Shadi, Come on ...when are you going to have kids? Enough of this goofing off and fancy pants "thinking.". We need little Shadis and Shadiniquas running around spending your money & driving you nuts.
For the faithful WoCers (whom I believe are all Abrahamic?), how do you live with the cognitive dissonance of being serious thinkers and social scientists while maintaining the pretense that what are transparently castles built on desert tribal fairy tales originating 3+k years ago are not just to be taken seriously anthropologically but literally believed?
Shadi, an Islamic question that keeps me up at night.
How do you reconcile (not in an abrasive how do you but a genuine wonder) the historical divide between Shia’s, Sunnis, Quranists and it’s impact on the practice of Islam— mainly in terms of salvation.
To me, it appears evident that in Christian circles the notion of being “saved by grace through faith” covers Catholic/Protestant split in history— do we have something similar in Islam?
You and Christine are reactionaries—recoiling and fretting and tut-tutting daily about the stunning abundance that life offers us in this moment.
Instead of embracing this new moment of stupendous new intellectual, sexual, and spiritual opportunity, you constantly ruminate about things like one’s duty to society and the future. Have children you say. But you apparently don’t know want them. You sound like a childless priest. Stop it. Kids are great; I have a great one. But they’re not for everyone. You worry too much about social security. You don’t gave kids for social security.
Instead of retrenching worn out Islamic and Catholic dogmas, and thereby expressing your own anxieties, you should embrace psychotherapy, sexual openness, psychedelics, and this generation’s unparalleled opportunity to make connections among the world’s great spiritual traditions, and create a new more abundant political and ethical ecology for us all with your big brains and kind hearts.
Hi John, thank you. Re: the sentence above "But you apparently don't know want them." Is that supposed to be "now want them"? Just want to make sure I have it right.
Realistically, what do you think are the prospects for liberal democracy in the Middle East? What are some second-best alternatives that you could live with?
Shadi, I just listened to your excellent conversation with Mustafa Akyol, on Zealots... I'm not well read on this history, but his liberal Turkey at the turn of the 20th century seems to omit the Armenian genocide which helped make it a muslim ethnostate... why didn't you call him out? It seems like the most hypocritical example to say Turkey does liberalism well, but only after it massacres of hundreds of thousands of christians. (I'm prehaps a bit riled because I happen to be reading the 40 Days of Musa Dagh currently.).
I'm all for not moralizing in politics, but I thought we drew the line at genocide.
Stop putting 'Art' to work for pet ideological causes. It is a clumsy tool for social critique. At best the work will be blunt, didactic. Good art works at the level of ancient impulses. We already have too much of that roiling nuanced social issues. Keep art unemployed... keep artists employed.
Would you be content with a US Middle East policy that strongly supported democracy in the region (preventing coups, aiding protestors, cutting off aid to dictators, etc.), while still arming Israel to the teeth and shielding it at the UN? Would you find it “good enough” if US policy was essentially, “we’ll do a lot to help most Arabs, just not Palestinians”?
I remember Damir mentioning the Shadi position on the Karabakh War in relation to the provocation, which really piqued my interest. What is the Shadi position? There are all sorts of minefields around territorial integrity, religion and ethnic cleansing.
I am also interested in Shadi's ideas on ethnic identity, in the US, the Middle East, and elsewhere.
Shadi has written and podcasted a lot about religion, its place in society and meaning for people. But I wonder if even in the Middle East, his analysis based significantly on faith misses the importance of ethnic nationalism and identity. Arguably we are in an era of resurgent ethno-nationalism with both Putin and Erdogan referring to "one nation, two countries" before starting/supporting wars. When the Tunisian president uses Orban's talking points against migrants, what is he doing? I know that this is something that Damir would have the most experience and arguably knowledge of, but I wonder what Shadi's theory of nationalism and irredentism is?
I hear this general theme of a “God-shaped” hole being left as religion declines, but how do you explain all the countries that have seen much lower rates of religious observance but haven’t descended into weird ideological obsessions like the US?
Shadi, Islam is a theologically empty religion. It borrows Abrahamic motifs to provide a guise of similarity to Judaism and Christianity but is otherwise a separate world unto itself. It focuses too much on practice and not enough on God’s nature or our relationship to him, and it assumes a great deal of prior agreement on the part of believers without having done the work to convince said believers of its claims, values, etc. Discuss.
Shadi, Come on ...when are you going to have kids? Enough of this goofing off and fancy pants "thinking.". We need little Shadis and Shadiniquas running around spending your money & driving you nuts.
For the faithful WoCers (whom I believe are all Abrahamic?), how do you live with the cognitive dissonance of being serious thinkers and social scientists while maintaining the pretense that what are transparently castles built on desert tribal fairy tales originating 3+k years ago are not just to be taken seriously anthropologically but literally believed?
Shadi, an Islamic question that keeps me up at night.
How do you reconcile (not in an abrasive how do you but a genuine wonder) the historical divide between Shia’s, Sunnis, Quranists and it’s impact on the practice of Islam— mainly in terms of salvation.
To me, it appears evident that in Christian circles the notion of being “saved by grace through faith” covers Catholic/Protestant split in history— do we have something similar in Islam?
Now want them. Apologies.
Shadi (and Christine),
You and Christine are reactionaries—recoiling and fretting and tut-tutting daily about the stunning abundance that life offers us in this moment.
Instead of embracing this new moment of stupendous new intellectual, sexual, and spiritual opportunity, you constantly ruminate about things like one’s duty to society and the future. Have children you say. But you apparently don’t know want them. You sound like a childless priest. Stop it. Kids are great; I have a great one. But they’re not for everyone. You worry too much about social security. You don’t gave kids for social security.
Instead of retrenching worn out Islamic and Catholic dogmas, and thereby expressing your own anxieties, you should embrace psychotherapy, sexual openness, psychedelics, and this generation’s unparalleled opportunity to make connections among the world’s great spiritual traditions, and create a new more abundant political and ethical ecology for us all with your big brains and kind hearts.
John
Hi John, thank you. Re: the sentence above "But you apparently don't know want them." Is that supposed to be "now want them"? Just want to make sure I have it right.
Realistically, what do you think are the prospects for liberal democracy in the Middle East? What are some second-best alternatives that you could live with?
Shadi, I just listened to your excellent conversation with Mustafa Akyol, on Zealots... I'm not well read on this history, but his liberal Turkey at the turn of the 20th century seems to omit the Armenian genocide which helped make it a muslim ethnostate... why didn't you call him out? It seems like the most hypocritical example to say Turkey does liberalism well, but only after it massacres of hundreds of thousands of christians. (I'm prehaps a bit riled because I happen to be reading the 40 Days of Musa Dagh currently.).
I'm all for not moralizing in politics, but I thought we drew the line at genocide.
Stop putting 'Art' to work for pet ideological causes. It is a clumsy tool for social critique. At best the work will be blunt, didactic. Good art works at the level of ancient impulses. We already have too much of that roiling nuanced social issues. Keep art unemployed... keep artists employed.
Would you be content with a US Middle East policy that strongly supported democracy in the region (preventing coups, aiding protestors, cutting off aid to dictators, etc.), while still arming Israel to the teeth and shielding it at the UN? Would you find it “good enough” if US policy was essentially, “we’ll do a lot to help most Arabs, just not Palestinians”?
Given that Israel and Cyprus are the only democracies in the region, strongly supporting democracy would mean being pro Israel, right?
I voted for Jill Stein!
Is politics a moral enterprise?
I remember Damir mentioning the Shadi position on the Karabakh War in relation to the provocation, which really piqued my interest. What is the Shadi position? There are all sorts of minefields around territorial integrity, religion and ethnic cleansing.
I am also interested in Shadi's ideas on ethnic identity, in the US, the Middle East, and elsewhere.
Shadi has written and podcasted a lot about religion, its place in society and meaning for people. But I wonder if even in the Middle East, his analysis based significantly on faith misses the importance of ethnic nationalism and identity. Arguably we are in an era of resurgent ethno-nationalism with both Putin and Erdogan referring to "one nation, two countries" before starting/supporting wars. When the Tunisian president uses Orban's talking points against migrants, what is he doing? I know that this is something that Damir would have the most experience and arguably knowledge of, but I wonder what Shadi's theory of nationalism and irredentism is?
I hear this general theme of a “God-shaped” hole being left as religion declines, but how do you explain all the countries that have seen much lower rates of religious observance but haven’t descended into weird ideological obsessions like the US?
Do you think the scale of post 1965 immigration has been good for American social solidarity?
Is the United States a morally driven nation?
Shadi, Islam is a theologically empty religion. It borrows Abrahamic motifs to provide a guise of similarity to Judaism and Christianity but is otherwise a separate world unto itself. It focuses too much on practice and not enough on God’s nature or our relationship to him, and it assumes a great deal of prior agreement on the part of believers without having done the work to convince said believers of its claims, values, etc. Discuss.