Annihilation, One Cultural Artifact, One Memory, At a Time

Epigram

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16
אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן
Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman
All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.
More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."
Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php
Abraham Isaac Kook
"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.
Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).
Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."
Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."
Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.
Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."
Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Notes

Care to Read What I Read?
I've embarked on a great reduction in privacy by bookmarking my web-based reading on the "delicious.com" utility. It may tip my hand as to what I have in mind for blogging, but the same may help friends and frenemies alike track my thinking: here is the URL:

http://www.delicious.com/commart
Author's Wish Each Friday Night
Shabbat Shalom. May our arguments be resolved through perceptive words and good deeds only; may we live another week helpful to one another in relative peace.
Photography: Prints & Services
A gentle reminder: I'm in business as a producer of fine art prints and as a provider of shoot-for-fee services, including portraiture and weddings plus assigned photojournalism. My general location: intersection of I-70 and I-81; core camera system: Nikon; transportation: Mustang.
Main web: www.communicating-arts.com
E-Mail: [email protected]
Also: as of 2011, I am building a photography print-on-demand presence at Fine Art AmericaM. This is the address:

http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/james-oppenheim.html

Effort in print-on-demand will not offset the production nor value of signed, limited edition prints made under my own hand. However, for very good convenience, price, and quality, print-on-demand may work out well for many fans and patrons.
Research Services
If you're engaged in funded research in conflict analysis or other areas that may be addressed here and wish to engage my mind in your project, feel welcome to drop me a note at [email protected].

J. S. Oppenheim's Other Blogs and Webs

September 08, 2008

Annihilation, One Cultural Artifact, One Memory, At a Time

"Not all Arabs are Muslim; not all Muslims are Arab. In fact, only 23 percent of the Arab population living in the United States of America is Muslim; 77 percent are Christian.

"Islam being the fastest growing faith in this country, as it is in the world today, the number of Muslims in American has soared in the last decade 14 fold. Only half a million in the early 70's, the estimated number of Muslims living in America today is between 6 to 7 mmillion. 75 percent of them are non-Arabs.

"Currently, there are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world: in other words, one out of every five persons living on the fact of the earth are Muslim, a ratio that is projected to be one our of four by 2020.

"In view of such a significant number and a vast variety of races, nationalities, and cultures, in what sense if any can one speak of the typical Muslim, man or woman? Such a person has never existed--just as an Islam unified in its practices, policies, and goals has never existed."

Source: Milani, Farzaneh and Abdulaziz Sachedina. "Imagining Unity: Muslim Cultural Diversity in North America". Online video. UVA Newsmakers, 2003.

With a recent note on the Taliban's inhibition of the music trade in Mingora, Pakistan and its effects on the distribution, enjoyment, and preservation of indigenous Pashtun music, I thought I'd surf a few minutes for additional reference to the destruction of the cultural artifacts of others at the hands of militant Islam.

Such were not hard to find, starting, perhaps, with the Bamyan Buddhas destroyed by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

However, I was surprised to find out of the Islamic theocracy of Iran the destruction of an ancient bridge and threatened or now evolving degradation of other structural artifacts of global significance (see Amil Imani's reference).

There seem too complaints of underhanded reconstruction underwritten by the Saudi state. To address the repair of Balkan Islamic monuments, Jolyon Naegele suggests the wholesale bulldozing of the same has been to replace that heritage with architecture more favoring the Saudi Wahhabi vision.

For Israel and the Jews, Mark Ami-El notes the erasure of evidence of Jewish habitation beneath the Temple Mount through the construction of an underground mosque:

"After September 2000, the Muslim Waqf closed off the Temple Mount entirely to any archeological oversight by the Israel Antiquities Authority. Then, in order to complete new underground mosques at the site, it removed to city garbage dumps some 13,000 tons of rubble from the Temple Mount that included archeological remnants from the First and Second Temple periods.

"The intention is to turn the entire 36-acre Temple Mount compound into an exclusively Muslim site by erasing every sign, remnant, and memory of its Jewish past, including the destruction of archeological findings that are proof of this past."

On behalf of traditional Malaysian culture, Chris Prystay tells a tale of subtle erasure of ancient folk dance and theater at the hands of Islamic influence and party politics:

"A Mak Yon performance, which runs over two or three nights, tells one of a dozen stories of mythological royalty. They are typically morality tales about the perils of lust or pride. The story of Dewa Muda, who struggles with sadness because he can't reach his princess, is the most popular.

"The performances are also therapeutic. Villagers seeking a cure for depression or other emotional ills don the same costume as the lead dancer and shadow her as she dances around the stage. By acting out Dewa Muda's own struggle, they purge their own. At the end of the play, the shaman leads the villager into a trance dance, chanting verses to banish the illness.

"Rituals like this are now performed in secret by a handful of retirees . . . ."

Read 'em and weep.

For hope, watch the University of Virginia video featuring Farzaneh Milani and Abdulaziz Sachedina, the latter careful, I think, to compare facets of Islamic ethnic and religious identity with "Italian-ness, and Germaness" but not, no mention, of Jewishness.

Still, four hours down the pike and 3,000 miles across the continent and off to Hawaii or up to Alaska, Muslims, like everyone else, may do things a little differently in America. All welcome diverse and robust cultures, not one that would destroy all others.

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