January 30, 2004
THE NORTH WILL RISE AGAIN:
A Northern Strategy (Stephen Schwartz, 01/20/2004, Tech Central Station)
[A] report in The Washington Post of January 15 included the following comment by Amir Mohebian, editor of the conservative Iranian newspaper Resalat: "In an Islamic society, selling wines is forbidden, but if somebody is drinking wine in his house, the question is, do we enter the house to arrest him or not? I think the system should apply only to the public sphere, not to the house. If somebody goes from the way of God in his house, that is a problem between him and God."Can one extrapolate further from these latter remarks to the possibility of a personal Islam, without aggressive public expression? In an earlier Weekly Standard reportage, I quoted Arben Xhaferi, an Albanian political leader in western Macedonia, who told me, "We have our own history, our own culture, and our own Albanian model of Islam, based on interfaith respect and the understanding that religion is private." [...]
Taking off from the quote by Arben Xhaferi above, I would argue that a personal or private Islam is the dominant form of the faith, in a wide belt extending from the Balkans through Turkey to the countries of Central Asia. I have come to think of these as the "northern tier Muslim countries," and their form of religion as "northern Islam." As indicated by The Washington Post quote, Iran, notwithstanding its recent extremist history, also embodies comprehension, at least, of Islam as, potentially, a personal matter.
"Northern Islam" may even be somewhat inaccurate, in that a similar style of Islam was historically found in Pakistan -- before that country was assaulted by Saudi-funded extremists -- in India, and in Malaysia and Indonesia. Muslims from these countries refer to a "Turko-Persian-Indian" Islamic tradition.
The end of history and the inexorable force of globalization means that Islam is going to be Reformed--best if it can be done from within the tradition. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 30, 2004 8:25 AM
The End of History is the mere gibberish of intellectuals -- see Lee Harris's new book.
Posted by: Paul Cella at January 30, 2004 8:31 AMLee Harris not only agrees but thinks we should impose it--that's all his neosovereignty is.
Posted by: oj at January 30, 2004 9:56 AMYeah, but he explicitly rejects that we have arrived at "the end of history"; instead we are only at "the next stage of history," his his subtle puts it.
Posted by: Paul Cella at January 30, 2004 11:00 AM... that would be "subtitle."
Posted by: Paul Cella at January 30, 2004 11:03 AMYes, that's a function of misunderstanding Fukuyama. That there'll be a period during which laggardly nations arrive at the end of history is not an argument that history has not ended. Nor, in fact, would the failure of civilization and the descent back into barbarism be an argument against the end of history, but rather an argument that the end was unsustainable.
Posted by: oj at January 30, 2004 11:19 AM"Nor, in fact, would the failure of civilization and the descent back into barbarism be an argument against the end of history, but rather an argument that the end was unsustainable."
Try to make sense of that one. The gibberish of intellectuals is an apt description.
Posted by: at January 30, 2004 1:15 PMHistory isn't ending,it never does end.
It does,however,go thru the occasional bottleneck.
The assumption that history is ending *now* is merely baby boomer ego.
History doesn't end--it has an end.
Posted by: oj at January 30, 2004 4:22 PM"History doesn't end--it has an end."
So it's not a "finish". It's a "telos". There's the semantic rub. So what if that "end" proves unsustainable. It's still the telos, right?
Unsustainability wouldn't tell us anyting about the correctness of that judgement.
Posted by: at January 30, 2004 5:59 PMIt would tell us we aren't ready yet.
Posted by: oj at January 30, 2004 6:25 PMOf course. It wouldn't possibly mean we were wrong about what the telos really was or if there was one at all. It's all very simple.
Posted by: at January 30, 2004 6:44 PMOf course we could be wrong--in fact, Europe shows the potential flaws that reside within liberal protestant capitalist democracy--but we can be certain that there are challengers that work better.
Posted by: oj at January 30, 2004 6:49 PM