From Iran in Focus:
A senior Iranian Ayatollah said on Friday that Iran would never back down from its nuclear pursuit and the nuclear capability was the “dignity of Islamâ€Â, state television reported.
“The Security Council can do what it likes. We must stand against it since nuclear energy is the dignity of Islamâ€Â, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, who heads the powerful Guardians Council, told worshippers during his Friday prayers sermon in Tehran.
“Today that power of Islam is mentioned everywhereâ€Â, Jannati said.
“Every time we say we want peaceful nuclear energy, America says no you want to build a nuclear bombâ€Â, he said, adding, “We must stand firm and pay the priceâ€Â.
He said that the United States and Europe were collapsing yet unaware of such because they were “infatuated with powerâ€Â.
[My emphasis]
Ah, the power of malleable interpretation divorced from original intent. Of course, I suppose that it’s possible the Prophet Mohammed foresaw the coming of nuclear arms and “coded” into the Koran’s Allah’s insistence that the “dignity” of Islam depends upon the acquistition of such weaponry—after all, he seems to have been dead on about the hatred of Jews—but my guess is that this particularly senior Iranian Ayatolla has overstepped his hermeneutic bounds and is in “Huck and Jim were gay lovers” territory.
Not that it matters. Imams are allowed to interpret the Koran however they see fit—which makes the book infinitely useful insofar as it can be used to justify any action—and demonize any opponent—on the flimsiest (and self-supporting internal) pretense.
Just another reason to give some thought to the German Koran indictment, which identifies in the “text” (and I still maintain that to fundamentalist Islam, the Koran’s ontology differs in crucial ways from how we in west think of texts) an all-purpose justification for internal foment against any non-Islamic government.
(h/t Allah)
You know, Jeff, you’re always going on and on about how we have to take what these people say seriously (i.e. “Let’s kill all the Jews” or “Hey, hey, won’t it be swell when we nuke Coney Island”), but you won’t believe them now.
If the Iranian Imams say that those nuclear weapons are for peaceful purposes, we should believe them. Maybe they have a tough Neighborhood Watch program – they live in a bad area, you know. Or maybe they really need the energy. What if they’ve discovered a way to power SUVs using radioactive Jews? Wouldn’t that be useful?
So make up your mind, man. Believe them or don’t. But this flip-flopping of yours makes me worried that your just hate totalitarian Iranian nutjobs.
Racist.
tw: trouble … Do I really need to bother?
We could send ‘em a bit of nuclear energy. Just don’t make me say what form I’m suggesting.
It’s too bad the diety didn’t demand mushrooms, because then the clouds would take on a whole new meaning.
Too bad you don’t put that request for peaceful nuclear power into the context of “Death to (fill in your name)” and the acquisition of long-range rockets.
But hey, maybe those rockets are going to be used to launch satellites so that they can beam episodes of “Burkha Babes Gone Wild” throughout the middle east.
Word: served. ”Served up on a platter.”
Europeans and Americans are not, for the most part, breeding enough children to replace the current population much less be able to support the aging populations. With such diminishing returns the only way the government can take care of the elderly is to have a large immigrant population. If we do not want to die under Sharia we better start breeding with a little more enthusiasm.
Why not just enjoy that new peruvian chicken restaurant? Sounds much better than Sharia.
I remember reading an article on the Koran several years ago in the Atlantic Monthly and the author said that something like a third of the Koran is just gibberish. Not in terms of substance or logic, but as agrammatical nonsense that could not be fully understood.
I don’t know if this is true or not, but it seems like something that a Muslim might be asked to address by those who want to know more about the footholds on Islam.
“That God cannot lie, is no advantage to your argument, because it is no proof that priests can not, or that the Bible does not.”
— Thomas Paine
Regarding flexible interpretations: My dad, attending scientific conferences, has run into Western-educated Islamic scientists who claim that all knowledge, including fields like quantum physics, can be obtained by reading the Koran, properly interpreted (only in the original Arabic, of course). When the particular bit of knowledge that you’ve extracted later turns out to be “more useful than true,” as is often eventually the case with big ideas like Newtonian physics, then that just means that your interpretation was at fault, and it’s time to whip out the book again.
Jeff, I am no academic but doesn’t your continued use of decontructionist jargon (if it is) in your posts (not this one necessarily) tacitly undermine your meme war thesis by using the language of your enemies? Pardon me but those guys are not reacheable thru argument IMO. Isn’t a big part of their problem is their use and abuse of language? Or do you think that their method of analysis is sound but they made a mistake somewhere?
Just askin’.
“Deconstructionist jargon”? Not sure I use too much of that—though I do, on occasion, use the language of hermeneutics and semiotics when I’m talking about, say, hermeneutics or semiotics.
And no, using the language of one’s enemy to dismantle their assertions using their own terminology doesn’t undermine the meme war. In the past, I’ve been critical of those who use and advance these memes incorrectly—which I think is a grave danger. Proper understanding of the terminology is in fact empowering, and I hope my posts here are able to argue for such proper uses while dismantling cynical or ignorant or “dead metaphorical” uses. For an example, see here.
Thanks Jeff.
I guess I should have just admitted that I frequently am not sure I understand your point exactly. You seem to have a special meaning for the word “text”…sounds vaguely deconstructionist to me…I am almost totally ignorant of the subject tho.
And it ain’t that easy to find out these specialized meanings. I tried to look up “normative” for example in my dictionary…it wasn’t even in there!!! Late brainstorm…try Google! D’oh!
To particular types of theorists, just about anything can be a “text” (for instance, one could argue that the collection of of billboard messages occurring along a particular stretch of highway constitutes a cultural text that bespeaks a certain contemporary materialist notion of American culture). Here’s a place to poke around.
The point is, a text, to many theorists of reference and interpretation, is not just a book, which is how we traditionally think about texts. So when I say that the Koran, to Islamic fundamentalists, is more than just a text (a book)—that it has an ontology (a being) beyond its material makeup (ink, paper, stitching), I’m making the argument that banning a text and banning a “text” that goes beyond the traditional notion of a paper and ink collection of marked pages are potentially different things. And we need keep that in mind when we make arguments about banning books and “free speech.”