War-in-War against the Sufis

Within the long war between the Sunni and the Shi'a branches of the Islamic world, there is an ongoing war against the Sufi interpretation. The massacre that took place in the Sinai last week, more than 300 worshipers gunned down in a mosque, was a Sunni attack against the Sunni (Sufi) people. The Shi'a, in their own sphere, also exterminate the Sufis and destroy their mosques and shrines.


In Lybia, the rebels bulldozed the shrine of al-Shaab al-Dahmani, a revered Sufi sage. In Mali, they demolished mausoleums and libraries in the ancient Saharan town of Timbuktu which were UNESCO world heritage sites. Sufi worship halls have also been turned to rubble in Iran, where the Islamic government is has jailed thousands of Sufi followers. In Egypt, Sufi shrines have been torched and the Sufi chanting ritual called zhikr has been banned.

The Sufis are targets of the fundamentalist Islam that sees their kinder, gentler interpretation of the religion of Mohamed as a challenge to their own rigid orthodoxy. Sufi practices, like the whirling of the Mevlevi dervishes in Turkey, first practiced by Rumi himself, employ music, dance and spiritual recitation to awaken the God who Sufis say is asleep in the human heart. The poems of Rumi in translation are well known and loved in the West. What is unknown is the the bloody persecution of his followers in our days of resurgent, hardened, fanatic Islam.

I think that the pacifist, inner-orientated, purification-seeking philosophy of the Sufi is doomed. The stiffening of the Islam will lead toward its unification and toward a new round of clashes against the Christian world. The contact with this hardened Islam has already induced a hardening of Israeli Judaism, and in the long term, I presume, it will cause the resurgence of a hardened Christianity in the West.

(On the other hand, I always have another hand, the hardening of Israeli Judaism may have internal causes; and the hardening of Western Christianity may never happen.)

300 Sufis Killed in a Sinai Mosque

Discarded shoes of victims remain outside Al-Rawda Mosque in Bir al-Abd northern Sinai, Egypt. a day after attackers killed hundreds of worshippers, on Saturday, Nov. 25, 2017. (AP Photo)

The killers as well the 300 victims were Sunni fanatics. Why then? The attackers follow the strict Wahhabi (Saudi) line while the mosque follows the Sufi tendency. The Sufi are strict Muslims with a penitential, ecstatic, mystical orientation. Sufi means rough, woolen garb, while Saudi princes prefer white galabiya (long shirts) with golden decorations. Reason enough for exterminating each other. Although, who needs reasons? A good war needs no cause (Nietzsche).

The first fully rational beings on the planet

"The first fully rational beings on the planet will surely be artificial intelligence machines" (author).

We should not fear machines that are more intelligent and rational than ourselves, just as we discovered that there is nothing frightening about locomotives that run much faster and are a thousand times more powerful than we are. Someone could build a machine capable of leveling towns, but none one did it. I have a premonition that thinking machines will be used to help seduce women and other sexual activities; after all, everything living organisms do is for reproduction.  

Protest

Manifestación, Antonio Berni, 1934. Foto: Gentileza Malba, Argentina.

Mnangagwa, the "Crocodile," sworn in as Zimbabwe president

Mnangagwa, the "Crocodile".

What can I add? except that I am impressed by his name and his avatar, the crocodile.

"Bibi" sounds babyish to me. It does not even approach the alarming neural impact of "Mnangagwa the Crocodile".

Aunt Genya Dead at 102

Aunt Genya arrived in Mandatory Palestine in the twenties or before from the Soviet Union. For some reason they left the country and lived a few years in Damascus, where she went to school. During the War of Independence, her perfect Syrian Arab became a rare resource and she was recruited into an organization that operated in the neighboring countries. She and her husband Juppah (a Hungarian-speaker)  spent their last years in a kibbutz. She was among the last of Israel's pioneer elite.
The pic is unrelated to her.

The Lebensraum Paradox

I always wondered about Germany's desire for more "living space" in the thirties, that ultimately led - among other motives - to its aggression against Russia. Among the other motives I count "opportunity", that according to Victor Davis Hanson, explains all the wars of the Ancient Greeks on.  Also, Nazis feared Communism, an international movement that saw as its duty to interfere in Germany's internal affairs. But from where the imperative of conquering more space? Germany was a large country, with excellent climate and agricultural lands, and with a rapidly declining population.

I found one possible explanation in Patrick Buchanan's latest article (about the Houtis of all Muslim sects). He mentions facts I had been unaware of. Quote:

Our aim is to “starve the whole population — men, women, and children, old and young, wounded and sound — into submission,” said First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill. He was speaking of Germany at the outset of the Great War of 1914-1918. Americans denounced as inhumane this starvation blockade that would eventually take the lives of a million German civilians.

After the Armistice of Nov. 11, 1918, however, the starvation blockade was not lifted until Germany capitulated to all Allied demands in the Treaty of Versailles.

As late as March 1919, four months after the Germans laid down their arms, Churchill arose in Parliament to exult, “We are enforcing the blockade with rigor, and Germany is very near starvation.”

Buchanan holds the Allies responsible for German starvation, which is only half truth. Food was scarce everywhere. Yet that generation of Germans lived with a deep fear of starvation and may have felt that they needed the cereal growing lands in Ukraine and Russia. In spite of the fact that Communist Russia was selling them grains for German industrial products. That may explain the paradox of a rich country with falling population seeking "Lebensraum".