a good leftist musician

crummy Right-Wing musicians

Amy Grant, 

Avenged Sevenfold, 

Charlie Daniels,  

Gretchen Wilson, 

James Hetfield, 

Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, 

Johnny Ramone,

Taylor Swift,

Ted Nugent,

50 Cent.

The making of the Muslim left

Muslim leftism is the only way to ensure that Islam's individualist revolution doesn't take an even darker turn than it already has.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/oct/16/themakingofthemuslimleft

By Ali Eteraz, guardian.co.uk

I went to a government school in the American south where I had constant interaction with religious supremacists. Such people believe that their moral mandate must be given preference, if not outright dominance. In the south, these people were Christian. Their imperative was to acquire converts who would eventually help make their political programme the law of the land.

Many times I put up with the noise of evangelical youth preaching on the steps with a megaphone. I was condemned to hell in class discussions. English teachers had to tread carefully through 19th century literature so as not to offend. I had to politely reject, and then oppose, Bible study groups.

My brother and I were the only Muslims in the school. We lamented the ceaseless invasion of our personal conscience by "these fundos".

After a couple of years, a number of Muslim students enrolled at the school. They were also upset with the endless Christian proselytising. Since many of them were family friends, they took me aside and urged me to help them set up an Islamic society. Its primary purpose would be to hold Quran study circles, correct anti-Muslim propaganda in textbooks, and - "just like the Christians do" - invite students to learn about their religion. All on school property. Their goal, just like the Christians, was evangelism (the Arabic term is da'wa). They presented two white boys with new Muslim names as proof of their success. As I left, my acquaintances couldn't understand why I wouldn't help them. "It's just da'wa!" they said. "It's a free country!"

There it was, in the microcosmic world of high school, staring at me in the face: the Muslim right. Or, as my brother pejoratively called them: "Falwell Muslims."

Today, it is undeniable that traditionalist clerical Islam - which is quietist, meek, and oriented towards the status quo - has lost its monopoly over Muslims. This is the result of multiple instances of internal dissent over a millenia (as well as colonialism). Led by a mixture of cleric-minded Muslims in the US, UK, and Jordan, traditionalist clerical Islam is trying to make a comeback and become more relevant - like by writing a letter of peace to the Pope. Though such efforts are good, it is a case of too little too late.

Instead, Islam is well on its way towards an individualist revolution; one that no amount of clerical effort can contain.

The most attention-grabbing child of this revolution has been jihadism. However, it is not the most successful. That (dis)honour lies, in my mind, with the Muslim evangelicals - also known as Islamism, the Muslim right, or political Islam. It is a great fallacy to think that jihadists and Islamists are one and the same.

The Muslim right is an ideological movement. Why not? When rationalism is rampant and clerics can't bind Muslims together, ideology is the best thing to obtain mass obedience.

Islamism's ideological aim is secular, ie political power. Yet, despite its secular ends, it makes its political base among a large swath of religious Muslims. With their religious supremacism - which convinces them that everyone else's life would be better off if they adopted the same values as them - these Muslims leave themselves wide open to be preyed upon by savvy propagandists. Thus, hateful tricks like invoking the dangers of homosexuality, attacking sexual liberation, demonising religious minorities and foreign cultures, and censoring anything that smacks of critical thinking, are all used to keep the ideological base stirring.

With that base in hand, Islamism then agitates for unfettered democracy. It purports to speak for the "common man" (even as it preys upon it) and acquires a populist mystique. Islamism doesn't fear elections because it is the best of the grassroots propagandists.

The Muslim right is international. It played off the Cold War and in a Machiavellian stroke made the US its benefactor. It ended up creating a decentralised international network. Jamat-e-Islami in Pakistan consulted with Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt; the Brotherhood then, with "tacit support" from their self-professed enemies, created Hamas. Then the Sunni Islamists went and assisted Khomeini, pragmatically putting aside their doctrinal disagreement with the Shia for the sake of shared ideology. Taking inspiration from these successes, copycats rose up in Gulf and African states. For publicity and fund-raising purposes, theMuslim right brought its evangelism to the west. Muslim children coloured by this ideology ended up in school with me, asking me to help them set up an organisation that does exactly what Christian supremacists do.

So the dilemma for 21st century Islam is that there is a group of Muslims who with "activists" instead of "clerics" have reined in Muslim individualism, organised it into a system, injected it with illiberal values, and then invoked non-violence and freedom of speech as a shield to hide behind. If I had not seen Karl Rove do it with American Christianity I could have never realised how the Muslim right does it with Islam.

So what is to be done?

Well, secular tyrannies are inadequate. Monarchies are dictatorial. Outright Islamophobia and directly demonising Islam gives fuel to Islamism. Military confrontation is out of the question for ethical and pragmatic reasons.

I recommend creating a viable and well organised Muslim left. It would be an intra-religious movement as 

opposed to a universalist one (though obviously it doesn't shun allies). It would be a cousin of the international left, but in a Muslim garb. Just as the Muslim right found Islamic means to justify the destructive ideas from the enlightenment (Fascism, Marxism, totalitarianism, evangelical religion), the Muslim left should find Islamic means to justify the positive ones (anti-foundationalism, pragmatism, autonomy, tolerance).

This Muslim left should also espouse the following basic ideas, without being limited to them:

• separation of mosque and state;

• opposition to tyranny (even if the tyrant has liberal values);

• affirmance of republicanism or democracy;

• an ability to coherently demonstrate that the Muslim right represents merely one interpretation of Islam;

• a commitment to free speech and eagerness to defeat the Muslim right in the marketplace of ideas;

• commitment to religious individualism and opposition to left-collectivism, specifically Marxism;

• opposition to economic protectionism;

• opposing any and all calls for a "council of religious experts" that can oversee legislation (even if those experts are liberals); and

• affirming international law.

Muslim leftists will - it is a must - have to be able to articulate all of these in Islamic terms, in order to persuade the people who need to be convinced, ie Muslims. This means that a Muslim leftist will, naturally, also have facility in the Muslim traditions. The real-world paucity of individuals with such dual facility is indicative of how far behind Muslim leftism is currently.

Further, in order to advance these ideas, the Muslim left will have to be sophisticated enough to employ certain strategies. These include but are not limited to:

a) Popularising the slogan "theocentric, not theocratic" to counter claims of religious treason that will be hurled by Islamists;

b) An alliance with supporters of old-school Muslim orthodoxy who despite their conservative values are not the same as the Muslim right because they do not like to politicise their faith. These Muslims, by virtue of doctrine and history, have always supported separation of mosque and state, and still do;

c) Having the confidence to call their solutions truer to the ethos of Islam than the ideas of the Islamists, without engaging in apostasy wars;

d) An alliance with Marxists and neo-Marxist Muslims without getting sucked into their collectivist phantasmagoria;

e) Opposing any and all punishments, fines and stigma for "apostasy," "heresy," and "blasphemy". This includes opposition to all "sedition" crimes;

f) Accepting that the enthronement of the left through democratic means might require the intermediate step of the Muslim right succeeding as well, due largely to its head-start;

g) Supporting arts, literature, agnosticism and atheism without engaging in derogatory or insulting gestures. The battle against Islamism isn't a fight against Allah or Prophet; it is against an ideology;

h) Supporting Muslims' right to express their piety with beards, hijab, niqab in order to draw the moderates among the pietists away from the Islamists; and most importantly

i) Opposition to all imperial western behaviour. Also, rejection of any and all alliances and support from the western right.

Muslim leftism is the only thing that will assure that Islam's individualist revolution doesn't take an even darker turn than it already has. Some in the Muslim right like to insist that they are moderate and ready for pluralism. 

That might be a bit of wishful thinking. Without a potent Muslim left, the right will not have an adequate check, nor any incentive to make accommodations. This is because political systems that rest on religious supremacism rarely make compromises. We know this from America. We know it from the third world as well. After more than two decades the Iranian right has failed to move significantly towards the centre. If unchallenged, better should not be expected from the Egyptian, Pakistani, or Gulf nations equivalents.

In the next post in this Islamic reform series, I will share names and identities of people who qualify to be on the Muslim left, in order to show how to identify others like them.

Real Christians don't love MONEY

Jesus against riches (Mark 10:17-25)

17 And when he was gone forth into the way, there came one running, and kneeled to him, and asked him, Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? 18 And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.

19 Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Defraud not, Honour thy father and mother. 20 And he answered and said unto him, Master, all these have I observed from my youth. 21 Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me.

22 And he was sad at that saying, and went away grieved: for he had great possessions.

23 And Jesus looked round about, and saith unto his disciples, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God! 24 And the disciples were astonished at his words. But Jesus answereth again, and saith unto them, Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God! 25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

(Compare: Matthew 19:16-30; Luke 18:18-30)

Righteousness versus Wealth

This famous scene with Jesus and a rich young man is probably the most ignored by modern Christians. If this passage were actually heeded today, it is likely that Christianity would be very different. It is, however, an inconvenient truth, and so tends to be repressed.

According to Jesus, there is no chance that a rich person can get into heaven. Rather than a sign of God’s blessing, material wealth is treated as a sign that someone is not heeding God’s will. The King James Version emphasizes this point by repeating it three times; in many other translations, though, the second, “Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God,” is reduced to “Children, how hard it is to enter into the kingdom of God.”

In the only example of anyone refusing to follow Jesus, the rich young man went away grieved, upset that he couldn’t become a follower on easier terms that would allow him to keep all of his possessions.

Deuteronomy 5:19 "You shall not steal"
Leviticus 19:11 "Do not steal. Do not lie"

Leviticus 6:1-5 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “If anyone sins and commits a breach of faith against the Lord by deceiving his neighbor in a matter of deposit or security, or through robbery, or if he has oppressed his neighbor or has found something lost and lied about it, swearing falsely—in any of all the things that people do and sin thereby— if he has sinned and has realized his guilt and will restore what he took by robbery or what he got by oppression or the deposit that was committed to him or the lost thing that he found or anything about which he has sworn falsely, he shall restore it in full and shall add a fifth to it, and give it to him to whom it belongs on the day he realizes his guilt.

Exodus 20:15 "You shall not steal"

Exodus 22:1 “If a man steals an ox or a sheep, and kills it or sells it, he shall repay five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep.

Exodus 22:3-4 But if the sun has risen on him, there shall be bloodguilt for him. He shall surely pay. If he has nothing, then he shall be sold for his theft. If the stolen beast is found alive in his possession, whether it is an ox or a donkey or a sheep, he shall pay double.

Matthew 23:23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.

Leviticus 19:13 You shall not oppress your neighbor, nor rob him. The wages of a hired man are not to remain with you all night until morning.

Deuteronomy 25:13-15 You shall not have in your bag differing weights, a large and a small. You shall not have in your house differing measures, a large and a small. You shall have a full and just weight; you shall have a full and just measure, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the LORD your God gives you.

Psalm 112:5 It is well with the man who deals generously and lends, who conducts his affairs with justice.

Proverbs 11:1 A false balance is an abomination to the LORD, but a just weight is His delight.

Proverbs 16:8 Better is a little with righteousness than great income with injustice.

Proverbs 22:16 He who oppresses the poor to make more for himself or who gives to the rich, will only come to poverty.

Jeremiah 22:13 Woe to him who builds his house without righteousness and his upper rooms without justice, who uses his neighbor’s services without pay and does not give him his wages.

1 Timothy 5:18 For the Scripture says, “Do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain,” and “The worker deserves his wages.”

James 5:4 Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty.

Ecclesiastes 5:10 Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. This too is meaningless.

Matthew 6:31-33 “Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’ “For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Luke 3:14 Some soldiers were questioning him, saying, “And what about us, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Do not take money from anyone by force, or accuse anyone falsely, and be content with your wages.”

Philippians 4:11-13 For I have learned to be content, whatever the circumstances may be. I know now how to live when things are difficult and I know how to live when things are prosperous. In general and in particular I have learned the secret of eating well or going hungry of facing either plenty of poverty. I am ready for anything through the strength of the One who lives within me.

1 Timothy 6:7-10 For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

Hebrews 13:5 Keep your life free from the love of money, and be content with what you have.

James 4:1-3 What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.

Proverbs 13:11 Wealth obtained by fraud dwindles, but the one who gathers by labor increases it.

Proverbs 23:4 Do not weary yourself to gain wealth, cease from your consideration of it.

Deuteronomy 15:10 Give generously to him and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to.

Deuteronomy 16:17 Every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the LORD your God which He has given you.

Proverbs 3:27 Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it.

Proverbs 11:24-25 There is one who scatters, and yet increases all the more, and there is one who withholds what is justly due, and yet it results only in want. The generous man will be prosperous, and he who waters will himself be watered.

Proverbs 21:26 …the righteous gives and does not hold back.

Proverbs 22:9 He who is generous will be blessed, for he gives some of his food to the poor.

Proverbs 28:27 He who gives to the poor will never want, but he who shuts his eyes will have many curses.

Matthew 6:3-4 But when you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving will be in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

Mark 12:41-44 And He sat down opposite the treasury, and began observing how the people were putting money into the treasury; and many rich people were putting in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which amount to a cent. Calling His disciples to Him, He said to them, “Truly I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the contributors to the treasury; for they all put in out of their surplus, but she, out of her poverty, put in all she owned, all she had to live on.”

Luke 3:11 And he would answer and say to them, “The man who has two tunics is to share with him who has none; and he who has food is to do likewise.”

Luke 6:38 Give, and it will be given to you. They will pour into your lap a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over. For by your standard of measure it will be measured to you in return.

Acts 20:35 In everything I showed you that by working hard in this manner you must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He Himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.

Romans 12:8 …Or he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness.

2 Corinthians 9:10 Now He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness;

James 2:15-16 If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that?

Proverbs 28:20 A faithful man will abound with blessings, but he who makes haste to be rich will not go unpunished.

Proverbs 13:11 Wealth obtained by fraud dwindles, but the one who gathers by labor increases it.

Exodus 22:25 If you lend money to My people, to the poor among you, you are not to act as a creditor to him; you shall not charge him interest.

Leviticus 25:35-37 Now in case a countryman of yours becomes poor and his means with regard to you falter, then you are to sustain him, like a stranger or a sojourner, that he may live with you. Do not take usurious interest from him, but revere your God, that your countryman may live with you. You shall not give him your silver at interest, nor your food for gain.

Deuteronomy 15:8 But you shall freely open your hand to him, and shall generously lend him sufficient for his need in whatever he lacks.

Deuteronomy 23:19-20 You shall not charge interest to your countrymen: interest on money, food, or anything that may be loaned at interest. You may charge interest to a foreigner, but to your countrymen you shall not charge interest, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all that you undertake in the land which you are about to enter to possess.

Deuteronomy 24:10 When you make your neighbor a loan of any sort, you shall not enter his house to take his pledge.

Proverbs 3:27-28 Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it. Do not say to your neighbor, “Go, and come back, and tomorrow I will give it,” when you have it with you.

Psalm 15:5 He does not put out his money at interest, nor does he take a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things will never be shaken.

Psalm 37:26 All day long he is gracious and lends, and his descendants are a blessing.

Psalm 112:5 It is well with the man who is gracious and lends; he will maintain his cause in judgment.

Nehemiah 5: 1-13 Now there was a great outcry of the people and of their wives against their Jewish brothers. For there were those who said, “We, our sons and our daughters are many; therefore let us get grain that we may eat and live.” There were others who said, “We are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards and our houses that we might get grain because of the famine.” Also there were those who said, “We have borrowed money for the king’s tax on our fields and our vineyards. Now our flesh is like the flesh of our brothers, our children like their children. Yet behold, we are forcing our sons and our daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters are forced into bondage already, and we are helpless because our fields and vineyards belong to others.” Then I was very angry when I had heard their outcry and these words. I consulted with myself and contended with the nobles and the rulers and said to them, You are exacting usury, each from his brother!” Therefore, I held a great assembly against them. I said to them, “We according to our ability have redeemed our Jewish brothers who were sold to the nations; now would you even sell your brothers that they may be sold to us?” Then they were silent and could not find a word to say. Again I said, “The thing which you are doing is not good; should you not walk in the fear of our God because of the reproach of the nations, our enemies? And likewise I, my brothers and my servants are lending them money and grain. Please, let us leave off this usury. Please, give back to them this very day their fields, their vineyards, their olive groves and their houses, also the hundredth part of the money and of the grain, the new wine and the oil that you are exacting from them.” Then they said, “We will give it back and will require nothing from them; we will do exactly as you say.” So I called the priests and took an oath from them that they would do according to this promise. I also shook out the front of my garment and said, “Thus may God shake out every man from his house and from his possessions who does not fulfill this promise; even thus may he be shaken out and emptied.” And all the assembly said, “Amen!” And they praised the Lord. Then the people did according to this promise.

Matthew 19:21-26 Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be complete, go and sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” But when the young man heard this statement, he went away grieving; for he was one who owned much property. And Jesus said to His disciples, “Truly I say to you, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. “Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” When the disciples heard this, they were very astonished and said, “Then who can be saved?” And looking at them Jesus said to them, “With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

Mark 4:19 But the worries of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.

Mark 8:36 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?

1 Timothy 6:9-11 But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. But flee from these things, you man of God, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance and gentleness.

James 5:1-6 Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries which are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments have become moth-eaten. Your gold and your silver have rusted; and their rust will be a witness against you and will consume your flesh like fire. It is in the last days that you have stored up your treasure! Behold, the pay of the laborers who mowed your fields, and which has been withheld by you, cries out against you; and the outcry of those who did the harvesting has reached the ears of the Lord of Sabbath. You have lived luxuriously on the earth and led a life of wanton pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and put to death the righteous man; he does not resist you.

Genesis 41:34-36 Let Pharaoh take action to appoint overseers in charge of the land, and let him exact a fifth of the produce of the land of Egypt in the seven years of abundance. “Then let them gather all the food of these good years that are coming, and store up the grain for food in the cities under Pharaoh’s authority, and let them guard it. “Let the food become as a reserve for the land for the seven years of famine which will occur in the land of Egypt, so that the land will not perish during the famine.

Luke 12:16-21 And He told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man was very productive. And he began reasoning to himself, saying, ‘What shall I do, since I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘This is what I will do: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come; take your ease, eat, drink and be merry.”‘ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have prepared?’ So is the man who stores up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”

Luke 14:28-30 For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? “Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish. ‘”

1 Timothy 6:7 For we have brought nothing into the world, so we cannot take anything out of it either.

Matthew 6:31-32 Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’ For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.

Deuteronomy 15:10 You shall generously give to him, and your heart shall not be grieved when you give to him, because for this thing the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all your undertakings.

Deuteronomy 24:19 When you reap your harvest in your field and have forgotten a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be for the alien, for the orphan, and for the widow, in order that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.

Acts 20:35 “In everything I showed you that by working hard in this manner you must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He Himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”

1 Corinthians 9:10-11 Or is He speaking altogether for our sake? Yes, for our sake it was written, because the plowman ought to plow in hope, and the thresher to thresh in hope of sharing the crops. If we sowed spiritual things in you, is it too much if we reap material things from you?

1 Timothy 5:18 For the Scripture says, “Do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain,” and “The worker deserves his wages.”

Deuteronomy 10:14 Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the highest heavens, the earth and all that is in it.

1 Chronicles 29:11 Yours, o Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, indeed everything that is in the heavens and the earth; Yours is the dominion, o Lord, and You exalt Yourself as head over all.

Psalm 50:10-12 For every beast of the forest is Mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird of the mountains, and everything that moves in the field is Mine. If I were hungry I would not tell you, for the world is Mine, and all it contains.

Proverbs 22:4 The reward of humility and the fear of the Lord are riches, honor and life.

Matthew 6:24 No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other you cannot serve God and wealth.

Matthew 23:12 Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled; and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted.

Luke 9:48 …and said to them, “Whoever receives this child in My name receives Me, and whoever receives Me receives Him who sent Me; for the one who is least among all of you, this is the one who is great.”

Matthew 22:21 They said to Him, “Caesar’s.” Then He said to them, “Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God the things that are God’s.

Deuteronomy 26:12 When you have finished paying all the tithe of your increase in the third year, the year of tithing, then you shall give it to the Levite, to the stranger, to the orphan and to the widow, that they may eat in your towns and be satisfied.

John 6:12 When they were filled, He said to His disciples, “Gather up the leftover fragments so that nothing will be lost.”

Ecclesiastes 5:12 The sleep of the working man is pleasant, whether he eats little or much; but the full stomach of the rich man does not allow him to sleep.

2 Thessalonians 3:10-11 For even when we were with you, we used to give you this order: if anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat, either. For we hear that some among you are leading an undisciplined life, doing no work at all, but acting like busybodies.

1 Timothy 5:8 But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

Isaiah 51:12 I, even I, am He who comforts you, who are you that you are afraid of man who dies and of the son of man who is made like grass

Matthew 6:25 For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? “Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life?

Matthew 6:31-33 Do not worry then, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?”‘ or “What will we wear for clothing?” For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Luke 12:22-29 And He said to His disciples, “For this reason I say to you, do not worry about your life, as to what you will eat; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing? Consider the ravens, for they neither sow nor reap; they have no storeroom nor barn, and yet God feeds them; how much more valuable you are than the birds! And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life’s span? If then you cannot do even a very little thing, why do you worry about other matters? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; but I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass in the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, how much more will He clothe you? You men of little faith! And do not seek what you will eat and what you will drink, and do not keep worrying. 

“Let’s be realistic, demand the impossible!”

Excerpt from

“France’s Greatest Export”

by Jonathan Rée

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/frances-greatest-export-sartre-badiou-french-philosophy/

[…]

If you are repelled by radical leftism, you can brush Badiou off as an unreconstructed Maoist bully. But even if you aren’t, you may feel uncomfortable with some of the so-called “axioms” of his “post-dialectical dialectics.” Politics, as Badiou understands it, is not about compromise, negotiation, or listening to what other people have to say: it is essentially a philosophical practice, and as such it cannot be satisfied with anything less than “the Good and the True,” which, it seems, refuse to come out of hiding except in the pure ecstasy of revolutionary action. You are therefore enjoined to set aside your bourgeois qualms about “elitism,” “aristocracy,” or “totalitarianism,” and enter the lists against “democratic stupidity,” “humanitarianism,” “programmatic egalitarianism” and “human rights.” No doubt about it: French philosophy still has a kick in it, and it can still turn heads. You have been warned.

Jean Paul Sartre meeting with Che Guevara in Cuba, 1960 © Museo Che Guevara

Badiou on Love and Politics

Alain Badiou: a life in writing

By Stuart Jeffries, guardian.co.uk

'So many people now don't know the joy of love. They know sexual pleasure, but we all know what Lacan said about sexual pleasure’

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2012/may/18/alain-badiou-life-in-writing

Love, says France's greatest living philosopher, "is not a contract between two narcissists. It's more than that. It's a construction that compels the participants to go beyond narcissism. In order that love lasts one has to reinvent oneself."

Alain Badiou, venerable Maoist, 75-year-old soixante-huitard, vituperative excoriator of Sarkozy and Hollande and such a controversial figure in France that when he was profiled in Marianne magazine they used the headline "Badiou: is the star of philosophy a bastard?", smiles at me sweetly across the living room of his Paris flat. "Everybody says love is about finding the person who is right for me and then everything will be fine. But it's not like that. It involves work. An old man tells you this!"

In his new book, Badiou writes about his love life. "I have only once in my life given up on a love. It was my first love, and then gradually I became so aware this step had been a mistake I tried to recover that initial love, late, very late – the death of the loved one was approaching – but with a unique intensity and feeling of necessity." That abandonment and attempt at recovery marked all the philosopher's subsequent love affairs. "There have been dramas and heart-wrenching and doubts, but I have never again abandoned a love. And I feel really assured by the fact that the women I have loved I have loved for always."

But isn't such laborious commitment a pointless fuss in this age of ready pleasures and easily disposable lovers? "No! I insist on this – that solving the existential problems of love is life's great joy," he says and then looks across the coffee table at his translator, Isabelle Vodoz, with a big, half-ironic grin. "There is a kind of serenity in love which is almost a paradise," he adds, popping a biscuit in his mouth and giggling. She giggles, too. "I am not only his translator," she tells me later. Below this sixth-floor apartment, an RER train screeches along the rails out of Denfert-Rochereau station.

I think about the distinction Badiou describes in In Praise of Love. "While desire focuses on the other, always in a somewhat fetishist[ic] manner, on particular objects, like breasts, buttocks and cock," writes Badiou, "love focuses on the very being of the other, on the other as it has erupted, fully armed with its being, into my life that is consequently disrupted and re-fashioned."

In other words love is, in many respects, the opposite of sex. Love, for Badiou, is what follows a deranging chance eruption in one's life. He puts it philosophically: "The absolute contingency of the encounter takes on the appearance of destiny. The declaration of love marks the transition from chance to destiny and that's why it is so perilous and so burdened with a kind of horrifying stage fright." Love's work consists in conquering that fright. Badiou cites Mallarmé, who saw poetry as "chance defeated word by word". A loving relationship is similar. "In love, fidelity signifies this extended victory: the randomness of an encounter defeated day after day through the invention of what will endure," writes Badiou.

But this encomium to creative fidelity surely shows Badiou to be a man out of his time. "In Paris now half of couples don't stay together more than five years," he says. "I think it's sad because I don't think many of these people know the joy of love. They know sexual pleasure – but we all know what Lacan said about sexual pleasure."

Indeed. Jacques Lacan argued that sexual relationships don't exist. (Badiou will shortly publish a book of conversations between Lacan and his biographer, Elisabeth Roudinesco.) What is real is narcissistic, Lacan suggested, what binds imaginary. "To an extent, I agree with him. If you limit yourself to sexual pleasure it's narcissistic. You don't connect with the other, you take what pleasure you want from them."

But wasn't the rampant hedonism unleashed during Paris's May 1968 événements, in which Badiou participated, all about libidinal liberation from social constraint? How can he, of all people, hymn bourgeois notions such as commitment and conjugal felicity? "Well, I absolutely agree that sex needs to be freed from morality. I'm not going to speak against the freedom to experiment sexually like some old arse" – "un vieux connard" – "but when you liberate sexuality, you don't solve the problems of love. That's why I propose a new philosophy of love, wherein you can't avoid problems or working to solve them."

But, he argues, avoiding love's problems is just what we do in our risk-averse, commitment-phobic society. Badiou was struck by publicity slogans for French online dating site Méetic such as "Get perfect love without suffering" or "Be in love without falling in love". "For me these posters destroy the poetry of existence. They try to suppress the adventure of love. Their idea is you calculate who has the same tastes, the same fantasies, the same holidays, wants the same number of children. Méetic try to go back to organised marriages – not by parents but by the lovers themselves." Aren't they meeting a demand? "Sure. Everybody wants a contract that guarantees them against risk. Love isn't like that. You can't buy a lover. Sex, yes, but not a lover."

For Badiou, love is becoming a consumer product like everything else. The French anti-globalisation campaigner José Bové once wrote a book entitled Le Monde n'est pas une Marchandise (The World Isn't a Commodity). Badiou's book is, in a sense, its sequel and could have been entitled L'Amour n'est pas une Marchandise non plus (Love Isn't a Commodity Either).

Surely that makes him an old romantic? "I think that romanticism is a reaction against classicism. Romanticism exalted love against classical arranged marriages – hence l'amour fou, antisocial love. In that sense I'm neither romantic nor classic. My approach is that love is both an encounter and a construction. You have to resolve the problems in love – live together or not, to have a child or not, what one does in the evening."

This new book on love is an application of Badiou's singular philosophy of the subject and his outré conception of truth set out in incredibly forbidding books steeped in mathematics and deploying Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, such as Theory of the Subject, Being and Event andLogics of Worlds. These books have led him to be hailed as a great philosopher. "A figure like Plato or Hegel walks here among us," Slavoj Žižek has written.

Badiou's philosophy of the subject is an extrapolation of Sartre's existentialist slogan "Existence precedes essence" and incorporates a communist hypothesis that Althusser might have liked. It's also a rebuke to postwar and often postmodern French philosophers such as Derrida, Lyotard, Baudrillard and Foucault with whom he argued and all of whom he has outlived. What is a subject for Badiou? "Simone de Beauvoir wrote that you are not born a woman, you become one. I would say you are not a subject or human being, you become one. You become a subject to the extent to which you can respond to events. For me personally, I responded to the events of '68, I accepted my romantic destiny, became interested in mathematics – all these chance events made me what I am."

How does truth come into all this? "You discover truth in your response to the event. Truth is a construction after the event. The example of love is the clearest. It starts with an encounter that's not calculable but afterwards you realise what it was. The same with science: you discover something unexpected – mountains on the moon, say – and afterwards there is mathematical work to give it sense. That is a process of truth because in that subjective experience there is a certain universal value. It is a truth procedure because it leads from subjective experience and chance to universal value."

Badiou's very odd, post-existentialist, heretically Marxist and defiantly anti-parliamentary conception of politics has a similar trajectory. "Real politics is that which gives enthusiasm," he says. "Love and politics are the two great figures of social engagement. Politics is enthusiasm with a collective; with love, two people. So love is the minimal form of communism."

He defines his "real politics" in opposition to what he calls "parliamentary cretinism". His politics starts with subjective experience, involves a truth procedure and ends, fingers crossed, in a communist society. Why? "It's necessary to invent a politics that is not identical with power. Real politics is to engage to resolve problems within a collective with enthusiasm. It's not simply to delegate problems to the professionals. Love is like politics in that it's not a professional affair. There are no professionals in love, and none in real politics."

Badiou hasn't voted since 1968, a habit he didn't break in France's recent presidential election. But he says he is writing a book about politics, a sequel to his 2007 succès de scandale De quoi Sarkozy est-il le nom? (The Meaning of Sarkozy), in which he notoriously called the last French president "rat man" for playing on public concerns about crime and immigration. Earlier this month he wrote a marvellously vituperative column for Le Monde that has been trending across the francophone world. Sarkozy and Marine Le Pen, he maintained, weren't the only politicians responsible for "the rise of rampant fascism" in France. He argued that there was a Socialist party tradition of colluding with right-wing racism – from Mitterrand through Jospin and, no doubt, into Hollande's first term. Ingeniously, Badiou suggested that mainstream politicians were disappointed in the French people for having a racist sensibility for which they, the "parliamentary cretins" (aided by some fellow intellectuals whom Badiou excoriated), were actually responsible for creating. "It is this stubborn encouragement of the state that shapes the ugly racialist opinion and reaction, and not vice versa … In order to improve democracy, then, it's necessary to change the people, as Brecht ironically proposed." The article nicely conveys his sense that democracy as currently practised in France is a charade inimical to true rule of the people.

Badiou's far-left politics were burnished in the late 60s. In 1969, he joined the Maoist Union des Communistes de France marxiste-léniniste (UCFml), enthused by Mao's Cultural Revolution that had begun three years earlier. Just as he has been faithful to all but one of his lovers, he has remained true to Maoism. Marianne magazine called him a "fossil of the 60s and 70s", but Badiou is unrepentant. He still holds that the Cultural Revolution was inspirational, as deranging and fertile for him as falling in love – despite the deaths, rapes, tortures, mass displacements and infringements of human rights with which it has been associated.

When I ask him why, Badiou explains that the success of Lenin's disciplined Bolshevik party in the 1917 October Revolution spawned a series of other workers' revolutions, notably in China in 1949. "One soon saw that this instrument that was capable of achieving victory was not very capable of knowing what to do with its victory." Maoist bureaucracy was corrupt and self-serving, party activists were bourgeois and anti-socialist, and the communist revolution under threat. "So the Cultural Revolution was important because it was the last attempt within that history to modify that in a revolutionary manner. That's to say they made an attack on the communist state itself to revolutionise communism. It was a failure but many interesting events are failures." He cites the Paris Commune and Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht's failed German revolution among such interesting failures.

In his 2010 book The Communist Hypothesis, Badiou wrote about the importance of failure for like-minded communists (many of whom gathered with him and Žižek at Birkbeck College, London in 2009 for a conference called On the Idea of Communism). "Any failure," he writes, "is a lesson which, ultimately, can be incorporated into the positive universality of the construction of a truth." Which means that Badiou at least has not lost faith in communism. "The old Marxist idea of creating an international society is truly the order of the day now," he says. "Today things are much more international than they have ever been – commodities and people are much more international than before." So the time is more ripe than ever for international workers' revolution? "I wouldn't say that. Certainly at the world level there can be more hope than hitherto. We're climbing a very big ladder."

Badiou was born in Rabat, Morocco, in 1937. His mother was a professor of philosophy, his father a maths professor and socialist mayor of Toulouse from 1944-58. His philosophical training began in 1950s Paris. He quickly became a Sartrean, devoted to the paradoxical philosophy that, he says, involved "a complicated synthesis between a very determinist Marxist theory of history and an anti-determinist philosophy of conscience".

In a new book of essays entitled The Adventure of French Philosophy, Badiou argues that between the appearance of Sartre's Being and Nothingness in 1943 and the publication of Deleuze and Guattari's What Is Philosophy? in 1991, French philosophy enjoyed a golden age akin to classical Greece or Enlightenment Germany. Badiou's great fortune was to be part of that adventure. Like wine and cheese, French philosophy should, he says, be considered part of France's glory. "I tell our ambassadors you have with us philosophers the greatest export product."

He speaks fondly of his times at the Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis which, founded in the late 60s, fast became a bastion of countercultural thought. There he engaged in fierce intellectual debates with his fellow professors Deleuze and Lyotard, even though he considered them traitors to the communist cause. 

"These men were my rivals and my neighbours, people whom I admired and differed profoundly from."

But why, if he's right, did France have this postwar adventure, this dizzying explosion of intellectual life? "I think because of the political catastrophe in France – Pétain and the disaster of collaboration. That resulted in a philosophy that had a duty to respond to those disgraces, to propose a different way. What's more, there is a French model of being a philosopher which isn't enclosed in the academy as in England – a philosopher who is an intellectual interested in all the things in their age. Such were Diderot, Rousseau and above all Pascal."

He credits Sartre with revivifying that French model of what a philosopher could be. "All my eminent colleagues were profs because they had to live, but that wasn't their vocation – they wanted to be politically engaged public intellectuals and often artists, like Sartre. Me, too." Badiou, like a mini-Sartre, is not just a publicly engaged philosopher, but a dramatist and novelist. Unlike Sartre, he has appeared in a Jean-Luc Godard film - as a philosopher lecturer on a luxury cruise ship in 2010's Film Socialisme. His says his overwhelming ambition has been to change the relationship between workers and intellectuals. "For me what was especially important from May 1968 to 1980 was that we created new political forms of organisations linking intellectuals and workers. Those links helped me reinvent myself as a human subject. One could say that attempt failed, but I keep dazzling memories of that time." Badiou's eyes gleam as if he's recalling an old love affair he can never forget, still less disown. Perhaps politics and love are not, if you're a French Maoist, so very different.

Badiou chuckles bitterly. "France always exists through its exceptions. There are temporary exceptions that aren't representative of an overwhelmingly reactionary country but are what make it less disgusting than it would be without them. I mean exceptions like 1789, 1848, 1871, the resistance, French philosophy after the war. They are the underside to the reactionary tradition of Louis Philippe, Napoleon III, Pétain, Sarkozy." And you're one of those exceptions? "Why not? Certainly philosophy from Sartre to Deleuze and me has made France better than it would otherwise have been."