Islamists aren't the only 'fundamentalists' to worry about . . .

Sadhvi Deva Thakur

. . . for there are ladies like this Hindu politician:

Sadhvi Deva Thakur is a leader of All India Hindu Mahasabha, a leading Hindu organization in India. On April 11, 2015, she demanded that Muslims and Christians in India be forcibly sterilized, as they were during Emergency Rule in 1975, when such forced sterilizations were carried out. The following are excerpts from a media report: A leader of Hindu Mahasabha on Saturday [April 11, 2015] stoked a controversy saying Muslims and Christians must undergo sterilization to restrict their growing population which was posing a threat to Hindus . . . . [Specifically, she said,] "The population of Muslims and Christians is growing day by day. To rein in this, [the] Center [the federal Indian government] will have to impose emergency [rule], and Muslims and Christians will have to be forced to undergo sterilization so that they can't increase their numbers," vice president of All India Hindu Mahasabha, Sadhvi Deva Thakur told reporters . . . . [and] also exhorted Hindus to have more children and increase their population so as to have an effect on the world. In another controversial remark, she said that idols of Hindu gods and goddesses should be placed in mosques and churches. Thakur also came out strongly in support of installing a statue of 'patriot' Nathuram Godse [the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi] in Haryana [state near Delhi ruled by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi].

You can read even worse things by other radical Hindu nationalists in the same Memri Report (Special Dispatch No. 6033, April 26, 2015), e.g., "Today there is a need to dig up the [bodies of the Muslims' deceased] mothers, sisters and daughters from graves, and to rape them . . ."

What a horrifying thing to say! What's the world coming to?

Slavoj Žižek Repeats Himself!

Slavoj Žižek
Wikipedia

Upon reading Slavoj Žižek's recent essay in the NYT, I had the sense that it was not quite apposite in being titled "ISIS Is a Disgrace to True Fundamentalism" (September 3, 2014) - as if that 'disgrace' were the worst thing about the Islamic State! When I finished reading the essay and looked carefully at the Editors' Note (September 5, 2014), however, I saw why Žižek's essay failed to fit expectations:

After this essay was published, a reader pointed out that several sections had originally appeared, in identical or substantially similar form, in Slavoj Zizek's 2008 book, "Violence: Six Sideways Reflections." The New York Times does not ordinarily reprint material that has been previously published; Op-Ed contributors are asked to affirm that their work is original, and exclusive to The Times. Had The Times known that portions of the essay were copied from an earlier work, it would not have accepted the essay for publication.

That likely already speaks volumes about Žižek's 'integrity,' assuming he knew of this policy (which he did) - and also explains why 'disgrace' is not a proper term with which to critique the Islamic State - but I'd like to dig a bit deeper into Žižek's failure of analysis, for the worst this continental philosopher can say about the Islamic State is that it lacks self-confidence:

The problem with terrorist fundamentalists is not that we consider them inferior to us, but, rather, that they themselves secretly consider themselves inferior. This is why our condescending, politically correct assurances that we feel no superiority toward them only makes them more furious and feeds their resentment. The problem is not cultural difference (their effort to preserve their identity), but the opposite fact that they already like us, that, secretly, they have already internalized our standards and measure themselves by them. Paradoxically, what the fundamentalists of ISIS and those like them really lack is precisely a dose of that true conviction of one’s own superiority.

In Žižek's world, the Islamic State is barbaric because the Muslims fighting for it are "terrorist pseudo-fundamentalists . . . deeply bothered, intrigued and fascinated by the sinful life of the nonbelievers," such that, "in fighting the sinful other, they are fighting their own temptation." I wouldn't entirely reject this point - the 'Western' Muslims fighting for the Islamic State likely have experienced such temptation - but this can't explain the entire movement. Nor does this:

[T]hese ultra-modern practices [of the Islamic State] are used to propagate and enforce an ideologico-political vision that is not so much conservative as a desperate move to fix clear hierarchic delimitations.

Žižek never takes the time to specify what these "hierarchic delimitations" are. Does he mean the rejection of equal rights for all? Muslim women as second-class citizens, Jews and Christians as third-class, pagans as no-class? He never clarifies. Most of all, he fails to recognize the arrogance and lack of self-doubt evinced by the Islamic State, so his analysis is therefore entirely unhelpful for the circumstances we currently find ourselves in.

I suspect that many readers would consider Žižek himself the disgrace.

Why Question Islamists? Because . . .

Extremist!

Christianity Today

Violent Islamists are convinced that they're carrying out God's unsearchable will in killing infidels. In smaller numbers, and less toxic, extremist Christian are calling down God's hateful wrath on the wicked, as with the Westboro Baptist Church founded by Fred Phelps to loudly affirm that God hates gays, among other divine objects of hatred, a message taught to the impressionable children and grandchildren of Mr. Phelps, such as his now 27-year-old granddaughter, Megan Phelps-Roper, who -- as Marlena Graves tells us in "The Westboro Baptist in All of Us" (Christianity Today, February 13, 2013) -- had something not long ago to tell us all (quoting from Dugan Arnett, "Megan Phelps-Roper of Westboro Baptist Church: An heir to hate," The Kansas City Star, November 19, 2011):

She wants to make it perfectly clear that you and the rest of this filthy, perverted nation will be spending a long, fiery eternity burning in hell.

A pleasant image, reminding me of that old hymn "Some Sad Morning":

Some sad morning,
When this life is over,
I'll fry away.

In a land where
Broiling never ends
I'll fry away.

I'll fry away,
Oh gory!
I'll fry away.
In the morning.

When I die,
Hell'l-do-yuh
Bye and bye!
I'll fry away.

Well, maybe I disremember the exact words . . . but the hymn went something like that. Anyway, there's no hope of reasoning with fanatics, right?

[I]n December 2012, Megan went to the library in Lawrence, Kansas, and began combing through books on philosophy and religion. As she read, "it struck her that people had devoted their entire lives to studying these questions of how to live and what is right and wrong. 'The idea that only (Westboro) had the right answer seemed crazy,' she says. 'It just seemed impossible.'"

Megan came to terms with the idea that maybe, just maybe, Westboro might be wrong.

For that reason -- and for many others -- we need to continue posing tough question about Islam in the hope that the sharper questions might burst a few bubbles.

That sometimes happens . . .

James V. Schall on Islam's 'Fragility'

James V. Schall

(Image from Georgetown University)

The Jesuit political philosopher James V. Schall has a recent short, reflective essay "On the Fragility of Islam" published at The Catholic Thing (August 23, 2011). In our time of aggressive Islamism, such a title is surprising, but perhaps it shouldn't be. Aggressiveness is often a cover for uncertainty, for lack of confidence. But why does Schall consider Islam "fragile"? Not out of ignorance, certainly. Schall first notes Islam's military success, its rapid spread through warfare from Arabia to "North Africa, the Mediterranean islands, much of Spain, the Balkans, the Near East, the vast land area from southern Russia to India and Afghanistan and even parts of China." Islam dominates in these places, as Schall notes with especial reference to formerly Christian territory, and appears powerful:

The Muslim conversion of former Christian lands seems to be permanent. What few Christians are left in these lands are second-class citizens. They are under severe pressure to convert or emigrate. Many forces within Islam desire a complete enclosure of Islam that would exclude any foreign power or religion. The Muslim world is divided into the area of peace and the area of war; the latter is what Islam does not yet control.

Given Islam's power, why does Schall consider Islam weak?

So with this background, why talk of the "fragility" of Islam? This instability arises from the status of the text of the Koran as an historical document. The Koran is said to have been dictated directly in Arabic by Allah. It has, as it were, no prehistory, even though it did not come into existence until a century or so after Mohammed.

Scholars, mostly German, have been working quietly for many decades to produce a critical edition of the Koran that takes into consideration the "pre-history" of the Koran. Due to the Muslim belief that any effort to question the Koran's text is blasphemy, the enterprise is fraught with personal risk to the researchers. The idea that the text cannot be investigated, of course, only feeds suspicion that even Muslims worry about its integrity . . . .

The fragility of Islam, as I see it, lies in a sudden realization of the ambiguity of the text of the Koran. Is it what it claims to be? Islam is weak militarily. It is strong in social cohesion, often using severe moral and physical sanctions. But the grounding and unity of its basic document are highly suspect. Once this becomes clear, Islam may be as fragile as communism.

Schall's argument reminds me somewhat of the secularization thesis, the long-held view that the secular forces of Modernity would undermine religious belief through critical thought, among other things. Outside of Europe, that hasn't quite happened yet, and Europe itself seems to be gravitating back toward religion, either through the growth of Islam there or in reaction to that growth among Europeans now becoming more aware of the Christian element of Western identity.

Moreover, if one compares Islam's textual situation with Christianity's, one sees that Christian fundamentalism, with its emphatic declaration of Biblical inerrancy, is partly a reaction to Modernity, especially to the threat of the scholarly world's modern approach to Biblical criticism, characterized by a hermeneutic of suspicion bent on demonstrating the incoherence of the text through focus upon inconcinnities that imply textual development reflecting theological struggles among early Christian communities rather than a divinely inspired textual revelation of theological truth at the outset, e.g., high Christology is seen as a late development of theological reflection rather than an early consequence of divine revelation. Christianity, in both its Catholic and its Protestant forms, has not fallen into theological ruin at such Biblical criticism.

But Schall might have a point. The Qur'an holds a uniquely central place in Islam, roughly analogous to the position of Christ in Christianity, and it is Allah's only verbal communication with mankind that has remained uncorrupted by those who have received it and is therefore as inerrant today as it was when the angel Gabriel dictated it directly to Muhammad. If critical hermeneutics applied to the Qur'an demonstrates that the text developed over time, i.e., that it drew upon previous scriptures and was rewritten in the decades following Muhammad's death, then Islam could suffer a critical shock, particularly if the very early Qur'anic texts found in the attic of an old mosque in Yemen should turn out to have significant textual variants.

But I don't think that a deconstruction of the Qur'anic text will happen without a fight, and not a purely academic one, at that.

Genesis Creation Story: Poetry or History or What?

History, Not Poetry?

(Image from Institute for Creation Research)

Some time back, my Uncle Cran sent me a link to the above website, suggesting, "I thought this article might interest you."

The article is titled "Genesis Is History, Not Poetry: Exposing Hidden Assumptions about What Hebrew Poetry Is and Is Not," and it's written by James J. S. Johnson, J.D., Th.D., for the Institute for Creation Research. I didn't find time to read it for a couple of weeks. Its basic point, as I discovered a couple of days ago, is that Hebrew poetry employs a poetic device that I've always known as Hebrew Parallelism, but which Johnson classifies as Informational Parallelism:

Unlike the rhyme and rhythm of English poetry, Hebrew poetry is defined by informational parallelism -- parallelism of meaning. The paralleled thoughts may emphasize good and bad, wise and unwise, reverent and blasphemous. They may or may not recount historical events, although time and place, if mentioned at all, are less emphasized than in narrative prose. This informational parallelism -- using comparative lines and phrases -- portrays similarities and/or contrasts, or comparisons of whole and part, or some other kind of logical associations of meaning.

He offers this example:

Psalm 104:29 Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled:
thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust.

Psalm 104:30 Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created:
and thou renewest the face of the earth.

He then explains:

Note how both lines in verse 29 show parallel similarity of meaning, as do both lines in verse 30. Yet verse 29 informationally contrasts with verse 30 -- verse 29 tells how God controls the death of certain creatures (like leviathan, mentioned in verse 26), but verse 30 tells how God controls the life of His creatures. In order to get the full meaning of either verse 29 or verse 30, the total parallelism must be appreciated. This is the hallmark of Hebrew poetry.

That's informative, and I'm obliged to Johnson for the point that the parallelism is "informational" . . . though I wonder if that's always the case (and also if this is a conventional expression for this poetic technique). Anyway, I recently wrote back in reply to Uncle Cran:

I finally found a moment to read the article.

Clearly, the man is right that Genesis doesn't employ "informational parallelism" characteristic of Hebrew poetry. I doubt that this settles the issue, however, for what is contained in the very category "poetry" could be disputed. He has a rather narrow view of English poetry, for example, that doesn't seem to include free verse -- which doesn't make use of rhyme or fixed rhythm. I would bet that one could argue about what ought to be included as "poetry" in Hebrew. Arguably, the first chapter of Genesis is poetry of a different sort than that which uses Hebrew parallelism. There is parallelism of a different sort, however, as one can readily see.

Moreover, just because some text is not "poetry" doesn't make it "history."

But thanks for the link. I learned the concept of "informational parallelism" (which I'd always known as "Hebrew parallelism"), so I'm obliged.

Since writing that to Uncle Cran, I've realized that I ought to give an example of what I mean, and because I brought up the issue of the first chapter of Genesis as poetry, let's take a look, using the traditional King James Version:

1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

1:4 And God saw the light, that [it was] good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

1:5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

1:6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

1:7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which [were] under the firmament from the waters which [were] above the firmament: and it was so.

1:8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

1:9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry [land] appear: and it was so.

1:10 And God called the dry [land] Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that [it was] good.

1:11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, [and] the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed [is] in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

1:12 And the earth brought forth grass, [and] herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed [was] in itself, after his kind: and God saw that [it was] good.

1:13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.

1:14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

1:15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

1:16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: [he made] the stars also.

1:17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,

1:18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that [it was] good.

1:19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

1:20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl [that] may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

1:21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that [it was] good.

1:22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

1:23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

1:24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

1:25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that [it was] good.

1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

1:27 So God created man in his [own] image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

1:28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

1:29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which [is] upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which [is] the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

1:30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein [there is] life, [I have given] every green herb for meat: and it was so.

1:31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, [it was] very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

This doesn't sound like history to me, and even if there's none of the Informational Parallelism of the sort that Johnson talks about, there is another kind of parallelism in the repetition of phrases -- e.g., such as "Let there be" -- and the entire chapter seems poetic rather than strictly historical. Historically speaking, if that's the right expression here, the sequence seems odd to me, with God creating light and dividing darkness from light to create night and day before creating the sun, moon, and stars. Where's the light coming from before these luminaries are created? And the more closely I look, the more questions I have. Everything seems to begin with water and darkness, and the orderly world that God sets about creating requires a separation of waters by forming a "firmament" that keeps the waters divided into waters above the heavens and waters below the heavens. I could continue, and a close reading raises all sorts of interesting questions, but I don't see that I'm reading a document about history. And the chapters that immediately follow this first one seem to present a somewhat different story of creation, including a garden with a tree of knowledge and a tree of life, along with a talking serpent. Are these really intended as history, or are they 'mythic' elements? But these are vexed questions, so I'll stop here.

I admit that I'm no expert on Hebrew poetry, so any experts out there are welcome to offer opinions on the characteristics of Hebrew poetry and the various sorts of Hebrew prose.

Also, what sorts of literature are these opening chapters of Genesis?

Rousas John Rushdoony: Christian Reconstructionism

Rousas John Rushdoony

(Image from Theopedia)

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916-2001), whom I mentioned yesterday, advocated something close to theocracy, which he called Christian Reconstructionism, and drew upon Old Testament laws for his vision of a properly ordered society. In such a society, not only would murder be punishable by stoning to death, but also, as I pointed out in yesterday's post, an application of biblical law would mandate the stoning to death of adulterers. Even more extreme, perhaps, is the death penalty for idolaters, which Rushdoony justifies as follows:

The penalty in every case is death without mercy. To the modern mind, this seems drastic. Why death for idolatry? If idolatry is unimportant to a man, then a penalty for it is outrageous. But modern man thinks nothing of death penalties for crimes against the state, or against the "people," or against "the revolution," because these things are important to him. The death penalty is not required here for private belief: it is for attempts to subvert others and to subvert the social order by enticing others to idolatry. Because for Biblical law the foundation is the one true God, the central offense is therefore treason to that God by idolatry. Every law-order has its concept of treason. No law-order can permit an attack on its foundations without committing suicide. Those states which claim to abolish the death penalty still retain it on the whole for crimes against the state. The foundations of a law-order must be protected. (The Institutes of Biblical Law, Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1973, page 38).

Given several sermons that I've sat through defining idolatry rather broadly as anything that one places before God, I wonder who would be left standing to throw the last stone. Maybe Zwingli, if the tossers go by alphabetical order. More seriously, I find Rushdoony's reasoning here similar to that of the traditional Muslim argument defending the death penalty for apostasy from Islam. To convert out of Islam is "treason," and as everyone knows, the only reasonable punishment for treason is death.

Wikipedia offers a list of capital crimes recorded in the Old Testament (including blasphemy [Leviticus 24:10-16] and disobeying one's parents [Deuteronomy 21:18-21]), though I don't know that Christian Reconstructionists would advocate execution for all of these. Wikipedia also offers a number of quotes from Rushdoony's writings, including a few expressing his distaste for democracy. Some of these are also from The Institutes of Biblical Law, apparently, though I couldn't locate the precise passages in searching Google Books. However, I did find this quote attributed to Rushdoony in Randall Herbert Balmer's Encyclopedia of Evangelicalism (Westminster John Knox Press, 2002):

Christianity is completely and radically anti-democratic . . . . It is committed to a spiritual aristocracy. (page 499)

I suppose that a scholarly approach to understanding the man and his thought would entail a study of Rushdoony's complete writings and a fundamental critique based on philosophical principles, but I don't have time for that -- as I suspect readers will understand -- and I've seen enough already to grasp why the man's views are problematic.

But for those who wish to explore further, more on Rushdoony's views can probably be found on the Chalcedon website, which is dedicated to his ideas.