Inescapable frameworks?

What we want is spirituality without religion, religion without faith, faith without God. We do know what we want, only what we do not want. Do we have any idea of what we need?

[ religion ]

Girard is quite right to claim that the Enlightenment succeeded in convincing everyone that evil comes from (religious) institutions and what constitutes freedom is an escape from repression, domination (negative liberty). To think that any collectivity could play a positive role in one's self-determination is to really tread the road to serfdom. 

Since human beings are now considered to be good in themselves (without the aid of grace) evil-if it is allowed to exist-must be located elsewhere. And to be free is to be 'free from' (other people, society, the family, organized religion, the state).

All heady stuff, you might think, except it does make you wonder whether that view has contributed to the dissolution of the self (or, more accurately, of the person..to talk about 'the self' is already to give too much to modern sensibilities).

It was the best of times, the worst of times. That seems to be one of Girard's messages. and since that is a confusing statement it isn't likely to gain much support in an age that wants simple, black and white answers: "you're either with us or against us."

Can't help but think-and this is without reading him and therefore totally unfair-that the last lines of his interview got to the heart of your scepticism towards him. His "passion for ideas", for "solving problems", "like a scientist". he sounds too much like a theoretician, an academic, a French academic! When you read Merton, in contrast, you get the feeling of a lived spirituality, an inward relation to faith that shines through in the simplicity and elegance of his language and clarity of thought. A spirituality and understanding that has been worked at. 

Girard, somewhere else, claims that Islam doesn't seriously engage other faiths in dialogue because of its emphasis on the falsification of the older texts. I'm not sure what his training in Arabic or the history of Islamic thought is but it's quite a remarkable statement coming from someone whose perspective maintains that there is only one way to salvation (pre-Vatican II and pre-Ratzinger's stunning recent comments).

It is remarkable because even a cursory glance of the texts would point to this rather strange term that crops up again and again: the People of the Book. And he couldn't be unaware of the deep reverence Muslims have traditionally held for the prophets from the Jewish and Christian faith who are thought to be part of the same islamic tradition (small 'i'). At one point Muslims are told to "compete" with people from other faiths 'in good works' and are also informed that some are righteous ( a momentous word, I think, in the Qur'anic lexicon).

And then there's what to me is a canonical verse:

Unto every one of you have We appointed a [different] law and way of life.
Q. 5.48

In the traditional formulation: the haqiqah (inner truth) is one; the sharia (laws) are many.

This phrase (or word), "way of life", is something to be explored. Asad has it down as "an open road", abstract, not specified. In that sense at the very heart of an inescapable framework that forms a community is the openness of the spirit. If one brings you home, the other keeps you a stranger, wandering.