Vinoth Ramachandra offers another causal factor that may be driving the Jihadi bus in this article reproed at Sojorners:"I suggest that the misguided young men responsible for the London bombings were motivated not by cultural or economic alienation (not only were they were not poor, but the world's poor don't tend to do such things), nor by 'hatred of the West' (there are many non-Muslims who hate liberal institutions and values but don't kill innocent civilians), nor by the study of the Quran per se (millions of Muslims who study the Quran diligently do not become suicide bombers), but rather by the simple and ancient motivation of revenge in 'shame cultures' - not for evils committed against them or their families, but against what they had been indoctrinated (probably in Pakistan) into seeing as evils committed against the Ummah, or household of Islam, by the United States and Britain. These are honor killings, and have no military objectives."
While I'm not convinced that this is the whole story, it is probably part of it an important in that previously it has not been picked up. Interesting too because the 'honour/shame' meme is a growing and popular theme in biblical studies at the moment.
An important balance is added too: "what is most disconcerting for Muslims and Christians living in South Asia is the way that the Western political and journalistic obsession with Muslim violence has led to the complete neglect of the equally vicious Hindu and Buddhist nationalist violence against minorities in India and Sri Lanka respectively." Building a worldwide culture of peace is the real task that focus on particulap violences might stifle, and to do that means taking responsibility for creating and advancing the conditions conducive to peace that are in our power. The biggest and best preconditions of peace are founded on justice and truth; something that western economic interests are not doing well with at the moment.
SojoNet: Faith, Politics, and Culture:[:terrer:]
05 August 2005
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I've been watching the TV series 'Foundation'. I read the books about 50 years ago (I know!) but scarcely now remember anything...
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from: http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/online/2012/5/22/1337672561216/Annular-solar-eclipse--008.jpg -
I've just had an article published on emergingchurch.info. It's an adaptation of some of my book, but I thought I'd share it and...
2 comments:
Andii, I've come across the honour / shame angle before (sorry, can't recall the source) and there's a lot about it that rings true for me.
An interesting side angle - I have a sneaking suspicion that many whites in the west have shifted away from a guilt / innocence paradigm to more of a fear / power paradigm which used to be more typically associated with shamanistic cultures. Not being a qualified sociologist I can't back it up but note this - the resurgence in might-is-right thinking in right wing circles over ideals of international law and of course the emergence of neo-shamanism in rave culture and pagan circles.
In interpreting our culture I think we need to start asking these sociological questions that were once the exclusive province of third world missionaries overseas.
Just realised I hadn't commented on this as I'd intended...
I think you are right that the guilt/innocence meme is dead or dying for us. The fear/power idea is interesting; I'd not really thought of that before. I'll need a bit of convincing though I am minded of the whole 'power evangelism' and 'strategic level spiritual warfare' thing about 10 years ago and asking myself if there's a connection...
Thanks for the insight -any further reading to go with?
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