Mirabile dictu: nobody in Western North Carolina has mentioned it to me either. I'm fielding a lot of questions about it from friends elsewhere, but locally it seems to be of no great concern.
One of the request was from someone traveling on business in France. Did I have any advice on avoiding violence? Yeah, put "mosque" into your phone's map app, and don't go to any neighborhoods that have one. Friday afternoon is the most likely time for violence, because that's when the weekly sermons are. If you get through Friday and you're not in a neighborhood with mosques, enjoy your trip. It'll probably be all right.
That's not to say that Muslims can't, aren't, blah, blah, blah. It's just a straight risk assessment. CNN's Amanpour asked her guest if 'its possible to hold two thoughts in mind' (4:10)-- this is an Aristotelian inquiry about mental sophistication -- that the slaughter was as bad as it gets, but also that 'everyone has the right to live with rights and dignity... legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people...', etc. Sure, Muslims can aspire to political liberalism, and adopt a view of the Rights of Man and Citizen. Absolutely, if you are a political liberal, there's nothing more fundamental than the view that all people deserve dignity and rights. The question is what you do when your neighbors are not political liberals. Some neighbors don't accept that you have dignity, or even believe in political rights; and indeed, hold that it's not only fine but desirable to kill you, your children and your elderly.
There's no logical contradiction here that would entail Aristotelian sophistication to entertain. If they were liberals, then you could live in a liberal order. Muslims can be, have been, liberals too. It only works out if that prerequisite has been satisfied. Otherwise, you're down to keeping out of the wrong neighborhoods when you can, and being well-armed when you can't. And really that's good advice anyway and all the time: Havamal 38, Lk. 22:36.
3 comments:
CNN's Amanpour asked her guest if 'its possible to hold two thoughts in mind' (4:10)-- this is an Aristotelian inquiry about mental sophistication -- that the slaughter was as bad as it gets, but also that 'everyone has the right to live with rights and dignity... legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people...', etc
Hamas, with the apparent overwhelming support of Gaza, showed by its recent actions that no Israeli "has the right to live with rights and dignity." Killing babies or killing those atending a music festival, etc. As such it appears to me that the Gazans and Haas have forfeited "the right to live with rights and dignity." Like our friends on the left love to say, actions have consequences. As ye reap, so shall ye sow.
Thought some might find what I recently posted on NewNeo to be of interest.
J.J
While the Jews were building a country, the Palestinian refugees have spent their years trying to destroy Israel and have thus languished on the UN dole. Quite a contrast!
Through my father, I knew a Palestinian Christian family. The patriarch of the family, who from 1949-1967 worked in the Jordanian civil service, had told his children well before the 1967 Six Day War to get out of the West Bank. He told his children that Muslims in the workplace would never promote a Christian if a Muslim were available to be promoted. Sounds as if he had some experience with that.
As a result, several of his children went to the US for college. They were very bright, very capable: Masters or Doctorate level STEMs. A grandson went to the US for graduate school, got his STEM doctorate, and worked for several decades in the US. He had been in elementary school when the Israelis took over the West Bank. (Recall that the Israelis told King Hussein that if he didn’t declare war in 1967, the Israelis would stay put.) As a result of living a decade or so under the Israelis, he had a much more anti-Israeli attitude than his aunts or uncles living in the US. In his several decades of employment at US universities, he appeared to spend as much time in political activism for Palestine as he did on his work. (I read once online that his daughter had a Jewish boyfriend!)
He eventually moved back to the West Bank.
One irony about his anti-Israeli activism is that one of his cousins on the other side of the family has posted online about Hamas and other Muslim groups harassing Christians. (I knew several from his mother’s side of the family; the aforementioned cousin was from his father’s side.)
The patriarch visited the States in the mid-1970s, and had dinner at my parents’ house. He did not like the Israeli occupation- no surprise there. The last I heard of him, he sent a Christmas card to my mother before she died in the late 1980s. He and his wife were living with a son in Kuwait. Given the Palestinian support for
Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, I doubt that ended well for the patriarch or his son’s family in Kuwait.
I think the "Day of Rage" was directed to their "Chi Boy Fridays."
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