405f). On the other hand, "good
men" had rewards waiting for them in Paradise, under which rivers
flow: "SURAH LXXVIII: 31. Lo! for the duteous is achievement -
32. Gardens enclosed, and vineyards, 33. And maidens for
companions, 34. And a full cup.; LVI: 22. And (there are) fair
ones with wide, lovely eyes, 23. Like unto hidden pearls, 35. Lo!
We have created them a (new) creation 36. And made them virgins,
37. Lovers, friends." No comment is made as to whether "good
women" had for companions in Paradise handsome, virile young men.

"SURAH II: 223. Your women are a tilth for you (to cultivate) so
go to your tilth as ye will, and send (good deeds) before you for
your souls, IV: 34. Men are in charge of women, because ALLAH
hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they
spend of their property (for the support of women). So good
women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which ALLAH hath
guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them
and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. 129. Ye will
not be able to deal equally between (your) wives, however much ye
wish (to do so). But turn not altogether away (from one),
leaving her as in suspense. V: 5. This day are (all) good
things made lawful for you. The food of those who have received
the scripture is lawful for you, and your food is lawful for
them. And so are the virtuous women of the believers and the
virtuous women of those who received the scripture before you
(lawful for you) when ye give them their marriage portions and
live with them in honour, not in fornication, nor taking them as
secret concubines. XXIV 31. And tell the believing women to
lower their gaze and be modest, and to display of their adornment
only that which is apparent, and to draw their veils over their
bosoms, and not to reveal their adornment save to their own
husbands . . . .And let them not stamp their feet so as to reveal
what they hide of their adornment. XXXIII: 37. . . .So when Zeyd
had performed the necessary formality (of divorce) from her, We
gave her unto thee in marriage, so that (henceforth) there may be
no sin for believers in respect of wives of their adopted sons,
when the latter have performed the necessary formality (of
release) from them. 50. O Prophet! Lo! We have made lawful
unto thee thy wives unto whom thou hast paid their dowries, and
those whom thy right hand possesseth of those whom ALLAH hath
given thee as spoils of war. . .55. It is no sin for them (thy
wives) (to converse freely) with their fathers, or their sons, or
their brothers, or their brothers' sons, or the sons of their
sisters or of their own women, or their slaves. O women! Keep
your duty to ALLAH! 59. O Prophet! Tell thy wives and thy
daughters and the women of the believers to draw their cloaks
close around them (when they go abroad). That will be better,
that so they may be recognized and not annoyed."

Though the Prophet himself had tried to improve the lot of women,
his purpose had been undermined by the traditional norms of the
Middle East and the urbanization process. The amalgamated
heritage of Byzantium included traditions of Armenians, Syrians,
Greeks and Jews, Macedonians and Italians; with Greco-Roman laws,
Christian religion, and Mediterranean attitudes mixed in,
attitudes toward women were disasterous. In COUNSEL FOR KINGS
al-Ghazali (CE 1058-1111) summed up all the pains visited on
women in repayment of Eve's mistake. Social norms as sanctioned
by religion structured his statement: "As for the distinctive
characteristics with which God on High has punished women, (the
matter is as follows): When Eve ate fruit which He had forbidden
to her from the tree in Paradise, the Lord, be He praised,
punished women with eighteen things: (1) menstruation; (2)
childbirth; (3) separation from mother and father and marriage to
a stranger; (4) pregnancy; (5) not having control over her own
person; (6) a lesser share in inheritance; (7) her liability to
be divorced and inability to divorce; (8) its being lawful for
men to have four wives, but for a woman to have only (one)
husband; (9) the fact that she must stay secluded in the house;
(10) the fact that she must keep her head covered inside the
house; (11) (the fact that) two women's testimony (has to be set)
against the testimony of one man; (12) the fact that she must not
go out of the house unless accompanied by a near relative; (13)
the fact that men take part in Friday and feast day prayers and
funerals while women do not; (14) disqualification for rulership
and judgeship; (15) the fact that merit has one thousand
components, (only) one of which is (attributable) to women, while
nine hundred and ninety-nine are (attributable) to men; (16) the
fact that if women are profligate they will be given only half as
much torment as (the rest of) the community at Resurrection Day;
(17) the fact that if their husbands die they must observe a
waiting period of four months and ten days (before remarrying);
(18) the fact that if their husbands divorce them they must
observe a waiting period of three months or three menstrual
periods (before remarrying). . . .it is a fact that all the
trials, misfortunes, and woes which befall men come from women"
(Tannahill, 1980:233f).

The French movie on the life of Muhammad touched in passing on
the Arab custom of neo-natal females being carried out in the
desert and being buried alive, which practice was castigated by
the Prophet. Some of those who survived wound up in some "Grand
Seraglio" which became, over the centuries nearly as complex as
was the Chinese Royal Household during the T'ang period (CE 618 -
907), but by CE 1909 the "Grand Turk" Sultan Abd al-Hamid II
"employed" around 1,200 concubines, requiring meticulous records
to keep the rank of male children straight. By the time of the
Crusades the romantic "bardic" tales comprising THE THOUSAND
NIGHTS AND ONE NIGHT, drawn from Persian, Indian, Greek, Hebrew,
and Egyptian bardic legends were well known. When a new girl was
summoned (if at all) by the Sultan she was hurried off to the
harem baths to be bathed, shampooed, massaged, perfumed, have ALL
body hair removed, her nails tinted, and her hair washed and
dressed. This was the first, and sometimes the last, step on the
ladder to genuine power, the position of Sultan Valdieh, Mother
of the next Sultan. Most of the rest of the harem were, for the
most part, effectively slaves.

Without univocal attitudes to guide and shape public policy, and
to provide a blue print for social structures, the status of
women in contemporary Islamic societies is in flux, with
predominant socio-religious vectors urging toward suppression.
Saudi women are beginning to demand greater freedom and to reject
their traditional inferior role, and want to join the labor force
so as to ameliorate needs for foreign workers, and to live in a
modern environment. Iranian women have expressed their views
even more forcefully, after initial acceptance of traditional
garb and customs, by renouncing their restrictive inferior status
(MIDDLE EAST,1995:188f). The Iranian revolution mobilized and
politicized women, giving them political and ideological force
which has hampered discrimination. Changed official attitudes
toward birth control, abortion, and family planning has tended
toward lessening discrimination, a process apparently destined to
continue (Stork & Benin, 1997:114ff). As late as 1992 the al-
Sabahs still denied women suffrage in Kuwait while promising to
extend such suffrage "in the future" (MIDDLE EAST, 1995:274).

During the INTIFADA houses adjacent to the site of stone-throwing
routinely were vandalized and tear-gassed, with no evidence that
the women (many pregnant) and children killed or wounded were in
any way involved (Smith,1996:298). Since the INTIFADA a number
of Israeli women's organizations (i.e., Women Against the
Occupation, Women for Political Prisoners, Women in Black, etc.)
have organized international conferences, demonstrations, peace
marches, and other activities opposing the occupation
(Gerner,1991:74). Hanan al-Ashrawi is an example of progress a
few Islamic women have made, having been a member of the
Palestinian delegation to the Madrid talks, and as a member of
the PLO Executive Committee, from which she resigned in
opposition to the Camp David agreement (Smith,1996:312,326). The
Islamist movement is opposed to any such progress, promulgating
codes of conduct including mandating "veiling", reaffirming the
patriarchial family, opposing women's legal and political rights,
education, participation in the wage labor force, and family
planning in the name of Islamic traditional gender relations
(Benin and Stork,1997:20). HAMAS considered female individualism
to pose a threat to the uprising, and tried to impose ("restore")
the hijab for Gazan women, mainly urban, educated, petit
bourgeoisie; the political logic represented by SHARI'A dress is
oppressive (Benin and Stork,1997:196ff). To move women from the
female side to the male side of what has been defined as the
proper place of each in Algeria is to challenge FIS's religious
notions of spatial propriety, and is a sin; there has been
created a milieu in which women are being targeted for abuse and
assassination no matter what they do (Benin and Stork,1997:218f).

In Sudan the Muslim Brothers seek to implement the shari'a and
cultural nationalist religious forces seek a "pure" and authentic
Islam; self-appointed moral guardians harrassed women in the
streets about conduct or dress, and national debates focussed
whether too many women were being professionally trained which
allowed them access to benefits, jobs, and political
participation enabling them challenge "authority thresholds and
potentially to threaten older social order. NIF asserts that
women should work only if they have no children and their income
is vital to family survival, and cultural nationalists oppose
emancipation for women as an imitation of the West which weakens
the family (Benin and Stork,1997:236ff). It would appear that
Tunisia and Turkey present milieux for women which is less
Islamist, and consequently less threatening. Discrimination in
the west may be to some extent less physically threatening, but
nonetheless is just as virulent; murder of spouses, violence
against women, rape, stagnation in employment at lower level
jobs, differentiation in pay levels, and non-acceptance as
occupational, intellectual, or professional equals come
immediately to mind. Our national news is suffused with stories
of sexual harassment of female doctors, professors, lawyers,
police officers, and engineers; Christians adhere no more to the
teachings on gender of Jesus of Nazareth than do Muslims to the
genderal instructions of Mohammad. While discrimination in
Islamist societies may be overt, and such discrimination is
covert under the ageis of "Christian Countries", such gender
discrimination is just as pervasive and perfidious in both
societies.
B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Armstrong, Karen A HISTORY OF GOD (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
Inc., 1993) pp.496.

Armstrong, Karen JERUSALEM: ONE CITY, THREE FAITHS, (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1996) pp.502.

Benin, Joel and Joe Stork (eds.) POLITICAL ISLAM (Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1997)

ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica,
Inc., 1968)

CHRONICLE OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (New York: Prentice Hall
Trade, 1987)

Fisher, Helen E. The Sex Contract (New York: Wm. Morrow & Co.,
Inc., 1982)

Fox, Robin THE RED LAMP OF INCEST (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1980)
pp.292.

Gerner, Deborah J. ONE LAND, TWO PEOPLES (San Francisco:
Westview Press, 1991)

Haskins, Susan MARY MAGDALEN (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co.,
1993)

Tannahill, Reay Sex in History (New York: Stein & Day, 1980)

Pagels, Elaine THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS (New York:
Vintage Books, 1979) pp.222.

Pagels, Elaine ADAM, EVE, AND THE SERPENT (New York:
Vintage Books, 1988) pp.234.

Pagels, Elaine THE ORIGIN OF SATAN (New York:
Random House, 1995) pp.244.

Pickthall, Mohammed Marmaduke (tr.) THE GLORIOUS KORAN (New York:
New American Library, 1956)

Smith, Charles D. PALESTINE AND THE ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT (New
York: St. Martin's Press, 1996)

THE HOLY BIBLE Authorized (King James) Version (Philadelphia: The
Bible Printing Press, 1900)

THE MIDDLE EAST (Washington, D. C.: Congressional Quarterly,
Inc., 1995)

2003-01-12T02:00:00.000-05:00

PALESTINE

A STUDY IN FUTILITY

A Possible Framework for Action

Emory L. Warrick, Sr.

A Paper For
Political Science 425A
The Arab-Israeli Dilemma
Prof. Mouyyed Hassouna

Winter Quarter 1998

The dress uniforms of the U. S. Army are modelled after the

uniforms of the Grand Army of the Republic, which represents the

greatest success of the Department of the Army. The uniforms of

the Papal Guards hark back to the reign of Innocent III, the

apogee of Papal power. Organizations and societies hark back

always to their days of greatest glory. Around a millenium BCE

the kingdom of King David extended more than 300 miles along the

Mediterranean coast, roughly following the Jordan river, with a

salient east of the river extending south from Dan to the

confluence of the Jordan with the Dead Sea and extending to the

east to a maximum distance of 50 miles at its apogee. David's

empire of vassalage extended nearly to the River Euphrates.

(Armstrong, 1996:45ff) A millenium and a half later The

Revelation came to Muhammad. (EB v.15.)

In the century following 650 CE the Omayyad Dynasty Caliphate

extended the reach of Islam throughout the central Middle East

and Asia Minor, including Armenia, Jordan, parts of Syria, and

Palestine. They extended this dominion through Egypt and along a

swath on the southern coast of the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.

Jubal Tarik, after the conquest of Tangier, moved into, and

conquered Spain. In 750 CE the Abbasids defeated the Omayyads

in the Middle East and established a dynasty lasting until the

First Millenium CE, the Caliphate extending Islamic dominion

throughout all of Syria, Iran, Iraq, extending to parts of Turkey

and parts of India. The Omayyad Caliphate also lasted until the

First Millenium, and raised their Spanish dominion to

unparalleled heights of material and literary culture. Abd el-

Rahman III lifted the kingdom to the apogee of power, culture,

and magnificance; Cordoba at the millenium was a metropolis with

immense prestige and reputation throughout Europe. (EB v.4.)

Religious tradition alleges that sometime around two millenia

BCE Abraham migrated from Mesopotamia to Canaan and settled. At

some time thereafter the PENTATEUCH asserts that Abraham was

instructed by Elohim (Knudson, 1918:23, an agricultural God) to

sacrifice Isaac on Mount Ararat. (Genesis 31:53) The KORAN

asserts that Abraham was instructed by ALLAH to sacrifice Ishmael

on Mount Ararat. (XX:33, XXXVII:102) The name "Elohim" in the

aramaic is "ALLAH" in the arabic. Sarai, wife of Abraham, was

barren, and instructed Abraham to "go in unto my maid (i.e.,

Hagar, bought in Egypt) * * * that I may obtain children by her",

* * * and Hagar bare Abraham a son * * Ishmael. When (Hagar) saw

she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes; when

Sarai dealt hardly with her, she fled from her face."

"Sarah (old and well stricken in age; and it ceased to be

with Sarah after the manner of women) conceived, and bare Abraham

a son in his old age * * * Isaac. * * * Wherefore she said unto

Abraham, cast out this bondwoman and her son; for the son of this

bondwoman shall not be heir with my son (Isaac)." (Genesis

16:1ff) With the matriarchs of the Hebrews and the Arabs at war,

relations among their descendents did not get off to a good

start. Their acknowledged Deity had promised their father,

Abraham, "unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of

Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates", but had not

specified to which group of descendents He referred. (Genesis

17:9; 21:12) Both communities arrived in the area at the same

time, having a common ancestor, and both groups had at one time

dominated and ruled the area, and both groups had been conquered

and subjected, and both groups had received what they religiously

believed to be the "One, Absolute, Final, Only Divine

Revelation". The International Community, and the world, lucidly

has come to know the degree of hatred and intransigence which has

grown in this fertile soil.

The international community apparently has recognized that

any regional conflict has the potential to ignite a world-wide

conflagration. The moral influence and physical strength of the

United Nations far surpasses any international organization of

the past. It seems evident prima facie to governments and

peoples of the "First World" that a prime flash-point of trouble

lies in Middle East turmoil and conflict. The obdurate

intransigent determination of each group to be the sole occupant

of Palestine bodes not well for any solution negotiated between

these two communities. It is virtually certain that any

pragmatic solution will, of necessity, be externally imposed, in

accordance with international law, by force if necessary, upon

these two peoples. There is some evidence that major segments of

both populations could learn to coexist peacefully.

International Law, or the law of nations, is a body of rules

or principles which STATES consider LEGALLY BINDING upon them.

The origins of international law lay in antiquity and the middle

ages. The corpus of modern international law arose in the

Sixteenth and early Seventeenth centuries to order relationships

and conduct of new independent sovereign European states. It is

obvious that such a system of legal precepts binding upon

sovereign states must rest upon some accepted base of authority.

A major source of authority was DE JURE BELLI AC PACIS written by

Hugo Grotius (1625), finding such authority in the ancient idea

of a system of natural law discoverable by reason, and from the

Roman Law in the JUS GENTIUM (law of nations) considered to be

RATIO SCRIPTA (written reason), consisting in rules always

considered to be generally accepted and to have universal

validity. Since notions of state sovereignty and subjection of

states to international law constitute an oxymoron, writers felt

need to justify and explain the legally binding force of

international law. (Brierly, 1958:54ff)

The idea that international law does not require particular

and special pleading to establish its legal nature accords with

observable fact, and that states do recognize their obligation to

observe it is demonstrable. The corpus of international law

between states in peacetime apparently is more consistently

applied and obeyed than are many systems of internal law, but the

imputed law of war, formerly a vital component of the system, has

largely proved inadequate and irrelevant. International Law

hardly touches many of the most important state activities such

as nationality, armament, immigration, and fiscal and trade

policies, all of which can affect vital international relations,

which by tradition lie within the unfettered prerogatives of the

sovereign state. Until recently even the right to wage war

resided in the discretion of each state, and now can be only

slightly restricted. A vital qualification is the maxim that a

court can exercise jurisdiction over a state only where the state

has consented to such jurisdiction. A stringent limitation is

imposed by the dearth of relevant international institutions,

such as effective legislature, executive, and judiciary; the true

source of international law has to be "those agencies by which

rules of conduct acquire the character of law by becoming

objectively definite, uniform, and, above all, compulsory".

(Allen, 1958).

Tests of validity for international law were stated

authoritatively in Article 38 of the "Statute of the

International Court of Justice:

1. The Court, whose function is to decide in accordance
with international law such disputes as are
submitted to it, shall apply:
a. International conventions, whether general or
particular, establishing rules expressly
recognized by the contesting states;
b. International custom, as evidence of a general
practice accepted as law;
c. The general principles of law recognized by
civilized nations;
d. . . .judicial decisions and the teachings of the
most highly qualified publicists of the various
nations, as subsidiary means for the
determination of rules of law.

The thousands of international treaties (conventions) now in

force constitute much of the fabric of international law more

than in the past. Past treaties focused predominantly on

politics - peace treaties, alliances, etc. - and not until the

Nineteenth Century was the multipartite treaty used to create law

among parties. These multipartite lawmaking treaties now have

become an indispensible tool of the society of states.

Unfortunately, with few exceptions, treaties are contracts only

binding upon states parties to them. The problem persists

regarding the enforcement of international law.

The elements necessary to establish a rule of customary
law are the concordant and recurring action of numerous
states in the domain of international relations, the
conception in each case that such action was enjoined by
law, and the failure of other states to challenge that
conception at the time. (PERMANENT COURT OF
INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE, Judge M. O. Hudson, p.609.)

. . .where there is no treaty and no controlling
executive or legislative act or judicial decision,
resort must be had to the customs and usages of
civilized nations; and as evidence of these, to the
words of jurists and commentators who by years of
labour, research, and experience have made themselves
peculiarly well acquainted with the subjects of which
they treat. Such works are resorted to by judicial
tribunals, not for the speculations of their authors
concerning what the law ought to be, but for trustworthy
evidence of what the law really is. (Mr. Justice Horace
Gray, United States Supreme Court, PAQUETE HABANA, 1899,
AMERICAN PRIZE CASES, p.1938)

The Charter of the United Nations moved in this direction by

requiring the general assembly to initiate studies and make

recommendations for "encouraging the progressive development of

international law and its codification" (Article 13). In 1947 an

International Law Commission was established to do this and began

its studies in 1949. In its first decade the Commission produced

reports on arbitral procedure, diplomatic immunities, state

responsibility, offenses against peace and security, and other

equally important problems. The general assembly has not moved

swiftly to address these problems legislatively. Important as

the emergence of international constitutional law is, its

ultimate value consists in the success or failure of that central

part of it concerned with the problem of war. A system of law

fails in its primary function if it fails to regulate the use of

physical force within the society it purports to govern.

The founding fathers of modern international law knew that

the control of war must be the primary function of the system.

They not only devised rules governing the conduct and methods of

warfare (the TEMPERAMENTA) but attempted also to distinguish

between just and lawful wars, and unjust wars which were,

therefore, unlawful. With no international authority to make the

determination one way or the other their efforts could have

little effect. The Twentieth Century has seen a return in new

form of the classical attempt to distinguish between just and

unjust wars; among these were the League of Nations covenant, the

Peace Pact of Paris (the Kellogg-Briand Pact, 1928), and the

charter and structure of the United Nations. The experience of

two World Wars, the failure of the League of Nations experiment,

and the frustrations of the United Nations has resulted in a

disillusionment contrasting strongly with Nineteenth Century

optimism. The proliferation of modern treaty law and

relationships, the development of international organizations,

the increasing concern of the law with the protection of

fundamental human rights of the individual even as against his

own state, the necessity for detailed international regulation of

technological developments such as civil aviation and space

exploration, have all resulted in a profound transformation of

the nature and content of the law. (EB v12) .

. . .the emphasis of law increasingly is shifting from
the formal structure of relationships between States and
the delimitation of their jurisdiction to the
development of substantive rules on matters of common
concern vital to the growth of an international
community and to the individual well-being of the
citizens of its member States. We shall find also as a
result of this change of emphasis the subject-matter of
the law increasingly includes cross-frontier
relationships of individuals, or organizations, and
corporate bodies which call for appropriate legal
regulation on an international basis, problems of
economic and technological interdependence requiring
regulation on the basis of common rules of matters which
do not per se involve inter-State relations in any real
sense, and rights designed to provide the individual,
and in some cases organizations, with a measure of
protection against the individual member States of the
international community. This international community,
which is still far from having attained any political or
moral unity and always is liable to be torn asunder by
disruptive forces, continues to be organized on the
basis of States, but its law has long since ceased to be
merely, and rapidly is ceasing to be primarily, a law
between States. (Jenks, 1958:17)

One fact stands out in stark clarity in Middle Eastern

turmoil and war: Until the problem of Jerusalem is solved and

settled there will be no peace. Social science research long has

indicated that any belligerent bi-polar situation can be improved

by the introduction of a third participant. This would seem to

indicate that the only solution to the Jerusalem dilemma would be

a Christian Community declaration that Jerusalem was the Holiest

Christian City, and the internationalization of Jerusalem. A

Governing Commission for Jerusalem could be established

consisting of six members: A catholic tradition member (Retired

Archbishop of Canterbury His Grace Robert A. K. Runcie or the

retired Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church U S A The Most

Reverend John Allin would meet the test of representing both

Roman Catholic and main-line Protestant traditions); the Rev. Mr.

Billy Graham or some other Pentacostalist of equivalent prestige

would represent Pentacostal traditions; a U. S. Conservative or

Reform Rabbi; an Israeli Orthodox Rabbi; a Sunni Imam; and a

Shi'i Imam. The Commission Presidency would rotate among members

in succession each quarter, the President becoming ex-Officio;

action by the committee would require a positive two/thirds

(2/3rd) vote. It might take 6 months for the Commission to

resolve deadlock and act, but events would demand, and receive,

action.

The United Nations should establish a Federal State embracing

all of Palestine, Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza in which

political ascendancy any group would be prohibited. There would

be two (Israeli and Arab) congruent jurisdictions co-existing.

There should be UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE. There should be an elected

Representative Assembly. Each Jurisdiction should have FIFTY

(50%) PERCENT of elected representatives regardless of

population. A Speaker is to be elected from each group, the

Speaker's Chair to revert from group to group each quarter.

A Court System should be established with equal numbers of

each jurisdiction chosen at each Judicial level. Inferior Courts

should consist of 2 members of the Jurisdiction of the accused

and 1 member of the other Jurisdiction. Appeals Courts should

consist of 60% of the Jurisdiction of the accused and 40% of the

other Jurisdiction. The World Court should appoint a cadre of

Judges to serve on Chancery Courts. Chancery Courts should

consist of one Judge from each Jurisdiction and one World Court

Appointee. More difficulties can be expected from civil

decisions of Chancery Courts than from criminal decisions.

Police patrols should operate in pairs with one from each

Jurisdiction. When police action is necessary only police from

the perpetrator's Jurisdiction can take action. Sufficient

back-up can be called in. If perpetrators from both

Jurisdictions are involved together then police from both

Jurisdictions can take action, but only in equal numbers. Police

action always is fraught with opportunity for abuse, because

power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Regulations MUST detail limits of police power and the

limitations thereof, and involve powerful negative sanctions for

the least violation or misuse of police power.

Any person convicted of murder must be sentenced to life

imprisonment without possibility of parole. They must serve that

imprisonment at hard labor building settlements for the destitute

of the Jurisdiction to which the victim belonged. The Supreme

Court should have the power to amend the sentence of life

imprisonment, since the circumstances of all murders are not the

same. All property and destructive crimes should be in like

fashion, at hard labor building settlements for the destitute of

the Jurisdiction to which the victim belonged. Restitution

should be required for victims. All perpetrators must be

socialized to internalize a "cause-effect" relationship of

restitution to victims of other cultures.

There should be a Federal Constitution containing the civil

safe-guards included in the Constitution of the United States.

Specifically, there should be a "BILL OF RIGHTS" detailing the

civil and constitutional rights detailed in our own "Bill of

Rights". Both Israelis and Arabs come from tribal/communal

cultures which value individuals only instrumentally (i.e.,

valued only as a means to the ends of the community). The "Bill

of Rights" specifies intrinsic valuation of the individual (i.e.,

valuable as an end in itself, not as a means to other ends). This

protection is vital for those who have known nothing but

oppression, or oppressing, and must extend equal constitutional

liberties and rights to everyone. It is well to recognize that

some "culture shock" may result from this innovation.

The established Federal State MUST be SECULAR. It must be a

society with an absolute wall between religion and the state. It

must be illegal to try to convert any person from one religion or

sect to another. There can be absolutely no THEOCRATIC

DICTATORSHIP OR TYRANNY. Conflict usually intensifies when value

systems or religious beliefs become increasingly congruent. The

smaller the difference, the easier it is to conceptualize an

issue to fight over - the easier it is to draw the issue to a

perceptible head - and there is much congruence between Islam and

Judaism.

Alfred North Whitehead details the "language imprinting age".

Between ages of one and ten the child imprints languages, and is

quite capable of learning, and differentiating, two or more

languages. In the school system established by the Federal

Government all students of both Jurisdictions must attend the

same schools. All must be taught, from infancy on, to be at

least bi-lingual - preferably multi-lingual - because syntax and

grammar convey social perspectives and culture, enabling

individuals to see issues from "the other side". (ANW, 1929:31ff)

Given the technological cultural chasm between the educated and

destitute of both Jurisdictions it is mandatory that the

university system involve experimental and extension divisions.

These divisions must be equipped to disseminate knowledge to all

citizens, and effect some sort of economic parity nation-wide.

It is vital that rural - urban cultural differences be taken

into account. Rural social organization is more likely to be

tribal/communial in structure, with individuals instrumentally

valued. Urban social organization is apt to be more commercially

oriented, with individuals valued intrinsically. Israel is not

going away, and "facts on the ground" must be considered. It is

vital to the First World that massive amounts of developmental

funds be funnelled to the Federal Government. Strict

accountability for funds must be guaranteed by continuing

intensive audit by some bonded First World Contractor.

There must be some sort of National Guard. It must be made

up of equal numbers of each Jurisdiction, regardless of

population, distributed equally at every organizational level and

at every rank. The command structure above the squad level must

be distributed RANDOMLY. They must be armed exclusively with

defensive weapons, and be allowed no offensive weapons. The unit

mission must be solely internal control. International

protection must be provided by the United Nations.

It is true that that the NAZI Holocaust of Jewish people, and

the holocaust of the Japanese "Rape of Nanking" tax the capacity

of the human imagination to conceive human evil. It is also true

that the plight of dispossesed Palestinian refugees, deprived of

all they had spent their lives to earn, represents a human evil

no less grave and intense. That the conscience of the First

World nations should be engaged in rectifying this evil should be

self-evident. The J'H'W'H of the Hebrew/Judaic peoples attracted

the respect and reverence of pagan peoples precisely because of

the ethical and moral demands made upon HIS peoples to show

compassion and respect for the human dignity of all with whom

they were engaged. It is not obvious that this demand for

ethical and moral treatment of Palestinians has been assiduously

observed. Every human deserves humane treatment which accords

that person compassion, respect, and protection for human

dignity.

It is not readily apparent that an air-tight legal precis

under International Law can be made for international imposition

of a Federal Government on that troubled scene. A pragmatic use

of International Law to achieve compassionate conditions in that

area might be more easily justified. It is certain that the

First World will not hear any univocal, consensual appeal of all

peoples of that area for such imposition. That continuing

conflict in that area constitutes a potential danger for us all

is perfectly obvious. International action has been taken on

lesser bases than are present in Palestine. This is, at least, a

possible framework for action.

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Allen, C. K. LAW IN THE MAKING (London: Oxford university Press, 1958)

Anderson, J. N. D.
1968 "Islamic Law" ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA v.12.

Arberry, A. J., (ed.).
1963 SELECTED POEMS OF HAFIZ (Tehran, Iran: Y.
Jamshidipur)

Armstrong, Karen JERUSALEM (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996)

Bammate, Nadjmoud-Dine
1968 "Mohammed" ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA v.15.

BIBLE (King James Version)

Bridgewater, William, and Elizabeth J. Sherwood (eds.).
1956 "Islam" THE COLUMBIA ENCYCLOPAEDIA (Morningside
Heights, New York: Columbia University Press)

Brierly, J. L. THE BASIS OF OBLIGATION IN INTERNATIONAL LAW (London: Oxford
University Press, 1958)

Farnum, G. C., (ed.)
1960 "Mohammedanism" GROLIER ENCYCLOPAEDIA v.14.

fitzGerald, Edward (tr.) RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM (Garden City,
New York: Garden City Publishing Company, Inc., 1937).

Fuller, B. A. G.
1945 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY (New York: Henry Holt & Co.).

Gibb, Sir H. A. R.
1968 "Caliphate" ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA v.4.

Humphrey, Edward (ed.).
1960 THE BOOK OF KNOWLEDGE vs.1; 3; 5; 4; 7; 9; 13; 14; 15.

Jenks, C. W. THE COMMON LAW OF MANKIND (London: Stevens & Sons, 1958)

Knudson, Albert C. RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT (New
York: Abingdon Press, 1918)

KORAN (tf. Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall)

MacDonald, Duncan Black
1968 "Imam" ENCYCLOPAEDIA BTITANNICA v.11.

Oates, Edward E. D. M.
1968 "Baghdad" ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA v.2.

Pickthall, Mohammed Marmaduke (tr.).
1956 THE GLORIOUS KORAN (New York: New American Library).

Rahman, Fazl'Ur.
1968 "Islam" ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA v.12.

Walzer, Richard R.
1968 "Arabic Philosophy" ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA v.2.

Warrick, Emory L. Sr.: The plan for amelioration of the
Jerusalem problem first was submitted to Barry Goldwater as
part of 150pp of speech materials for the 1964 election, and
subsequently to Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Bush, and
Clinton. Reagan could not have understood it. The
remaining concept for a structure for a government of
Palestine developed later, and was refined over the years.

Whitehead, Alfred North THE AIMS OF EDUCATION (New York: New
American Library, 1929)

2003-01-12T01:58:00.000-05:00

Islamist Origins

Over a decade the type students asking Hiltermann for his

opinion of West Bank universities has changed; the young Hamas

activists he now sees sprinkle their nationalist discourse with

religious references. In 1968 Arafat gained control of the PLO

from the pro-Nasir leaders who had lost credibility. The PLO

then became, with the Tunisian Islamic Tendency Movement,

reactions to Arab regimes with socialist and nationalist

ideologies who grasped power during the 1950s. Both groups first

found fertile opportunity in the schools and universities and

then in social clubs, institutions, trade unions, associations,

and, for the Islamists, the mosques. During the 1980s Israelis

kidnapped or assassinated Hisb Allah leaders, just as they had

done with PLO leaders in the 1970s. What Palestinian nationalism

and political Islam displayed was a new language and a new vigor

of attack upon the Israeli-U S strategic alliance and the

perceived moral laxity of the incursions of Western culture.

The Amal militia propagated a social program which opposed

discrimination, exploitative government, and inequality while not

pursuing seriously a social agenda of imposition of shari'a

rules, probably because of Lebanon's urban quasi-Westernized

culture. The Lebanese struggle against Israeli occupation became

the vehicle for Hisb Allah to displace Amal in the 1980s when

Amal began to participate in the political process, but Hisb

Allah has had to follow the same path. When The Islamic Group

gained control of Egyptian university student groups in the

1970s, Tal'at Fu'ad Qusim led the Islamist student group at

Minya, becoming later a founding menber of the majlis al-shura of

the organization at large. Shaikh 'Umar 'Abd al-Rahman (of World

Trade Tower fame) later became head of the majlis, which in 1981

recruited Sadat's assassin, Khalid al-Islambuli, to do the job.

Qasim, then in prison for eight years, escaped to Peshawar and

joined the Afgan mujahidin. Qasim also was involved in

establishing a muhkama shari'iyya which sentenced Eygptian

officials and secularists, including Farag Fuda, to death.

Religion requires not just personal conversion; the Islamic

Group began by spreading their message, but the ultimate goal

always was the establishment of an Islamic State. Gama'at al-

Jihad's Ayman al-Zawahiri was in prison with Qasim, escaped to

Peshawar, and began work with Arabs and met 'Usama bin Ladin, a

very rich Saudi, who financed much of the Afgan training. The

Islamic Group has pursued terrorist activities against tourists

in Egypt, holding that even if there are innocent tourists, they

are striking against "tourism". The Islamic Group is not simply

a protest movement or a limited opposition, but an alternative to

the regime, to the state. There will be no dialogue until one

side is victorious over the other, or the Islamic regime is

established. Qasim's message has been stated clearly in AL-

MURABITUN's first issue (February 1990) in the cover story, a

picture of a gun on the cover, "Terror is a Means to Confront

God's Enemies".

On grounds of heresy and apostasy Cairo University tenure

committee in March 1993 voted to deny tenure to Prof. Nasr Hamid

Abu Zayd. This ignited a public debate about the power of

religious institutions serving and managed by the state,

intellectual terrorism, and absence of protection for critical

thought, and crystallizing the struggles between Islamism,

secularism, Egyptian critical thought, and free thought in

ideological institutions of the Egyptian state. A book and

scores of articles were published in the next year, both opposing

and supporting Abu Zayd's work, and dramatically increasing

readership of his works, but most Egyptians regard him more as a

symbol, positive or negative, than as an intellectual producing

works faithful to Islam while denying both any heresy or

apostasy. He has concluded that interpretation of religious

texts in the KORAN has become an integral part of the cognitive

framework of Islamic-Arabic consciousness, and the validity of

any concept consisted in its not contradicting the KORAN. Verses

deemed by one "school" to be "clear" were deemed by another

"school" with differing ideology to be "unclear/vague" and in

need of interpretation, and these interpretations became weapons

for propagation in social, intellectual, and political struggles.

Abu Zayd found Sadat's speeches informative because they

illustrated how interpretation is not just connected to classical

Arab culture; changes in political purposes of the regime changed

Islamic interpretations - now war against the Israelis, now

peace.

It became obvious that religious texts from the past were

interpreted under the influence of current pressures and

concerns, and Zayd's inquiry proposed to illuminate the ideology

served by such discourse and how much authority such

interpretation might accord to the text. Early Islamic

commentators understood clearly that their grasp of Koranic

scriptures might differ from the original, and concluded their

opinions with "God the Almighty is more knowing", conveying that,

in differing interpretations, no human interpretation could be

Divinely valid. Many who have critized Zayd's work cite

commentator opinions as if those opinions were Divinely inspired.

The struggle for advancement in the Arab world will never be

settled until the Islamist ideology has been tried, a frightening

eventuality. The ruling elites have never understood that a

"free economy" will never be successful until accompanied by

social, intellectual, and political liberties. The problem is

the necessity for the "enlightened elites" to keep good relations

with the West while the Muslim Brothers are needed to placate the

"oil states".

Bassam Jarrar, a respected Islamist thinker in the occupied

territories, asserts that one would do better to listen to what

Islamist leaders actually are saying. Continually, since Oslo,

Hamas representatives have said they do not want conflict with

the nacent Palestinian authority, but that peace comes with a

price tag - influence through mosques, schools, and law on

culture and society. In education Islamists want curricula based

upon Islamic and Arabic civilization unadulterated by foreign

influences, and they want "family law" based explicitly upon

shari'a law guaranteeing Muslim (i.e., male) rights. Islamists

distinguish between associational, municipal, and regional

elections and national elections on the grounds that dominance of

lower political echelons strongly influences culture and society

without participating in self-rule and acceptance of the Oslo

Accords as dominance at the national level would require. It is

necessary that the transitional authority listen carefully to

what the municipalities and associations are saying if it desires

to build a genuine environment of national consensus during the

interim period. The Islamist movement exists because it exists

independently of the PLO and is thoroughly integrated into

Palestinian political culture.

As an element of the "Muslim Brothers in Palestine", the

Hamas appeared in February 1988 under the spiritual guidance of

Shaikh Ahmad Yasin, and continued the Brothers cultural and

social efforts having the purpose of "founding of the Islamist

personality". The intifada had presented the Muslim Brothers

with a "Hobson's Choice"; forgo de facto accomodation with the

occupation or lose the Palestinian streets. The resolution was

the formation of Hamas as an Islamist entity dedicated to

national liberation with a Covenant blending a socially

puritanical Islam, an amended Eurocentric anti-Semitism, and

accomodation to PLO nationalism. Hamas continued with this

predominantly culturalist thrust and flavored the intifada with

an Islamist appearance, conducting in the beginning a social

offensive against "un-Islamic behavior". When the PNC decided in

1988 to recognize Israel within pre-1967 borders, endorse the

"two-state" solution, and then, in 1991, decided to participate

in the U S-brokered peace plan at the conclusion of the "Gulf

War", Hamas challenged PLO credibility and thereby transformed

Islamism into an alternative political culture for Palestine

liberation. The military targets were Israeli officials, while

politically attacking Arafat and PLO leadership who could in no

way object to killing Israeli officials. .

Hamas pushed Rabin into continuous use of collective

sanctions against Palestinians thus strengthening Hamas

rejectionism and highlighting the awkward conciliation of the

PLO. Hamas joined PFA in January 1994, thus creating the

opportunity for Hamas to drop some of the more offensive and

unpopular elements of its social agenda "for the good of

Palestinian liberation". In October 1993 Yasin admitted that

Hamas would participate in self-government elections in contests

below the national level to gain influence over the daily lives

of Palestinians in occupied areas, not to defeat the PLO, but to

position themselves as the strongest opposition party, thereby

forcing the PLO to accomodate Hamas political and social agendas.

Hamas major support in the territories derives from socially

conservative groups, and Islamists insist on total separation

between existing shari'a courts, adjudicating family, marriage

and divorce issues, and the PA's Ministry of Justice adjudication

of "positive law". Hamas is faced with reconciliation of these

elements of radical secularist nationalism and their socially

conservative agenda. The prospect of an emergent Islamist

political culture in the occupied territories is risky for the

Palestinian national struggle because its interpretation of Islam

ignores the economic and political challenges arising out of this

struggle and threatens imposing a vision of Palestinian national

identity which is racist, sectarian, and antidemocratic.

The Lebanese intercommunal National Pact of 1943 essentially

was a division of power between Maronite Christian and Sunni

political elites, while for the first half of this century six

landowning families, the As'ads, Zayns, and 'Usayrans in southern

Lebanon, and in Ba'albek and Bint Jbail the Husaynis, Haydars,

and Hamadas, monopolized Shi'i political representation. In 1948

225,000 Shi'a comprised 18.2% of the population, and by 1975 the

Shi'a had tripled to 750,000 representing one-third of Lebanese,

and political representation was seriously out contact with

reality. The socio-economic composition of the Shia had changed

radically from basically agricultural to essentially commercial,

and half of the rural population had migrated to poverty stricken

satellite surburbs of Beirut. With a radicalized intelligensia

comprising an ambitious and enterprising contra-elite, the 1970s

brought the birth of Imam al-Sadr's "Shi'i movement" as an

outcome of the Shi'a demographic and socio-economic shift from

the periphery to the new city-state of Beirut. Musa al-Sadr's

movement was a mass movement in the Lebanese Shi'i community, a

spontaneous popular upsurge defined by its social base and

religion, asserted in moral and religious language and Shi'i

traditional protest themes, strongly associated with the

Palestine resistance, and having Amal as its military wing. Two

major themes of the movement were the relationship of the

community with the state, and the consequent allocation of

resources stated in terms of distribution of government jobs,

discriminatory social and economic policies contributing to the

extreme poverty and backwardness of most Shi'i areas, and the

relationship of the Shi'i community to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The Shi'i movement saw change as militating toward their

social marginalization, exclusion from power, and continuance of

the historical backwardness of the Shi'i hinterland, and so set

goals of removing barriers to government employment and powers,

development policies, and confessional and regional allocation of

resources, equality of resource distribution, and a co-equal

chamber of religions alongside the Chamber of Deputies, to

arbitrate among sects. Shi'i ideology always had been an Islamic

ideology of protest, and perceiving the traditional concept of

religion as being overwhelmed by the liberal ideology of the

urban marketplace, they used religious symbolism to legitimize

political action. in 1975 al-Sadr said: "We began our movement

in this way because we believe in God and we know that the

believer who is unconcerned with the fate of the dispossessed is

an unbeliever and a liar"; religious symbolism provided a direct

translation of social struggles into a religious code, providing

adherents with a frame of reference. The movement rejected

violence directed toward the internal adversary, substituting

pressure tactics and nonviolent actions such as rallies, strikes,

and demonstrations, but encouraging and actively planning

violence against Israel. From May to July 1975 there were

general strikes, hunger strikes, roadblocks, and the official

birth of Amal, and movement needs and tactical flexibility

dictated use of various permutations of political action, but the

primary characteristic of the movement remained spontaneous mass

actions which often exceeded the plans of the organizers. The

movement always was guided by the principle of concentration on

the main contradiction and the main enemy while never disrupting

relations to the point of impossibility of resuming negotiations,

so that your "sincere efforts" at conciliation expose the

fundamentally bad faith of the adversary.

The rise of the Islamist movement in Tunisia by 1970 resulted

from the young perceiving that the government had no fundamental

policy orientation, but could practice leftist politics and then

swing to right-wing economic policies; the uprooting of these

young who were searching for an identity and finding no ideology

with which they could connect; and the disasterous Arab defeat in

the 1967 War. When our first high school students entered the

university and came into contact with both radical rightists and

leftists the confrontation between traditional Islamic thought

with the modes of thought and action of leftists radicalized our

group. At that moment the political profile of the ITM was

formed; we knew nothing of imperialism, and only because of

contact with leftists did we discover the history of foreign

intervention in the affairs of underdeveloped countries. The

Shaikh came to the realization that the legendary Egyptian Muslim

Brothers were more appearance than substance, without any clear

grasp of any coherent ideology, relying on ancient and past

thought, with a so-called methodology totally obsolete and

clearly leading to disaster. Shaikh al-Nayfar realized there was

a need to create a Tunisian identity and began to apply a notion

previously taboo, "Tunisian Islam", while fighting against what

he perceived as "the new sufism" which ignored the uniqueness of

each Arab country and only addressed Islam as a whole. The ITM

never produced a plan with a well-developed social profile with

which society can identify, and never developed structures and

associations involved with various social classes representing a

definite social phenomenon, not a frustrated, marginal people.

2003-01-12T01:57:00.000-05:00

Islamist Activities

Most contemporary Islamist movements have a puritanical streak,

but the relationship between contemporary culture and new forms

of Islamist identity is exceedingly complex. Markets around

major mosques in virtually any locale are replete with cassetts

of reciters of the KORAN and sermons of popular preachers, many

hued posters of holy sites and cities, and the same types of

religious "junk" one finds around holy sites of christendom.

There is offered, also, by these Islamist movements new forms of

personal identity and self-image, a new perception of reality,

and new versions of the past as Islamist groups and others

contest interpretations of the history of the nations. Hard

currency remitted by Egyptians in the Gulf and Algerians in

France kept the lid on in those countries in the face of

inadequate political coping, but collapsing oil prices after 1985

created politico-economic crises. It was in this milieu of failed

postindependence, state-consolidating processes that political

Islam arose to contest governments. One-party states tried to

outlaw political opposition of any type, but Islamists prevailed.

For those perceiving Europe as "Christendom" as contrasted to

"Islam" there is unease regarding new "minority" populations of

Muslims suffusing even the core of Europe, kindling anxieties

regarding European identity and feelings of being economically

and culturally besieged by immigrant Muslims. Franco-Maghribi

women students in 1989 demanded the right to wear hijab to their

lycee and French cultural pretensions stimulated general horror,

envisioning the ghost of an Islamic France. "Decent French

working people" were distraught by the "noise and smell" (i.e.,

music and cuisine) of foreigners; these are the foundations upon

which distinctive identities are maintained in alien

environments. The most pervasive type of "noise" afflicting the

native French was rai music. A major rai star is Cheb Khaled,

who opens his appearances with a song about The Prophet, and then

concentrates on "alcohol, bad luck, and women". The Algerian

audiences danced whether the Song was about Mohammad or women

and alcohol, and no one considered such to be blasphemous.

The Franco-Maghribi audience for rai ("arab noise") is a

heterogeneous group comprised of Algerians, Tunisians, Berbers,

Arabs, Moroccans, "illegals", immigrants and French-born off-

spring, noncitizen "legal" residents, and citizens. Out of about

three million "foreigners" in France, around a million are French

citizens. Franco-Maghribi cultural orientations are quite

heterogeneous, four main subcultures being assimilationists,

delinquents, ethnonationalists, and the hybrids. The delinquents

are the young from the banlieues apparently unable to achieve

coherent identities, feel trapped between two cultures, both

seeming alien to them, denied regular employment or decent

educations, who are best known for their petty acts of

criminality and random violence; assimilationists practice a

sort of hyperconformism to French cultural norms. Militant

ethnonationalists adhere to Berber or Arab sociocultural

expectations while envisioning an eventual return to the

homeland, meanwhile atempting to create a separate, autonomous

social space minimizing contact with "whites" - militant

Islamists are part of this group. The young hybrids embrace

cultural diversity while trying to forge a syncretic, positive,

minority identity out of "in-betweenness".

Rai has been a tool for articulating desires to be accepted

by some French collectivity sharing a tolerant Islamic-Arabic

ethnonational identity. The secularized rai performances and

lyrics reflect the general secular trend of Franco-Maghribi life.

While only one in twenty of this population are practicing

Muslims, Islamic practices such as Ramadan are occasionally

widely observed. Franco-Maghribis use both rai and rap to

identify simultaneously with Arab and French cultures while

resisting Arab conservatism and French ethnocentricity. Hybrid

cultural forms are attacked in Algeria where conservatives

consider such music "illicit" and "immoral". The Tunisian rai

star Amina says: "I will continue preaching for the mixture of

cultures; the more hybridization we have, the less we'll hear

about claims to a pure culture".

Extensive access to television and limited broadcast hours

and channels mean that television coverage will reach a majority

of Egyptians. Television debates and talk shows take up some

broadcast time, but more popular melodramatic serials meant to

entertain are also tools employed to deliver political messages.

Questions about the place of Islam are at the center of Egyptian

public life, and signs of an intentional Islamic cultural

identity are increasing. In the late 1980s Mamduh al-Laythi,

film and serials section director of The Union of Television and

Radio, mandated coverage resonant with viewer concerns such as

housing shortages, family planning, drug addiction, and religious

extremism. Serials of the 1980s were noticeably silent on

Islamic movements and their alternative visions for Egypt's

future. Changes in the 1990s were dramatic when the policy of

using media to combat "terrorism" was activated.

Beginning in 1991 violent confrontations between members of

Islamic militant groups and the government became dismayingly

regular, and while many ordinary folk disapproved these tactics,

the government got no sympathy. In "Part 4" of "Hilmiyya Nights"

included a subplot featuring a a "religious extremist" shown in a

negative fashion, as well as illuminating the corruption of

entrepreneurs in post-Nasir Egypt. After the 1992 assassination

of Egyptian human rights activist Farag Fuda, Karim Alrawi wrote

that the Moslem Brotherhood decided to kill Fuda after a February

1992 debate at the Cairo Book Fair between secularists and Muslim

Brothers, which was filmed but never shown. In a 1992 film

("Terrorism and Kebab") a character modelled on Fuda delivers

didactic speeches about "true Islam" advocating elimination of

all illiteracy, cultural, vocational, and religious, and belief

in God as a weapon in pursuit of this mission. The Islamists

influence television in Egypt by encouraging more religious

programming and making dramatic programs more socially

conservative. Minister of Information Safwat al-Sharif decreed

that female television announcers, who specifically had been

denounced in the religious press, and vilified as provocative

agents of temptation, were to wear subdued makeup and clothing.

The only place in Tlemcen where social strata mingle is in

the madina; the self-constructed neighborhood of Boudghene is, on

the other hand, inhabited by the old Saharan nomad immigrants who

had lost their land, those crowded out of the madina, and rejects

from the city. There is a tremendous backlog of housing

construction, while simultaneously there is a population growth

rate among the world's highest. In proletarian areas one might

find fifteen people top the room; the girls stay inside, but

males, by adolescence, are outside in public space, and one can

see the vacuum and readiness for any attractive purpose. Women

can circulate in the city, but there is no intergenderal meeting

in public space; a woman cannot go walking with a male without

being stopped and her papers checked by a non-official moral

entrepreneur. The FIS built a cohesive cadre around the mosques

by organizing associations for charitable purposes such as

teaching, social service, child care, worship, providing food and

building housing stock, and providing imams for the mosques which

were built. When the FLN cut off funds for the elected FIS the

Islamists raised their own funds and operated independently,

emphasizing issues which resonated with the public such as

cleaning up addiction, entertainment, and urban degradation.

The FIS, speaking in the name of Islam and asserting the

objective of establishing an Islamic republic, was legalized in

1989 when the single party Algerian establishment began trying to

legalize a multi-party electorate. In June 1990 the FIS won many

municipal and regional elections, and in December 1991 triumphed

in the first round of national legislative elections. These

electoral successes, which rent the single-party system, were at

least partially the result of socioeconomic trends of exclusion

and frustration motivating the activist cadres of the new

movement, who responded to the ideological bases of this

mobilization of political power. The FIS gave political form to

an emerging sociopolitical movement, benefitting greatly from the

networks organized around mosques established by Islamists in the

1980s, by using religious rhetoric to translate social discontent

into political activism. The young activists of FIS claim

descent from the "deceived heroes" of 1954, and have an identity

defined by religious belief, an organic model of society, and

demands for social justice. The state is perceived as a

political entity which confiscated independence by arrogating to

itself the historic role of the "real people" to consolidate

political power.

Algeria's Islamist movement combined religious renewal, moral

reform, and nationalism while fighting assimilation through

defense of Muslim religion and Arabic language, and was

exemplified by the Association of 'Ulama' led by Abd al-Hamid Ben

Badis. Self-proclaimed imams provided youth with heroic myths

while creating a Muslim identity creating a sense of "social

belonging" in individuals. While advocating solidarity and social

cohesion the "brothers" provided charitable social services such

as providing food for the needy, arranging funerals, visitation

of the sick, and recreational activities (e.g., soccer games,

hiking, group camping, etc,). Marriage is beyond the means of

the young, and urban housing (a precondition to marriage) was a

major failure of the FLN, leaving that seventy (70%) percent of

the population under thirty in a condition reminiscent of Ireland

and the IRA. By reclaiming principles of equity derived from

Islam and the Algerian revolution FIS asserts the injustice of

present conditions. The regime was held to account, and defeated.

2003-01-12T01:55:00.000-05:00

The NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY ORGANIZATION

The NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY ORGANIZATION was established 4
April 1949. Treaties included Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France,
Iceland, Italy, Luxemburg, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, The
United Kingdom, and the U. S. The European Economic Community
was formed in March 1957 among Belgium, France, Luxemburg, Italy,
The Netherlands, and West Germany. Denmark, Ireland, Norway, and
The United Kingdom were admitted in January 1972. Greece was
admitted in January 1981, and the Treaty of Maastricht reformed
the EEC into the European Economic Union, a legally much closer
relationship, on 7 February 1992, to be implemented 1 November
1993. Greece and Turkey were admitted to NATO in September 1951,
and on 5 November 1993 Belgium, France, and West Germany
inaugurated Eurocorps, conceived to be the core around which a
European army could be built.
After the "Falling of the Iron Curtain" (Churchill,
Westminster College, Fulton, MO, 5 March 1946) the U. S. went
into a hysteric frenzy of fear over the USSR. The voices of
those few who had a grasp of the fractured Lenin-Marxist axis and
its failures, particualrly its inability to feed its populations,
were drowned in the "Chicken Little" wailing of rabid
anti-Lenin-Marxists. During the Reagan Administration "Defense
Spending" amounted to EIGHTY BILLION DOLLARS AN HOUR every hour
from 1980 until 1992 (WHEN THE PENTAGON WAS FOR SALE, Andy
Pasztor, 1995), octupling our national debt to EIGHT TRILLION
DOLLARS. The COLD WAR came into being at the end of WWII when
the imperialistic intentions of the USSR toward Europe became
obvious. Organization of NATO and the EEU came as tools of
opposition to these imperialistic tendencies. On 14 May 1955 the
WARSAW PACT, organized by the USSR as successor to the COMINTERN
and the COMINFORM, came into being to include Albania, Bulgaria,
Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania.
The Warsaw Pact collapsed in February 1991 as a result of the
collapse of the USSR. The EEU and NATO now function successfully
as stabilizer and maintainer of peace in Western Europe. The
former members of the Warsaw Pact politically now drift, along
with the former units of the USSR now dissociated with Russia,
aimlessly in an economic and political vacuum. It seems vital to
our interests that they be aided economically and protected
politically, and acceptance into NATO the EEU apparently provide
the best method to accomplish such a task. Russia historically
consistently has been imperialistic, and this drive has in no way
died out. The nations of the Warsaw Pact were integrated into
the armed forces of the USSR, with national forces split up and
scattered among the whole USSR armed forces, and all their
weapons standardized and produced by the USSR.
In the 14 July 1997 TIME there is discussion of liabilities
and benefits of expansion of NATO. The Czech Republic, Poland,
and Hungary have been accepted, and membership tendered to
Romania. Consider that the armed forces of new members will be
integrated into NATO Forces, and their weapons standardized to
NATO standards and usages. It will be virtually impossible for
any resurgent Russia to coopt the armed forces of those countries
once again. Integrated into the EEU, and with the common currency
(EURO) stability is much more likely, and economically good for
us. NATO should be expanded. Emory L. Warrick, Sr. POS 2401-C
Research by interested organizations reveals that some three
millions of land mines lay strewn across the landscapes of most
"Third World" countries. Published media research informs us
that more than SONE TRILLION DOLLARS ($1,000,000,000,000) worth
of weapons are manufactured and sold world-wide each year.
Stumbling onto land mines leaves many thousands of children and
adults dead or maimed each year. The TRILLION DOLLARS worth of
weapons represent money wasted. Economists assert that while
each billion dollars invested into the civilian economy creates
50,000 jobs, a billion dollars invested in "Defense Spending"
creates only 18,000 jobs. This spending on weapons provides the
mounts upon which the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" ride
(i.e., war, disease, famine, and pestilence).
This money is spent in essence to maintain "National
Sovereignty", an ideology whose time is long past. So long as
there are multi-national corporations whose financial influence
negates that of so-called "Sovereign Nations", then "National
Sovereignty" is a meaningless ideology. Dean WILLIAM R. INGE of
London's St. Paul's Cathedral declared, a propos of WWII: "A
nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and
by a common hatred of its neighbors." In his 1953 speech to the
American Society of Newspaper Editors PRESIDENT DWIGHT D.
EISENHOWER asserted:
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every
rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft
from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are
cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not
spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its
laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its
children....This is not a way of life at all in any true
sense. Under the cloud of war, it is humanity hanging
on a cross of iron.
Should this TRILLION DOLLARS spent on weapons instead be invested
in medicines, food, infrastructure, and education it would result
in monumental social change which could improve quality of life
for all inhabitants of this planet. Unfortunately, Dr. RUBEN
LAMAR NORMAN, Jr. had it right: "There ain't no morality between
groups!!!"
It is a discouraging truth that things are not so simple. In
spite of the fact that all the developed nations who might take
action to ameliorate this situation style themselves as "Peace-
Loving Christian Nations", they are not about to go agaist their
own selfish self-interest. Hear ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD:
There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths.
It is trying to treat them as whole truths which plays
the devil. .. I consider Christian theology to be one
of the great disasters of the human race. ... It would
be impossible to imagine anything more unChristlike than
Christian theology. Christ probably couldn't have
understood it. ... As society is now constituted a
literal adherence to the moral precepts scattered
throughout the GOSPELS would mean sudden death. ...
Religion is the last refuge of human savagery.

So long as thousands of children are losing life and limb, and so
many thousands of children are dying of disease and pestilence
when christian action could have saved them, and so long as tanks
and guns and bombs and missles are killing innocent civilians in
the name of "National Sovereignty" then we citizens of so-called
"Christian Nations" are falling short of our civic obligations.
Proliferation of arms should never be permitted in today's world,
and we should let our Congress know that just because "Defense
Contractors" have bought Congress, lock stock and barrel, there
is no reason to continue. Stop it. Emory L. Warrick, Sr. 2401C
In any discussion of nationalism it is vital to consider
various vectors bearing on the problem. Population is one of
these vectors. At the beginning of the first century population
had reached 250 million; by 1650 population had doubled to 500
million; by 1850 it had doubled again to 1 billion, and by 1920
doubled again to 2 billion, and by 1960 doubled again to 4
billion. World population now exceeds 6.5 billion, and will
reach 20 billion by 2050. One of the earliest settlements
discovered by archeologists was Eynan, a settlement of 300 hunter
Natufians dating back 12 millenia. Such isolation engendered a
feeling of social solidarity which we have come to know as
NATIONALISM.
Eynan was culturally homogeneous, just as contemporary China,
Japan, and Britain, are homogeneous, and in such environments
"nationalism" flourishes like as noxious weed. The model was
followed world-wide, precipitating continual conflict as
population growth forced disparate cultures into interaction,
even in heterogeneous societies such as the U. S. Growth in
educational coefficient (85% of adults have HS diplomas and 24%
of adults have baccalaureate degrees in the U. S.) has fomented a
shift from right-brain affect to left-brain cognition which makes
intolerable the inherent contradictions in ideologies and
cultural norms, as well as religion, and augumented the effect of
perceived "relative deprivation". Quantum advances in technology
of transportation and communication have stimulated homogeneous
expectations concurrent with heterogeneous cultural and religious
normative ideologies. Aggrevating the turmoil of all these
vectors are the problems of waste disposal, inadequate resources
for allocation, and crowding and lack of space. Heterogeneity,
crowding, ethnocentricity, cultural solidarity, all coalescing
into nationalism, results in intense conflict and violence.
Historically, politicians/leaders decide what social controls
are needed to dominate society, Shamans and religious figures
have revelations which give those social controls "Divine
Sanction", and politicians then use force to enforce such
cultural norms. The religions are based upon the concept of a
"Flat Earth" in a 3-tiered universe (i.e., God/Heaven "Up-There",
us here, and Hell/Devil "Down-There") with utterly no concept of
actual scientific reality, and anthropomorphization renders a
"God" having the worst characteristics of humans. War provides
the "moral imperative" needed to provide solidarity to these
societies, and this cohesive desire to defeat the enemies who
threaten us is what we call "nationalism", one of the most
destructive ideologies known to humans. Multi-national
corporations with no national loyalties, but loyal only to
profits however gained, further complicate the matter by creating
a world-wide integrated interdependent economy which transcends
any national boundries. When one considers that more than 130
automobiles are manufactured for every 100 which can be sold (cf.
ONE WORLD: COMING READY OR NOT, William Greider), and
extrapolate that to airplanes, computer chips, and all other
manufactured goods, one begins to understand the economic turmoil
of Asia, Latin America, and Russia, to say nothing of organized
crime coerced loans, never to be repaid, made by banks world-wide
including the U. S. NATIONALISM MUST GO!!! Warrick, POS 2401C
When one speaks of "nationalism" one must consider the
distinction between affect and cognition. The brain has two
hemispheres. The "right brain" processes information
affectively; the "left brain" processes information cognitively.
Every increase in educational co-efficient world-wide effects a
shift from affect to cognition. Since nationalism and patriotism
both are affective, rather than cognitive, functions the strength
of these emotions will vary inversely with the level of education
within any specified population. The type of social organization
of any society will vary with such educational coefficients.
In a society which can be defined (technically, not
religiously) as "catholic" or "tribal" (i.e., China, Russia,
Japan) the population effectively will be homogeneous, and the
individual will be valued "instrumentally" (i.e., as a means to
the ends of the society, not as an end in such an individual's
self). Social morality will tend to be "relative" (i.e., what
benefits the society will be "moral" without regard to absolute
values), and the "ends" will justify the "means". In a society
which can be defined (technically, not religiously) as
"protestant", or, in most cases, as "capitalist", the individual
will be valued "intrinsically" (i.e., valuable as an end in
oneself), and "social control" must be replaced with "internal,
individual self-control" is such society is to be stable and
provide security and serenity for its citizens. Values in such a
society, to be effective, must be ethical rather than moral, and
value each individual and individual rights equally without
regard to any other considerations. Dr. Reuben Lamar Norman,
Jr., is wont to say: "There ain't no morality between groups!!"
Here lies the essence of "nationalism" which is ethnocentric in
nature.
In the "weltanshauung" limned by "traditional science"
discreteness was possible, and the concept of delimited national
borders to effect distinct geographic nations maintaining
"arm's-length" relations were conceivable. With the advent of
"modern science" involving an electro-magnetic universe in which
reality inhered in "relations" rather than "entities", and social
groups must come to grips with intimate intragroup relations in
which there no longer exist discrete entities. To state a major
aphorism of modern science: "A change ANYWHERE in the system is
a change EVERYWHERE in the system." Isolationism no longer is a
viable option in the world of today. Quantum acceleration of
technological development in communication and transportation,
along with geometrical increase in population, all have conduced
to homogenization of disparate cultures, and conflict where
"cultural purity" has been defended by conservatives in the face
of such social change. "Nationalism" represents the quintessence
of such ill-conceived emotional resistance to such social change.
If this words is to survive through the 21st century then all
social processes must be cognitively, rather than affectively
based. Wars essentially are affective, as are medals,
patriotism, uniforms, "esprit d'corps", religion, and politics.
Compromise, as distinct from appeasement, is cognitive. Alvin
Toeffler hit a social nerve with his concept of "future shock".
Affect cannot cope with "future shock". Cognition can.
Nationalism must cease. Emory L. Warrick, Sr., POS 2401C
Between the eighth and eleventh centuries CE the Iberian
Peninsula was occupied by Muslim Moors thereby creating an
academic cauldron stimulated by the interaction of Jewish, Roman
Catholic, and Muslim universities. Among the vital academic
concepts contributed by the Muslim scholars were the arabic
numbering system and the concept of "ZERO. These concepts
facilitated the deverlopment of the capitalist system, and
eventuated in world-wide trade. In 1776 Adam Smith's THE WEALTH
OF NATIONS was published providing the formative concepts of
"LAISSEZ FAIRE" economics and "mercantilism" to economic theory
and capitalist practices. "Mercantilist Theory" stipulates that
industrial countries should "establish" colonies and use the raw
materials from such colonies to feel their manufacturing needs.
Such colonies were not permitted to develop any industrial base
of their own.
World wide trade has evolved into a world wide economy which
is completely interdependent upon every economy in the world.
The basic problem resides in governmental concepts of
"nationalism" and "sovereignty" when the multi-national
corporations with virtually infinite economic power totally
ignore such restrictions. The economic bubble is threatened
further by the fact that capitalism conduces to absolutely
radically uncontrolled greed and self interest when coordination
and control are essential to the health of such global economy.
Currently there are one hundred forty automobiles being
manufactured for every one hundred which can be sold, which means
that some economies will go bankrupt. These same situations
obtain for many other manufactured products such as appliances,
computers, and silicon chips. A central principle of modern
science and organic cosmology is: "A change anywhere in the
system is a change everywhere in the system"; in the 17th century
John Donne said much the same thing from the High Altar at St.
Paul's: "Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for THEE".
Even given the power of the multi-national corporations the
U. S. Government has achieved some objective control of those
corporations, even though organized crime has a powerful
influence. In economies in other parts of the world the cultures
permit nepotism to a staggering degree, and the concomitant greed
has conduced toward families and intimates of the "Head of State"
gaining control of industries and financial institutions, as well
as exercising such "nationalist" constraints of trade as tariffs
and taxation. Even more markedly have the forces of organized
crime in LDCs been influential in raping such national economies
and creating such economic conditions that final institutions and
currencies have failed disasterously. One cannot even begin to
participate in any local economy without the payment of truly
monumental amounts of "baksheese" to local political, criminal,
and patriarchial authorities. Examples would be Russia, Malaysia,
Indonesia, Korea, Thailand, Viet Nam, China, Laos, et al.
Overlaying all this is the drug trade, brought into being by the
legislation of insane profits into the enterprise by a misguided
Religious Right and their puppets in the U. S. Congress who get
election funding from the super-rich and their "human capital"
for organization from religious zealots; no wonder things are in
such a mess. POS 2401C Emory L. Warrick, Sr.
ISSUE ONE - SAFETY OF WORLD ANTE COLD WAR
Patrick Glynn opines that the end of the Cold War has created
extreme dangers for the world. He recognizes the separatism and
fragmentation resultant from this pivotal event, but does not
glimpse a primary stimulus for this occurrance. Alvin Toeffler
speaks of "Future Shock", stress placed on persons and peoples by
the inexorable process of change. Stress is a debilitating force
which motivates peoples to strive to resist such change and to
preserve the status quo, if not to return to the past. "Ethnic
Cleansing" is but this separatism carried to extreme. Glynn
asserts that contemporary peoples no long have past attachments
to grand ideas worth fighting or dying for, whether for evil or
good, but rather seem collectively to be losing such allegiances.
One must remember that such attachments were affective, not
cognitive. Religion, patriotism, and morality all are affective,
and humans tend to resist coping cognitively with reality. Glynn
considers contemporary problems to arise from questions of human
identity. Western civilization is seen to view the identifying
feature of being human qua human as cognitive coping activity.
He asserts that the Greek philosophical conceptualization of
humans as rational made possible the creation of extensive
political organizations on a non-despotic foundation. Socratic
philosophy conceived democracy as transcending human's self-
definitional differentia.
The Roman Empire is seen as falling to foes culturally,
intellectually, and technologically inferior to them. Rising
educational coefficients result in discoveries eliminating "awe"
which results in demythologization and detheologization thereby
effecting a shift from right-brain affective coping to left-brain
cognitive coping. "Future Shock" results as change is resisted.
The teaching of "multi-culturalism" in our universities is the
poisonous fruit of this, even more than the effects upon foreign
policy and regional conflicts. We either will achieve a unified
overarching American culture permitting ethnicity to the extent
that it does not impinge upon others, or we will perish. Glynn's
assertion of the critical danger to civilization is well taken.
Fukuyama, author of "The End of History", reacts as would
Voltaire's Dr. Pangloss. His voice, muffled by the sand in which
his head is buried, asserts "this is the best of all possible
worlds". "Who would trade the American automobile industry for
the German one; Diamler-Benz swallowed Chrysler. He asserts poor
people in Asia will get rich; the reality is that they won't in
1998. Japan forged ahead in spite of other recessions, and moved
away from past corrupt machine politics; one need only to read
news to refute that. "The most important security problem in Asia
is North Korea's nuclear program; what about India and Pakistan?
Fukuyama contends that fears arising from implications of
Yugoslavian turmoil are exaggerated. He asserts that the absence
of greaat-power contention will mean that ssectional strife wil
have only regional impact. He recognized that even though the
world is becoming united through communications technology that
it is being regionalized and disconnected politically. Investment
bankers have lost trillions. There is instability and confusion.
Fukuyamas errs; this is not the best of all possible worlds.
Emory L. Warrick, Sr. POS 2401C
ISSUE #2: NATO EXPANSION
Supporters of a strong and expanded NATO envision a growing
emphasis on collective security as evidenced in increasing UN
peacekeeping missions and other international collective efforts
at maintenance of peace. The assassination of Grand Archduke
Franz Ferdinand by Leon Colzolz in Serajevo ignited WWI, and any
effort to avoid any such political conflagration in the present
should surely be made. Harry Truman asserted that:
the free people of the world look to us for support in
maintaining their freedoms. If we falter in our
leadership, we may endanger the peace of our world - and
we surely shall endanger the welfare of our own nation.
Madeleine Albright maintains that America stands with Europe
because we understand, regardless of political affiliation, that
it is in our national and collective interests to do so. The
contempory mission of NATO is peace and cooperation with all who
will, and has aided realization of this century's most elusive
dream: A unified Europe at peace with every nation free, and
every free nation a partner. Albright sees a common purpose to
do for Eastern Europe what NATO did a half century ago for
Western Europe: To integrate new democracies, eliminate old
hatreds, provide confidence in economic recovery, and deter
conflict.
NATO intends to complete its internal adaptation by beginning
accession talks, accepting new members, and creating an Atlantic
Partnership Council open to new members. It is a positive
alliance, not directed against any nation, and not to be feared
by any nation not creating trouble. NATO realizes clearly that
no united, secure, and democratic Europe is possible without
Russian participation. The Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland
will be included in NATO by year's end. Democratic nations have
failed twice before in the Twentieth Century to achieve these
aims. Today is the time to employ the vision, take the
opportunity, and build such a Europe.
Clemens reminds me vividly of Neville Chamberlain. Russia
has c.150 million population with a GDP c. $300 billion, about
half the GDP of California with 4 times its population, and a GDP
equalling that of The Netherlands. Except for the internal army
of the KGB (fully equipped and technologically advanced) and
SPETNAZ the Russian armed forces are destroyed. Clemens refers
to the cost of re-equiping the armed forces of those new nations
to be admitted to NATO, but does not address the difficulty
Russia would face should it entertain future imperialist
intentions aimed at the "near abroad". They would be unable to
provide spare parts to weapons, equipment and materials different
from their manufacturing base, to say nothing of providing
ammunition for weapons not chambered to the Russian standard.
This is to say nothing of the disorganization of Russian Armed
Forces, unpaid military personnel and workers throughout Russia,
and the resultant destruction of morale.
Most governments of central Eastern Europe welcome NATO
expansion so long as they are included. Ukraine is an exception.
It has a third the population of Russia and spends $1 billion on
arms, where Russia spends 20% of its GDP on the military.
Ukraine wants neutrality, and Belarus wants military cooperation
with Russia. Churchill asserts that Hitler could have been
stopped in 1933. Expand NATO now. Emory L. Warrick, Sr. POS2401

ISSUE 3 (10) PROLIFERATION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS
On 11 September 1945 Secretary of State Henry Lewis Stimson
wrote to Pres. Truman:
If the atomic bomb were merely another, though more
devastating, military weapon to be assimilated into our
pattern of international relations, it would be one
thing. We then could follow the old policy of secrecy
and military superiority relying on international
caution to prescribe the future use of the weapon, but I
think the bomb constitutes instead merely a first step
in a new control by man over the forces of nature too
revolutionary and dangerous to fit into the old
concepts. I think it really caps the climax of the race
between man's technical power for destructiveness and
his psychological power of self-control, his moral
power.
Arms races, regional rivalries, and acquisition by other peoples
of advance weapons technology constitute a proliferation threat
disasterous to long-range global instability. The choice of 20th
Century governments to use advanced weapons in conflict exposes
civilians, as well as soldiers, to mortal danger. The use of
such weapons in the 20th Century has resulted in greater
destruction and number of casualties than in the preceeding four
centuries. These weapons currently consume a trillion dollars a
year, which is diverted from housing, medical care, food, and
education of the world population. Every 10 seconds a child
loses life or limbs to a landmine.
Lantis is in error. The heart of our nuclear shield were the
submarines, absolutely undetectable by any other nations
technology. The submarine fleet was divided into three parts,
with one third constantly on patrol. Before that third could
return to port, the next third had to be on station. Each
submarine carried 16 intercontinental missiles with 10
independently targeted nuclear warheads on each missile.
Submarine commanders were in direct contact wsith the White
House. Thus the panic when the Walker spy case surfaced.
A principle argument for maintenance of our nuclear arsenal
is maintenance of our power hegemony over the rest of the world.
America always has had a strong isolationist streak which has
expressed itself in extreme political nationalism. To maintain
such superiority it has considered necessary to continue testing
to guarantee viability of our weapons stock. Much of this
impetus has sprung from "camapign" contributions to Congress by
weapons and weapon's transporter manufacturers. Millions of
dollars have been poured into advertising to convince the public
of this need. The Soviet "Ministry of Misinformation" has done a
real job on our populace and government.
A vigorous opponent of nuclear armaments formerly was
Commanding General of our nuclear weapons establishment. The end
of the Cold War simply threw the nuclear proliferation problem
out of the frying-pan into the fire. Not only are we faced with
the disposition of nuclear waste have a "half-life" of millions
of years, posing wwhat amounts to a perpetual threat to all
mankind, but we face also the prospect of the acquisition by
every despotic ruler of LCDs of nuclear, biological, and chemical
weapons technology, along with the acquiring of missiles capable
of reaching enough enemies to start WWIII. Israel, Pakistan,
Iraq, India, Iran, and many other countries are now thought to
possess such technology. Churchill"s take on the nuclear age was
"the stone age may return on the gleaming wings of science". We
better wake up and face reality. Emory L. Warrick, Sr. POS2401C
ISSUE 4 (16) NATIONALISM
In 1773 and 1791 the German philosopher J. G. Herder
conceived "der volksgeist", the "folk-spirit" which allegedly
united the germanic peoples into one nation. In 1788 the German
philosopher Immanuel Kant enunciated his Categorical Imperative
"Duty is respect for the LAW". In 1781 Bismarck transmuted
Kant's dictum into "Duty is respect for the STATE. Hitler's MEIN
KAMPF took it from there into into WWII, after Kaiser Wilhelm's
abortive foray into WWI. Dean William R. Inge of London's St.
Paul's Cathedral asserts: "A nation is a society united by a
delusion about its ancestry and by a common hatred of its
neighbors." Dr. Reuben L. Norman, Jr., asserted, as an
undergraduate: "There ain't no morality between groups."
Cox distinguishes two types of nationalism: first is civic,
or political, nationalism (cf. America or Western Europe); second
is ethnic nationalism (cf. Eastern Europe, Armenians, or Kurds).
Cox enumerates 5 functions of nationalism: (1) identification;
(2) a means to mobilize economic, political, or military power;
(3) a centrifugal force (i.e., separation); (4) a centripetal
force (i.e., gravitational); and (5) a "gestalt" for resistance.
Among negative aspects of nationalism Cox lists imperialism,
glorification of the state, creation of enemies, overlap with
religion, discrimination against minorities, and competing rights
(which he trifurcates into ethnic, historic, and strategic
rights). Cox says that nationalism has been one of the most
powerful forces in the world for the last two centuries, regarded
as an inevitable companion to social modernization. There are,
however, indications that the usefulness or relevance of
nationalism may be fading.
Keane maintains that European nationalism is a powerfully
virile and magnetic of "closed systems of life" based upon fear.
He regards nationalism as a scavenger. He states that it feeds
upon the pre-existing sense of nationhood within some given
territory, transmuting such shared national identity into a
"bizarre parody" of its former self. Keane views nationalism as
a pathological form of "national identity" destroying
heterogeneity by reducing the nation into the "Nation", and
taking advantage of any democratizing influences by asserting its
validity and power upon all others. Keane asserts that
nationalism has a fanatical core, establishing boundries guarded
by internal and external border posts manned by border police
charged with maintaining internal compliance and preventing
external interference. Keane hopes establishment of the European
Community will damp some of these fires of hatred in Europe.
It would seem that Cardus and Estruch are blind to two
cardinal principles of Western Civilization. Philosophically, it
is a logical tautology that any argument (or ideology) becomes
absurd. Theologically, it is a given that the "Doctrine of
Original Sin" recognizes that human's innately are self-centered,
self-serving, and greedy. Given any opportunity to exploit
others and exercise power, those not having achieved the grace
of "other-centeredness" will take the ideology of nationalism to
its extreme. Their support of the virtues of nationalism seems
very weak. Cardus and Estruch do not establish that Nationalism
is an unmitigated virtue. Emory L. Warrick, Sr. POS2401C
IS ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM A THREAT TO POLITICAL STABILITY?

Two centripetal forces influencing Muslim unity are the UMMAH
and the sense of a common history. The UMMAH envisions a unitary
spiritual, cultural, and political community of Muslims adhering
devoutly to the SHARI'AH in a theocracy, joining spiritually and
politically in one great Muslim Community. Such a community
began developing with the Hijira in 622, continued in the Middle
East with the first four Caliphs, then the Ommayyads until 750,
and the Abbasids until c. 1100, and the Ommayyads in North Africa
and Spain from 750 until 1100. Islam achieved an intellectual
and cultural peak with abd al Rahman III. Centrifugal forces are
the tensions between Sunni and Shi'ite adherents, and a
secularism which has developed over disagreements concerning
interpretations of the Shari'ah. Secularists would tend to
divide the political state from the religious establishment.
The Western interpretation of "human rights" is more
individualistic than such "tribal" societies as Muslims, China,
the Soviet Union, and many southern LCDs. Snarr concentrates
upon the UN approach to Human Rights. Snarr distinguishes among
three "generations" of civil rights. First he sees political and
civil rights, focussing upon individual rights and emphasizing
responsibility of states to refrain from interfering with these
rights. Secondly, he sees social and economic rights, involving
more of a socialist perspective, and involving rights to social
security, fair wages, right to union activity, right to an
adequate standard of living comprised of adequate food, housing,
medical care, clothing, and education, and the right to the
cultural life of one's community. Thirdly, he sees "solidarity
rights" reflecting the emergence of Third World nationalism with
its demand for redistribution of wealth, power, and resources,
among others. Such "ethnicity" tends to be centrifugal.
Female Genital Mutilation is the junction of the discussion
themes of Snarr and Rourke. This practice is not essentially
arabic, but is prevalent among North African and Far Eastern
Islamic groups while Arabic Islamic practices involve shaving all
female pubic hair. While secular Islamic adherents do not demand
the total draping of women, the more fundamental the
interpretation of the Shari'ah the more complete draping is
demanded. Islamists are equally insistent upon other practices;
Pipes asserts that fundamentalists demand: "Islam is the
solution." "Islamism" differs from traditional Islam; emphasis
on public life rather than personal faith, leadership
professionals rather than religious figures, and reaction against
any modernization. Islamists insist that the only possible
social structure for all peoples must be their interpretation of
the Shari'ah; all government MUST be a theocracy.
Pipes says the U. S. lacks a coherent foreign policy toward
Islamic countries because of liberal-conservative disagreement as
to whether such policy should be based upon conciliation or
conflict. Karabell asserts that one cannot predict Islamic
foreign policy by domestic policy. One should remember that the
"UMMAH" does not recognize political boundries, a conflict with
secular nationalism. Policy implications should differ by
countries in their effect. Don't get spooked. The oil is safe,
and civilization may survive. Emory L. Warrick, Sr. POS2401C
ISSUE #6 (12) HUMAN RIGHTS
Realists assert that the end of the Cold War did not mean the end
of power politics. Idealists hope people act in accordance with
core principles without fear of empowering enemies. This debate
regarding the wisdom of incorporating human rights standards into
foreign policy making is not an exercise in abstract principles
because vital policy choices and objectives are involved. If we
believe peace is promoted by democracy then Canada, Britain, the
U. S., and others should exert utmost influence upon the non-
democratic regimes to accept these principles. The use of armed
force may be permissible. The U. N., the U. S. and other allies
accomplished this "sea-change" in Haiti, and in other nations.
Tonelson would ask whether any government-centered human
rights policy makes sense in the post Cold War world. He asserts
all available evidence would indicate that such policies, however
morally compelling, are obsolete. He maintains that such
policies are torpedoed by forces which in the past inspired such
bipartisan hope for a new age of human rights progress. He
claims that the retreat of Soviet power in Eastern Europe and
end of Cold War confrontation among LCDs has exposed failure of
our policies in such areas as Bosnia, Rwanda, Haiti, Georgia,
etc. He would maintain that the disasterous conditions and moral
outrages in those areas are trivialized by reference to them as
"human rights violations. He appears to be a Reaganite fighting
"the Last War" of supply side economics, not realizing we have no
longer a "labor-based economy", but rather an "informnation-based
economy"; Tonelson does not seem to have a clue!!
Michael Posner posits that Tonelson's postmortem is flawed by
four of what Alfred North Whitehead defines as "uncritiqued
assumptions". Posner claims that Tonelson misrepresents the
origins of human rights, the scope and objectives of U. S. "human
rights" policy, reasonable measures to judge the effectiveness of
U. S. policies, and the view of our key allies regarding such
policies. Faced with 22 million casualties, most civilian,
during WWII, in addition to the 6 million Jews murdered during
the Holocaust, the U. S. and its allies felt compelled to amend
for their laggard response to such atrocities, and began to take
steps to prevent such atrocities in the future. Pursuit of a
"human rights policy" has been a prime motivation for the U. S.
for the past half-century. Posner asserts that Tonelson accuses
"liberals of using human rights to advocate using U. N. sanctions
or military force to oust repressive regimes", but that exceeds
core principles of human rights, challenging of governments for
mistreatment of their citizens. The civil and political covenant
requires, minimally, governments to allow popular participation
in choosing governments, rights to hold public meetings and speak
out freely without fear, and allow a free press.
Ratification of international treaties requires that states
accept core principles proscribing torture, slavery, or political
murder of citizens. The U. S. provides military aid to many
states in violation. We can measure progress by how indigenous
activists can act in their countries.Our human rights policies
have not antagonized our allies. Many U. S. allies factor human
rights into their foreign policies. The declining unilateral
ability of the U. S. to act must be considered. ELW,Sr. POS2401C
ISSUE #7 (14)- HUMAN RIGHTS IN CHINA
Poll respondents probably would agree strongly in principle
with items advocating civil liberties (e.g., freedom of speech,
assembly, press) and human rights (e.g., freedom from torture or
discrimination). If item 2 regarded condemnation of individuals
or states violating such principles fewer respondents might
agree. Should the next item recommend sanctions against such
violators fewer still would accept the idea. When use of force
to intervene and stop such violations is advocated only a small
minority would agree. Respondents who disagree with the last 2
items might justify such attitudes on the basis of cultural
relativism, when condemned practices may not be abuses, but are
practices disapproved because of our cultural biases. Such
respondents might also disagree on a pragmatic basis, fearing
that antagonizing the government might lead to retaliation
against citizens, or refusal to trade with the antagonist.
The PRC is an authorian state in which the Party IS the
power, members holding all top civilian, police, and military
positions above local levels. The Party demands stability and
social order, and is consecrated to perpetuating its rule.
Citizens lack any liberty to express any political opposition to
the Party or its rule. Marxist ideology has been superceded by
economic pragmatism as decentralization has increased the power
of regional officials. Party authority resides in economic
reform, social stability, fomenting patriotism, and control of
the security apparatus. They are Ministries of State Security,
Public Security, People's Armed Police, People's Liberation Army,
and the state penal, judicial, and procuratorial systems.
The Chinese government still commits widespread, documented
human rights abuses which violate internationally accepted norms
because of authority intolerance of dissent, fear of unrest, and
indifference to legal safeguards for individuals. Abuses include
torture and abuse of prisoners, forced confessions and arbitrary
lengthy incommunicado detention. Restrictions are imposed on
liberty of speech, press, assembly, association, religion,
privacy, and worker rights. In 1996 concentrated efforts were
made to cut off protest or criticism, and all public dissent
against the government was silenced by intimidation, exile,
imposition of prison terms, and administrative detention, leaving
no known active dissidents at year's end. Serious human rights
abuses persist in minority areas such as Tibet, Xinjaing, and
Inner Mongolia. Intensified repression of religion and other
fundamental liberties in these areas has been instituted.
The Information Office of the State Council of the PRC would
dispute these facts. It says the State Department misrepresents
those facts. For instance, "as soon as a people's court decides
to begin trial proceedings, it should seend a copy of the
indictment from the people's procuratorate to the accused no
later than SEVEN DAYS before the trial. With regard to the 76
year old Roman Catholic bishop they arrested, and who had
contracted pneumonia, it was alleged medication had been denied;
they asserted that Bp. Zeng had been detained for holding illegal
church services in his home. Allegedly Zeng"s illegal meetingsa
in recent years seriously disrupted the public order. China's
human rights abuses pose a severe problem. ELW,Sr POS2401C
ISSUE #8 (13) DOES DEMOCRACY PROMOTE PEACE
Democracy has spread in Latin America, Africa, Asia, Eastern
Europe, Russia, and in former Soviet Republics. Such changes
have persuaded some observers that the world norm might become
Western style democracies. In 1795 Immanuel Kant (PERPETUAL
PEACE) wrote that the spread of democracy would change the world
by eliminating war because:
"if the consent of the citizens is required in order to
decide that war should be declared...nothing is more
natural than that they would be very cautious in
commencing such a poor game, decreeing for themselves
all the calamities of war."
Some researchers using empirical methods have found evidence that
democracies seldom fight each other. For 30 wars occurring
between 1816 and 1988 one analysis concluded that over 90% of
these conflicts clearly were democracy vs non-democracy wars.
Another study concluded that among contiguous countries that
adjacent democracies were least likely to go to war.
James Lee Ray avers that Woodrow Wilson characterized WWI as
an effort to "make the world safe for Democracy". Kissinger
asserts: "Wilson originated...what would become the dominant
intellectual school of American foreign policy. NY Narcotic
Addiction Control Commission researcher Dean Babst published in
1972 ("INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH) an article concluding that "no wars
have been fought between independent nations having elective
governments between 1789 and 1941." Singer and Small disclaimed
validity of Babst's conclusion, but conceded that his observation
was essentially accurate (1976). In their efforts to discredit
Babst's conclusion they illuminated a distinction thus far
unnoticed, that democracy is an important pacifying force.
Psychologically, the most impressive evidence in support of the
democratic peace proposition is that no dispute or crisis between
states ever has escalated into an international war unless unless
one of the involved states was NOT democratic.
Ray asserts there are 2 persistent myths apparently accepted
by consensus. The first myth maintains though democratic states
have not warred abainst each other, they are just as war-prone as
autocratic states in relationships with other kinds of states.
The second myth holds that while democratic states do not war
against each other, no one has produced evidence of causality as
opposed to association. One comprehensive review of this issue
reveals that while democratizing regimes are more war-prone than
stable regimes, states involved in transition to autocracy are
even more war-prone. A second analysis concludes dangerous
transitions to democracy are likely only when the state is
surrounded by autocratic states. Much of the energizing of this
debate springs from the implication that democracy potentially
can have a revolutionary impact on world politics, rendering
international war obsolete.
Research has not noticed that pacifistic states are without
exception "promiscuous", while war-states are "puritanical",
origins of which trend are lost in the mists of antiquity. Mary
Caprioli writes as a feminist radical. Consider school-teacher
Golda Meier or Margaret Thatcher. Everyone has gotten lost in
definitions. She does recognize constitutional and public
opinion restraints on decision making. The 1960s "hippies" had it
right: "Those who make love don't make war". ELW,Sr POS2401C
ISSUE #9 (11) PEACEKEEPING AND PEACEMAKING
No writers involved in this issue approachs the crucial
determining factor ultimately deciding this issue. That question
involves just where SOVEREIGNTY ultimately will reside - in
individual super-nations or an international federation capable
of overpowering any individual nation. Stephenson introduces
several historical concepts. In the 19th century the "balance of
power" motivated foreign policy by trying to prevent any alliance
from achieving overwhelming superiority. In the first third of
the 20th century it was "collective security", the seeking of an
over-arching alliance dominant over any possible individual
aggressor. WWII introduced "common security" out of which the
Comintern, Cominform, Warsaw Pact, NATO, EC, and EEC developed.
None of these ideological solutions provided an adequate solution
to the problem of security, and thus this debate issue.
Stepenson distinguishes between "negative peace" (absence of
war or direct violence) and "positive peace" (social justice and
absence of exploitation). She points out that for the UN
"peacebuilding" includes establishing social conditions conducive
to peace, "peacekeeping" means interdicting fighting among
parties, and "peacemaking" means enforcing conditions preventing
inter-party conflict. "Peacemaking" would include enquiry and
fact-finding, mediation and conciliation, arbitration, judicial
settlement, and use of force as a final resort. The dilemmas
confronting the UN are made insoluble by the propensity of the
international community to use force as "first aid" instead of as
a last resort. It is possible that UN problems of general
support and funding of operations may, in spite of popular
consensus, be due to overenthusiastic resort to force rather than
other options for solutions. It may be time for more intensive
debate regarding long-vs-short term, and violent-vs-diplomatic,
approaches to world peace.
Schwartzberg recommends a permanent UN armed force organized
along lines used by the USSR as described by Suvorov in INSIDE
THE RED ARMY, the "front system" commanded by one central
commander commanding all branches. This force would consist
basically of an army consisting of 3 corps (i.e., 100,00
personnel each), each corps having responsibility for 1 of 3
geographic areas covering the entire globe. Over a period of
time all nations would reduce armed forces to the levels of
domestic police forces, and all heavy armaments would accrue to
the UN force. Schwartzberg envisions roles for such a force as
congruent with the Chinese PLA (i.e., including "Peace Corps"
functions) in addition to armed conflict where necessary.
Recruitment would be voluntary, composed mostly of LDC recruits,
screened for the best possible personnel, unrestricted by gender
or race, skewed toward personal development in all areas,
designed to develop ployglot capabilities, and returned in less
than a decade to their own societies to aid in developing those
societies. All in all, the visionary scheme of an idealist.
Hillen attacks this vision at every point. He is intoxicated
by the concept of "national sovereignty". He considers super-
power force to be the only solution. His perspective is "Reagan
Era". He sees only "real-politick". His perspective is that of
Henry Kissenger redux. Emory L. Warrick, Sr. POS 2401C
ISSUE #10 (8) INTERNATIONAL TRADE AND GLOBALIZATION
International trade cannot be treated simply as an economic
matter because influential consequences are arising from these
activities which will shape our world environment in many ways.
Policy makers may believe trade should be governmentally
encouraged because such benefits are produced as jobs producing
export materials, revenues for purchase of imports, and corporate
profits. Most states attempt to control trade so as to minimize
liabilities and maximize benefits. Balance of trade deficits
tend to produce currency devaluations, price increases, and
accelerating levels of debt; whether capital inflows benefit or
harm an economy will depend upon capital sources, terms of
acquisition, and uses to which the capital is put. Free trade
ideologues attempt to deemphasize distributional effects, and
concentrate on the impact of trade on the whole economy, but
distributional consequences produce such self-evident political
effects that governments are more attentive to them than economic
theorists. Trade shapes wealth distribution among individuals and
nations, affects power and interstate relations among states, and
affects achievement of goals founded upon non-economic values.
In ONE WORLD; READY OR NOT William Greider presents adaquate
reliable data to show the effects and probable trend of economic
globalization. Rourke's introduction illuminates the important
point relevant to values; is buying products manufactured by MNCs
in other countries where businesses can pay starvation wages, not
provide benefits, and utilize child lable moral? Weidenbaum and
Albo give much opinion and precious little reliable data to
support their positions. It is interesting that many "American"
MNCs have shifted more than half, and up to three quarters, of
their assets overseas (e.g., Citicorp, Bankers Trust, Chevron,
Exxon, etc.). Weidenbaum does point out that Americans are
already part of globalization, and employees, customers,
suppliers, and U. S. investors increasingly are participating in
the international economy. Transitional enterprise is
increasing, and many overseas markets are more profitable than
domestic markets, but rich opportunities and high risk are twins.
The rise of the global market place opens new vistas of
opportunity for diversification of American investments in a
milieu of high risk. Even in view of current troubles, China and
Southeast Asia have become vital elements of globalization with
which Americans must cope. The continental European Community,
with its new "Euro", compels U. S. commerce to participate in
their markets; political and military issues create tensions
there, but do not slow unification progress. The U. S. economy
continues as the world's strongest, and U. S. companies rank at
the top in sales volume in 13 major industries. The business of
supplying armaments to superpowers has created substantial
economic wealth. The thrust of the global marketplace, however,
has shifted from government to private enterprise.
Aldo writes from a Marxist/Socialist perspective. He nit-
picks every issue. It is obvious that globalization has
disadvantages, but it is not going away. Unless it is controlled
and regulated it is going to crash. So much is self-evident. It
seems unlikely that failed Lenin-Marxism will be the controls
utilized. Aldo should wake up. Emory L. Warrick, Sr. POS2401C
ISSUE #11 (6) ADMISSION OF CHINA TO THE WTO
China desires to make the transition from a destitute
agricultural economy to an expected wealthier industrial economy.
Though having adopted many capitalist trappings, it stringently
retains its authoritarian, communist ideology. China's inability
to impose economic practices and responsibilities upon provencial
enterprises, while maintaining totally centralized economic
planning, makes it a problematic candidate for WTO membership.
WTO currently has 117 members. It has the organizational purpose
of policing economic practices among member nations in order to
avoid any advantage being taken by any member at the expense of
others. To admit as a member a nation unwilling to conform to
these accepted, consensual, pragmatic practices would debilitate
the organization, thus harming everyone.
Ross states that with favorable economies of scale and near
infinite supply of cheap labor, China promises to become a major
export power capable of overwhelming the domestic markets of its
economic competitors. Were China at the same time refuse to
offer opportunities to participate in its domestic market, such
policies could participate destabilizing responses by all major
economic powers. State-owned enterprises in China in 1995
produced 31% of industrial input, controlled strategic economic
sectors, and had heavy subsidization and preferential investment.
Concurrently the government refuses to enforce domestic policies
to protect foreign businesses. Admission of China to the WTO
would subject it to multilateral pressures to adhere to a self-
imposed agreement to adopt such trading practices in a specified
length of time, while it now accepts no agreement to reform and
modify its destabilizing trade practices. Current American
policy fails either to minimize the likelihood of international
economic instability or to improve Chinese trading practices.
Given a current trade deficit with China exceeding $37
BILLION the U. S. has sufficient motivation to do something.
Mastel asserts that some China experts forcefully advocate the
administration putting aside its concerns and supporting
immediate Chinese admission into the WTO. Doing this would give
priority to political and security concerns above economic
concerns, and has the appearance of classic American Cold War
foreign policy decision making "gestalt" dominating China policy
for decades. The first of three basic reasons to distrust the
current Chinese compatibility with the WTO is formal trade
barriers, inclusive of tariffs, import licenses and duties, and
subsidies which in recent years have been changed in particulars
while compensating adjustments retained obstruction. The second
basic reason regards lack of any reliable rule of law which
presents virtually insurmountable obstacles to WTO membership so
long as national policies for trade regulations and tariffs are
ignored at the provencial and local levels; how does one predict
Chinese behavior in international commerce? The third basic
reason concerns a communist government, directed by complete
totalitarian communist ideology, and practicing Lenin-Marxist
economic control over industrial planning and subsidization,
price fixing, manufacturing quotas, and utterly unconcerned for
external interests and welfare; this poses quite a dilemma for
American economic policy makers. Emory L. Warrick, Sr. POS2401C
ISSUE #12 (7) CUBA SANCTIONS AND HELMS/BURTON
Castro, or someone in his armed forces, got aggrevated at
"small plane" fly-overs to drop opposition leaflets and shot down
a couple. That gave megalomaniacs Dan Burton and Jesse Helms the
opportunity to try to be President in lieu of Clinton by doing
"foreign policy". Their idea was that everyone in the world
should do exactly as those two want them to do, because they know
the "only truth". Unfortunately for them what they did failed,
as was usual. The measure was not so popular on the
international scene. Before the Canadian Parliament Mexican
"Presidente" Zedillo asserted: "Mexico and Canada consider
inadmissable every measure that ...erects (barriers) to the
detriment of international investment and business", which
statement also reflected EU opinion.
Lisio opines that by seeking to punish any foreign citizen,
government, or company not adhering Jesse's embargo, the U. S.
tests the boundries of international law. Cuba's subsequent
progress only confirms Burton's and Helms' ineptitude. These two
claim that no other issue or country in the world is more
important than Cuba to U. S. foreign policy, taking precedence
over relations with EU, Russia, Mexico, or Canada. TITLE I
involved proscriptions against loans, financing, or trading, or
membership in international organizations to which the U. S. was
a contributor. TITLE II outlines support to be given to a
"democratic" government in Cuba which specifically excluded the 2
Castros, and including requirements most undemocratic. TITLE III
seeks punishment of any who made use of American property seized
during Castro's takeover from the dictator Gen. Batista, ignoring
the principle of international law which legalizes the
expropriation of property by a sovereign nation.
TITLE IV recurs to Helms' favorite activity; denying visas
to anyone with whom he disagrees or dislikes. By delaying
enforcement of TITLE III President Clinton averted the flood of
retaliatory legislation by allies which Helms' foreign policy
ineptness would have provoked. The USSR collapse, and subsequent
loss of $5 billion a year subsidies, plunged Cuba into a disaster
from which its Lenin-Marxist "command economy" ideology could not
extricate it, the lack of subsidies resulting in reduction of
export production, in lower foreign exchange earnings, and thus
in diminished imports to alleviate the situation. On 26 July
1993 Castro announced to his people: "Today life, reality...
forces us to do what we would have never done otherwise...we must
make concessions", and make them he did, reluctantly. Castro
dismantled state farms and created capitalist style farmers'
markets and, despite higher prices, alleviated food shortages and
moderated inflationary black-market prices. He allowed self-
employment in over 150 "professions" (e.g., electricians), and
could reduce the 2.2 million government employees to 1.4 million.
Castro legalized foreign currency and dollar-peso
convertiblity. In spite of Helms, emigre, tourist, and loan
dollars flooded in. Castro eliminated 15 government ministries.
Cuba's economic progress since USSR days disproves sanctions
toppling Castro. Helms' Foreign Relations Committee admitted a
Cuban emigre to testify. The emigre loved Helms-Burton and hated
Castro's accomplishments. Emory L. Warrick, Sr. POS2401C
ISSUE #13 (9) FOREIGN AID
As technology developed in human history a parallel need
arose for means of goods transfer since no one completlely could
be self sufficient. Population growth and settlement required
such goods transfer largely become symbolic, which can be defined
as money or capital. Sazama claims 3 concepts to be central to
international finance. They are physical capital (i.e., Marx's
"means of production"), human capital (i.e., Marx's labor,
bureaucracys' Skills, Knowledge, Aptitudes), and financial
capital (e.g., stocks, notes, deeds). He says that only 15% of
the world's population live in MDCs while 80% of capital flow is
among these countries. These "capital flows" fall into 4
categories: foreign direct investment (FDI), international loans,
foreign portfolio investment, and international currency flows, a
substantial part of which results from profit motivated currency
movements for arbitrage and speculation (what "derivatives" do).
It is a fact of the world system that there are 2 economic
classes of countries. The North is industrialized and relatively
prosperous while the South is mainly nonindustrial and relatively
(or absolutely) impoverished. After all AID and debt adjustment,
debt is relatively most severe in African countries and standards
of living and degree of economic development are lowest in the
world. There are 3 views with regard to LDCs failure to thrive.
Some blame colonialism, some LDC culture, and some MDC failure to
bail out the LDCs. Grant indicates that 20% of world population
is living on less than $1 a day, and that children bear the brunt
of this poverty; 20% of U. S. children live in poverty, the
highest proportion of any MDC.
Grant claims that not science, but a much improved political
and organizational milieu, has begun to improve conditions.
Grant asserts that Lyndon Johnson deserves great credit for
leadership in mobilizing sectors of societies such as rural
credit, marketing, transport, foreign exchange allocations, and
media attention which were required for success. Frequent
illness, malnutrition, poor growth, illiteracy, high birth rates,
and gender bias are reciprocally poverty's worst symptoms and
most fundamental causes. The road to power for many
extremiet/terrorist movements, religious or political, is paved
with misery of the poor. Reducing poverty would give greatly
enhance efforts at democratization, and such progress would, in
turn, accelerate economic growth. A quarter-million children die
unnecessarily each week when minimal aid could save them,
iodizing salt, providing vitamin A, oral rehydration therapy
kits, educating children (including girls), and encouraging
breast feeding of infants.
The U. N. Population Division asserts: "Improvements in
child survival, which increase the predictability of the family
building process, trigger the transition from natural to
controlled fertility behavior." This in turn stimulated the need
for family planning, which Reaganite "Christian" bigots have
completely stymied U. S. aid. The ECONOMIST does not favor aid.
It asserts Asian countries thrived without aid, while African
countries failed with it. Since 1960 $1.4 trillion aid has been
given. It asks whether MDCs giving another $1.4 trillion would
help; it says experience says "NO". Emory L. Warrick,Sr POS2401C
ISSUE #14 (18) GLOBAL POPULATION CRISIS
The population of Mexico is added to world population each
year, 4 times the U. S. population added each decade; reasonable
people forsee a problem. Poverty spurs population growth, and a
6 billion population base coupled with endemic poverty in more
than 90% of our world has caused disasterous overpopulation.
Educational and financial improvements, and women's contraceptive
opportunities are inversely correlated to high fertility rates in
LDCs. The U. S. Vice-President, Al Gore, addressed these
problems 25 August 1994 at the National Press Club. Gore sees a
transition period resultant from the Cold War end resulting in a
drawing together of nations ecologically, economically, and
politically. It is necessary to recognize the profoundly altered
nature of the relationship between humans and the ecology.
Three factors produced a radical change in this relationship.
Philosophically we must alter attitudes toward the earth and our
future and accept our responsibility for consequences flowing
from our actions and behaviors. It has been said that a lag
between ethics and technology began in the time of Plato and
increased continually for the last two and a half millenia, we
having never learned to employ technology efficiently and
ethically. The third factor is the geometrically increasing
world population which developing consensus specifies must be
considered in the context of sustainable economic development.
It took ten thousand generations to reach a world population of 2
billion, which doubled in less than a half century. If one
graphs this exponential growth, and overlays on that graph the
trends in deforestation, greenhouse gas accumulation, ozone level
depletion, species extinction, top-soil loss, and global warming
these trends tend to show a sharp correlation to our original
graph.
Rapid population increase and overcrowding tend to the
degradation of natural resources and ecological disaster,
aggrevated by patterns of consumption and production of waste.
This population increase contributes to economic devastation of
social services in LDCs, resulting in low wages, poverty, and
economic disparity. It prevents adequate investment in human
resources and necessary infrastructure for economic development,
leading to discrimination against females, poor health, high
fertility, and miserable quality of life for the great majority
of world population. One can note that in 1993 that Rwanda had
the highest population density in Africa, and Somalia the fastest
rate of population increase. The population of Nigeria doubled
during the past 4 decades, and likely will triple in 4 decades
more, its population exceeding the total population of Africa in
1950, and its problems insurmountable. In another international
problem area, Afghanistan is the fastest growing country in the
world, and will double its population in just the next decade,
boding ill for the rest of us.
Avery is from the Hudson Institute, a Republican think-tank.
His diety is profit. He writes for The Washington Times Corp.,
parent of the WASHINGTON STAR. He ignores the effects of
pesticides. He ignores erosion. He ignores deforestation and
waste disposal. He recognizes that Africa's problem is bad
government, a cultural artifact. Emory L. Warrick, Sr. POS2401C
ISSUE #15 (17) IMMIGRATION RESTRICTION
Many countries are reacting to increased immigration
pressures by severely restricting immigration. There are now 2.8
million illegal immigrants living in Western Europe. There are
probably more illegal immigrants in the U. S. to go with 20
million legal immigrants now here. The basic problem seems to
inhere in an innate racism in our people, since the calls for
restriction coincide with the declining proportion of Northern
European immigrants as against increasing proportions of Asians,
Africans, West Indians, and Latinos. Yeh Ling-Ling, writing for
the Republican USA TODAY MAGAZINE would oppose open immigration,
probably because Republicans never have been able to forsee the
consequences of their actions. Hard-Right Republican Christians
never have been able to feel christian compassion, nor have they
ever been able to countenance investment in human capital.
Passive, resigned people do not immigrate, but rather stay
where they are and suffer. It is the best, brightest, and most
aggressive people who immigrate in hope of a better deal out of
life. The greatest resistance to immigration arises from the
bottom quartile of our population who have lost adherence to the
"Puritan Work Ethic". Those migrating to the U. S. have had to
earn every morsel of food and "luck" they possess. They also
come from societies whose best schools produce better educated,
competent, and harder working individuals than are produced by
our schools. As a result, the contribution they make to our
society is of much more value than their cost to us.
George Soros, who recently contributed $1 billion to the
Russian economy is a first generation immigrant from Hungary, as
is TIME "Man of the Year" Andrew Grove, CEO of Intel. Nobel
Prizewinner Paul C. W. Chu, first generation Chinese immigrant,
Univ. of Houston physicist, discovered superconductivity which
bodes to immeasurably enrich us with its applications. Millions
of HIV/AIDS victims may survive because of TIME 1996 Man of the
Year David Da-i Ho, Chinese immigrant from Taiwan, who initiated
administration of protease-inhibitor cocktails to victims.
DuPont-Merck, Wang, Intel, Microsoft, Netscape, Sun, and Applied
Materials are just a few whose technological dominance is built
upon immigrant contributions. Robert Kelley, Jr., President of
the SO/CAL/TEN association of 200 high-tech California companies,
says: "Without the influx of Asians in the 1980s we would not
have had the entrepreneural explosion we've seen in California."
David N. K. Wang, V-P of Allied materials, Inc., claims that
because of immigration: "Silicon Valley is one of the most
international business centers in the world."
Take away the immigrants and you take away the talent base
from which such centers operate. In 1988 the National Research
Council reported: "a large fraction of the technological output
of the U. S. is dependent upon foreigh talent, and such
dependence is growing." Well over half of all engineering
doctorates from American universities go to immigrants, and one
third of U. S. engineers are immigrants. U. S. voters need to
wake up. We no longer can afford to ignore the facts. By pursuing
a liberal and strategic policy on immigration the U. S. can
guarantee the 21st century will again be an "American Century"
of scientific dominance. Emory L. Warrick, Sr. POS2401C
ISSUE #16 (15) UN WORLD CONFERENCES
These UN Conferences reveal clear evidence of a growing
awareness of vital needs to protect the environment, control
population growth, ensure women's rights, and address other
global problems which involve global implications, and require
global solutions. These conferences have no ability to make laws
or agreements legally binding on sovereign governments, but have
immense impacts, leading to establishments of NGOs and IGOs. One
has only to look at the attention attracted by such conferences
to realize their importance. The Cairo Conference provoked a
furious battle over such issues as women's reproductive rights.
Timothy Wirth indicates that during the past 3 decades the world
has grown increasingly interdependent, U. S. interests becoming
intricately intertwined with peace and prosperity all over the
world. American interests are not well served by isolationism;
such tragedies as Rwanda might have been avoided by progress on
stabilization of population and prevention of environmental
degradation.
The Clinton administration did not initiate these major
conferences, but rather has participated in them to advance
international progress on new and emerging global concerns
affecting U. S. and world interests. Some of the core principles
advanced by the U. S. in an effort to enhance world peace and
prosperity have to do with necessary and universal human rights,
adherence to democratic decision making, open markets and free
enterprise, sovereign responsibilities of States, necessity of
equal rights for women, and environmental protection as a
guarantor of long-term economic progress. These conferences
promote a creative effort on the part of the world community to
come to grips with common, long-term, global challenges in the
face of budgetary restraints resistance to elaborate programs.
When they are successful the plans for action developed at these
conferences serve as structures by which individuals, groups, and
nations can prepare implementation of carefully negotiated
recommendations. The conferences have conduced to governmental
accountability, provoking the type of global "action-plans" with
agreed upon compliance standards which allow for quantification.
The conferences have instilled a measure of accountability to
leverage compliance of reluctant nations displeased with basic
standards of human rights and decency, free enterprise, rule of
law, environmental protection, and basic health.
International negotiations following the Rio Conference
yielded agreements combatting desertification and fishery
depletion by commercial interests. Human rights have been
enhanced by ensuring voluntarism as the basis for family size
decisions. Promoting basic education , particularly for girls,
has helped advance women's roles world-wide. Millions of people
are better off because the U. S. stood up to those nations trying
to dilute international human rights standards under the guise of
cultural peculiarities. Jesse Helms, as Chairman of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, invited a Venezuelan female member
of the Holy See Delegation, and fanatic anti-abortionist, to try
to discredit all the accomplishments of these conferences. Her
presentation was replete with misinformation and interpretations
skewed to complement ideology. Emory L. Warrick, Sr. POS2401C
ISSUE #17 (5) GEOPOLITICS vs CYBERSPACE
In consideration of the relationship between geopolitics and
cyberspace language is a vital component, because language
provides spectacles through which we view reality. When language
reflects the "weltanshauung" of traditional science any change is
resisted, but change occurs. Change involves the functionally
increasing coefficient of educational level among the population
of the United States and the entire world. This is a QUALITATIVE
social change unlike any social change experienced by any society
in prior human history. The consequences of this change in
social conditions, latent and manifest, have been incalculable -
future shock incarnate. This change produced an uncontrolled
experiment in changing social conditions came as a by-product of
the increase in educational coefficient, caused by population
density increase resulting from immigration and fecundity.
Rise in educational level fostered technological advance
fostering centralization of production and services, producing
rapid urbanization. Functional increase in population density in
other societies brought immigration to this country which further
aggrevated our population density here. Health improvements
provided by medical technological advances by research efforts
motivated by WWII yielded fecundity of our fertile population
which further aggrevated population density in the United States.
Functional increase in population density, along with the process
of urbanization, fosters increasing contact among different
cultures, and both have contributed tremendously to
heterogeneity of urban populations. Concurrently, rising levels
of education and literacy increased usage of left-brain cognitive
functioning which has increasingly supplanted the right-brain
affective processes which were effective in shaping social
relationships prior to these social changes. Left-brain
cognitive processes are characterized by analysis and questioning
of social values and norms, and comparison of these values and
norms with sensate data and extra-cultural experience.
We have developed 2 distinct populations, one of which
"understands" geopolitics and the other "understands" cyberspace.
"Geopolitics refers to 'the relation of international political
power to the geographical setting'", something concrete one can
touch, feel, and see. Cyberspace is "out there", a conceivable
ephemeral presence which senses cannot apprehend. The arguments
of Colin Gray with regard to geopolitics, economics, territory,
naval strategy, and "the man on the ground with the gun" are
effective and well taken. He explores weaknesses in the argument
for the primacy of cyberspace intelligently and cogently. The
"weltanshauung" of Libicki is totally different because Libicki
sees cyberspace as a work in progress, changing radically each
nanosecond, each change bringing progress.
One must conceive this progress in terms of a geometric, or
functional, increase in effectiveness. Libicki states that with
any given year the ration of information to force declines. He
grasps "information counter-attack". He assumes that peace will
continue for a while, and cyberspace will not be used for "Trojan
Horses". He also understands that any speculation on cyberspace
must realize the inevitable may take longer than thought. Both
considerations must be entertained. Emory L. Warrick, Sr POS2401C
ISSUE #18 (3) ISOLATIONISM vs INTERNATIONALISM
Mayhap the most important insight of Western Civilization is
the "Doctrine of Original Sin", holding that humans are born
self-centered but having the capacity, through Grace, to become
other-centered. Many humans never make this transition, and for
them no one else exists or has value. On the national level this
toxic value expresses itself in terms of "Nationalism" and
"Isolationism". This country was not solely isolationist until
WWII, and then univocally became internationalist, but rather
there was this tension and ambiguity always among Americans with
regard to this issue. Isolationists consider that collapse of
the USSR and the Cold War removed the main rationale for
internationalism, they feel that U. S. economic power relatively
has declined, and they feel isolated from global instability. The
idoelogical fulcrum upon which this controversy rests is the
concept of the purpose of the national government.
Bandow was part of the Reagan Administration, and like
Reagan and his henchmen, never could conceive anything beyond the
end of his nose. Their language, syntax, logic, and perspective
derived from traditional science, and none ever could comprehend
"interrelatedness". For them the only purpose of government was
to protect assets of the rich, and to insure that the rich got
richer at the expense of the poor. All this intervention cost
money, and might result in the rich having to pay taxes as they
were forced to do during WWII. George Washington, accurately,
saw the oceans as barriers insuring our security, but external
reality intruded even then. Republicans resis all change, and
have never understood that reality has altered the conditions
upon which our original isolationism was based.
Bandow asserts that advocates of interventionist foreign
policy have advanced many lofty justifications; to protect human
rights, promote democracy, ensure stability, stop aggression, and
and enforce international law and order, but he sees these as
irrelevant. He sees gross, not proportional, monetary costs. He
claims that "We today do not have a single soldier, airman or
sailor solely dedicated to the security mission within the U. S.
He overlooks Reagan's "Drug War" involving our armed forces, and
the tasking of Military Intelligence/CIA/NSA to spy on us as
citizens who might disagree with the government. Unfortunately
the growth of technology has conduced to a world totally
interconnected. We now have problems with communication of
disease, dispersal of biological/chemical/nuclear weapons, the
reach of terrorism, and other international problems.
Anthony Lake and Sandy Berger have got a grasp on the reality
of our problems. They understand isolationists would destroy
many tools used by America for the last half century to maintain
world leadership. Key elements of our foreign policy have been
international peacekeeping,aid to emerging markets, economic
support for peace, fighting drug trafficking and terrorism,
foreign assistance, and a strong military. They believe that our
success is endangered, under attack by new isolationists from
both left and right. They would deny our nation necessary
resources, beseige our engagement in world affairs, and imperil
our leadership. We must not allow their budget cutting to
disembowel U. S. leadership. Emory L. Warrick, Sr. POS2401C
Language provides spectacles through which we view reality.
Our language derives from traditional science. This desk, for
instance is assumed to be real because it is concrete. It is a
seething mass of energy, different from the air only in that the
molecules are more tightly packed. One needs to read about
Clerk-Maxwell, his 4 equations for gravity and magnetism , and
our electro-magnetic universe.One needs also to read THE DANCING
WU-LI MASTERS by Gary Zukov which deals with sub-atomic physics.
Its not the desk which is real, but its relations to the rest of
the universe.
Lets consider the "Yellow School Bus" my students used to
hear about. One must be educated, not trained, to understand - to
apprehend - "A change anywhere in the system is a change
everywhere in the system. Consider a 1x106 gallon hydraulic tank.
While these changing conditions affecting the status of
women were transpiring in the religious developments in the
English speaking world there was vigorous change going on in the
economic sphere as well; these developing politico-economic
changes were to have far reaching effects on women. Between 1750
and 1800 the population of England increased from six millions to
nine millions of people. The "Enclosure Acts" had reached a peak
during the latter half of the Seventeenth Century resulting in
most of the serfs being pushed into urban conglomerates at the
precise time when the population was increasing. John Kay
constructed his loom in 1733; James Hargreaves devised his
spinning-frame in 1764; and Samuel Crompton perfected his "mule"
in 1779. This machine did the work of two hundred (200) hand
spinners. The cotton gin of Eli Whitney (1793) made available
the raw material for those machines for which the steam engine of
James Watt (invented in 1769 and manufacture begun in 1780)
provided the power to forge the Industrial Revolution in Britain.
The factories became places of torment for whole families
from the youngest children (even two year olds could carry
bobbins from machine to machine) to dying elders, all working
fourteen (14) hours a day seven days a week year in, year out,
until they died. The "Enclosure Acts" were the result of
mercantilism applied to a native rather than to a colonial
population. The "Enclosure Acts" were enacted so that sheep
could be grown to provide wool as raw material on which the
factories could operate. This moved the peasantry back into a
subsistence existence and virtually required that the home be
broken up. Woman was dispossessed. The difference between an
agricultural and an industrial economy is the difference between
being self-sufficient through growing and making all the things
one needs versus a situation in which one must have money to buy
necessities provided by other people who have made, grown, or
bought these things themselves; if one has no money one starves,
and if one has little money one starves slowly.
One variable having received remarkably little research
attention is behavioral outcomes contingent upon differences in
functioning of right-brain affect and of left-brain cognition.
Technically defined, a "catholic" society is an homogeneous
culture where individuals are instrumentally valued, this value
deriving from their group membership. A "protestant" society
would be an heterogeneous culture with individuals intrinsically
valuable in and of themselves, independently of other factors.
Examples of "catholic" societies would be China, England, tribal
societies, and ancient hebrews. Contemporary North America would
represent a "protestant" society; a "catholic" society would be
rural; a "protestant" society urban. Values in a "catholic"
homogeneous society are consensual and can effectively be moral
in nature; values in a "protestant" heterogeneous society are
pluralistic and must be ethical rather than moral to be
effective.
Very often the U. S. has functioned as a spontaneous and
extemporaneous social laboratory where changing social conditions
and social forces operated as uncontrolled experiments yielding
illuminating results. This enabled social scientists to envision
more clearly the effects of these changes when they occur in
other societies and nations. One such change involves the
functionally increasing coefficient of educational level among
the population of the United States. National Educational
Asssociation research informs us, from census data, that:

1. In 1915 only 3% of the US population had completed 3rd grade
2. In 1920 just 3% had completed 8th Grade
3. In 1940 just 3% completed 12th grade (High School Diploma)
4. In 1950 just 3% completed college (Bachelor's Degree/BA)
5. In 1960 just 6% held the Bachelor'Degree/58% held HS Diploma
6. In 1970 16% held BA and 3% held PhD (1980 data unavailable)
75% held HS Diploma
This represents a QUALITATIVE social change unlike any social
change experienced by any society in prior human history. The
consequences of this change in social conditions, both latent
and manifest, have been incalculable - future shock incarnate.
Another uncontrolled experiment in changing social
conditions came as a by-product of the increase in educational
coefficient, and as a consequence of population density increase
resulting from immigration and fecundity. In 1920 the population
of these United States was 10% urban and 90% rural. By 1970
those proportions had reversed leaving our population at more
than 90% urban and less than 10% rural. Rise in educational
level fostered technological advance which fostered
centralization of production and services which fostered rapid
urbanization. Functional increase in population density in other
societies fostered immigration to this country which further
aggrevated our population density here. Health improvements
brought on by medical technological advances fostered by research
efforts motivated by WWII yielded fecundity of our fertile
population which further aggrevated population density in the
United States.
Functional increase in population density, along with the
process of urbanization, fosters increasing contact among
different cultures. Both have contributed tremendously to
heterogeneity of urban populations. Concurrently, rising levels
of education and literacy increased usage of left-brain cognitive
functioning which has increasingly supplanted the right-brain
affective processes which were effective in shaping social
relationships prior to these social changes. Left-brain
cognitive processes are characterized by analysis and questioning
of social values and norms, and comparison of these values and
norms with sensate data and extra-cultural experience. Left-
brain cognitive processes effectively expose immanent/inherent
contradictions in value systems and institutions. Religious
belief, patriotism, and other centripetal social vectors suffer
first.
Migration to America - Religions/religious wars North/
econonomics (see above) South
Africans enslaved Africans and sold them to Arabs who sold
them to Caucasians
Ozone, TN - Blue Ridge Mountains - Ozone radical = O1/H2O2
is hydrogen peroxide, releases O1 radical for cleansing/ N2O from
fertilizer used to attempt increased per-acre production affects
ozone/hydrochlorofluoro-carbons (CFCs and HCFCs) wreak havoc on
the ozone layer - the ozone layer blocks UltraViolet-B (UV-B)
radiation causing malignant melanoma, inhibits growth, metabo-
lism, and photosynthesis affecting soybeans, sugar beets, beans,
sorghum, wheat, peas, tomatoes, lettuce, potatoes, etc. - dis-
rupts marine systems, destroys planckton (foundation of marine
food chain)/ genetic markers = blindness in sheep and rabbits,
cancer in cattle, in southern hemisphere, frogs "genetic sports"
in northern hemisphere
hydrocarbon fuels create SO2 which combines with O2 to make
H2SO4 which is acid rain, causes desertification, deforestation
(leads to erosion and pollution of water supplies), crop failure,
destroys wildlife and marine habitat
Tectonic plate shifts resulting in volcanic eruptions on
land and under sea - global warming - effects on arable lands and
food production -
Weber sin cycles/RC vs Calvinism/Predestination God hates
poor people - Republican greed/Reaganism/Televangelism/$60
million this year to Congress by HMO/Health Insurance/Politicians
blind - cannot see beyind end of nose
Kudzu and tobacco lugs/stems pulverized cheap source of
vital protein, low tetrahydrocanabinol Cannabis substitutes
perfectly for tobacco in soil composition, climater, and
environment
birth control allowing intercourse without fear of pregnancy
empowers and frees women - may be the most important social
advance and social change of the 20th century
Solar, wind, and water power (oceans/temperature and wave
action) - storage is problem.