"Altway" <altway@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:314a928f-dc40-46c0-968a-fd09216aec76@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> On 26 Mar, 16:45, "Robert Houghton" <rober...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
<snip>
>> Tantawi is clearly not vacillating, but practising taqiyya: telling the
>> West
>> what will be to the advantage of Islam, while denying his apparently
>> reasonable and responsible pronouncements when before a Muslim
>> audience. This accepted and legitimized Muslim practice makes it very
>> difficult
>> for non-Muslims engaged in debate or negotiations with them. How can
one
> ever judge that they are acting in good faith? What a primitive system
of
> ethics.
<snip> ...
> As other things about Islam Robert has obviously not understood the
> concept of "taqiyya". ...
<snip> ...
Comment:-
Robert, like most strident Islamophobes, fails to understood the concept
of
"politics" at any level either in the Arab world. They mistakenly believe
that the Arab world or Egypt is synonymous with the Muslim world, another
myth invented and echoed by the nefarious Israeli lobby for the gullible
non-Muslim public in the undereducated west. Is it any wonder that their
arguments are intrinsically flawed . If one looks closely at what has been
written descriptively one can immediately recognise that they knows
nothing
whatsoever about the rules of the universal game called 'politics'. In
fact,
one could say their ignorance even of the subtle 'electioneering' elements
of 'one must be honest' and the more pragmatic 'it pays to be honest' is
somewhat naively astounding. The edification of emphatic bully-boy style,
in
obstreperous anti-intellectualism, at the expense of reflective thought,
one
could say
In the rhetorical political arena is there any significant difference
between non-Muslim politicians and Muslim politicians? Can Islam or
Christianity , for that matter, ethically be held to account for
ubiquitous
acts and omissions of oxymoronic 'honest politicians' of whatever
particular
flavour. This is simply a bizarre joke, as is his "acting in good faith'
sophism is an obvious double-standard. Can anyone honestly say that any of
his hostile anti-Muslimism posts fufill the 'acting in good faith' rubric,
when, for instance, the bigoted presumption in the subject heading is that
Muslims always "act in bad faith' because of Islam? This is absolutely
nonsenical humbuggery and manipulation (see below). So is " Taqiyya at the
highest Muslim level" unique to the Muslim world? Is this political
expediency relevant to Islam as a religion? I hardly think so.
Now "Humbuggery and Manipulation - The Art of Leader****p", by the
irrepressible and scholarly Frederick. G. Bailey, an anthropologist, at
the
University of California-San Diego, is a very serious book. For this
comprehensive study of cross-cultural leader****p and its allegedly
contemptible methods hypocrisy, lying and manipulation from Professor
Bailey
who believes that politicians must violate the ethics of their cultures to
do their jobs. Professor Bailey examines questions at the base of social
behavior e.g. what types of followers are there?; why do we routinely let
our leaders lie to us? And provocative analysis of current and past
political systems, including Communist China, Nazi Germany, colonial India
and primitive societies ("Strategems and Spoils", i.e. Pashtuns in the
"Taliban" heartland of the Swat valley), yields original theories about
the
true nature of leader****p that can be transposed across cultural
boundaires
and what function it serves society. See this NYT review "To Lead Is to
Lie"
at this link to get the gist of this scholarly thesis:-
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DEFD71539F93BA1575BC0A96E948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print
<Clips> ...
... His own candidacy for world-class unpopularity is based on the
declaration that all politicians, not just a few rotten individuals, are
deceitful. Furthermore, he asserts, they must be that way to do the job
properly. A person who scrupulously operated within the rules of his
culture, whatever they happen to be, would not be able to lead.
It is an absorbing idea that the job of leading is inevitably structured
so
that the rules of the society being led must be violated. In an
interesting
and orderly fa****on, Mr. Bailey sets out the conflicting tasks a leader
must
master - acquiring and satisfying followers, managing his entourage of
high-level sup****ters and scapegoats and attempting to deal with the
problems he has promised to solve - and he demonstrates that they require
psychological double-bookkeeping.
Just to become a leader, a person must convince others that he is
extraordinary (even if he has to go so far as to brag about his common
touch, ...) and that he has a clear understanding of major problems, with
the insight and courage to solve them, .... He even has to pretend that it
is not power he wants, but the op****tunity to serve. Such fantasies not
only
benefit the individual politician, but supply an essential, uplifting
spirit
to his domain. They also account for those inflated images and hollow
promises.
None of this must cloud the leader's recognition that ''the real world is
not that simplified and purified image which is conveyed to the m*****
[but]
a world of failures, a world often too complicated for rational
management,
a world of frustrated hopes and failures, where the most im****tant lesson
is
that things will go wrong and the only real failure is not to pick oneself
up, work out what went wrong, and try again.'' The leader and his
entourage
must keep the real world in mind while creating a simpler one for public
use. Maintaining this dual vision accounts for his habit of duplicity. If
he
is to find successful ways to deal with real problems and to find new
solutions to new ones, the leader must keep an open mind, unhampered by
traditional restraints. He ''must have the imagination
(and - a paradox - the moral courage) to set himself above and beyond
established values and beliefs if it is necessary to do so in order to
attain his ends.'' That accounts for the conviction that he should not be
judged by the same standards as the community he represents. ''Leaders are
not the virtuous people they claim to be; they put politics before
statesman****p; they distort facts and oversimplify issues; they promise
what
no one could deliver; and they are liars,'' Mr. Bailey says. Then, in what
ought to be the politician's favorite statement since the invention of ''I
was quoted out of context,'' he adds: ''Leaders, if they are to be
effective, have no choice in the matter.''
<End clips>
Isn't this factual synopsis relevant to both the real political Arab world
and the west? Can anyone sensibly argue the opposite? This has nothing to
do
with being a Muslim or Islam as such.
Let's look at a specific example of "contemptible methods hypocrisy, lying
and manipulation" in this previously referenced article, on a website
that's
very popular with the Islamophobia and BNP sup****ters club and their
cohorts
in this forum, full article at this link:-
http://www.isic-centre.org/archive-descriptive-view/34-briefings/110-barack-obamas-issue-with-islam.html
Would you say its author the Rev. Patrick Sookhdeo meets Professor
Bailey's
criteria in "Humbuggery and Manipulation"; in summary; ''Leaders are not
the virtuous people they claim to be; they put politics before
statesman****p; they distort facts and oversimplify issues; they promise
what
no one could deliver; and they are liars.''?
--
Peace
--
We should not be ashamed to acknowledge truth from whatever source it
comes
to us, even if it is brought to us by former generations and foreign
peoples. For him who seeks the truth there is nothing of higher value than
truth itself [al-Kindi 801-66]
Zuiko Azumazi
zuiko.azumazi@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
|
