Shams' Infinite Playlist of Quantum Sufi Madness

No I don’t know if I qual as a “progressive”.

According to Johpi’s comments comparing my meme war jihad against the Proselytizers to the satanic bible, I am more like a satanist than a muslim.

Apparently “progressive” muslims turn the other cheek and reject deploying the viral fist and practice some sort of emasculated koombyah Islam that I don’t recognize…or perhaps it is salad-bar-open-door-ijithad Islam, I don’t know…that is why I asked the question.

Here is an interesting thread from 2003, before I came to the blog verse, and long before my reversion.

In evangelical churches and seminaries across the country, lectures and books criticizing Islam and promoting strategies for Muslim conversions are gaining currency. More than a dozen recently published critiques of Islam are now available in Christian bookstores.

Arab International Ministry, the Indianapolis group that led the crash course on Islam here, claims to have trained 4,500 American Christians to proselytize Muslims in the last six years, many of those since the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Evangelical christians believe it is their mandate, and indeed their right, to proselytize.  That is what happened to poor Rifqa Bary.  She was proselytized.

The reason that I reject the concept of “productive interfaith dialog” with evangelicals, is that they only view that as an opportunity to proselytize.

A dihliz cannot exist without mutual respect, and evangelicals assume their mandate to proselytize and “spread the good word” trumphs respect and consideration.  It is their fitrah.  And even worse, they believe the obscene intellectual violation of proselytization is evidence of their “love” for the victim.

Johnpi:  To my mind, this isn’t a question of ‘good Muslim’ or ‘bad Muslim’ but you seem to have pulled in some ideas from somewhere else out in the universe entirely, ie, ‘memetic warfare’, and then introduced it as a building block of your Muslim perspective, and it just doesn’t compute to me. Apples and oranges, oil and water, etc.

If you’re not willing to defend ‘memetic warfare,’ are you willing to consider discarding it?

No.

And I didn’t “pull it in from out in the universe”.

When I started my forevertask of learning arabic, a task that eventually contributed to my reversion, my prof recommended a slim book of arabic poetry translated by Michael Sells.  I learned of the Mu’ allaqat, the suspended ones, and the qasidha, the arabian ode, and the na’qaat, the tribal combat poets that bestrode the plain of jizzya combat, where warring tribes took tribute from each other.  The two tribes would be arrayed  facing each other, and in the middle the na’qaat would compete  with brilliant flashing poetry and wit…sometimes the poetry was so clever and satirical and mocking that the opposing tribe would fall from their saddles laughing, remount and ride away in defeat without a single physical blow being struck.

When I began my study of the Qur’an, I learned that the bedouin poet-warriors were considered to be the bearers of bedouin cultural values, the cultural authority of the time.  I learned that the bedouin poets of the Jahiliyyah had opposed the Prophet at first, and Muhammed surrounded himself with his own cadre of poet-warriors.  Ka’b ibn Zuhayr was one of the Prophets fiercest opponents crafting cutting mockery and satires, but  finally yeilding to the Prophet with the qasidah al burdha when it became clear that Muhammeds authority could no longer be challenged.

So no…I did not pull it in from the universe, and no I am not going to give it up.

It is my sword and my sheild.

And like Shanfara, I’d rather drink dust.

I’d sooner slurp the dust

a dry mouthful

than take some man’s

condescending favors

Blame Willow for this.

In Evo Bio 101 one of the most popular topics for discussion was The Female Orgasm. Naturally, we mostly argued about the evolutionary basis for multiple orgasms in the XX. One hypothesis was that FMOs increased pair bonding, another that FMOs kept women wanting more, and so increased loyalty….but what I wondered about was…what if men falling asleep after sex was somehow paired with a sort of female genetic promiscuity that led to outcrossing?

Because outcrossing masks deleterious recessives. In a communal sleeping environment like an EEA (environment of evolutionary advantage) cave or long-house, post-coital males would fall asleep, while post-coital females could take another partner….a sort of anti-polygamy evolutionary strategy, to counter the influence of a single male genome dominating the local genepool.

I am very excited about Social Brain Hypothesis. For me, it is like puzzle pieces dropping into place with a deliciously satisfying snick! Intuitively social brain behavior makes a lot of sense, how we decide, social network theory, and….myths, legends and faerytales.

The whole framework of Nights is defined on female promiscuity, and not just King Shahriyar’s faithless wife, but his brother Shah Zamen, the Sultan of Samarkand, suffers from the same wifely perfidious betrayal and nearly dies from it.  It takes Shaharazade a thousand and one nights to persuade King Shahriyar to marry her instead of cutting her head off after marrying her to keep her from betraying him.

Thus FGM.  It is my hypothesis that FGM arose in MENA as a tribal practice designed to reduce female promiscuity. Possibly intense anti-female promiscuity mores are a side-effect of polygamous societies, a single older husband, multiple wives and a population of unmarried younger men. But FGM persists because it simply increases the market value of the bride in the social matrix.  It is an economic tradition.  The way to discourage the practice is not to forbid it, which only drives it underground and makes it stronger, particularily because the practice has colonized islamic jurisprudence. The way to reduce the practice (which is abhorant to me personally) is to find competitive ways to increase the economic value of women in MENA society.

In watching Amanpur’s CNN special Generation Islam I was especially epiphanied by her interview with a young Talib. She asked him why girls couldn’t go to school, why the Taliban was against education for women. He answered…….of course they can go to school……they just must be accompanied by a male relative.

Ah, the genetic perfidy of the fair sex.

ghostblog crosslink

So this weekend I watched the Christiane Amanpur/CNN special Generation Islam and Jackson’s cruelly genius anti-apartheid sci-fi epic, District 9. District 9 is based on writer/director Neill Blomkamp’s short film, Alive in Joberg….watching that will give the plot premise of District 9 sans spoilers.  The two sound/vision experiences wound up in a brainscape-mashup for me.  Filmed in South Africa, the obvious analogy is SA apartheid, but the palestinian and afghan footage, the ravaged neighborhoods and crushing dehumanizing poverty in the CNN special is deeply evocative of the alien ghettos in District 9.

Peter Suderman sneers that District 9 is “probably overrated” and urges us all to check out the neocon apologia ” The Hurt Locker”.  I suppose that is the universal conservative reaction.  It is like there is an apartheid of ideas, and conservatives can only enjoy conservative films and liberals only enjoy liberal films.  Unfortunately, nearly all the good films ARE liberal, and all nearly ALL liberal films are good.

As my friends and I walked out of the theater, visibly shaken and moved by the powerful apartheid and cruelty themes limned in the film, we were shocked to see another group of (all male) students laughing and mocking the aliens.

“MNU should have just sealed up District 9 and let the prawns kill each other off,” said one boy.

George W. Bush and Benjamin Netanyahu’s Palestine Policy in one line.