Owen
While I am an IT professor, I am very backward in using blogs and almost incapable of expressing myself in emails or otherwise. Your question
would be better discussed in a long session with lots of coffees and chocolates
J
I do not normally put my Moslim hat on; almost never because I see religion as a relationship between me and God that is no one else business.
Therefore, my actions are my responsibilities and if I do something good I take the reward personally so why when I do something bad should my religion, or any dimension of my identity be blamed.
But your question was interesting. Not just from complexity perspective, from many other dimensions that once more, writing long emails would
not send the right message through.
Sometimes the good Moslims (whatever this means and in whose eyes) do not respond simply because they do not agree with the premise. The premise
of the religion as the centre for conflict. The premise that we should be blamed for our belief. The premise that I should spend my time justifying someone else actions simply because there is a perception that I and them share something in common because
it is written in my passport or on a system somewhere. If I believe in doing good, I would like to invest my time in that, and not invest my time to defend bad when bad was not my action in the first place.
So call it an ego-centric or whatever, this is I. In Islam, when we do good, we should not talk about it because we are doing it to fulfil a
sacred commitment to God. In fact, there is a premise that you should hide the good you are doing to get a better reward from God. This is too complicated to explain in an email!
Some of us just do not wish to be bothered to defend or discuss the bad because the time and resources to spend on doing good alone
are very limited. The world is full of opportunities to do good, why should we spend the time to discuss the bad!
Sometimes also if we wish to explain concepts properly, you would not do it properly in a simple email or a simple discussion. There are things
that can take a long time to understand before we can use them to explain!
If this sounds a weak argument, we have to dig down to the roots to see what defines weak and strong arguments; and that is a long discussion!
If I want to use a complexity lens, the Egyptian reply was a choice they made on a Pareto curve. If someone seriously wishes to understand it,
they will need to analyse in details the underlying axes for this Pareto curve, the sources of anti-correlation, and the interaction of the utility functions. Only then, they will see the complex dilemma setting at the roots of this reply as compared to a
possibly artificial politically correct reply that some people expect.
If the above is a starting point for a discussion, next time you visit Australia, drop by and we can attempt to resolve it all on a nice cup
of coffee with nice dark chocolates J
Kind regards
Hussein
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]]
On Behalf Of Owen Densmore
Sent: Friday, 14 September 2012 3:01 AM
To: Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: [FRIAM] Fwd: America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist
The Economist sent out their weekly email, which included a story on the Libya fiasco:
http://goo.gl/0mfCW
This reminded me of one of my possibly Politically Incorrect notions: Why don't the civilized muslim world attempt to counter this insanity on the part of their fundamentalists? At least
some attempt to apologize for My Religion, The Bad Parts? God knows I do!
We had an imam visit the cathedral in Santa Fe to discuss the simplicity and beauty of his religion. Some questions were asked about The Bad Parts, in a very civilized manor. The conversation
was sane, polite, and certainly informative.
What if the Vatican sent out a hit squad for all the similar anti-Christian movies or other inflammatory media? Or the Buddhists sent ninjas after non-believers? Or the Jews killed Dutch
cartoonists?
What I'm getting at is this: why *isn't* there a strong community of sane and vocal muslims at least trying to communicate to the rest of us?
Please do understand that this is not a rant against religion, but more of a puzzled look at an insane situation. And Yes, I really wish we'd keep our nose out of other's affairs. I'm not
trying to be a bigot. But I truly would like to grok this phenomenon.
What am I missing? Good complexity question, I bet.
-- Owen
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