Crunchy Cat
Agreed. I would assert; however, that the Islamic world lacks the flexability to overcome many challanges that others can.
If only because it lacks the economic luxury of flexibility. True, they're stuck in a rut. But it can only be considered permanent if it exists independently of different influences. There's a reason it's university students and professors in Iran; there's a reason it's Egyptian journalists; there's a reason it's not the common Muslim in a third-world nation carrying the banner of a more vital Islam apropos the era. It is because these people are, for various reasons, engaged in such ideas.
There's a "for Dummies" site offered in a "Required Reading" topic; the website makes the point that it's not necessarily being a dummy, but that being caught up in maintaining a home, working, raising children ... well, it's hard to find time to consider certain ideas. It can't be any easier for the common Iraqi or Afghani.
It does point to a human problem, but I think that Islamic inflexibility reduced itself to not being able to grow beyond basic human problems.
So it stays relevant to the issues concerning a great portion of its adherents; what is perceived as elitism among mystics is the flip-side of this problem--a religion can become too complex for the everyday believer.
Don't you wish we could get into the heads a mass of people and extract their thoughts? It would make interpretation so much easier.
So it would seem. But the diversity of interpretations from the diversity of information would be a sticky situation. I think we'll be seeing a new trend emerge in American politics; letting the truth "bleed into the river". Note how little interest Wolfowitz's mouth generates among the average American. There's too much information to handle, and if they can find a more spectacular headline to offer, the story they don't want people talking about will get lost in the muddle of exclusives and on-scene investigative reports about fluff. I know that with such clairvoyance I could simply get lost in the sea of information and forget to do anything with it.
And you know that when we get around to that technology, it will be a direct-marketing technology that first achieves the capability.
Yes and at a more 'primal' level.
It is a more primal condition. Give every Palestinian and Iraqi food, a G5, and the opportunity to sit around and consider their condition in detail on a discussion board and I guarantee you the debate will become more sophisticated.
Take Iraq: there's not enough food and water, there's a plethora of guns, and that's the way it's been for a while. I fight over ideas; some of the people I see in the images coming from around the world are fighting for a meal.
It's that big ol' wall of inflexibility I mentioned. It's not an adaptation promoter.
I just think the process works the other way around.
I see a minority in the Islamic environment as being supressed rather than being given freedom to explore
it's potential. This seems relevant to me.
Relevant, perhaps. Effective in its context? I contest.
If that minority is still composed of Muslims it is an indicator that yes, seeds do flower in that desert, and points toward the problems being more common and human, influenced in their manifestation by Islam and the human politic.
And my larger point is that Islam is no more defective than anything else written down as a code. That's what bugs me about the article; Locke seems to be calling the kettle black with his comparisons; a more serious and useful article would have explored the
reasons for the points he raised. There's a whole book condensed into that article.
Islam is a human creation that suffers human imperfections. History demonstrates that people remedy those problems when they feel they have the time.
:m:,
Tiassa
