Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id EAA18296 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 23 Jan 2002 04:53:08 GMT Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 20:48:45 -0800 Message-Id: <200201230448.g0N4mj924843@mail15.bigmailbox.com> Content-Type: text/plain Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary X-Mailer: MIME-tools 4.104 (Entity 4.116) X-Originating-Ip: [65.80.160.121] From: "Joe Dees" <joedees@addall.com> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: RE: Fundamentalism and beliefs Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk('binary' encoding is not supported, stored as-is) Go to:
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/90sep/rage.htm
to read THE ROOTS OF MUSLIM RAGE by Brenard Lewis
> "Lawrence DeBivort" <debivort@umd5.umd.edu> <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Fundamentalism and beliefsDate: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 11:03:27 -0500
>Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>
>Theme: The expansion of Western ‘modern’ civilization created in the people
>affected psychological conditions akin to exile.
>
>>From Karen Armstrong, THE BATTLE FOR GOD, NY: Ballantine Books, 2001, paper,
>p. 8.
>
>Armstrong has just examined the repression of the Jews of Spain by Isabella
>and Ferdinand, Catholic monarchs who defeated the last Muslim rules in
>Spain. In 1492, the monarchs ordered the conversion by baptism or explusion
>of all Jews from Spain. 70,000 Jews stayed and converted, though they
>continued to be held in suspicion and subjected to the Inquisition. 80,000
>fled next door to Catholic Portugal, and 50,000 travelled overseas and found
>welcome in the Muslim Ottoman Empire -- LB
>
>Armstong continues:
>
>“[The Spanish Jews] were used to Muslim society, but the loss of Spain—or
>Sefarad, as they called it—had inflicted a deep psychic wound. These
>Sepharad Jews felt that they themselves and everything else were in the
>wrong place. Exile is a spiritual as well as a physical dislocation. The
>world of the exile is wholly unfamiliar and, therefore without meaning. A
>violent uprooting, which takes away all normal props, breaks up our world,
>snatches us forever from places that are saturated in memories crucial to
>our identity, and plunges us permanently in an alien environment, can make
>us feel that our very existence has been jeopardized. When exile is also
>associated with human cruelty, it raises urgent questions about the problem
>of evil in a world supposedly created by a just and benevolent God.
>
>“ The experience of the Sephardic Jews was an extreme form of the uprooting
>and displacement that other peoples would later experience when they were
>caught up in an aggressive modernizing process. We shall see that when
>modern Western civilization took root in a foreign environment, it
>transformed the culture so drastically that many people felt alienated and
>disoriented. The old world had been swept away, and the new one was so
>strange that people could not recognize their once-familiar surroundings and
>could make no sense of their lives. Many would become convinced, like the
>Sephardics, that their very existence was threatened. They would fear
>annihilation and extinction. In their confusion and pain, many would do what
>some of the Spanish exiles did, and turn to religion. But because their
>lives were so utterly changed, they would have to evolve new forms of faith
>to make the old traditions speak to them in their radically altered forms.”
>
>
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This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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