I have been wondering about the importance of someone's marital status for their worth lately. Does it make sense that having a partner should make someone better or worse, more able to speak on valid erotic experience or disapprove violence and conflict? Does it give people credibility or does it make them look like they know more? Does it make someone have more of a grasp of how people work and what makes someone choose loyalty to their wife or loyalty to their mistress?
I think there is a certain amount of social hierarchy set up on who has an intact marraige and who doesn't. Does this just reinforce false beliefes about one person's superiority over another, and who is better than who?
Is the belief that your marriage makes you more valuable or less valuable just the result of insecurity and an inability to find independent value in the arts, or God, or philosophy?
It is absurd to think that one person is more satisfied with life than another based on their marital status. All that belief represents is a mindset that is dependent on external appearances and standards of worth that have no bearing on someone's true value.
What should we judge someone by then? On the Day of Judgement what will matter? Only a person's piety. There is nothing that will make someone more or less valuable to God than their piety and their good conduct. Your marriage won't make much of a difference. What do Muslims give as the most valid reason for divorce? A spouse who is bad for your religion.
What is this in process terminology. How can we conceptualize the actual event of the Day of Judgement, the Hour of Judgement within the words of Alfred North Whitehead? What would marriage look like within this schema.
The Day of Judgement is a day whose prehension occurs in each individual event of piety, the nexus of feelings which prehend the conclusion of time.
So then, what is piety in Process Thought?
It is the good the beautiful. A measurement of the sufficiently broad and not too narrow assessment of each event in order to prehend the satisfaction of the Universe most beautifully. Maybe piety would be the satisfaction of the indivdual'ss experience of God for each individual occcasion. Maybe piety is God's satisfaction. Maybe piety is satisfaction itself.
Marriage then would only be useful in the ways that it allowed each actual event to ccroncresce and realize its owwn a satisfaction. In other words in the ways that marriage allowed life and experience to become more full and complete marriage wwould be useful in time and in the satisfaction of this world.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Conversations between Feminism and Islam
mothering, language, art, love, freedom, the erotic, heterosexism
the erotic: I feel like there is a trend toward divorce that is a result of feminism that reflects something that has been wrong with heterosexual marraige for a really long time. Feminists in the defense of divorce have been tryign to overcome this problem through ending marriages that have been troubled. But what if we could take the ability of Islam to teach women to protect their virginity, something Irigaray talks about, and combine that with the feminist quest to locate feamle sexual energy back in a female space, not as a tool for men or an object of male power to use to manipulate women and further consolidate male power. On some level this is a discussion fo manon woman violence. The forcing of women into situations by men through phsyical means, coercion whatever. The concpet of consent seems like something that should be addressed. How to make our ability to take our desire into our own hands more powerful. To liberate ourselves from this voyeuristic violence where we watch ourselves and others with judgement and hatred.
The concept of rape has been something I have been thinking about for a really long time. How people violate other people in order to act out something other than the explicit violation. How we cannot prevent the violation and what to do about that. where to find power in the situation.
The rape march- is that going to help? It sounds like adding trauma to trauma.
the erotic: I feel like there is a trend toward divorce that is a result of feminism that reflects something that has been wrong with heterosexual marraige for a really long time. Feminists in the defense of divorce have been tryign to overcome this problem through ending marriages that have been troubled. But what if we could take the ability of Islam to teach women to protect their virginity, something Irigaray talks about, and combine that with the feminist quest to locate feamle sexual energy back in a female space, not as a tool for men or an object of male power to use to manipulate women and further consolidate male power. On some level this is a discussion fo manon woman violence. The forcing of women into situations by men through phsyical means, coercion whatever. The concpet of consent seems like something that should be addressed. How to make our ability to take our desire into our own hands more powerful. To liberate ourselves from this voyeuristic violence where we watch ourselves and others with judgement and hatred.
The concept of rape has been something I have been thinking about for a really long time. How people violate other people in order to act out something other than the explicit violation. How we cannot prevent the violation and what to do about that. where to find power in the situation.
The rape march- is that going to help? It sounds like adding trauma to trauma.
On the topic of being published
I think beyond the question of the headshot that accompanies my article, I feel too much energy is on this one line where I talk about possible conveersations between islam and feminism. But this specific part reads:
Western feminism can still contribute to Islamic understandings of the mothering, language, art, love, freedom, the erotic, heterosexism,and other areas of human experience in spite of the need to start from assumptions that are not part of the Western feminist tradition. The work of "jamming the theoretical machinery itself" (Irigaray 78, 1985) is still valuable and grounds for dialogue.
That is the topic of this blog so I might just take a little time to talk about that here....
Western feminism can still contribute to Islamic understandings of the mothering, language, art, love, freedom, the erotic, heterosexism,and other areas of human experience in spite of the need to start from assumptions that are not part of the Western feminist tradition. The work of "jamming the theoretical machinery itself" (Irigaray 78, 1985) is still valuable and grounds for dialogue.
That is the topic of this blog so I might just take a little time to talk about that here....
I have been published
I feel ok about this article despite the picture of me near the fire, not a good association unless you are a dead head and these days you aren't supposed to admit that either.
Click on "I have been published" to see the journal.
Click on "I have been published" to see the journal.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
gnosticism
I have been returning to the concept of gnosticism over the last few weeks. I am not sure why. Maybe it is the time of year Al Hijra. This is the month of Maulid, the celebration of the Prophet Muhammad's birthday(sallahu alayhi wa salam).
What is the Nur Muhammad? It is the original light, the NUR that existed outside of time before creation. Jesus, alayhi salam, was referred to as the light of the world by the writers of the gospels. Jesus, alayhi salam, was the word of God that brought all creation into being.
What is the point of religion, anyway? The Buddha taught that the nature of enlightenment, or nibbana, was the same as the snuffing out of a candle, the cessation of influxes. Is religion an attempt to understand this original light that is at the center of all people. Or not at the center but what remains after death.
Gnosticism is the attempt to understand this light, the light embodied in Jesus and Muhammad (sallallahu alayhi wa salam)
gnosis comes from one of two greek words to know. Similar to the french to know someone (connaitre) and to know something (savoir)
What is the Nur Muhammad? It is the original light, the NUR that existed outside of time before creation. Jesus, alayhi salam, was referred to as the light of the world by the writers of the gospels. Jesus, alayhi salam, was the word of God that brought all creation into being.
What is the point of religion, anyway? The Buddha taught that the nature of enlightenment, or nibbana, was the same as the snuffing out of a candle, the cessation of influxes. Is religion an attempt to understand this original light that is at the center of all people. Or not at the center but what remains after death.
Gnosticism is the attempt to understand this light, the light embodied in Jesus and Muhammad (sallallahu alayhi wa salam)
gnosis comes from one of two greek words to know. Similar to the french to know someone (connaitre) and to know something (savoir)
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