"a pathetic shadow"

“You will not meet a young Muslim man in the world who is not angry about something." This, to the court, from the ex-fiancée of a terrorist. I'm not sure if she was a witness for the prosecution or for the defense. The article, by Salim Mansur, brings up some interesting points, though.

Mansur speaks of the nature of Moslem culture: "Their cultures are mostly closed, authoritarian and patriarchal. While Muslim men of all ages can be genuinely friendly to strangers, theirs is a culture of boasting and quick tempers. [¶] But when one engages them individually (especially younger men) in polite discussions of politics and history ... the mask falls and there is much sorrow expressed over how greatly the Muslim world has degenerated into a pathetic shadow of its past. [¶] What is privately admitted cannot be publicly affirmed or discussed."

The issue is anger. The cause is frustration. As usual. As always. We desire but cannot have. We have some ideal in our minds about how things should be, and reality does not conform to it. That makes me so mad.

Islam is a shadow of its past? I suppose so. But that's all the past can ever be. A shadow. The problem then is that a shadow is yearning after its shadow. Stated more concretely, Islam will never amount to anything worth while, until it adapts itself to the situation as it is, rather than as is should be. Indeed, the supposed greatness of its past lies only in a comparison to the other practically stone-age cultures that it conquered. To be head caveman isn't much. Islam's greatest greatness wasn't in the fact that it adapted an alphabet or had mathematicians. It's that it conquered just about everywhere it went.

That's all Islam knows how to do. When it can't do that, it gets angry.

All this is very obvious. When it's combined with self-delusion and hypocrisy, putting on an angry public face and whispering the truth only into one's pillow, and that only during fitful dreams -- well, no room for health, in such a sick bed. Islam, as has been argued in these pages, is deeply dysfunction at its very core. Here, we have a concrete example, in a young angry terrorist, of what such double-think leads to.

Adults understand that anger is never an excuse for action. It is properly a motivator, not a motive. It is a source of energy. No shame, in itself. Jesus felt it, as when he marched up the Temple Mount, weaving leather cords into a whip as he went. Righteousness often seems to have a tinge of anger in it. Part of the palate. Shouldn't be the only color we know. That's a difference between living in light and living in shadows.

Ah well. That's all. Just another peek at human folly. We learn our lessons where we find them.


J