I was concurring with Ken's observation that Muslims in Senegal have a model that other Muslims in African might consider replicating. Namely, they perform a local hajj to a sacred destination in Senegal.
Forward ever,
kzs
On Sep 28, 2015, at 7:43 PM, Samuel Zalanga <szalanga@bethel.edu> wrote:Your questions when properly understood are not just questions for Islam. The logic of the question when properly understood could be asked of many other things.Why not pursue one's life or education in Africa but the U.S. or Europe? Are education and opportunities housed only in the U.S. or Europe for example? Can't these be achieved or acquired in Africa? We should ask immigrants these two questions. Why do people people in Nigeria go to the church or mosque and pray in their communities instead of just doing so in their bedrooms and on their beds? Some of them have expensive houses. Does God only listens to prayers from the church and mosque? Why do some Catholic Churches do part or all of their worship in Latin? Why not use regular language? Why do people elevate the Holy Quran and Holy Bible even though there are other books on whose basis the modern world is built which both religious people and others enjoy and take for granted? There are books today in the market that are more expensive than the copies of the Holy Quran and Holy Bible, but why do people treat these other books so specially?
To understand religion is to understand the power of the sacred and profane and the power of "MYTH" in human existence and their struggle for meaning in life. The answers to these questions will never be the same for all or at all times. Different people will answer them differently. "Myth" is not used here as a false story but the reality that in Kantian terms exists at the transcendental level which both reason and science cannot reach but only interpret.When religion is understood very deeply, it is not about whether the beliefs are accurate or false per se. It is about the fact that people believe them and as they internalize them, they constitute a lens through which they view and interpret reality, they understand themselves, others, time, and space. In effect, this forms the foundation of their cosmology. The beliefs become their categories of mediation. Human beings may have beliefs that are not totally accurate, beliefs that may not be totally coherent, and may not explain everything etc. But they cannot afford to live without some beliefs, whatever their source. Even Sigmund Freud had beliefs that shaped his choices in life and whether they are correct of false is not the issue but how they have shaped his worldview and subsequently many other things.There is a good example of why people do the kind of thing that people go to Mecca and Jerusalem and do (i.e., Pilgrimage) in the documentary film titled: "Sacred Journeys" with Bruce Feller --http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/sacredjourneys/content/home/The documentary makes a case study (among others) of the "Osun-Osogbo" shrine. The documentary illustrates the meaning that people in Southwestern Nigeria attach to the shrine. They leave their houses and cities to walk distances to reach the shrine. Why? Because it provides a deep sense of meaning and connection to them, just as pilgrims in Mecca and Jerusalem do it for similar reasons. The best way to appreciate it is not to say whether it is false or right but the meaning it creates in people's lives, just as the ceremonies that the ancient Greeks conduct on behalf of their gods, including visiting Parthenon. I wish science and reason can create a deep sense of meaning but there are legions of scholars in the Western and non Western who appreciate science and reason but also see their limitation.Of course now we have new "sacred places" like Wall Street competing with the old sacred places. With regard to these new god and shrines that have been ushered in by modernity which is built on science and reason, there are two quotes from Max Weber that just illustrate the crisis we have found ourselves in, given that the more capitalism and modernity succeeds with the institutions undergirding it, the more meaninglessness or confusion humanity will encounter. Here is Weber reflecting on that:"The calculability of decision making and with it its appropriateness for capitalism... is the more fully realized the more bureaucracy "depersonalizes" itself, i.e., the more completely it succeeds in achieving the exclusion of love, hatred, and every purely personal, especially irrational and incalculable, feeling from the execution of official tasks. In the place of the old-type ruler who is moved by sympathy, favor, grace and gratitude, modern culture requires for its sustaining external apparatus the emotionally detached and hence rigorously 'professional' expert."And Weber is not a radical but part of the German establishment but key observer of key engine of modernity which is the process or rationalization, concludes with this pessimistic observation that when one reflects is baffling as we see it around us but as Herbert Marcuse argues, we are distracted from focusing on because the culture industry deliberately sublimates our consciousness and distracts us from thinking or fighting about reforming the system. Weber asserts:"Imagine the consequences of that comprehensive bureaucratization and rationalization which already today we see approaching. Already now... in all economic enterprises run on modern lines, rational calculation is manifest at every stage. By it, the performance of each individual worker is mathematically measured, each man becomes a little cog in the machine and, aware of this, his one preoccupation is whether he can become a bigger cog.... It is apparent that today we are proceeding towards an evolution which resembles [the ancient kingdom of Egypt] in every detail, except that it is built on other foundations, on technically more perfect, more rationalized and therefore much more mechanized foundation. The problem which besets us now is not: how can this evolution be changed? -- for that is impossible, but: what will come of it" (All quotes from: pp.231-232 of Lewis Coser, Masters of Sociological Thought: Ideas in Historical and Social Context). Thus Weber argues that the future of humanity in Western civilization because of this unending process of rationalization that is at the core of modernity will lead to people living in an 'iron cage" rather than a "Garden of Eden" as Karl Marx predicted.This is why modernity (science and reason) can impact religion but it will never eliminate it because there are certain fundamental questions that are at the heart of what it means to be human that science and reason will not provide. Of course people will answer these questions differently and until eternity they will never agree on one and even with war, some people will not abandon their own ways. It is in this way that we can understand why religious people do what they do, and among them are often people who are highly educated and informed.Thank you.SamuelOn Mon, Sep 28, 2015 at 2:12 PM, Olayinka Agbetuyi <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com> wrote:And why must Satan be stoned only from Saudi Arabia? Was that his home?Why not stone Satan in Sokoto or Ilorin?
Sent from Samsung Mobile
-------- Original message --------From: Mobolaji AlukoDate:28/09/2015 16:06 (GMT+00:00)To: USAAfrica DialogueSubject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Another Nigerian stampede survivor says I was pinned down - Vanguard News
Kasim Alli:
To the extent that we have not heard that the Saudi Army was the one that shot these victims, this tragedy can only be consigned to an unfortunate accident that we wish should not recur. So to your question as to what AU/African countries/those countries affected/the Muslim Ummah should do:
(1) demand for a thorough, honest and complete investigation of the incident, primarily to prevent a recurrence in the future. Part of the deterrence for than non-re-occurrence is to punish those who through negligence allowed it to occur.
(2) work out a limit to the crowd in any given space during these observations. Just as an elevator has the maximum number of safe passengers, and a stadium has a given safe limit of spectators, don't these worship grounds have any limits at all? These limits must be "actuarially" established, so that a stampede (if any) should not cause these many deaths.
(3) ask all participants to take a life insurance. This can be initiated by the sending country, Saudi Arabia or the pilgrim himself/herself. The dead don't gain from insurance; it is the survivors.
(4) This may be politically incorrect, but too many Nigerians do repeat visit to Mecca, as if they have to stone Satan every year for Satan, already defeated, to be re-defeated! There are people who go to Lesser Hajj, Greater Hajj and Middle Hajj EACH YEAR - three times a year. Yet, the injunction is at least only once in a lifetime, not every year, Haba! To limit the number of participants, there should be a tax for repeat Hajj - double/triple Alhajis and Hajiyas etc. - escalating each time you go again.
Nothing stops all the above from being imposed on Jerusalem Pilgrims.
And there you have it.
Bolaji Aluko
PS: Kasim, how many times have you gone?
On Mon, Sep 28, 2015 at 3:15 AM, 'Kasim Alli' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:
What exactly should (can) the AU and/or Nigerian government do in this case?
Sent from my iPadThe AU should take a decisive action for the insult coming from the officials of Saudi Arabia. I hope The Federal Government of Nigeria must do something about this crazy religious obligation that leads to voluntary suicide in Mecca.
Prof. Segun Ogungbemithis is pretty sad, esp given official saudi responses blaming the victims.
i should remind folks that in senegal the mourid hadj is to touba, the grand magal. no need to make the hadj to mecca to fulfill the obligation. and there are christian equivalents there as well. senegal gets it right, i believe.
ken
On 9/27/15 12:43 PM, 'CJM1' via USA Africa Dialogue Series wrote:
http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/09/another-nigerian-stampede-survivor-says-i-was-pinned-down/
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