The logic of war against terrorism: as we have learnt from Israel and the US
Terrorists use civilians as their shelters, so we can kill civilians (by mistake, of course) to defeat terrorism!
Bombing thousands of civilians by a ‘state’ is not terrorism mainly because the carnage is not intentional!
Producing and using weapons of mass destruction in massive scales is not a crime, but aiming to produce them is!
For every victim of terrorism in the West, it is justified to kill hundreds of civilians in the East as the unavoidable causalities of war against terrorism!
Democracy is good if a puppet comes out of the ballot!
Terror means any threat against civilians in the US and its allies!
The more power you have, the less you are terrorist!
Should we trust Iran?
I think most of the arguements around the issue of Iran's nuke case are trapped into a false controversy between the Western powers and ffice:smarttags" />
The Openning
1.   The Opening
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بِسْمِ اللّهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ
1.  In the name of the “Existence”, the ultimate source of Beneficence, and Generosity
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الْحَمْدُ لِلّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ
2.     The "Existence", the ultimate nurturer of the myriad worlds, deserves to be deliberately appreciated.
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اَلرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ
3.     The ultimate source of Beneficence, and Generosity
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مَالِكِ يَوْمِ الدِّينِ
4.     The ultimate Sovereign of the period of history when mankind would lead their lives according to the nature of the Existence on their own free will.[1]
[1] The fundamental and basic quality of this period would be that no man would have any authority, power or supremacy over the other.
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إِيَّاكَ نَعْبُدُ وإِيَّاكَ نَسْتَعِين
5.     We purely "realize" You (the Existence) and we purely rely on You, [at the most basic level of our life].[2]Â
[2] A direct talk to the Existence is adopted here to show that the Existence is not just a set of rules of life but a conscious entity.
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اِهْدِنَا الصِّرَاطَ المُسْتَقِيمَ
6.     Guide us to the straight course.Â
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صِرَاطَ الَّذِينَ أَنعَمْتَ عَلَيهِمْ غَيرِ المَغضُوبِ عَلَيهِمْ وَلاَ الضَّالِّينَ
7.     The course of those whom You have blessed with the best of life; not those who have incurred the rage of Existence, nor the misguided.
112. The Uniqueness
In the name of the "Existence”, the ultimate source of Beneficence, and Generosity
1.     “The Existence” is unique in essence [and free from contradictions].
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اللَّهُ الصَّمَدُ
2.      The Existence is self-contingent [sovereign and self-organized][1]
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لَمْ يَلِدْ وَلَمْ يُولَدْوَلَمْ يَكُن لَّهُ كُفُوًا أَحَدٌÂ
3.     The relationship between “the Existence” and human being can not be reduced to or even exemplified with the relations like those of father and child [let alone master and slave]. And, nothing bears a resemblance to the Existence but herself.
[1] Therefore, the Existence does not need anybody’s worship, sacrifice or pray. These symbolic actions must be done and oriented towards the most benefit of people themselves.
VOCABULARY
|
Akhirat:ffice |
the sustainability اخرت |
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Allah: |
the Existence الله |
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Dunya: |
the ephemerality دنیا |
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Shaytaan: (Satan) |
the extinction شیطان |
Nass: the Multitude الناس
Suicide terrorism is not primarily a product of Islam
Editorial Reviews
Book Description
Suicide terrorism is rising around the world, but there is great confusion as to why. In this paradigm-shifting analysis, University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape has collected groundbreaking evidence to explain the strategic, social, and individual factors responsible for this growing threat.
One of the world’s foremost authorities on the subject, Professor Pape has created the first comprehensive database of every suicide terrorist attack in the world from 1980 until today. With striking clarity and precision, Professor Pape uses this unprecedented research to debunk widely held misconceptions about the nature of suicide terrorism and provide a new lens that makes sense of the threat we face.
FACT: Suicide terrorism is not primarily a product of Islamic fundamentalism.
FACT: The world’s leading practitioners of suicide terrorism are the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka–a secular, Marxist-Leninist group drawn from Hindu families.
FACT: Ninety-five percent of suicide terrorist attacks occur as part of coherent campaigns organized by large militant organizations with significant public support.
FACT: Every suicide terrorist campaign has had a clear goal that is secular and political: to compel a modern democracy to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland.
FACT: Al-Qaeda fits the above pattern. Although Saudi Arabia is not under American military occupation per se, one major objective of al-Qaeda is the expulsion of U.S. troops from the Persian Gulf region, and as a result there have been repeated attacks by terrorists loyal to Osama bin Laden against American troops in Saudi Arabia and the region as a whole.
FACT: Despite their rhetoric, democracies–including the United States–have routinely made concessions to suicide terrorists. Suicide terrorism is on the rise because terrorists have learned that it’s effective.
In this wide-ranging analysis, Professor Pape offers the essential tools to forecast when some groups are likely to resort to suicide terrorism and when they are not. He also provides the first comprehensive demographic profile of modern suicide terrorist attackers. With data from more than 460 such attackers–including the names of 333–we now know that these individuals are not mainly poor, desperate criminals or uneducated religious fanatics but are often well-educated, middle-class political activists.
More than simply advancing new theory and facts, these pages also answer key questions about the war on terror:
• Are we safer now than we were before September 11? No
• Was the invasion of Iraq a good counterterrorist move? No
• Is al-Qaeda stronger now than it was before September 11? YES
Professor Pape answers these questions with analysis grounded in fact, not politics, and recommends concrete ways for today’s states to fight and prevent terrorist attacks. Military options may disrupt terrorist operations in the short term, but a lasting solution to suicide terrorism will require a comprehensive, long-term approach–one that abandons visions of empire and relies on a combined strategy of vigorous homeland security, nation building in troubled states, and greater energy independence.
For both policy makers and the general public, Dying to Win transcends speculation with systematic scholarship, making it one of the most important political studies of recent time.
About the Author
Robert A. Pape is associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago, where he teaches international politics and is the director of the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism. A distinguished scholar of national security affairs, he writes widely on coercive airpower, economic sanctions, international moral action, and the politics of unipolarity and has taught international relations at Dartmouth College and air strategy for the U.S. Air Force’s School of Advanced Airpower Studies. He is a contributor to The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, The New Republic, and The Washington Post and has appeared on ABC’s Nightline and World News Tonight, National Public Radio, and other national television and radio programs.
Does Secularism Secure Peace?
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In order to find the answer, one just needs to have quick look at the history of the most secular century, the 20th century. Fascism was based on social evolutionism. Marx dedicated his most famous book to ffice:smarttags" />
Anyway, my idea is that whatever you believe, whether a religion or a secular discourse, you really need to be clear about the basics of your faith on the issues like peace and human rights. Then expose them in public and get involve in communication with your fellow believers and non-believers.
I think anybody who has studied the history of Islam will agree with me that we do not have one single "Islam" as a single historical phenomenon. Even for the events happened or not happened during Muhammad’s life, there are lots of disputes among Muslim scholars themselves. So we have "Islams". Anybody who talks about Islam must emphasize that she is talking about her own interpretation of Islam. So others can agree or not. My claims that “Islam = peace” is exactly comes from my interpretation of my identity as Muslim. Of course, there are some, like Mullahs and their followers, who may disagree and justify violence based on their interpretations. But I don’t believe that "any body has any exclusive rights in interpreting any religion, any historical event, any ideology or concept like democracy or human rights. I do not believe that if any specific interpretation of history/religion which has become popularized and dominant due to the supports from those who are in power in order to justify their governance based on manipulating history, is the truest version of that religion or ideology just because of its popularity. Popularity does not bring authenticity unless it is gained in a very free, open society where anybody without any fear is able to expose herself.
Similarly, we do not have a single definition of "democracy". Neo-cons’ definition of democracy is in contradiction with Chomsky's definition and both may be at odds with Gandhi's, and Shirin Ebadi’s (the Muslim lady who won the Nobel peace prize). Therefore, we do not need to give up our interpretation of our religion or ideology or identity because there are so many other interpretations which might be at odds with or different from ours. What we need to do is to clarify our definitions and get involve in a free, equal and coercion-free sphere of dialogue with others. If we do not have such spheres, we need to build them; one way is such public online forums, or offline ones in our communities. If the disputers do not want to get involve or want to impose their ideas by censoring us or by ignoring or disempowering us, so we will struggle for our basic rights, and other people can see if we are right or not. If our interpretations are well equipped with evidences and reasons we are not afraid of any sentimentalist disputer, even of losing the struggle for our rights in short term. At least we have exposed ourselves and modified our knowledge in the course of action. Ideas are not just pre-established theories in our minds. They become refined and reformed through our practices. Through my practice to expose my preliminary interpretation of Islam I have become more articulated and more clear than before, but still need more and more experience.
So whatever we believe on; we just need to understand that the production of any knowledge/idea is not something exclusive. We need to acknowledge that the history of most religions has experience lots of hegemonic periods in which the free thinkers of those religions or ideologies have been disempowered/ excluded by those who were in power and their ideologues. We need to discover the voices which have been deprived of enough opportunity to have their says in history. We need to start understanding any faith objectively, fairly and without prejudice or hatred due to our daily experiences of the bad manners of its followers which are themselves victims of mass deceptions (mainly organized by their clergies). Please See, the statement about non-deliberative nature of Islam. (= my interpretation of Islam that I call it Islamic humanism in order to emphasize its humanistic, egalitarian and peaceful nature).
However, I do not care about anti-Islam or pro-Islam sentimentalists. They have right to expose themselves. They have implicitly helped me to be more sensitive about my ideas. I have seen many similarities between the anti-Islamism and Islamic extremism. Both endorse the exclusion of the "Other", in understanding the original message of Islam and its today's duties. What Quran says and what is the original message of Islam is the subject of collective understanding and not collective subordination.
Submission to truth (the literally meaning of Islam) is meaningless without contemplation. You can find many verses in Quran which ask people to think about the meanings. The authenticity of truth comes from itself and not from the speakers. We are not supposed to follow the messages of Quran or Muhammad merely because they are told by an unquestionable source. We are supposed (as Muslims) to contemplate them as an important historical experience, like any other historical experience. Quran itself is full of historical experiences and asks people to think about them (for example the stories of rise of fall of civilizations due to the withdrawal of morality, responsibility and accountability).
But what makes us specifically Muslims and not just simply historians? The answer is that, becoming a Muslim is not a product of a sudden decision. It’s a process. The more we contemplate, the more we understand and internalize its basics (as far as we find them useful and inspiring for our life). The more we internalize them we find ourselves in a common destiny with those who have done this before or those who have been the victims of a historical ignorance in doing this. I am not prescribing this for any body. It is possible to reflect on any other faith or ideology, but we don’t have time to study all ideas. As someone who has grown up in a so-called Islamic context, I have always felt the responsibility to contemplate and to reconsider my historical identity. "No body can and have right to stop me. I study, reflect, express and question, so I do exist".
Islamic Humanism has two pillars in relation to humanity-society:
Islamic Humanism has two pillars in relation to humanity-society: ffice Alter, here, means the ‘Other’, the other subject which can be nature, or other persons or other cultures Human being are created and endowed with self autonomy to find the truth and to act in relation to each other. Such autonomy is comparable to God’s autonomy; human beings regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, culture, social status, are the Caliphs of God on the earth. Any behaviour and action is merely valuable or condemnable regarding the level of autonomy. The more we have autonomy in conducting our actions the more we are responsible and accountable to ourselves and others. The more autonomy we have, the more we will be able to create values. The more we are determined by the willingness of others, the less our actions are valuable. So, since human beings are all created equally free and autonomous from the beginning to be able to maximize the values, they are supposed to maintain their autonomy in a way not to limit other people’s autonomy. So the best way to realize such a balance which can produce the maximum of autonomy for all members of society equally, they need to be alter accommodative. This means everybody needs not only to be sympathetic to other people’s interests and concerns, but also is required to deliberately organize the most reliable, honest and equal relations with others especially those who are disempowered. Therefore, human rights, democracy and justice must be all inclusive and nobody should be excluded due to political authority, economic inequality and social discriminations. Spirituality/morality cannot be gained completely in a society where there are groups, even if minority, who are experiencing exclusion, discrimination and injustice, violence etc. In such a situation, the only way left to enhance spirituality and morality is to struggle for the Self and the disempowered Other’s rights in the most peaceful and non-violent manner (Jihad). The most devastative and dangerous enemies of Islam, are those who do violence, injustice, and discrimination in the name of Islam. Struggling with religious dogmatism, extremism, and patriarchalism through increasing the consciousness of our fellow Muslims who are enchanted by many Mullahs and Clergies is the first priority for Progressive Muslims. There are Imams or Mullahs who might condemn terrorism and violence but their basic knowledge of Islam is corruptive and in contradiction with the abovementioned pillars. They consider for themselves exclusive right for interpreting the messages of Islam. Their knowledge is not discussed in free public spheres and carries lots of aggressive, violent elements that many of them might not be detected in the first place.
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Stop violence, terror, war, kidnapping, and torture in the name of my faith (Islam = Peace and Submission to Truth) or in the name of my ideals (Democracy and Justice).
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These are all criminal means, and in absolute contradiction with both Islam and Democracy. Those who commit these crimes are not Human, let alone Muslim, Christian or Secular.
For Quran, even Killing One Person is Genocide
based on a very clear verse in quran killing one person by anybody (whether muslim or non-muslim) and for any reason but self defence is "genocide". this is the meaning of genocide in my faith and that's why i love quran when says: " For this reason We decreed to the children of Israel that whoever killed a self, whether for revenge or for corruptive aims in the land/earth
"And Allah invites [all] to the abode of peace and guides whom he/she pleases into the right path" (Yunes 26)
A turning point for Muslims?
So I say: Decontaminate the basics of your faith and culture or be determined to naught.
Losing to Islamic Populism: The Self-made Failure of Governmental Reformism in Iran
Losing to Islamic Populism: The Self-made Failure of Governmental Reformism in Iran
Ahmad Alehosseinfficeffice" />
"Reformism from above is dead", "reformism has reached an impasse"; these are claims vociferously declared by iranian intellectual reformists like Said Hajarian, the so-called ideologue of the Iranian reformism, just about two years before the election. "A president is not more than a supplementer for the system" is an assertion passively stated by Khatami, and popularized by the reformist media, just less than one year before the election. Despite these acknowledgements revealed by reformists when they were questioned by critics about their malfunctions, during the recent election they sharply changed their voices and started disallowing their inabilities. While criticizing the interventions of the supreme leader in the executive and legislative matters, Moin, the progressive reformists, and his supporters paradoxically accepted the interference of the leader in favor of himself, when leader wanted the Guardian Council to include Moin into the list of candidates. These sort of very paradoxical behaviours, regardless of many sophisticated justifications behind them, worked against the reformists’ authenticity in the eyes of many of their potential supporters, if any plausibility had been left after 8 years ignoring the most subsistent demands (whether material or non-material) and values of multitudes of lower middle class, marginalized and disadvantaged people.
In terms of resources for campaigning in 2005 election, reformists were definitely more powerful than in the 1997 election in which Khatami won his conservative competitor without having any newspaper, the TV's support and even supports from the moderate opposition groups from within like Nehzate Azadi. Khatami was experiencing a weaker situation on that time than his prospective successor Moin this year. However many people, whether from middle class or working class, voted for him since they in order to snub his alternative, a conservative clergy, Nateghe-Noori, who didn't initiate neither serious comments on, let alone reformist programs for, a fairer resource redistribution nor democratic changes. In this year election, the situation of reformists was comparable with the situation of Nateghe-Noori in 1997 in some essential respects. They failed to convince people of how to manage getting out of the impasse, they avoided criticizing or even reflecting upon their failures, and mistakes; from the beginning, as they themselves shamelessly depicted, people had been considered just ‘levers for pressure from below to run negotiations on the top’ (a very instrumentalist concept of democracy). They failed to render any clear program about how to tackle the structural obstacles Khatami's government used to mention as excuses for his failures, in order to convince pro-reform but disappointed students and intellectuals. Even they failed to address the material and economic needs of people, the very important issue of corruption and social discriminations in their mottos; they used to postpone these to time when democracy is completely realized. They expected millions of unprivileged people to forgo their very basic and immediate needs mainly for the sake of continuing a very long-term, exhausting course of realizing luxurious-like needs of middle class such as freedom of speech for moderate reformist journalist who had never raised the very essential demands of them. Even many of those who dedicated their votes to the reformists this year aimed to avoid the very creepy hardliner's victory. ‘Fighting with fatal bureaucratic corruption and inequality in the redistribution of resources’, ‘containing the grave economic inflammation’, and ‘impeding discriminations’ were just a set of very simple but effective slogans that Ahmadi-Nejad a man less recognized as a serious conservative by many disadvantaged and traditional families employed to win the election by attracting just 36 percent of the whole eligible voters against those who's slogans and programs were not addressing the needs of or convincing more than 20 percent. Ahmadi-Nejad's voting machine should not have reasonably been able to make him a winner in the second round if any of other candidates were able to convince the gray voters to support in the first round. Based on the official reports, 45 percent did not vote in the second round. The active participation of many of this part of population which included many students and intellectuals could be very crucial for the reformists’ victory. They cannot be simply described under political apathy.
Iranian reformism from above assured its death when got married with ‘structural adjustment programs’, ‘privatization’, and the World Bank advises that had been proved to be ineffective in many third world countries, and even in Iran during Rafsanjani’s term, due to the increasing social inequalities and even democratic accountability of political and economic institutions. Rather it helped the emergence of a young network of militarist-merchant groups who enjoyed tremendous rise of financial allocations in the reformist budgets. Finally, this network challenged its old founder, Rafsanjani, by involving the issues of inequality and poverty in their populist slogans. Today, reformists have no chance to reconstruct their potency through representative mechanisms, since the Iranian society is getting into a historical stage where the gap between civil societal forces and the state is getting widened and hopes for reforming the system regarding the structural-constitutional limits are being waned; the limits based on which even the issue of referendum looks as an unfeasible strategy. Developing underground single issue movements, establishing networks of resistance, organizing pockets of civil disobedience which are deeply linked with the immediate concerns and indigenous egalitarian-autonomous values - inherited from the very long history of Iranian resistance against the oriental despotism - are the initiatives one may expect as the bases of upcoming stories from the inside in the background of inter-state clashes with the West.
photo from: http://www.payvand.com/news/04/feb/iran-election1.jpg
Neuroscience, the Person, and God: An Emergentist Account
Author: Clayton P. 1
Source: Zygon, September 2000, vol. 35, no. 3, pp. 613-652(40)
Publisher: Blackwell Publishing
Abstract:
Strong forms of dualism and eliminative materialism block any significant dialogue between the neurosciences and theology. The present article thus challenges the Sufficiency Thesis, according to which neuroscientific explanations will finally be sufficient to fully explain human behavior. It then explores the various ways in which neuroscientific results and theological interpretations contribute to an overall theory of the person. Supervenience theories, which hold that mental events are dependent on their physical substrata but not reducible to them, are explained. Challenging the determinism of “strong” supervenience, I defend a version of “soft” supervenience that allows for genuine mental causation. This view gives rise in turn to an emergentist theory of the person. Still, I remain a monist: there are many types of properties encountered in the world, although it is only the one nature that bears all these properties. The resulting position, emergentist monism, allows for diversity within the context of the one world. This view is open at the top for theological applications and interpretations while retaining the close link to neuroscientific study and its results. Theology offers an interpretation of the whole world based on a yet higher order of emergence, although the notion of God moves beyond the natural order as a whole. It therefore supplements the natural scientific study of the world without negating it.
Universal values like justice, democracy, civilization, civility, have been abused throughout the history to justify interventions, colonization, and exploitations of others. Non-westerners for a long time have been conceptualized as un-civilized people (by powerful states) as those who need to be disciplined. Many movements have been critical of abusing the human rights (say the rights of being sovereign or autonomous) "in the name" of very broadly universalized values like democracy (say in the case of ffice:smarttags" /> In my country, 27 years ago, we had a revolution to stop these interventions and to gain our autonomy-sovereignty by relying on our traditional, Islamic values, and our indigenous, national culture. However, the revolution was hijacked by Islamic fundamentalists who justified their brutality by these traditional values. Now after a century being completely disempowered by both corruptive "secular" and "theocratic" regimes, we are tired of both the so-called spiritual and humanist values. We (people like me and I) can no longer trust religious institutions and secular ideologies (isms). They both have restricted our creativity. Think you want to say a poem inspired by a religion or ideology. And now compare your ability with the time you are free from both. People like me have two options: (1) simply rejecting humanist-secular values (under which we have been exploited) together with spiritual-religious values under which we were disempowered. (2) Starting from criticizing the history of both modern and traditional movements and their ideological basics to achieve an alternative, or a synthesis instead of just mixing them in a contradictory way. Now I can say that Islamic humanism is a critical philosophy that starts from de-constructing both the histories of Islam (my culture) and humanism (the World's modern history) to understand their deviations from their original values and then to re-construct a synthesis based on which we can build a new life for ourselves. Both of them have been real historical experiences and worth to be reviewed. Reviewing the history of Islam against its original massages has opened new perspectives for us: in Islam unlike Islamic scholasticism, humans by discovering and realizing the attributes of god (like honesty, mercy, compassionate, justice)in relation to other humans can reached to a level very closed to God (it is called me'raj. God has given humans self-autonomy and self-consciousness (we call it khalifattollahi- human is the caliph of God on the earth), God is the process of creation itself, therefore humanity is included in this process and the relation between humanity and god is not like a slave and a master. Therefore there is no mediator in original Islam between God and human, clericalism has no legitimacy in original Islam. Islam itself was a movement for secularizing-humanizing the religion (by reducing so many gods to one God which is omnipresent everywhere even inside the humanity, by destroying religious institutions and building self-autonomous communities known as Shura, by rejecting clerics and clericalism, by turning the attention of people to material life based on justice and evenness etc). Therefore Islamic humanism inspired by these original principles, while stressing on human autonomy and freedom as its central principle and unlike secular humanism, does not isolate humanity from the nature and the whole existence by giving him an ultimate omnipotence. Unlike Islamic scholasticism and traditional Islam, Islamic humanism believes that God has shared his/her omnipotence with human beings to be autonomously able to reach the ultimate goals of life. Secular humanism by giving ultimate centrality to humanity against the Mother Nature and moral life has caused lots of damage in the environment and in morality. The supremacy of humanity in secular humanism gives him permission to over-exploit the nature. Women are turned into commodities for sale, share and sexual exploitations etc. unlike some other religions, spirituality in Islamic humanism is not something practicable in isolation from societal responsibilities. "The way to God passes only through the masses". Just by struggling for justice, freedom and moralities, we can realize God in ourselves, and we may reach to the highest level of eternality. Body and soul (say 'mind' or 'morality' in Islamic humanism) are created together and will die together and will be again revitalized in new formats in after life.ffice" />