True Believers (Revisited)

Scott Bradley
Original post date: May 25, 2011

I have met a lot of true believers in my day, and they were not, as you might have already anticipated, Christians. There are Christian true believers of a sort, of course, but I'm talking about true, true believers. These are people who have no doubts — have never doubted — could never doubt. I am thinking, for the most part, about Muslims.

I used to teach English as a second language, and worked a year in Morocco and more than six in Saudi Arabia. I have thus had a lot of exposure to Islam.

Most of my Muslim friends have been Pakistanis — some of the nicest guys you could meet. This is because I have traveled in Pakistan and spent a considerable amount of time in India, where I picked up a lot of Hindustani, a mix of Hindi and Urdu, the predominant language of Pakistan. These Pakistani friends were not in Pakistan, however, but in Saudi, expatriate workers like myself. Speak a bit of peoples' mother tongue, and they naturally warm to you.

Long ago something happened in the West that we call the Enlightenment. This was manifest in many ways, but what interests me here is that we began to doubt. We have never been the same since.

The Cartesian Method, as inaugurated by Descartes, begins with doubt — assuming that I do not know it, how can I prove that God exists? Step one was to prove that he himself existed: I think, therefore I am. [Itself a total logical fallacy.] Admittedly, he knew were he was going — the world would all settle back to normalcy — but still the gap was there.

Most Muslims have not experienced this gap. The existence of God is an absolute given, and except for purely apologetic purposes, they would see no need to prove it. Indeed, to even ask if would be a heretical act. (For the record, there are also many Muslims who have experienced a different reality.)

The Islamic Hegira calendar is somewhere near 1500, and from a Western philosophical perspective, this seems about right. I do not say this disparagingly, but factually. Indeed, there is a certain almost enviable simplicity in this kind of certainty. I have more than once looked out at the simple Indian farmer, a Hindu, plowing his field with buffalo or camel, and thought, He is probably a lot happier than I. And if happiness is a worthy value, then I cannot fault his naiveté. True, he's missing out on all that wonderful existential despair and angst, but everything has its price.

To my thinking, that farmer is best left to plow his row. And I, well I must muddle my way through my 'modernity' in search of the peace he has yet to lose.

The truth is, of course, that I wouldn’t trade my existential despair for anything, save transcendence.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

F.O.B.-b (A Fan of Bill, but...)

Trey Smith

I am a b-i-g fan of Bill Maher. There are not very many TV programs I watch regularly, but you'll find me plopped down in front of the television almost every Friday night when Real Time with Bill Maher is on!

For the most part, I think Bill is insightful and extremely funny. He typically educates with barbs and biting humor. I agree with his take on a lot of issues, but there is at least one issue that I think he has dead wrong. JP Sottile seems to agree with me.

Bill Maher is a funny guy.

But he’s not very reflective.

That’s because, quite ironically, he’s fallen into the War on Terror trap — the comfortable and comforting stereotype of angry Muslims as irrational ideologues armed with religious hair-triggers and little else.

Like so many of the so-called “Left” in America, Maher has basically accepted the key notion that a whole population of like-minded people have decided to kill Americans because of an irrational religious belief system.

Maher’s go-to example of the Muslim world’s “unique” religious insanity is the way Muslims seem to go ballistic whenever “The Prophet” is offended — in cartoons, bad movies or by American soldiers burning Korans.

It’s not that it hasn’t happened. It has. Muslim outrage over real or perceived sleights to The Prophet and Islam — which forbids graven imagery of God and, in some cases, Mohammed — is no laughing matter.

But isn’t it interesting that the supposedly “Liberal” Obama Administration is currently fending off scandal-hungry Republicans because they tried to pawn off a “terrorist” attack on a paramilitary target (the Benghazi “diplomatic facility” also housed a “CIA annex”) as little more than a predictably frenzied Muslim response to an offensive movie?

That’s where Maher picked it up on an episode of “Real Time” when the topic strayed from GOP efforts to hang Benghazi on the Democrats to Maher’s relentless drumbeat about the inherent nuttiness of Muslims. Bill even entertained the possibility that it is better to keep dictatorships in control of Muslims because, like the Arab Spring in Egypt, when you let them have some freedom, they naturally become a mob of theocratic loonies. In other words, their kooky religion means Muslim masses cannot be trusted to govern themselves.

And there is something else about Bill that has made me a bit uneasy lately. He appears to have taken a page straight from the Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh handbook. When guests bring up points that he strongly disagrees with, he talks right over the top of them! How rude!

TYT - Religious Cleansing In The Armed Forces?

Jesus Ain't No Buddha

Trey Smith

Ryan Rotella, a junior at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) said that his professor, Dr. Deandre Poole, of his Intercultural Communications class, asked students in the class to write the word “Jesus” on a piece of paper, fold the paper, and step on it. By the time FOX News and Commentary got to the story, “asked” had become “directed,” “step” had become “stomp,” and the “Stomp on Jesus” firestorm was manufactured. FAU reacted by apologizing to those who were offended, immediately placing Poole on administrative leave, and banning him from FAU’s campuses.

Poole was using an exercise from an instructor’s guide to a popular textbook, Intercultural Communication: A Contextual Approach, written by Jim Neuliep, a professor of communication and media studies at St. Norbert College, in Wisconsin. The instructor’s guide describes the exercise:

This exercise is a bit sensitive, but really drives home the point that even though symbols are arbitrary, they take on very strong and emotional meanings. Have the students write the name JESUS in big letters on a piece of paper. Ask the students to stand up and put the paper on the floor in front of them with the name facing up. Ask the students to think about it for a moment. After a brief period of silence, instruct them to step on the paper. Most will hesitate. Ask why they can’t step on the paper. Discuss the importance of symbols in culture.

Poole, under orders from FAU not to discuss the case, did say that he never told anyone to “stomp on Jesus,” but asked his students to step on the piece of paper. Poole said that one student approached him after class and said, “How dare you disrespect someone’s religion?” while hitting his balled fist into his other hand. Poole claims the student said the “he wanted to hit me,” but didn’t. Poole reported the incident to campus security and filed a report.

Poole, a former Sunday-school teacher, identifies himself as “very religious” and says that Jesus “is my lord and savior.” Poole has received hate mail and death threats, including one threatening Poole, an African-American, with hanging. Poole is on a one-year teaching contract with FAU, and although FAU may not fire him, the non-renewal of his contract will send the same message.

Not one to miss out on an opportunity to pander, Governor Rick Scott called the assignment “intolerant to Christians.”

Christians have learned well from their Islamic brothers. Any slight to their faith, real or imagined, is to be met with the full wrath of the faithful. As Poole’s situation demonstrates, no slight is too insignificant, or too illogical. Like Islam, the only way Christianity can get the respect they think they deserve is through threats and intimidation. Like Islam, it appears that Christianity has given up any hope of achieving respect through persuasive argument.
~ Academic Freedom Sacrificed To Religious Intimidation by David Drumm ~

For me, this news item highlights a key difference between a deity-based religion versus a philosophic religion or a philosophy. The former treats symbols as sacred, while the latter does not. For the former, even a symbol of the symbol -- like a word written on a piece of paper -- is holy, while the latter recognizes symbols for what they are -- symbols.

To underscore this difference, think of the Zen Buddhist koan, "If you meet the Buddha, kill him." Can you imagine a Christian saying this about the savior (If you meet Jesus, kill him) or a Muslim saying this about the prophet (If you meet Mohammed, kill him)? Want to talk about blasphemy! You would be denounced by the faithful until the cows come home.

Think about the first line of the Tao Te Ching.

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.

Can you imagine a devout Christian standing up to declare, "The God we worship is not the eternal God"? Such a person would be tossed out of the flock so fast it would make your head spin!

People of a religious ilk -- particularly those of the Abrahamic religions -- have never come to grips with the notion that they treat the finger pointing at the moon as the moon itself. The finger -- the symbol of the deity -- has become just as important, if not more so, than that which they ostensibly worship!

This whole situation would be downright comical...if not for the societal implications it engenders.

So, Who Are the Real Peacemakers?

Trey Smith

In this predominantly Christian nation, we know that Christians, by and large, are followers of one Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus is the fellow who is famous for the Sermon on the Mount. Of the beatitudes he lists, one goes, "Blessed are the peacemakers." Since Jesus appeared to be an ardent supporter of peace, it would follow that Christians as a group would be a very peaceful bunch.

The same cannot be said for Muslims and atheists. According to most people you talk to, the former believe in a violent religious doctrine. They are bloodthirsty people who have little respect for the lives of non-Muslims and, sometimes, fellow Muslims as well. Atheists are almost as bad as Muslims because we deny God. With no God to lead us, we lack the inherent morality of Christians and most of us certainly lead hedonistic and selfish lives.

It all seems really straightforward. Christians = peacemakers. Muslims/atheists = supporters of wanton violence.

Not so fast, says Jim Naureckas of Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR). In doing some research, he happened across a Gallup poll that turns these assumptions on their heads!

When respondents were asked if the killing of civilians was ever justified by individuals, groups or a government's military, the two groups that were most opposed on any of these grounds were NOT the Christians. No, it was the Muslims and the atheists. In fact, when the question concerned solely the military, nearly 60 percent of Protestants and Catholics gave a big thumbs up. Compare this to Muslim respondents in which only about 20 percent approved!

What we have here is a rather obvious disconnect. The followers of the Prince of Peace tend to support the use of violence against civilians in much greater numbers than Muslims or atheists and slightly more than Jews. Doesn't that seem to you like a strange way to follow someone? (It sure does to me.) It's like Jesus says, "Hey everyone, let's turn left here" and the majority of his flock go tromping off to the right...all the while singing his praises!

"God in the Dock"

Scott Bradley

I have put this title in quotes because I'm sure it has already been used elsewhere, though I can't remember where. The idea of questioning "God" is an important one to me because I was for a long time a Christian and I ultimately abandoned that faith when its "God" could no longer live up to the lofty moral standards he ostensibly proclaimed. "God" must ultimately kill "God".

As an aside, I'd like to address the understandable sense of embarrassment that I feel in saying I was a born-again Christian. I do occasionally have my previous beliefs thrown in my face when I mention some of the moral absurdities of that faith. My answer is simply that when stoned on LSD and you have an incredible transformative experience packaged as Jesus, all the absurdities that go along with it are of little consequence. In other words, I did not become a Christian because I believed its doctrines but because almost accidently (it was with a laugh and as a lark that I prayed the prayer) I had my socks blown off. I saw it happen to another while my friend and I were bumming around S. California shortly thereafter. An AWOL marine, also stoned on LSD, had the same experience before my eyes, and when my friend mentioned Noah (and his ark) the marine exclaimed, "I believe, I believe!"

The revealed God of Judaism, Christianity and Islam made the critical error of identifying with certain beliefs and ‘historical’ deeds which though then acceptable are now seen as monstrous. "Hell" is, in my opinion, the most horrendous idea ever conceived by the mind of man. (Though strictly speaking Judaism has no hell — just a smoldering dump, Jesus was Jewish and thus his ideas were Jewish and likely reflected the Jewish thought of his time.) Of 'historical' events I need only mention a few: choosing one tribe above every other, Passover (being the passing over of that tribe while God murdered the firstborn of all of Egypt), raining fire and brimstone on Sodom, ordering the total genocide of the indigenous peoples of Palestine. (These are all from the Judaic root, but Christianity and Islam have made their own horrendous use of and contributions to them.) If this "God" is God, then we are in deep shit indeed.

Nietzsche wrote that every great idea must ultimately lead to its own negation. Understanding this, we can both affirm the contributions of these traditions — and they are many — and also leave them behind. Judaism gifted the West with a high moral code; yet that morality, once internalized, cannot but renounce the very God supposed to be its author. If God is in the dock, it is because he has failed of his own morality.

This is about my personal journey and I feel no crusading need to disabuse others who still believe of their faith. These things happen when they happen and not because we make them happen, or even because we ever wished them to happen.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

TYT - Does Fox News Have an Alliance with Al Qaeda?

"Mowing the Lawn"

Trey Smith

"Mere words cannot match the depths of your sorrow, nor can they heal your wounded hearts … These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change." Every parent can connect with what President Barack Obama said about the murder of 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut. There can scarcely be a person on earth with access to the media who is untouched by the grief of the people of that town.

It must follow that what applies to the children murdered there by a deranged young man also applies to the children murdered in Pakistan by a sombre American president. These children are just as important, just as real, just as deserving of the world's concern. Yet there are no presidential speeches or presidential tears for them, no pictures on the front pages of the world's newspapers, no interviews with grieving relatives, no minute analysis of what happened and why.

If the victims of Mr. Obama's drone strikes are mentioned by the state at all, they are discussed in terms which suggest that they are less than human. The people who operate the drones, Rolling Stone magazine reports, describe their casualties as "bug splats", "since viewing the body through a grainy-green video image gives the sense of an insect being crushed". Or they are reduced to vegetation: justifying the drone war, Obama's counterterrorism adviser Bruce Riedel explained that "you've got to mow the lawn all the time. The minute you stop mowing, the grass is going to grow back".

~ from In the US, Mass Child Killings Are Tragedies. In Pakistan, Mere Bug Splats by George Monbiot ~

Can you imagine the unmitigated furor that would have been caused if, during his speech in Newtown, President Obama had referred to the slaughter of 20 American children as "bug splats" or a case of "mowing the lawn"? He would have been denounced -- rightfully so -- almost universally!

Who Would Have Thought It?

Scott Bradley

In The Enlightened Mind, Mitchell offers some selections from the Koran:

Do not despise the world, for the world too is God.

So wonderfully put! To this I could burn incense, but won't for fear of starting a fire and ending up in a heap of trouble. A Sufi might affirm this de-contextualized statement as it stands, but I sincerely doubt that an "orthodox" Muslim would. No matter, it echoes my own heart's assent.

Does that matter? No. No words matter. Yes. Something happens experientially when the heart releases into what these words mean.

Whoever knows himself knows God.

Wow! What book is this from?!

Is there some special part of me that I need to know to know Dao? No. All of me is Dao.

True religion is surrender.

Yes! Surrender is release into the unknowable Vastness. Surrender is letting life unfold as it does, affirming everything as it arises. It is "hiding the world in the world so that nothing can ever be lost." It is "handing it all over to the inevitable." It is ultimate Trust. It is unreserved Affirmation. It is pure Thankfulness. Yet still it has no object.

But is this Islam? Again, it is not "orthodox" Islam, though it may be for those Muslims of mystical bent.

"Islam" is this word translated here are "surrender". I've only ever seen it translated as "submission" however, and there is a world of difference between the two. One "submits" to what one knows. In this case, one knows a personal God who rules and makes moral judgments. One submits to the will of God. One submits to the laws of God. And one suffers eternal damnation for a failure to do so.

It’s curious how we can find our “good words” wherever we wish to find them. No true intellectual honesty is required. I don’t mean this as a criticism of Mitchell — he has sought to be inclusive, and there is indeed the rare Muslim who could give assent to not only these excised words, but also to the broader point of view to which they refer us.

What’s more curious still is our (my) relentless parsing of words — compare and contrast, yes and no, correct and incorrect. Maybe Mitchell has gone beyond needing to do so. There must be that place, no? A place where there can be a God of any name, or no God of every name. A place where none of these ideas matter.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Afternoon Matinee: A History of Al-Qaeda 3/3

Afternoon Matinee: A History of Al-Qaeda 2/3

Afternoon Matinee: A History of Al-Qaeda 1/3

Afternoon Matinee: Biblically Incorrect, 2 of 8

Warning: Bill Maher is a self-professed pottymouth!

Where Are the Prophets? Lo Ami

Scott Bradley

At the time of my writing it is the 'holiday season'. In this connection I recently heard a political commentator, a liberal, use his final few seconds of 'rant' to say, “What would Jesus do? He would declare the rights of the impoverished over those of the rich. He would cast the money-changers out of the temple."

Where are the prophets? I hear none.

One of the most powerful phrases in the Prophets (a companion to the Torah and the Writings in what Christians call the Old Testament) consists of two words: Lo ami. Not my people. This 'minor' prophet, I forget which one, declared to the Nation of Israel the word of God: You are not my people. You have oppressed the poor and the dispossessed. You are not my people.

Where is the prophet for the Jewish people of today? Yes, you are among the world's most philanthropic, but until you face up to the horrendous crime being committed against the Palestinian people, and your part in perpetuating it, lo ami. It is not the hostility of the Arab peoples that is your greatest enemy; it is Zionism. The militancy of "never again" can only precipitate more of the same. There are many secular Jews who know and proclaim this. But where is the rabbi? Where is he who believes in the God of Israel who stands up, and in the name of that God declares lo ami?

Where is the Christian conservative, the Bible-thumper, who takes to the pulpit and declares to the Church lo ami? You have sided with the oppressors. You have embraced the Empire and declared it a 'chosen people'. You have become chaplain to the Joint Chiefs, put God's seal of approval on the merchants of death. You care for the unborn, but not for the born. It began long ago with Constantine, the first Christian Roman Emperor; you abandoned God and kissed the ring of power. The Anabaptists broke free; why can't you? Is it that you fear the lions more than your God? Or is it because hate is so much easier than love?

Where is the Islamic scholar who stands up and declares a fatwa against all Islamic extremism and the despicable oppression of most all Islamic peoples by their own governments? Where is the mullah who declares Islamic culture morally bankrupt, who recognizes that righteousness is a great deal more than covering tits and ass, eschewing pig, and declaring that God is great? Lo ami. If God were great, he would disown you.

You are all morally bankrupt. To your shame, it is those who do not believe that carry the torch of righteousness. You have forsaken your God. Lo ami.

Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukah. Happy Eid (when next it comes).

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Legalized Islamophobia

Ten US college students from Southern California have been convicted of unlawfully disrupting a speech by Israel's ambassador to the US last year and placed on probation.

Friday's verdict followed two full days of deliberations by a six-man, six-woman jury in a case that has touched off a furor over free-speech rights at the University of California at Irvine.

The students, who were ordered to perform 56 hours of community service, are to remain on probation for three years. But they could have that reduced to a year once they complete the community service.

Charges against an 11th defendant have been tentatively dismissed.

"We're going to continue fighting this. We're going to appeal this decision," supporter Marya Bangee, 25, said outside the court.

"These men to us represent our struggle for civil rights in this country and for them to be found guilty and sentenced for speaking their minds is devastating for us all."

The case stems from a protest organized by the Muslim Student Union at the university against a February 8, 2010, speech there by Michael Oren, the Israeli diplomat.

Prosecutors say the students interrupted his appearance by shouting statements such as "Michael Oren, propagating murder is not an expression of free speech!" and "It's a shame this university has sponsored a mass murderer like yourself".

The US constitution guarantees Americans the right to freedom of speech.

But the Orange County district attorney's office, which is prosecuting the case, has said the students - rather than exercising their own free-speech rights - were interfering with the right of Oren to be heard.

The total amount of time taken up by the students' disruptions was approximately only one minute, an attorney for the group said.
~ from Ten US Muslim Students Convicted for Disrupting Speech ~

While one could argue that it's bad form to interrupt a speaker -- something Rush Limbaugh and Ed Schultz are famous for -- who would have guessed that it would be deemed illegal?

What I find stunning about the DA's interpretation is that there is no constitutional right to be heard. No, the right concerns expression. Each of us is free to express our views and others get to decide if they wish to listen.

I will not take the DA's position seriously until I see that office prosecute the flip side. If a Muslim-sponsored event takes place within the jurisdiction and Islamophobic protesters try to shout down a speaker -- so that he or she can't be heard -- then this DA must throw the book at them! If not, then the DA can't pontificate at all about the rule of law.

How They/We Stood By

Except for the most right-leaning ideologues, most rational people accept the historical accuracy of The Holocaust. As summarized by Wikipedia,

The Holocaust (from the Greek ὁλόκαυστος holókaustos: hólos, "whole" and kaustós, "burnt"), also known as The Shoah (Hebrew: השואה, HaShoah, "catastrophe"; Yiddish: חורבן, Churben or Hurban,[3] from the Hebrew for "destruction"), was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a program of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi Germany, led by Adolf Hitler, throughout Nazi-occupied territory. Of the nine million Jews who had resided in Europe before the Holocaust, approximately two-thirds perished. More than one million Jewish children were killed in the Holocaust, as were approximately two million Jewish women and three million Jewish men.

One of the questions asked by people in our day and age is: How could the German people simply sit by and allow this to happen?

Well, we shouldn't act so high and mighty because a new sort of Holocaust is happening in our midst and we aren't doing much of anything to stop it either! This time around the primary target group is not the Jews; it's the Muslims. Led by the zealous designs of US leaders and ably assisted by the Brits, we are systematically going from Arab country to Arab country murdering people because, in part, of their religious beliefs.

While the Nazis preferred method of extermination was the ovens, ours increasingly has become the use of drones. Add to this bombs dropped by aircraft and missiles launched from ships or land and we have perfected a strategy for raining terror down on innocents without too much need for face-to-face slaughter.

This is not to suggest that our foot soldiers don't play a part too. Via WikiLeaks, we've learned of several occasions in which US and/or NATO troops have murdered families at pointblank range.

I realize that a lot of people will cringe at the thought that US aggression rivals Nazi aggression. Some will claim that we have strict military objectives, while the Nazis merely were pursuing their own form of ethnic cleansing. Others will point out that while the Jews posed no terrorist threat to the Nazi regime, there are Muslim zealots out there whose sworn duty is to kill Americans.

I grant there are differences in circumstance, but the vast majority of people we are killing are not terrorists. They are average people who are caught between the terrorists and the imperialist aggressors (that's us). While wealth -- most often in the form of oil -- appears to be the prime motivator for our machinations, a casual observer could also note that we seem to be hellbent on religious cleansing. We aren't attacking any non-Muslim countries who possess oil (like Canada or Venezuela).

Conservative estimates are that our military endeavors have led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, and Yemen. Some have theorized that the total death toll tops one million people. Whatever the number is, it continues to grow day-by-day. And, even if we ceased all military operations tomorrow, the death toll will continue to climb in the not-so-near future because of our use of weapons coated with depleted uranium and our conscious strategy to destroy the health and safety infrastructure of the nations we've targeted.

Fifty years from now, people may look back on this history of atrocities to ask: Why did the American people passively sit by to allow this to happen?

If a few of us are still around, what in the hell could we say in our own defense?

No Mercy (and No Shame)

A goodwill dinner planned for Ramadan at the Catholic Mother of Mercy High School in Cincinnati has been cancelled after an outcry from parents. The wonderful interfaith gesture to the Muslim community ended in sectarian prejudices as parents objected it was too close to the 9-11 anniversary and “sent the wrong message.” My favorite quote came from one parent who said “I’m glad it’s canceled; it wasn’t a good thing . . . It would have really given Mercy a bad name.” Yes, Mercy now stands for something entirely different.

Archbishop Dennis Schnurr wrote a letter to the school in response to letters from parents, asking for the cancellation. Some parents criticized the association with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has long been a target of critics. CAIR insists that it has always denounced terrorism. Moreover, if the parents wanted other Islamic groups to take the lead or to participate, I am sure that could have been arranged.

The closeness to the 9-11 anniversary only heightened the significance of this gesture. The dinner could have shown unity and fellowship between religions — and a rejection of the petty prejudices that divide the country.
~ from Giving Mercy A Bad Name? Catholic School Cancels Goodwill Ramadan Dinner by Jonathan Turley ~

And Christians (whatever their denomination or affiliation) wonder why people like me often have such a low opinion of them? Here's Exhibit #4,569,093!

Those "Bloodthirsty" Muslims

If you listen to a certain segment of the US population, they will tell you that Islam is an evil belief system. Muslims, by and large, are a violent people who see nothing wrong with shedding innocent blood. Foreign Muslims, in particular, don't like the freedoms we Americans supposedly have and so they have made it their life's mission to destroy this country. Blah, blah, blah.

If you will remember, this past spring a deadly tornado struck Joplin, Missouri. Not only were there 160 deaths and hundreds of injuries, but the town's one public high school and several other schools were severely damaged or destroyed. Along with all the destroyed classrooms, the school district lost most of its computers.

On Wednesday, Joplin students returned to school. Classes are being held in makeshift locations around the city. While the district, its teachers and students have had to scramble to come up with needed books and supplies for the school year, they haven't had to worry about replacing one specific item: computers.

You see, a donor stepped in to contribute $1 million to insure that "every student could get a free laptop."

Who was this donor? Was it Microsoft, Apple, Dell or any number of American computer companies? Nope. The money came from a Muslim country -- the United Arab Emirates!!

That's right. Some people from a religion that we're told want to destroy the United States were moved by the calamity in Joplin to reach out to help students they do not know. That doesn't sound very bloodthirsty to me; it sounds benevolent.

Kindness and generosity know no [religious] bounds.

True Believers

True Believers
by Scott Bradley

I have met a lot of true believers in my day, and they were not, as you might have already anticipated, Christians. There are Christian true believers of a sort, of course, but I'm talking about true, true believers. These are people who have no doubts — have never doubted — could never doubt. I am thinking, for the most part, about Muslims.

I used to teach English as a second language, and worked a year in Morocco and more than six in Saudi Arabia. I have thus had a lot of exposure to Islam.

Most of my Muslim friends have been Pakistanis — some of the nicest guys you could meet. This is because I have traveled in Pakistan and spent a considerable amount of time in India, where I picked up a lot of Hindustani, a mix of Hindi and Urdu, the predominant language of Pakistan. These Pakistani friends were not in Pakistan, however, but in Saudi, expatriate workers like myself. Speak a bit of peoples' mother tongue, and they naturally warm to you.

Long ago something happened in the West that we call the Enlightenment. This was manifest in many ways, but what interests me here is that we began to doubt. We have never been the same since.

The Cartesian Method, as inaugurated by Descartes, begins with doubt — assuming that I do not know it, how can I prove that God exists? Step one was to prove that he himself existed: I think, therefore I am. [Itself a total logical fallacy.] Admittedly, he knew were he was going — the world would all settle back to normalcy — but still the gap was there.

Most Muslims have not experienced this gap. The existence of God is an absolute given, and except for purely apologetic purposes, they would see no need to prove it. Indeed, to even ask if would be a heretical act. (For the record, there are also many Muslims who have experienced a different reality.)

The Islamic Hegira calendar is somewhere near 1500, and from a Western philosophical perspective, this seems about right. I do not say this disparagingly, but factually. Indeed, there is a certain almost enviable simplicity in this kind of certainty. I have more than once looked out at the simple Indian farmer, a Hindu, plowing his field with buffalo or camel, and thought, He is probably a lot happier than I. And if happiness is a worthy value, then I cannot fault his naiveté. True, he's missing out on all that wonderful existential despair and angst, but everything has its price.

To my thinking, that farmer is best left to plow his row. And I, well I must muddle my way through my 'modernity' in search of the peace he has yet to lose.

The truth is, of course, that I wouldn’t trade my existential despair for anything, save transcendence.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Afternoon Matinee: I Am A Muslim