Sunday, July 2, 2023

Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - More Quran burning in Sweden in the name of "Freedom of Expression " 2

You wrote a lot toyin, and i want to take my time to respond. But if you livedhere, i think pretty strongly you would see the implication of your question about what the muslims here have done to merit the opprobrium is misplaced. I want to make this short, so i will say it is a case of blaming the victim for their punishment.
9/11 was a great shock to this country, and if you recall it followed a good deal of american attacks on various muslim entities in the middle east. But the people in the planes, in 9/11, were not american muslims, not supported by american muslims. It was saudis. The kid who bombed the boston marathon was another foreigner. You'd have a very hard time finding muslims to blame for attacks in this country, but an easier time finding americans largely from the rightwing fringe who have blown up buildings with children or shot children in schools or committed atrocities. And you'd have no trouble finding americans who supported invading iraq and afghanistan and then who tortured, created guantanamo, etc etc.
There is no end to this "war on terrorism" that was unleashed, largely by bush, and then all american presidents since, including obama.
Sorry, the muslims in this country have lived peacefully and decently, but are blamed by the far right for everything.
It is a sad state of affairs.
That's my short answer! Something took hold of my fingers and made them tap it out. Couldn't help it.
Ken

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, July 2, 2023 8:01:44 PM
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - More Quran burning in Sweden in the name of "Freedom of Expression " 2
 
Thanks Cornelius.

That list of my holy books is not organized in order indicating value but simply indicating what's occupying my attention right now.

A text becomes holy for me when it deals powerfully with uplifting ideas, ideas relating to the ultimate significance of existence.

There are lines from Soyinka and the Encyclopedia Britannica I repeat to myself every day. These are holy for me.

I was also trying to suggest my view that conventionally understood sacred texts are great but not unique in their qualities.

A good part of their veneration comes from social consensus.

Falola's Iya Lekuleja is my own African  version of Milarepa, Jesus and other masters of  self transcending spirituality, integrating various conceptions of African nature spirituality and medicine.

Thanks

Toyin 


On Sun, Jul 2, 2023, 11:08 PM Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com> wrote:

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju,


Why didn't you include Moshe Chaim Luzzatto?


4U2 Smile: 


I'm not an idol worshipper and I'm telling you the Gospel truth: If you had included Kperogi (About 1 020 000 results (0,41 seconds) I would have forgiven you, easily, since it would have confirmed something about your taste,  not for literate literary criticism per se, but for big grammar characteristics, spinx  jingoism, and higher political hermeneutics extravaganza


Now,  let it be said: I'm not going to forgive you because you did not include Abiola Irele, speak less of the only book I've read about your area, written by J. Omosade Awolalu who in my estimation deserves a place in your pantheon.


If I have offended you, please forgive me. 


I've been wondering why you limit your Holy books to 14 categories.


BTW,  in 1989, my Pir, Sultanhussein Tabandeh who was then the Qutb and leader of The Gonabadi Dervishes requested that I should read Al Quran Al Kareem fourteen (14) times;I suppose in honour of The Fourteen Infallibles alaihim salaam.


With all the nonsense rabble Islamophobic talk about "Militant Islam", and "Moderate Islam" I would recommend that for a proper orientation, you visit this website https://www.al-islam.org/

and prepare yourself for the advent of Imam Mahdi -alaihi salaam

'







On Sunday, 2 July 2023 at 00:29:24 UTC+2 Oluwatoyin Adepoju wrote:
My Holy Books

1. The sections on Iya Lekuleja in Toyin Falola's A Mouth Sweeter than Salt and Counting the Tiger's Teeth

2. Toyin Falola's essay '''Ritual Archives''

3. My ongoing essay on the image of Iya Lekuleja

4. The acknowledgements pages of Nimi Wariboko's books and some of his Whatsapp communications 

5. My essays on Nimi Wariboko

6. Akinwumi Ogundiran's The Yoruba A New History

7. My writings on Ogundiran's book

8. Various writings of Wole Soyinka's

9. Everything written by Susanne Wenger

10. My writings on Wenger

11. A good no of the works of Immanuel Kant

12. My own writing on Kant

13. More not incuded here, including works of fiction

14. The Bible, the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, the Mahabarata, ese ifa and other traditionally understood holy books

Why Are Those Texts Holy to Me?

They are inspired and they inspire me

No one should burn my own copies bcs they are precious to me 

I would not want any copes to be burnt so people are not deprived of them

but i would wonder why anyone would bother burning copies of them

is the person trying to make a statement of some sort?

i would like to dialogue with the person to understand what they are trying to say

but i would not be offended, disturbed or challged by such burning

you cant burn ideas 

unless the person is not trying to send a signal of hatred as in the Nazi burning of Jewish books i would not be bothered

i would be  interested though in the persons motives 

thanks
toyin

On Sat, 1 Jul 2023 at 19:29, Harrow, Kenneth <har...@msu.edu> wrote:
dear cornelius, toyin,
i don't want to offend other people. if i disagree with them, i still will respect them, as long as their own beliefs and actions are not offensive to me or others.
so, no qur'an burning. ok. why not? we actually are taught to bury any papers marked with hebrew religious content, rather than to put it in the garbage or recycling, like copies of texts you might be working on and which contain sacred texts. in the past such manuscripts or scrolls would be buried in a geniza, and amidav ghosh wrote a beautiful novel on just the materials and stories that emerged from one such egyptian geniza after hundreds of years had gone by and an anthropologist student came upon them. It was called, In an Antique Land (1992).
the genizas were actually ancient trash bins. what irony, sacred trash becomes archival material of inestimable worth.

We don't have to agree on what is sacred and what is haram, what is to be revered and what disrespected, as long as we can be tolerant of each other.
in spain the best jamon in the world is to be found; in brooklyn it might be considered treif or harmful garbage. but don't spit on my food, don't burn my sacred texts, i won't burn yours.
when the taliban destroyed the giant buddhist statues in afghanistan, even after the buddhists were all gone, whose statues were they destroying? yours and mine. ours, all of ours.
i claim them for us; i claim the benin bronzes for us; i claim the original declaration of independence for us; i claim the magna carta for us; i claim the dead sea scrolls and the codex sinaitucus for us.
so toyin is right, in a sense. we do not want to treat the buddhas or qur'ans or bibles or statues as holy idols which belong to just one people, and whose harm is felt by its owners. we are all harmed by the violence and disrespect, not because the idol is sacred, but because we are holy ourselves.
ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu


From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, July 1, 2023 12:05 PM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - More Quran burning in Sweden in the name of "Freedom of Expression " 2
 
Shalom

After Mao and the Communists took over in China, at the age of thirty-five ( 35) my late best friend and erstwhile mentor  Mikhail Tunkel  - very Jewish, of Lithuanian ancestry - a disciple of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, a great admirer of the Chinese people, a friend of Ehud Olmert's father, etc, moved from Harbin, China, where he was born and bred, moved to Israel In 1953 -and to Sweden circa 1988. Back in his dear Israel, one day, when curiosity got the better of him, he entered Al-Aqsa Mosque, so he tells me, and with increasing excitement, as he was making his way to the minbar which he imagined was the mosque's holy of holies, he espied the Quran and was about to take hold of the book when a loud voice - which he thought was coming from Heaven, shattered the silence with these words:


" Only the pure shall touch it! "


He says that his heart almost stopped and he almost fell down with fright, he thought it was the voice of the archangel Gabriel, but it turned out it was only one of the custodians of the mosque shouting from the balcony that he should not touch the Holy Quran, that he must be in a state of wudu - (ritual purity) to touch the Holy Quran …


I Have only one question in response to all that you have said in this thread: Does Hillel's dictum not apply to Quran burning? 


Hillel the Elder: "That which Is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow! That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary"

On Saturday, 1 July 2023 at 03:16:00 UTC+2 Harrow, Kenneth wrote:
i'm like toyin adepoju in thinking the value of the book doesn't really lie in its material properties. and i wouldn't let the haters bait me.
on the other hand, there's lots of burning i would really mind a lot.
i recently read of the various statues and scrolls etc destroyed by the various goons during the iraq war—priceless heritage of all human kind. and the taliban destruction of the buddhist statues.
if it were a 8th century qur'an, i'd be upset; if it were an early christian relic, i'd be upset.
etc etc
the nazis burned everything jewish they could get their hands on, or sold them. i don't like that.

toyin is right: we don't want to go to war over idolatry of this or that manuscript; but we do want to give value to humanity in our veneration of objects we treasure....like, for instance, the benin bronzes, or ifa heads or yoruba masks etc. when the missionaries burned them they were the same as the foolish iraqi man in sweden who delighted in desecration of the qur'an.
i'm with anthony appiah on this: the relics of each of us are relics for all of us.
ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu


From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, June 30, 2023 7:54 PM
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - More Quran burning in Sweden in the name of "Freedom of Expression " 2
 
If it were my own holy book being burnt I would not care

On Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 2:22 PM Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:

A copy of the Holy Quran was burned outside a mosque in Sweden on Wednesday during the  Eid al-Adha celebration 


Saudi Arabia condemns extremist who burnt Quran outside Stockholm mosque during Eid


Holy Wrath 👍


image.png


Turkeye's President Erdogan reacts to the burning of a Quran outside a mosque in Sweden :


""We will eventually teach the arrogant Westerners that insulting Muslims is not freedom of thought; We will show our reaction in the strongest possible terms, until a determined victory against terrorist organizations and Islamophobia is achieved, Those who commit this crime as well as those who allow it under the guise of freedom of opinion, those who tolerate this despicable act will not be able to achieve their ambitions"




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