Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Today's Quotes

It is true that Christianity and Islam have expanded to different parts of the world. But religion can as much be an instrument of violence as it can be instrument for something good and enobling. What religion is used for is an empirical question and not given. And this is true of all religions.

 I am not saying anything special here. Yes, I am a Christian but I am not gullible. Forget even about physical violence which is extreme. Freire argues that any time and at any place a group of human beings have been prevented from pursuing their ontological vocation as human beings which is to pursue freedom and human dignity, that is violence, period. I am glad that in the Hebrew Bible, the prophet Jeremiah and Amos are there to make a case for social justice, in situations where fellow Jews trampled upon other Jews like a pair of sandals. One of my favorite book is "Reading the Bible from the Margins" which documents all cases of persons in the Bible who were dehumanized and oppressed. 

Violence is well recorded even in the past history of Israel as it is in the past history of other societies and religions, including Islam. I wish someone can prove me wrong on this. They just interviewed someone on CNN today who was the former speaker of the Israeli parliament but making the case that the U.S. is no more a fair arbiter between Israel and Palestine. There are many persons like him and scholars like Martin Buber who wrote "I -it and I-Thou." To treat another person as "it" is to treat the person as an instrument, a a mere means to another person's end, while treating someone as "thou" is to recognize the person's full humanity and dignity. The book is very relevant for understanding the concern that many Jewish scholars have about the way Palestinians are treated. 

The Hebrew Bible is excellent enough to record the woeful failure and fallibility of humans who in the name of God committed violence in pursuit of "libido dominandi." Yet today, some people want to elevate a race or an ethnic group beyond moral reprimand or scrutiny. This may work in some quarters where people are GULLIBLE. The moment there is a recognition that some human groups are inherently superior than others, it is a slippery slope. In that case, there will be no reason why White racism should be condemned in this respect.

The Hebrew Bible i.e., the Christian Old Testament has huge record of violence and in today's language, genocide. Often the justification is that God said so, and so the victims were just people at the wrong place and the wrong time in history. Their humanity is reduced to footnotes. Please read the article below by Professor Philip Jenkins in the Boston Globe. It makes my point. When  I make such statements, be rest assured I have evidence in the pubic domain to back it up. We are all human, all too human. Thomas Jefferson in the "Letter on the State of Virginia" made the case that Black people are an inferior race, but in spite of his sense of personal and white superiority, he could not resist the sexual attractiveness of his female slave. Human, all too human.

With regard to Biafra not being an enclave I am sorry that we will have to disagree here. Even in modern university departments, there are people whose thinking and scholarship takes the form of an enclave. It also happen in politics and business. People just focus on their narrow self-interest and forget the common good or the "commons." There is among such scholars little appreciation for interdisciplinary scholarship which is driven by the desire to solve a problem than some kind of disciplinary turf, or warfare. Only persons with an irenic spirit can participate in such a team work.  

Biafra and all nation states as social identities are social constructions. People use different methods and strategies to construct such identities as Barrington Moore Junior discusses in his book "Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy."  There is no preexisting identity called "Biafra," British, American etc. A child has to be socialized, and this is one fundamental insight from introduction to sociology. It is through socialization that the young becomes part of society, starting with his or her family (primary socialization).  

I mentioned this before but let me regurgitate it. When I did my National Youth Service in Aboh Mbaise, Imo State, in our farewell party in the Local Government Headquarters, they told us  that we were  the agents of national unity in Nigeria. I agree that this was ideally the goal and I still have gratitude to God and to the Nigerian government for providing me the opportunity to serve in the Southeastern part of Nigeria because, very early in my life, it helped me learned things that were a value addition to my life, compared to my experience in Bauchi State. I will never forget this. But during the farewell party, when it was my time to speak, to make my farewell comments and I worked in the social welfare department, I told them that I am not sure that it was true that we were agents of national unity. 

I said so because during my time there there was a saying that I came across which disturbed me so much. And I heard it over and over. The saying was that if an Mbaise man and a snake are coming into your house, leave the snake and hit the Mbaise man. Presumably the Mbaise man was so dangerous. This is a saying by members of one ethnic group towards other persons that are also of the same ethnic group.  This surely suggest an "enclave" way of thinking if people who come from the same ethnic group can use such a dehumanizing language against some of their members. The place was quiet when I said that. No one could deny that I spoke the truth. The information officer of the local government immediately said he would like to interview me at the end of the farewell party. Across Nigeria or Africa, if we cannot work hard to reach understanding at the local level and respect the dignity of all, how can we talk of national unity or even pan-Africanism? I discussed this with students in class. And what about the Umuleri and Aguleri conflict:http://www.unn.edu.ng/internals/repository/view/ODAwNw--  

Of course such conflicts are all over Nigeria and African countries as well. So it is not unique to one region or ethnic group. There are two points I am trying to make here: it takes an enclave way of thinking for people so close to each other to engage in such warfare; and second, this shows that identity is socially constructed and that is why even if genetically people are of the same ethnic group, depending on how they were socialized, they can see other people in the same ethnic group as outsiders for reasons that are too numerous for me to discuss here.   

 Here in Nnamdi Azikiwe University, there is tension between Pentecostals and Catholics even though they are all Igbos. And those from Imo state are treated like outsiders because the University is in Anambra state. The VC is from Imo State but some here resent him. Note that he is a Nigerian. There is still a court case against his appointment if my memory is correct. The person challenging the appointment is from Anambra State. What I am describing here is common in many regions of Nigeria. Federal universities have become like state universities now.  Do not assume Hausa-Fulani is monolithic or that Yoruba is monolithic. All such identities require effort so that they can be effectively constructed and sustained. My hope is that the process of building such an identity which initially starts from infancy to childhood, when an infant is not even aware of himself or herself, will continue to expand until it comes to terms with our shared humanity and not stagnate at the ethnic, state, national or even continental level. Thank you very much.

Samuel

Dark passages

http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/03/08/dark_passages/?page=full

Does the harsh language in the Koran explain Islamic violence? Don't answer till you've taken a look inside the Bible

By Philip Jenkins

March 8, 2009

WE HAVE A good idea what was passing through the minds of the Sept. 11 hijackers as they made their way to the airports.

Their Al Qaeda handlers had instructed them to meditate on al-Tawba and Anfal, two lengthy suras from the Koran, the holy scripture of Islam. The passages make for harrowing reading. God promises to "cast terror into the hearts of those who are bent on denying the truth; strike, then, their necks!" (Koran 8.12). God instructs his Muslim followers to kill unbelievers, to capture them, to ambush them (Koran 9.5). Everything contributes to advancing the holy goal: "Strike terror into God's enemies, and your enemies" (Koran 8.60). Perhaps in their final moments, the hijackers took refuge in these words, in which God lauds acts of terror and massacre.

On a much lesser scale, others have used the words of the Koran to sanction violence. Even in cases of domestic violence and honor killing, perpetrators can find passages that seem to justify brutal acts (Koran 4.34).

Citing examples such as these, some Westerners argue that the Muslim scriptures themselves inspire terrorism, and drive violent jihad. Evangelist Franklin Graham has described his horror on finding so many Koranic passages that command the killing of infidels: the Koran, he thinks, "preaches violence." Prominent conservatives Paul Weyrich and William Lind argued that "Islam is, quite simply, a religion of war," and urged that Muslims be encouraged to leave US soil. Today, Dutch politician Geert Wilders faces trial for his film "Fitna," in which he demands that the Koran be suppressed as the modern-day equivalent to Hitler's "Mein Kampf."

Even Westerners who have never opened the book - especially such people, perhaps - assume that the Koran is filled with calls for militarism and murder, and that those texts shape Islam.

Unconsciously, perhaps, many Christians consider Islam to be a kind of dark shadow of their own faith, with the ugly words of the Koran standing in absolute contrast to the scriptures they themselves cherish. In the minds of ordinary Christians - and Jews - the Koran teaches savagery and warfare, while the Bible offers a message of love, forgiveness, and charity. For the prophet Micah, God's commands to his people are summarized in the words "act justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly with your God" (Micah 6:8). Christians recall the words of the dying Jesus: "Father, forgive them: they know not what they do."

But in terms of ordering violence and bloodshed, any simplistic claim about the superiority of the Bible to the Koran would be wildly wrong. In fact, the Bible overflows with "texts of terror," to borrow a phrase coined by the American theologian Phyllis Trible. The Bible contains far more verses praising or urging bloodshed than does the Koran, and biblical violence is often far more extreme, and marked by more indiscriminate savagery. The Koran often urges believers to fight, yet it also commands that enemies be shown mercy when they surrender. Some frightful portions of the Bible, by contrast, go much further in ordering the total extermination of enemies, of whole families and races - of men, women, and children, and even their livestock, with no quarter granted. One cherished psalm (137) begins with the lovely line, "By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept"; it ends by blessing anyone who would seize Babylon's infants and smash their skulls against the rocks.

To say that terrorists can find religious texts to justify their acts does not mean that their violence actually grows from those scriptural roots. Indeed, such an assumption itself is based on the crude fundamentalist formulation that everything in a given religion must somehow be authorized in scripture. The difference between the Bible and the Koran is not that one book teaches love while the other proclaims warfare and terrorism, rather it is a matter of how the works are read. Yes, the Koran has been ransacked to supply texts authorizing murder, but so has the Bible

If Christians or Jews want to point to violent parts of the Koran and suggest that those elements taint the whole religion, they open themselves to the obvious question: what about their own faiths? If the founding text shapes the whole religion, then Judaism and Christianity deserve the utmost condemnation as religions of savagery. Of course, they are no such thing; nor is Islam.

But the implications run still deeper. All faiths contain within them some elements that are considered disturbing or unacceptable to modern eyes; all must confront the problem of absorbing and reconciling those troubling texts or doctrines. In some cases, religions evolve to the point where the ugly texts so fade into obscurity that ordinary believers scarcely acknowledge their existence, or at least deny them the slightest authority in the modern world. In other cases, the troubling words remain dormant, but can return to life in conditions of extreme stress and conflict. Texts, like people, can live or die. This whole process of forgetting and remembering, of growing beyond the harsh words found in a text, is one of the critical questions that all religions must learn to address.

Faithful Muslims believe that the Koran is the inspired word of God, delivered verbatim through the prophet Mohammed. Non-Muslims, of course, see the text as the work of human hands, whether of Mohammed himself or of schools of his early followers. But whichever view we take, the Koran as it stands claims to speak in God's voice. That is one of the great differences between the Bible and the Koran. Even for dedicated fundamentalists, inspired Bible passages come through the pen of a venerated historical individual, whether it's the Prophet Isaiah or the Apostle Paul, and that leaves open some chance of blaming embarrassing views on that person's own prejudices. The Koran gives no such option: For believers, every word in the text - however horrendous a passage may sound to modern ears - came directly from God.

We don't have to range too far to find passages that horrify. The Koran warns, "Those who make war against God and his apostle . . . shall be put to death or crucified" (Koran 5.33). Other passages are equally threatening, though they usually have to be wrenched out of context to achieve this effect. One text from Sura (Chapter) 47 begins "O true believers, when you encounter the unbelievers, strike off their heads."

But in such matters, the Bible too has plenty of passages that read painfully today. Tales of war and assassination pervade the four books of Samuel and Kings, where it is hard to avoid verses justifying the destruction of God's enemies. In a standard English translation of the Old Testament, the words "war" and "battle" each occur more than 300 times, not to mention all the bindings, beheadings, and rapes.

The richest harvest of gore comes from the books that tell the story of the Children of Israel after their escape from Egypt, as they take over their new land in Canaan. These events are foreshadowed in the book of Deuteronomy, in which God proclaims "I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh" (Deut. 32:42). We then turn to the full orgy of militarism, enslavement, and race war in the Books of Joshua and Judges. Moses himself reputedly authorized this campaign when he told his followers that, once they reached Canaan, they must annihilate all the peoples they find in the cities specially reserved for them (Deut. 20: 16-18).

Joshua, Moses's successor, proves an apt pupil. When he conquers the city of Ai, God commands that he take away the livestock and the loot, while altogether exterminating the inhabitants, and he duly does this (Joshua 8). When he defeats and captures five kings, he murders his prisoners of war, either by hanging or crucifixion. (Joshua 10). Nor is there any suggestion that the Canaanites and their kin were targeted for destruction because they were uniquely evil or treacherous: They happened to be on the wrong land at the wrong time. And Joshua himself was by no means alone. In Judges again, other stories tell of the complete extermination of tribes with the deliberate goal of ending their genetic lines.

In modern times, we would call this genocide. If the forces of Joshua and his successor judges committed their acts in the modern world, then observers would not hesitate to speak of war crimes. They would draw comparisons with the notorious guerrilla armies of Uganda and the Congo, groups like the appalling Lord's Resistance Army. By comparison, the Koranic rules of war were, by the standards of their time, quite civilized. Mohammed wanted to win over his enemies, not slaughter them.

Not only do the Israelites in the Bible commit repeated acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing, but they do so under direct divine command. According to the first book of Samuel, God orders King Saul to strike at the Amalekite people, killing every man, woman, and child, and even wiping out their livestock (1 Samuel 15:2-3). And it is this final detail that proves Saul's undoing, as he keeps some of the animals, and thereby earns a scolding from the prophet Samuel. Fortunately, Saul repents, and symbolizes his regrets by dismembering the captured enemy king. Morality triumphs.

The Bible also alleges divine approval of racism and segregation. If you had to choose the single biblical story that most conspicuously outrages modern sentiment, it might well be the tale of Phinehas, a story that remains unknown to most Christian readers today (Numbers 25: 1-15). The story begins when the children of Israel are threatened by a plague. Phinehas, however, shrewdly identifies the cause of God's anger: God is outraged at the fact that a Hebrew man has found a wife among the people of Midian, and through her has imported an alien religion. Phinehas slaughters the offending couple - and, mollified, God ends the plague and blesses Phinehas and his descendants. Modern American racists love this passage. In 1990, Richard Kelly Hoskins used the story as the basis for his manifesto "Vigilantes of Christendom." Hoskins advocated the creation of a new order of militant white supremacists, the Phineas Priesthood, and since then a number of groups have assumed this title, claiming Phinehas as the justification for terrorist attacks on mixed-race couples and abortion clinics.

Modern Christians who believe the Bible offers only a message of love and forgiveness are usually thinking only of the New Testament. Certainly, the New Testament contains far fewer injunctions to kill or segregate. Yet it has its own troublesome passages, especially when the Gospel of John expresses such hostility to the Ioudaioi, a Greek word that usually translates as "Jews." Ioudaioi plan to stone Jesus, they plot to kill him; in turn, Jesus calls them liars, children of the Devil.

Various authorities approach the word differently: I might prefer, for instance, to interpret it as "followers of the oppressive Judean religious elite," Or perhaps "Judeans." But in practice, any reputable translation has to use the simple and familiar word, "Jew," so that we read about the disciples hiding out after the Crucifixion, huddled in a room that is locked "for fear of the Jews." So harsh do these words sound to post-Holocaust ears that some churches exclude them from public reading.

Commands to kill, to commit ethnic cleansing, to institutionalize segregation, to hate and fear other races and religions . . . all are in the Bible, and occur with a far greater frequency than in the Koran. At every stage, we can argue what the passages in question mean, and certainly whether they should have any relevance for later ages. But the fact remains that the words are there, and their inclusion in the scripture means that they are, literally, canonized, no less than in the Muslim scripture.

Whether they are used or not depends on wider social attitudes. When America entered the First World War, for instance, firebrand preachers drew heavily on Jesus' warning that he came not to bring peace, but a sword. As it stands, that is not much of a text of terror, but if one is searching desperately for a weapon-related verse, it will serve to justify what people are going to do anyway

Interpretation is all, and that changes over time. Religions have their core values, their non-negotiable truths, but they also surround themselves with many stories not essential to the message. Any religion that exists over long eras absorbs many of the ideas and beliefs of the community in which it finds itself, and reflects those in its writings. Over time, thinkers and theologians reject or underplay those doctrines and texts that contradict the underlying principles of the faith as it develops. However strong the textual traditions justifying war and conflict, believers come instead to stress love and justice. Of course Muslim societies throughout history have engaged in jihad, in holy war, and have found textual warrant so to do. But over time, other potent strains in the religion moved away from literal warfare. However strong the calls to jihad, struggle, in Islamic thought, the hugely influential Sufi orders taught that the real struggle was the inner battle to control one's sinful human instincts, and this mattered vastly more than any pathetic clash of swords and spears. The Greater Jihad is one fought in the soul.

Often, such reforming thinkers are so successful that the troublesome words fade utterly from popular consciousness, even among believers who think of themselves as true fundamentalists. Most Christian and Jewish believers, even those who are moderately literate in scriptural terms, read their own texts extraordinarily selectively. How many Christian preachers would today find spiritual sustenance in Joshua's massacres? How many American Christians know that the New Testament demands that women cover their hair, at least in church settings, and that Paul's Epistles include more detailed rules on the subject than anything written in the Koran? This kind of holy amnesia is a basic component of religious development. It does not imply rejecting scriptures, but rather reading them in the total context of the religion as it progresses through history.

Alternatively, one can choose to deny that historical experience, and seize on any available word or verse that authorizes the violence that is already taking place - but once someone has decided to do that, it scarcely matters what the text actually says.

Philip Jenkins teaches at Penn State University. He is the author of "The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia -- and How It Died."

© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

 

Samuel Zalanga, Ph.D.

Bethel University

Department of Anthropology, Sociology and Reconciliation Studies,

Bethel University, 3900 Bethel Drive, #24, Saint Paul, MN 55112.

Office Phone: 651-638-6023

On Thu, Mar 1, 2018 at 11:50 AM, Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com> wrote:

The first sentence on which I presuppose the whole edifice is built, sticks in the eye : re - "But is not Biafra the way you characterized it recently in this forum in your debate with IBK more like a blood ancestral movement bound together by language and culture and we live in a globalized cosmopolitan society as you acknowledged just now?"

Even globally speaking, I hope that you and Samuel don't regard Biafra as merely " a tiny enclave" , even if you may regard the Brexit secessionist British Isles or Merry England as a "tiny enclave". With regard to Biafra or any other "tiny" entity ( relatively speaking – relative to the poetic cosmos ) as my mother used to tell me , " despise not the day of little things"

Thinking of what some people refer to as another "tiny enclave" ( Israel) " a blood ancestral movement bound together by language and culture" and her role in history, even if Hebrew is not as widely spoken despite the world outreach of Christianity and Islam which acknowledge and lay claims to the role of the Holy Hebrew Language Prophets

This was published yesterday : The Palestinians and Their Allies Should Know the Truth About the Nazis

On Thursday, 1 March 2018 14:07:29 UTC+1, Chidi Anthony Opara wrote:

(1)One important issue the advocates of "mother tongue" do not address is the relevance of a "mother tongue" spoken only in a very tiny enclave in this era  of globalization.

(2)The majority dwells in frivolities, that is why the minority rules.

(c) Chidi Anthony Opara

#2018Quotes

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