A Foundation Of Love

"What we face is not only a clash of civilizations, or even a clash of religions, but a clash between levels of reality. Thus, we fight on the side of truth against error, goodness against evil, and life against death."

I think Wafa Sultan was saying something similar in her 2006 interview on Al Jazeera: "The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions, or a clash of civilizations. It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights, on the one hand, and the violation of these rights, on the other hand."

One would like to think that rationality, goodness, and truth will ultimately prevail, but it may depend, not on the reality of ordinary citizens, or the intellectuals, but that of our elected political leaders, and that, as they say, is a scary thought.

A very thought provoking article. Thank you.

Interesting article but what has this blog and the New English Review got to do with the politics or culture love of any kind?

There is hardly a trace of  a love informed mind, heart or consciousness to be found anywhere on this website.

Even the word love is seldom, if ever used.

I would suggest that your real patron "saint" is St George mounted his horse, forever fighting off  the threatening other, with his lance.

And always inevitably by his very nature finding, and in fact calling up, a never ending supply of monsters to destroy.

St George used a lance and sword and was therefore relatively harmless.

But you would, if the situation arose, quite readily use nuclear weapons---and thereby  destroy not only your enemy, but most probably yourself and all of sentient life on this planet, in the ensuing conflagration.

"But you would, if the situation arose, quite readily use nuclear weapons---and thereby  destroy not only your enemy, but most probably yourself and all of sentient life on this planet, in the ensuing conflagration."

Quite the contrary. Of all the problems facing civilization right now, Islam is one of the most manageable. It will take the nerve to confront the problem, however, and if it is not confronted now, things wlll grow infinitely worse is a short period of time.

Why people feel the need to jump from, if Islam is a problem, then the answer to it is nuclear annihilation, I'll never know.

Reading Rebecca Bynum, I sometimes feel we must have been twins separated at birth.

Her whole way of thinking, and what seems to me most unique in it, seems oddly like what I feel most unique in my own thinking.  

Living religious experience as opposed to theological assumptions; love as the highest reality and the core religious experience; a concern with distinguishing matter from spirit; a criticism of scientism and philosophical materialism, and of the application of a mechanomorphic paradigm to everything; I think I sense those animating Bynum's writings in a way oddly reminiscent of how they animate me.  I feel Bynum must have had spiritual experiences very similar to my own, and has come to terms with them in ways somewhat similar to my own ways.  I wonder if she was ever part of LRY or Homestead Community long ago.  Well, probably not.