Are the Arabs already extinct?

We [Arabs] have become extinct," said Syrian poet Adonis in a March 11 Dubai television interview transcribed by the Israeli media monitor MEMRI, [1] but ignored by the mainstream Western media. The prognosis by Adonis, the only Arabic writer on the Nobel Prize short list, for the Arab prospect has become more bleak over the years, and his latest pronouncement has a Spenglerian finality.

a people becomes extinct when it no longer has a creative capacity, and the capacity to change its world ... The great Sumerians became extinct, the great Greeks became extinct, and the Pharaohs became extinct," he said.

I do not believe that anyone can make Islam out to be whatever what they want, but that the sophmoric method of pasting quotations into one’s copy-book is insufficient. I despite Karen Armstrong with a passion, and rather like Robert Spencer, but this is not personal: it is about the right and wrong way to go about a dangerous and sensitive and critical task. What he does is well intended, but it simply isn’t good enough.

Muslims do not check off a list of precepts, good or ill; they are Muslims for existential reasons. I made the same point at greater length here:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HJ03Aa03.html

Islam is a religion, that is, a spiritual act, not a set of doctrines that one agrees to or not. One has to get inside spiritual experience of the religion to understand the motives of its adherents. Among the leading living theologians only Benedict XVI has touched on the issues, albeit with great caution. Among the leading 20th century theologians only Franz Rosenzweig offered a thorough treatment of Islam’s problems. There are resources available for analysis of Islam, and they are ignored at our great peril.

Thank you for posting this amazing analysis of Arab culture.

From the link:

Westerners will assimilate this view only with great effort, for poetry of devotion is among the most artful and most complex in the literature. One thinks of Dante in Italian, John Donne and John Milton in English, St John of the Cross in Spanish, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock and Christian Fuerchtegott Gellert in German, and Yehuda Halevi in Hebrew.

Not only poetry,but music.

I have often that that the lack of adorative music is evidence that Islam is not inspired by God, but by the Other, the anti-God, the anti-Christ. To be filled with God, is to burst forth with Joy, with Worship, with Psalms.

To Christians and Jews, God is not a monarch who presents a final and indisputable truth, but a lover whose face is hidden - perhaps the most fruitful subject for poetry in human history. In the tradition of the biblical Song of Songs, St John conveys love for God in distinctly erotic terms. It is inconceivable for a Muslim poet to address Allah with the intimacy of a lover in the language of human passion. If poetry holds a mirror to our inner life, then the inner life of Westerners is profoundly different from that of Muslims, as different as the concepts of a God of Love who exalts the humble, and Allah who loves the strong and rewards the victorious.

There may be Muslims who contend that Allah has the characteristics of the Judeo-Christian God, but if they believe this, then they have found the true God, but he is not the God of the Koran.

But in order to defeat your enemy, you first have to get inside his mind, and that requires empathy.

Hence, Jesus' exhortation to Love Your Enemies.

If the Arabs are in spiritual crisis, then the resolution is rooted in a spiritual answer.

We would be most helpful if we would get out of the way, and like a good therapist, let them come to this discovery themselves.

Any role we do play would be to insist on truth, not Politically Correct accommodation to their need to deceive themselves, and us, in an effort to be included at the table of ethical, rational religious systems (the oft-cited "abrahamic tradition"). This was the effort that Pope Benedict undertook with his speech referencing a dialog between Islam and Christianity from the 14th century. We need to have confidence in our own worldview, and not back down or stand down when Muslims respond with feelings in lieu of arguments, or we ill-serve this process.

I assume he is excluding the ability to destroy the world...that seems like what they are intent on doing....

I think the nuclear situation is very dangerous, but let's not forget that Arab economies are hollow. They skim oil wealth, and that is it.

Until and unless they turn from primitive literalist religionism, they have no future as a civilization. And if Iran or a similar country manages to set off a nuke, I believe they will cease to exist as a country within a week.

Muslims are not comic-book villains. They are human beings in profound anguish, many of whom turn desperate and destructive. I am not saying this can be solved with therapy! One has to meet violent force with superior violent force, period. But in order to defeat your enemy, you first have to get inside his mind, and that requires empathy. Ticking off the bad guy’s bad points doesn’t do the job.

Know your enemy. well said.

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