I mean ‘ourselves’

also

“On this note I very much recommend the chapter on Mungo Park in Age Of Wonder by Richard Holmes. It seems to suggest that a certain Capt John Martyn symbolizes a sea change (responding to French Revolutionary forces) in the British Imperial mindset.”

Well, ermm… Edmund Burke and William Wilberforce were surely setting precedents for the so called Imperial mindset… so as ever, it’s rather complicated.

As with The Totalitarian Temptation by Roger Scruton, I recognise, on a less extreme and not involving violence, some of my own faults, tendencies.

Similarly, to quote at some length from The Terrorists Among Us http://www.city-journal.org/html/163urbanities-terrorists.html

“It is not the personal that is political, but the political that is personal. People with unusually thin skins ascribe the small insults, humiliations, and setbacks consequent upon human existence to vast and malign political forces; and, projecting their own suffering onto the whole of mankind, conceive of schemes, usually involving violence, to remedy the situation that has so wounded them. Indeed, the terrorist temperament was apt to see tyranny where there was none. As Conrad puts it: “The way of even the most justifiable revolutions is prepared by personal impulses disguised into creeds.” In Conrad’s The Secret Agent, for example, the Professor—“his title to that designation consisted in having been once assistant demonstrator in chemistry at some technical institution,” who quarreled with his superiors “upon a question of unfair treatment,” and who had “such an exalted conviction of his merits that it was extremely difficult for the world to treat him with justice”—is a man who has devoted himself to devising bombs and detonators. Predisposed to dissatisfaction by his small stature and unimpressive appearance, he develops “a frenzied Puritanism of ambition” that seems once again, after September 11, only too familiar to us. “The extreme, almost ascetic purity of his thought, combined with an astounding ignorance of worldly conditions, had set before him a goal of power and prestige to be attained without the medium of arts, graces, tact, wealth—by sheer weight of merit alone. . . . To see [his ambition] thwarted opened his eyes to the true nature of the world, whose morality was artificial, corrupt, and blasphemous. . . . By exercising his agency with ruthless defiance he procured for himself the appearances of power and personal prestige.”

Conrad tells us that one of the sources of terrorism is laziness, or at least impatience, which is to say ambition unmatched by perseverance and tolerance of routine. Mr. Verloc, the secret agent, has a “dislike of all kinds of recognized labour,” which, says Conrad, is “a temperamental defect which he shared with a large proportion of revolutionary reformers of a given social state. For”—Conrad continues—“obviously one does not revolt against the advantages and opportunities of that state, but against the price which must be paid in the same coin of accepted morality, self-restraint, and toil. The majority of revolutionists are the enemies of discipline and fatigue mostly.”

Unfortunately, as Dalrymple points out perhaps as well as anyone, ‘the same coin’ is anything but, it (the virtually enforced U.S dollar as something like a world currency) I’d say, as is evidenced by current financial chaos, has come to epitomize the concept of sluttishness, promiscuity, plunder and rape.

But perhaps I’m now succumbing to the following

“Not wishing to relinquish their cherished ideology—their only possible source of collective pride and accomplishment—they seek to explain the technical and economic superiority of others by different kinds of denigratory mental maneuvers. They may claim, for example, that the West has achieved its preeminence by illicit use of force and pillage, by exploiting and appropriating the oil of the Muslim lands, say.”

Here is where Dalrymple expresses a similar view to Ayn Rand

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N4KbLbGYgk&feature=related

I’m very uneasy about this assertion; I think it’s similar, perhaps very much so, to American interests in South America i.e. Chile (Klein, Shock Doctrine). “should have had the foresight” – our imperial enterprises should have been informed by less ‘Spencerian’ (survival of the aggressive) mechanistic, Nietzschian, attitudes. On this note I very much recommend the chapter on Mungo Park in Age Of Wonder by Richard Holmes. It seems to suggest that a certain Capt John Martyn symbolizes a sea change (responding to French Revolutionary forces) in the British Imperial mindset.

Dalrymple, and uses of technology/modernism:

“Ahmad’s refusal to go to college might be interpreted in this light: for the path to constructive achievement is long, hard, and unsure, strewn with tedium and the chance of failure, while the life of destruction is exciting, even in its most tedious moments, because of the providential role that the destructive revolutionist has awarded himself. Once the magic wand of revolutionary destructiveness has been waved, even dull routine becomes infused with significance and excitement.”

Speaking of converting on basis of ‘love affair’ and thinking of Reading Lolita In Tehran. It’s all very well referring to Mr Darcy but there does seem to be a disturbing tendency that once sexual freedom is acquired the fairytale Mr Darcy ideal is put on the shelf while youthful licence plays itself out i.e. Playing The Field, with the Willoughby’s and Wickham’s (and frankly far worse) of this world i.e. the would-be Fanny Price’s and Elizabeth Bennett’s mysteriously tend to undergo a Mary Crawford transformation. I was recently reading where someone was making the distinction between sexual desire (compared to Montane voles) and romantic love (Prairie voles) http://www.sciencenetlinks.com/sci_update.php?DocID=80 How the most subversive of forces, sexual desire, manifests itself, well, never mind evading this danger on the basis of spurious generalizations think about yourself.

“And precisely what proportion of converts do you think are disagreeable, self-loathing and only in it for a cause?”

Here’s also a danger of the scientific (or should that be scientistic) era of data and statistics etc. ‘Precisely’, it’s easy to say and not saying I don’t similarly use the term but to suggest that because you lack precision (as oppose to being more specific, providing greater evidence, say), which I believe is what many people do, is often more about buying time, being evasive.

I’m well aware that “Muhammad Muhammad” is a false name and that he is probably a troll. I’m not as gullible as this might look. I let his post through because it was not abusive or defamatory. And his comments about converts being disagreeable, etc., don’t hold with my experience.

I think you say ‘dance to his tune?’

…but English isn’t my 1st, or 2nd, 3rd or 4th language and it’s without doubt the most difficult I’ve had to learn.

I’ve met converts with a very low opinion of “ethnic” Muslims and a very high opinion of certain aspects of the European tradition…

If what Yusuf says about new white muslims prejudice is true then I’d say they perhaps need to re do their research on Islam and then convert again b/c they most probably missed something in their first research or just didn’t take it seriously enough. May be they never saw our Prophet’s summon on the mount:

About 1400 years ago, in his last sermon, Prophet Muhammad (peace be on him) said:

“All mankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a white has no superiority over a black nor a black has any superiority over a white — except by piety and good action. Learn that every Muslim is a brother to every Muslim and that the Muslims constitute one brotherhood. Nothing shall be legitimate to a Muslim which belongs to a fellow Muslim unless it was given freely and willingly. Do not therefore do injustice to yourselves. Remember one day you will meet Allah and answer your deeds. So beware: Do not stray from the path of righteousness after I am gone.”

I think people take the Murabitun’s “fondness” for European thinkers slightly out of context. They use European thinkers either to challenge other European ideas that muslims are adopting or in reference to areas which are islamically neutral (ie just a matter of individual opinion).

Technological progress for example is a European feature that has been spread to other parts of the world as is the concept of gender equality. Critiquing them or at least understanding them then is best done with reference to European scholarship.

This isn’t something new for muslims. Chinese muslims in the past had quite close familiarity with historical Chinese scholarship and culture. According to Tim Winter most Chinese muslims historically would tend to believe that Confucius was a prophet.

Well, Direct Action and Baader-Meinhof were precisely the equivalent of the modern jihadi, not of the convert who merely dislikes aspects of the culture into which he or she was born. In fact, perhaps such people have seen aspects of that culture which you (or I) haven’t.

If anything, among Muslim converts (white and black) there are major ethnocentric tendencies. I’ve met converts with a very low opinion of “ethnic” Muslims and a very high opinion of certain aspects of the European tradition (although a great disdain for others) - note the Murabitun with their fondness for Nietzsche and Heidegger, an enthusiasm not shared by most Muslims from Muslim countries.

In many countries vegetables are used as staple foods, particularly potatoes and cassava.

Has similar problems to oil.

Many of these countries have a lot of agricultural produce, and some have nice climates. Most of the fruits and vegetables that we get are from places like Syria, Turkey, and Iran.

Fruits and vegetables are specialized products with high value/weight ratios, not staple foods.