The absurdity of Karen Armstrong is a phenomenon that never ceases to amaze, and, in its own way, amuse. Here she is in this weekend’s Financial Times, beginning her latest piece in that cracking style that is all her own:
I was fully engaged with this book from the very first sentence – “This book is a journey and an initiation” – because an initiation is exactly what we need at this perilous moment in history. Like so many religious terms, the word initiation has lost much of its force in modern times. But in all the great spiritual traditions, initiation signified the creation, often painfully acquired, of a new self. Classical yoga, for example, was not an aerobic exercise but an initiation that consisted of a systematic dismantling of egotism. Those yogins who succeeded in extracting the “I” from their thinking found that, without the distorting filter of selfishness, they perceived the world quite differently.
Somehow that brings us to Tariq Ramadan, a saint of sorts in Armstrong’s PC pantheon:
Tariq Ramadan, Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University and author of The Quest for Meaning, is convinced that we are all experiencing a profound loss of confidence. “Fear, doubt and distrust are imperceptibly colonising our hearts and minds. And so the other becomes our negative mirror, and the other’s difference allows us to define ourselves, to ‘identify’ ourselves,” he writes.
To which one can only retort, “speak for yourself, chum.”
Then we get to the point and away from the Enlightenment:
The “toleration” that was the watchword of the Enlightenment philosophers is not enough, Ramadan argues. Toleration literally means “to suffer” or “to endure” the presence of others and implies a relationship of domination; the powerful are requested “to moderate their strength and to limit their ability to do harm”. But such grudging acceptance is detrimental to both the person who tolerates and the one whose presence is merely endured. What is required is respect, based on a relationship of equality. Tolerance can “reduce the other to a mere presence” but “respect opens up to us the complexity of his being”.
It is always a temptation to imagine that my truth is the only truth. But, Ramadan insists that there are universally shared truths that are arrived at differently in many systems of thought, secular and religious.
“Universally shared truths”. I doubt it.
The rest of the piece is the usual faintly pernicious mush: the “pluralism” of Islam, the nastiness of “egotism”, the “unique sacredness of every human being”, “global community”, well, you know how it goes.
I remember reading a review of the book “Genome” by Matt Ridley when it came out. The review admitted that the book was “factually correct” but complained that it lacked “spiritual awareness”. As soon as I read that, I knew I’d love the book, and I did.
I’d like simply to say that I fully endorse what both Andrew Stutterford and John have said on the matter. (I especially like the ‘Speak for yourself, chum’.) I have the same feelings as both of you, both on the mysterian and political levels. On the mysterian issue, I have recently been trying not to take (or feel) an aggressive stance, feeling that perhaps it is an indicator of self-doubt. The tone of the post is just right. Amused detachment.
“Tolerate” – she seems to have her own unique dictionary.
“Fear, doubt and distrust are imperceptibly colonising our hearts and minds.”
When bloviators write things like that they mean that *you* have the negative characteristics, but they can help you be almost as good as they are.
“Had God so willed, he would have made you one single community.”
Google that supposed quote – it appears nowhere else but in that article.
Here’s one translation of 5.48 from the comic book without pictures:
[5.48] And We have revealed to you the Book with the truth, verifying what is before it of the Book and a guardian over it, therefore judge between them by what Allah has revealed, and do not follow their low desires (to turn away) from the truth that has come to you; for every one of you did We appoint a law and a way, and if Allah had pleased He would have made you (all) a single people, but that He might try you in what He gave you, therefore strive with one another to hasten to virtuous deeds; to Allah is your return, of all (of you), so He will let you know that in which you differed;”
Yes, tolerance means one group is in a dominant position with respect to another, and that the dominant group chooses not to destroy the other group.
That’s reality. There’s nothing “good” or “bad” about it groups having unequal power. Tolerance is good because any group benefits from intellectual competition.
I am confident that Tariq Ramadan wants the West to become less Western and more Islamic. I am confident that Karen Armstrong is a useful tool. I am confident that I am totally opposed to them.
See OneSTDV on Yoga. Also, click thru from there to Half Sigma on long distance running.
Luke, We are not going to get intellectual competition from the Muslims.
“The rest of the piece is the usual faintly pernicious mush: the “pluralism” of Islam, the nastiness of “egotism”, the “unique sacredness of every human being”, “global community”, well, you know how it goes.”
Well said, Mr. Stuttaford! Your post brightened my day.
Neither did the Greeks get intellectual competition from the Romans. And look how that turned out for ’em.
Caledonian,
As one of my law professors once said, “the Romans never had an original thought, but they created the Western world.”
Just one point of clarification, Mr. Stuffaford, when you are decrying Armstrong’s intellectual fluff, do you mean to say that the idea that each person isn’t “sacred”? I understand the concern over the use of the term, but the idea, that each and every person is unique and therefore of value — is that an idea that you find objectionable? Or just the way that Armstrong phrases it?
I think a strong secular/atheist/agnostic argument can be made for the unique “sacred” (I don’t know what other word would be appropriate) value of each individual person. Since each human being is here only for a moment, with no pre-existence or post-existence, that makes each life even more meaningful. For what it’s worth.
Mark in Spokane,
I don’t think each individual has value, and I took Mr. Stuttaford to be raging against this specifically Christian sentiment. In Christianity, each individual has value because God has created him or her thus. Is there a secular version of this? I doubt it. A person’s uniqueness has nothing to do with it. Each dropping from my cat on my carpet is unique. So what?
Pedophiles, terrorists, third-world butchers; all of these people lack value in my estimation. Of course, I could be wrong about an individual person, but I’m quite certain that the world is filled with evil scumbags that have no value by any meaningful standard. To hell with them.
And be warned: this “every individual has value” nonsense is only trotted out to serve an ideological (or theological) position regarding Muslim terrorists or other persons we rightly dislike.
Mysticism gives me a belly-ache.
As for you, Mark in Spokane, I can’t speak for Mr. Stuttaford, but I can certainly do so for myself: all that “sacred value of life” malarkey is a whole-cloth fabrication of post-war liberalism. Life, whether a grasshopper or our own grandma, has value only in proportion to how it impacts our own existence. Otherwise, it’s meaningless. If you pretend otherwise, you’re just preening your own ego — and that’s intellectual dishonesty. Which, not so coincidentally, is the root of modern liberalism.
Welcome to the cold, harsh reality of life. Enjoy the ice cream. You’ll be in the ground soon enough, at which point you will provide a lovely home for various sub-surface creatures for a few years.
Purposeful? Maybe. Sacred? Hardly.
“Pedophiles” and “terrorists”, oh my!
Apathy is right, no one’s life is of an value whatsoever aside for whatever value I happen to vest in it. The “evildoers” trope however is really egregiously annoying by now.
I saw her on TV once. She really is an unutterably stupid person, isn’t she?
The Muslim world never had an original thought either, but it increasingly seems that they’re going to be creating the future.
Your point is not very comforting.
“Apathy is right, no one’s life is of an value whatsoever aside for whatever value I happen to vest in it. The “evildoers” trope however is really egregiously annoying by now.”
It’s “egregiously annoying” to you because you spend too much time on the internet constructing egregiously annoying sentences like the two above. Try reading before clicking “submit comment.”
And if you ever actually have to read a Karen Armstrong book you’ll realize that pimping for Muslim savages is the hidden message in each syrup-coated, multi-culti, every-one-has-value paragraph.
Don, your bruised ego is impairing your reading comprehension. My solitary point was that your knee-jerk “horror” with your chosen boogeymen does you a disservice. The discussion called for a saner response – Apathy’s – than yours and you were eminently capable of offering that response but couldn’t help getting all populistically neoconservative in your sputterings. I imagine that few people here can help but snort with repulsion at a computer generated whine about “pedophiles, terrorists and third world butchers”.