How are the West, Islam, advertising jingles, passion, words, and melodrama connected?
In a world of ideologues, East and West, Ad men, and complete asses in the guise of human beings – in an age of disputes about mosques on ground zero and Quran burnings by preachers, let’s look at something relevant – looking at both the best of the non Muslim West’s tradition, and the Islamic East’s tradition, and asks hard and difficult questions about our situation today, in our own lives and hearts, when we turn off the TV or radio.
Hamza Yusuf Hanson, of California’s Zaytuna Institute, gives a discourse on Poetry, and what happened to it in the modern world. The context of the talk was a conference on Rumi, it’s relevant to both non Muslims and Muslims, and in fact his major question is what happened to English poetry and certain lies behind modern poetry. The chief subtext is melodrama as the substitute for true passion in the modern world, after the demise of traditional Western poetry. Imam Hamza starts exploring the Western tradition of great poetry, and Islam’s tradition, and consumerism.
He begins covering the greatness of Shakespeare, Homer, the danger of misunderstanding Achilles’ error, and others, the lie of hard things coming easy, and the alienation of modern Westerners from their own tradition. From Helen Wilcox, to the analogy of McDonald’s food and modern poetry, and the hardening of the heart.
An amusing segment is the recitation of the modern poetry inherent in advertisements, and what it illustrates about the power of words, and the lack of awareness therein. Elizabeth Browning, to the Quran, and the selling of poetry in pagan Arabia, West Africans somatically receiving poetry, passion itself. From consumerism, the mediocrity of passionless people, the mimicry of passion in discourses and politics, and several other topics.
He weaves between the West’s high poetry and the Islamic East, with a deep awareness and near mastery of both Western liberal arts and humanities, as well as Islamic humanities, sapiential and scholastic traditions. The speaker weaves a synthesis of understanding, use the best of both the West and East to illustrate broader concerns about consumerism, substituting for true living, the utter disappearance of true passion from our culture’s discourse, and what poetry bespeaks to.
Several clips are pasted below, the full DVD used to be orderable from Alhambra productions however it no longer appears in their catalog (NB Alhambra Productions is now Sandala Productions [click here] – I post this without permission for fair use only and general public benefit. Watch it, and consider deeply Hamza’s words.
Minutes 1-10
Minutes 11-20
Minutes 21-30
Minutes 31-40
The remainder
_EOF
I’m watching the first video. I agree with what he says about the “mimicry of passion” in today’s world. Case in point: PUAs mimicking genuine interest in mating and replicating their DNA – which they have ZERO interst in doing. “Getting laid” is not “mating”. “Demonstrating higher value” is NOT genuinely HAVING higher value, etc. Their concept of “irrational confidence” is spot-on though. Confidence coming from guys who have nothing to be confident about is indeed irrational. LOL.
This whole world is one big fake-ass mimick of a reality that must be out there somewhere.
Watching 2nd video. Enjoying immensely. One critique. When he says, “the ancients would never do this” in reference to the horribly tacky and shallow advertisement “poetry” of today’s consumerist culture, I disagree. I’ve noticed that people who tie themselves to philosophies, religions and ideologies of long ago have a tendeny to over-idealize and romanticize them. They also do comparisons and contrasts between un-ideal situations in today’s era to ideal situations in previous eras. The appropriate procedure would be to compare the bullshit of today to the bullshit of the past, as well as the positive of today to the positive of the past. Not the bullshit of today with the positive of the past or the postive of today with the bullshit of the past.
It’s like comparing figs and pork chops.
He ends up taking in video 4 the very same Manichean approach he criticises in videos 1 and 2.
Physician, heal thyself.
I what way?
His whole “The West” vs the rest of the world (“The East”???) wrt consumption. I call bullshit. He doesn’t define which countries he considers “The West”. In Europe there are plenty of countries that are not consuming a whole hell of a lot of resource. He also doesn’t take into consideration the filthy rich individuals (there are many) throughout “The East” – ones that have their own planes flying in exotic fruits to their helipads in the morning so they can have their breakfast, etc.
He’s pitting an undefined and unqualified “West” against an undefined and unqualified “East”.
Very black and white, very manichean.
Also saying that this super-resource-consuming West is being transplanted into the Middle East in the form of Israel. Many of the transplants into Israel are poor Eastern Europeans and Ethiopians.
That’s a good point. It’s possible to make sloppy and inaccurate generalizations.
It is possible to divide the modern West from a good deal of the world in many ways, culturally, historically, and religiously. Of course this runs the risk of romanticizing either one, and ignoring substantial nuances.
And as you point out such generalizations can lead to a rigid black.white dichotomy.
Not he’s not specifically talking of the East as much as the East and the South, within both he lived, studied, and spent a good deal of time.
It is valid to within specific domains make such a dichotomy if one is very clear as to what one is talking about and admits the relative value of the dichotomy. It’s in universalizing generalizations that one runs into problems.
In any case he makes many good points, no one’s discourse is universally free of problems or issues, and it’s always possible to see benefits in a person’s discourse while noticing things one has a problem with.
Taking all words, seeing the best of them, and leaving behind what is not best, is a good trait to continue to cultivate through one’s life. A person can have wise insights in one domain of experience, and still have huge unexamined areas in another. We all do, life is the constant process of ironing such wrinkles in our soul out.
The speaker, Hamza Yusuf, is an example of a man whose discourse has matured over the decades with experience, I still find a good deal of insight in his earlier works, while noticing things that he said as a younger figure that were highly problematic. All people grow and mature if they have any degree of consciousness.
So you make a very good point, I still find this talk of his of value, but you pointed out a type of thinking that even I’m prone to. Doesn’t erase any good points the guy made, but sometimes an outside party can see things an insider can not.
In the Quran does it say anything about women of enemies killed becoming “war booty” (pun intended)?
Hmmm.
You do know that in the Hebrew bible, such women of enemies killed in battle are actually slaughtered. The Shulkhan Aruch and other Talmudic exegesis has a bit to say about such matters.
I find it interesting that, often, people apply far different standards to Islam than they apply to anyone else in history.
In all ancient religions, civilizations, and cultures worldwide pre-Islam women and children of the enemy following a battle were either taken captive or slaughtered en masse. This was the norm through human history.
Someone who insults “Abrahamic religions” should realize that non-Abrahamic religions and cultures were far worse in this regard.
Among ancient pre-Islamic cultures, reasons for such slaughter during siege included terror, but also the simple banal and practical logistics, in a pre-modern era, of carrying and feeding thousands of your enemy’s kith and kin over hundreds of miles.
Leaving them behind after slaughtering their men folk could also be a form of cruelty anyway because what is a city full of traumatized old women, children, and young mothers going to do after a siege and the death of the vast majority of their male population? So the universal rule in the ancient world, East and West, was slavery or slaughter. The Romans, Greeks, Persians, and many other ancient cultures were noted for inflicting horrendous slaughter on people in times of war.
This is real history. From India to Persia to Rome, this is how the ancients conducted war. In India, this was also practiced and slave girls taken in war are mentioned in passing, in the Lekha Paddhati. Pagan Greek society at its foundations was based on slavery, especially for the Spartans. Slaves outnumbered Romans and the Romans didn’t even consider slaves humans. Ancient Germanic people had thralls taken in battle, Asoka’s great repentance took place after he slaughtered 100,000 and took 150,000 captive – who is being kidded?
Up until the mid 20th century most countries even in the West took war slaves. What the hell do you think the Japanese did to tens of thousands of Chinese girls?
Maintained slave bordellos for their men.
What did the Germans do? Kept brothels filled with Jewish slave girls, even in concentration camps.
Even in the USA after the civil war, following battle was rape en masse. What did the Germans do in Russia? Well what did the Russians do in Germany, a thousand fold? I find myself unimpressed with modern concerns – even the e’er so great Western civilization continued such practices.
Look, the Quran allows men to marry or keep as concubines female captives of war, with legal rights, with them recognized as humans legally with specific rights and the ability to purchase their freedom, purchase property, and having legal recourse in courts upon abuse. There is no comparison whatsoever.
Any comparisons verge on sophistry.
Classical Islamic jurisprudence, based on the Quran, forbade the murder and slaughter that the Hebrew bible claims was permitted to the Hebrews. The Hebrews used to even slaughter the donkeys in a city. The Quran, and hadith, bade just and humane treatment.
In an era in which mass slaughter was the historically attested norm, the Quran allowed such captives to be ransomed, set free, or kept as captives. It furthermore allowed soldiers taking concubines from these captives. Such concubines were clothed, fed, kept in fair conditions, often educated and taught to read, and unlike in pagan Western antiquity, treated like human beings not chattel.
As for the 21st century, Things do evolve, you know. Nowadays everyone just bombs them, shove the survivors into refugee camps, and the pretty ones used by UN peace keepers in tent bordellos. Web links on this matter can be found, if you care.
Such is recorded history so we can avoid sophistry, regarding such matters.
There are, among people who condemn Islam, idiots who typically also call Alexander “Great” in spite of Alexander’s being among history’s greatest mass murderers and rapists. Short of Genghis Khan, and a few others.
There is almost no parallel in pre-modern history to Islam’s teachings regarding treating captives and slaves humanely.
Considering everyone else on the bloody planet was busy in orgies of rape and pillage and slaughter during war, I think that we can avoid utter sophistry on this point.
Regarding captive women: it’s evident from literature of the period and the social norms (see my notes on Jariya on my Roxana post) that such women were also not “raped” in that men did not force themselves on them, there is documentation from the period regarding the ability of such captives to earn wages, own property, choose marriage partners, and as al-Jahiz’s glosses in his book of qiyan attest, choose lovers and spurn others. Keeping in mind realities and literary depictions of an age a thousand years prior can diverge, the charitable reader can at least entertain the possibility that historical situations may have been more nuanced than snide and snarky polemics might suggest.
I used to despise what I perceived as hypocrisy in this area, but then I came to realize that emotional sentiment and innate biases are very strong and its difficult for people to look at, fairly, things they were raised to see as evil.
So I just nod and go my own way, as the Quran says “Lakum Deenakum wali al-Din” (to you your way, and to me mine) – people are generally conditioned to have strong views in one area, and indulgently look the other way in other areas. Such is the human condition. It doesn’t make them bad people are knowingly disingenuous, it just makes them biased.
The Sharia, as molded by the Quran’s injunctions, asserts laws of humane treatment of prisoners of war that were without parallel. I find it hard to discuss such matters with people who glibly accept the notion of collateral damage and killing civilians in order to catch terrorists. The whole discourse is often marked by a degree of glib disregard of realities that I find matters distasteful.
“You do know that in the Hebrew bible, such women of enemies killed in battle are actually slaughtered. The Shulkhan Aruch and other Talmudic exegesis has a bit to say about such matters.”
1. You are not a Christian or a Jew, you are a Muslim, that is why I’m asking you about the Quran.
“I find it interesting that, often, people apply far different standards to Islam than they apply to anyone else in history.”
2. Not me. My standard for saintly or prophet-like behaviour applies across the board, across religions, across cultures and across time.
“In all ancient religions, civilizations, and cultures worldwide pre-Islam women and children of the enemy following a battle were either taken captive or slaughtered en masse. This was the norm through human history.”
3. Who says? Who fed you this Kool-Aid?
“Someone who insults “Abrahamic religions” should realize that non-Abrahamic religions and cultures were far worse in this regard.”
4. BULLSHIT!
Kamal, you have been sold a bill of goods. All religions were far worse than Islam before Islam came along? According to whom?
Muslims of course!
Look, a warrior is one thing, a saint or prophet another.
I would expect no less from warriors than to be so “gracious” as to offer women who’s husbands, sons, fathers and brothers they killed the “oppurtunity” and “privelege” to be their “concubines”. Such an insensitive, insulting, and outlandish proposal is expected from men egotistical enough to wage war.
HOWEVER, that is NOT the saintly and godly standard.
As you noted, Ashok RENOUNCED his warrior ways and opted for a life of love and pacifism instead.
In Hindu culture it is advised for ALL warriors to do the same. Forget all warriors, it is advised for ALL people to dedicate at least a portion of their life to the monks way, usually the last quarter of one’s life, to prepare for hte next life. Nowhere is it encouraged for ANYONE to continue down a materialisitic path up until the day they day OR TO DIE WHILE FIGHTING.
Whatever glorification of “righteous war” you do see, is meant specifically for the warrior caste, not any other, and only for a very short period of life. Page after page after page of sacred text is devoted to the criticism of worldly pursuits such as war, wealth, women, land, sex, etc.
In short, people like Ashok and Muhammed are told to GIVE THIS NONSENSE UP!!!!
Whoever told you that all religions before Islam came around were bullshit, is well, full of bullshit.
In Hinduism warriors who take women as war booty would NOT be glorified as “Perfect Human” and “God’s Messenger” but rather the saints, sadhus, perfect humans and God’s messengers would be knocking on their doors begging some alms as an excuse to PREACH to them and bring them around to the right path.
That’s exactly what happened to Ashok and so many other Kings and warriors of South Asia. Sadhus brought them around to the right path, they renounced their kingdoms and began their spiritual lives.
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