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with Chris Hedges
RT America on Oct 22, 2016
On this week’s episode of On Contact, Chris Hedges explores Islam and the Muslim world with Hamza Yusuf, President of Zaytuna College. Yusuf, one of the most prominent Islamic scholars in the U.S., discusses the disenfranchisement of Muslim youths and the perversion of Islam by terror groups. RT Correspondent Anya Parampil examines the wave of Islamophobia in the U.S. after 9/11.
Watch the video on RT.com
From the archives:
Chris Hedges: It’s Our Bombs, Not Trump’s Comments, that Fuel Hatred Towards the United States
Thought Crime: The Road To A Police State by Vashti Kenway
Chris Hedges: To Stop Terrorism, End U.S. Occupation of the Middle East
Chris Hedges: Saudi Wahhabism a Tool of U.S. Foreign Policy
Abby Martin and Dr. Deepa Kumar: Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire
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I am not a literal deist, but neither am I a militant atheist; having studied Islam in some measure throughout my life, personally I find this conversation valuable and instructive.
I was introduced to Sufism in London in my late teens, so I acquired an early respect for the values some Sufi authorities purport to uphold. European Christendom has mutated through epic evolutionary change & great conflicts, & now Islam is riven with profane & horrific sectarian violence, that far exceeds the anguish of its formative histories ~ albeit not infrequently characterized by brutal, doctrinal & dynastic strife, but also distinguished by superb intellectual, aesthetic and spiritual achievements.
I had not heard of Hamza Yusuf before this interview, so welcome the opportunity to listen to him speak. Here in the UK Prof. Tariq Ramadan occupies the Chair of Contemporary Islamic Studies in Oxford; he once memorably debated Christopher Hitchens in the US
http://www.lectoro.com/index.php?action=search&ytq=Christopher%20Hitchens%20and%20Tariq%20Ramadan%20Debate:%20Is%20Islam%20a%20Religion%20of%20Peace?
See also
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/04/tariq-ramadan-demonised-france-160406100710313.html
The span of mystical consciousness is vast and deeply subjective. While the dominion of science is profoundly exacting, rigorously framed by empiricist symbolic logic, religion professes moral order & esoteric authority; but science challenges the conceits of human knowledge by testing our pragmatic hypotheses. So truth is an endless quest, both inwardly and out. It knows no limits.
The best we can do is conduct ourselves with decorum and interrogate our prejudices. This is what true education offers us, a civilizing context for personal and public development.
David , Science does not challenge our conceit of human knowledge , it increases our conceit by making the same mistake as religion. which is as Nietzsche says, “imprisons us in organized thought.”
As far as Truth being an endless quest , that is a fallacy that Lessing purported when he said that he would rather be on a constant quest for truth than to know it . Why would he say that ? Because once one has the truth revealed to them they are epistomologically accountable to it.
This means changing ones life literally to that accountability and takes the constant quest out of the realm of intellectual curiosity and into the world of personal sacrifice for others . Paul nailed Modern Dictatorship of relativism when he said ” They always seek but never come to the knowledge of the truth”. This implies that constant seeking is a dodge that keeps ones own autonomy perfectly in tact while Rome burns.
and then comes as Hedges calls ”Externalizing evil instead of dealing with it in ourselves.” So the cycle of the blame game goes on with nothing but bringing destruction in its path .
Thanks Rocket for responding. I disagree about science being a binding, restrictive agency. Creative thought is only scaffolding. Raja Yoga teaches us this. Science is a method of investigation and inquiry, the intelligent means to revise our understanding of specifics.
Any hypothesis should be testable, and ‘falsifiable’ as Popper contested, by repllcable means; otherwise it is only a matter of opinion, dogma, illusion, prejudice and self-projection. Although I will concede that all evidence, however robust, only ever constitutes persuasive approximations.
So your existential truth may not be mine, indeed, can not be ~ since I am not you in any literal sense. We need to learn to tolerate the difference, that is what maturity can and sometimes does bestow. Living things may appear similar (to our limited perceptions) but that does not mean they are ever exactly the same.
To know the final, complete and only answer, infers that you have framed the right ‘perfect’ question. To assert a single unalloyed truth is to profess absolute certainty. This is indeed a seductive conceit. Moreover it contradicts time. I do not accept the validity of this. Life is not a finished exercise, it is a complex process of experiential learning ~ a progressive meditation.
I am not the same person I was twenty years ago. I may not necessarily be wiser, but I am certainly older, having processed a succession of biographical events & therefore will have changed.
I totally agree with you and Hedges about externalizing evil. That is sheer folly; the most fundamental moral error. It is the grossest metaphysical naivete. If you need the devil, there is not much hope for God.