tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-75776096552361936862024-03-08T06:02:33.728-08:00dario fernandez-moreradario fernandez-morerahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00391121279827034696noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7577609655236193686.post-6183602460012550552021-01-27T17:47:00.001-08:002021-01-27T17:47:32.093-08:00<p> </p><div class="post-outer" style="background-color: white; border-radius: 10px; border: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5px; margin: 0px -20px 20px; padding: 15px 20px;"><div class="post hentry uncustomized-post-template" itemprop="blogPost" itemscope="itemscope" itemtype="http://schema.org/BlogPosting" style="min-height: 0px; position: relative;"><h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; position: relative;"><a href="https://dariofernandez-morera.blogspot.com/2012/07/variation-on-theme-of-antonio-machado_20.html" style="color: #992211; text-decoration-line: none;">Variation on a Theme of Antonio Machado</a></h3><div class="post-header" style="color: #999999; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><div class="post-header-line-1"></div></div><div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-4045042285278073428" itemprop="description articleBody" style="font-size: 14.85px; line-height: 1.4; position: relative; width: 528.033px;"><div class="post-header" style="color: #999999; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><div class="post-header-line-1"></div></div><div class="post-body entry-content" itemprop="articleBody" style="font-size: 16.335px; line-height: 1.4; position: relative; width: 528.033px;"><em>Variation on a Theme of Antonio Machado:</em><br /><br /><span lang="ES" style="font-family: Arial;">Y podrás conocerte recordando</span><br /><span lang="ES" style="font-family: Arial;">Del pasado vivir los duros golpes,</span><br /><span lang="ES" style="font-family: Arial;">Y tus muertos, la vision de ti mismo,</span></div><div class="post-body entry-content" itemprop="articleBody" style="font-size: 16.335px; line-height: 1.4; position: relative; width: 528.033px;"><span lang="ES" style="font-family: Arial;">El arbol y las flores que sembraste.</span></div><div style="clear: both;"></div></div><div class="post-footer" style="color: #999999; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px;"><div class="post-footer-line post-footer-line-1"><span class="post-author vcard" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 1em;">Posted by <span class="fn" itemprop="author" itemscope="itemscope" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"><a class="g-profile" data-gapiattached="true" data-gapiscan="true" data-onload="true" href="https://www.blogger.com/profile/00391121279827034696" rel="author" style="color: #992211; text-decoration-line: none;" title="author profile"><span itemprop="name">dario fernandez-morera</span> </a></span></span><span class="post-timestamp" style="margin-left: -1em; margin-right: 1em;">at <a class="timestamp-link" href="https://dariofernandez-morera.blogspot.com/2012/07/variation-on-theme-of-antonio-machado_20.html" rel="bookmark" style="color: #992211; text-decoration-line: none;" title="permanent link"><abbr class="published" itemprop="datePublished" style="border: none;" title="2012-07-20T20:08:00-07:00">8:08 PM</abbr></a> </span><span class="reaction-buttons" style="margin-right: 1em;"></span><span class="post-comment-link" style="margin-right: 1em;"><a class="comment-link" href="https://dariofernandez-morera.blogspot.com/2012/07/variation-on-theme-of-antonio-machado_20.html#comment-form" style="color: #992211; text-decoration-line: none; white-space: nowrap;">No comments: </a></span><span class="post-icons" style="margin-right: 1em;"><span class="item-control blog-admin pid-1329589643" style="display: inline;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=7577609655236193686&postID=4045042285278073428&from=pencil" style="color: #992211; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Edit Post"><img alt="" class="icon-action" height="18" src="https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_edit_allbkg.gif" style="border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-style: none !important; border-width: initial; margin: 0px 0px 0px 0.5em !important; position: relative; vertical-align: middle;" width="18" /> </a></span></span><div class="post-share-buttons goog-inline-block" style="display: inline-block; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.5em; position: relative; vertical-align: middle;"><a class="goog-inline-block share-button sb-email" href="https://www.blogger.com/share-post.g?blogID=7577609655236193686&postID=4045042285278073428&target=email" style="background: url("/img/share_buttons_20_3.png") 0px 0px no-repeat !important; color: #992211; display: inline-block; height: 20px; margin-left: -1px; overflow: hidden; position: relative; text-decoration-line: none; width: 20px;" target="_blank" title="Email This"><span class="share-button-link-text" style="display: block; text-indent: -9999px;">Email This</span></a><a class="goog-inline-block share-button sb-blog" href="https://www.blogger.com/share-post.g?blogID=7577609655236193686&postID=4045042285278073428&target=blog" style="background: url("/img/share_buttons_20_3.png") -20px 0px no-repeat !important; color: #992211; display: inline-block; height: 20px; margin-left: -1px; overflow: hidden; position: relative; text-decoration-line: none; width: 20px;" target="_blank" title="BlogThis!"><span class="share-button-link-text" style="display: block; text-indent: -9999px;">BlogThis!</span></a><a class="goog-inline-block share-button sb-twitter" href="https://www.blogger.com/share-post.g?blogID=7577609655236193686&postID=4045042285278073428&target=twitter" style="background: url("/img/share_buttons_20_3.png") -40px 0px no-repeat !important; color: #992211; display: inline-block; height: 20px; margin-left: -1px; overflow: hidden; position: relative; text-decoration-line: none; width: 20px;" target="_blank" title="Share to Twitter"><span class="share-button-link-text" style="display: block; text-indent: -9999px;">Share to Twitter</span></a><a class="goog-inline-block share-button sb-facebook" href="https://www.blogger.com/share-post.g?blogID=7577609655236193686&postID=4045042285278073428&target=facebook" style="background: url("/img/share_buttons_20_3.png") -60px 0px no-repeat !important; color: #992211; display: inline-block; height: 20px; margin-left: -1px; overflow: hidden; position: relative; text-decoration-line: none; width: 20px;" target="_blank" title="Share to Facebook"><span class="share-button-link-text" style="display: block; text-indent: -9999px;">Share to Facebook</span></a><a class="goog-inline-block share-button sb-pinterest" href="https://www.blogger.com/share-post.g?blogID=7577609655236193686&postID=4045042285278073428&target=pinterest" style="background: url("/img/share_buttons_20_3.png") -100px 0px no-repeat !important; color: #992211; display: inline-block; height: 20px; margin-left: -1px; overflow: hidden; position: relative; text-decoration-line: none; width: 20px;" target="_blank" title="Share to Pinterest"><span class="share-button-link-text" style="display: block; text-indent: -9999px;">Share to Pinterest</span></a></div></div><div class="post-footer-line post-footer-line-2"><span class="post-labels" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px;"></span></div><div class="post-footer-line post-footer-line-3"><span class="post-location" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px;"></span></div></div></div></div><div class="post-outer" style="background-color: white; border-radius: 10px; border: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5px; margin: 0px -20px 20px; padding: 15px 20px;"><div class="post hentry uncustomized-post-template" itemprop="blogPost" itemscope="itemscope" itemtype="http://schema.org/BlogPosting" style="min-height: 0px; position: relative;"><a name="6813911199671199073"></a><h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; position: relative;"><a href="https://dariofernandez-morera.blogspot.com/2012/07/epistemological-dialogue.html" style="color: #992211; text-decoration-line: none;">Epistemological Dialogue</a></h3><div class="post-header" style="color: #999999; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><div class="post-header-line-1"></div></div><div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-6813911199671199073" itemprop="description articleBody" style="font-size: 14.85px; line-height: 1.4; position: relative; width: 528.033px;"><strong>Epistemological Dialogue</strong><em>:</em><br /><em>--"Truth is relative, a social construction."</em><br /><em>--"So evolution is relative, a social construction?"</em><br /><br /><strong>Pensamientos:</strong><br /><br />Life is a protracted reprieve.<br /><br />To corrupt is easier than to edify.<br /><br />Never underestimate human ingratitude or the correlation between favors done and resentment created.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.blogger.com/" name="_GoBack" style="color: #992211; text-decoration-line: none;"></a>The course of human life could be regarded as a series of losses, which could be used as an ασκησεις, a training or preparation for the final one.</div></div></div>dario fernandez-morerahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00391121279827034696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7577609655236193686.post-12579089265780329822021-01-27T17:37:00.006-08:002021-01-31T13:08:41.538-08:00<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Darío Fernández-Morera <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">A
Meta-Critical Examination of Scholarship in English on the Otherness of al-Andalus [published in <i>eHumanista</i> 37 (2017) (U. of California Santa Barbara): 268-281] <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Darío Fernández-Morera <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">(Northwestern<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>University)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Continental scholars have
noted the persistence among academics in the English-speaking world of a
particular set of views on Islamic Spain.<a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_edn1" name="_ednref1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Perhaps the most common view
is that Christians were treated generally well, except for a few unfortunate
occasions, so there was no reason for them to feel too bad under Islamic
rule.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Related to this view are the
beliefs that basically good relations between Christians and Muslims existed
(especially under the tolerant Umayyads, with some exceptions of course), that
both sides learned a great deal from each other, and that we should learn today
from this successful experiment in diversity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">This paper will not examine
this view, since both Medievalist and Islamic Studies academics in the English-speaking
world may vigorously protest that they, too, believe, after all, that there was
no <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">convivencia</i>, so attacking the
concept of<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> convivencia</i>, they might insist,
is creating “a straw man.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Instead, this paper will list
and briefly discuss just a few among the other propositions that comprise much academic
teaching and publishing in English on Islamic Spain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then it will explore a particular example,
the practice of female circumcision, which illustrates the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">otherness</i> of this civilization—an otherness pointed out by José
Ortega y Gasset, among others, but dismissed by a large number of today’s scholars
in the English-speaking world in favor of such edifying phrases as “</span><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="color: #211d1e; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Minion Pro"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">internalization
of the other</span><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="color: #211d1e; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Minion Pro";">,” </span><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">“<span style="color: #211d1e; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">cultural congruence,”
“creative interaction</span></span><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="color: #211d1e; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Minion Pro";">,” “<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">complex social
dynamic,</span>”</span><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> and so forth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this discussion of female circumcision,
this paper will present the first translation from Arabic of a passage in one
of the most instructive works by Ibn Rushd.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">1. There
was no Islamic conquest as a result of a jihad, and perhaps there was not even
a conquest, but rather a migration, analogous to that of, say, the Visigoths,
or perhaps even some sort of willing conversion of the people to Islam, which somehow
turned Hispania into “al-Andalus” (this also supports the teaching according to
which the “change” from Hispania to “Al-Andalus” was not a catastrophe for the
Christians)</span></b><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.25in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">This view originated in the
work of Ignacio <span style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); border: 1pt none windowtext; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">Olagüe</span> and has continued to be proposed, with some modifications, by
Emilio González Ferrín, a creative professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at
the University of Seville.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although
largely discredited among historians and Arabists in Spain, it has developed a surprising
following in the English-speaking academic world. <span style="color: #211d1e;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="Default"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 111%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .4pt; margin-right: 26.7pt; margin-top: .55pt; margin: 0.55pt 26.7pt 0in 0.4pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-line-break-override: restrictions; punctuation-wrap: simple; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 17.6pt;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 111%;">Thus a professor affirms, “<span style="color: #231f20;">We should think of the Muslims, in some way, as a
migratory wave, just like the Visigoths, except two hundred [<i>sic</i>] years
later.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_edn2" name="_ednref2" style="mso-endnote-id: edn2;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="color: #231f20; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While reviewing a recent book by the historian
and Arabist Alejandro García Sanjuán, a book which once more discredits these
views, another professor defends ingeniously the plausibility of the “there was
no conquest” thesis, since after all, the sources are few, we cannot trust the
sources completely anyway, and besides, history is as much about convincing
with a good narrative rather than about establishing the truth—history is a
form of “rhetoric” (perhaps the professor might have used here the French bon
mot and write, history “n’est que littérature”):</span><span style="color: #211d1e;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 111%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .4pt; margin-right: 26.7pt; margin-top: .55pt; margin: 0.55pt 26.7pt 0in 0.4pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-line-break-override: restrictions; punctuation-wrap: simple; text-autospace: none;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="color: #231f20; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 111%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">[N]egationism is not simply
a figment of Olagüe’s or González Ferrín’s imagination; it is— despite its
obvious shortcomings—an interpretation of the past that, like all
interpretations of the past, attempts to account for the evidence. In the case
of early medieval Spanish history, the evidentiary record is a spotty one, to
say the least. Hence every modern historian of Spain is forced to confront not
only the paucity of sources from the early eighth century, but the tendency of
ninth-century (and later) historians to “retroject” (that is, to project
backwards) their political agendas onto the events of that era. One could
certainly argue…that the negationist point of departure—with its radically
skeptical approach to the sources—is too “pessimistic;” that it throws out the
baby with the bathwater. But one should not do so without acknowledging that
the opposite tendency—that is, taking medieval historians at their word—has had
a much more negative effect on Spanish historical scholarship for a much longer
time. Regardless of whether any given historian of medieval Spain believes
there was a conquest or not, he must come up with a convincing explanation for
the suddenness with which the Visigothic kingdom disappeared, the speed with
which Arabs and Berbers established their authority over much of the peninsula,
the willingness with which Iberian [sic] Christians accepted the terms of
capitulation offered to them, the tardiness with which Christians responded to
the religious identity of the new regime, and the astonishing fact that
al-Andalus came to be Islamized and Arabized despite the fact that the Muslims
and Arabs were so vastly outnumbered by the native population….In this sense
history remains true to its roots; the Romans considered it a subfield of
rhetoric, useful primarily for providing examples to strengthen a rhetorician’s
argument.<a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_edn3" name="_ednref3" style="mso-endnote-id: edn3;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 111%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .4pt; margin-right: 26.7pt; margin-top: .55pt; margin: 0.55pt 26.7pt 0in 0.4pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-line-break-override: restrictions; punctuation-wrap: simple; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 17.6pt;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 111%;">Yet another influential professor
assures us that the conquest had nothing to do with religion:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="color: #231f20;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="Pa10" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .25in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0.25in 0in 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="color: #211d1e; font-size: 14pt;">The
traditional interpretation has been that the invasion was impelled by belief in
the notion of <i>jihād </i>in the sense of Holy War. When writing history in
certain epochs, particularly in the nineteenth century, it was natural to
ascribe the growth of Islam to the ardour of the faith of the early Muslims. .
. . The pursuit of <i>jihād </i>as Holy War is not . . . a motivating factor
relevant to the clashes between Muslims and the people they vanquished in the
first century of Islam, at least not as far as the conquest and subsequent
occupation of the Iberian peninsula is concerned.<a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_edn4" name="_ednref4" style="mso-endnote-id: edn4;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="color: #211d1e; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">These views of the Islamic
conquest have been, of course, debunked by leading Spanish historians and
Arabists, from Felipe Maillo Salgado to Serafin
Fanjul to </span><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">Alejandro Garcia Sanjuán to </span><span style="font-size: 14pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Luis A. García Moreno to Francisco García Fitz, to Manuel González
Jiménez, to Miguel Ángel Ladero Quesada, to Rafael Sánchez Saus, to José
Enrique Ruiz-Domenèc y Antonio Domínguez Ortiz among many others--as well as by
expert French Arabists such as Dominique Urvoy and Charles-Emmanuel Dufourcq.</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_edn5" name="_ednref5" style="font-size: 14pt; mso-endnote-id: edn5; text-indent: 0.5in;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 14pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> Betraying
his exasperation at the continuing life of these views, and their curious
imperviousness to scholarly refutation, historian Francisco García Fitz laments
in his review of the book by Alejandro García Sanjuán:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">It is rather perplexing to
see how, already in the second decade of the XXI century, it is still necessary
to demonstrate, in a rigorous and well-documented work, that the conquest of
711 was carried out by armed Berber and Arab contingents, acting under the
orders of the authorities of the Islamic State, whose ideology was based on
faith in a One God, and in his prophet Muhammad, and that there are sufficient
sources to ascertain it.<a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_edn6" name="_ednref6" style="mso-endnote-id: edn6;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">These views of the conquest are
not supported by the Christian <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chronica
mozarabica</i> of 754, written only a few decades after the invasion, or by the
Visigoth hymn <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tempore belli</i>, also
written shortly after the conquest. And they are not supported by archeology—numismatics—either,
because we have Muslim coins dated from 711 in North Africa that call for the
Islamic warriors to carry out a jihad—jihad as Holy War, not as some peaceful
“self-improvement” effort. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover,
later Muslim chronicles, which claim to use earlier sources, affirm that jihad
was the motivation for the conquest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
as Arabists such as Felipe Maíllo Salgado explain, whenever the Muslim texts of
al-Andalus talk about war against the Christians, they are talking about a
jihad--as a religiously motivated war, not as an “effort to try to be the best
we can be” (as many experts in academia in the English-speaking world now
portray the principal meaning of “jihad”). <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">3. Islam,
if it conquered anything, conquered a dismal and ignorant and retrograde Christian
kingdom, much inferior to the civilized conquerors (this also supports,
indirectly, the widespread teaching according to which the conquest was not a
catastrophe for the Christians but in fact beneficial, since it got rid of a
terrible kingdom and replaced it with the tolerant “al-Andalus”)</span></b><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Typical of this dismissive
view are the words of a prominent professor, who, in his animosity against the
Christian Visigoths, calls them "<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">men
of the woods</i>" who never quite left those woods:<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="color: #221e1f; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">The failure of
the Visigothic state . . . was also reflected in its technological atony,
which was at the core of the elite’s inability to adapt to any ecology other
than that with which it was originally familiar: the men of the woods never
strayed too far from there.<a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_edn7" name="_ednref7" style="mso-endnote-id: edn7;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="color: #221e1f; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">This curious animosity
against the Christian Visigoths (Visigodophobia or Christianophobia?) is also
reflected in the sarcasm of another professor: <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="color: #221e1f; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">For all the
glorification of the ‘Great Christian monarchy’ of legendary Visigothic Spain
that one encounters in chronicles, etc., the fact is that the Visigoths had fled
Spain and abandoned it to the invading Muslims. The Christians of the
Reconquest . . . learned well the lesson . . . of </span><i><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="color: #221e1f; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Minion Pro";">convivencia</span></i><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="color: #221e1f; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Minion Pro";">. That was only one of the
many things that made Spain great, and which the rest of Europe could have
learned from it to its profit.<a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_edn8" name="_ednref8" style="mso-endnote-id: edn8;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="color: #221e1f; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Minion Pro"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="color: #221e1f; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Other professors display a similar dismissiveness towards
(or perhaps ignorance of) the culture of the Christian Visigoth kingdom, one of
them stating that “</span><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="color: #010101; font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: 0.2pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">very little evidence survives from the
short-lived Visigoth kingdom” and that a “treasure hoard” does not prove that
it was “magnificent.</span><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">”<a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_edn9" name="_ednref9" style="mso-endnote-id: edn9;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">However, the available
evidence, which is, in fact, considerable and growing, shows the opposite of
what these and other professors write and presumably teach at their
universities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, the Muslim
conquerors were largely Berbers, with a cultural level far inferior to that of the
population of the Christian kingdom of the Visigoths, and, as the Muslim
chronicles state, these invaders were quite impressed by the culture they found.<a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_edn10" name="_ednref10" style="mso-endnote-id: edn10;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[10]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Well-known archeological
evidence indicates the continuity between the Roman imperial world of Spain and
the Visigoth kingdom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We have remains of
aqueducts, of baths, of coinage printing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We have evidence of even an artistic center in Merida. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">In addition, archeological
research in the great Visigoth ruins of Recópolis shows a vibrant city, again
with aqueducts, plazas, great stone buildings, baths, and even a city plan that
tried to imitate that of the great city of Constantinople, or New Rome, the
most extraordinary city of the early Middle Ages (yes, the most extraordinary
city of the early Middle Ages was not Baghdad or Damascus or Cordoba or Rome,
but Constantinople, the capital of the Christian Greek Roman Empire).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So does the archeological evidence in the
Visigoth capital of Toledo.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">We know, of course, of several
Visigoth intellectuals, among them the great Saint Isidore of Seville, the most
frequently cited scholar during the High Middle Ages; Theodulf, a Visigoth who became
one of the pillars of the Carolingian Renaissance and bishop of Orleans; and the
bishop and historian Julian of Toledo (who, coming from a family regarded as sincere
Jewish <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">conversos</i>, was named by the Catholic
Church Primate of the entire Visigoth kingdom).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">We also know that the Visigoth
educational system preserved the Roman system of education.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In addition, French scholars have pointed out
the beneficial and fundamental influence of Visigoth culture in the creation of
Christian Medieval Europe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">And we have the Visigoth
Code of Law, which, “barbaric” as some of its provisions may seem to us today,
was nonetheless far closer to our present day notions of Western jurisprudence
than either medieval Jewish or Islamic law.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>At one point it even states the need to restrain the power of government
(“the king”) in a section reminiscent of the much later and famous Magna Carta
and, even later and most famous, the Constitution of the United States.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This Visigoth Code is of course a combination
of Roman law and some remaining Germanic customs, all of it influenced by
Christian principles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Yuppy SC";">It
should be emphasized that the Visigoths' assimilation of the Christian
Greco-Roman heritage--of this <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">romanitas</i>
which informs the nations of the West and indeed Western Civilization, and which Arabist, Hellenist, Hebraist and Philosopher R</span><span style="color: #231f20; font-size: 18.6667px; text-indent: 23.4667px;">é</span><span style="font-size: 14pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">mi Brague has profoundly examined in his </span><i style="font-size: 14pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Europe, la voie romaine </i><span style="font-size: 14pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">(1992)-- differs
qualitatively from the way in which Islam used the civilizations that it
conquered.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Yuppy SC";">The
Visigoths, which were already quite Romanized by the time they entered Spain in
415 to help the Christian Latin Roman Empire against other Germanic nations (such
as the Vandals and the Suevi), assimilated themselves to the civilization they
found in the land—in their language, in their religion, in their laws, in their
literature, in their philosophy, in their cultural practices and in their
science and technology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Yuppy SC";">The
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Muslim conquerors, however,
neither assimilated themselves to— nor even integrated themselves with— the
preceding civilizations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span>Instead,
they took advantage of the practical knowledge they found in those
civilizations, and then proceeded to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">replace</i>
them, using a number of marvelously designed laws and social and family
practices, all of which had a religious grounding and force, and which
inexorably changed the culture and the demographics of the conquered lands,
eventually wiping out their civilizations—among them, Zoroastrian Persia, the
Christian Greek Roman Empire in the Middle East and North Africa, the
Hindu-Buddhist kingdom of Sind, and the Christian kingdom of the Visigoths in Spain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As several Spanish historians and Arabists have
pointed out while discussing the presumed “cultural cooperation” between Christian
and Muslims, this “cultural cooperation”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Yuppy SC";">Was,
in the words of Garcia Fitz, largely a practical utilization of the knowledge
of those who had submitted, a utilization which not at all implies a
recognition of their religious or moral values, that is to say, an acceptation
of the Other in positive terms.<a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_edn11" name="_ednref11" style="mso-endnote-id: edn11;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Yuppy SC"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[11]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">The achievements of the
Visigoth kingdom evidenced by the archeological findings are echoed in the
Muslim chronicles, and not just in the Christian ones: these textual sources
even speak of magnificent palaces which the Umayyad rulers chose for their
residence, and of libraries, and of wonderful metallurgy, this last cultural
feature corroborated by archeological findings as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">We may ask ourselves, what
happened to all this Hispano-Roman-Visigoth civilization?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To understand what happened we have two
sources.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One is the evidence from
archeology: the constructions of the Visigoth kingdom were crushed for their
superior materials for the building of Muslim constructions, as art historian
Basilio Pavón Maldonado, among others, has shown.<a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_edn12" name="_ednref12" style="mso-endnote-id: edn12;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[12]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We also have the evidence from both Christian
and Muslim chronicles of the practice of the early Islamic conquests: this
practice included the destruction or transformation of monuments from the
conquered civilizations, including their houses of worship, which might obscure
or rival or offend Islam and its material achievements.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Ignorance of the
achievements of the Visigoth kingdom may be the result of an inability to read
the work of Spanish and French scholars, who have published the best studies of
the cultural importance of the Christian kingdom of the Visigoths for the
creation of the European medieval identity. But since work on the Visigoths is
also available in English, written by scholars such as Alberto Ferreiro,<a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_edn13" name="_ednref13" style="mso-endnote-id: edn13;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[13]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> this
ignorance may be the result of what we in Spanish call, in its most polite
formulation, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mala fe</i>, as indicated by
the words of many professors in the English-speaking world.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>4. Islam, if it conquered Spain at all, did
not conquer it by force but through peaceful pacts (this also supports the
teaching according to which the change from Hispania to “al-Andalus” was not a
catastrophe for the Christians):</span></b><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">This is a half-truth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There were peaceful pacts, of course, but
Christians accepted them because they had seen what had happened to those who
did not accept the pacts and resisted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And what were these pacts?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
pacts were one version or another of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dhimma</i>,
the ingenious system developed by Islamic law to control and exploit Christians
and Jews.<a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_edn14" name="_ednref14" style="mso-endnote-id: edn14;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[14]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Under the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dhimma</i>, the Christian lords and the
bishops and their people, called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dhimmis</i>
(not “mozarabs”), were allowed to continue living and practicing their
religion-- as long as they accepted their juridical status as subalterns to the
Muslim population, their restrictions on the practice of their faith, and their
payment to the Islamic authorities of a tribute, a so-called “protection” tax,
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">jizya</i>—a tribute which was
intended, according to Islamic jurists, not only as a steady source of revenue
but as a reminder to the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dhimmis</i> of
their humiliated status.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The second Caliph,
Umar, one of the Companions of Muhammad and his father-in-law, had explained to
Muslims the reason to keep Christians and Jews as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dhimmis</i> rather than turn them into outright slaves: they were far
more profitable as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dhimmis</i> than as
slaves. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Moreover, as the scholar of
Islamic law Majid Khadduri has observed, Islamic jurisprudence reserved for
Muslims the right to abrogate any pact if the abrogation was in the interest of
Islam<a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_edn15" name="_ednref15" style="mso-endnote-id: edn15;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[15]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> (as it
reserved for Muslims the related right to lie to the infidels about their real
views, even if apostasy was necessary—the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">taqiyya</i>
system, most famously illustrated by the mass “conversions” of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">moriscos</i>, a system employed by most of
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">moriscos</i> to be able to remain in
Spain while practicing Islam in secret).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>These and other such juridical prescriptions were part of the
marvelously designed Islamic approach to hegemony.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, both the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chronica mozarabica</i> and Muslim chroniclers like al Hakam point out
the often deceitful nature of the pacts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We have evidence that the palace of Theodomir, one of those lords who
signed a pact, was eventually destroyed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We have a text from the pact with Theodomir that shows the considerable tribute
that this Visigoth lord had to pay to the Islamic authorities to be allowed to
live and enjoy his land and his servants and his wealth. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">So we have both the evidence
from the Christian and Muslim chronicles and other texts, and the evidence from
Islamic legal teachings and practice, to counter the academic idea of a
peaceful conquest by means of pacts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And,
of course, people enter into pacts where they have to pay for “protection” only
when they fear for their lives. This ingenious system, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dhimma</i>, has facilitated the scholarly and popular interpretation of
Christian submission to Islam as some sort of tolerance, even down to our days
in the Middle East.<a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_edn16" name="_ednref16" style="mso-endnote-id: edn16;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[16]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">5.
Islam conquered a place called “Iberia”, not Spain, so in our scholarly
writings we should use the name medieval “Iberia” rather than Medieval Spain</span></b><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">In fact, both Muslim and
Christian medieval texts referred to the land as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Spania</i>, and to its inhabitants as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Spani</i>, that is, Spaniards. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even
early Islamic coins in Spain have on one side the word “Alandalus” in Arabic,
and on the other side SPAN, that is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Spania</i>.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Christian kingdoms such as León,
Asturias, and Portugal, were kingdoms within Spain, not within “Iberia.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_edn17" name="_ednref17" style="mso-endnote-id: edn17;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[17]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Neither Christian nor Muslim
medieval texts refer to the land as “Iberia.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This term was used only by Greek geographers, and then only before the
conquest of the land by the Romans, who called it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hispania</i> (possibly borrowing the word from the Carthaginians, who
had even earlier occupied part of the land).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Neither Christian nor Muslim
medieval texts refer to Spain as the “Iberian Peninsula” either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, both terms—“Medieval Iberia” and
“Iberian Peninsula”—have been adopted by scholars, largely in the
English-Speaking world, for unhistorical reasons--beginning about twenty some
years ago (before then, scholars consistently used “Medieval Spain”).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">6. The
Essential Otherness of al-Andalus--The Example of Female Circumcision:<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-themecolor: text1;">Elsewhere I have cited many religious and, therefore cultural practices
in al-Andalus that made the side-by-side living of Muslims and Christians
difficult, at best: </span><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">among them, considering the dog—<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;"> </span></b><span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">an animal that both pagans and
Christians in the West have regarded as their closest companion for thousands
of years </span>(one of the most moving scenes in Western literature involves
Odysseus and his dog Argos)--a religiously polluting animal unfit to share a
home with human beings; or stoning an adulterous <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">muhsana</i> (a free Muslim woman of sound mind in a properly
consummated marriage); or regarding as polluted the utensils or water touched
by a Christian; or regarding the life of a Christian man (as well as that of a
Muslim woman) as juridically worth only half that of a Muslim man (thus a
Christian must be punished with death if he killed a Muslim, even if in
self-defense, whereas<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a Muslim man must
not be punished with death if he killed a Christian, even if he killed him intentionally);
or considering Christians, as eaters of pork and drinkers or wine, polluters
who could not be allowed to walk among the tombs of a cemetery in Umayyad
Cordoba); or turning war into a religious obligation.<a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_edn18" name="_ednref18" style="mso-endnote-id: edn18;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[18]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">But perhaps it is the juridical
and biographical Islamic primary sources on female circumcision that offer the
most instructive examples of the otherness of the civilization of
al-Andalus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most scholars insist that
there was no female circumcision in al-Andalus, and that, in fact, it was not
practiced in the “Islamic West.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
Islamic West presumably covered North Africa West of Egypt (where it continues
to be widely practiced today) and, of course al-Andalus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So it would not have been practiced in the
areas of what are today’s Morocco, Algeria, and Libya either. Yet the
documentary evidence indicates otherwise, at least in the case of al-Andalus.<a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_edn19" name="_ednref19" style="mso-endnote-id: edn19;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[19]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">In the book mentioned above
I have cited several passages in a number of Maliki juridical texts used in
al-Andalus, including the foundational <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Muwatta</i>
by Malik Ibn Anas, which take for granted female circumcision and even
recommend it as honorable or noble, such as the influential <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Risala</i> by al-Qayrawani, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">al-Tafri</i> by Ibn al-Gallab and the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Leyes de Moros</i>--these last two so widely
used that they were still being used by Muslims to rule themselves according to
their own law when already under Christian domination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">But the most impressive
documentary evidence of the practice may be that of the great sharia judge Ibn
Rushd (known in the West only as “the philosopher Averroes”).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The passage cited and discussed below from
Ibn Rushd has never before been even mentioned by scholars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">It should be understood that
Ibn Rushd (who like most intellectuals in al-Andalus had a Christian ancestry) reached
the highest possible juridical post in the land: sharia judge in Cordoba.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In his famous manual of instruction for
Islamic judges, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bidayat</i>, this
great Islamic thinker tells them that, according to the majority of the Maliki
juridical authorities in al-Andalus (Malikism was the school of sharia prevalent
in al-Andalus for most of its history), if <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the
two circumcised parts</i> touch, the Hajj (the obligation to travel to Mecca at
least once in a life time) becomes invalid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Ibn Rushd’s relevant words deserve citation:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Abu Hanifa said: The
majority of people and the notables believe that the touching of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">two circumcised parts</i> [emphasis added] invalidates
the major pilgrimage (Hajj).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And whoever
wants to obtain purification for ejaculating between <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the two circumcised parts </i>[emphasis added], must keep in mind this
condition for the Hajj.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the
authorities disagree about the matter when the semen drops in some other place
that is not the vulva. (trans. from the Spanish of Felipe Maíllo Salgado)<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"> </span></span><a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_edn20" name="_ednref20" style="mso-endnote-id: edn20;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" lang="ES-TRAD" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" lang="ES-TRAD" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[20]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">In view of the generalized and prudent insistence among
researchers on “doubting” the practice of female circumcision in the “Golden
Age” of Islam—al-Andalus—, it is not surprising that the English translation of
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bidayat</i> omits this and other
similarly delicate passages, effectively censoring Ibn Rushd.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Thus Ibn
Rushd, writing in the twelfth century, after generations of mixed marriages (an
argument against the practice of female circumcision could be that Christian
women would successfully refuse to circumcise their daughters--against the
wishes of their Muslim husbands, who might insist, like good fathers, in having
their daughters grow up to be considered honorable by the Islamic law and by
their future Muslim husbands…), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in the
course of instructing judges </i>on cases of ritual purity, also <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">takes for granted the existence of female
circumcision. <o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Now, it would be difficult
to imagine Western philosophers such as Saint Thomas Aquinas, or Plato, or even
Aristotle (wo did not hesitate to tackle biological matters in a naturalistic
manner) writing a discussion of the views of erudite Christian thinkers or even
pagan Greek thinkers on the subject of washing oneself, for religious reasons, if
the two circumcised human genitals touch--as it would be difficult to imagine
them discussing the views of erudite Christian thinkers or even pagan Greek
thinkers on the subject of what is the most appropriate way that religious law
dictates for the stoning of an adulterous woman, as also does Ibn Rushd in his<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Bidayat</i> (he writes that most juridical authorities
agree, with the exception of al-Shafii, that the woman need not be placed in a
hole in the ground for her stoning).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">The Spanish Arabist Manuela
Marin gives some “real life” biographical cases from al-Andalus which confirm
the practice.<a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_edn21" name="_ednref21" style="mso-endnote-id: edn21;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[21]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One is a biography of a judge who is consulted
about whether one needs to practice an ablution to purify oneself after <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the two circumcised parts</i> have touched.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So here we have a real life consultation that
makes reference to the existence of female circumcision, a reference repeatedly
found in the juridical texts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Another real life case is yet
another biography, where a learned man complains that his “twelve women” refuse
to undergo circumcision.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This case indicates
that female circumcision was practiced--hence the man’s complaint that these
twelve women of his do not want to have it done to them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the case also indicates that these “twelve
women” who refuse circumcision could not be the man’s proper Muslim wives (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">muhsanas</i>)--because Islamic law allowed
only <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">four </i>wives, not “twelve.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They must therefore be sexual <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">slaves </i>(<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">yawari l’muta</i>)--of which a Muslim man in al-Andalus could have as
many as he could afford to buy and maintain--not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">muhsanas</i> (free Muslim women of sane mind in a marriage properly
consummated).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And if they resisted
circumcision, these female sexual slaves would originate in lands where female
circumcision was not practiced, more likely the Christian lands to the North
(moreover, since these were “women,” therefore they could not be Muslim women,
because Muslim women would have been circumcised not when they were already women,
but when they were still girls, as indicated in Ibn Rushd al-Yadd’s
recommendation—see next-- to circumcise one’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“daughters</i>”).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Indeed, Marín cites the testimony
of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the famous Cordoban judge Ibn Rushd
al-Yadd (the grandfather of Ibn Rushd), which also confirms that, as Malik Ibn
Anas taught<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, </i>circumcision is recommended
and honorable for both Muslim “daughters” and for female slaves that their master
wants to keep. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">It should be also of
interest to researchers to see other testimonies about the practice of female
circumcision in Islam in general as a possible result of the teachings of
Muhammad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">One such testimony is that
of Aisha—Muhammad’s youngest wife, whom, according to al-Bukhari and other
authoritative sources, he married when she was six and with whom he consummated
the marriage when she was nine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In one
of the six most authoritative collections of<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">
ahadith</i>, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sunan Ibn Majah</i>, we
are informed by Aisha herself that, after <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">her
circumcised </i>genitals and the circumcised genitals of Muhammad had been in
contact, both had to take a purification bath; and that, therefore,
purification is always necessary after <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the
two circumcised parts</i> have touched.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Another testimony is that of
one of the earliest sources we have on Islam: the Christian scholar Saint John of
Damascus—who possibly was, like his father before him, a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dhimm</i> serving the Umayyad Caliph in Damascus as a bureaucrat towards
the end of the seventh and the beginning of the eight century. The Damascene points
out in one of his writings that “He [Muhammad] legislated that they should be
circumcised, including their women.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_edn22" name="_ednref22" style="mso-endnote-id: edn22;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[22]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">We also learn in al-Bukhari,
author of one of the two or three most respected collections of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ahadith</i> among the Sunnis, that
purification is necessary if <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the two
circumcised parts</i> touch. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">The non-Maliki <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sahih Muslim</i> also takes for granted female
circumcision in the course of discussing ablution.<a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_edn23" name="_ednref23" style="mso-endnote-id: edn23;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[23]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And for the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Risala</i> of the great non-Maliki authority al-Shafii, who belonged to
the same tribe as Muhammad (the Quraysh), female circumcision is not only
honorable, but indeed obligatory.</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_edn24" name="_ednref24" style="mso-endnote-id: edn24;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" lang="ES-TRAD" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" lang="ES-TRAD" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[24]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Other Islamic sources also refer to the “two
circumcised parts” in the course of discussing ablution.<a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_edn25" name="_ednref25" style="mso-endnote-id: edn25;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[25]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Therefore the academic
discussions on whether female circumcision is “really” prescribed by Islam; or
if it is a “pre-Islamic Arabic practice that Islam kept” but that Muhammad
would not have approved, but that later clerics, for some reason, adopted; or
the affirmation that it was “not practiced in al-Andalus because “Islam adapts
to all different conditions,” must face and deal with all this documentary biographical
and juridical evidence showing that it was legal, that it was practiced, and
that it was even recommended as “honorable” or “noble” for proper Muslim women in
al-Andalus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But merely continuing to repeat
that it is “doubtful,” or that it is not “clear,” that it existed will not do:
it will be necessary to present documentary biographical and juridical evidence
to demonstrate that it was not practiced among free Muslim women, and that way
counter the documentary biographical and juridical evidence showing that it did.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Default" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">On
the other hand, it must be pointed out that perhaps the reluctance of many
academics to accept the practice of female circumcision in al-Andalus arises
from an unjustified dislike or even fear of the practice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A modern translator of the religious texts of
the Maliki School of jurisprudence observes: </span><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="color: #221e1f; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">“The
traditional circumcision of the Muslims must not be confused with that
practiced today, widespread in parts of Sudan and Africa, known as Pharaonic
circumcision. The former is a very minor operation involving no damage to the
woman, when carried out by suitably qualified practitioners. The latter is a
particularly abhorrent mutilation.</span><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">”</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_edn26" name="_ednref26" style="mso-endnote-id: edn26;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" lang="ES-TRAD" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" lang="ES-TRAD" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD; mso-bidi-font-family: "Minion Pro"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[26]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" lang="ES-TRAD" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">
</span><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">It
is probably following this line of thought that </span><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="color: #221e1f; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">in 2009
the Fatwa Committee of the National Council of Islamic Religious Affairs of Malaysia
decreed that female circumcision is in fact “obligatory for all Muslim women”.</span><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<div style="mso-element: endnote-list;"><!--[if !supportEndnotes]--><br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<div id="edn1" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_ednref1" name="_edn1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD;"> <span lang="ES-TRAD" style="color: #3e3e3e;">Bruna<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Soravia.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span><em><span lang="FR" style="color: #3e3e3e; mso-ansi-language: FR; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Al-Andalus au miroir du multiculturalisme</span></em><em><span lang="ES-TRAD" style="color: #3e3e3e; mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"> : Le mythe de la convivencia</span></em><span class="apple-converted-space"><i><span lang="ES-TRAD" style="color: #3e3e3e; mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD;"> </span></i></span><em><span lang="ES-TRAD" style="color: #3e3e3e; mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">dans quelques essais nord-américains
récents</span></em><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="ES-TRAD" style="color: #3e3e3e; mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD;"> </span></span><span lang="ES-TRAD" style="color: #3e3e3e; mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD;">In :<span class="apple-converted-space"> Manuela Marín, ed. </span><em><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Al-Andalus/España.
Historiografías en contraste : Siglos</span></em><span class="apple-converted-space"><i> </i></span><em><span style="font-variant: small-caps; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">xvii</span></em><em><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">-<span style="font-variant: small-caps;">xxi</span></span></em><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>[en ligne]. </span><span style="color: #3e3e3e;">Madrid : Casa de Velázquez, 2009. <o:p></o:p></span><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; font-size: 12pt; padding: 0in;">This gem is representative of the position of
many academics in the English-speaking world: “<span style="color: #221e1f;">Modern
historians seem to agree that the invasion was not particularly cruel, or destructive
and it is certain that Muslims</span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">,
<span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #221e1f; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">already familiar with both religions in the Middle East</span>, <span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #221e1f; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">were taught to respect Christians and Jews as ´People of the
Book´; moreover, a large Christian population lived on for centuries in al-Andalus
with legal rights and relative freedom of worship.”</span> Colin <span style="background: #F3F4FA; border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #221e1f; letter-spacing: -.75pt; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">Smith
(Professor of Medieval Spanish Literature at </span><span style="background: #F3F4FA; border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #221e1f; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">Cambridge University, President of the Modern Humanities
Research Association, Editor of the Modern Language Review, and Commander in
the Order of Isabel La Católica) </span><i><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #221e1f; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">Christians and Moors in Spain</span></i>
(<span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #221e1f; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">Warminster: Aris &
Phillips, Ltd., 1988) 1:10.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #221e1f; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;"><span style="background: #F3F4FA;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><o:p> </o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn2" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.4pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-line-break-override: restrictions; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; punctuation-wrap: simple; text-autospace: none;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_ednref2" name="_edn2" style="mso-endnote-id: edn2;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
<span style="color: #231f20; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">David Nirenberg, Deborah
R. and Edgar D. Janotta Professor of Medieval History and Social Thought at the
University of Chicago, in the PBS film </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #231f20;">Cities of Light: The Rise and Fall of
Islamic Spain </span></i><span style="color: #231f20;">(2007).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Elsewhere, this academic has done excellent
work on the religious conflicts in medieval Spain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><o:p> </o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn3" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_ednref3" name="_edn3" style="mso-endnote-id: edn3;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span lang="ES-TRAD" style="mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD;"> Kenneth Baxter Wolf, “Negating
Negationism,” (2014) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pomona Faculty
Publications and Research</i>, 394, a review of Alejandro García Sanjuán’s </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="ES-TRAD" style="background: white; color: black; mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">La
conquista islámica de la península ibérica y la tergiversación del pasado: Del
catastrofismo al negacionismo</span></i><span lang="ES-TRAD" style="background: white; color: black; mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">
(Marcial Pons, 2013).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><span lang="ES-TRAD" style="mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn4" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_ednref4" name="_edn4" style="mso-endnote-id: edn4;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <span style="color: #211d1e; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Richard Hitchcock, Professor
Emeritus of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter, </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #211d1e;">Mozarabs in
Medieval and Early Modern Spain: Identities and Influences</span></i><span style="color: #211d1e;"> <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">(Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2008), 7–8.</span></span><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn5" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_ednref5" name="_edn5" style="mso-endnote-id: edn5;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
For a full discussion of the work of Spanish and French scholars as well as my
own examination of the primary sources, see Darío Fernández-Morera, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims,
Christians and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain</i> (Wilmington: ISI
Books, 2016), chapter 1.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><o:p> </o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn6" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<h4 style="background: rgb(241, 241, 241); line-height: 17.4pt; margin-bottom: 3.75pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0in 3.75pt;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_ednref6" name="_edn6" style="mso-endnote-id: edn6;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[6]</span></b></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD;"> <span lang="ES-TRAD">“</span></span><span lang="ES-TRAD" style="color: #333333; font-weight: normal; mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD;">Reseña
de la obra <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La conquista islámica de la
Península Ibérica y la tergiversación del pasado. Del catastrofismo al
negacionismo</i>, de Alejandro García Sanjuán,” Anuario de estudios medievales
44/1 enero-junio 2014, 562.<o:p></o:p></span></h4>
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><span lang="ES-TRAD" style="mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn7" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_ednref7" name="_edn7" style="mso-endnote-id: edn7;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <span style="color: #221e1f; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Thomas F. Glick, Professor of
Medieval History and Director of the Institute for Medieval History at Boston
University, </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #221e1f; mso-bidi-font-family: "Minion Pro";">Islamic and Christian
Spain in the Early Middle Ages</span></i><span style="color: #221e1f; mso-bidi-font-family: "Minion Pro";"> <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">(Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979;</span></span><span style="color: #221e1f; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Minion Pro"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> </span><span style="color: #221e1f; mso-bidi-font-family: "Minion Pro"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">rpt. New York: Brill, 2005), 31.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><o:p> </o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn8" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="Default"><a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_ednref8" name="_edn8" style="mso-endnote-id: edn8;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Minion Pro",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Minion Pro"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Norman Roth, Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Studies, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Jews,</i> <i><span style="color: #221e1f;">Visigoths, and Muslims in
Medieval Spain: Cooperation and Conflict </span></i><span style="color: #221e1f;">(Leiden:
E. J. Brill, 1994), 38.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Default"><o:p> </o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn9" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_ednref9" name="_edn9" style="mso-endnote-id: edn9;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Thomas
Madden, Professor of History and Director of the Center for Medieval and
Renaissance Studies at Saint Louis University, “Acts of Faith,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The New Criterion</i>, September 2016, 16.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><o:p> </o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn10" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_ednref10" name="_edn10" style="mso-endnote-id: edn10;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[10]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
For the work of archeologists, the textual evidence, and my examination of the
Visigoth Code see Fernández-Morera, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">op.
cit.</i>, chapter 2.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><o:p> </o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn11" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_ednref11" name="_edn11" style="mso-endnote-id: edn11;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[11]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD;"> </span><span lang="ES-TRAD" style="mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Felipe Maíllo Salgado, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Acerca de la conquista árabe de Hispania:
Imprecisiones, equívocos y patrañas</i> (Madrid: Abada, 2016), 182.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This entirely practical utilization is not unlike the use of
some aspects of Western civilization—basically technology and science--by Islamic
nations such as Saudi Arabia, or by the Caliphate of al-Baghdadi, or even by
many Muslims living in Western nations.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><o:p> </o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn12" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_ednref12" name="_edn12" style="mso-endnote-id: edn12;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[12]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="ES-TRAD">Tratado de arquitectura hispano</span></i><span lang="ES-TRAD"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">musulmana</i> (Madrid: Consejo Superior de
Investigaciones Científicas, 2009), 3 vols.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><span lang="ES-TRAD" style="mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn13" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_ednref13" name="_edn13" style="mso-endnote-id: edn13;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[13]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Among many works by Ferreiro see <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Visigoths.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Studies in Culture and
Society</i>, ed. Alberto Ferreiro (Leiden: Brill, 1999).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><o:p> </o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn14" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_ednref14" name="_edn14" style="mso-endnote-id: edn14;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[14]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
For a full examination of the primary sources and a presentation and discussion
of the secondary sources from Spanish and French historians and Arabists, see
Fernández-Morera, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">op. cit.</i> chapters
1, 3, and 7. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><o:p> </o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn15" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="Default"><a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_ednref15" name="_edn15" style="mso-endnote-id: edn15;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Minion Pro",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Minion Pro"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[15]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Majid Khadduri<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">, </span><i><span style="color: #221e1f; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">War and Peace in the
Law of Islam </span></i><span style="color: #221e1f; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1955), vii, 202.</span><span style="color: #221e1f; font-size: 8pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Default"><o:p> </o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn16" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_ednref16" name="_edn16" style="mso-endnote-id: edn16;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[16]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
It is fascinating to see how the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dhimma </i>system
continues to work in favor of Islamic hegemony even today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus we find that the United Nations declines
to name the destruction of Christians in the Middle East by the Islamic State a
genocide because, after all, the use by the Islamic State of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dhimma</i> system and its accompanying tax,
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">jizya</i>, does allow the Christians
to live and practice their religion: see <span style="color: #111111; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Ronald J. Rychlak and Jane F. Adolphe,
eds. <i>The Persecution and Genocide of Christians in theMiddle
East: Prevention, Prohibition, & Prosecution (</i>Kettering, OH: Angelico
Press, 2017).</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn17" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_ednref17" name="_edn17" style="mso-endnote-id: edn17;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[17]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
For the primary and secondary evidence, see Fernandez-Mrera, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">op. cit</i>. Introduction and chap. 1.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><o:p> </o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn18" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_ednref18" name="_edn18" style="mso-endnote-id: edn18;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[18]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Fernández-Morera,
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">op cit</i>., chap. 5.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><o:p> </o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn19" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_ednref19" name="_edn19" style="mso-endnote-id: edn19;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[19]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> That
today it seems not to be practiced in Morocco, Algeria, or Libya is a different,
although one may suspect that it ended there under the influence of European
colonialism (as was the case with slavery of white Europeans captured at sea or
from coastal towns, which ended only with the European colonization of the Barbary
Coast).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or perhaps, because it is
outlawed, as a result it has simply gone underground and remained unobserved
even by expert Arabists travelling there and of course by international health
agencies: in the news one still sees the case, in Europe, of an “immigrant”
Moroccan father (Morocco being the example usually presented to show that it
does not happen in those places) discovered having had a daughter circumcised “Moroccan
Dad Arrested in Holland for Genital Mutilation of Girl,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Digital Journal </i>(February 7, 2009).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This Moroccan father did not seem to realize that female circumcision is
not practiced in Morocco.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><o:p> </o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn20" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_ednref20" name="_edn20" style="mso-endnote-id: edn20;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[20]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <span class="MsoHyperlink"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/books/BIDMJ.htm">Bidyat al-Mujtahid</a></i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> (Comparative Fiqh book): Arabic E-text
(unedited) Source: Muhadith.org (<span class="MsoHyperlink"><a href="http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ir/works/bidyat-al-mujtahid.zip">Zipped</a></span>)</i>
en Islamic Philosophy Online, “El Libro del Hayy” (Peregrinaje a la Meca):<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>وقال أبو حنيفة: لا يحل
إلا بعد الحلاق، وإن جامع قبله فسدت عمرته. واختلفوا في صفة الجماع الذي يفسد الحج
وفي مقدماته، فالجمهور على أن التقاء الختانين يفسد الحج، ويحتمل من يشترط في وجوب
الطهر الإنزال مع التقاء الختانين أن يشترطه في الحج. واختلفوا في إنزال الماء فيما
دون الفرج، فقال أبو حنيفة: لا يفسد الحج إلا الإنزال في الفرج. وقال الشافعي: ما يوجب
الحد يفسد الحج. وقال مالك: الإنزال نفسه يفسد الحج، وكذلك مقدماته من المباشرة والقبلة.
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This is the translation into Spanish of the entire passage,
never before translated into any language from the original Arabic:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="aolmailmsonormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="ES-TRAD" style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD;">“Dijo Abū Ḥanīfa: No está permitido sino después de la circuncisión, y
si cohabita antes de ello se invalida la peregrinación menor (‘<i>umra</i>).
Discrepan acerca de la calificación del coito que invalide (=hace <i>fāsid</i>)
la peregrinación mayor (<i>ḥaŷŷ</i>) y lo anterior. La mayoría de la gente y
notables (<i>ŷumhūr</i>) consideran que el encuentro de <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">las dos partes circuncidadas</i> [énfasis
añadido] invalida (=hace <i>fāsid</i>) la peregrinación mayor (<i>ḥaŷŷ</i>).
Y quien quiera buscar la purificación eyaculando entre <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">las dos partes circuncidadas</i> (los
dos circuncidados) [énfasis añadido], debe tener en cuenta esta condición
para el <i>ḥaŷŷ</i>. Y discrepan si cuando escurre el líquido en otro
sitio que no sea la vulva.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="aolmailmsonormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="ES-TRAD" style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD;">Dijo Abū Ḥanīfa: No hace nulo (<i>fāsid</i>) el <i>ḥaŷŷ</i> sino
la eyaculación en la vulva.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="aolmailmsonormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="ES-TRAD" style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD;">Y Šafi‘ī: Lo que hace obligatorio el <i>ḥadd</i> (los
castigos “límite”) hace nulo (<i>fāsid</i>) el <i>ḥaŷŷ</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="aolmailmsonormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="ES-TRAD" style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD;">Y Mālik dijo: La eyaculación de por sí anula el <i>ḥaŷŷ</i>, y
así mismo los preliminares de la cohabitación y la dirección [en que se
efectúa].”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">(properly translated into Spanish very
kindly at my request by Arabist Felipe Maíllo Salgado)</span><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn21" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_ednref21" name="_edn21" style="mso-endnote-id: edn21;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[21]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="ES-TRAD">Mujeres en al-Andalus</span></i><span lang="ES-TRAD"> (Madrid: Consejo
Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2000), 157-160.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><span lang="ES-TRAD" style="mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn22" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_ednref22" name="_edn22" style="mso-endnote-id: edn22;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[22]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
For the testimony of Saint John Damascene and Aisha (as far as I know, neither
one mentioned before by any scholar examining the issue of female circumcision
in Islam) and the others see: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">John of
Damascus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First Apologist to the Muslims</i>,
trad. Daniel J. Janosik (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2016), 268 (I thank
Professor Anne Gardiner for calling my attention to this important source);<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Sunah.com: Sunan
Ibn Majah</span></i><span style="color: black; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">: “The Book of Dry Ablution”, vol. 1 Book 1 Hadith 608 (English
etext), Book 1, Hadith 651 (Arabic etext); <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bukhari</i> Book 5, Hadith 42:</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #666666; font-size: 16.5pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">باب</span><span face=""Trebuchet MS",sans-serif" lang="ES-TRAD" style="color: #666666; font-size: 16.5pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #666666; font-size: 16.5pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">إِذَا</span><span face=""Trebuchet MS",sans-serif" lang="ES-TRAD" style="color: #666666; font-size: 16.5pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #666666; font-size: 16.5pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">الْتَقَى</span><span face=""Trebuchet MS",sans-serif" lang="ES-TRAD" style="color: #666666; font-size: 16.5pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #666666; font-size: 16.5pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">الْخِتَانَانِ</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" lang="ES-TRAD" style="color: #666666; font-size: 16.5pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="ES-TRAD" style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Arabist Felipe Maíllo Salgado notes the
mention of the “two circumcised parts” in the following Islamic sources as
well: : “<i>Nāsa’ī</i></span><span lang="ES-TRAD" style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">, en su obra <i>al-Sunan
al-kubrà</i>, en el <i>Kitāb al-Ṭahāra</i>, cap. 121 dice: ‘el gusl es
obligatorio cuando se tocan las dos circuncisiones (<i>ẖitānān</i>) [i.e. los
dos lugares circuncidados]’;los diccionarios <i>Lisān al-‘Arab</i> y
el <i>Tāŷ al-‘Arūs</i>, en la entrada <i>ẖatana</i>: <i>iḏā
iltaqà l-ẖitānānī faqad waŷaba l-gusl</i>, ‘cuando se ponen en contacto los dos
lugares circuncidados es obligatorio el <i>gusl</i> (baño o ablución
mayor)’”.<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn23" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_ednref23" name="_edn23" style="mso-endnote-id: edn23;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[23]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sahih Muslim, </i>Book 3, no. 684.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><o:p> </o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn24" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="Default" style="line-height: 115%;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_ednref24" name="_edn24" style="mso-endnote-id: edn24;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="ES-TRAD" style="mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="ES-TRAD" style="color: black; font-family: "Minion Pro",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD; mso-bidi-font-family: "Minion Pro"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[24]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span lang="ES-TRAD"> </span>In fact, the legal scholar Lyda Favali points out that a
majority of early <i><span style="color: #221e1f; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">fuqaha </span></i><span style="color: #221e1f; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">agreed with Malik’s teaching that female circumcision was a
sunnah—a proper religious practice derived from the actions and sayings of the
Prophet handed down through the traditions or the <i>ahadith</i>—though the
extent of the circumcision would vary: “Differences among various schools of
Islam exist on the nature of the obligation (mandatory, advisable), and on its
purport (does it refer to all of the clitoris, or only the hood etc.). . . . it
is a <i>sunna </i>according to the majority [of early <i>fuqaha</i>], and
according to Malik. Moreover, according to al-Shafii, it will be compulsory for
men and women. For women, circumcision will involve only the excision of the
hood of the clitoris.” See Lyda Favali, “What Is Missing? (Female Genital
Surgeries—Infibulation, Excision, Clitoridectomy—in Eritrea),” <i>Global
Jurists Frontiers</i>, 1, 2 (2001): 42. As of 2002, female circumcision is
Egypt was still widely practiced though forbidden by the legal code: see
Baudouin Dupret, “Sexual Morality at the Egyptian Bar: Female Circumcision, Sex
Change Operations, and Motives for Suing,” <i>Islamic Law and Society</i>, 9,
no. 1 (2002): 42–69. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, conflicting <i>fatwas
</i>have been issued on the subject: on </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><span style="color: #221e1f; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">May 28, 1949, Egyptian <i>fuqaha </i>decided that it is not a
sin to reject female circumcision; on June 23, 1951, they stated that female
circumcision is desirable because it curbs “nature” (i.e. sexual drive among
women), and that medical concerns over the practice are irrelevant; on January
29, 1981, the Great Sheikh of AlAzhar (probably the most famous university of
the Islamic world) stated that parents must follow the lessons of Muhammad and
not listen to medical authorities, because the latter often change their minds,
and that parents must do their duty and have their daughters circumcised; on
June 24, 2007, the Mufti of Egypt, Ali Gum, announced tha</span><span style="color: #221e1f;">t the custom was now prohibited.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, in 2009 The Fatwa Committee of the
National Council of Islamic Religious Affairs of Malaysia decreed that female
circumcision is in fact obligatory for all Muslim women: </span><span style="color: #221e1f; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="background: white; color: #212121; letter-spacing: 0.15pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Female circumcision on
the rise in Malaysia”, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Express
Tribune</i>, (febrero 20, 2015). “Female circumcision on the rise in Malaysia”,
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Express Tribune</i>, (February 20,
2015).</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn25" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_ednref25" name="_edn25" style="mso-endnote-id: edn25;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[25]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD;"> <span lang="ES-TRAD">The Arabist </span></span><span lang="ES-TRAD" style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">EFelipe Maillo Salgado notices that the “two circumcised parts” are
also mentioned in the following sources: “<i>Nāsa’ī</i></span><span lang="ES-TRAD" style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">, en su obra <i>al-Sunan
al-kubrà</i>, en el <i>Kitāb al-Ṭahāra</i>, cap. 121 dice: ‘el gusl es
obligatorio cuando se tocan las dos circuncisiones (<i>ẖitānān</i>) [i.e. los
dos lugares circuncidados]’;los diccionarios <i>Lisān al-‘Arab</i> y
el <i>Tāŷ al-‘Arūs</i>, en la entrada <i>ẖatana</i>: <i>iḏā
iltaqà l-ẖitānānī faqad waŷaba l-gusl</i>, ‘cuando se ponen en contacto los dos
lugares circuncidados es obligatorio el <i>gusl</i> (baño o ablución
mayor)’”.</span><span lang="ES-TRAD" style="mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div id="edn26" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/dfe010/Documents/fernandez-morera%20article%20for%20ehumanista%20A%20Meta-Critical%20Examination%20of%20Scholarship%20in%20English%20on%20the%20Otherness%20of%20al-Andalus%20sept%2019%20%20146%20pm%202017.docx#_ednref26" name="_edn26" style="mso-endnote-id: edn26;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="ES-TRAD" style="mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="ES-TRAD" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[26]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a> Abdassamad Clarke
en <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Madinan View on the Sunnah</i>, 96.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><o:p> </o:p></p>
</div>
</div>dario fernandez-morerahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00391121279827034696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7577609655236193686.post-40450422852780734282012-07-20T20:08:00.001-07:002012-07-20T20:08:18.059-07:00Variation on a Theme of Antonio Machado<div class="post-header">
<div class="post-header-line-1">
</div>
</div>
<div class="post-body entry-content" itemprop="articleBody">
<em>Variation on a Theme of Antonio Machado:</em><br /><br /><span lang="ES" style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: ES;">Y podrás conocerte recordando</span><br /><span lang="ES" style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: ES;">Del pasado vivir los duros golpes,</span><br /><span lang="ES" style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: ES;">Y tus muertos, la vision de ti mismo,</span></div>
<div class="post-body entry-content" itemprop="articleBody">
<span lang="ES" style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: ES;">El arbol y las flores que sembraste.</span></div>dario fernandez-morerahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00391121279827034696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7577609655236193686.post-68139111996711990732012-07-20T20:06:00.003-07:002012-07-20T20:06:40.522-07:00Epistemological Dialogue<strong>Epistemological Dialogue</strong><em>:</em><br /><em>--"Truth is relative, a social construction."</em><br /><em>--"So evolution is relative, a social construction?"</em><br /><br /><strong>Pensamientos:</strong><br /><br />Life is a protracted reprieve.<br /><br />To corrupt is easier than to edify.<br /><br />Never underestimate human ingratitude or the correlation between favors done and resentment created.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.blogger.com/" name="_GoBack"></a>The course of human life could be regarded as a series of losses, which could be used as an ασκησεις, a training or preparation for the final one.dario fernandez-morerahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00391121279827034696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7577609655236193686.post-72464610472984459012012-07-20T20:00:00.002-07:002012-07-20T20:00:54.686-07:00Religion in Latin America<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif"; font-size: 24pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"><a href="http://libertylawsite.org/2012/07/18/religious-freedom-and-state-power-in-the-latin-american-experience/"><span style="color: blue;">Religious Freedom and State Power in the Latin American Experience</span></a></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The recent appearance of a number of Christian historical movies, such as <a href="http://www.dragonsresources.com/"><i><span style="color: #2e499a;">There Be Dragons</span></i></a>, on the sufferings of Catholics during the Spanish Civil War; <a href="http://www.sonyclassics.com/ofgodsandmen/"><i><span style="color: #2e499a;">Of Gods and Men</span></i></a>, on a massacre of Trappist monks by Muslim fighters in 1996; and <i><a href="http://www.forgreaterglory.com/"><span style="color: #2e499a;">For the Greater Glory</span></a>, </i>on the Cristiada War in Mexico, makes John Lynch’s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/New-Worlds-Religious-History-America/dp/030016680X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1342573648&sr=1-1"><i><span style="color: #2e499a;">New Worlds: A Religious History of Latin America</span></i></a> curiously timed. This excellent book gives a panoramic description of the rise, ups and downs, and present state of religion in Latin America. It covers the different Christian churches, Judaism, Vodou, Santeria, and Amerindian religions. However, it justifiably focuses on the Catholic Church, for as the author makes clear, Catholicism has been for five centuries “the defining religion of Latin America.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The book reads like an adventure story, with the Catholic Church as its flawed, but charismatic hero. We are reminded that a succession of popes, in agreement with a number of Catholic theologians since the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, spoke against slavery. Pius II in 1492 condemned the slave trade as a great crime, censuring Christians who enslaved Black Africans. Paul III in 1536, Urban VIII in 1639, and Benedict XIV in 1741 defended the liberty of the Indians.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Before Pius II, none of the legal authorities of the other great monotheistic religions had condemned the slavery, not only of their coreligionists (which Islam and Judaism did), but also of their non-coreligionists (which Islam and Judaism did not). In Islamic lands, in fact, the enslavement of whites, blacks, and Asians acquired unheard-of proportions, with slaves found everywhere, from state bureaucracies and armies to private households and the harems of sexual slaves. Robert C. Davis has estimated that in Islamic lands just from the 1530s to the 1780s, of white slaves alone, between 1 million and 1.25 million people were traded–men, women, and children, taken from the Mediterranean coasts, Greece, the Balkans, Armenia, Persia, and Slavic lands.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">However, not until Benedict XIV and Gregory XVI did popes after Pius II condemn the trade of Black Africans. Moreover, although the famous Bishop of Chiapas, Fray Bartolome de Las Casas, vigorously defended the liberty of the Indians, he suggested in 1516 the importation of Black Africans into the New World in order to spare the Indians from slavery—an idea from which he eventually repented. Thus Las Casas, the “Protector of the Indians,” bears responsibility for a trade that had ominous consequences.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We are also reminded that the Vatican’s record in Latin America includes its less than sterling treatment of some of its most devout followers in a particularly sad episode of the continent’s checkered history: the Cristiada, or <i>Cristero</i> War. The progressive Mexican Constitution of 1917 forbade all religious education and schools (as Carlos Perez Vazquez translates, “<i>educational services shall be secular and, therefore, free of any religious orientation…The educational services shall be based on scientific progress and shall fight against ignorance, ignorance’s effects, servitudes, fanaticism and prejudice</i>.”). It forbade Catholic worship outside church buildings, gave sole power to the State to determine the number of churches and priests in Mexico, and denied priests the right to vote (“<i>the State and the churches are separated entities from each other. Churches and religious congregations shall be organized under the law</i>”). The government forbade religious publications to comment on public affairs. It outlawed religious orders. It prohibited confession (thereby effectively prohibiting communion), fasting, abstinence, religious vows, wearing clerical garb publicly, and Church ownership of property. After 1926, the government forced priests to register before being allowed to perform their duties. Echoing the French Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and Marxism-Leninism, politicians in the Mexican Congress called priests “vermin,” “foul and treacherous vampires,” and “insatiable vultures.” Eventually, churches were sacked, Church property seized, confessionals burned, and bishops, priests, and nuns were jailed or exiled. These events and the ensuing Catholic rebellion are still glossed over in Mexican schools and Mexican history books, or presented as the result of the actions of superstitious peasants led by fanatical priests and nuns. Some works in English (such as <i>The Inveterate Dreamer</i>) even misrepresent the Cristero tragedy as an “anti-Church feeling (known in Mexico as La Cristiada).”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">On 11 April 1920 a huge procession of Catholics went to the center of Mexico to inaugurate a statue to Christ the King. This statue would soon be blown up by the government, but it became the symbol of the <i>Cristo Rey</i>, the Cristiada rebellion. In the hinterland, bands of Catholics attacked government buildings and burned government schools. Cristero forces were made up mostly of young men, “raised in family piety, who prayed and received the sacraments, and many were married according to canon though not civil law; they included workers as well as peasants, and women’s brigades provided logistical support.” “Some of the Cristero groups were led by priests who acted as fighters as well as chaplains.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Though under-armed, the Cristeros beat Federal troops in guerrilla engagements and pitched battles in Jalisco and Durango because of superior morale. They controlled much of the states of Zacatecas and Michoacan, inflicting over 60,000 casualties on government troops. However, the Federal army had the power of the Mexican State behind it and the logistical and diplomatic support of the United States. Although the government could not defeat the Cristeros, the Cristeros could not defeat the government.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">For the Cristeros, fighting for “Christ the King and the Virgin of Guadalupe was inherently just.” However, “Rome did not share these views, convinced as it was that armed force would not succeed and would compromise the Church in future. At the end of 1927 it ordered the Mexican bishops to distance themselves from the rebellion and work for a negotiated settlement.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">These Catholics were, in effect, left out to dry by Pope Pius XI. As they deposed their arms in obedience, the rebels were massacred. In a manhunt, all Cristero leaders and many of their followers were rounded up and executed, for a total of 5,000 killed between 1929 and 1935 alone. A total of over 40,000 Catholics died during the rebellion. It would not be the first, or, for that matter, the last time that the Vatican would do nothing of substance to help devout Christians and even devout Catholics (the Orthodox have not forgotten A.D. 1204 and 1453; and the terrorizing and killing of Catholic men, women, and children in the Middle East, Africa, and Indonesia continue today without the Vatican doing anything of a practical—not to mention military—nature to help them).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The “negotiated settlement” of the Cristero War gained little for Catholics in Mexico. Lynch summarizes the scene:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As the rebels demobilized, the government pressed harder. Catholics gained a minimal freedom to practice their religion but no other rights, and the anti-Catholic religious legislation remained in place unchanged in the slightest degree. The government presented this as the surrender of the Church, and so it was. The revolution had apparently crushed Catholicism and driven it back inside the churches, and there it stayed, throughout the 1930’s and beyond, preserved by the sheer religiosity of the Mexican people, while the government, dedicated to perpetual revolution, repeated its anti-clerical clichés and reinforced its anti-religious ideology.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Pius XI lacked the resolve of such popes as St. Pius V, organizer of the Catholic coalition which defeated the Muslim Turks at Lepanto in 1571and which momentarily interrupted their conquest of Christian Europe. All Pius XI did was issue a series of encyclicals. Pius XI, in fact, presided during the years of that “Terrible Triangle” of atheist states which persecuted and killed Christians in the twentieth century–not only Catholics in Mexico and in Spain under the Spanish Republic, but also millions of Orthodox Christians in Russia under Marxism-Leninism.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It took the Church more than sixty years to beatify the most famous martyr of the Cristeros: Father Miguel Pro. Scheduled for 1987, Father Pro’s beatification was postponed because it would have coincided with an election year in Mexico, and the party in power, the <i>Partido Revolucionario Institucional</i>, the PRI, happened to be the governing party during the Cristiada. In fact, General Plutarco Elias Calles, the atheist Mexican President who ordered the shooting, without trial, of Father Pro, was also the founder of the PRI, and is still considered a national hero. The Church was afraid that Catholic celebrations would anger the PRI. However, when Pope John Paul II finally beatified Father Pro on September 25 1988, the ceremony took place on the birthday of long-dead Calles. The Church claimed it was a coincidence.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The least convincing in this otherwise excellent book are those pages dedicated to the native cultures, which are treated with the utmost delicacy. No mention is made of the thousands of people killed every year by the Mexica (the “Aztecs”) and obtained as captives in a yearly ritual war (the <i>Guerra Florida</i>). No mention is made of the chilling account by Bernal Diaz del Castillo, who was rather sympathetic to Moctezuma because the Mexica emperor had granted him a number of beautiful females: according to Bernal, one delicacy Moctezuma enjoyed was the flesh of babies.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In fact, the Mexica empire was what one might call a vampiric empire, since it lived off the tribute, in goods, and in men, women, and children, exacted from other Amerindian nations as slaves and victims. When seen under this light, and especially when one takes into account that other Amerindian nations gladly joined Hernan Cortes in his destruction of the Mexica empire, the conquest of Mexico by the Catholic Spaniards begins to look less like the destruction of a charming native civilization and more like the liberation of a land long oppressed and bloodied by a hellish religion.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A similarly politically correct treatment, not unusual among modern anthropologists, is given to the Maya religion. All we read about its bloodiness is that “the Maya underworld is peopled by deities placated by human sacrifice.” But the entire Maya world, not just the “underworld,” was peopled by horrendously looking deities, who were not only “placated” by—but actually dependent on—human blood for their continuing support of the universe.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This support required the self-bleeding of their genitals and tongues by Maya kings and queens (carried out with thorns attached to ropes, and stingrays), as well as the more abundant blood obtained through the ingenious torturing (pulling nails was one frequently used method) and eventual killing of captives. After the Catholic Spaniards destroyed the power of this horrific religion, which was one of the bases of Maya culture, the Maya stopped their internecine wars and their torturing, bleeding, and killing of humans for religious purposes. Instead of using people, these days Maya priests use chickens, ritually beheaded and bled in colorful ceremonies which tourists and anthropologists admire and even film enthusiastically in complete safety—chicken blood being a less powerful means of appeasing the native deities, to be sure, but one safer, at least for human beings. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">No mention is made, either, of the fact that Maya cities, which often spoke languages unintelligible to each other (the eventual universal adoption of Spanish made a previously difficult communication among the several Maya nations easy), engaged in endemic bloody wars, with captives taken as slaves or sacrificial victims.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The more unsavory aspects of Inca culture are also prudently left out in this book. We read nothing of the Inca’s conquest and, in some cases, extermination of other Amerindian nations, the destruction of their religions, the imposition of the Inca cult of the Sun and the Inca Emperor, and the use of ethnic cleansing as an effective means of conquest. No mention is made of the Inca religious sacrifice of children and young women on the mountain peaks of the Andes either.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Nonetheless, this readable and learned book is probably the best available one-volume account of religious phenomena, and especially of the trajectory of the Catholic Church, in Latin America.</span></div>dario fernandez-morerahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00391121279827034696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7577609655236193686.post-17303587437695760412011-08-13T15:10:00.000-07:002011-12-21T20:13:59.689-08:00Brave New World’s Critique of the Present<div class="WordSection1"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Brave New World</span></i><i><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">=</span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">s </span></i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Critique of the Present</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">by Dario Fernandez-Morera</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">As in the case of Nineteen Eighty-Four, criticism of Huxley</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">=</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">s great novel has </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">reflected the views of its critics. And since most critics have been academicians, and</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">since most academicians are not political libertarians or even conservatives, they have </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">emphasized the seeming anti-capitalist themes in the novel, while downplaying or </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">outright ignoring its sometimes libertarian, sometimes outright conservative messages.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The book</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">=</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">s attack on what today we call consumerism is a case in point, although there are others, such as the dangers of technology, genetic engineering, and </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">so on. Consumerism as a feature and often as a lamentable feature of our modern </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">capitalism is undeniable. It is a byproduct of the abundance of goods and services that </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">we should thank capitalism for. But we are still free simply not to consume. I do not </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">consume much. I bet there are many here who do not consume much. And </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">presumably the numerous and vociferous critics of consumerism in our society do not </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">consume much either. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Why is it then that we, in today</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">=</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">s society, can not consume, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">whereas practically all the people in the novel cannot avoid consuming? </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The answer is </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">that the society of Brave New World is not a free market society any more than it is a </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">free political society. It is not quite clear if production is publicly controlled or not, but it </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">is certainly clear that a central authority controls both the media and production well </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">enough so that no alternative to the doctrine of consumption and no alternative to the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">government-sanctioned production can reach the public. Surely this situation is not </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">even close to that of a very moderately free market society like ours, where anti-</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">consumerist voices can make a living attacking consumerism and having their anticonsumerist product consumed by other anti-consumerists. More important, we know that businesses and their means of production do not have to be owned by the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">government for production not to be free. Government directives and regulations </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">suffice. Government authority simply directs private industry to produce certain items </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">in such and such quantities and to advertise certain items with such and such </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">frequency and such and such intensity. National Socialism did it. The American war </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">economy during the Second World War did it. And a mild form of such directional </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">control can be seen in today</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">=</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">s United States, when government pushes industry </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">through regulations or monetary incentives to do many things presumably for the good </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">of the society, such as hiring people that if left to its own devices industry would not </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">hire, or modifying products in certain ways that if left to its own devices industry would </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">not modify (or consumer stop consuming), or advertising against or in favor of things that if left to its own devices </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">industry would not advertise for or against. Brave New World, then, is not a capitalist </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">world: as the book makes clear, people are compelled to consume (33); whereas in a </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">free market society, people are not compelled to do much, including consuming. That </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">is the whole point of a free market. You buy one thing instead of another if you want. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Or you do not buy, period, if you do not want. One way or the other, then, whether its </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">businesses are privately or publicly owned, Brave New World is not a free market </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">society, but a benevolently socialist world, a corporate state, a case of Socialism with a </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">human face.</span></div></div><br />
<div class="WordSection2"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">But even more interesting than what critics choose to emphasize in</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Huxley</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">=</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">s novel is what they choose to ignore or even honestly fail to see. Some of </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">these issues are apparently too hot to handle. One of them is the question of forced </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">communitarianism. Another is the question of a New World Order that leads to a </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">benevolent World State. Other questions too hot to handle are sex and religion.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Critics tend to ignore the individualist message in the novel because they are usually </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">socialists of either the left or the right to whom individualism is a bad word. Yet the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">message is clear, strong, and ubiquitous. There are constant Community Sings. There </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">are constant Solidarity Services (35). Critics ignore also the localist message of the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">book because they are usually internationalists who dream of a one-world that will </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">bring final peace and abundance to all. Yet the anti-one world themes in the book are </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">clear, strong, and ubiquitous. The cultural vacuum of Brave New World</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">=</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">s society stems </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">in part from the lack of alternative societies, and there are no alternative societies </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">because nations, with their unique ways, have disappeared. A gray uniformity prevails. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The local has been pushed away and confined to the Reservations. Only there do we </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">find remnants of a long gone multiform culture that includes Christianity, paganism, and </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">even a copy of Shakespeare</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">=</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">s complete works. </span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">We have a World State now,</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> voices </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">in the novel say. (35) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> I would like to examine this question at length, but lack of time</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">compels me to move on to the questions of sex and religion. These questions, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">however, have implications for the anti-statist and cultural themes of the book, so that </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">here and there I will go back to these issues as I move along.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Brave New World is a society where techne is supreme and the transcendent </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">has been defeated. That is one reason Shakespeare is not around (other reasons are </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">of course that he is OLD, not healthy and not politically correct, often sad, or too </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">complicatedly merry, and so forth). Shakespeare is not techne. That is also one </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">reason why Christianity is not around (other reasons are of course that Christianity is </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">OLD, not healthy and not politically correct, often sad, or too complicatedly merry, and</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">so forth). Christianity is not techne. But what does the transcendent have to do with </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">sex and Shakespeare and Christianity? Of course we know about that sonnet where </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Shakespeare recommends procreation as a means to immortality. And we know that </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">passage in the Old Testament where Abraham is about to kill Isaac, the means God </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">promised him to achieve family continuity, the same kind of immortality that </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Shakespeare talks about. And we also know of that passage in the New Testament,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">where Jesus promises immortality, a passage often read in Christianity in conjunction </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">with the previous passage in the Old Testament. We are closer here to the matter of </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">transcendence. But what does all this have to do with sex?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Well, it seems that a great deal, at least in the mind of the social thinkers of </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Brave New World, since their fight against transcendence includes the question of sex. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">By turning sex into yet another form of entertainment, the social engineers of Brave </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">New World have removed transcendence from sex. Now sex is no different from </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">sports, traveling, skiing, movies, TV, partying, buying, sailing, and all the other </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">sometimes frenetic activities and forms of entertainment that keep a person</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">=</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">s mind from </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">thinking, really thinking, concentrating on his reason for existing, the conditions of that </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">existence, and so forth, the sort of thinking that may lead to unhappiness and therefore </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">to unhappiness with one</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">=</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">s existence and therefore to alienation from authority and even </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">to rebellion. That is why, too, the novel makes clear that in the brave new world people</span></div></div><div class="WordSection3"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">do not read much and certainly do not read anything that may tax their intellect too </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">much: such reading creates problems because it may lead to thinking, and especially to </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">thinking in isolation, for oneself, which is potentially very subversive.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Moreover, sex separate from the transcendent function called procreation and </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">therefore family-building facilitates the weakening and eventual elimination in Brave </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">New World of the family as a social unity and therefore the elimination of one of the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">strongest obstacles to allegiance to larger social units like the state. In Brave New </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">World the family has ceased to exist as a rival to the state. Thus turning sex into just</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">another pleasant activity is fundamental to the political agenda of the social engineers.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">In the novel we have a vast, amorphous state where there is no local </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">differentiation of customs, cultures, political organization, or even languages. It would </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">certainly be the ideal of the U.S. State Department</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">=</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">s Deputy Secretary of State and </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">New Worldist Strobe Talbott (now President of the Brookings Institution), who in a <i>New York Times</i> profile piece (September 1999) declared that in the 21</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 7pt;">st </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">century the U.S. </span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">In its current form</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> will not exist because the very concept of nationhood will have ceased to exist. Some years earlier (Time, July 20, 1992), Talbott had confessed that he looked forward to a universal government run by </span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">one global authority.</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Within the next hundred years,</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Talbott wrote, </span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">nationhood as we know it will be obsolete, all states will recognize a single, global authority.</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Talbott went on to explain the theoretical foundation for his optimistic view of the future: </span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">All countries are basically social arrangements....No matter how permanent and even sacred they may seem at any one time, in fact they are all artificial and temporary.</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> We can see in Talbott</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">=</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">s words the explicit and implicit contrast and hierarchy of the Artificial as positive against the Sacred as negative, the Temporary and therefore the New as positive against the Permanent as negative, the Now as positive against the Old as negative, and the Present and the Ahistorical as positive against the Historical as negative.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Another professor, Joh Huer, might be talking about Huxley</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">=</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">s new worlders and </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">the Savage when he wrote recently, comparing the United States and the Serbs, that </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">the latter are an </span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">atavistic holdover from a bygone era,</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> while the Americans are </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">probably the </span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">future prototype humans.</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> For professor Huer the United States </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">represents a world of </span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">ultimate sophistication, so logical and so rational, with little </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">human involvement,</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> in contrast to the </span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">total disregard of logic and rationality</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> of the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Serbs. Americans believe in the power of technology and all that that implies</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">B</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">reason, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">logic, solution-finding,</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> whereas the Serbs believe in the power of their destiny,</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">powerful and so human.</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> The professor concludes that the Serbs have </span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">to recognize </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">this inevitable development of history and join up with what will be, not what was or </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">should be.</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Indeed, join or die, as the fate of the Savage illustrates.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Here there are of course Orwellian notes. In Brave New World life has been </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">arranged by the wise and benevolent rulers independently of existing traditions and </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">ancestral memories, which can only contribute to conflict and blood shedding. The </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">social engineers of Brave New World share the views of the NATO politicians who in </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">our own time have told the Serbs that, unlike you, we are not interested in History. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">History is the past, and the past is undesirable because bloody and intolerant and</span><span style="font-family: Shruti;"></span></div></div><div class="WordSection4"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">messy and unhealthy and politically incorrect. It is better to construct a society anew, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">ex-nihilo, in a reasonable fashion, more geometrico, without worrying too much about </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">traditions and religions and languages and customs, or at most let us create some new </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">ersatz traditions intended as plausible and accommodating substitutes for the OLD </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">practices.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">These ersatz traditions include religion. Today in the U.S. we hear many actual </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">and potential social engineers speak of the need to develop and encourage a secular </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">religion (never mind the oxymoron) that will enshrine the statist communitarian ethos </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">dear to the engineers, and that will teach that service and allegiance and obeissance to </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">the government is a high, praiseworthy goal. In an article called </span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Civil Religion, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Cultural Diversity, and American Civilization,</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> professor Leroy S. Rouner cites, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">approvingly, a letter by a Yankee Civil War veteran made famous by Ken Burns</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">=</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">s Civil </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">War TV series, not coincidentally an icon of the Public Broadcasting Corporation, in </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">which the Yankee soldier wrote to his sweetheart a letter shortly before the battle </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">where he lost his life. The soldier fervorously and favorably compares his love for the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Lincoln government to his love for her and even to religion. As he writes, </span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">I know how </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">the triumph of American civilization now leans upon the triumph of the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">government...and I am willing, pefectly willing, to lay down all my joys in this life to help </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">maintain this government....</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Professor Rouner, excstatic over this letter, uses it as the springboard for his </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">defense of a strange something which he and others call </span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Civil Religion.</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> In Orwellian </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">fashion, these professors give to the word religion whatever meaning they want. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Religion now does not necessarily have to do with God. We are also told that this </span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">American Civil Religion</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> is shared by all Americans, </span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">whether they are formally </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">religious or not.</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> It is true that, as professor Rouner himself admits, this Civil Religion </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">is, I quote, </span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">so vague and general that it almost isn</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">=</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">t anything at all.</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> But a good </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">professor is not deterred by such obstacles as vagueness and generality. Besides, the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">question is not whether there is such a thing as Civil Religion. He assumes there is. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The question is how do we use it for our benevolent purposes? One possible answer is</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">that, as other communitarians have argued, we should start re-emphasizing this nonreligious religion</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">=</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">s rituals, such as celebrating even more vocally and intensely the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">more politically correct National Holidays, using uniforms in schools, or attending </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">parades, or holding services in praise of cultural diversity as long as the diverse culture </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">is not too diverse from ours (such as that of the Christians, or </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">the Serbs) and engaging in other such soul-lifting civic or civil practices.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Professor Rouner is not alone. As the importance of spiritual beliefs and the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">human craving for transcendence and ritual become widely recognized, alarmed </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">statists, and even some libertarian atheists and agnostics endeavor to develop </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">practices that may function as substitutes for religion. Even people who until recently </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">viewed themselves as superior to the unwashed masses partly because the masses </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">could not seemingly function without religious practices, are now searching for some </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">kind of ritual that will satisfy their own cravings and their unwillingness to leave that </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">area of human life in the dreadful hands of religion. These people remind me of the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">elite of classical antiquity, who having lost their faith in the gods, retreated into </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">mathematical cults like those of the Pythagoreans, or, later on, into variously abstract </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Neoplatonic sects. They were unable to give up their cravings for transcendence, or </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">live without a spiritual dimension, yet could not stoop to sharing the masses</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">=</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> allegedly </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">naive versions of what the elite wanted. Modern examples of this search include </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">something called </span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">centering,</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> which its advocates hope will work as a substitute for the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">dreaded old-fashioned thing once called </span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">prayer.</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Even many followers of Ayn Rand have joined the effort to, as they put it, </span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">reclaim spirituality from religion.</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> In the catalog of publications of The Objectivist Center in Poughkeepsie, New York, one finds such titles as </span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Rational Rituals, or Pay no Attention to That Man Behind the Curtain,</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> where the author, Dr. Madigan, I quote from the blurb, </span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">discusses the experience of the humanist movement in creating secular alternatives to religious practices</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">B</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">especially when they</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">=</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">re based on reason rather than faith.</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> In another work titled </span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Green Cathedrals: Modern Spiritual Poverty and the Rise of Environmentalism,</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> the author, Robert James Bidinotto, I quote, </span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">shows how the modern secular world view </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">can incorporate a sense of the sacred</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> without falling into the religious pitfalls of some </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">environmentalists. Even Nathaniel Branden, Rand</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">=</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">s one-time favorite disciple and</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">lover, who has over the years moved over to some kind of vague, hip, California </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">spirituality has contributed a piece called </span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">What Are Our Spiritual Needs,</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> where he, I </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">quote, </span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">explores the meaning and misconceptions of spirituality. Based on his many </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">years of practice and reflection, Dr. Branden presents his own understanding of our </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">spiritual needs and their role in our development.</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"></span></div></div><div class="WordSection5"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">As usual, Huxley foresaw the future by looking at his present. The social </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">engineers of Brave New World have long confronted and solved the problem now </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">consuming the attention of the non-religious religionists. Like them, they have </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">understood human needs and have tried to satisfy them without making any </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">concessions to religion and certainly without making any concessions to dreaded </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Christianity. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Their solution is a secular religion indeed, of which the Orgy Porgy is a </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">culmination. In Huxley</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">=</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">s novel, the grotesque rituals of the Orgy Porgy are a caricature, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">not of old religion, as other critical readings of the book have opined, but of the nonreligiousreligionists</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">=</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> attempt, so necessary if the state is to have absolute control, to </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">offer some kind of substitute that modern man can use and trust in place of the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">potentially anti-statist power (compare ancient Rome; compare late twentieth-century </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Poland, and so on) of old-fashioned religion and even more so, of local religious</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">practices and communities. All these local and traditional forms of spiritual expression, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">including Christian ones, Brave New World has confined to the badlands, subhuman </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">world of the Reservations, from which John, the Savage, comes, like a failed John the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Baptist, to announce a hard, self-denying, self-punishing faith that probably no one in </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Brave New World will follow (a possible future exception is Helmholtz).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div></div><div class="WordSection6"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Most criticism of Huxley</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">=</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">s work has been written by literature professors. Since </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">literature professors by and large are a rather irreligious group, these critics have been </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">willfully or perhaps unknowingly oblivious to the religious angles in Huxley</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">=</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">s thought </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">and writing and therefore in his greatest novel. And yet Huxley makes rather clear how</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">the social engineers in Brave New World in fact provide a complete and systematic </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">alternative to the social theory of traditional religion. Here I am coming back to the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">question of sex. In place of the old religious injunctions against abortion and even </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">against contraception (</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">grow and multiply</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> says the Bible), the brave new world of the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">novel offers women total protection against pregnancy by means of the regular supply </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">and consumption of contraceptives carried in the very accurately named Malthusian</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">belts.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">In fact, in the novel reproductive freedom, as we call it today, has been taken to </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">its logical conclusion. The world government offers not just reproductive freedom, but </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">actual freedom from reproduction. Women are no longer burdened by pregnancy. Like </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">men, they no longer have to connect sex with future discomforts. They have achieved </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">perfect sexual equality through technology, sexual equality being only one aspect of</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">the pervasive equality aimed at by the social engineers, an equality which critics have </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">overlooked, misled by the existence of different classes of people. The critics have </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">overlooked that, within each class, perfect equality is the norm (this is one reason </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Helmoltz does not fit and is looked upon with suspicion: he is too good for the other </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Alphas). Now babies are made in laboratories, without the messiness and the painful </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">and rather unhygienic quality of old-fashioned reproduction. Against the sacrosant</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">fetishization of the family, of which the old religion was guilty, brave new world society</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">has dissolved the family altogether, replacing it with allegiance to the much larger </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">community, the colossal village (for it takes a village, not a family) of brave new world, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">with its community rituals and solidarity practices. Allegiance is now social, not familial.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Freedom from motherhood has also been accompanied by a transformation of </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">the concept of mother into something not just undesirable but actually repulsive, the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">mere mention of which makes women blush in embarrassement, much as in a long,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">long gone era the mention of sex in polite company made them blush. Sex, of course, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">no longer makes women blush in the brave new world. Again Huxley knew what he </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">was talking about. He extrapolated, with amazing lucidity, from his own observations of </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">the behavior of British elite intellectual society during the 1920's (not much different from that of the British elite in the twenty-first century) to what the future</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">might hold in store.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">A noticeable shift in the word </span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">mother,</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> in the same direction, has taken place in </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">the U.S. today. In a recent article titled </span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">I Want to Be a Mom,</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Bethany Patchin writes t</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">hat when her 10</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 7pt;">th </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">grade English teacher asked the females in the class, </span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">How many of </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">you want to be at-home moms?</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Patchin raised her hand. At once the room got awfully</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">quiet and everyone stared at her. Patchin recounts a discussion with her college </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">adviser four years later. When she told him she wanted to marry and have children </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">after graduation from college, he said, </span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">I wouldn</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">=</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">t have expected you to be that type.</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@ </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The expression </span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">that type</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> by the professor counseling the woman was telling. A </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">recent article by Kathleen Parker makes the same point, namely that the idea of a </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">woman being a mother and nothing else, is already OLD, quaint, and generally looked</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">down upon, the more so the more educated and elite the one doing the looking is.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Moreover, instead of the sexual prohibitions, taboos, and caveats of the old </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">religion, brave new world society offers unlimited sexual freedom. Sex as mere </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">recreation, a la Playboy. Sexual experimentation among little children, encouraged as </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">a healthy way to, as we say today, explore one</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">=</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">s sexuality, is part of the exceedingly </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">desacralizing, matter-of-fact approach to life in the brave new world of Huxley</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">=</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">s novel. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Like religion, sex has been thoroughly de-mythologized, to use the expression of </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">famous so-called Christian theologian Rudolf Bultmann.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">But like our more advanced social thinkers, the enlightened social engineers of </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">the brave new world have realized the need to do something about the stubborn, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">undesirable, embarrassing, but nonetheless factual importance of religion. Like </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">physicist Freeman Dyson, who recently won the Templeton Prize for Progress in </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Religion (another oxymoron here?), they may think that (I quote Dyson) </span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">religion has a </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">much more important role in human destiny than science.</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">@</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> (By the way, Dyson has</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">declared he is both a Christian and an agnostic, and that to him religion is a way of life, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">not a belief; go figure; his daughter has recently being ordained a Presbyterian </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">minister). And so the leaders of the brave new world have come up with something that today</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">=</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">s social thinkers are </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">still trying to come up with, namely a religious ersatz, an undisputably man-made, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">plastic religion. It is a religion that mimics the rituals of the older religion, but steers </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">clear of spiritual transcendence, and that instead of the OLD God with whom </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">individuals could come into personal contact, offers a sort of impersonal collective deity </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">who stands for the shared communality in which the inhabitants of the brave new world </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">participate. The parody reaches obscene proportions toward the end of the ritual, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">where the ubiquitous sexuality of the new society surfaces, during the ceremony that </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">celebrates communitarianism, in the form of the Orgy Porgy, where everyone is for and </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">does everyone else, in a proper collective climax to the social ethos of the brave new </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">world.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">There are many differences and similarities between the creative visions of </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. What Orwell saw he may have seen more sharply </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">and distinctly. Huxley often saw more dimly, but he saw more than Orwell did. Like </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Nineteen Eighty-Four, but in a more spiritual, perhaps even more profound way, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Huxley</span><span style="font-family: "WP TypographicSymbols";">=</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">s Brave New World is a deeply conservative book.</span><br />
<br />
</div>dario fernandez-morerahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00391121279827034696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7577609655236193686.post-62964559621085541542011-08-07T21:44:00.000-07:002012-02-06T17:48:03.036-08:00The Truth About the Convivencia of Muslims, Jews, and Catholics in Islamic SpainThat in Medieval Islamic Spain the three cultures of Muslims, Jews, and Catholics lived together in happy harmony is one of the many remarkable falsehoods of today’s widely accepted "knowledge." In Al-Andalus Muslims were in fact at the top of a religiously, racially, and socially stratified society and the sole controllers of the political sphere, with Jews functioning as an ancillary class that had allied itself with the Muslim invaders during their early conquest of Catholic Spain and that for some centuries continued to enjoy an intermediary and at times influential status between Muslims and Catholics. <br />
<br />
In fact, in Al-Andalus the majority of the members of "the three cultures" lived in their own neighborhoods, interacting only whenever it was necessary for commercial reasons. Catholics (or "mozarabs," a misleading term, since they were not Arabs in any form or shape, but Catholics who had stayed in Islamic Spain after the Muslim conquest and had kept their religion, customs, and traditions in spite of adverse conditions: in fact, Muslims referred to these Catholics not as "mozarabs," but as <em>dhimmis</em>, that is, a people subject to and "protected"--an ominous term for anyone familiar with protection rackets--by the Islamic hegemonic law) were at the bottom of the totem pole. Many of their churches had been converted to mosques, as had been the practice in all lands conquered by Islam. The best known examples are probably the mosque of Cordoba, built upon an ancient Catholic church (and converted into a Catholic church when Catholics re-conquered Cordoba in the twelfth century), and the great Greek Orthodox church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople (changed by Muslims to "Istanbul" in the early twentieth century in another well-known procedure whereby the conquerors changed the names of the places they conquered), probably the most beautiful building of the early Middle Ages, turned into a mosque upon the conquest and sacking of Constantinople in 1453 by the Ottoman Kaliph Mehmet II: though now converted into a museum, it still features four minarets that constitute not only a religious desecration but an aesthetic travesty.<br />
<br />
It is not true that Muslims shared the Catholic dhimmis' festivities with Catholics (or for that matter, Jewish festivities with Jews). In lands re-conquered by Catholics, but not in Muslim lands (where such temptations did not exist because Catholics were simply forbidden to celebrate publicly their religious holidays), the remaining Muslim population was occasionally tempted to enjoy the merry festivities of Christians, but this always provoked stern rebuttals from the Muslim ulama. These ulama functioned and still function today as the equivalent of a priesthood, another historical myth being that Islam in Spain had not priests. Even today among Muslims the ulama function as priests because they are a source of religious knowledge, preaching, advise, religious injunctions, etc. with no distinction being made between what is religious and what is not, but of course with different rituals, beliefs, organization, etc. than those of Catholic priests: one only has to read the papers to see today the ulama class as a religious clergy in action in Shiite Iran, in Sunni Islamic lands, and even in Western cities. But of course that in Medieval Spain some Muslims wanted to have fun during the Catholic festivities in cities re-conquered and once again controlled by Catholics (again such festivities were forbidden in lands controlled by Islam) constituted no more a <i>sharing</i> of such festivities than when today’s Americans who are not Catholic <i>enjoy</i> Christmas without actually sharing what Christmas means for Catholics, namely the celebration of the incarnation of one of the three personae of God in human form and His birth in Bethlehem–all notions blasphemous to Muslims in Spain.<br />
<br />
Catholic dhimmis did not share political power in Muslim Spain, could not hold processions or display publicly the cross or other Christian symbols such as images of Christ, the Virgin Mary, or the saints, they could not ring church bells, their buildings had to be lower than Muslim buildings, they could not ride horses or carry weapons, they had either to convert to Islam or pay a special tax to the Muslim state or die, they could not marry or have sexual intercourse with Muslim women under punishment of death (whereas Muslim men could marry Catholic women and their children must be brought up as Muslims), they could not build new churches (still the case in Muslim states like Saudi Arabia, where building churches is forbidden, and in some other Muslim nations where building churches is extremely difficult or de facto impossible), they had to defer to Muslims socially, and in all legal matters they were subordinate to the Muslim population whenever they came in conflict with it. <br />
<br />
The effect of these oppressive social conditions on Catholics was that by the twelfth century Catholics had basically become extinct in Islamic Spain because of flight to the Catholic North, conversions to Islam, and expulsions. Over the centuries, Muslim authorities expelled hundreds of thousands of Catholics to Muslim Africa. Some of these expulsions occurred in retaliation for the armed resistance of the Catholics, among them the famous Omar Ibn Hafsun, who for many years in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada held off the forces of Abd-el-Rahman III (Arab chronicles tell us that Hafsun died as a Catholic, and that Abd-el-Rahman III had his body disinterred and desecrated as an example to the population). Thus by 1492, when Granada was finally re-conquered by Catholics, no Catholics could be found in the city. The process of Catholic cultural and religious extinction in al-Andalus was similar to what one can witness in the Middle East and North Africa today, where the Christian population has been steadily declining from a time when most of the Middle East and North Africa was Christian, prior to the Islamic conquests. <br />
For a more detailed treatment of these issues see my "The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise" at http://www.isi.org/journals/archive/issue.aspx?id=f6e1ad61-8699-4622-9d66-3d4aac01b072<br />
Professor Dario Fernandez-Morera<br />
Northwestern Universitydario fernandez-morerahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00391121279827034696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7577609655236193686.post-22737020418271851192011-07-26T16:16:00.002-07:002021-01-28T11:06:44.321-08:00Esther Fernandez-Morera's Salmon Paste<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><a href="about:blank" name="_GoBack"></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">My Mother Esther (or “Sonia,” her stage name as an assistant to the magician, my father, "El Gran Dary") Fernandez-Morera’s Salmon Paste Recipe</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">My mother, que en paz descanse, taught me this recipe many years ago, when I was still living in California and going to Foothill College, or perhaps I was already at Stanford, I don’t remember.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is easy to make and very nutritious and tasty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is loaded with protein.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It can keep in the refrigerator for about 5 days.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The garlic in it helps preservation.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">One 14.75 oz. (418 g.) can of red or pink Salmon, such as Pillar Rock.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">3 eggs, boiled.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">4 cloves of garlic, cut in very small pieces or equivalent (bottled garlic is ok; use two teaspoons of bottled garlic).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1/3 large onion, cut in very small pieces.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">8-10 full tablespoons of mayonnaise, preferably with all the fat, for taste and calories; non-fat or low fat is ok but less tasty of course.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1/2 teaspoon of herbs seasoning in powder form; I prefer Garlic & Herbs by Ms. Dash.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1/3 teaspoon of cayenne pepper.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">½ teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">½ teaspoon of Soy sauce.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Start boiling the eggs in a soup pan with water (well, someone might want to use wine, or who knows what) for about 5 minutes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Use a timer of course.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">While the eggs boil, chop the onion and the garlic and mix them in a soup bowl.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Open the Salmon can on one end and cut the metal all around but not completely so that you can use it as a sort of lid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Walk over to the dog dish and pour most of the liquid in the dog dish holding the salmon in with the lid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dog loves licking the liquid (using this recipe at dog feeding time has the advantage of one’s being able to pour the liquid over the served dog food; dogs love it).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you don’t have a dog (too bad) just pour the liquid in the garbage can, unless you have other cooking plans for it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Empty the Salmon into a large soup dish or other large bowl.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Break down the salmon with a fork.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Pour the mayonnaise over the salmon and mix it well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The amount of mayo should not obliterate the flavor of the salmon, merely complement it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Start with 8 tablespoons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Feel free to taste the mixture for flavor and add more mayo if you wish.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do not use the same fork or spoon you use to taste for further mixing.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Pour the mixed onion and garlic on the salmon and mayo mix.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mix well with a fork.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">If eggs are ready, take them out and place them inside a container with cold water from the faucet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When one is cool enough, peel the egg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Place it on a cutting board.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then cut it up, first by half, then again by half.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do the same with the other eggs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You will end up with four pieces for each egg.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Pour the cut boiled eggs into the salmon mixture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mix it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Pour the seasoning and the cayenne.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mix it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Pour the Worcestershire sauce.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mix it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Pour the Soy sauce.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mix it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Esther Fernandez-Morera’s Salmon Paste is ready to be spread (or, which I prefer, plopped on the bread using a soupspoon) on toasted bread (which you may have already toasted in the toaster) or untoasted bread.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Either sliced whole wheat bread or whole wheat pita bread works well with this salmon paste.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It makes I don’t know how many servings; it depends on how much one eats.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Leave unused paste in the same bowl, cover it with see-through plastic wrap and refrigerate.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><br />
</div>dario fernandez-morerahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00391121279827034696noreply@blogger.com0