No Oriente, uma estrela!
quarta-feira, fevereiro 08, 2006
Um grande texto publicado num jornal de fora da Europa. Por um anónimo que assina Spengler,numa clara referência a Oswald Spengler. Estou já a ver os clamores, contra o anonimato e por isso fica aqui um cheirinho a alecrim. Virá a salvação do Oriente?!
The global relationship among literacy rates, secularization and population growth makes clear that the fragility of Muslim traditional society is not a Muslim problem as such. But the Muslim world is far more vulnerable than the numbers suggest, for two reasons. The first reason is chronological, and the second is theological. It is not a good thing to come late to the table of globalization. China and its neighbors have emerged from the maelstrom of revolution and the violent loss of tens of millions of lives to become actors on the world economic stage. Of China's 1.3 billion people, 400 million are integrated into the world division of labor, and millions more are becoming urbanized, literate and productive by the year. India remains behind China but has good prospects for success. Against these formidable competitors, few countries in Western Asia, Africa or Latin America can hope to prevail. In a world that has little need of subsistence farmers and even less need of university graduates with degrees in Islamic philosophy, most of the Muslim world can expect small mercy from the market. The theological problem I have discussed in other locations, most recently in reporting the pope's seminar at Castelgandolfo. Christianity and Judaism have adapted to doubt, the bacillus of modern thought, by inviting doubt to serve as the handmaiden of faith. No better formulation of this can be found than in Benedict XVI's classic Introduction to Christianity. The object of revelation, the believer, becomes a participant in revelation, in dialogue with the Revealer. This great innovation has not prevented the death of traditional, autonomic Christian belief, but it has left an enduring core of Christian faith in the West well inoculated against skepticism. As the pope explained, the eternal, unchanging character of the Koran that the Archangel Gabriel dictated verbatim to Mohammed admits of no doubt. Muslim belief is not dialogue, but submission. It is as defenseless before the bacillus of skepticism as the American aboriginals were before the smallpox virus. That is why Muslims cannot respond to Western jibes at the person of their Prophet except as they did to the Jyllens-Posten cartoons. I do not sympathize with scoffers but, like Benedict, I see doubt as an adversary to be won over, rather than as an enemy to be extirpated. I would not have drawn nor published these cartoons, but when the lines are drawn, I stand with Western freedom against traditional authority. I write these lines over a Carlsberg and shall drink no other lager until the boycott of Danish product ends.
Publicado por josé 10:28:00
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Não concordo com esta parte. Acho que entrar em guerra aberta com eles, a não ser que seja realmente necessário, não irá beneficiar ninguém. E então não haverá mesmo nenhuma esperança para as mulheres muçulmanas. Só quem não se preocupa é que pode falar assim.
Por mim, o anonimato está bem. COmo para alguns não está e serve de arma de arremesso, é sempre útil lembrar que não estamos sós. É só por isso.
tina:
Tenho uma interpretação diferente para essa passagem assimilada ao discurso de Bento:
Na dúvida, fortalecemos as crenças se ultrapassamos aquela.
Para tal, a tolerância é essencial, mas não a submissão.
A passagem, a meu ver, não advoga a guerra. Antes pelo contrário. Mas não a teme também. Antes pelo contrário.
É essa a atitude correcta, a meu ver, nos tempos que correm.
Obrigado.
po