This unstable character of man, this going from one extreme to the other, arising as it does out of his narrow vision and petty mind, reveals certain basic moral tensions within which human conduct must function if it is to be stable and fruitful. These contradictory extremes are, therefore, not so much a "problem" to be resolved by theological thought as tensions to be "lived with" if man is to be truly "religious," i.e., a servant of God. Thus, utter powerlessness and "being the measure for all things," hopelessness and pride, determinism and "freedom," absolute knowledge and pure ignorance—in sum, an utterly "negative self-feeling" and a "feeling of omnipotence"—are extremes that constitute natural tensions for proper human conduct. It is the "God-given" framework for human action. Since its primary aim isto maximize moral energy, the Qur’ān—which claims to be "guidance formankind"—regards it as absolutely essential that man not violate the balance of opposing tensions. The most interesting and the most important fact of moral life is that violating this balance in any direction produces a "Satanic condition" which in its moral effects is exactly the same: moral nihilism. Whether one is proud or hopeless, self-righteous or self-negating, in either case the result is deformity and eventual destruction of the moral human personality.

The neo-cons, or some of them, decided that they would back Clinton when he belatedly decided for Bosnia and Kosovo against Milosevic, and this even though they loathed Clinton, because the battle against religious and ethnic dictatorship in the Balkans took precedence. This, by the way, was partly a battle to save Muslims from Catholic and Christian Orthodox killers. That impressed me. The neo-cons also took the view, quite early on, that coexistence with Saddam Hussein was impossible as well as undesirable. They were dead right about that. They had furthermore been thinking about the menace of jihadism when most people were half-asleep.And then I have to say that I was rather struck by the way that the Weekly Standard and its associated voices took the decision to get rid of Trent Lott earlier this year, thus removing an embarrassment as well as a disgrace from the political scene. And their arguments were on points of principle, not 'perception.' I liked their ruthlessness here, and their seriousness, at a time when much of the liberal Left is not even seriously wrong, but frivolously wrong, and babbles without any sense of responsibility. (I mean, have you read their sub-Brechtian stuff on Halliburton....?) And revolution from above, in some states and cases, is—as I wrote in my book A Long Short War—often preferable to the status quo, or to no revolution at all.

الدين غريزة فطرية عند النسان أيا كان وفي أي عصر عاش. إل أن هذه الفطرة إذا غذيتبالعلم والتحرر الفكري، هدي صاحبها إلى معرفة الدين الحق..أما إذا تركت دون أن يشرق فيها ضياء العلم، فإنها قد تضل بصاحبها،وتزج به في سبل الغواية وتخضعه للأوهام والأساطير.

As to the 'Left' I'll say briefly why this was the finish for me. Here is American society, attacked under open skies in broad daylight by the most reactionary and vicious force in the contemporary world, a force which treats Afghans and Algerians and Egyptians far worse than it has yet been able to treat us. The vaunted CIA and FBI are asleep, at best. The working-class heroes move, without orders and at risk to their lives, to fill the moral and political vacuum. The moral idiots, meanwhile, like Falwell and Robertson and Rabbi Lapin, announce that this clerical aggression is a punishment for our secularism. And the governments of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, hitherto considered allies on our 'national security' calculus, prove to be the most friendly to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.Here was a time for the Left to demand a top-to-bottom house-cleaning of the state and of our covert alliances, a full inquiry into the origins of the defeat, and a resolute declaration in favor of a fight to the end for secular and humanist values: a fight which would make friends of the democratic and secular forces in the Muslim world. And instead, the near-majority of 'Left' intellectuals started sounding like Falwell, and bleating that the main problem was Bush's legitimacy. So I don't even muster a hollow laugh when this pathetic faction says that I, and not they, are in bed with the forces of reaction.

As a convinced atheist, I ought to agree with Voltaire that Judaism is not just one more religion, but in its way the root of religious evil. Without the stern, joyless rabbis and their 613 dour prohibitions, we might have avoided the whole nightmare of the Old Testament, and the brutal, crude wrenching of that into prophecy-derived Christianity, and the later plagiarism and mutation of Judaism and Christianity into the various rival forms of Islam. Much of the time, I do concur with Voltaire, but not without acknowledging that Judaism is dialectical. There is, after all, a specifically Jewish version of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, with a specifically Jewish name—the Haskalah—for itself. The term derives from the word for 'mind' or 'intellect,' and it is naturally associated with ethics rather than rituals, life rather than prohibitions, and assimilation over 'exile' or 'return.' It's everlastingly linked to the name of the great German teacher Moses Mendelssohn, one of those conspicuous Jewish hunchbacks who so upset and embarrassed Isaiah Berlin. (The other way to upset or embarrass Berlin, I found, was to mention that he himself was a cousin of Menachem Schneerson, the 'messianic' Lubavitcher rebbe.) However, even pre-enlightenment Judaism forces its adherents to study and think, it reluctantly teaches them what others think, and it may even teach them how to think also.

أنت تجد في الشرق أحد اثنين .. تجد من يرفض العلم اكتفاء بالدين والقرآن .. و تجد من يرفض الدين اكتفاء و عبادة للعلم المادي و الوسائلالمادية .و كلا الاثنين سبب من أسباب النكبة الحضارية في المنطقة .. و كلاهمالم يفهم المعنى الحقيقي للدين و لا المعنى الحقيقي للعلم .

لا أدري لماذا لا يطير العباد إلى ربِّهم على أجنحةٍ من الشوق بدل أن يُساقوا إليه بسياط من الرهبة ؟! إنَّ الجهل بالله وبدينه هو عِلَّةُ هذا الشعور البارد ، أو هذا الشعور النافر - بالتعبير الصحيح - ؛ مع أنَّ البشر لن يجدوا أبرَّ بهم ولا أحنَى عليهم من الله عز وجل

على الرغم من مرور كثير من الأمم و القرون فما زال إسم الدولة الإسلامية بما إقترنت به من عدل و إخاء و محبة و ثراء روحي ... مازال هذا كله مرتبطا باسم عمر فهو أول حاكم في الإسلام إجتمعت عليه الأمة و آخر حاكم إلتفت وراءة بلا خلاف ثم تفرقت من بعده و لم تجتمع إلى يومنا هذا ... !!

[…] I began to see Algiers as one of the most fascinating and dramatic places on earth. In the small space of this beautiful but congested city intersected two great conflicts of the contemporary world. The first was the one between Christianity and Islam (expressed here in the clash between colonizing France and colonized Algeria). The second, which acquired a sharpness of focus immediately after the independence and departure of the French, was a conflict at the very heart of Islam, between its open, dialectical — I would even say “Mediterranean” — current and its other, inward-looking one, born of a sense of uncertainty and confusion vis-à-vis the contemporary world, guided by fundamentalists who take advantage of modern technology and organizational principles yet at the same time deem the defense of faith and custom against modernity as the condition of their own existence, their sole identity.[…] In Algiers one speaks simply of the existence of two varieties of Islam — one, which is called the Islam of the desert, and a second, which is defined as the Islam of the river (or of the sea). The first is the religion practiced by warlike nomadic tribes struggling to survive in one of the world's most hostile environments, the Sahara. The second Islam is the faith of merchants, itinerant peddlers, people of the road and of the bazaar, for whom openness, compromise, and exchange are not only beneficial to trade, but necessary to life itself.

له‌ ئیسلامدا به‌ به‌هاترین كار بیركردنه‌وه‌ و روونكردنه‌وه‌ی زانستییه‌ -بێگومان كه‌سێك ده‌توانێ ده‌ستی به‌ بیركردنه‌وه‌ی راست بگات كه‌ به‌ ئاگابێت - ئاگایی وردی زانست بێت ئیسلام به‌و جۆره‌ به‌ها بۆ بیركردنه‌وه‌ داده‌نێت.( تفكر ُ ساعة خيرُ مِن عبادة ستين سَنة )

Verily, Allah enjoins justice, and the doing of good to others; and givinglike kindred; and forbids indecency, and manifest evil, and wrongfultransgression. (The Holy Quran, an-Nahl 16:91)This verse sets forth three gradations of doing good.The first is the doing of good in return for good.This is the lowest gradation and even an average personcan easily acquire this gradation that he should do goodto those who do good to him.The second gradation is a little more difficult thanthe first, and that is to take the initiative in doinggood out of pure benevolence. This is the middlegrade. Most people act benevolently towards thepoor, but there is a hidden deficiency in benevolence,that the person exercising benevolence is consciousof it and desires gratitude or prayer in return for hisbenevolence. If on any occasion the other personshould turn against him, he considers him ungrateful.On occasion he reminds him of his benevolence orputs some heavy burden upon him.The third grade of doing good is graciousness asbetween kindred. God Almighty directs that in thisgrade there should be no idea of benevolence or anydesire for gratitude, but good should be done out ofsuch eager sympathy as, for instance, a mother doesgood to her child. This is the highest grade of doinggood which cannot be exceeded. But God Almightyhas conditioned all these grades of doing good withtheir appropriate time and place. The verse citedabove clearly indicates that if these virtues are notexercised in their proper places they would becomevices.

إن حرية الفكر لا تعني حتماً مجافاة الدين , كما يغفهم بعض المقلّدين في التحرر , حين يرون الجفوة بين الدين و الفن و العلم في أوروبا لظروف تاريخية خاصّة بالقوم هناك ؛ فينقلونه نقلاً الى العالم الاسلامي , الذي لم تقع الجفوة بين الدين و العلم و الفن في يوم من أيام التاريخ !

I think I have a very good idea why it is that anti-Semitism is so tenacious and so protean and so enduring. Christianity and Islam, theistic though they may claim to be, are both based on the fetishizing of human primates: Jesus in one case and Mohammed in the other. Neither of these figures can be called exactly historical but both have one thing in common even in their quasi-mythical dimension. Both of them were first encountered by the Jews. And the Jews, ravenous as they were for any sign of the long-sought Messiah, were not taken in by either of these two pretenders, or not in large numbers or not for long.If you meet a devout Christian or a believing Muslim, you are meeting someone who would give everything he owned for a personal, face-to-face meeting with the blessed founder or prophet. But in the visage of the Jew, such ardent believers encounter the very figure who did have such a precious moment, and who spurned the opportunity and turned shrugging aside. Do you imagine for a microsecond that such a vile, churlish transgression will ever be forgiven? I myself certainly hope that it will not. The Jews have seen through Jesus and Mohammed. In retrospect, many of them have also seen through the mythical, primitive, and cruel figures of Abraham and Moses. Nearer to our own time, in the bitter combats over the work of Marx and Freud and Einstein, Jewish participants and protagonists have not been the least noticeable. May this always be the case, whenever any human primate sets up, or is set up by others, as a Messiah.

Vor sechshundert Jahren besaß die Pariser Medizinische Fakultät die kleinste Bibliothek der Welt. Sie bestand aus einem Titel. Und diese Schrift war das Werk eines Arabers.Es war so kostbar, daß noch Seine Allerchristliche Majestät König Ludwig XI. zwölf Mark in Silber und hundert Taler in Gold hinterlegen mußte, als er sich diesen Satz auslieh, damit seine Leibärzte jederzeit eine Kopie als Nachschlagwerk bei möglichen Attacken auf die Allerhöchste Gesundheit zu Rate zu ziehen vermöchten.Dieses Werk, das den ganzen Bestand der Bibliothek ausmachte, umfaßte aber auch die Fülle des gesamten medizinischen Wissens seit den frühesten Griechen - bis zum Jahre 925 n. Chr. Und da die folgenden vierhundert Jahre hierzulande so gut wie nichts dazu beigetragen hatten, wog dieser eine mächtige, strotzdende Gigant aus der Feder des Arabers tausendfach die bescheidenen, dünnbrüstigen Schriften sämtlicher klösterlichen Biblitotheken auf.Wie sehr die Pariser ihren Schatz zu würdigen wußten, beweißt das Denkmal, das sie dem Andenken seines Autors im Auditorium maximum ihrer Medizinschule gewidmet haben. Heute haben die Studenten der École de Médecine täglich sein Bild und das eines anderen Arabers vor Augen, wenn sie sich in dem großen Hörsaal am Boulevard St. Germain des Prés versammeln.Rhases nannte ihn das Abendland. Die Araber nannten ihn ar-Rasi. Sein eigentlicher Name war Abu Bekr Muhammed ben Sakerija.

I ran across an excerpt today (in English translation) of some dialogue/narration from the modern popular writer, Paulo Coelho in his book: Aleph.(Note: bracketed text is mine.)... 'I spoke to three scholars,' [the character says 'at last.'] ...two of them said that, after death, the [sic (misprint, fault of the publisher)] just go to Paradise. The third one, though, told me to consult some verses from the Koran. [end quote]' ...I can see that he's excited. [narrator]' ...Now I have many positive things to say about Coelho: He is respectable, inspiring as a man, a truth-seeker, and an appealing writer; but one should hesitate to call him a 'literary' writer based on this quote. A 'literary' author knows that a character's excitement should be 'shown' in his or her dialogue and not in the narrator's commentary on it. Advice for Coelho: Remove the 'I can see that he's excited' sentence and show his excitement in the phrasing of his quote.(Now, in defense of Coelho, I am firmly of the opinion, having myself written plenty of prose that is flawed, that a novelist should be forgiven for slipping here and there.)Lastly, it appears that a belief in reincarnation is of great interest to Mr. Coelho ... Just think! He is a man who has achieved, (as Leonard Cohen would call it), 'a remote human possibility.' He has won lots of fame and tons of money. And yet, how his preoccupation with reincarnation—none other than an interest in being born again as somebody else—suggests that he is not happy!