Integral Islam

[Balder]

An interesting new blog / video on Integral Life:

Why We Desperately Need an Integral Islam, by Amir Ahmad Nasr

The Child of a Fragmented World Gone Slightly Mad

It was sometime around early 2009, and to most of my friends, I was a cheerful happy guy, but what they didn’t know is that deep inside, I had never felt more mentally and emotionally tormented.

In just two short years, growing up religiously dogmatic in childhood up to the late 90’s had given way to a new reality in which my relationship with Islam was in shambles.

Blogging and the open vastness of the Internet had a lot to do with it.

From war-torn Sudan to oil-rich Qatar, I had experienced living in traditional, religious, and conservative societies that honored their tribal roots and heritage.

We enjoyed the fruits of modernity–cars, communication technology, and medical drugs–but most of us didn’t necessarily embody it as a worldview. In many ways, our tribal, traditional and modern identities were in tension and lacking in harmony and reconciliation, let alone deep coherent integration.

It got a lot worse when my family moved to Malaysia in 1997 and I got enrolled into a British international school with a liberal and Westernized environment. I was almost 11 years old.

For my parents, the move had its challenges for sure. For my siblings and I, the cultural and linguistic ordeals we confronted were on a whole other level.

All of a sudden modernity and post-modernity came crashing on us, and challenged our identities and worldview in ways that we were not prepared for.

They challenged a worldview I had inherited but never really critically conceptualized on my own. A worldview that wasn’t truly mine throughout a short unexamined life that hadn’t gotten thoroughly examined until much later.

The result should have been obviously predicable: distress, confusion, and anxiety. Then puberty hit, and boy oh boy was that fun. I am of course being sarcastic.

So I did what I could do: repress, ignore and continue as if nothing worthy of resolution was really going on.

That is until I accidentally stumbled upon the liberal Arab blogosphere in early 2006. Continuing to sweep doubt under the rug seized to be an option. Heck, the rug disappeared, and now I had to confront the persistent question marks head on.

[Continued Here.]

[13w6cecaz7s7h]

and

 

 the problem this situationposes has at least 2 faces  : ) : 1. the monotheistic or polytheistic belief systems .and kenny does a bad job here already in his overtly friendly "its all more or less the same approach and everybody and the cat is right ;sort of.."..... tHis hides more then it clarifies

2. the strange postmodern filosofies dead ending in nihilism mostly....

now , if we (äh, me) is looking at the first problem section i can see that not all is same not even similar. for example mono and poly theists are not essentially the same BELIEF at all and then we have the buddhist nontheists as well AND  the 2nd problem group throws all of this in the same box, sometimes called amber. or pre-modern . and labels it mostly as harmless but stupid retarded beliefs, humans will grow out of,just like kids out of the toothfairy time etc,  IF they get good humanistic modern education.

doesn´t work as we can see by many suicide bombers who came form affluent families and had  received a good western modern education , very often university level.so....

 if we look more closely we see that for example the tenants of islam are completly different from those held by any other known religion, even its own roots judaism/christinanity has nothing as viscious as this. and definitly none of the others : neither the poly nor the non theist sections. those are all usually more or less harmless and also christianity /judaism are relativly harmless because even though it is dumb to not give healthcare , i agree , still such an action is still quite far away from systematic indoctrination of jihad .

in fact , in europe the churches have no more a decisive role in policy making ( i think here europe is way ahead of the usa) BUT the same critical assessment that made that possible IS not accorded to islam. so....thats the funny part.

so what i am saying here is this : i am not blaming islam is the least : islam is as islam is and was.

the problem is this double standard behaviour of europe´s elite .

IF the elite would treat  islam in the same despicing and critical way it has and still does with all things christian

THERE would be NO islamic european problem .

so the question is : what is going on. is this a deliberate political conspiracy as some think (using islam as a means to destroy the natural national differences of the 26 countries that make up the european union in order to then create the united states of europe, USE )

which would be quite a plot.....

or does this strange benevolent blindness towards islam point to some blind spot in the perpetrator : the green meme.

one thing is clear : islam was the enemy of europe when europe was amber and that war was raging over a 1000 years on- going (and if i look right now outside my window i can see the battlefields,figurativly , one example being the european architecture of towns which changed a great deal to accommodate the constant onslaught of the sarrazens , because during the romen empire previous to islams arrival , towns were not build as defended as after ....anybody who has travelled italy ,south of france or spain can see that.....

and europe defeated islam only when it turned orange .

so then europe won the war with islam.

but now since europe has turned green it is inviting its old deadly enemy and treats this enemy who has not changed an inch of its doctrine in the last 1200 years and is not willing to do it now either, so europe without being forced, has opened the doors and let itself being flooded with people who import a doctrine europe has been fighting against ,and out of  good reasons, for over 1400 years a war which it  had won too in the end.

so what the hell is going on with this green meme ???

i can understand that for americans this is a far off situation but i can assure you, IF europe goes down, america will have to get involved so .....its a global  problem already .so

is this a conspiracy ......

or is it a blind spot of green meme

or both

or neither ?

theurj said:

"But the christian fundamentalists as a rule do not teach their disciples to blow themselves up in an atheists schoolbus, so we need to differentiate in more depth."

Did I say anything to that effect? No, I did not, so I wonder who needs some depth here. What Christian fundamentalists in Congress do though is push to reduce or remove food stamps for the poor as one of many examples of literally killing us softly instead of with bombs. Killing Obamacare is another, actually taking away a poor person's ability to see a doctor in the early stages of disease, instead of having to go to an emergency room when it is too late. And no, I don't paint all Christianity with this broad brush, just the regressives. There are plenty of progressive Christians and I am constantly pointing them out when they fight their own religion's regressive branch.

"and the whole green meme mass media and university professor pose .....would they relativize it all again" and other so-called green meme and pomo rants. Again, who is the one lacking depth here, painting the entire mass media, university staff and postmodernism as relativists? Me thinks you're drunk on the kennilingus strawman ale here.

oh dont know´, drunk maybe but on that ale .....

i am neither christian nor wilberite so....

but i am not a smart as you, not as erudite nor as educated and english ain´t my mother tongue

plus i confess i am thouroughly infected with crazy wisdom juice which, as we all know by now, drives the

yogi eventualy crazy too, so drunk for sure but on what....

so when a yogi driven crazy  by crazy wisdom talks.......especially then in the internet he defintiyl is a fool already  which is good isn´t it or not or what?

its hard to know: is this just crazy or is it wise or totally foolish or both or none..

or what and the crazy yogi also has absolutly no clue

otherwise what crazyness would that be ?

but i do like to keep my head on my shoulders so.....

 

[Edward theurj Berge]

Don't get me wrong. I agree with Harris and others about Islam overall. And I agree that there is a form of pluralism that is relativistic to the point of accepting another culture's baser instincts as "just their thing." But that is not what postmodern pluralism is in toto, and in fact since it emerged around 30 years ago has itself 'evolved' into what I'd call a legitimate contender for an alternative 'integral.' And in which category I consider myself and some very important intepomogral voices, so I'm a bit touchy about broad brushes on this.

Now Sweden, I wish the US could be more like them. According to this article they are one of the most happiest nations. Why? One reason: "They are all borderline socialist states, with generous welfare benefits and lots of redistribution of wealth. Yet they don't let that socialism cross the line into autocracy." And this one shows they are one of the most democratic nations. Yes, democracy has a lot to do with socialism! I wish we had more of it here. This is what the next and better phase of humanity looks like right now.

[13w6cecaz7s7h]

ah o.k. i might be a bit testy about relativization : ))

and i do not know what post modern pluralism  in toto is, i am not a scholar nor a filosof

i just see what the european brand of it , or maybe its something else ,produced which is not all bad .....i like europe i like real  multiculti but islam is the worst monoculti that exists.  so the only big problem i see is that peculiar blindness regarding islam ....the rest might just be processed .....eventually like their ökocraze .

or this islam blindness might be the place where the pomo shadow shows most clearly.the symptom. in any case it is strange to see otherwise quite  intelligent people deliberatly lying or pretending not to see the evidence that stares them square in the face ...... pink elephants come to mind.....talking like idiots.......denying the obvious ..... it has an eerie quality seeing this every day in the news , the mass media , papers etc the politicians all everywhere......has everybody gone mad ?

like the latest attack in london : the guy who did it waited for the police and talked to some bystanders meanwhile ,all on video , his hands still bloody, holding  the butcher knife and he explained that the koran vers 9.5 which he then quoted (KILL ALL UNBELIEFERS WHERE EVER YOU FIND THEM) was a clear order by allah and that he had to do what he did because he is a moslem and then he shouted allahu akbar etc . now this part was only in the earliest news clips , later it was ....disappeared and then the great british islam scholar, imam Cameron explained that : no this had nothing to do with allah or islam ,it was in fact the contrary ....... aha right .....

its this that ,well what would you call this ? deliberate lying ? or .....not telling it how it is or i guess you could call it reframing : ).....i mean the facts are directly in the face but no ,it is not like that, it is the opposite ......

well we are in the year 1984 and all the clocks stopped .......its 84 from now on .......forever....this is

insane .stuck in groundhogs day,  thats how i see the green meme : plain insanity.

maybe they put something in the water .......and me and a few others are immune......

 

[13w6cecaz7s7h]

i actually wanted to stop commenting here but then i discovered that an article by one of my

favourite immigrants , a turkish guy called piricci, has been translated (albeit not very well,  still...) and i thought this is a must read for americans . he is referring to many recent event happening in germany ,so some of the context will be missed by you ,but this article caused for the author (he is a very succesfull novelist , writing in german language) a lot of trouble, since the mass media pricks he attacks here (and rightfully so) bit viciously back , despite him being an immigrant himself .after the shitstorm died down he was afriad that he might never find another publisher in his life in germany , thereby threatening his lifelyhood.its that vicious. so ..he really touched a nerve there.he is accusing the green meme to activly ignore the many many killings by turks of germans (and he uses a recent case as an axample, daniel) and the many many rapes of the same clientel, turks raping german native girls. actually you like sweden, you said theurij : they are now leading the european statistic of rapes and 99% of those rapes are commited by muslim man on swedish woman.same as anywhere else in europe actually but the swedish muslims seem to be more active .in germany on the other hand, there are more killings of german man (of course since all official statistics are doctered its hard to get real figures but one thing is  certain : it is much worse then the official statistics show) so arif piricci comments on that.

http://www.pi-news.org/2013/06/the-slaughter-has-begun/#more-9714

[13w6cecaz7s7h]

and if you want to inform yourself what is happening in germany or europe

here is the biggest political incorrect blog in germany  it has an english section .

 http://www.pi-news.org/

and no we are neither rascist nor neonazis nor christian nuts nor conservative .

just concerned awake citiziens who

notice that the official media is mostly lying nowadays .

in any case at this blog  

you find the real news.

a little further down from piricci´s article you´ll find the trial of another of these atrocities

and that trial is such a shambles one has to be ashamed to be part of the same nation,  really.

unfortunatly the main article there (the link) in not translated only a few quotations

by the killers on trials muslim friends.

[Edward theurj Berge]

I'm just wondering to what degree the 'average' Muslim is devout enough to follow the letter of their gospel? I know here in the US most church-going Catholics do not follow the letter of the Vatican's interpretation of the Bible, often engaging in contraception and premarital sex, having gay friends, eating meat on Friday, taking the name of the Lord in vain. Even, God Forbid, fellatio or cunnilingus! So even though a strong case can be made for the violence in Islamic scripture, and for those violent adherents of said scripture, is this really what most purported Muslims believe and how they behave? Do we have any empirical studies on this? It's far too easy to look at the bad apples but do they spoil the whole bunch?

[Edward theurj Berge]

Update: See this Pew Research. While it seems most Muslims are rather conservative socially most object to violence. "More than 75% say that suicide bombing and other violence against civilians is rarely or never justified." And of course it depends on social context and geography.

[Edward theurj Berge]

Your reply to my blog post on this follows:

well there are statistics like here

http://www.pi-news.org/2013/06/alarming-pew-poll-data-on-islam-desp...

but i do agree that MOST of the moslems are just NOT doing what they are told by the imam

still, as experience in the newly islamic enriched european countries prove (50 years of data) TOO MANY of them do .
this is like living with a poisonous snake which sometimes but rarely bites.
in any case it willnot be conducive to relaxed living
it is enough to look at india which has a 1000 year record of how it is living with islam in your own backyard. fazit: not very pleasant and constantly in danger .
especaily nowadays with atomic weapons rolling around zhe globe

one zealot is enough for a lot of real trouble

max

[Edward theurj Berge]

Your link doesn't disprove my argument or the Pew research. It just reiterates, like Harris, that the scripture sucks and there's no argument there. But the research shows that it matters a great deal the social context and geography. And yes, there are fanatics, perhaps too many. So let's hunt them down and kill them; I have no problem with that.* But to say all Muslims are violent fanatics just ain't supported by the research. And Pew polls have quite an accuracy history.

* Which reminds me of course of the current US debate about data mining our phone calls, emails and internet use. Data mining is not actually listening to our calls or reading our mail. And it requires warrants to actually listen or read once the data mining reveals a pattern. According to several security experts this is a actually preventing terrorist acts, and catching terrorists once they do commit violence.

[13w6cecaz7s7h]

hahaha i never said that,

" But to say all Muslims are violent fanatics "

and in fact i do not think  "hunting them down and killing them "

is a very usefull option .

thats not the point i am making at all.

my point is that the data says 25% of 1.8 billion etc

just check the math : even IF only 0.1 % of 1.8 billion is really jihadist well......then .

the problem is though not Islam . of course it is its theology is totally fucked it can only lead to

total disaster its fascistic to the very core. BUT that has been known by orange already

what is more problematic is that postmodernism is not seeing this obvious fact and its the policies which pomo has established in europe due to that blindness that NOW have created a lot of islamic problems in europe and will lead to many more including civil war in europe, so thats not so ...nice

i posted different voices and sites and IF you look them up you will hopefully see what i mean

personaly i have very little hope thatz this whole thing will end well for all concerned but it might just fester for another  200 years worldwide before it will be resolved one way or another and i think it will be the chinese who will sort this out in the end. thats my personal prophesy . check it out in 200 years : ))

but europe will be finished in less then 20 by your peaceful muslim friends, no doubt there.

it will be lebanized and cease being the europe i grew up in and many know as europe

byzanz all over again.

[13w6cecaz7s7h]

so do i have a solution ? no i don´t.

the only thing i can say that not seeing a problem is also not gonna help

and green meme in europe is using that method and violently so which makes me think ....

maybe the green meme people arent as smart as they pretend to be ???

and you were do you live ? in canada?

the vast  land that a few humans share with  2 salmons and a brown bear?

what do you know of europe and its cramped spaces ?

[13w6cecaz7s7h]

so here i have done the math for you

 IF only 0.1% of all musims (1.8 billion tendency fast growing) decide to give their life totally to the islamic

message of jihad then we have 1.800.000 million terrorists ready to do suicide attacks

on all kuffar and mushikrums :

you and me

and here some pictures of the cramp spaces in europe

https://www.google.it/search?q=pictures+of+moslem+praying+on+street...;

  and thats only in france