I suppose seven years and ten million pounds down the line we're supposed to feel some deep respect for an independent process that holds power to account. In which other country, for example, would you have the government and agencies put under such scrutiny? I can see the validity of that view but it misses the main point.
For me the more important question is: how could democratic governments engage in such a catastrophic war? Once you pose it like that you realize how naive the question is because, putting colonialism to one side for a moment, the so-called democratic countries have been engaged in all sorts of wars ( directly or indirectly) for some time now. Some of them have been supporting all sorts of very nasty people ( dictators, authoritarin governments, etc.) in the name of " national interest".
And so the difficult question is: why is violence so central to the modern state? How is it that the worst instance of extreme violence the world has known was committed on European soil? Bettelheim, Foucault and Agamben are worth thinking about here since all suggest there is a deep current that links modernity with the camps.
The simple question that you often hear Muslims put is met with eternal silence. Why are the abhorrent actions of non-state actors considered to be an instance of terrorism whilst state violence is somehow legitimate? And yet surely the word was first used in conjunction with state power, namely: state terror. Part of the difficulty rests in their failure to understand that the state is the last god in town ( simone Weil). For king and country. Soldiers are supposed to just do their job..ours is not to wonder why. As if to say, bravery or courage is a disposition that has nothing to do with other virtues (discernment) or that is independent of the goal to which it is related to.
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Unrelated points...an interesting lecture by Hamza Yusuf, who you're not fully convinced by. But he did raise the point, unfortunately not followed up on, about how an education that was not oriented toward God or the good represents a formal kind of intelligence. Also, the Qur'anic notion that human beings are " weighty" beings, creatures that are supposed to have gravitas. And yet in our own times might not be said that the compulsion to follow each and every whim leads to a kind of superficiality, or ' lightness'?
To be a slave of one's desires, the servant of power or even the follower of religious authorities, speaks of a disturbing inclination in human beings towards submission to authority, or more generally to the desire to lose oneself in an oceanic feeling, the crowd, the collectivity. The sobriety of religion on the other hand demands a form of ' wakefulness'. As the Allama rather daringly said, ' Even if the Divine reveals His Face I'll still take " perhaps" and " maybe".'
Yusuf: those who go to heaven retain their name. Few of us have the strength to hold on to our name.
To be in the condition of exile makes one sceptical of 'home'.
" May I run, run, and never find".
shah Latif.
" yearning makes the heart grow deeper".
Augustine.
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The divine name, Al-Wasi...vastness, capaciousness, the all-embracing.
For me the more important question is: how could democratic governments engage in such a catastrophic war? Once you pose it like that you realize how naive the question is because, putting colonialism to one side for a moment, the so-called democratic countries have been engaged in all sorts of wars ( directly or indirectly) for some time now. Some of them have been supporting all sorts of very nasty people ( dictators, authoritarin governments, etc.) in the name of " national interest".
And so the difficult question is: why is violence so central to the modern state? How is it that the worst instance of extreme violence the world has known was committed on European soil? Bettelheim, Foucault and Agamben are worth thinking about here since all suggest there is a deep current that links modernity with the camps.
The simple question that you often hear Muslims put is met with eternal silence. Why are the abhorrent actions of non-state actors considered to be an instance of terrorism whilst state violence is somehow legitimate? And yet surely the word was first used in conjunction with state power, namely: state terror. Part of the difficulty rests in their failure to understand that the state is the last god in town ( simone Weil). For king and country. Soldiers are supposed to just do their job..ours is not to wonder why. As if to say, bravery or courage is a disposition that has nothing to do with other virtues (discernment) or that is independent of the goal to which it is related to.
------
Unrelated points...an interesting lecture by Hamza Yusuf, who you're not fully convinced by. But he did raise the point, unfortunately not followed up on, about how an education that was not oriented toward God or the good represents a formal kind of intelligence. Also, the Qur'anic notion that human beings are " weighty" beings, creatures that are supposed to have gravitas. And yet in our own times might not be said that the compulsion to follow each and every whim leads to a kind of superficiality, or ' lightness'?
To be a slave of one's desires, the servant of power or even the follower of religious authorities, speaks of a disturbing inclination in human beings towards submission to authority, or more generally to the desire to lose oneself in an oceanic feeling, the crowd, the collectivity. The sobriety of religion on the other hand demands a form of ' wakefulness'. As the Allama rather daringly said, ' Even if the Divine reveals His Face I'll still take " perhaps" and " maybe".'
Yusuf: those who go to heaven retain their name. Few of us have the strength to hold on to our name.
To be in the condition of exile makes one sceptical of 'home'.
" May I run, run, and never find".
shah Latif.
" yearning makes the heart grow deeper".
Augustine.
---
The divine name, Al-Wasi...vastness, capaciousness, the all-embracing.
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