Another day, another incident in London. As usual the predictable array of responses. An investigation into the killing today will undoubtedly occur, and I am left shaking my head at those ready to point accusatory fingers at the police.
People are endlessly saying that most Muslims really want a modern existence. I'm skeptical, insofar as no religion honestly wants that. Muslims, just like doctrinaire Jews and Christians, are seeking a return.
But a return to what? We are quick to point out that the messianic historical fantasies of the beleivers never truly existed. Something else is going on - we are in the throes of a counter-reformation, one that makes the original one of inquisition fame pale in contrast. In response to the enlightenment and beyond, the various religions mostly beat a disorganized retreat. However, after the Second World War, things began to shift in a multiplicity of dimensions Secularism and its cronies began to go places hitherto sacrosanct, and the great mass was repelled. Religion saw its chance, and grabbed it with vigor, giving people moral and eschatological certainty in the place of the absolute relativism. Since then, religion has been on the march, highlighting its strengths with ideological firmness necessary to counter-reformation.
The Muslim world has been particularly hard hit by this counter-reformation because never truly modernized, and as a result this counter-reformation is merely pushing it even further back than the other religions are being pushed back. Couple this with variously legitimate greivances and a dangerous sense of pride at the expense of all else and there is a recipe for disaster.
The response of the Christian and Jewish right to radical Islam can mostly be ignored, since what is really coming through is more a law and order attitude in practice, even if the theory occasionally emanates from messianism. The response of the left wing is more interesting. In my mind it is difficult to overestimate the importance of Marx's statement that imperialism is the last stage of capitalism. While the actual veracity of the statement is limited to hot air, it has influenced the left wing today in several ways. The left wing sees imperialism as the ultimate sin of capitalism, one which can never been atoned for and which is responsible for the evils of the world, as it was the ultimate expression of capitalism in their minds. Radical islam is to their minds merely an attempt to recapture dignity which imperialism fiendishly stole from them. Secondly, to their minds imperialism is still the way of the world. It must be, since otherwise the marxist revolution which led to world socialism would have already occured. Thus the US is regarded as an imperialist agressor. And there are few things lefists hate more than an imperialist agressor. This school of thought is not as influential in the US as it is in Europe. But then, self-styled American intellectuals have always felt a need to steal ideas from their European superiors.
It makes some sense that the allies of muslim radicals are those who cling to Marx. After all, it is radical Islam which is truly their heir to communism. While obviously not atheistic, its methods and aims are both communistic in nature. The Muslim Brotherhood (from which most muslim terror groups descend from) openly acknowledged its debt to communist rebels in its methodology. Finally, how different, really, is the notion of world revolution from the notion of a worldwide umma? In both cases it is a world where individual expression and though are enslaved to "the greater good." The commune consumes the world.
Those fighting this war are mostly religious themselves, vaguely oblivious to the fact that the muslim radicals do not consider American Evengelical Christians to be their primary enemy. Where are those who embrace the values of relativism and recognize that the marxism that was shoved in them was a completely unnatural ideology at odds with relativism? The glory of human experience is not to be had in conformity - if it is, then it matters not whether we live in America or the Umma. Rather, it lies in freedom of expression, thought, and action. Are there any willing to wave that tattered banner without being corrupted by socialistic notions at odds with liberty?
We are still here.
So, I was at my sister's Sheva Brochos in Lincolnwood, eating a "chinese" repast of dead chicken and deader beef, when a series of divrei torah (expoundations on elements of the bible) were uttered. Most forced me to focus on not chuckling, but one provoked some thought, leading to the rant at hand...
Those who have seen the satanist symbol know that it is a goat's skull with the word "L'azazel" written above it in hebrew (actually, I'm reasonably certain fairly few who have been in the circumstance of seeing it could read it, but such is a seperate issue). According to the bible, the goat given to "azazel" (L' is the modifier meaning "to") is the counterpart to the goat given and sacraficed to god - the scapegoat. The goat given to azazel was set free into the wilderness.
Something they don't teach you in hebrew school is that azazel means the evil force in judaism also. One thing I was struck by in conversation with satanists is how they regarded their religion as dealing with nature and natural things including death more than as being the ritualistic worship of the Christian Satan (although some do that also). That night, their assertion made perfect sense to me - Judaism views the malefic force exactly the same way.
The innovation of Judaism, one adopted by the religions that followed, is that the religion does not worship nature, as polytheistic religions ineveitably do (E.G. a god of the sun, god of the sea, god of death, et al). Rather, the Jewish god stands above and beyond nature, ruling over it, rather than with it. Nature itself is the dark force that only the light of god can save man from.
Which brings us back to the source - the goat being let into the wilderness to Azazel is being left to the dark force of nature from which god protects , whereas the scapegoat is returned to god and the people's sins forgiven. With this understanding, the usage of azazel in context makes perfect sense. It also explains why certain aspects of the bible exist, such as the section requiring the destruction of the asherah prayer trees and the prohibition on foreign altars.
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