"The occupation of Iraq is presented as "a mess": a blundering, incompetent American military up against Islamic fanatics. In truth, the occupation is a systematic, murderous assault on a civilian population by a corrupt American officer class, given licence by its superiors in Washington. In May, the US marines used battle tanks and helicopter gunships to attack the slums of Fallujah. They admitted killing 600 people, a figure far greater than the total number of civilians killed by the "insurgents" during the past year. The generals were candid; this futile slaughter was an act of revenge for the killing of three US mercenaries. Sixty years earlier, the SS Das Reich division killed 600 French civilians at Oradour-sur-Glane as revenge for the kidnapping of a German officer by the resistance. Is there a difference?

These days, the Americans routinely fire missiles into Fallujah and other dense urban areas; they murder whole families. If the word terrorism has any modern application, it is this industrial state terrorism. The British have a different style. There are more than 40 known cases of Iraqis having died at the hands of British soldiers; just one soldier has been charged. In the current issue of the NUJ magazine, The Journalist, Lee Gordon, a freelance reporter, wrote: "Working as a Brit in Iraq is hazardous, particularly in the south where our troops have a reputation (unreported at home) for brutality." "More here"

Pilger at his best!

Freud the Marxist!

"If . . . a culture has not got beyond a point at which the satisfaction of one portion of its participants depends upon the suppression of another, and perhaps larger, portion - and this is the case in all present day cultures- it is understandable that the suppressed people should develop an intense hostility toward a culture whose existence they make possible by their work, but in whose wealth they have too small a share . . . . It goes without saying that a civilisation which leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and derives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence"

"The Future of an Illusion p. 12"

Poverty of Islamic Economics

"The initiative to provide an Islamic economic justification for capitalism dates back to the early 1970s. Its leading exponents in those days were Najatullah Siddiqui at the Centre for Islamic Economics Jeddah, Khurshid Ahmad visiting professor at the King Abdul Aziz University and Umar Chapra of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency. The sub discipline of Islamic Economics was invented to justify Saudi polices.

In the 1980s, Prince Muhammad al Faisal led the Islamic banking movement to justify Arab integration into the imperialist financial system. The IMF and the World Bank were closely associated with the Prince’s initiative. Sami at Darvish, a Director of the World Bank became the first President of Faisal’s, Daral Maal al Islami. IMF researchers – Mohsin Khan and Abbas Merakhor – started providing apologies for Islamic finance in the professional literature. Within Pakistan, Ziauddin Ahmad and Fahim Khan played a similar role.

Islamic economics represents an attempt at legitimizing the ethics and institutions of capitalism. This becomes abundantly clear when we examine the technical writings of the Islamic economists. Invariably these scholars work within the neo classical paradigm. The “Islamic” consumer/producer/public policy maker is a welfare maximiser (like his neo classical compatriot) and the definition of his utility function is a task usually left to the faqihs (the neoclassical economists also depend upon the philosophers of utilitarianism to define individual and community welfare functions). Although the constraints within which utility maximization is sought by the Islamic economists are claimed to be uniquely Islamic this is of very little significance. For, the Islamic economists claim also that in the long run the elimination of interest, the introductions of Zakat etc. are necessary for the maximization of efficient production. The Islamic constraints thus appear in the guise of procedures which constrain short term utility maximization so that long term utility may be maximized. The Islamic economists are rule utilitarian and short term constraints turn out to be no constraints at all in the long run.

This methodological similarity necessitates that the ethics of capitalism – acquisitiveness, competition, primacy of material well being, freedom, equality – are all endorsed by Islamic economics. Islam is seen not as a distinct civilization but as a means of reforming capitalism. Capitalism is criticized not for the ends it sets itself but for failing to achieve a “balance” in the attainment of legitimately conflicting ends (acquisitiveness vs cooperation, freedom vs equality etc) Islam can achieve such a balance if we formally eliminate interest and introduce Zakat."

"More here"

An article in the current issue of *The New Yorker* magazine which can
be found at "THE WILDERNESS CAMPAIGN"includes this little gem of a reference to Habermas:
"Gore didn't really want to talk politics at first, but when the
subject of the press came up he seized on it and gave, at my best
estimation, a twenty-minute discourse on the degradation of 'the
public sphere,' a phrase coined by the German philosopher Jürgen
Habermas, in the nineteen-sixties. (One tries, and fails, to imagine
the current President alluding to the author of 'Moral Consciousness
and Communicative Action.') 'He's a ve-rrry interesting guy,' Gore
said. 'Why am I just finding out about him?'"

The article is by David Remnick.

"Courtesy Douglas Barber"

"Massacre of Civilians in Fallujah -- "Aw dude!""

An entertaining review of "Professor Terry Eagleton's" "After Theory" and "Figures of Dissent"
"The Business of Theory"

"Religious Tolerance—The Pacemaker for Cultural Rights Jürgen Habermas"

"Ce Yusuf Islam qui interdit les Etats-Unis à Cat Stevens"

"Cat Stevens 'shock' at US refusal"

"Das Mädchen aus der Fremde:Hannah Arendts schwierige Liebe zu Deutschland und Heidegger / Von Joachim Fest"

Ich bin der Staub, Du die Sonne

Ich bin der Staub, Du die Sonne
die mir das Licht zuteilt

Ich bin vor Kummer Krank, Du
Das Mittel, das mich heilt

Ich fliege ohne Flügel
Und Fendern zu Dir hin,

Der Bernstein Du, Ich ein Stroh nur,
Von deinem Sog ereilt

Maula e Rum

"The Philosopher Gilbert Ryle, who pointed out that 'to make a mental note' means not to make a note at all, was once asked by a colleague at High Table when he could hope to see his next book. 'You can hope whenever you like,' Ryle replied."

"I once heard a sociologist recount how he had walked into his university department to find his secretary in tears. Having consoled her as best he could, he strolled down the corridor and glanced into another office, only to see another secretary in tears. 'One secretary in tears', he remarked, 'is tragedy. Two is sociology.'"

"The Gatekeeper: A Memoir, pp. 163 and 164."

"FROM SLAVERY TO MASS INCARCERATION"

"Washington's secret nuclear war"

Illegal weapons of mass destruction have not only been found in Iraq but have been used against Iraqis and have even killed US troops.

"I was wrong about al-Jazeera"

As Downing Street's communications chief, Alastair Campbell had several run-ins with Al-Jazeera, over its coverage of the Iraq war. So when he visited its Qatar headquarters, he didn't expect to come away singing its praises

"Muslim Reverts on the Rise in Germany: Paper"

"BERLIN, August 29 (IslamOnline.net) – Germans reverting to Islam have risen dramatically in the past few years and are keen on leaving their indelible marks on society, a leading German newspaper has reported.

The number of reverts has climbed remarkably to 800 last year compared to 300 cases each year in the past, the online English version of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said Friday, August 27.

Though the Shahadah (testimony of faith) is a prerequisite to revert, some Germans avoid the formalities altogether.

According to latest estimates, the number of Germans who reverted to Islam is between 13,000 and 60,000.

The rise represents a good percentage of the European country’s three million Muslims.

They are not only rising in numbers, but also showing great enthusiasm to learn more about Islam, establishing Islamic publishing houses or bookstores to highlight the true essence of their new religion.

The head of the Islam archives in Soest, Mohammad Selim Abdullah, attributed the rise to the recent wars in the Gulf region."

"US Behind Rising Wave of Global Terrorism: Boutros-Ghali"

"Former UN secretary general Boutros Boutros Ghali held the US administration accountable for rising wave of terrorism, saying Washington’s unilateral approach has fuelled civil wars across the world.

Boutros-Ghali also asked American President George W. Bush to order his forces out of Iraq and to allow Arab countries mediate a peaceful settlement to the crisis gripping the war-scarred country.

...................

“Violence begets violence. This is exactly the situation in the occupied territories as only one side has warplanes and tanks, a fact naturally leading the other side to try to possess a weapon to use in its defense.”

.....

The Arabs have the clue about resolving the crisis in Iraq.”

“The Iraqi crisis would not be solved by foreign parties. The task must be left for an Arab mediator approved by all Iraqi parties for helping draw up a better and democratic future for Iraq as was the case with the Lebanese civil war,” Ghali said."

"9/11 letters"

Arthur Schlesinger tries to allay European anxieties about the bellicose new America. Timothy Garton Ash replies

"Taking On the Myth"

"On Sunday, a celebrating crowd gathered around a burning U.S. armored vehicle. Then a helicopter opened fire; a child and a journalist for an Arabic TV news channel were among those killed. Later, the channel repeatedly showed the journalist doubling over and screaming, "I'm dying; I'm dying."

Such scenes, which enlarge the ranks of our enemies by making America look both weak and brutal, are inevitable in the guerrilla war President Bush got us into. Osama bin Laden must be smiling.

U.S. news organizations are under constant pressure to report good news from Iraq. In fact, as a Newsweek headline puts it, "It's worse than you think." Attacks on coalition forces are intensifying and getting more effective; no-go zones, which the military prefers to call "insurgent enclaves," are spreading - even in Baghdad. We're losing ground.

And the losses aren't only in Iraq. Al Qaeda has regrouped. The invasion of Iraq, intended to demonstrate American power, has done just the opposite: nasty regimes around the world feel empowered now that our forces are bogged down. When a Times reporter asked Mr. Bush about North Korea's ongoing nuclear program, "he opened his palms and shrugged."

"Far graver than Vietnam "

"Most senior US military officers now believe the war on Iraq has turned into a disaster on an unprecedented scale"

"If you are a Muslim and the community is under occupation by a non-Islamic power it becomes a religious requirement to resist that occupation," Terrill explained. "Most Iraqis consider us occupiers, not liberators." He describes the religious imagery common now in Fallujah and the Sunni triangle: "There's talk of angels and the Prophet Mohammed coming down from heaven to lead the fighting, talk of martyrs whose bodies are glowing and emanating wonderful scents."

"The Bush Administration Governs by Fear"

""L'administration Bush gouverne par la peur""

"As for what motivated me, it is quite simple; I would hope that in the eyes of some people it might be sufficient in itself. It was curiosity-the only kind of curiosity, in any case, that is worth acting upon with a degree of obstinacy: not the curiosity that seeks to assimilate what is proper for one to know, but that which enables one to get free of oneself. After all, what would be the value of the passion for knowledge if it resulted only in a certain amount of knowledgeableness and not, in one way or another and to the extent possible, in the knower's straying afield of himself? There are time in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently than one thinks, and perceive differently than one sees, is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all. People will say, perhaps, that these games with oneself would better be left backstage; or, at best, that they might properly form part of those preliminary exercise that are forgotten once they have served their purpose. But, then, what is philosophy today-philosophical activity, I mean-if it is not the critical work that thought brings to bear on itself? In what does it consists, if not in the endeavour to know how and to what extent it might be possible to think differently, instead of legitimating what is already known?"

Michel Foucault: The Use of Pleasure, pp. 8-9.

"One night when we were talking about the truth of myth, he [Foucault] said that the great question, according to Heidegger, was to know what was the ground of the truth; "but in my opinion," he added - and I [Paul Veyne] am quoting his exact words, for I jotted them down -"the question is: how is it that there is so little truth in truth?" ["'d'où vient que la vérité soit si peu varie?"]

Paul Veyne" The Final Foucault and his Ethics" in Foucault and His Interlocutors, p. 225

"When his colleagues at Harvard (where he taught throughout his career) tried to get him to teach historical material, he resisted. He once did give a course on Hume, but remarked in his 1985 autobiography, The Time of My Life, that "determining what Hume thought and imparting it to students was less appealing than determining the truth and imparting that." His remark echoes one Carnap is supposed to have made when asked to give a course on Plato: "I will not teach Plato. I shall teach nothing but the truth."

An Imaginative Philosopher: the Legacy of W.V. Quine

Interesting even if not sure what to make of it How many jellybeans?

Thanks to John for the link and for some good laughters early in the morning.

Odious Debts: Loose Lending Corruption and the Third Worlds

"In the same connection, it's worth recalling that when the US took over Cuba 100 years ago it cancelled Cuba's debt to Spain on the grounds that the burden was 'imposed upon the people of Cuba without their consent and by force of arms.' Such debts were later called 'odious debt' by legal scholarship, 'not an obligation for the nation' but the 'debt of the power that has incurred it,' while the creditors who 'have committed a hostile act with regard to the people' can expect no payment from the victims. The same doctrine was invoked 25 years later when Costa Rica cancelled the debt of its former dictator to the Royal Bank of Canada. Britain's challenge was submitted to arbitration. The arbitrator -- US Supreme Court Chief Justice William Howard Taft -- concluded that the Bank lent the money for no 'legitimate use,' so its claim for payment 'must fail.'[N7]

The logic extends readily to much of today's debt: 'odious debt' with no legal or moral standing, imposed upon people without their consent, often serving to repress them and enrich their masters. The observation is familiar in high places. The current US executive director of the IMF, economist Karin Lissakers, wrote seven years ago that Washington's argument for cancelling Cuba's debt, 'if applied today would wipe out a substantial part of the Third World's indebtedness.'[N8] But that too is not on the agenda, for reasons that have to do with power, not economic or legal principle, let alone moral considerations."

Power in the Global Arena

"Bechtel's legal action against Bolivia is currently being heard by the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), an international tribunal housed at the World Bank in Washington DC that holds all of its meetings in secret."

Bechtel's Water Wars

Thanks to John for the link and the quote.

Fallujah Brigade’ to Disband, Join Resistance in Control of City

Superb review of Slavoj Zizek, The Fragile Absolute, or, Why is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For?


"In order to function as an assumption, the question itself has to stay in the background. If made visible, it might read thus: How can secular thought tolerate the idea that religions continue to exist at all? More specifically, how can secular thought approach those forms of faith that make their political presence felt while subjugating the concerns of history to those of eternity (i.e., "fundamentalists")? Once asked, the question smacks of the "immodest demands of transcendental narcissism" that William Connolly has ascribed to secular thought (8), a charge that would seem to require retrenchment of its claims to cultural and epistemological ascendancy. But in this book, the latest and boldest in a tradition of such immodesty, the shape of the answer still conceals its question.3 Clearly, the persistence of religion as a political and cultural force contradicts secular assumptions. But the self/other dichotomy created by the image of the "fundamentalist freak" places the blame for this contradiction on fundamentalists. The frequently declared "return" of religion, despite what secular thought knows to be true of its continuing existence, becomes the very evidence that return is unthinkable. In the tone of Zizek we might say that the fantasy of fundamentalism works like this: We all know that religion, because it is in decline, is illegitimate at best and potentially monstrous; therefore, if it is discovered that religion is not in decline at all and is in fact not only a living element of culture but a political and intellectual force as well, this proves beyond a shadow of a doubt just how monstrous it is! "

by Pizzino, Christopher A Legacy of Freaks Postmodern Culture - Volume 12, Number 2, January 2002 - Review

Hegel hits the beach,
CORRUPTING THE YOUTH: A history of philosophy in Australia

"But using military power, especially overwhelming military power, only works if it results, in the inimitable words of the Bush administration, in "shock and awe." We have seen the shock but not the awe. It is hard to be awesome when the great U.S. armed forces are held in check by a popular resistance in Iraq that is growing daily. It is hard to be awesome when it is clear that the U.S. armed forces are at present stretched to their utter limits, in terms of personnel, with few means of expanding their number in the near future. It is hard to be awesome when we have military and intelligence personnel in the U.S. urging prudence on their civilian superiors."

"What Has the U.S. Achieved in Iraq?"

"Persisting, I detect two deep traits . . . namely, I am orderly and I am frugal. The one trait was instanced . . . in the neatness of my desk and my abhorrence of loose ends, and the other in my use of discarded Xeroxes. Frugality was called for anyway by penury in early decades. It is unrelated to selfishness; I gladly give where love or decency dictates, and I am unhappy with possessions that I see no way of using. Economy of means is the keynote, here as in mathematics. I hate waste. Vandalism is twice the crime that theft is.

My love of earthly boundaries, by the way, stacks up oddly with my disdain of conceptual ones. My challenge of the boundary between analytic and synthetic statements is notorious, and I have been at pains to blur the boundaries between natural science, mathematics, and philosophy. My own philosophical efforts began in mathematical logic and have verged increasingly on linguistics, psychology, anthropology, and physics, in blithe disregard of all barriers but that of ignorance."

The Time of My Life: An Autobiography, pp. 476-477.

"Wherever there is an occupation there will be resistance"


US officials are very proud to say they have established some schools in Iraq. But were there no schools in Iraq before the occupation? Iraq was honoured by UNESCO in 1981 for being the first developing country to eliminate illiteracy.

Iraqi civilians caught in raging battles

At least 42 people, including women and children, have died in a day of fierce clashes between Iraqi militiamen and US troops across the country.
In Ramadi, US tanks and helicopters killed 10 Iraqi civilians when they opened fire on a residential district, a doctor said.

Earlier in the day, at least 10 Iraqis were killed and 35 others injured after US helicopters fired missiles at a crowd in a central Baghdad street.

Twenty-eight year old Palestinian television journalist, Mazin al-Tumaisi, was killed and two photographers wounded when the US missiles struck.

Al-Tumaisi, who worked for Saudi television Akhbariya and as a fixer for the Arab satellite channel al-Arabiya, was killed covering the fighting in Haifa Street, said Al-Arabiya reporter Ahmad Salih.

US Air Strike Targets Crowd in Central Baghdad

At least 12 people were killed, including two children, and 41 wounded when US helicopter gunships fired at central Baghdad early Sunday, September 12, as the residents of the northern town of Tal Afar appealed to the world to stop what they termed “systematic US massacre” that claimed the lives of 100 people.

"The Humean predicament is the human predicament"**

"Epistemology Naturalised" in W. V Quine:Ontological relativity,: And other essays, p. 72.

** For the Humean predicament refer to the quote from Hume in the posts below.

BOB KERREY PRESIDENT NEW SCHOOL UNIVERSITY

Courtesy John Campbell

"[A]ll inferences from experience suppose as their foundation, that the future will resemble the past . . . . If there be any suspecion that the course of nature may change, and that the past may be no rule for the future, all experience becomes useless, and can give rise to no inference or conclusion. It is impossible, therefore, that any arguments from experience can prove this resemblance of the past to the future; since all these argument are founded on the supposition of that resemblence."

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, pp. 37-38.

Bob Kerrey, CIA War Crimes, And The Need For A War Crimes Trial

"By now everybody knows that former Senator Bob Kerrey led a seven-member team of Navy Seals into Thanh Phong village in February 1969, and murdered in cold blood more than a dozen women and children.

What hardly anyone knows, and what no one in the press is talking about (although many of them know), is that Kerrey was on a CIA mission, and its specific purpose was to kill those women and children. It was illegal, premeditated mass murder and it was a war crime.

And it's time to hold the CIA responsible. It's time for a war crimes tribunal to examine the CIA's illegal activities during and since the Vietnam War."

Terrorism or Radical Islam?

"I can't pass this up." Kerrey said. "I know it will take into my ten-minute time, but as somebody who supported the war in Iraq, I'm not going to get the national security adviser 30 feet away from me very often over the next 90 days.

"But I've got to tell you -- I believe a number of things," Kerrey said. He said he thinks the U.S. underestimates that the war on terrorism is a war against radical Islam. He called terrorism a "tactic."

"Secondly, let me say, that I don't think we understand how the Muslim world views us. And I'm terribly worried that the military tactics in Iraq are going to do a number of things and they're all bad."

"The Painful Truth: All the World Terrorists Are Muslims"

"Under the headline "The Painful Truth: All the World Terrorists Are Muslims!," he wrote, "Most perpetrators of suicide operations in buses, schools and residential buildings around the world for the past 10 years have been Muslims." He also wrote that if Muslims want to change their image, they must "admit the scandalous facts," rather than disparage critics or justify terrorists' behavior.


As a good Baptist would say, "Amen!" It's about time somebody spoke the truth. From Russia to Iraq, from the Sudan to the Philippines, and from Madrid, Bali and Kenya to the World Trade Center in New York, a field in Pennsylvania and the Pentagon in Washington, one characteristic describes all of the killers: They are Muslims."


I did not know that USA (the leading terrrorist by all standards) had already converted to Islam!! Unless she has, it would be hard to accept the above statement!!!

There will be another Beslan

"Beslan is an extreme example of what is rightly seen as a depraved military tactic. But the equally unpalatable truth is that hostage-taking is also a rational tactic in the desperate context of asymmetrical warfare. Despite the likelihood of a bloody end to most hostage situations, they are likely to grow more, rather than less, frequent."

Israeli Army Jeep Crushes Palestinian Boy to Death

"An Israeli army spokeswoman claimed jeeps had entered the camp following shots directed at the nearby Psagot settlement and were met by stone-throwing youths.

A jeep inadvertently rolled over one of the boys, she said.

Aljazeera satellite channel, however, showed footage of the vehicle intentionally hitting the boy"

Watch Aljazeera clip

The incident is a grim reminder of the killing of American peace activist Rachel Corrie,who was crushed by an Israeli military bulldozer in the southern Gaza town of Rafah on March 16, 2003.

"Between the man of faith and the man of science, there is little difference: both guard against destructive chance and reconstitute the requirements of order; both appeal to a constant which they pray to or theorize about; both are men of accomodation and of unity for whom the other and the same are complementary. Speaking, writing, calculating, they are eternal conservers, conservers of eternity, always in quest of something stable, and pronouncing the word 'ontological' with confident fervor."

Blanchot,_The Writing of the Disaster_, 90

Courtesy MATT of Pas au-delà

Wittgenstein and the limit experience

"As a private in the First World War, Wittgenstein puzzled his military headquarters by constantly demanding to be transferred to more dangerous postings in the field. The nearness of death, he hoped, might shed some light on his radically unfulfilled existence. But he was not at all afraid: he felt that his life was at some level beyond harm, hidden away, unassailable, which is perhaps the deepest keynote of comedy. With the drafts of the Tractatus in his pocket, he crouched on the extreme limit of language with the darkness of death at his back, and was struck dumb. You had to demarcate what philosophy could legitimately say, all those not terribly important things, from those vital matters about which it had better remain silent, and to which Dostoevsky and detective thrillers, Tolstoy and bad American movies, St John and Mendelssohn might yield the odd clue"

Terry Eagleton, The Gatekeeper: A Memoir, pp. 65-66

Fitna and Civil War within Islam

Fitna: guerre au coeur de l'islam should be an interesting read, however the theme has been dealt by many in the Enlgish speaking world (e.g. Roxana Euben, Joseph Nye) before. Michael Scott Doran, “Somebody else’s civil war”, Foreign Affairs vol. 81, no. 1 Jan/Feb 2002, 22-42, had described the idea succinctly at the time. Here is the crux of what he says in the article:

"David Fromkin suggested the answer in Foreign Affairs back in 1975. "Terrorism," he noted, "is violence used in order to create fear; but it is aimed at creating fear in order that the fear, in turn, will lead somebody else -- not the terrorist -- to embark on some quite different program of action that will accomplish whatever it is that the terrorist really desires." When a terrorist kills, the goal is not murder itself but something else -- for example, a police crackdown that will create a rift between government and society that the terrorist can then exploit for revolutionary purposes. Osama bin Laden sought -- and has received -- an international military crackdown, one he wants to exploit for his particular brand of revolution.

Bin Laden produced a piece of high political theater he hoped would reach the audience that concerned him the most: the umma, or universal Islamic community. The script was obvious: America, cast as the villain, was supposed to use its military might like a cartoon character trying to kill a fly with a shotgun. The media would see to it that any use of force against the civilian population of Afghanistan was broadcast around the world, and the umma would find it shocking how Americans nonchalantly caused Muslims to suffer and die. The ensuing outrage would open a chasm between state and society in the Middle East, and the governments allied with the West -- many of which are repressive, corrupt, and illegitimate -- would find themselves adrift. It was to provoke such an outcome that bin Laden broadcast his statement following the start of the military campaign on October 7, in which he said, among other things, that the Americans and the British "have divided the entire world into two regions -- one of faith, where there is no hypocrisy, and another of infidelity, from which we hope God will protect us."

Polarizing the Islamic world between the umma and the regimes allied with the United States would help achieve bin Laden's primary goal: furthering the cause of Islamic revolution within the Muslim world itself, in the Arab lands especially and in Saudi Arabia above all. He had no intention of defeating America. War with the United States was not a goal in and of itself but rather an instrument designed to help his brand of extremist Islam survive and flourish among the believers. Americans, in short, have been drawn into somebody else's civil war."

More killed by suicide than war

During School Siege, Russia Took Captives in Chechnya

"Of course we feel sorry for the hostages in Beslan, but this is a situation that happens in Chechnya every day," said Buchu Abdul-Kadyrova, Maskhadov's sister, who was one of those detained last week."

Moving . . .A Soldier's Last Request - The sister of a soldier lost speaks out

A Teen Discovers Islam Through the Teachings of Jesus

"However, Islam was different to me in some respects than Christianity, but in ways that were pleasant and helpful. For example, I have always had a good relationship with God because of Jesus (pbuh) and his teachings, and I have always seen Christianity as a religion focused on God’s love. At school I have many Jewish friends, and I have partaken in the Sabbath with some of them, attended holidays, etc, and I noticed that they are very law abiding, yet in talking to my friends, it seemed to me as though they didn’t have that same connection/relationship with God that I and many other Christians I knew had. So my feeling was this: Christianity is great because it is focused around the love of God, but there is a lot of blind faith and mysteries involved, and that Judaism is great because many Jews live in accordance to the laws of the Torah, yet in my personal observances, it seemed as though many lacked some of that relationship.

Islam is both a religion which requires certain beliefs and is focused around the love of God/a relationship with Him, and it also has a strong aspect of law abiding, and ritual; in short, it has the passion and love of Christianity and the law and ritual of Judaism. These two are of course a fine combination if one wishes to know God and be obedient of His commandments."

EU Commissioner: Europe Risks Being Overrun by Islam

"Calling demography the "mother of politics", he said that while America had the youth and dynamism to remain the world's only superpower, and China was the rising economic power, Europe's destiny was to be "Islamised"."

U.S. Conceding Rebels control Regions of Iraq

"But other American officials are more pessimistic about the prospects for regaining control of those areas. One noted, for example, that attacks on American forces rose to 2,700 in August, from 700 in March.

General Myers conceded that American forces faced a tough, adaptive foe. "The enemy is becoming more sophisticated in his efforts to destabilize the country," he said."

Fitna: guerre au coeur de l'islam

An interesting interview with a seasoned French Islamist Gilles Kepel: The Jihadists are Haunted by their Isolation

The Philosophical Lexicon

Philosophers can have sense of humour too! Do not believe me? Test yourself!

Few random picks...

chomsky, adj. Said of a theory that draws extravagant metaphysical implications from scientifically established facts. "Essentially, Hume's criticism of the Argument from Design is that it leads in all its forms to blatantly chomsky conclusions." "The conclusions drawn from Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle are not only on average chomskier than those drawn from Godel's theorem; most of them are downright merleau-ponty."

dreyfus, n. (from "dry" & "fuss") An arid ad hominem controversy. "What began as an interesting debate soon degenerated into a dreyfus."

foucault, n. A howler, an insane mistake. "I'm afraid I've committed an egregious foucault."

habermass, (from the Middle High German halber Marx; cf. ganzer Marx) n. A religious ceremony designed to engender an illusion of understanding through chants describing socio-economic conditions. Hence also, habermass, v. "He habermassed Einstein; he attempted to deduce the special theory of relativity from the social structure of the Zurich patent office." "Nothing but a gadam habermass" - H. S. Truman.

heidegger, n. A ponderous device for boring through thick layers of substance. "It's buried so deep we'll have to use a heidegger."

quine, v. (1) To deny resolutely the existence of importance of something real or significant. "Some philosophers have quined classes, and some have even quined physical objects." Occasionally used intr., e.g., "You think I quine, sir. I assure you I do not!" (2) n. The total aggregate sensory surface of the world; hence quinitis, irritation of the quine.

rort, n. m. (1) an incorrigible report; hence, rorty, adj. incorrigible. n. (2) Fashionable but confused discourse. "Don't talk rort."


For full go here

THE PHILOSOPHICAL LEXICON DANIEL DENNETT, EDITOR

An old piece but still worth looking at: Letter to America
by Jürgen Habermas
"In Continental Europe, proponents of intervention took pains to shore up rather weak arguments from international law by pointing out that the action was intended to promote what they saw as the transition from a soft international law toward a fully implemented human rights regime, whereas both US and British advocates remained in their tradition of liberal nationalism. They did not appeal to "principles" of a future cosmopolitan order but were satisfied to enforce their demand for international recognition of what they perceived to be the universalistic force of their own national "values."

Masjid-e-Qartaba (The Cordova Mosque)

Sublime, a work of love and genius (in Urdu and Farsi)
Masjid-e-Qartaba

from the official Iqbal website
allamaiqbal.com

An important insight into the American mind

"I have been in the year that I have passed here to make a synthesis of the abstract thinking that I have done, have studied and listened to ever since I became interested in philosophy, and [the] meaning of American life - have been able to follow the connection that has gradually been established between abstract philosophy and daily life.

I have learned to see that society advances, men get closer and closer to each other and the kingdom of heaven is established on the earth, so far as, man becomes more and more organically connected with nature. This has generally been laid up against America as materialism - and she has been scouted as sunk in money getting and as letting go [the] spiritual side of life. But it seems to me clearer every day that the telegraph and locomotive are the great spiritualizers of society because they bind man and man so close together that the interest of the individual must be more completely the interest of all day by day. And America is pushing this spiritualzing of nature is doing more than all in bringing the day when every man will be my neighbour and all life shall be saturated with the divine life."

quoted in "George Herbert Mead: The Making of a Social Pragmatist, by Gary A. Cook University of Illinois Press; (July 1, 1993)", p. 31.

A view on the Arabic language . . .

An informative piece (from a non Islamic Arab perspective)"Eloquent, elegant Arabic"