Cloned from:
http://marlon-james.blogspot.com/2006/07/on-fundamentalism.html
Thursday, July 27, 2006
On Fundamentalism
http://nowscape.com/islam/images/Afghan_Terrorist_School.jpg
On 15 August 2004, Atefah Sahaaleh was hanged in a public square in the Iranian city of Neka. She was convicted of Crimes against chastity and of adultery. The Iranian state newspaper said she was 22. In truth she was only 16 and not married but the charge of adultery was just one of many things in this case that made no sense. And while she was hanged for her sexual crimes the man who was also implicated got a mere 95 lashes for what was essentially a continuous and systematic rape of the young girl. But Iran is a fundamentalist state and one of the many things that fundamentalists have in common whether they be Islam, Jewish or Christian, is that there is no such thing as rape.
This incident mirrors of all things the BIBLE. In the notorious adulterous woman chapter, where Jesus is challenged to stone the accused woman, the man is never mentioned as if the woman was caught masturbating to Playgirl. But Judaism at the time was also a fundamentalist religion. And while Jesus asked that the person without sin should cast the first stone maybe he should have asked another question: What’s up with the fear of female sexuality and why do only the Abraham based religions have it?
Maybe the root lies with Abraham himself. It took both him and Hagar to produce Ishmael, and he was the one who did not trust God to give him a son, yet Hagar was the one banished. All bets are off when female sexuality comes into play and nothing is the man’s fault. Nobody understands this better than fundamentalists. Couple years ago, an Iranian pamphlet was circulated about the world of sin that existed in the body of a woman. Women were walking Pandora’s boxes capable of inciting even the most virtuous man to fall into an inglorious sexual stupor and even a small slit in a chador showing nothing but the eye could still cause a man to stumble. Sayid Qutb, the father of islamic fundamentalism (Islamism) came to his radical philosphy not because he was concerned about the unholiness of the world but because he couldn't stand being so horny all the time when he was in America in the 1940's. Add to that the end of the last islamic world power (the Ottoman) and you're left with a man who was both dick obsessed and dickless. In Iran there must be 4 male witnesses to corroborate a rape and in many cases the woman is the one punished. But how can a country even conceive of such a thing as rape when the age of consent in Iran is 9?
And that’s another thing about fundamentalism. Not only does it abound in fear of female sexuality but it also drips of sexual hypocrisy. Picture an Islamic martyr philosophy that promises suicide bombers a virgin filled orgy in heaven (72 virgins for every man!). To ensure that he is ready, many suicide bombers wrap their genitals in a protective material so that if nothing else, the penis will make it to heaven. Just what today’s bomb crazy fanatic needs, a paradise of women too inexperienced to judge his non-existent sexual skills. A good thing that, because these religious sects are nothing if not homosocial. So Boboshanti Rastafarians move in packs of men who call one man father, and the Taliban when not killing women, paint lipstick and eye shadow on their photographs and cross that messy line between homosocial and homosexual. For a pack of men who hate gays fundamentalists sure love to hang together.
But lest anybody think I’m anti Islam, the Christian nutcases aren’t much better. So in Jamaica, Pentecostal preachers still rail against the use of contemporary music in church, lambaste women for dancing, wearing pants or using hair products, and frequently leave women with the impression that rape is their fault. And while fundamentalist religion is devoutly religious, it has the intellectual certitude of a housefly. This is because thinking is anathema to religion and any form of intellectual discourse is tantamount to having kids with Satan. Fundamentalists have a virulent hatred of books, of philosophy and of the why? Question. Theirs is not the way to think, provoke or challenge. It is to obey, force and command others to be just like them. This flies in the face of Jesus Christ, and Mohammed who believed that the work of God began in the mind, not the fist.
Of course being anti-book serves a purpose. Because Fundamentalism is also one other thing: False. Reading is one of the surest ways to find that out. The big lie about fundamentalists, from the Ayatollah, to the Christian Coalition, to the I-served-in Germany-but- I wasn’t-a-Nazi-Pope, to that preacher in Jamaica who though gang rape could be dealt with by prayer, is that they are returning to something, a lost, cherished value. Fundamentalism preaches to be just that, a return to the fundamentals, the basics, and the core of the faith before years of bad influence corrupted things. But even a cursory glance at the three Abraham based religions proves that to be absolutely untrue.
There’s not a single religion that began as fundamentalist. Not Islam, which in the Crusades was exemplary for its open-mindedness, Not Judaism and certainly not Christianity whose Jesus was killed precisely because he did not conform to a fundamentalist vision of a messiah. On the contrary, these religions began as open-minded reactions to rigid institutions and that is why they attracted numbers to begin with, in particular, women. Fundamentalism on the other hand is a reactionary movement. A return to a warped idea of basics that never existed, that comes frequently with a violent agenda. In this regard the conservative Christian is no different from the Taliban. Nothing in the bible says to support the Iraq invasion or prayer in schools. Nothing in the Koran says that while sex with an 8 year old is statutory rape, sex with a 9 year old is ok. These are laws invented by repressed men to suppress everybody else. And nobody suppresses like a repressed man. What these movements also have is large populations of disenfranchised men, lacking relevance in their own countries that are suddenly empowered to take things by force. Fundamentalism is as much about economics and social disenfranchisement as it is about religion.
In Christianity there are virtues and vices. But there is a third direction, a far opposite of vice but just as bad. This is called perversion. For example, purity is the virtue. Licentiousness is the vice. But there is a perversion as well and that’s called puritan. A warped, extreme version of the original value that causes as much damage as the vice. So a puritan is a pervert. So is a fundamentalist. In their world a righteous man can do no wrong, rape is the woman’s fault, everybody else is going to hell and they never ever have to hold themselves accountable. Rastafari is not much better in this regard as the Rastafarian frequently “licks out” against the Babylon in front of him but never holds a mirror to himself. And let’s not even get started on how Rastas treat women having their period.
I know this sounds like an unfocused rant, but the execution of 16-year-old girls pisses me off. A preacher scolding a congregation for telling the police that a deacon orchestrated a gang rape horrifies me. A false doctrine trying to pass itself off as an older vision insults my intelligence and the bloodshed these religions leave in their wake convinces me that there is no God in them. The great thing about Fundamentalism is that something blazing that intense is bound to burn itself out. There is only so much that victims can take. So next time, Capleton screams More Fire, slip some dynamite in his pocket and light it.
posted by Marlon James @ 8:00 PM
7 Comments:
Choshek said...
___Marlon James___
There's not a single religion that began as fundamentalist. Not Islam, which in the Crusdes was exemplary for its open-mindedness, Not Judaism and certainly not Christianity whose Jesus was killed precisely because he did not conform to a fundamentalist vision of a messiah. On the contrary, these religions began as open-minded reactions to rigid institutions and that is why they attracted numbers to begin with, in particular, women. Fundamentalism on the other hand is a reactionary movement. A return to a warped idea of basics that never existed, that comes frequently with a violent agenda.
-----
How so, in the case of Judaism? It didn't begin in the fundamentalist reforms of Hezekiah, who brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made, or with Josiah (Yoshiyahu), apparent patron of the "Deuteronomist", who destroyed the foreign cultic objects "and all the hosts of the heavens" in Solomon's Temple? These actions sound much like those of the Taliban in Afghanistan, who dynamited ancient Buddha statues. (First mention of Jews regards a battle of Rezin and Pekah against Ahaz, 2 Kings 16:6.)
Or do you consider Judaism to have begun with Moses' removal of the Hebrews and Israelites from Egyptian captivity?
Choshek
7:55 PM
Marlon James said...
Interesting point. Perhaps Judaism is unique in that the book Levitcus appears so early in the Jewish story, already constricting human activity to a set of rules and regulation, the disobedience of which exacted a terrible price.But could that be because unlike Christianity and Islam, Judaism had no precedent? Maybe the only thing it had to parrellel itself against was paganism? I'm not sure if all that makes it fundamentalist, but it does perhaps explain a certain legacy for the violent maintenance of social order.
7:29 AM
Choshek said...
I believe most of those codes that "constrict human activity" were borrowed from the Hittites, but I'm still looking into the specifics on that.
11:58 AM
Ron Amos said...
I have thought that the reason
for fundamentalism is so that peaceful honest people can gather the nutcases all into one place, they are easier to watch out for that way.. the purpose of gathering the restrictive rules from the surrounding cultures is so that you can gather up the nutcases from all of those cultures, then as the nutcases learn to communicate with one another some get more restrictive and self destruct while others get more open and inclusive and so create a renasaisance.
It requires some patience while this sorting out of the sheep and the goats takes place but in the long run the peaceful and the productive will create a most welcome renasaisance.
1:48 PM
Choshek said...
What; gather them all on and in control of the nexus of lucrative trade routes? (As you've alluded elsewhere.)
2:25 PM
Ron Amos said...
That does create a problem putting the fundamentalists in charge of the trade routes so it's likely that protecting the trade routes is the reason for the creation of fundamentalism. They do tend to come into prominence along the tradtional trade routes, the Silk Road from Jerusalem through Baghdad to Peking and the North South Tributaries of the same. Even through Europe into Spain, France and England the most restrictive forms show up along the trade routes.
Then across America as the western expansion occured, the power centers tended to spawn Fandamentalist religious movements..
When trade is shaky and peoples lives are insecure then is when they seek out religion, the more restrictive ones gain the most ground during those periods..Note in the US today, it's the more restrictive forms of Christianity that are favored by many if not most Americans. Again in the Middle East as more instability occurs the more restrictive forms of Islamic fundamentalism gain the most converts.
5:21 PM
Choshek said...
I'm sure it is. Trade routes, especially their convergences and best supply points, become highly desirable locations for access. Competition for that creates rent. People who want the rent for themselves, rather than sharing it (as Georgists, etc. prefer), will establish and maintain control systems to set themselves up in and protect their privileged position. Once established they have much to lose, so will increase their efforts to maintain a nepotistic dynasty (hereditary offices for rule, priests, plantations, etc.) and also protect themselves from not only cuckoldry, but also sexually-transmitted disease. This creates provisions such as that in Numbers 31 to take wives of captives, but kill all women who have known a man.
4:00 PM
http://marlon-james.blogspot.com/2006/07/on-fundamentalism.html
Thursday, July 27, 2006
On Fundamentalism
http://nowscape.com/islam/images/Afghan_Terrorist_School.jpg
On 15 August 2004, Atefah Sahaaleh was hanged in a public square in the Iranian city of Neka. She was convicted of Crimes against chastity and of adultery. The Iranian state newspaper said she was 22. In truth she was only 16 and not married but the charge of adultery was just one of many things in this case that made no sense. And while she was hanged for her sexual crimes the man who was also implicated got a mere 95 lashes for what was essentially a continuous and systematic rape of the young girl. But Iran is a fundamentalist state and one of the many things that fundamentalists have in common whether they be Islam, Jewish or Christian, is that there is no such thing as rape.
This incident mirrors of all things the BIBLE. In the notorious adulterous woman chapter, where Jesus is challenged to stone the accused woman, the man is never mentioned as if the woman was caught masturbating to Playgirl. But Judaism at the time was also a fundamentalist religion. And while Jesus asked that the person without sin should cast the first stone maybe he should have asked another question: What’s up with the fear of female sexuality and why do only the Abraham based religions have it?
Maybe the root lies with Abraham himself. It took both him and Hagar to produce Ishmael, and he was the one who did not trust God to give him a son, yet Hagar was the one banished. All bets are off when female sexuality comes into play and nothing is the man’s fault. Nobody understands this better than fundamentalists. Couple years ago, an Iranian pamphlet was circulated about the world of sin that existed in the body of a woman. Women were walking Pandora’s boxes capable of inciting even the most virtuous man to fall into an inglorious sexual stupor and even a small slit in a chador showing nothing but the eye could still cause a man to stumble. Sayid Qutb, the father of islamic fundamentalism (Islamism) came to his radical philosphy not because he was concerned about the unholiness of the world but because he couldn't stand being so horny all the time when he was in America in the 1940's. Add to that the end of the last islamic world power (the Ottoman) and you're left with a man who was both dick obsessed and dickless. In Iran there must be 4 male witnesses to corroborate a rape and in many cases the woman is the one punished. But how can a country even conceive of such a thing as rape when the age of consent in Iran is 9?
And that’s another thing about fundamentalism. Not only does it abound in fear of female sexuality but it also drips of sexual hypocrisy. Picture an Islamic martyr philosophy that promises suicide bombers a virgin filled orgy in heaven (72 virgins for every man!). To ensure that he is ready, many suicide bombers wrap their genitals in a protective material so that if nothing else, the penis will make it to heaven. Just what today’s bomb crazy fanatic needs, a paradise of women too inexperienced to judge his non-existent sexual skills. A good thing that, because these religious sects are nothing if not homosocial. So Boboshanti Rastafarians move in packs of men who call one man father, and the Taliban when not killing women, paint lipstick and eye shadow on their photographs and cross that messy line between homosocial and homosexual. For a pack of men who hate gays fundamentalists sure love to hang together.
But lest anybody think I’m anti Islam, the Christian nutcases aren’t much better. So in Jamaica, Pentecostal preachers still rail against the use of contemporary music in church, lambaste women for dancing, wearing pants or using hair products, and frequently leave women with the impression that rape is their fault. And while fundamentalist religion is devoutly religious, it has the intellectual certitude of a housefly. This is because thinking is anathema to religion and any form of intellectual discourse is tantamount to having kids with Satan. Fundamentalists have a virulent hatred of books, of philosophy and of the why? Question. Theirs is not the way to think, provoke or challenge. It is to obey, force and command others to be just like them. This flies in the face of Jesus Christ, and Mohammed who believed that the work of God began in the mind, not the fist.
Of course being anti-book serves a purpose. Because Fundamentalism is also one other thing: False. Reading is one of the surest ways to find that out. The big lie about fundamentalists, from the Ayatollah, to the Christian Coalition, to the I-served-in Germany-but- I wasn’t-a-Nazi-Pope, to that preacher in Jamaica who though gang rape could be dealt with by prayer, is that they are returning to something, a lost, cherished value. Fundamentalism preaches to be just that, a return to the fundamentals, the basics, and the core of the faith before years of bad influence corrupted things. But even a cursory glance at the three Abraham based religions proves that to be absolutely untrue.
There’s not a single religion that began as fundamentalist. Not Islam, which in the Crusades was exemplary for its open-mindedness, Not Judaism and certainly not Christianity whose Jesus was killed precisely because he did not conform to a fundamentalist vision of a messiah. On the contrary, these religions began as open-minded reactions to rigid institutions and that is why they attracted numbers to begin with, in particular, women. Fundamentalism on the other hand is a reactionary movement. A return to a warped idea of basics that never existed, that comes frequently with a violent agenda. In this regard the conservative Christian is no different from the Taliban. Nothing in the bible says to support the Iraq invasion or prayer in schools. Nothing in the Koran says that while sex with an 8 year old is statutory rape, sex with a 9 year old is ok. These are laws invented by repressed men to suppress everybody else. And nobody suppresses like a repressed man. What these movements also have is large populations of disenfranchised men, lacking relevance in their own countries that are suddenly empowered to take things by force. Fundamentalism is as much about economics and social disenfranchisement as it is about religion.
In Christianity there are virtues and vices. But there is a third direction, a far opposite of vice but just as bad. This is called perversion. For example, purity is the virtue. Licentiousness is the vice. But there is a perversion as well and that’s called puritan. A warped, extreme version of the original value that causes as much damage as the vice. So a puritan is a pervert. So is a fundamentalist. In their world a righteous man can do no wrong, rape is the woman’s fault, everybody else is going to hell and they never ever have to hold themselves accountable. Rastafari is not much better in this regard as the Rastafarian frequently “licks out” against the Babylon in front of him but never holds a mirror to himself. And let’s not even get started on how Rastas treat women having their period.
I know this sounds like an unfocused rant, but the execution of 16-year-old girls pisses me off. A preacher scolding a congregation for telling the police that a deacon orchestrated a gang rape horrifies me. A false doctrine trying to pass itself off as an older vision insults my intelligence and the bloodshed these religions leave in their wake convinces me that there is no God in them. The great thing about Fundamentalism is that something blazing that intense is bound to burn itself out. There is only so much that victims can take. So next time, Capleton screams More Fire, slip some dynamite in his pocket and light it.
posted by Marlon James @ 8:00 PM
7 Comments:
Choshek said...
___Marlon James___
There's not a single religion that began as fundamentalist. Not Islam, which in the Crusdes was exemplary for its open-mindedness, Not Judaism and certainly not Christianity whose Jesus was killed precisely because he did not conform to a fundamentalist vision of a messiah. On the contrary, these religions began as open-minded reactions to rigid institutions and that is why they attracted numbers to begin with, in particular, women. Fundamentalism on the other hand is a reactionary movement. A return to a warped idea of basics that never existed, that comes frequently with a violent agenda.
-----
How so, in the case of Judaism? It didn't begin in the fundamentalist reforms of Hezekiah, who brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made, or with Josiah (Yoshiyahu), apparent patron of the "Deuteronomist", who destroyed the foreign cultic objects "and all the hosts of the heavens" in Solomon's Temple? These actions sound much like those of the Taliban in Afghanistan, who dynamited ancient Buddha statues. (First mention of Jews regards a battle of Rezin and Pekah against Ahaz, 2 Kings 16:6.)
Or do you consider Judaism to have begun with Moses' removal of the Hebrews and Israelites from Egyptian captivity?
Choshek
7:55 PM
Marlon James said...
Interesting point. Perhaps Judaism is unique in that the book Levitcus appears so early in the Jewish story, already constricting human activity to a set of rules and regulation, the disobedience of which exacted a terrible price.But could that be because unlike Christianity and Islam, Judaism had no precedent? Maybe the only thing it had to parrellel itself against was paganism? I'm not sure if all that makes it fundamentalist, but it does perhaps explain a certain legacy for the violent maintenance of social order.
7:29 AM
Choshek said...
I believe most of those codes that "constrict human activity" were borrowed from the Hittites, but I'm still looking into the specifics on that.
11:58 AM
Ron Amos said...
I have thought that the reason
for fundamentalism is so that peaceful honest people can gather the nutcases all into one place, they are easier to watch out for that way.. the purpose of gathering the restrictive rules from the surrounding cultures is so that you can gather up the nutcases from all of those cultures, then as the nutcases learn to communicate with one another some get more restrictive and self destruct while others get more open and inclusive and so create a renasaisance.
It requires some patience while this sorting out of the sheep and the goats takes place but in the long run the peaceful and the productive will create a most welcome renasaisance.
1:48 PM
Choshek said...
What; gather them all on and in control of the nexus of lucrative trade routes? (As you've alluded elsewhere.)
2:25 PM
Ron Amos said...
That does create a problem putting the fundamentalists in charge of the trade routes so it's likely that protecting the trade routes is the reason for the creation of fundamentalism. They do tend to come into prominence along the tradtional trade routes, the Silk Road from Jerusalem through Baghdad to Peking and the North South Tributaries of the same. Even through Europe into Spain, France and England the most restrictive forms show up along the trade routes.
Then across America as the western expansion occured, the power centers tended to spawn Fandamentalist religious movements..
When trade is shaky and peoples lives are insecure then is when they seek out religion, the more restrictive ones gain the most ground during those periods..Note in the US today, it's the more restrictive forms of Christianity that are favored by many if not most Americans. Again in the Middle East as more instability occurs the more restrictive forms of Islamic fundamentalism gain the most converts.
5:21 PM
Choshek said...
I'm sure it is. Trade routes, especially their convergences and best supply points, become highly desirable locations for access. Competition for that creates rent. People who want the rent for themselves, rather than sharing it (as Georgists, etc. prefer), will establish and maintain control systems to set themselves up in and protect their privileged position. Once established they have much to lose, so will increase their efforts to maintain a nepotistic dynasty (hereditary offices for rule, priests, plantations, etc.) and also protect themselves from not only cuckoldry, but also sexually-transmitted disease. This creates provisions such as that in Numbers 31 to take wives of captives, but kill all women who have known a man.
4:00 PM
posted by Choshek at 2:04 PM
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