http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/books/review/Al…

—excerpt—

Blind Faiths

By AYAAN HIRSI ALI
Published: January 6, 2008

Several authors have published books on radical Islam’s threat to the West since that shocking morning in September six years ago. With “The Suicide of Reason,” Lee Harris joins their ranks. But he distinguishes himself by going further than most of his counterparts: he considers the very worst possibility — the destruction of the West by radical Islam.

The expansion of Islam is perhaps more potent than the expansion of the Christian empires (including Rome after Constantine) because the concept of separating the sacred from the profane has never been acceptable in Islam the way it has been in Christianity.

Harris goes on to argue that the Muslim world, since it is governed by the law of the jungle, makes group survival paramount. This explains in part the willingness of Muslims to become martyrs for the larger community, the umma — uniting peoples separated by geographical boundaries, with different cultures, heritages and languages. According to Harris, this sense of solidarity is sustainable only with the weapon of fanaticism, which obligates each member of the umma to convert infidels and to threaten those who attempt to leave with death. That is, the aim of Muslim culture, so different from that of the West, is both to preserve and to convert, and this is what enables it to spread across the globe.

The second fanaticism that Harris identifies is one he views as infecting Western societies; he calls it a “fanaticism of reason.” Reason, he says, contains within itself a potential fatality because it blinds Western leaders to the true nature of Islamic-influenced cultures. Westerners see these cultures merely as different versions of the world they know, with dominant values similar to those espoused in their own culture. But this, Harris argues, is a fatal mistake. It implies that the West fails to appreciate both its history and the true nature of its opposition.

Nor, he points out, is the failure linked to a particular political outlook. Liberals and conservatives alike share this misperception.

Harris does not regard Islamic fanaticism as a deviancy or a madness that affects a few Muslims and terrifies many. Instead he argues that fanaticism is the basic principle in Islam. “The Muslims are, from an early age, indoctrinated into a shaming code that demands a fanatical rejection of anything that threatens to subvert the supremacy of Islam,” he writes. During the years that this shaming code is instilled into children, the collective is emphasized above the individual and his freedoms. A good Muslim must forsake all: his property, family, children, even life for the sake of Islam. Boys in particular are taught to be dominating and merciless, which has the effect of creating a society of holy warriors.

By contrast, the West has cultivated an ethos of individualism, reason and tolerance, and an elaborate system in which every actor, from the individual to the nation-state, seeks to resolve conflict through words. The entire system is built on the idea of self-interest. This ethos rejects fanaticism. The alpha male is pacified and groomed to study hard, find a good job and plan prudently for retirement: “While we in America are drugging our alpha boys with Ritalin,” Harris writes, “the Muslims are doing everything in their power to encourage their alpha boys to be tough, aggressive and ruthless.”

Social and cultural evolution has always relied on individuals — to reform, persuade, cajole or force. Culture is formed by the collective agreement of individuals. At the same time, it is crucial that we not fall into the trap of assuming that the survival tactics of individuals living in tribal societies — like lying, hypocrisy, secrecy, violence, intimidation, and so forth — are in the interest of the modern individual or his culture.

in a tribal society, life is cruel and terrible. And I am not alone. Muslims have been migrating to the West in droves for decades now. They are in search of a better life. Yet their tribal and cultural constraints have traveled with them. And the multiculturalism and moral relativism that reign in the West have accommodated this.

Harris is correct, I believe, that many Western leaders are terribly confused about the Islamic world. They are woefully uninformed and often unwilling to confront the tribal nature of Islam. The problem, however, is not too much reason but too little. Harris also fails to address the enemies of reason within the West: religion and the Romantic movement. It is out of rejection of religion that the Enlightenment emerged; Romanticism was a revolt against reason.

Both the Romantic movement and organized religion have contributed a great deal to the arts and to the spirituality of the Western mind, but they share a hostility to modernity. Moral and cultural relativism (and their popular manifestation, multiculturalism) are the hallmarks of the Romantics. To argue that reason is the mother of the current mess the West is in is to miss the major impact this movement has had, first in the West and perhaps even more profoundly outside the West, particularly in Muslim lands.

Thus, it is not reason that accommodates and encourages the persistent segregation and tribalism of immigrant Muslim populations in the West. It is Romanticism. Multiculturalism and moral relativism promote an idealization of tribal life and have shown themselves to be impervious to empirical criticism. My reasons for reproaching today’s Western leaders are different from Harris’s. I see them squandering a great and vital opportunity to compete with the agents of radical Islam for the minds of Muslims, especially those within their borders. But to do so, they must allow reason to prevail over sentiment.
…

To argue, as Harris seems to do, that children born and bred in superstitious cultures that value fanaticism and create phalanxes of alpha males are doomed — and will doom others — to an existence governed by the law of the jungle is to ignore the lessons of the West’s own past.
…
(end excerpts)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/books/review/Al…

—excerpt—

Blind Faiths

By AYAAN HIRSI ALI
Published: January 6, 2008

Several authors have published books on radical Islam’s threat to the West since that shocking morning in September six years ago. With “The Suicide of Reason,” Lee Harris joins their ranks. But he distinguishes himself by going further than most of his counterparts: he considers the very worst possibility — the destruction of the West by radical Islam.

The expansion of Islam is perhaps more potent than the expansion of the Christian empires (including Rome after Constantine) because the concept of separating the sacred from the profane has never been acceptable in Islam the way it has been in Christianity.

Harris goes on to argue that the Muslim world, since it is governed by the law of the jungle, makes group survival paramount. This explains in part the willingness of Muslims to become martyrs for the larger community, the umma — uniting peoples separated by geographical boundaries, with different cultures, heritages and languages. According to Harris, this sense of solidarity is sustainable only with the weapon of fanaticism, which obligates each member of the umma to convert infidels and to threaten those who attempt to leave with death. That is, the aim of Muslim culture, so different from that of the West, is both to preserve and to convert, and this is what enables it to spread across the globe.

The second fanaticism that Harris identifies is one he views as infecting Western societies; he calls it a “fanaticism of reason.” Reason, he says, contains within itself a potential fatality because it blinds Western leaders to the true nature of Islamic-influenced cultures. Westerners see these cultures merely as different versions of the world they know, with dominant values similar to those espoused in their own culture. But this, Harris argues, is a fatal mistake. It implies that the West fails to appreciate both its history and the true nature of its opposition.

Nor, he points out, is the failure linked to a particular political outlook. Liberals and conservatives alike share this misperception.

Harris does not regard Islamic fanaticism as a deviancy or a madness that affects a few Muslims and terrifies many. Instead he argues that fanaticism is the basic principle in Islam. “The Muslims are, from an early age, indoctrinated into a shaming code that demands a fanatical rejection of anything that threatens to subvert the supremacy of Islam,” he writes. During the years that this shaming code is instilled into children, the collective is emphasized above the individual and his freedoms. A good Muslim must forsake all: his property, family, children, even life for the sake of Islam. Boys in particular are taught to be dominating and merciless, which has the effect of creating a society of holy warriors.

By contrast, the West has cultivated an ethos of individualism, reason and tolerance, and an elaborate system in which every actor, from the individual to the nation-state, seeks to resolve conflict through words. The entire system is built on the idea of self-interest. This ethos rejects fanaticism. The alpha male is pacified and groomed to study hard, find a good job and plan prudently for retirement: “While we in America are drugging our alpha boys with Ritalin,” Harris writes, “the Muslims are doing everything in their power to encourage their alpha boys to be tough, aggressive and ruthless.”

Social and cultural evolution has always relied on individuals — to reform, persuade, cajole or force. Culture is formed by the collective agreement of individuals. At the same time, it is crucial that we not fall into the trap of assuming that the survival tactics of individuals living in tribal societies — like lying, hypocrisy, secrecy, violence, intimidation, and so forth — are in the interest of the modern individual or his culture.

in a tribal society, life is cruel and terrible. And I am not alone. Muslims have been migrating to the West in droves for decades now. They are in search of a better life. Yet their tribal and cultural constraints have traveled with them. And the multiculturalism and moral relativism that reign in the West have accommodated this.

Harris is correct, I believe, that many Western leaders are terribly confused about the Islamic world. They are woefully uninformed and often unwilling to confront the tribal nature of Islam. The problem, however, is not too much reason but too little. Harris also fails to address the enemies of reason within the West: religion and the Romantic movement. It is out of rejection of religion that the Enlightenment emerged; Romanticism was a revolt against reason.

Both the Romantic movement and organized religion have contributed a great deal to the arts and to the spirituality of the Western mind, but they share a hostility to modernity. Moral and cultural relativism (and their popular manifestation, multiculturalism) are the hallmarks of the Romantics. To argue that reason is the mother of the current mess the West is in is to miss the major impact this movement has had, first in the West and perhaps even more profoundly outside the West, particularly in Muslim lands.

Thus, it is not reason that accommodates and encourages the persistent segregation and tribalism of immigrant Muslim populations in the West. It is Romanticism. Multiculturalism and moral relativism promote an idealization of tribal life and have shown themselves to be impervious to empirical criticism. My reasons for reproaching today’s Western leaders are different from Harris’s. I see them squandering a great and vital opportunity to compete with the agents of radical Islam for the minds of Muslims, especially those within their borders. But to do so, they must allow reason to prevail over sentiment.
…

To argue, as Harris seems to do, that children born and bred in superstitious cultures that value fanaticism and create phalanxes of alpha males are doomed — and will doom others — to an existence governed by the law of the jungle is to ignore the lessons of the West’s own past.
…
(end excerpts)

A) Sorry about the long discourse in reply to CoL. I shan’t mistaken the kindness of your interview and the format of your blog as a place for me to dance my whacky ideas around. (Although I love your “dance hall”)

B) Girlfriend, girlfriend . . . how cool! Not that I’m a guy that gets too excited about people “enrolling” in the Faith in general but that “person” that I referenced in Part II, who was kind of my muse for KiK?
HE DECLARED!
Awesome. I saw him the other night. We had some coffee. He had visited your blog and read the interviews and . . . not because of the interviews or me or such but . . . He DECLARED. Just in time for Easter.
Now I’ve just got to be careful that I don’t do the “Baha’i mutation” thing where someone declares and then – plop – they’re on their own now.
C) After my mom was cool with the interview I went ahead and sent the link to a “selection” of my friends and most of them thought it was great. Some felt disinclined to visit the rest of Rants – I think that’s fine. Some clicked through some of your links and raised a few eyebrows or concerns- again, I think our eyebrows need more exercise anyway
But I was stoked by the general positive response and even had a couple of folks that thought your site was great.

(I’m thinking that most people are a little cautious on leaving comments. Some of us – – are a little less circumspect and are willing to leave chrysolite footprints behind ourselves on our journey in search of our Self. And never mind the “now” which is always our “yesterday”)

Anyway . . . last thought.

On account of the “stim” you’ve given me . . . well . . . at the risk of sounding absolutely hubristic and self-deluded -

I FIGURED IT OUT.
Namely, what the Baha’i Faith Inc. “is”.

I’m guessing that numerous of your visitors are T9-ers – some anyway – and I rejoined that group for a second here (although its dangerous because its addictive and I can’t afford that sort of thing in my life right now) – to see if it might be possible to present the “idea” and then find some folks that might be willing to “play” with it, serious “play”, to see if it can find some flesh.

Anyhow . . . Maybe CoL is a T9-er for example.
And I’m hoping that you, Baquia, with your strong heart, great spirit and sharp “perceptors”, will give the idea a word or two when I get the chance to put it up.

Thanks again for acting on your inspiration viz. KiK.
I don’t think my friend has gotten around to the “bookmarking” of the onlinie version yet.
I’ll send him an e-mail as a “reminder”.

Peace and Love,
B

A) Sorry about the long discourse in reply to CoL. I shan’t mistaken the kindness of your interview and the format of your blog as a place for me to dance my whacky ideas around. (Although I love your “dance hall”)

B) Girlfriend, girlfriend . . . how cool! Not that I’m a guy that gets too excited about people “enrolling” in the Faith in general but that “person” that I referenced in Part II, who was kind of my muse for KiK?
HE DECLARED!
Awesome. I saw him the other night. We had some coffee. He had visited your blog and read the interviews and . . . not because of the interviews or me or such but . . . He DECLARED. Just in time for Easter.
Now I’ve just got to be careful that I don’t do the “Baha’i mutation” thing where someone declares and then – plop – they’re on their own now.
C) After my mom was cool with the interview I went ahead and sent the link to a “selection” of my friends and most of them thought it was great. Some felt disinclined to visit the rest of Rants – I think that’s fine. Some clicked through some of your links and raised a few eyebrows or concerns- again, I think our eyebrows need more exercise anyway
But I was stoked by the general positive response and even had a couple of folks that thought your site was great.

(I’m thinking that most people are a little cautious on leaving comments. Some of us – – are a little less circumspect and are willing to leave chrysolite footprints behind ourselves on our journey in search of our Self. And never mind the “now” which is always our “yesterday”)

Anyway . . . last thought.

On account of the “stim” you’ve given me . . . well . . . at the risk of sounding absolutely hubristic and self-deluded -

I FIGURED IT OUT.
Namely, what the Baha’i Faith Inc. “is”.

I’m guessing that numerous of your visitors are T9-ers – some anyway – and I rejoined that group for a second here (although its dangerous because its addictive and I can’t afford that sort of thing in my life right now) – to see if it might be possible to present the “idea” and then find some folks that might be willing to “play” with it, serious “play”, to see if it can find some flesh.

Anyhow . . . Maybe CoL is a T9-er for example.
And I’m hoping that you, Baquia, with your strong heart, great spirit and sharp “perceptors”, will give the idea a word or two when I get the chance to put it up.

Thanks again for acting on your inspiration viz. KiK.
I don’t think my friend has gotten around to the “bookmarking” of the onlinie version yet.
I’ll send him an e-mail as a “reminder”.

Peace and Love,
B

Thanks for the comments re: the Persian/Christian experience. I’m finishing another round through the “prophets” – i.e. IS, JER, EZE, DAN and, yeah, it would be more accurate to say that the Jews were made captives of the Babylonians and then were only “captives” of the Persians insofar as Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians were overthrown by the Persians and subsequently were the mechanism for the return of the Temple articles and folks to Jerusalem.

And as far as Jesus/Christianity – my main “visual” had to do with Paul’s gospel-spreading journeys through the region. It’s like he went straight up the Turkish border and hung a west most consciously.

The fact that Baha’u'llah’s sojourns cut such a swath throughout all these regions and end up sticking Him in AKKA and Bahji ultimately, with this crazy shining dome of ours (“a city that is set on a hill cannot be hid”), is so lusciously filled with all manner of crazy, divine “obviousness” that – well – I had to stop being “discursive” a long time back.

Viz. your kind assesments about the “methods” of the madness, if you will, utilizing literary tropes, and inter-textuality (currently known as “hyper-links” I believe), etc. – man! how cool to hear someone say it!

I don’t know if I reference it in KiK but one text that had a great impact on me is “Society of Mind” by Marvin Minsky, the AI pioneer at MIT. I don’t know about the actual matter of the text, but its structure, within the “book”, linear format, is a fascinating “experiment”.

It is presented as a sequence of one-page chapters; some of which follow upon the previous. Some of which have no connective tissue. In any case, the premise is that, after reading the “ENTIRE” text, its holistic totality will present the overall theme.

That is, to my mind, how the “READ”, which is the linear sequence of the AKJV Bible and the Penguin/Dawood Koran works. One reads the entire thing in a single, non-intellectual, session (takes approximately 6 days if one employs intoning/murmurring techniques that can be easily developed) and, when its done, IF one has at least had some exposure to Baha’u'llah’s ouvre – like 7 Valleys and Iqan – within seconds of having a “quiet moment” of reflection – one will actually begin to “feel” the congealing and transformation of their own inner psychic-cosmology (by which I mean worldview) start to take place.

But on their own terms, with their own symbology, without the need to discard or discredit any of the data/concepts/image-dictionary they’ve accumulated over the course of their life.

This, of course, is a “theory”. But it is a testable proposition. And that, hopefully, is not lost in the midst of all the other hoo-ha in KiK, nor in these interviews.

It is the literal fulfilment of “To those who Have More shall be given” . . . in the sense that, the intellectual, like yourself, with a discursive, rational, left-brain heavy acquisition of knowledge, would not LOSE anything (as you seem to have articulated) by checking out this “methodology” but rather would have an amazingly rich and complex stockpile of intellectual treasures which, if co-mingled and re-integrated by the Word of God, on its and your own terms, would result in . . . God! I can’t even imagine.

Tragically, for this lowly servant, and as Baquia quickly identified during my brief stint on T9, I’ve pretty much spent my intellectual capital – but that’s okay with me.

Everyday is a non-stop amazing smorgasbord of witnessing the “Living Word” of God running amuck in the world and – man – I can just “feel” the vibrancy of “travail”, with all its hope, with all its fear, with all the knowledge that birth is trauma, and that there’ll be placenta, and there’ll be a great endorphin rush and depletion of sugar levels, etc . . .

and I can only hope that some folks with Baha’i background – which is the ONLY theology that incorporates the express concept of religious unity within this Abrahamic-strain of religion- will try the experiment on themselves in the not too distant future.

Worst case? They actually read the entire Bible and Koran for themselves.
Best Case? They meet “God” face to face, for themselves, and become utterly transformed into a new creation.

Maybe

Concourse on Low?
Awesome.
B.

Thanks for the comments re: the Persian/Christian experience. I’m finishing another round through the “prophets” – i.e. IS, JER, EZE, DAN and, yeah, it would be more accurate to say that the Jews were made captives of the Babylonians and then were only “captives” of the Persians insofar as Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians were overthrown by the Persians and subsequently were the mechanism for the return of the Temple articles and folks to Jerusalem.

And as far as Jesus/Christianity – my main “visual” had to do with Paul’s gospel-spreading journeys through the region. It’s like he went straight up the Turkish border and hung a west most consciously.

The fact that Baha’u'llah’s sojourns cut such a swath throughout all these regions and end up sticking Him in AKKA and Bahji ultimately, with this crazy shining dome of ours (“a city that is set on a hill cannot be hid”), is so lusciously filled with all manner of crazy, divine “obviousness” that – well – I had to stop being “discursive” a long time back.

Viz. your kind assesments about the “methods” of the madness, if you will, utilizing literary tropes, and inter-textuality (currently known as “hyper-links” I believe), etc. – man! how cool to hear someone say it!

I don’t know if I reference it in KiK but one text that had a great impact on me is “Society of Mind” by Marvin Minsky, the AI pioneer at MIT. I don’t know about the actual matter of the text, but its structure, within the “book”, linear format, is a fascinating “experiment”.

It is presented as a sequence of one-page chapters; some of which follow upon the previous. Some of which have no connective tissue. In any case, the premise is that, after reading the “ENTIRE” text, its holistic totality will present the overall theme.

That is, to my mind, how the “READ”, which is the linear sequence of the AKJV Bible and the Penguin/Dawood Koran works. One reads the entire thing in a single, non-intellectual, session (takes approximately 6 days if one employs intoning/murmurring techniques that can be easily developed) and, when its done, IF one has at least had some exposure to Baha’u'llah’s ouvre – like 7 Valleys and Iqan – within seconds of having a “quiet moment” of reflection – one will actually begin to “feel” the congealing and transformation of their own inner psychic-cosmology (by which I mean worldview) start to take place.

But on their own terms, with their own symbology, without the need to discard or discredit any of the data/concepts/image-dictionary they’ve accumulated over the course of their life.

This, of course, is a “theory”. But it is a testable proposition. And that, hopefully, is not lost in the midst of all the other hoo-ha in KiK, nor in these interviews.

It is the literal fulfilment of “To those who Have More shall be given” . . . in the sense that, the intellectual, like yourself, with a discursive, rational, left-brain heavy acquisition of knowledge, would not LOSE anything (as you seem to have articulated) by checking out this “methodology” but rather would have an amazingly rich and complex stockpile of intellectual treasures which, if co-mingled and re-integrated by the Word of God, on its and your own terms, would result in . . . God! I can’t even imagine.

Tragically, for this lowly servant, and as Baquia quickly identified during my brief stint on T9, I’ve pretty much spent my intellectual capital – but that’s okay with me.

Everyday is a non-stop amazing smorgasbord of witnessing the “Living Word” of God running amuck in the world and – man – I can just “feel” the vibrancy of “travail”, with all its hope, with all its fear, with all the knowledge that birth is trauma, and that there’ll be placenta, and there’ll be a great endorphin rush and depletion of sugar levels, etc . . .

and I can only hope that some folks with Baha’i background – which is the ONLY theology that incorporates the express concept of religious unity within this Abrahamic-strain of religion- will try the experiment on themselves in the not too distant future.

Worst case? They actually read the entire Bible and Koran for themselves.
Best Case? They meet “God” face to face, for themselves, and become utterly transformed into a new creation.

Maybe

Concourse on Low?
Awesome.
B.