The shape of my hopes

Submitted by NORM SINGER (United States), Aug 13, 2002 at 16:27

While I applauded the optimism of your original article, your comments today, cause me to respond to an element that has been bothering me.

You use as your sole example of 'reason to hope', recent decisions made by "Turkish religious authorities".
Apples and oranges, says I.

The great Attaturk made the decisive move, 70 years ago, to separate Church and State. Turkey remains the only Muslim country to have done this. That move has had many effects, including:
* Modernity (an example of which you cite) of long standing such that Turkish Women have become Doctors, Lawyers, Teachers, etc.
* Vicious declamation by other, typically Arab Muslims that this action makes Turkey Apostate. She is slated for destruction, right after Israel, (with whom - by the bye - relations have been very good for many years).

we must call things by their proper names. We musn't allow ourselves to condemn all reptiles because some snakes are venomous. Nor can we ignore the real dangers of such snakes just because we respect the Galapagos Turtle.

I have recently finished reading "The Arab Mind" (by the late, great Sociologist Raphael Patai), and...on the chance that you have not done so, plead with you to read it.

He wrote this comprehensive volume at the end of the '80's. Yet, in reading it, I could clearly see the formation of those storm clouds that struck us on 9/11. It is, I believe, a seminal and essential tome.

From what Patai taught me, I can see that the problem is that Arab Muslims are profoundly different from all other followers of Islam. Those differences are essential to understand, as they force into existence the worst qualities of that group we have been calling "Radical Islamists".

The bedrock of their truly hellish hatred, and their great hunger to do evil are formed on the harsh anvil of Arab child 'rearing' practices. (It makes me queasy to even use that term in this cause). I will not attempt to excerpt from Patai, as I fear I might do him an injustice. I will continue in the hope that his work is known to you.

At this point, I'll let it suffice to advise that, each week, as my congregation says the routine 'Mishebayrach' prayer for those in need of spiritual support for their healing, I pray that "G_D will heal the poisoned souls of the children of our Arab Cousins".

For, they ARE poisoned with the worst of all toxins, Hate. Groundless, unremitting, unquenchable Hate. A Hatred so intense that it literally is consuming some of those so afflicted. And, this has NOT been done passively, it has been accomplished as a sociological imperative.

The shape of my hope is therefore a little different than yours. I pray that not ALL Arab Muslims are so spiritually contaminated. That it is only a minority which is so. As we have seen from our microcosm of experience with such venomous souls as Manson and Bundy, such poisoned souls, if allowed to grow to maturity, are not capable of being 'healed'.

Thus, the shape of my hope is that somehow the majority of Arab Muslims will find the awareness, and the strength to rise up against and destroy that minority of venomous Arab 'Muslim' monsters who have enslaved, tortured and generally abused them far worse, and far longer than any evil regime has done to any group of people so far in the history of mankind.
Their next step would then need to be the re-design of Arab culture. In that, we might be able to lend some assistance.

That is the shape of my hope.

You state, "...we all need to pitch in and "help modernize this civilization."
Perhaps the most significant first thing we can do towards achieving this end is to concertedly contribute to that UpRising.

B'Shalom,

Norm

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