Voegelin argued that some people -- politicians, intellectuals, journalists, for example -- prefer to see the world as a projection of their desires rather than comprehend its reality. Such fabulists effectively live in what Voegelin called a "second-order reality."

Terrorism, they argue, is rooted in poverty, frustration over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and memories of western imperialism. In other words, so the argument goes, the West itself is to blame for terrorism. If only the West would apologize, make reparations, abandon Israel, leave the Middle East and Afghanistan, all would be well. Or at least that's where the root-cause crowd's assumptions logically lead.

The problem with this materialist view of terrorism is that it largely misses the spiritual motivations that inform Islamist geo-politics. As political theorist Barry Cooper argues in his book, New Political Religions, or, An Analysis of Modern Terrorism, the Islamists, like the Nazis and Communists, are motivated more by a "disease of the spirit" than materialist aspirations. "When ordinary human beings see themselves as specially chosen by God, or even as gods themselves, they are not necessarily psychopaths, but they most definitely are spiritually disordered."

divinereal:

Yes indeed, poignant and thought provoking article. In todays world no ideology, religion or dogma is recluse from getting vetted and scrutinized. I am all for the dialogue and discourse on all aspects of human existence. Africans/Nigerians must open their eyes and minds and bring them into the 21st century especially as it pertains to religion and culture. We cannot base our morality and spirituality on bronze age middle eastern myths.

Sweetnecta:

while I dont see a separation of Mosque and Politics, since Islam is a religion that never leaves a muslim in all his/her dealings, affairs, Islam itself is there political. The Mosque was the center of all islamic affairs during the lifetime of the Messenger (AS), the person who was the embodiment of the religion.

There is nothing wrong in being conscientious Islamist, realizing the responsibility that comes with being a muslim; obeying the Laws of God, being responsible to Him alone, which entails your deep love and painstaking attention to preservation of His creation.

Allah says in the Quran that those who get the best meaning of the verse of Quran when they hear it are those who are endowed with wisdom, knowledge. People for the most part have turned islam over its head, choosing instead their own evil agenda and coloring it with the cloak of Islam. A man who is a sadist is the one that will not see how Prophet Job (AS) was told to deal with his wife in the Quran, instead will result into picking up a cable wire to beat her "lightly". Same type of ignorance will not make a parent send a child to receive secular education along with Quranic education, when Allah says in the Quran that exploration and research of 'nature' make a person know who his Lord is. It is the same type of mentality will drag a person to commit murder, even suicide when God Almighty stated that preservation of life is a preferred alternative to killing.

The bold speaks more directly to those who say they are "Gods/gods, God's chosen people and or children of God, along with those in Islam who are evil doers. I consider these evil doers hypocritical muslims.

divinereal:

Don't blame the West

The 'root causes' of Islamist terrorism do not lie in poverty or western imperialism, but an age old conflict between reason and revelation

divinereal:

By Robert Sibley, Ottawa Citizen January 3, 2011 6:40 AM Comments (2)

During the last decade of Islamist terrorism, numerous commentators, particularly those on the left, have adopted a materialist approach to explain why some Muslims want to slaughter guests at hotels in Mumbai or detonate bombs at Christmas festivals in Sweden.

divinereal:

Terrorism, they argue, is rooted in poverty, frustration over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and memories of western imperialism. In other words, so the argument goes, the West itself is to blame for terrorism. If only the West would apologize, make reparations, abandon Israel, leave the Middle East and Afghanistan, all would be well. Or at least that's where the root-cause crowd's assumptions logically lead.

divinereal:


The problem with this materialist view of terrorism is that it largely misses the spiritual motivations that inform Islamist geo-politics. As political theorist Barry Cooper argues in his book, New Political Religions, or, An Analysis of Modern Terrorism, the Islamists, like the Nazis and Communists, are motivated more by a "disease of the spirit" than materialist aspirations. "When ordinary human beings see themselves as specially chosen by God, or even as gods themselves, they are not necessarily psychopaths, but they most definitely are spiritually disordered."

divinereal:

Cooper draws on Eric Voegelin, a 20th-century political philosopher who coined the term "pneumopathology" to account for the spiritual diseases of the modern world. Voegelin argued that some people -- politicians, intellectuals, journalists, for example -- prefer to see the world as a projection of their desires rather than comprehend its reality. Such fabulists effectively live in what Voegelin called a "second-order reality." If they acquire power they all-too-often pursue extreme measures -- genocide, gulags, crashing airplanes into buildings -- to transform the world to suit their fantasies of perfection.

In the case of the Islamists, they imagine Islam spreading across the globe and the establishment of a worldwide caliphate based on shariah law. They see themselves empowered by Allah to bring about this new world order by destroying a civilization they regard as spiritually empty. Thus, Islamism constitutes a political religion of apocalyptic proportions.

divinereal:

You don't have to look far to find hints of such second-order thinking. The New York Hall of Science is currently staging an exhibit titled "1001 Inventions" that purports to show that Islam enjoyed a Golden Age of scientific and intellectual accomplishment when Europe was wallowing in the Dark Ages. According to a New York Times reviewer, the exhibition's promoters claim Islam's cultural glories were later "misappropriated" by the West.

It is true that, between the seventh and 10th centuries, Islamic culture spread across North Africa and the Middle East -- prompting the building of libraries, universities and cities where science and philosophy were prized. Scholars, such as al-Zahrawi and al-Haytham, made significant contributions to medicine and physics. Philosophers such as al-Kindi and al-Farabi absorbed Aristotle and Plato and, like the Greeks, tried to apply reason to the problems of Muslim society. But to deny that Muslim thinkers borrowed heavily from other cultures -- evidence, again, of second-ordering thinking -- is a distortion of historical reality. As the Times' reviewer puts it: "Major cultures of the first millennium (China, India, Byzantium) are mentioned only to affirm the weightier significance of Muslim contributions."

But then Islam's Golden Age was golden only in comparison to the endarkenment that descended on Western Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth century. According to some historians, the rise of Islam in the seventh century exacerbated Europe's "Dark Age." "Islam, far from being a force for enlightenment in the so-called Dark Age, was actually responsible for the destruction of the literate and urban civilization that we now call Classical," says John J. O'Neill, the author of Holy Warriors: Islam and the Demise of Classical Civilization. The Muslim conquests of the Christian lands of the Middle East and North Africa in the seventh and eighth centuries were, he says, made much easier by the breakdown in law and order throughout the Mediterranean as the borders of the Roman imperium receded. In this regard, the "1001 Inventions" exhibition is, perhaps, being disingenuous.

divinereal:

Worse, though, says the reviewer, is the exhibition's failure to account for the "long eclipse" of Islamic culture. Indeed, one of history's much-debated puzzles is why the Muslim world stagnated after its Golden Age, why the spirit of scientific inquiry and philosophical debate by and large faded from Islamic culture

divinereal:

Blame the imams. In the 11th century, Imam Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, a brilliant if tormented theologian, published The Incoherence of the Philosophers, effectively bringing to conclusion centuries of debate in the Muslim world about the primacy of reason versus that of revelation. Reason makes us question things, makes us doubtful and uncertain, al-Ghazali argued. He attacked philosophers who thought that humans could know the world by means of rational thought. Reason, he said, leads to despair. Only divine revelation, the word of God as revealed in the Koran, provides certain knowledge of how best to live. Human reason must submit to Allah's will.


A century later, another Muslim philosopher challenged al-Ghazali's views. In The Incoherence of the Incoherence, Ibn Rushd -- better known in the West as Averroes -- argued that reason was God's gift to mankind and was to be used for the betterment of society. Ignorant theologians should not intrude on areas they don't understand. It was too late. The imams carried the day. Averroes' books were burned and he fled into exile. The voice of reason fell silent in courts of the caliphs and Muslim culture gradually ossified.

divinereal:

Some scholars argue that Islamist terrorism can be traced to this eclipse of reason. Unlike Christianity, which eventually found a way to balance the claims of Athens and Jerusalem, leaving it open to the scientific reasoning that re-emerged in the Renaissance and Enlightenment, Islam has never reconciled reason and revelation. This unwillingness to reconcile the human and the divine fosters the kind of spiritual pathologies that give birth to terrorism.

[/quote]

This man is very pathetic indeed, how does some one not believing in Science makes him a terrorist?

divinereal:


Such a mindset, Reilly argues, forgoes many attributes Westerners regard as essential to the modern mind, particularly philosophical skepticism and scientific reasoning. "If one lives in a society that ascribes everything to first causes, one is not going to look around the world and try to figure out how it works or how to improve it," he writes. "The Middle East is poor because of a dysfunctional culture based upon a deformed theology, and unless it can be reformed at that level, economic engineering or the development of constitutional political order will not succeed."

I still dey laugh oh, Because persin no believe for science then him go rush do suicide bombing, no this is nonsense indeed.

divinereal link=topic=578549.msg7454033#msg7454033 date=1294070248:

Other political theorists argue that democracy cannot establish deep roots in a culture where human reason is not paramount because, in Barry Cooper's words, "the prerequisite of democracy is the respectability of reason." But without respect for reason there can be no notion of discovering natural laws. And without natural law, says Cooper, "there can be no constitutional political order by which human beings, using reason, create laws to govern themselves and act freely."

So one does not use reason to interprete the shariah? If this man wants Muslims to accept secularity, he could have just come out and said so instead of hiding behind terrorism. Even part of this democracy is anti - thetical to common sense, as with reason one can easily re - interprete the foundation of Democracy, freedom, u need freedom but to what extent?

divinereal:

Such views, if valid, augur ill for the presence of Islam within the secular West. If radical Islam is, as Reilly contends, rooted in the suppression of reason, it is hard to see how even moderate Muslims can achieve a deep and wholesome attachment to western societies and their values. How can genuinely devout Muslims identify wholeheartedly with a modern secular society that denies the efficacy of their faith? And if they can't, what are they going to do about it?

This man is argueing based on illogical points, he wants us to believe that one must be secular in other for him not to do terrorism, that is insanely daft have he not hear of anarchist in Europe? whom during the 80s were involvled in terrorism. This man is very naive oh? how does secularity stops someone from doing terrorism. Wonders they say in Warri never ends.

divinereal:

The Islamists' answer, obviously, is that no accommodation is possible. Hence, they ultimately seek the transformation of the West to accommodate Islam. Chandra Muzaffar, a widely respected Malaysian Islamic scholar, writing in a 2006 book, The New Voices of Islam, captures this spiritual aspiration: "Islam and the post-Enlightenment secular West are diametrically opposed to one another.

This is pathetic as the author of the nonsense is just misquoting poeple, as Muzaffar could have been saying in terms of values Islam is opposed to the west, in termsof contemporal happenings Islam is opposed to the west, but becasue this article was written in bad faith hence u need just say things out of place.

[quote author=divinereal link=topic=578549.msg7454033#msg7454033 date=1294070248]
Muslims will then realize that unless they transform the secular world of the West, that vision of justice embodied in the Koran will never become a reality." The challenge for Islamists, obviously, is whether they can achieve that transformation better through demographic domination over the next few decades or through violence.



The challenge for Westerners, perhaps not so obviously, is whether they will awaken in time from their multicultural slumbers to protect their cultural heritage and avoid, possibly, a new dark age.

Again Lumping people together, as a lot of Muslims do not even think of dominating anybody talkless of forcing conversion as the Majority of Muslims just go on with their business. This man simply overlooked the effects of colonialism, injustice, imperialsm,etc and also the role of misguided individuals in the ongoing terror problem, just looking at the current threand terrorism is clearly being fought for materials gains, look at Osama whom accuased the US of supporting oppressive govt in his home land, look at the Taliban who are trying to push the US out of Afganistan, look at Hamas which is fighting Isreal for land, look at pakistan terrorist who are fighting for control of the country, look somalia wher Al -shabab are fighting for the control of their country etc.

Sweetnecta:

@JeSoul; « #5 on: Yesterday at 08:05:35 PM »It is not the intention or the goal of God Almighty Who created and chose Islam for mankind that it should spread, and be enforced all across the world. If it is Allah would not have given man free will and states that no compulsion in religion. He would not have told us that hell fire is the place for disbelievers, which must mean, coupled with the free will people make their own decision to be disbelievers being fuel for hell. Allah says if He had willed, He could have made all persons of the nation of Islam, being believers. But that is not His Will because some might have said they were forced to belief, instead of entering the path of guidance willingly. I will not force anybody. Muhammad (AS) didnt force anyone. And to be dominant even per head count does not mean 100% of the world population. While Muhammad was alive there were disbelievers in Arabia. So there. And you remember the saying; one with God is a majority? That weakens the head count part. And Allah says that most mankind are disbelievers, anyway. Most is more than 50% you will agree.

divinereal:

Divine, do you think religion itself is the problem? or rather the people practicing the religion


Per your question above: I am yet to study a religious doctrine/system that is not morally flawed. When looking at my analysis of a religion I focus on the doctrine/dogma, holy book of a said religion and customary practice by its adherents. None of the Abrahamic faiths denounced slavery or believed in the true equality of human beings. There are genocidal acts in the Koran and Torah. The very concept of praying for forgiveness to "God" for harm caused on others, society is very immoral in itself and lacks accountability.
On another note, all religions are not equal in bigotry, moral bankruptcy, divisiveness and proclivity for violence. They are as varied and diverse as sport; some extremely violent like boxing, while others more benign like golf.

The challenge for Westerners, perhaps not so obviously, is whether they will awaken in time from their multicultural slumbers to protect their cultural heritage and avoid, possibly, a new dark age.

seyibrown:

Bang on point call for action! Not only westerners but people everywhere in the world should wake up from their slumber and protect their heritagefrom any 'imposition of backwardness' which will plunge us into a new dark age!

If one were to 'protect one's heritage from any imposition of backwardness', it would mean that one's heritage is 'more advanced'/better than the 'backwardness' that is being imposed! For example, If you have enjoyed freedom of speech for decades and someone is trying to impose a 'gagging' policy/culture, freedom of speech which you already have is better/more advanced than a gag! Take as another example the imposition of 'leaves' as new compulsory clothing material in this day and age!