For a searchable index of quran and hadith.
www.usc.edu

This particular verse is from Surah Tauba, verse 5.

peace
i was connected to Celestine but seems lost cant read Emerson -- Salima told me but i have forgotten --


i am who i am
from what i remember
Only Us
inbetween me.
He said Be
and made me
a fist full of dirt
with a hollow
heart of light
i am
He me
inbetween Him


if someone has the time please paste that Emerson quote ....

identity is fermenting and

'the war on terror' is surfacing - whats that all about??

?When the sacred months are over, slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them and lie in ambush for them. Koran?

quoted from teh first page of
'War Against the Terror Masters' By :: Michael A Ledeen - 2002

link& pid=1970634143474312719& oid=2007078329060011378& btnG=Search+Froogle& scoring=p


anyone know of a good Quran web index where i can find out where above quote is from and indeed how accurate it is and the context of the inspiration ...

catch the pun on Michael's last name?? ...LoL

peace out

But wondering which verse of the quran it is.. that Emerson quotes...

That until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned: That until there are no longer first-class and second class citizens of any nation; That until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes; That until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race; That until that day, the dream of lasting peace and world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never attained...

H.I.M. Haile Selassie I
Speech to the United Nations
New York City, NY
October 4, 1963

That's beautiful...Emerson never fails to impress.

"i was as though a gem concealed,
me my burning ray revealed"
google it ... see what comes up.
unbelievable ....

peace y'all... thanks for your comments and insights ... i am learning lots reading what you say....

as one who wants to continue this thought experiment i will say for now.... its not so much about giving up identity as much as it is about holding on to it ... the term identity came about in the late 16th century from 'Idem - the same' ... identity that is held onto leads to 'the Othering' and the essentializing of people it seeks difference rather than similarity ... my issue is to look at the opportunity costs of identity perceptions .... more later

thanks, Plato. :) it's that good ol' Jesuit education that makes u and i so cool. ;) he he. (although now i am learning from the Dominicans!)

seriously though, i agree with both of you smart men. Whipper is right on an idealistic, individual sense. i think it is a good goal for all peoples. however, although ideal, is it realistic that even a small number of people constituting even 1% of society can/will succeed with that sort of endeavor? (That is not to say it should not still be something to reach for!) This is where Plato's comments come in... as a nation, society, or any group not comprised of just individualistic individuals floating around - it does not work.

I think both your points are good... whip - on a spiritual, idealistic level... and plato - on a practical communal one.

hmmm...

my view remains, and i think these peotry serves to prove my point. though it is nice and inclusive, seemingly free of conflicts towards others. it may work for an individual, or a group of individuals. but it is impossible for it to work for a family, or a nation.
It may offer peace to a person, but not to a unit.

it seems to bring with it a disolution of the most fundemental parts of our society, of our civilization.

it was once said, you need 100 people with their feet firmly on the ground to maintain 1 person with his head in the clouds. and those who adopt this sense of non-identity strike me as clearly individuals who are "above" the rest of us, and are only there due to the hard work and good graces of those below.

Rumi can be Rumi, becasuse a thousand farmers, solders, beurocrats and citizens where who they where.

To leave a concept of God, a powerfull identifying force that does transend race adn family, nationality and geography, would only serve to isolate different groups more than they are alrady. Balkanization would set in.



but, i suppose if this discussion is about only certain few idividuals, then thats fine.
but as social policy? commuity endeavor? it would not owrk, condemned to failure.

and since it is so hindered by our nature, an identity none of us can transend, this kind of release from identification is not a worthwhile goal to pursue.

Understanding of others identities is worthwhile.


but choosing to forgo your own limits your capacity to even do that, most people would not give up their affiliations. the fact that you would/did would make you an oddity, untrusted by those wh did not, and your ability to give up something so central to the rest of mankind would put you at odds with them, as you would not understand their attachment, and they woukd not understand your aloofness.


this seems a dangerous path as any nationalist, trabalist extention.
i Agree with ML- as exteeme as any other extreemism.



ML - u rock.

I would approach the Rumi's words you quoted with caution here. Although my own profile says something very similar (by Sultan Bahu) to what you quoted from Rumi, my take on it is as follows:

If you have a car, you can drop the bicycle as you won't need it. If you have attained God, you can drop your other identities like christian/muslim etc. Rumi is at that level. Hz. Hallaj Mansoor was at that level. When you are at that level you know it. You only give one for something better.

But on the other hand, if I, Asif Shiraz, drop my identity with God and traditional Islam, at my current position, I will have no place left to go to. I can sit with an athiest, love him perhaps (her with higher probability ;) but at the end of the day, I am a Pakistan Sunni Muslim. I'm not giving that up because harmony in this world CAN be attained INSPITE of our identity differences. This is the essential difference in my view between western cosmopolitanism, and quranic conception of unity of mankind. Quran encourages us to maintian our local identities, yet, attempts to destroy the basic racist/economical differences. Western cosmopolitianism on the other hand wants to reduce the superficial differences, and maintain the more significant ones!

It depends on what works for a particular person. For some people belief in God is a hindrance, as they cannot love someone who doesn't believe in God.

For others, they love athiests just because they too are God's creation, and the relationship is redirected through God. I belief Rumi falls in this second category.

For both of the above two kinds of people, the identity of believing or not believing in God is neither the problem, nor the solution. The problem and its solution are his own maturity of behaviour and respect of others. I don't think by adopting any particular identity, or renouncing any others, one can automatically attain that maturity of thought :s Not sure though...

thanks Wipper-ji for your synthesis -- and notion of "adoption of progressively superior identificiations as we proceed." -- that is a key idea in moving forward in this age of globalization -- and as a believer and slave of Him i agree but what about those who dont adhere to the belief in a God or say to us that My God is not Your God ... are we back to square one??

is there an identity based on being human that can apply to all people ... Rumi touches on this when he says not part of any system .. as far as i can see that brings us to 2 irreducible attributes namely our biological sex and our skin color -- everything else are layers we pick up through socialization aculturalizattion ...

even with these two irreducible attributes we still have potential for me against you | us against them situation .. are we any better off??

so i suppose my question to you is can there be adoption of progressively superior identificiations if we were to leave the concept of god ??

are Rumi's lines here helpful for us to construct such an identity...

Not any religion

or cultural system. I am
not from the east
or the west, not
out of the ocean or up

from the ground, not
natural or ethereal, not
composed of elements at all.
I do not exist,

am not an entity in this
world or the next,
did not descend from
Adam and Eve or any

origin story. My place is
the placeless, a trace
of the traceless.
Neither body or soul.

wishing you well and looking forward to your comments

peace out

nicely said, whip. :)

Almost all the useful and interesting things on this very important topic all seem to have been said already :) In other words, its a compliment to all the posters. Now my two cents.

There are two strands of thought here:

Platoshadow: We must have an identity
> families, nations, gods, idols, whatever. but this identification is needed.

And Haquima: That we must free ourselves from it
>While identity does indeed matter, we should aspire to freedom from identification...

Rather diplomatically, I will reconcile these two and take a middle position: We must free ourselves from identities, but the process of freeing ourselves should not be renunciation of identity, since one is always required, but adoption of progressively superior identificiations as we proceed.

Reminds me of the quranic verse: 06:76-79

When the night covered him over, He saw a star: He said: "This is my Lord." But when it set, He said: "I love not those that set."

When he saw the moon rising in splendour, he said: "This is my Lord." But when the moon set, He said: "unless my Lord guide me, I shall surely be among those who go astray."

When he saw the sun rising in splendour, he said: "This is my Lord; this is the greatest (of all)." But when the sun set, he said: "O my people! I am indeed free from your (guilt) of giving partners to Allah.

For me, I have set my face, firmly and truly, towards Him Who created the heavens and the earth, and never shall I give partners to Allah."


Surely, Allah is neither American nor Palestinian, neither Muslim nor Jew, neither male nor female, so as we adopt and discard different identities in our journey towards him, we must be mindful of one thing: When HIS identity comes before us, we must dicard ours and submit to that. When Adam comes before us, we must prostrate, and not say, my identity is superior to yours.

As far as I have understood, the best identity is the identity of Fuqr-e-Muhammadi (sm).

but i agree with plato - we find identity by knowing what is and what is not similar. it is the basis of language as well. "no man is an island" is correct... as Aquinas says, to be a man is to be in dialog and contact with others. the only way to not have groupings is to remove oneself from all society and that is not an acceptable answer and extremism in its own right. the answer is balance. recognize that you are more than your nationality (and know the limits of that identity), your religious affiliation, etc... and that under it all we are all one in God, with God, with all of creation and "is-ness"... yet separate as well

oh, i love Krishnamurti. :)

A Catholic guy into inter-religious dialog said in one of his books: (I am not quoting directly but roughly from memory) "beware of cultural isolationism that hijacks the religion and outs it in the service of ethno-centric fundamentalism."

i disagree.

not on philosophical grounds, clearly you are right, identification with a group is teh frist step towards more extreme views, but this is a risk you must take.

we are social beasts, we are not islands unto ourselves. we need to identify, the very first step in life or any creaturs is to identify the self and the non-self, a single cell needs to create a barrier to keep all nonself out, multiple cells must extend recognisiton to other non-self-cells and recognize them as self anyway, this contineus to extend until you have individuals recognizing family as part of a unit, then units recognizing other units as community and so on and so forth.

we need this identification. in a very practicle sense, if you do not hve it you fall victem to teh non-self world. this goes as much for communitites as individuals, as single cells.

the only remedy is creating a universal community. This is unacheivable.

the problem is you cannot take this step as a sole indivudual. either all or none.
as soon as your immune system decides that your kidneys are not part of the comunity, or as soon as your heart accepts a coxakie virus as self, you run into serious, often deadly, problems.


A nation runs the risk of extremism, but people need things to focus on, they need objects larger than themselves onto which they can devote time and energy. families, nations, gods, idols, whatever. but this identification is needed.


not only does it give you perspective and orientation int the world, but it gives you a focus and direction as well.

risky... sure.
unavoidable. definetly.




i sense and analogy of this and hypothalamic ventromedial nuclei damage.... but i think i'll keep it to myself or expand it into a journal later.

peace
thank you for your astute insight Haquima...

you are right of course -- we should aspire to freedom and not be trapped within social constructs -- have you read Krishnamurti??

... love what you said "membership is not the same as identity" -- so what do we construct our identity on??
what are we left with ??

i believe there must be a viable option as identity based on social constructs are destructive and fosters an "us versus them" situation

peace out

While identity does indeed matter, we should aspire to freedom from identification...that is, we should not identify ourselves *with* any particular abstract or social construct i.e. nationality, ideology...membership is not the same as identity. And it is identification with a nationality or ideology that fosters extremism.

obviously you are referring to Rumi's words -- but what do you think about the message he is delivering??