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Subject: Americans must respect Islam
salaam al-aqaaid    5/13/2004 10:18:35 AM
The outrageous atrocities commited by Americans at the Abu al-Grayyib prison complex speaks to a need for the United States Americans to give sensetivity training to its entire military so that they will no longer offind Muslims with the contemptious use of women as prison guards and unsavery adiction to homosexual pornographies. These things are offinsive to the Muslims community. Have you no shame? You must remove all women and homosexuals from contact with Muslim prisoners. This is offinsive.
 
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On Watch    some creators, NOT ready for Prime Time   8/24/2004 10:04:07 AM
>>...in particular (people on the street, people in prisons, people in places predisposed to be anti-USA) my word is regarded as more valuable than cash --elcid<< Why am I not surprised? On Watch -- Let's Roll
 
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celebrim    RE:alternative to nationalism is to invest your civic loyalty in a person instead of an idea   8/24/2004 10:38:18 AM
"Correction: that is only ONE alternative. There are many others." First of all, I pointed out at the end of that peice that there were two other alternatives. But, its quite possible that I missed a few. So I'm listening. "One might, for example, not use a national frame of reference at all. Thus a person who is really a Christian (or Jewish, or Muslim for that matter) does not see the merit of a person (or a policy) primarily in terms of some national context. [The first question is not "what country are you a citizen of" before deciding if we will trust you, like you, help you, do business with you, etc.] " In other words, they might invest thier civic loyalty in a transnational idea, one of the two alternatives I provided. However, as I said before, this isn't really that big of a shift from nationalism and in practice isn't usually a shift at all. In particular, your example is a particularly bad one. Both Judism and Islam are explicitly nationalistic religions in which the nationaly identity of the adherent is deeply tied either in theory or in fact to the body collective of their fellow worshipers. To be Jewish in a pious I believe in the words of this book way is to explicitly believe that you are part of a national people chosen, guided, and established by God. Likewise, to be Islamic in a pious I believe in te words of this book way is to explicitly believe that your loyalty is first to the nation state of 'dar al Islam'. It is precisely that Islamic idea that brings Islam repeatedly into conflict with the nationalities of its neighbors. It's worth noting that in both cases the idea is a transnational one by political necessity and not original conception. Judism and Islam are both expressly national identities in thier texts. Both outline real geographic regions as explicitly thier kingdoms. Even Christianity has a national identity on a metaphorical level which has at times past (and maybe even present) been used to justify 'Christian Nations'. Christ talks about being a King, but of a nation 'not of this world'. Paul talks about Christians having thier citizenship in heaven. The medievals spoke about 'Christiandom' as a super-national identity, and you still hear some Christians talk as if they had a special national need to ally with other nations because they are Christian. The founding fathers of America talked about such things as 'No King but King Jesus' and some seriously considered adopting that as a motto. So there is actually a very fine line between investing your civic identity in a national idea and a transnational idea (as I said before). "A non religious person might similarly adopt a similar attitude, and think in terms of "is what this person, or idea, represents, good for the world as a whole" instead of from the point of view of, say, Nigeria." In which case, you are adopting a sort of 'citizen of the world' approach, but in point of fact this 'citizen of the world' approach can rapidly border on being just as jingoistic as the worst nationalistic propaganda and ultimately I think will have some sort of nationalistic expression (for example the EU). In fact, some of the intellectual justification for anti-Americanism is the idea that we belong to what is basically a rogue nation because we have yet to pledge our civic loyalty first and foremost to this idea of being 'citizens of the world' and still openly adhere to the idea that Americans are first and foremost citizens of America. "To the extent the world economic-political system is really viable and popular, it is because it serves the interests of most (perhaps even all) nations. No one considers violating the International Postal Union, for example, because there is no sound reason to do so. In most cases, when a person is overly focused on the narrow interests of a single nation, their judgements are less likely to produce something admirable, from a general point of view." Well, I hate general points of view. Generalities really bug me, because just about everything is true 'in general'. In practice, the body of 'citizens of the world' can be just as wrong as any other body of people, and sometimes the interests of the one can in fact be in the interests of the many. In any event, if the body of 'citizens of the world' really cared for the rest of the world instead of their own personal national interests, they'd not be saying 'never again' after Rwanda while the genocide in the Sudan was and is still ongoing. In political practice the citizenship of the world approach tends to be no such thing. For myself, I'm content with the Christian idea of dual Citizenship in which we 'render unto Caeser the things that are of Caeser and to God the things that are of God'. "The reason the USA "leads" the world is that we have learned how to promote things very different than classical imperial powers did." I think you are aware that that is an overly simple explanati
 
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celebrim    RE:The problem with nationalists--question for Cel   8/24/2004 11:06:21 AM
"Would you care to do a fair bit on the difference between jingoism and nationalism, or the tendency of the meaning of the two to be blurred together?" It's a good question, and one which to be honest I haven't considered at all closely before you asked it. I am such a deeply patriotic individual, that I seldom think about the downsides of nationalism and given what is politically correct in today's world I so often find myself arguing for the advantages of a nationalistic identity that I've probably left myself somewhat biased. Nonetheless, I've had some time to think about it, and I'll give it a first go - though you should probably take this with a grain of salt as something I've not thought through completely. When I think about truly Jingoistic times, I'm struck by the fact that they have in common the idea that the problems of the nation are principally the fault not of some internal problem but rather of external forces, and that if there is anything wrong internally at all it is that the people in power or in the sway of those external forces. Whether it is Hitler's Zionist Conspiracy, or the savages that are hindering Westward expansion, the idea that is behind jingoism is 'It's not our fault, it's thiers.' Jingoism arrises from nationalism in one of two ways, one of which is I think historically far more dangerous than the other. The first is that the country becomes so flushed with its own success that it thinks it can do know wrong. It begins to see itself in a Patriarchal role, and all the other nations as children needing its guidance and discipline. This can and has lead to all sorts of horrid imperialistic practices, but I think the ultimate hypocracy of the position destroys it relatively quickly, and the underlying good motive (however unwise it may be) tends to moderate the excesses inherent in the position. None of that exonerates the Trail of Tears or any other self-evidently hypocritical and self-serving imperialism (or even imperialism of any sort), but I do think it is a jingoism of a very different character than the other sort. The other sort occurs following a terrible blow to national pride of some sort. The people begin to be disillusioned about thier nation which had previously been such a source of self-esteem and they are left adrift without an identity that they can take pride in. At this time, the appeal of 'it's someone elses fault' is at its strongest, and whether its Germany after the folly of WWI or the whole of the Arab world for the past six or seven centuries, the ground is very fertile for anyone that can produce a scape goat. The problem here is that the imperialistic position once adopted is not hypocritical at all. The nation can say, "Well, if we are treating them poorly, it is because they deserve it." Or the nation can say, "If we are being self-serving, it is because we deserve it." There is a saying, "There is no evil a man will not do when he thinks he has been wronged." I am in fact empathetic to those Europeans who see in every thing that America does some hint of jingoism as the parallels are obvious. But, however empathetic I may be to that based on thier own history, I can't help but think that they are usually wrong. Again, that may be my bias talking, but the American national character is quiet complex and is difficult to render down to black and white pronouncements. For instance, you might argue that America's current adventure in Iraq is Jingoism of the patriarchal sort, but for my part one of the reasons that America is usually so unsuccessful in empire building is that in fact it isn't pratriarchal but imagines its relationship to the people of Iraq in basically a fraternal way. Our basic expectation is almost always that everyone basically thinks like us, when in fact almost noone does (and that's one of the reasons we are so often misunderstood). In Iraq, the plan for the occupation was probably so incomplete precisely because we don't think of Iraqi's as children that need to be shown how to take care of themselves. If we did, we might be guilty of jingoism and vulnerable to all the excesses that brings, but a whole lot of trouble might also have been spared both us and the Iraqi's. Not because the Iraqi's are children, but because they are very different than us in thought and culture not in the least as the result of being 30 years underneath a brutal tyrant. Change will naturally take alot of guidance. In short, it Jingoism is a beligerant sort of nationalism that blames the national problems not on its own citizens but on outsiders. Of course, it might be the case that the problem really is the fault of outsiders, but that's a different topic. And, it really chaps my hide when I hear half-educated Europeans pontificating about the U.S. when its clear that they don't know a thing about us and are seeing us solely through thier own prejudices and experiences.
 
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Uchiita    The Sexist Card (or abandon ship, she's listing to port) OW   8/24/2004 11:06:40 AM
Oh, On Watch, that was just beautiful. It made me cry with laughter. I never knew that your admirals were poets in the tradition of ee cummings. Has he read "She, being new" I wonder? I shall now go and compose a delicate response entitled 'why a tank is like a man". Something to do with firepower at the front but weakness at the rear.... ach well. I salute you for the effort, sir. Uchiita
 
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Uchiita    RE:The Sexist Card (or abandon ship, she's listing to port) OW   8/24/2004 11:14:15 AM
http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/eecummings/331 Just in case you were wondering. Uchiita
 
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FJV    Off topic Voodoo to Elcid:   8/24/2004 2:27:49 PM
The entry on Voodoo in Longman Guide To Living Religions states several times that Voodoo contains strong Catholic elements: "Voodoo (Vodun). This is the name given to the syncretic mix of African traditional an Roman Catholic religion found in Haïti. In many respects it resembles Candomblé, Santería, Shango and those numerous expressions of African-Catholic systems of believe and practice found in the Caribbean and Central and South (and to some extent North) America. Lao (Iwa) is one of the principal terms used to refer to numerous African gods and Catholic saints (the two groups having been conflated) on which this religion is based." - Further on the entry says: "Sacrifices to the family dead co-exist with Roman Catholic funeral rites on the occasion of a bereavement." Source: Longman Guide To Living Religions. ISBN 0-582-252970 Publisher Longman Group Limited 1994 PS Wasn't sure wheter posting the entire entry would infringe copyrights, so I used only potions of the entry I also had a look at: http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html Seems that these guidelines are used to determine fair use: 1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; 2. the nature of the copyrighted work; 3. amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and 4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. Makes me wonder about some posters posting entire articles on this forum.
 
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Echo    RE:Americans must respect Islam   8/24/2004 2:55:21 PM
I fail to see what this banter between Uchiita and On-watch has to do with the topic,apart from the fact that they sound like a couple of school kids falling in love,I think you should exchange E-MAILS and leave us all in peace.but keep us posted if anything happens
 
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swhitebull    RE:Americans must respect Islam   8/24/2004 3:34:43 PM
..I fail to see what this banter between Uchiita and On-watch has to do with the topic,apart from the fact that they sound like a couple of school kids falling in love,I think you should exchange E-MAILS and leave us all in peace.but keep us posted if anything happen ... ROFLMAO swhitebull
 
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Echo    RE:Americans must respect Islam   8/24/2004 4:00:51 PM
O.K I know I'M walking into a giant elephant trap here, but what the hell does that mean roflamo mean,
 
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appleciderus    ROFLMAO   8/24/2004 4:36:03 PM
"roll on floor, laugh my a$$ off" A big compliment from a guy with a well developed sense of humor.
 
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