Arabian might like this

[Said1]

http://www.sedos.org/

 

[Annie]

Said1, there are some really good links here, I especially liked this one:

Anthony O'Mahony
Islam in Europe

 

[Said1]

Said1, there are some really good links here, I especially liked this one:

Anthony O'Mahony
Islam in Europe

You're right. I can't get a link to the article, only home page. I could paste the article, it's long and probably not worth all the effort!

 

[Annie]

You're right. I can't get a link to the article, only home page. I could paste the article, it's long and probably not worth all the effort!

Yeah, I tried to get the link to the article too. How about the title and writer though? I should be able to find it then..

 

[Said1]

Yeah, I tried to get the link to the article too. How about the title and writer though? I should be able to find it then..

Sure. The link on the home page is about half way down entitled "Seminar 2003" The author is Anita Mir 'A Muslim Woman’s Perspective'.

 

[Annie]

Sure. The link on the home page is about half way down entitled "Seminar 2003" The author is Anita Mir 'A Muslim Woman’s Perspective'.

Found it!

 

[Annie]

Found it!

This is an excellent piece, worth reading in its entirety. Here is an excerpt:

...Richard Sennett, in his book, The fall of public man, contends that in the Antique world inwardness (the private) was based on the principle of religious transcendence of the world. It was in the public domain that the world’s action took place and where man acquired his sense of continuity. Sennett says that following the upsurge of capitalism and secularism the public domain was dis-valued. Privateness was then seen to lead not to transcendence, but to self-absorption. Without the public or political domain — the arena of continuity, the reposit of our shared memories, we become rootless. Those who espouse one or another form of religious fundamentalism,3 understand and feed off this rootlessness. Hannah Arendt describes this as the human paradox: just as we have control over nature, the ability to go to space and literally transcend earth we have come to believe that we are only one of many animal species that just live and die. The Pakistani poet/philosopher, Mohammad Iqbal in Is religion possible?4 makes a similar point when he says, ‘... an unprecedented control over the forces of Nature, has robbed man of his faith in his own future’.

In my time as both a journalist and human activist in Pakistan, I have interviewed a number of fundamentalists. What remains with me is the implacability of their faces — in which all uncertainty has been wiped clear — and their lack of imagination in envisaging a future. The world they would build is one that belongs to the past, but to a past however that never existed. Their call to ‘tradition’, to ‘cultural authenticity’ is not only misguided, it is wrong. For tradition and culture are vital; they remain so by their openness to change. As regards uncertainty, the philosopher Martha Nussbaum makes an important point: it is through our uncertainty, our pain and fragility that we learn to be truly human. Our acceptance of such fragility is, therefore, seen to be a good. Fundamentalists, with the rigidity of their thinking, would rid us of chance, the wind of fortune that brings with it both good and ill. The scale of our lives would be rendered in a minor key. And beauty would be forbidden to us, for it is, as Plato says, the only thing we know instinctively. Instincts which inspire us to the transcendent would not be allowed; for they would lead to a return to the sanctity of the private. In the fundamentalists reckoning, private and public space are one and each man becomes the keeper of his neighbours’ morality....

 

[Said1]

This is an excellent piece, worth reading in its entirety. Here is an excerpt:

I'm trying to get my hands on the full paper. I was really impressed with her analysis. Will post if I can find a pdf version!

 

[Annie]

I'm trying to get my hands on the full paper. I was really impressed with her analysis. Will post if I can find a pdf version!

I'd be thrilled if you do!