From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Wed Sep 03 2003 - 09:05:01 MDT
On Wed, 3 Sep 2003, Amara Graps wrote:
> >A Reformation is the last thing Islam needs right now -
> >fundamentalists are very similar in their rhetoric and analysis to
> >people such as Luther and Calvin. [snip]
>
> Thank you for pointing out my mistake, Steve. I had thought that
> the Christian Reformation did the opposite of this, that is, cause
> a reanalysis and subsequent mellowing of the more extreme elements
> of the religion. I have to study a little more religious history,
> obviously !
Amara, I would *not* be so fast to back off on this. There has
been a recent PBS special in the U.S. running on Luther I think.
It points out how dogmatic the Catholic church had become (IMO
it still is). At least one analysis I've seen regarding the
issue of priests and marriage suggests the restriction that priests
must be celibate had nothing to do with anything in the Bible but
had primarily to do with having priests leave their wealth to the
church rather than their heirs. Pure self-interest at work.
The consequence, in part, being the current molestation scandals.
Now, why the reformation may have promoted individual self-interpretation
of the text of the Bible -- it seems to have given way to "fundamentalism".
I am not sure when and why this took place. I suspect it has something
to do with the power of leaders to convince people to interpret things
in a specific way. Spike has pointed out to me several times that
the Bible can probably be used to justify almost anything. I suspect
that the same is true of the Koran.
So the problem is *not* a 'reformation' per se but the fact that some
people abuse the 'reformation' process to convince people to interpret
the text in a certain specific way -- rather than allow people to
interpret it in their own way. Such behavior is a power grab and
is rooted in basic survival instincts. One can see this between
both the people who have religious power in Iran and the young
college students there as well as the old and young shiites in Iraq.
Friedman has an interesting observation with respect to "tribes"
in the NY Times today [1]...
{ Technology, though, still can't trump two huge impedients to Arab
democracy. One is the lack of institutions to ensure a peaceful rotation
of power. "In too many countries there is still a tradition of rule or die
- either my group or tribe is in power or it's exposed to great danger, so
you must never give up power," noted Michael Mandelbaum, author of "The
Ideas That Conquered the World."
The other is that so many Arab economies are dominated by state oil
revenues and state companies, with private enterprise very weak.
Therefore, holding onto or being close to power are the only pathways to
wealth. Control power, control wealth. "It will be very hard to install
lasting democracy in this region," Mr. Mandelbaum added, "without
institutions and economic reforms that guarantee that there is life after
power and wealth without power." }
It would be interesting to bring either the "nanotech" or "AI" discussions
to the table in Arabic countries since both would seem to trump concerns
about "tribal power" and "survival instincts" in various ways.
Robert
1. Friedman, T. L., "52 to 48", NY Times (3 September 2003).
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/03/opinion/03FRIE.html?pagewanted=print
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