Bruce Lawrence is the Duke professor who says that jihad means "being a better student, a better colleague, a better business partner. Above all, to control one's anger." Now he has joined to that bit of wisdom the assertion that Osama bin Laden needs to take his place among the world's statesmen. Unfortunately, were he ever to meet Osama in person, I expect that the terrorist mastermind might wisely and gently differ with his definition of jihad. "Do not await anything from us but Jihad, resistance and revenge," he told the American people in 2002. I guess he meant "Do not await anything from us but being better students, better colleagues, better business partners, and controlling our anger."
All that said, I expect that Lawrence's book will be a useful sourcebook, showing Osama to be something quite different from how Lawrence characterizes him. "Prof publishes bin Laden’s words," from the Duke University Chronicle, with thanks to Ruth King:
Bruce Lawrence, professor of religion, is publishing a book of Osama bin Laden’s speeches and writings.Only days after the fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, a Duke professor is trying to explain the motivations of the tragedy’s organizer—jihadist Osama bin Laden.
Bruce Lawrence, professor of religion, edited and wrote the forward to the book Messages to the World—The Statements of Osama bin Laden. The text, which goes into print today and will arrive in bookstores in the fall, is the first to include the translations of the Arabic writings of bin Laden.
The book features a collection of 22 speeches and interviews given by the leader of the terrorist organization al Qaeda between 1994 and 2004....
“If you read him in his own words, he sounds like somebody who would be a very high-minded and welcome voice in global politics,” Lawrence said.
After analyzing his writings, Lawrence said he concluded bin Laden does not have an ultimate goal that he wants to achieve in his jihad but that he does have a specific target.
He doesn't have an ultimate goal, eh? Apparently Lawrence did not read the writings he was editing all that closely. Osama makes it quite clear in his message to the American people of November 24, 2002 that he is waging "Jihad in the way of Allah so that Allah's Word and religion reign Supreme." He criticizes the United States for failing to adopt Islamic law: "You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator."
What, then, is his goal? To restore the caliphate and Sharia in the Islamic world, and then by offensive jihad to extend it over the non-Muslim world. This is emphasized not only by Osama but by other jihadists around the world. How could Lawrence have missed it?
Duke University propagates this:
Vittorio Feltri was right when he wrote at “Libero” that the decadence of Westerners is to be identified with their illusion of being able to deal amiably with the Enemy, and even less with their fear. A fear that induces them to meekly host the enemy, to attempt to conquer him with sympathy, hoping that he will allow himself to be absorbed; while [the enemy] is the one who wants to absorb.
And this does not even take into account our familiarity with being invaded, humiliated, and betrayed. Like I said in “The Apocalypse,“ [it’s] the general attitude of resignation. Resignation generates apathy. Apathy generates inertia. Inertia generates indifference and, besides impeding moral judgment, indifference suffocates the of self-defense; that is, the instinct to fight back.
http://mysteryachievement.blogspot.com/2005/07/enemy-we-treat-like-friend-part-ii.html
When I read `The Greening Of America` I never ever imagined it would come to this.
Ghengis Khan was gracious to guests, Rodrigo Borgia was quite well read, Caligula threw "the best parties" Josef Stalin turned his nation into an industrial powerhouse, Adolf Hitler (or "Onkle Addie" to the Goebells children) was great with kids and Osama Bin Laden may be "high minded."
So f**king what?!?!
As the above examples have (I would hope) shown an individual's virtues can't be used to justify the terrible things they have done. To paint a rosy picture of a past tyrant and gloss over the atrocities they had carried out is offensive - to do that same for a mass-murderer who is still "in business" is unacceptable.
As a student I can appreciate the pressure that academics are under to produce work that is politically "palatable" but do so either dishonestly is wrong. When, through that dishonesty (or, worse still, gross ignorance) one presents a man who, by his own admission, thinks that the intentional and premeditated killing of unsuspecting women and children is not only right but a divinely ordained mission as a "welcome voice in global politics" then one has truly crossed every line an academic can cross.
Bruce Lawrence has chosen to voice the most watered down interpretation of Islam and its followers works and I don't doubt that if all Muslims shared his views the world would be a much finer place. The reality is that the majority of Muslims DO NOT share his view.
The religious texts that Bin Laden and many others refer to state in fairly plain terms that, as Kafirs dwelling in Dar al-Harb, rejecting Islam and refusing to pay our jizyah we are all fair game. Mohammed declared war on those whom he considered "unbelievers" and that war was not meant to end until the world is united under the Caliphate and living under Sharia Law.
Why, oh why would one allow themself to be used as a tool of the enemy? It is this Jihad Watcher's opinion that the learned Prof. Lawrence should be required at this point to turn in his mortar board.
When I read this, I couldn't help but think of the scene in the Mel Brooks movie "The Producers" where one of the producers tells the neo-Nazi playwright that he wants to portray "the Hitler with a song in his heart." The difference, of course, is that was a joke, this "professor" is serious. With every passing day, I grow more and more disgusted over the state of education in the U.S.
"Ghengis Khan was gracious to guests, Rodrigo Borgia was quite well read, Caligula threw "the best parties" Josef Stalin turned his nation into an industrial powerhouse, Adolf Hitler (or "Onkle Addie" to the Goebells children) was great with kids and Osama Bin Laden may be "high minded.""
Took the words out my mouth.
What struck me as rather bizarre (I guess I'm still getting used to the idea that these people are sincere) is that Osama hasn't even tried to atone for his sins, and this prof's giving him a free pass, calling his Islamic rants a "welcome voice". Good grief, a _welcome_ voice. Like, we in the west are just _so screwed up_, thank God we have the likes of Osama to point out our shortcomings.
With the exception of it's medical school Duke has always been a disgrace to North Carolina citizens. Once tenured the insane gain control. This idiot is just another in a long line. It is rumored that he is gay and thus he would be a fan of the religion of "piece". From the anti-Israel administration of Duke this guy is just another orgasm of muslim vomitus. What a shame for N.C. citizens.
Connoisseurs will note that Bruce Lawrence, the sinister sentimentalist, teaches at Duke. One is tempted to note that at Duke, among the faculty members in what is still optimistically called the Humanities, have recently been Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Fredric Jameson, Frank Lenticchia, and was it not the stomping-ground as well of Stanley Fish, now rivalling Martha Nussbaum as a named professor of literature, and law, and just about anything else you care to name (quasi-humanities subject matter, law-school-level salary, anointed role as World's Greatest Authority -- nice play if you can get it). Now there are those who after a few decades of critical theory, of boring themselves and their students to death, finally see the light and just want to have fun and read books. Thus Frank Lenticchia's not-exactly death-bed conversion. Thus in a way Stanley Fish's metamorphosis. But the stout defenders of Feminist Studies, Queer Studies, Post-Colonial Studies -- who will always exist, because la betise s'est mise a penser -- remain at Duke.
At Duke Bruce Lawrence has been cock-of-the-walk, ruling his little roost. Unlike some members of MESA Nostra, who try to offer apologetics by minimizing the significance of a "handful of extremists," Lawrence in his book "
Defenders of God" uses the term "Islamic fundamentalism" in the sense of returning to the roots of Islam, to the real Islam (this use, by Lawrence, is noted by Johannes Jansen in his own book, "The Dual Nature of Islamic Fundamentalism"). Lawrence goes beyond taqiyya-and-tu-quoque apologetics. He finds Islam rational, coherent, and with so much to like about it. Why hide, he suggests, all the wonderful things about Islam, all the truly impressive things about that master of classical Arabic prose (Lawrence likes to make much of this because it implies that he is capable of judging Arab prose, and thus serves as thinly-disguised self-promotion). His world, and welcome to it.
But what about those poor students who attempt to learn about Islam, its tenets and its history, at Duke? Many will remain permanently ill-informed, or will have been brainwashed into accepting the unacceptable -- by slow degrees. Others, however, may go on to graduate work elsewhere, and have their minds opened by further encounters with the world of Islam, and with Muslims. I have heard of one student who, while still worshipful of Laurence, spent time learning Arabic in Qatar. The open racism of the Arab Muslims struck him -- it was by him so unexpected. He knew little of how much attention the Arabs give to such things as skin color, always preferring the "light." He did not know --Bruce Laurence was hardly the man to tell him -- that within Islam is a clear Arab supremacist ideology. One wonders if that stay in Qatar set the student on the path of questioning what Laurence (and the new set of apologists, far cleverer, that he will find at the graduate program he is now enrolled in) and others taught him.
Cigarette peddlers have long been forced to affix or print prominently on their wares a Warning Label. Duke owes its existence to those sheaves of tobacco made into cigarettes. On the Duke course-catalogue, or on those parts of the catalogue containing listings for such subjects as history and literature, it would be fitting if, just as on the wares of the Big Donor Who Made It All Possible, on the wares of those tenured and mediocre beneficiaries of the nicotine-and-tar largesse, a similar Warning Label were to be affixed.
And that goes especially for any coursees taught by that admirer and apologist of Bin Laden, Professor Bruce Lawrence.
And now, why have lines from the "Soliloquy at the Spanish Cloister" suddenly come to mind?
Grrr. The swine, my heart's abohorrence! Sometimes my temper gets the better of me, and sometimes I don't stop bashing those I hate till there's nothing left of them but footprints scattered across the aether. I bashed a Presbyterian pastor in Pennsylvania. I promised I'd stop. I promised I wouldn't do it anymore unless there is a good reason to resume. So far nothing's come to my attention. I won't write anything more about the man. For now.
It was because of that cretin, (in the modern sense of the word,) that I also went after a young student at Princeton University, a theology student. That young man and his fellows, I believe undeserving of my hostile attentions, even today come to my blog to look at some of the things I wrote about them. I was nasty, cruel, vicious. And the worst of it the students I raged at are not deserving of it. Pick any one from the litter and I'd be proud to be his or her father, I'm sure. And yet these young people came under my hammer for the things they wrote on blogs of their own, chatty blogs about girlfriends and cars and piza and beer parties. Ah, and killing Israelis. Oh, and killing anyone else who gets in the way. Hmm, I recall now that murder is sort of OK over-all for some of these young theology students. That would be the part that enraged me. But that's only the smaller part: the big outrage is that they are decent and normal people who will soon take places in the world as Protestant ministers, that they will lead their communions of souls in the life of whatever morality they can muster; and it is there that I lose my temper with those who've conned them into thinking, writing, probably even believing, that Human decency is whatever one wants it to be, and forget about the idea of right and wrong. These young men and women are responsible for their thoughts and deeds; but those who lead them to this slough of despond and convince them by the authority of the ranks they hold in the academy, these vile professors who turn young men and women into amoral monsters of the Church, these are my heart's abhorrence.
These academic dhimmi pimps putting young men and women on the streets to whore for them are probably the first reason God invented lightposts, to hang them from.
And yet all is not lost. The students come almost daily to read about post-modernism at the link below. I wrote a paragraph or two of introduction that's easy enough to skip over, and the following essay is a definite winner, written by a philosophy professor who seems to have hit a chord with Princeton's theology students.
If they can tear themselves away from MTV long enough to puzzle over a poem by Robert Browning they might be good ministers someday. If not, grrrr, they too will be my heart's abhorrence. But I like to think that with some reason and perhaps a bit of even temper the students of today will be like students of any other day, mediocre and sheep-like, following whichever lead leads them. If they can find authority in Spencer and Hugh that they respect, then they might find themselves better people for it. If they don't, then we have to look at our futures filled with idiots preaching drivel from the pulpits, idiocies dangerous and destructive, perhaps the final end in our time to any real communion of souls, leaving only an atomic population of exiles to grope in the darkness.
Or you can marry your cat.
http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2005/08/like-pomomusing-you-know.html
Members of the Browning Society will now come to order. Thank you.
And now for the Treasurer's Report.
The good professor sounds high-minded in his own right, to the extent he may eventually find himself peeking out from behind his own tonsils.
It's 30 years now since I studied Robert Browning, having fallen since then into Jude-like obscurity.
But look at the life of modern man: I can read Browning if I so choose because I can read, because I can think about what I read, because I have access to books of poetry, because I don't live a life of rural idiocy like my grandparents and the countless generations of my relatives before them.
Thank God for Modernity!
How many of Browning's contemporaries could read his poetry? How many could read at all?
Thank God for Modernity!
Even in this state of our obscurity we are free to roam the universe and to contribute mightily to the treasury of the store of the mind. Pile up those riches. Oh, Lord, we have wealth beyond anything I could ever have dreamed of when I was a boy. No people in history are as rich as we. We are blessed in our riches, and we are equally blessed in our time that we can fight such a battle to preserve our bounty and share it with the world at large.
Had we but world enough and time, Hugh, I would thank you for reminding me of the poetry buried under years of neglect, poetry that kept me up all last night, that has me glowing and laughing for nothing but simple happiness in being alive this day.
Thanks, Hugh.
Well, good.
"And did you once read Browning plain? And did he stop and speak to you? How strange it seemed, and new."
"Memorabilia"? "My Last Duchess"? "Two in the Campagna"? "A Grammarian's Funeral"? You didn't stay up all night reading "The Ring and the Book," did you?
But when you ask "How many of Browning's contemporaries could read his poetry? How many could read at all?" and say "Thank God for Modernity" I think you have it wrong. Mass mis-education is not education. You are too sanguine. The answer about how many could read his poetry is: Many. And far more people were reading Browning, or reading anything good at all, then than now. And I am not referring only to those Browning Societies that I jokingly invoked so as to allude to the author.
The minimal literacy in our minimally literate and undereducated, falsely educated, mis-educated, country, full of "dynamic" people "taking leadership roles" and practically everyone under the age of 40, save for the dreamers and the desperate (who deserve all the support and protection they can get),is getting on with the real business of living -- i.e., getting, and then spending, doesn't make me want to cheer.
Look at the schools. Look at the universities. Look at the faculty at those universities. Look at how language is used in newpapers and magazines and books, on television, on the radio. Imagine being 15, 0r 20, or 25 -- and trying to deepen your sense of language.
I don't share your belief that more people today are reading good things. What sells, what they read or read part of, and then what they fax to each other, what the email to each other, what they write here and there and everywhere -- well, I would gladly trade what we have now for what they had in the heyday of Browning at the Casa Guidi.
Still, it took only a single fleeting allusion to send you flying to the right verses, either in your memory or on the page. And in the same spirit, because of your kind remarks, I feel the urge to make a mad dash for the bookshelf right now, to pull open a copy of ----
Given that aposiopetic mad dash, I will now fittingly take down "A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy," with Beardsleyesque illustrations to boot, an edition which at this point I am now grown-up enough to read.
Hugh, in the interests of our dignity I'll refrain from expressing anything further than a simple repeat of my earlier thanks.
Dag.
Hugh.... No. That's enough.
Duke has long had a weird streak. Long before insanity became common in US universities, it was the theathre of J.B.Rhine's ESP "experiments," that have afforded Martin Gardner, C.E.M Hansel and John Sladek so much matter for mirth.