I put off judgment for insight to step in

Submitted by Salah ali (Norway), May 24, 2009 at 04:24

Dear Mr. Thompson

I really do not know exactly what sort of superiority Moslems carry with them. This applies more to Arab-Moslems than to Moslems who abide by Qur'an teachings to the letter. I should dare say. If Moslems feel superior it then runs against the Qur'an which dictates Moslems in various verses (Chapter 31, verses 15-20). There are certain verses which dictate Moslems to feel proud or impose humiliation on non-believers (But these are context-bound and by no means general principles). As for the superiority felt by the Arabs, I think the roots go to culture not to religion. Arab personality still varies in the grain much of the Bedouin cast of mind. A Bedouin is proud even in the worst real life situation. He never admits defeat.

Take for example Mr. Philip Hitti's description of Bedouin personality. There is much to share with the camels' haughtiness. I, being myself a Bedouin, feel it running in my blood. But for that all humans feel proud standing on two and seeing the rising sun!

I agree with you eye to eye that ontology is a question of faith and Qur'an does strongly stress the etiology and teleology of existence in the world. I studied the relevant verses in the Qur'an from phenomenological and conceptual perspective with Sartre and Derrida in the background and I found its questionings reasonable.

The differences with a secular cast and religious one is all too evident but let's take an example: setting religion aside it seems unnatural or at least unclean to encourage permissiveness to a degree that it allows for distortions in the natural roles assigned biologically to men and women or culturally to dogs and people. The West gives dog (which are in Islam considered dirty) a status that occasionally traverses that of a first class citizen. There are marriages between men and men and women and women. And going through pornographic sites I feel disgust at the smear women given. Women in Islam are epitomized by Merriam (PBH) and men by Jesus Christ (PBH). We detest Secularism because it threatens family unity and distorts natural and cultural proportions. We believe in evenness, justice and cleanliness. Before every prayer, a Moslem must clean his feet, hands, face, blow his nose and clean his mouth. We regard women as mothers and sisters and daughters. Sex is satisfied by marriage. And dictation that a Moslem can marry 4 is temporally bound. In times of war men are lost and only when more men are needful to defend Islam this works. But, in general 99 Moslems are married once to one wife only.

As for the Blackstone, there is no mention in the Qur'an of a Blackstone. But the Qur'an mentions al-Ka'ba (a sort of a building similar to a cube). It says that Abraham (PBH) was ordered by Allah to build because it is holy spot similar to the right side of Sinai mount when God addressed Moses at. There are in all religions sacred times and sacred places, but I do not exclude the persistence of certain pagan traces. These are symbolic and were scarifies by way of contiguity. Therefore, it was not politics but regard to time-honoured rituals. Take the later scarification of the Holy shrines in Karbala and Najaf. People need stones and symbols to visualize the unseen, yet this does not negate the logic on which Qur'an is founded or all other religions for that matter.

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