tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post7315880723794818737..comments2024-03-27T09:14:27.496+00:00Comments on All That Is Solid ...: Palestinians and IntersectionalityPhilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06298147857234479278noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-64834977000795895132014-07-31T16:11:41.970+01:002014-07-31T16:11:41.970+01:00Oh dear Anon.
Islam was born around 600 AD, the ...Oh dear Anon. <br /><br />Islam was born around 600 AD, the first crusades were around 1100. <br /><br />The crusades were largely a reaction to Muslim expansionism. That was 500 years of murderous rampage by the way before the Christians responded, albeit briefly. <br /><br />The carnage wrought by the crusades pales in comparison to the corpses Islam left in its wake. The difference is Christianity has more of a historic guilt conscience than Islam - at my local mosque they put on an exhibition celebrating the "Muslim Conquest" (their own words).<br /><br />It's a moot point, but IMHO Christianity is very much a religion of "the West" - it expanded across and was adopted by the Roman Empire and is a marriage of Greek and Judaic tradition. Arguably even the Jewish Christian sect was influenced by the Greek schools (and language) which were very much the thing in Roman-ruled (ie Western) Israel at the time. <br /><br />So given that "the West" is a mix of Jewish and Greek culture, and was around for 600 years (at least) before the birth of Islam, I don't see where you are coming from. <br /><br />Understanding the past can help make sense of the present. Perhaps it is this lack of historical understanding that leads to so much muddled thinking. <br /><br /> <br /><br />Speedynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-85137943485899526702014-07-30T18:15:16.669+01:002014-07-30T18:15:16.669+01:00Christianity and Judaism were not Western inventio...Christianity and Judaism were not Western inventions by the way, rather they were carried from the East? So how you can say Islam would not have existed without the West is a bit puzzling. Unless you mean it was borne out of the murdering colonial rampage that was the crusades.<br /><br />The Germans were of course also exemplars of colonialism if we go back far enough, the Romans carried out numerous massacres of the Germanic peoples.<br /><br />So the holocaust was perfectly understandable?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-33385412452201699762014-07-30T02:33:23.948+01:002014-07-30T02:33:23.948+01:00Indeed. But one does wonder what they want to repl...Indeed. But one does wonder what they want to replace "western" with. If, for all their supposed awareness, they even understand what "western" is. <br /><br />They speak of colonialism, but of course the Jews are the exemplars of its effects, going back to the destruction of the Temple. "Western" is actually rooted in the Western Roman Empire. For 300 years the religion of Rome - Christianity - dominated the region, along with the few remaning Jews, until it was swept away by the ultimate colonising force of Islam. But there are still some Palestnian Christians. What about them? <br /><br />And Islam itself, an Abrahamic religion that synthesised the traditions of Judaism with the utopinianism of Christianity, is hardly alien - it would not have existed without the West. It may be a counter-hegemony but it is no less "western" than communism versus capitalism. It was simply an ancient version of this old dynamic, a product of its time - just like the buzz-word packed "analysis", blowing bubbles out of the Abrahamic fishbowl. <br /><br />You have to look much further east to avoid the taint of the West, and ultimately, given the nature of the human animal, you end up going in circles.Speedynoreply@blogger.com