Communicating Arts - Main Web SiteI had written: "From what American schoolchildren are being taught by their teachers to what Americans are being told by their presidents, concepts unique to Islam are nowadays almost always 'Westernized.'… [T]his phenomenon has resulted in epistemic (and thus endemic) failures, crippling Americans from objectively understanding some of Islam's more troublesome doctrines." [1]
Via the Middle East Forum, Raymond Ibrahim's remarks well recognize the existence of a extensive body of literature culminating in clerical judgment and edict.
As one associate noted, one might argue the meaning of a Qur'anic ayat broadly only to find more certain and swift anchorage in the Hadith, Sunnah, and Tasfir and all their flowdown into hair-splitting exegesis. If language is a cultural technology, one aspect of it in which I believe, then Islam has been working on its own machinery for 1400 years.
For a glimpse into how not parallel or graced with "parity" languages are, here is one of the great contemporary theological experts hashing through Persion, Latin, and Arabic (and his words are in translation too).
Dr Soroush began by explaining the concept of secularism. He said: In Persian, we don’t have a specific term for ‘secularism’; in fact, it’s a term that’s unique to the Latin languages. Most Arabic speakers haven’t found an equivalent for it either and they’ve mostly chosen to use the foreign original. Of course, in Persian, terms such as gitianegi and/or donyaviat have been suggested (derived from the words for the cosmos and the world). In Arabic, too, the term ilmaniat has occasionally been used which is derived from the term for ‘science’ or for ‘the world of differences’. In the Latin languages, ‘secularism’ is derived from the word saeculum, meaning here and now; that is to say, this world and not the next world, this world and not the world beyond. So, in effect, secularism is a confirmation of one world and a rejection of two other worlds. It means that our concern is focused on this earthly, natural world, in which we’re living now, that we’re seeking to understand and to succeed in the world we’re in; we’re not concerned about the world after death or the world beyond (the supernatural). On the whole, secularism is a rejection of asceticism, a confirmation of partaking in and of this world in every sense of the term, and a snubbing of the hereafter and the supernatural. [2]
Abdolkarim Saroush has his own intellectual encounter with the Divine through which to journey in cultural-linguistic multiplex. Although touted as a now renegade pro-democracy Iranian scholar (he who appointed by Ayatollah Khomieni himself oversaw "the expulsion of a significant number of academics and students from universities that he felt were not revolutionary or religious" [3]), his Wikipedia entry sports this slight upside-downism:
Soroush's political theory is in line with the modern tradition from Locke to the framers of the American constitution. It portrays human beings as weak and susceptible to temptation, even predation. As such, they need a vigilant and transparent form of government. He believes that the assumption of innate goodness of mankind, shared by radical Utopians from anarchists to Islamic fundamentalists underestimates the staying power of social evil and discounts the necessity of a government of checks and balances to compensate for the weaknesses of human nature. [3]
Right keys (" . . . Locke to the framers of the American constitution"), discordant melody: America's colonizing prigs, ne Puritans, may have thought the "assumption of innate goodness" shared by radical and evil elements--the same that booted them out of England--but old Ben Franklin and the energetic Thomas Jefferson and others--no: " . . . that all men are created equal" proved their opening salvo, not that some are better believers in God than others, and those others need the judicious mastering of a paternal government.
Nonetheless, such verbal card tricks well point out the remarkable creativity with which humans have evolved separate communicating metonymies: our most critical symbols recognize and address similar issues, but they don't cluster in similar ways.
My most simple example of functional metonymy has been this: if I say, "Fireplace" you say what?
You may have some answers, even the one I have in mind, but the one noun should remain open to many possibilities. However, should I have said "Fireplace and stockings," the intuitive choices in minds where Christian culture predominates should be quite narrow.
We may call it the "Salvation Army", and it may function with some discipline and zeal, but it is no army and the charity it receives has no destination known to arms; in Islam, charity may be charitable but it may include a most uncharitable and willful end--the spread of Islam abetted by violence to those who are not of it and wish not to be subdued and enslaved in its name: "For example, in its section on zakat, the Arabic-English edition of the standard legal text, 'Umdat as-Salik, translates fi sabil Allah as "those fighting for Allah." Next to the index entry for fi sabil Allah, it simply says "see jihad"--notes Ibrahim's article. Ibrahim follows through with the meaning of "Jihad" of deepest interest to those most enthralled by it and to those most understandably fearful of the former.
Those who know me know well that I have referred to the Islamic Small Wars as conflicts for detectives and poets from the first peep into the misery in central and south Somalia, and here it would seem the poets, or poet-scholars, blessed with extraordinary cultural, language, and linguistic abilities and skills, have much work ahead of them.
Reference
1. Ibrahim, Raymond. "When Will Westerners Stop Westernizing Islamic Concepts?" Middle East Forum, August 25, 2009: http://www.meforum.org/2441/westernizing-islamic-concepts
2. Saroush, Abdolkarim. "Militant Secularism." Nilou Mobasser, Translator. Source (foreign language): http://www.roozneveshtha.com/2007/08/post_135.shtml; drsoroush.com, August 2007: http://www.drsoroush.com/English/On_DrSoroush/E-CMO-2007-Militant%20Secularism.html
3. Wikipedia. "Abdolkarim Soroush": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdolkarim_Soroush
# # #
Comments