The Developing and Deepening Conflict
Host: Farhad Saba

Influencing Belief Systems

(Participant) Bill Keller in today's New York Times dismisses as conspiratorial nonsense, or anti-Semitism, the idea that the Jewish neoconservatives close to Bush and Cheney (Wolfowitz, Perle, etc.) are succeeding in persuading the administration to follow an agenda that fundamentally serves Israel's interests. Is there agreement with this position in the ILF?

(Participant) Anti-Semitism has always been a handy tool for strengthening any side of a political controversy. From my perspective, the Bush administration could reverse and turn anti-Semitic without leaving any tire marks after the turn.

To over-simplify a hugely complex situation:

The real enemy of both Israel and Palestine has minimal religious causes: it is the looming certainty of insufficient water, land and other necessities of life for the present and forecasted demography of the land over which they are both fighting to survive--Israel to maintain a currently high standard of living, Palestine for life itself.

To stretch an image: if the cultural mix trying to find living space in an over-crowded space were barely reproducing Germans and high reproducing French (which of course today they are not) the antagonism would be similar. The logic for warlike and barbaric behavior is far more understandable for both Israel and Palestine than it is for us against Iraq.

(Participant) Harlan--just an aside. Your last paragraph describing "Democracy" is delightful. I wish we had it. "Civilian control of the military"--hardly, unless you think of Bush as the civilian. We do have millions of entrepreneurs, but women are only on the way to "liberation," we are ruining our schools, both with standardized tests and under funding (war for $100 billion and nothing for our schools?) and all those etceteras. If democracy were functioning according to most definitions, the majority of citizens of the US would indeed control the military. But the entrepreneurs control the media, and the presidential clique manages both the military/budget in ways that are counter to what the people clearly want.

Having run on, I would like to join the welcome for Farhad Saba. Farhad. Please tell us whether there is growing support in the Arab world for a moderate version of Islam, as for example it would appear there is beginning to be in Iran despite the fundamentalist Islamist leaders, or whether the hope of moderation is another likely casualty of the Bush program.

(Participant) An interesting piece in the New York Time online. tiled The Philosopher of Islamic Terror, by Paul Berman, it examines the writings of Sayyid Qutb. Depressing, disturbing, yet at the end he asks some important questions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/23/magazine/23GURU.html?

(Participant) Thanks, Kip. It is great to see your precise responses to some of the earlier postings.

The questions at the end of the New York Times article to which you referred reminded me of a discussion we had in an earlier forum. That discussion revolved around the concept of the sacred. At its basic level, Muslims view the Cartisean paradigm, and the secular modernity on which it is based, a blasphemy.

Islamic thought, science and technology developed in the pre-modern world, when Arab scholars had a holistic view of the world. They were, as scientists, observers to a sacred event–the universe. Theirs was not a science of overpowering nature, but understanding it, and living in harmony with it.

Once we have resolved the current conflict, and the question of Palestine, we have to resolve the ultimate rift between Islam, which basically believes in the sacredness of the universe, and modernity, which believes in universe as a machine, albeit a conscious one.

(Participant) Were that "ultimate rift" the only issue, I'd register on the side of Islam. Must I now go somewhere and hide?

(Participant) A few observations:

1. 30 million people worldwide have protested--even if true this constitutes only one-half of one percent of the world's population--an insignificant number.
2. Islam is not a religion, but a way of life. No matter what you call Islam, it has all the trappings of a religion--prayer, places of worship, icons, belief in a supreme being, leaders, etc. Zen, Taosim and Sufism are better examples of a "way" of life. Notice that they don't refer to others as 'infidels'.
3. The middle east has for centuries survived economically by controlling the access to its natural resources (e.g. alum and oil) and be preying on the trade between east and west either by banditry or taxation. Some of the difficulties which have arisen in the mid east are the result of the Suez canal, which put a virtual end to the big trade caravans.
4. Are we genetically coded to be violent? No matter where you look in life violence is a part of it. One plant kills all competitors, one species of fish kills all others, etc.
5. Should we not focus on the opportunities, and see if we can promote them in some way? I couldn't agree more.

I saw on the news last night that VP Cheney's former company, Halliburton, has been awarded a major contract for rebuilding Iraq. Also Bush will be asking Congress for $489 million just to repair oil facilities in the country. Isn't it nice to know the guys at the top?

The triumvirate of rulers, the military and merchants has been a dominant force in world politics for as far back as there is any recorded history and regardless of what some of us may want that's not going to change. I find it interesting to note that the people who comprise that triumvirate are not from another planet. We produce them right here from among ourselves. If we, the people, are dissatisfied with those who take to the roles we provide perhaps we should change ourselves in such a way that we no longer produce those who are so unsatisfying to us.

(Participant) I, too, found the Berman piece most informative. Scary.

Kip: I have to argue against a couple of your points. Thirty million people, even worldwide, is a huge group, considering what it takes to actually march and protest. It could be highly representative. Your calculations must include those who sympathize, feel that strongly, but do not march, of which there are many millions more, two times more, ten times more, a hundred times. Social scientists can accurately sample the entire US population with a selected group of only 1500.

To focus on the presence of violent acts throughout history without pointing to the presence of cooperative acts (which far outnumber the violent ones) leads one to self-confirming behaviors. That's how security systems are developed, producing exactly the opposite of their intent. In America, one of the more "violent" countries in the world, the vast majority of citizens have never even witnessed a violent act--a beating, stabbing, rape, or murder. The violence we witness is more or less limited to the 240,000 violent acts children see on television before they graduate from high school. Just take a walk around your town someday and watch all the cooperative behavior, people giving directions to strangers, helping blind people, carrying packages, etc.

I'm prepared to look at our current opportunities, but the beliefs and attitudes we carry into that task will determine our options.

(Participant) Fred, I think (well, at any rate based upon personal experience and that of friends) that the modernist, mechanistic view of the universe is considerably less prevalent among today's western thinkers and scientists than it might have been even so recently as the 50's. Perhaps one of the most significant contributions of the hippie movement was to focus a large portion of that generation on a more sacred view of the universe. I don't see that the rift between Islam and Christianity is so great that it can't be healed with just a modicum of tolerance on both sides.

Dick, I stand by my statement regarding violence. That cooperative acts far outweigh, in number, violent acts doesn't in any way change the observable and verifiable fact that violence is a part of life. Zero sum and non-zero sum games both exist and (as part of the sacred view of the universe) comprise the engine that drives life. The Yin and the Yang, if you will.

(Participant) Well, Kip, we don't disagree on the fact that violence exists, and is part of life. But it isn't nearly as prominent a part as most people think it is, and because they have a false idea about it, all sorts of unnecessary or counter-productive structures are built, such as prisons, and all sorts of unnecessary measures are taken, such as wars, predicated on those false assumptions. Then, because both prisons and wars beget violence, they become self-confirming assumptions.

It would be foolhardy to pretend that there is no violence or evil in the world. Indeed that part of life is what gives meaning to the good. But for those of us who care about developing strategies for a better world, we have to proceed with assumptions that fit the facts. We are buffeted about by media coverage, nightly news patterns ("If it bleeds, it leads.") and all sorts of violent images, because there is a morbid fascination in violence and death. We can see it today in our watching the televised war. Even war protesters, I'm sure, are watching the developing conflict with some fascination for how violent it may become. Violence is a part of life, but it isn't the overwhelming truth that should guide us as we construct our future.

(Farhad Saba) Raymond, & Kip:

Thanks for your comments regarding modernism and Islam. I don’t think that Raymond should hide, and I agree with Kip that the Cartisean paradigm has been amended by new ideas in recent years. However, post-modernism is still a developing project, and for the most part it is not moving toward a goal which I was hoping that it would.

There is a great opportunity here to develop a post-modern ideology that would bring the best of the pre-modern thoughts of China, India, Persia, and Arab lands with that of the post-modern western thought. When I was living in Connecticut, I had the opportunity to attend several sessions of the Hartford Seminary where this possibility was discussed.

One approach would be to bring a few Islamic scholars (3 to 5) who are familiar with the Western thought and tradition together with ILF fellows for a foundational discussion of post-modernism. I firmly believe that modernism is the root cause of misunderstanding between East and West. Now we have a historical opportunity to address the issue because of what Kip is saying. Even if we resolve the current political issues –which must be resolved –the fundamental issue of modernism will create new political problems.

I have tried to present the case of Islam as much as I can. But you have to realize that I spend my day in correcting HTML code in student projects, and figuring out how we can resolve audio feedback in Flash Communication Server Software! I don’t spend my day reading theological treaties of Islam. We need to involve those people in our discussion and then you would have a unique forum that could offer something of global importance. Richard, what do you think?

(Participant) Fred, I think your idea is terrific! Everything that is happening seems to me to be pointing in this very direction. This is an exciting and even mysterious time, offering us tremendous opportunity for integration and growth--or not.

I spend several hours a day with HTML myself, but fortunately I don't have to correct anybody's code but my own!

(Farhad Saba) Thanks for supporting my idea about a conference on tradition, modernity and post-modernism. This question has been paramount in most of my professional life, as someone who was responsible for transfer of modern technology to Iran in the 1970’s. I feel, when we win the war in Iraq, we will have to address this question sooner or later. This is how we can win the peace.

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