We're running on parallel tracks, aren't we? :-) ... Thanks much for adding the link AND for your excellent post. I've read a bit about Qutb, but your essay tied together a lot of loose threads. There are moments when I think finding a bridge between the Anglo-American-Biblical-Enlightenment world that animates you (and me) and the world of Qutb, al-Alawqi, and the mullahs is an impossibility. The gulf between those two worlds is too big. But what's the option but to try. Otherwise, it's October 7, Gaza, and nukes -- all the way down. ... Keep the faith, Daniel. And keep doing the work. You're really good at it.
Hi Alan and many thanks. Remember Qutb wanted to created a vanguard because most Muslims didn’t agree with him. That's our hope. At the very least the majority of Muslims accepted the mixing of Islam and Aristotle in the time of Maimonides. The return to first generation Islam was Qutb's unfortunate innovation that is plaguing us today.
"At the very least the majority of Muslims accepted the mixing of Islam and Aristotle in the time of Maimonides." >> So why do you think Qutb reverted to a 7th-century version of Islam? I don't think it was colonialism or the post-colonial balkanization of the former caliphate. Yes, there was and is frustration with living inside a political grid built by Western powers before they all went home. But I sense something else is at work.
I think that an ideology can afford to be relatively beneficent when it's on top, but when it declines then things get Darwinian. Islam declined compared to the West and it doesn’t yet have a theological answer to that.
Ideology. Maybe. But since we all have our hobby horses, I'll get back on mine: I think Aristotle and Maimonides were brilliant in the realm of ideas. But what about Story? How much narrative juice can we squeeze out of "The Guide to The Perplexed" and "Poetics"? ... My pet theory is that guys like Qutb are drawn to Marx because Marx provides a Story for his dialectics. People could read his analysis, then cast themselves inside the Marxist drama. They weren't simply embracing a set of ideas; they became actors in world history riding a narrative wave to the shore of Redemption.
As I've said before: The (Jewish) Story begets The Law, not the other way around.
Qutob is the Americanized spelling of a ex friend of mines last name whose father came to Minneapolis in 1948 to open the first mosque. We had an amicable delightful relationship for decades since meeting in college, she was gorgeous and exotic and secular and I was the blue-eyed Ashkenazi and there was no rancor between us. I ate at her home in mid-august 2 years ago and her kids told me that they watched challah braiding videos on tiktok and thought it was super cool that my daughters were in seminary in Israel.
I was supposed to have dinner at her house on Friday October 6th and for random reasons I canceled.
On October the 8th she texted me saying that her white American husband's family was freaking out and asking her husband for guns because they had heard of hamas's day of rage and she was enraged that they were in fear and she spewed the speech about islamophobia all without a scintilla of sympathy or acknowledging that my two daughters were there, huge epiphany... I speculate that she was kin to MB, yet she married a non-muslim non-practicing American Christian and she has no Islamic observance, but hangs out with Lefty Jews at the Peace center, haven't talked since receiving that woe is me as an Arab the world is picking on me text...
Relevance to the story nearly none, thanks for illuminating another dark figure staining our history
This is such a refreshing article about what is possible. If the ME can be freed from the warmongering and radicals then the world might be a better place for everyone again. I'm just not sure how probable this is, but one can only hope and pray that the tide will turn and diverse cultures can co-exist in peace again.
We're running on parallel tracks, aren't we? :-) ... Thanks much for adding the link AND for your excellent post. I've read a bit about Qutb, but your essay tied together a lot of loose threads. There are moments when I think finding a bridge between the Anglo-American-Biblical-Enlightenment world that animates you (and me) and the world of Qutb, al-Alawqi, and the mullahs is an impossibility. The gulf between those two worlds is too big. But what's the option but to try. Otherwise, it's October 7, Gaza, and nukes -- all the way down. ... Keep the faith, Daniel. And keep doing the work. You're really good at it.
Hi Alan and many thanks. Remember Qutb wanted to created a vanguard because most Muslims didn’t agree with him. That's our hope. At the very least the majority of Muslims accepted the mixing of Islam and Aristotle in the time of Maimonides. The return to first generation Islam was Qutb's unfortunate innovation that is plaguing us today.
"At the very least the majority of Muslims accepted the mixing of Islam and Aristotle in the time of Maimonides." >> So why do you think Qutb reverted to a 7th-century version of Islam? I don't think it was colonialism or the post-colonial balkanization of the former caliphate. Yes, there was and is frustration with living inside a political grid built by Western powers before they all went home. But I sense something else is at work.
I think that an ideology can afford to be relatively beneficent when it's on top, but when it declines then things get Darwinian. Islam declined compared to the West and it doesn’t yet have a theological answer to that.
Ideology. Maybe. But since we all have our hobby horses, I'll get back on mine: I think Aristotle and Maimonides were brilliant in the realm of ideas. But what about Story? How much narrative juice can we squeeze out of "The Guide to The Perplexed" and "Poetics"? ... My pet theory is that guys like Qutb are drawn to Marx because Marx provides a Story for his dialectics. People could read his analysis, then cast themselves inside the Marxist drama. They weren't simply embracing a set of ideas; they became actors in world history riding a narrative wave to the shore of Redemption.
As I've said before: The (Jewish) Story begets The Law, not the other way around.
Fascinating stuff
Qutob is the Americanized spelling of a ex friend of mines last name whose father came to Minneapolis in 1948 to open the first mosque. We had an amicable delightful relationship for decades since meeting in college, she was gorgeous and exotic and secular and I was the blue-eyed Ashkenazi and there was no rancor between us. I ate at her home in mid-august 2 years ago and her kids told me that they watched challah braiding videos on tiktok and thought it was super cool that my daughters were in seminary in Israel.
I was supposed to have dinner at her house on Friday October 6th and for random reasons I canceled.
On October the 8th she texted me saying that her white American husband's family was freaking out and asking her husband for guns because they had heard of hamas's day of rage and she was enraged that they were in fear and she spewed the speech about islamophobia all without a scintilla of sympathy or acknowledging that my two daughters were there, huge epiphany... I speculate that she was kin to MB, yet she married a non-muslim non-practicing American Christian and she has no Islamic observance, but hangs out with Lefty Jews at the Peace center, haven't talked since receiving that woe is me as an Arab the world is picking on me text...
Relevance to the story nearly none, thanks for illuminating another dark figure staining our history
This is such a refreshing article about what is possible. If the ME can be freed from the warmongering and radicals then the world might be a better place for everyone again. I'm just not sure how probable this is, but one can only hope and pray that the tide will turn and diverse cultures can co-exist in peace again.
Love never fails 🌾