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
:)
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 :)
Kind regards
Hussein
From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] 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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