What if Loma Lindans were Muslim? The following is an adaptation on a recent LA TIMES article (link), with little except the religion of the people changed.

LOCAL

McDonald’s proposal divides healthy Loma Linda

The chain wants to open a fast-food restaurant in the Muslim community, a spiritual enclave where liquor is not sold and cigarettes are not smoked.

Abdul Malik Shakur, executive Imam at the Loma Linda University mosque of Muslims, said all the attention to the McDonald’s plan was “almost an embarrassment to the mosque.” (January 18, 2012)

By Phil Willon, Los Angeles Times

January 22, 2012

Without a single liquor store, and legally smoke-free for nearly three decades, the tiny hillside town of Loma Linda brims with pride about its devotion to health and spiritual well-being.

So news that the first McDonald’s was coming to town, with its special-sauce-slathered Big Macs and 500-calorie sheaves of large fries, has triggered enough political reflux to put City Hall on the defensive.

A noisy group of doctors at the city’s landmark Loma Linda University Medical Center definitely isn’t lovin’ it. Already, there are whispers of election day payback and crafting a ballot measure to choke off a proliferation of fast-food joints.

“McDonald’s does not fit the Loma Linda brand of health and wellness,” said Dr. Ahmad Khan, head of preventive medicine at the medical school. “Compare it to smoking laws: There’s no question that smoking is harmful to people’s health. Exposing people to fast food also is harmful to their health.”

That healthful lifestyle is a core tenet of the Muslim faith, which is woven through the San Bernardino County town of 21,000, from the Muslim-run Loma Linda University Medical Center to a City Council governed exclusively by mosque members. There’s even a Loma Linda line of Halal food, produced by the same company that makes Mecca Farms zabihah halal burgers.

Along with abstaining from pork, most Muslims shun tobacco, alcohol and fancy dress. They are quick to brag about being home to the healthiest, and longest-living, folks in the nation. National Geographic in 2005 identified Loma Linda as one of the world’s four “blue zones” — towns with greatest number of people living healthy lives into their 90s and past 100. The others were Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy; and Nicoya, Costa Rica. “It’s a great point of pride that their commitment to health is paying off,” said Khan.

For Loma Linda residents, temptation already is just down the street. There are a half-dozen McDonald’s restaurants within five miles, all outside the city limits, and the town already has a Carl’s Jr. and Del Taco. But something about the Golden Arches popping up along Barton Avenue, within sight of the rolling hills that Muslim cleric Fatimah Al-Yaqoubi envisioned as a haven for the mosque, has proved too much to bear for many.

Al-Yaqoubi is a member of the Healthy Loma Linda Coalition, composed mainly of preventive health professionals, which opposes the McDonald’s.

The group is considering creeping in a ballot measure to require the city to ensure that the number of eating establishments that offer shariah-compliant halal food will always outnumber fast-food restaurants.

“Plus, every city councilman is an elected official,” he warned, referring to consequences at the ballot box.

The City Council so far has taken its chances, voting 3-2 to approve the McDonald’s as part of a larger development of a vacant lot a block from City Hall. The controversy has created an uncomfortable rift among Muslims. Al-Yaqoubi and other mosque attendees call fast food an affront to the faith’s shariah law of holistic wellness. Others call that an extreme view of the Muslim faith.

Loma Linda Mayor Muhammad Haleem, a Muslim and director of the medical center’s home care services, expressed frustration about all the attention. His city’s political dust-up has been dissected on ABC’s “Nightline,” and he’s gotten calls from reporters in Germany.

“The press is casting it as health-conscious people versus greedy business people. It’s not. This is a disagreement about the role of government,” said Haleem, a physician and lifelong halal food consumer.

“My perspective as a conservative libertarian is that government’s role should be minimalized. We should keep people from harming one another, but government doesn’t have a strong need to keep people from harming themselves.”

Abdul Malik Shakur, executive Imam at the Loma Linda University mosque of Muslims, said all the attention was “almost an embarrassment to the mosque.”

Within a block of the Muhammad’s Nutrition and Natural Foods market is a Stater Bros. market stocked with pork chops.

The Muslim mosque’s holistic devotion to people’s health and spiritual well-being dominates daily life.

For 81 years, the post office didn’t deliver mail on Fridays, the Muslim Holy day, opting for Sunday instead. The postal service ended that policy last spring in a cost-cutting move, which faithful Muslims took as another slap at their traditions.

The Muslims’ emphasis on health, nutrition and exercise would be easy to miss for those living outside the city limits were it not for the medical center and university’s schools of health. They attract 600,000 patients a year. For many, the hospital’s halal-only cafeteria is the first hint that life is different here.

Quranic creationism is preached in the town’s abundance of madrasas. Yet, Loma Linda Medical Center is best known for performing the world’s first infant cross-species heart transplant. “Baby Fae” was given the heart of a baboon in 1984.

“It goes back to the 1800s. Health always has been an important part to our shariah,” said Shakur. “It really ties into how a person is spiritually.”

Loma Linda for decades has been a magnet for modern-day Juan Ponce de Leons, health researchers intrigued by the Muslim fountain of youth. Muslim men live an average of seven years longer and Muslim women four years more than other Californians, according to a detailed health study of Muslims for 1974 through 1988. The study, the second phase of which is underway, also found that Muslims had lower rates of cancer, heart disease, diabetes and stroke.

“It shows that if we want people to have better diets and physical activity … then we have to be able to be in an environment that will promote those kinds of choices,” said Dr. Wafaa’ Wahiduddeen, nutrition professor and senior investigator with the university’s Muslim Health Study. “We’re talking about walkability of a community. Having more stores and restaurants that can offer some halal choices.”

At the Carl’s Jr. across the street from City Hall, nursing student Hafsa Abdallah, a Muslim from Redlands, was munching on some biriyani and masala curry. She said she likes the convenience of having fast food nearby but agrees that everyone would be better off with fewer temptations. She opposes the new McDonald’s.

“We can’t tell people what to eat, but we should do what we can to promote healthy food and being healthy,” said Abdallah. “Who doesn’t want to be healthy and to live a long life?”

McDonald’s officials showed no sign of relenting. The new restaurant, company representatives said, will provide the city with a “contemporary dining experience and help fuel economic growth.” John Lueken, a regional director for McDonald’s in Southern California, defended the fast-food chain’s healthful menu options.

“We have been working hard over the past several years to ensure we have options on our menu to meet a variety of dietary needs,” Lueken said in a statement. “For example, our line of premium salads can be ordered without meat. We also have other offerings, including apple slices, oatmeal and fruit and yogurt parfaits as well as a variety of portion sizes.”

The notion drew a scoff from Dr. Farhat Soulaimanian, a professor at the university’s school of preventive medicine and member of the Healthy Loma Linda Coalition.

“Trying to say there’s a healthy menu at McDonald’s is like putting 5 milligrams of Vitamin C in a cigarette,” Soulaimanian said.

“Our issue is not a faith issue,” said Soulaimanian, who is not a member of the Muslim mosque. “Our issue is childhood obesity. I have patients who are 10 years old with a fatty liver…. I’m tired of seeing that. The elephant in the room is what we’re eating.”

parody.phil.willon@latimes.com

Many of the Han Chinese who converted to Islam are also considered Hui people. The Hui speak fluent Chinese as their mother tongue, unlike Muslims from the other nine ethnic groups who are associated with their own non-Chinese languages. (link)

By religious conversion, a Chinese person can become a member of another “ethnicity” (Han –> Hui).  This is possible because ethnicities are basically affiliations that become real through member (or outsider) belief in the validity of grouping people on a certain basis, and religion is apparently the primary ‘difference that makes a difference’ (popularly, if not by any official definition) in differentiating the group “Han” from “Hui.”

And also in that article…

Han Yaohua, who is a bachelor, goes to the mosque every day without fail to pass his time. [...]

“During Chinese New Year, there are many temple fairs in China that visitors can look forward to but they are more of a cultural event. To me, Eidul-Fitri is more significant as it is my ethnic festival.”

Here, Mr. Han represents Eid al-Fitr, an Islamic religious holiday, as an “ethnic festival” of a Chinese minority ethnicity.  This reflects how the holiday is understood popularly in Chinese society, and official recognition of the holiday is part of the government policy of “harmony between peoples.”

Here we have two of the most positive and empowering social/psychological concepts represented by what are arguably the two most negative words in the English language.  Something is very wrong.  When you say “up” and people are hearing “down,” you know that no progress can be made in communication until you straighten out these words.

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“Fear”?

Sometimes in religious dialogue, “fear God” is a stand-in phrase for a more complicated concept. (See “Equivalency Translation” in this post) In an Islamic context, when someone says “fear Allah” (“Allah” just means “the God” in Arabic), the phrase they are translating from Arabic to English is “itaqu Allah”. “Itaqu” is the command form verb of the noun “taqwa.”

The concept of taqwa is different from the concept of “fear” in English in important ways: fear is an irrational and debilitating emotional response. Basically, it sucks, and if persistent could be pathological.

On the other hand, “taqwa” relates to the concepts of “to ward off,” “to protect against,” and “to be wary of.”  If you see a potential danger on the road ahead of you and out of reasonable caution you decide to take a safer route, that’s taqwa.

This is the kind of attitude Muslims are taught to have about God’s justice.  It does no good for someone to sit around feeling fear, but to be wary of unethical action because you believe that not even death prevents a person from meeting justice is a positive and useful attitude.  Since nobody would suffer anything negative from such a belief-based attitude unless they were willfully committing unethical actions, taqwa is a healthy emotional attitude, unlike fear.

Also, note that the notion of taqwa is not faith-dependent any more than “caution” is, and any reasonable person probably has some amount of taqwa.

The second word that may be translated as “fear” is khawf. This word is closer to the meaning of “being scarred of” something.  This word is often used to describe what wrongdoers should rightly feel while they are doing something they know will earn punishment.  (eg. 2:114 “…it is not fitting that they should enter except in fear. For them is disgrace in this world and in the world to come…”)

The third possibility is rahba, which is closer to “intimidation”. (eg. 2:40 “…and fear none but Me”).

A fourth term is khašya, meaning “anxiety” or “apprehension.” (eg. 2:150 “…do not fear them but fear Me…”).

The message generally expressed about these attitudes is that a person who believes in God’s justice and in the hereafter really doesn’t have anything to fear in the world.  Whatever may happen to you, as long as you stay away from wrongdoing, you’ll be alright (in the hereafter if not in this world).  The only thing a person needs to fear is their own wrongdoing and facing ultimate justice for it.  As I once heard a shaykh (Islamic scholar) point out: while fear is a natural human emotion, instead of fearing all kinds of things in the world, a Muslim can simplify his internal state by having nothing to fear except one thing.  That unified focus also makes conquering fear a simple matter of avoiding wrongdoing.

“Shame”?

This is another stand-in English word used for concepts that are significantly different in the original language.  In Arabic, the relevant words are ḥayaʾ (حياء)  and ʿaffa (عف).  (also ḥišma).

Both of the attitudes designated by these Arabic words involve a strong sense of self-respect and the self-confident decision to be virtuous.  The English translation “shame” represents the exact opposite, something closer to disappointment, regret, guilt, and self-loathing.

A person with ḥayaʾ and ʿaffa has the ability to distinguish right from wrong, and makes the choice to do right and refrain from wrong.  A psychologically healthy human needs to have the capacity to feel bad when they do something they view as wrong.  This is the most basic foundation of morality.  It’s an inner mechanism that provides us with the Jiminy Cricket we need to grow and develop as upright, decent people.  Alternate words used to translate these two concepts are “modesty,” “virtue,” “innocence,” “shyness,” “(capacity for) embarrassment,” “decency,” “purity,” or “righteousness.”

Ḩayaʾ andʿaffa are highly valued character strengths, and not everyone retains them into adulthood, because they can be dulled by habitual self-denigration and repeated wrongdoing so that one gradually loses the ability to feel shame (either for a given action, or for wrongdoing generally).  In this context, to say that someone has “lost their innocence” (meaning their ḥayaʾ) would not be something to giggle about, but would mean that the person had to some extent become emotionally deadened through (often self- or socially-inflicted) psychological abuse.

The Meanings of these Words

In the English language, a person experiencing fear or shame is in a very negative and uncomfortable emotional state.  In the context of  Islam, these words represent emotionally-empowering positive personal states, demonstrating a confident commitment to decent, upright actions, and an inner peace that comes from knowing that whatever may happen, you’ll be OK.  Far from being attitudes that should be avoided, “ethical wariness” and “(capacity for) shame”  are attitudes upon which the best aspects of our humanity depend.

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Copyright © 2011 Brendan Newlon

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People have developed a terrible misunderstanding of important words that we use all the time.  Communication on critical issues is failing utterly and leaving people confused, distraught, and frustrated.

Misuse of language in the media and scholarship make finding clear information even harder.  Is the President “an Arab”?  Is this woman in Hong Kong “worshiping Islam,” and did her ethnicity really change along with her religion? Is fist-bumping a terrorist attack?

Confucius says, “the first thing we need to do is straighten out these words.”   (see “Crisis in Terminology“)

必也正名乎

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Copyright © 2011 Brendan Newlon

“EVIL” (ideally read while listening to Toccata and Fugue in D Minor)

It seems to me that you basically have to be speaking from a religious perspective to apply the term “evil.”  Otherwise one could use terms like “unethical behavior” (perhaps socially defined), “criminal behavior” (governmentally defined), or simply “suffering” (I suppose that would be medically or subjectively defined?).

But, to take the next step and equate “criminal behavior” with “evil” would require theocracy, to equate “unethical behavior” with “evil” would turn social contract theory into something sacred, and to equate “suffering” with “evil” would require you to regard human comfort as cosmically significant.

I’m not judging any of those views, just pointing out that “evil” as an ultimate value judgement is a bit grand to be throwing around unqualified.  Some criterion still has to be applied to elevate “cool” and “not cool” (for example) into “Good” and “Evil.”

(yes, “evil, like the froo-its of the dev-eel.”

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Copyright © 2011 Brendan Newlon

The connection between belief and ethical behavior is that while there can be practical, emotional, or conscientious motivations for ethical action, the only purely rational motivations for ethical action is the belief in inevitable justice, by which ethical actions are rewarded and unethical actions are punished or a belief in the intrinsic value of ethical action.  In Western traditions including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, belief in judgement and reward or punishment after death provide a rational motivation to behave ethically during life.  In Eastern traditions including Hinduism and Buddhism, the notion of karma and various pleasant or unpleasant options for rebirth provides the same rational motivation for ethical action.  (To my knowledge all of these traditions also include a belief in the intrinsic value of ethical action).

As Machiavelli argued, in this life there can be practical reasons to make sure people believe someone (eg. a prince) acts ethically, but if one can benefit by unethical deeds, there is no rational motivation to actually act ethically.  If someone feels no hesitation to behave unethically when they know they will not suffer consequences in life, we know from their choice of actions that they do not believe that they will meet justice in the hereafter, and in English we call such a person a psychopath. When someone continues to behave ethically despite the opportunity to gain by unethical actions, even when they know there will be no consequences in the world, we can know from their actions that they are either acting irrationally, or they believe in a universal mechanism for justice in the hereafter and/or believe in the intrinsic benefit of performing ethical action.  Obviously, one’s inner state contributes to outer expressions and behaviors.  Assuming rationality, opportunity, and intelligence, an inner state of “belief” will lead to ethical actions while an inner state of “disbelief” will lead to unethical actions.  For this reason, belief is something valued very highly in the Islamic tradition, because it is the root of ethical action.

(related posts: “Religion vs. Dao,” and “Religion = Propriety?“)

….Discussion ad nauseum at r/atheism.

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Copyright © 2011 Brendan Newlon

“Equivalency” Translation

Translation is a very difficult task, especially because an expression in one language may not have a simple parallel in another language.  When faced with this kind of situation, translators have to decide between a few options: Ruling out lengthy footnote explanations or adding whole paragraphs as though they belonged to the primary text, the remaining option is to choose an expression that’s similar enough that someone familiar with the concepts will be able to recognize the concept when they hear the new term (eg “Heavenly Immortals” as the Chinese translation for “Angels” and “Sage” for “Prophet”).  This is called searching for equivalence.  The idea is that an educated Chinese-speaking Muslim reader would be familiar enough with the context of the religion to avoid confusion between the concept of “Heavenly Immortals” in Taoism and the appropriation of the same term for Islamic texts.

One danger of this translation technique is that readers without a thorough education in the religious context (and even some well-intentioned scholars) may mistakenly believe that the Chinese Muslim author was confused about their religion or was attempting to add a Taoist concept into Islam.

Semantic relationships and connotation

The second danger is that the term a translator uses will likely have semantic relationships that do not match the semantic relationships of the term in the original language.  Semantic relationships are the connections one word or concept has with others.  For example, “big” relates to “small” in a strongly oppositional way.  ”Big” also relates in various ways to concepts like “huge,” “bigger,” “size,” “superior,” “tall,” “macroscopic” (‘think big’), “magnanimity” (‘that’s big of you’), and even “successful” or “powerful” (eg. “he made it big”, “the big cheese,” “a big shot”).  Some of these relationships are stronger and some are weaker. This affects the degree to which the word “big” has the power to bring other concepts to mind without those concepts needing to be explicitly stated, but these relationships all affect the connotation of the word “big” to some extent.

The key terms in Arabic iman and kufr are often translated as “belief” and “unbelief.”  These translations aren’t exactly wrong (they can function to indicate the corresponding concepts to readers familiar with the Islamic context), but they also aren’t quite right — readers without a firm familiarity with Islamic concepts might be misled by connotations that arise from the semantic relationships of “belief” and “unbelief” in the English language, which do not parallel the connotations of “iman” and “kufr” in Arabic.

“Iman” is relationally oppositional to “kufr” in the same way that “belief” is oppositional to “unbelief”, but the connotative meaning is very different.  Iman contains the meanings “safety,” “confidence,” “fortitude,” and “stability.”  Kufr indicates “covering,” “concealing,” “occluding,” “hiding,” and “denying (something known to be true).”

The people of 7th century Arabia didn’t necessarily disbelieve in God (“Allah” literally means “the God”).  The practice of idolatry had become common, yet in many cases the idol/deity/etc was considered to be merely an intermediary between a person and God, or else a separate entity besides God who also had power to affect worldly affairs.  The Arabic term “shirk” means “association” and refers to the belief that God would need help from an associate to administrate some function in the universe.  The monotheistic vision of Islam holds that God is omnipotent and omniscient, and has no trouble administrating everything in the universe from the very big to the very small.  Those people who practiced idolatry were called “mushrikeen,” literally, “those who associate (other beings with God).”  Even the kafirun (“people who do kufr“) and mushrikeen still usually claimed to believe in God.  As the Qur’an says, “If you ask them, ‘Who created the heavens and the earth, and put the sun and the moon in your service,’ they will say, ‘God.’ Why then did they deviate?” (29:61) and “If you ask them, ‘Who sends down from the sky water, to revive dead land,’ they will say, ‘God.’ Say, ‘Praise God.’ Most of them do not understand.” (29:63).  We can see from this that the difference between the mu’min (“one who has iman“) and the kafirun was not strictly what we would call “belief” in English.  There’s more to it.

Towards a better understanding of “believers” and “unbelievers” in Arabic

When the people in Arabia were given the message of Islam, it came as a series of (1:) statements about belief in unseen realities and (2:) ethical injunctions to change some of their behaviors.  The matters relating to belief were arguments for understanding the implications of monotheism (ie. if you believe that God is the omniscient and omnipotent creator and sustainer of all things, what are you doing praying to an idol? That’s just rude to the God who has done so much for you and deserves your gratitude).  The ethical injunctions reminded people that just because a practice has become commonplace does not mean that it is right (ie. female infanticide is murder and stealing the rightful inheritance of orphans is wrong). These kinds of ethical statements were not news, they were merely reminders (the Qur’an refers to itself as “the reminder”) of what people already knew in their hearts to be true.  The notion of kufr is this: when someone was told that what they were doing was wrong they knew this was true, but in the interest of worldly gain they denied what they heard, occluding and concealing the truth of it.  This covering-up is called kufr. As is generally the case when involved in a cover-up of unethical actions, the person (one would hope) feels unstable and troubled by their conscience. On the other hand, when someone is given an ethical reminder and takes it as a reinforcement of what they already know in their heart to be true, it provides them with a sense of stability and fortitude in the ethical correctness of their actions; this is called iman.

The wrap-up

“Iman” could be translated as “the fortification of belief in justice and the ethical behavior it leads to,” and “kufr” could be understood as “concealing truth and willful ignorance of justice out of desire for unethical action.”  To have iman (often translated as “faith” or “belief”) and be a mu’min (“a believer”) means that your decision to behave ethically is (or would be) fortified by the message of judgement in the hereafter.  To do kufr and be a kafir (“an unbeliever”) means that someone chooses to deny their belief in justice (what C.S. Lewis called ‘willful blindness’) out of desire to continue in behavior they know to be unethical even after they have been reminded that such behavior is unethical. As this explanation should make clear, a person does not have to identify themselves as “Muslim,” or even “religious” for iman to be present in their heart, and they might be called “a believer” as the term is used in the Islamic tradition.

To translate these terms simply as “belief” and “unbelief” comes from a need for terms that provide functional equivalence, but for it to be functional, one must first know the full meaning of the Arabic expression so that these words can properly function as stand-ins.

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Copyright © 2011 Brendan Newlon

Concerns and Solutions:

Location:  Universities are too few and far between.  Students should have the option to pursue education closer to home if they choose.  Let’s revive the public library system, and expand these through local community funding to include research and learning areas and resources?  When teachers are not available, recorded (or streaming) videos of lectures and reading materials can be provided.  Students can submit questions to a network of community universities, scholars, and students.

Cost:  Tuition is FAR too high for most people to afford.  While universities operated as a business may charge as much as they like to limit the demand to what they are able to supply, a community university should provide FREE learning resources to everyone who wants to increase their knowledge.  Free public computer terminals (maybe in library study rooms) could provide access to structured course materials and practice quizzes.  Wikiversity, although still slowly developing, can be taken as an example of structured free education.  Scholars with a higher level of proficiency can volunteer to meet occasionally with students to evaluate their progress when they feel they are ready for a thorough evaluation in a topic (see below).

System:  The current degree system is ridiculous.  A “Bachelor of Arts” degree indicates that you specialized in some certain topic and implies vaguely that you were also exposed to math, science, literature, philosophy….  I suggest that we instead focus on individual certifications: if a student has mastered French language, for example, give them a certification in French language and don’t demand that they study biology before recognizing their achievement.  Rather than blandly announcing on a resume that you have received a BA from X University, you can list the topics in which you have demonstrated mastery and earned a certification, along with the name or qualifications of the person who gave you your certification and date it was received.  Lets adapt the ijaza system to all fields of study, so that we can identify exactly what skills, texts, or concepts a student has mastered.

Scope:  Can anyone give a compelling argument that everyone needs to know something about English Literature?  Is that knowledge always essential to the ability of everyone to live happily and successfully in the real world?  (Not to pick on EngLit; the same question could be asked about any topic).  Rather than emphasizing a certain uniform set of GE subjects, let’s encourage students to discover and pursue those topics towards which they incline and have find interesting.  Let students study what they like or find comes naturally to them.  Automotive repair, computer programming, chemistry, politics…. Whatever it is a student wants to learn and feels will be useful in their lives, help them to learn as much as they can about it without undue distraction.

Administration:  When the focus is on providing information to the students who are seeking it, a community university will run smoothly without need of any costly administrators.  A combined library/education center needs a basic library staff that can also keep the classrooms clean and computer stations functioning.  Rather than spending educational funds on refurnishing administration offices and increasing the salaries of university regents, all of the money can be used to provide educational materials in a public space.  If things really get tight, run the university as a Co-op: incoming students spend part of their time as building staff to earn classroom time.  Advanced students make themselves accessible as mentors and TAs to newer students.  A full certification/ijaza could be contingent upon first spending a certain amount of time teaching.

Travel. When desired, a community can sponsor a scholar to come to their area, or sponsor a student to pursue knowledge in another area.  An exchange network between community universities can assist visiting students and scholars with basic needs when they travel to a new area.  A community is enriched by interacting with visitors with different perspectives, and the exchange system can maximize the potential benefit a community can gain from any knowledgeable visitor.  The exchange system can also make travel easier and more affordable, and the benefits of being welcomed in a place as a visiting scholar can provide another incentive for students to pursue advanced levels of study.

Goal:  Rather than education being something that one “gets” in their late teens and then claims to “have” for the rest of their life, it should be a constant process that continuously involves and connects the entire community.  Education and learning should be a mainstay of social life and the foundation that brings communities together and creates a feeling of respectful society among people who live in proximity to each other.  The community university can be a venue for meeting people with similar interests and growing through the exchange of information and ideas.  The community university can become the community center–a place to talk about current issues and get to know new people and learn new things.

If good food, coffee, and tea were added to that mix, there wouldn’t be any other place that people would want to spend their free time, and neighborhoods would have neighbors again.

Make it happen! It doesn’t require any votes, just a community that comes together to build it. Then again, maybe “if you build it, they will come.”  Take over the space of your local public library; you already paid for it with your tax dollars, after all.  Use it as a home base, a place to teach, a study place, a research place, and a social meeting place.

Let the local newspaper know what you’re doing. Talk about it to your work colleagues, friends, family, and religious community.  Advertise your meetings on local forums or internet forums like Craigslist and Facebook to attract a community of people who want to teach or increase their knowledge.  Get the local PTA, Rotary, Elks, Key, Masons, Druids, Oddfellows, fraternities, sororities, veterans’ association, retirement communities, and book clubs involved. By all means approach community members and local businesses for sponsorship if you need funding for materials to get started, and invite your sponsors to stay involved with the project.  Patronage of community education and the arts has always been an honorable role that wealthy community members can take on as a way to uplift society.

Approach people with knowledge about volunteering a small amount of time to teach a few eager students, and let students buy lunch or coffee for their new teacher. Respectfully invite (beg) the teachers from the local high schools and community college to teach and make sure that the students will honor teachers for their knowledge and willingness to share it.   A good teacher is the most precious resource a community can have, and should always be shown the utmost respect.

And please keep me updated as your community university grows!

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Copyright © 2011 Brendan Newlon

When a person identifies with a culture, they are putting on the mask of that entity, becoming a mouthpiece (avatar, persona) of the Great Being called “culture”.

It helps to note that the word “persona” originally referred to a mask (often of a deity) used in dramas. “Per” means “through” and “sona” means “sound”. So the mask was that through which the sound came.

Identification with a culture is the wearing of a certain mask. It is as though the individual allows themselves to be possessed by this greater being which guides and informs their judgment and then authorizes the individual (or so they feel) as a representative.

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Copyright © 2011 Brendan Newlon

The point of this article is to research a question I was asked recently about terrorism related with Islam.  Are most terrorists Islamists?  In the EU during the last three years, apparently not.  Most terrorism in recent years in the EU is related to ethno-nationalist and separatist movements rather than Islamist motivations.

I was personally very surprised by these statistics.  From watching the news I had developed a very different impression.

Here is a summary of the report’s information relevant to our question, but I would encourage anyone who is interested to read the full report, which is linked below.

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Responsibility for Terrorist Attacks in 2007, 2008, and 2009 in EU by affiliation:

In these statistics, all terrorist attacks, whether failed, foiled, or successful, are counted as attacks.

Islamist

• 0.34% in 2007.

• 0% in 2008.

• 0.3% in 2009.

Separatist

• 91.6% in 2007.

• 90% in 2008.

• 80.6% in 2009.

In the three years of 2007, 2008, and 2009, there were only three incidents of Islamist terrorism out of a total of 1,316 terrorist attacks, making only 0.15% of terrorist attacks during those three years related to Islamist motivations.  Separatist movements were responsible for 88.6% of terrorist attacks occurring during these three years.

Arrests for suspicion of Terrorism in EU in 2009 by Affiliation:

Islamist

• 110 suspects arrested out of a total of 587 arrests, accounting for 18.7% of all arrests.

Separatist

• 413 suspects arrested out of a total of 587 arrests, accounting for 70.4% of all arrests.

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Statistics according to Europol TE-SAT 2010: EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report (link to PDF)

With thanks to the www.reddit.com/r/islam community for bringing this report to my attention.

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Copyright © 2011 Brendan Newlon