I’ve written often on the subject of the Hegemon, my collective word for religious and cultural hegemonies that appropriate and contort religions and their sacred texts for the purposes of power and manipulation, but it’s largely been in the abstract. Today I’ll take a look at a real-world, concrete example.
Tag: hegemon
Pluralism in the Qur’an
I think that Samuel Huntington is right and that the West and the Islamic world are in the midst of a clash of civilizations. But I don’t think that’s what Islam really is. I don’t think that that’s what the Qur’an says that Islam is, and that’s the source I take to be most authoritative in this matter.
Faith and Sacrifice, pt. 2: Kierkegaard, Tillich, and the Story of Abraham and Isaac
The interrelated concepts of faith and sacrifice have remained, throughout my explorations into religion, matters of endless fascination. In the last work in this series, I adapted the story of the Binding of Isaac, as Kierkegaard had done, and took an overview of the history of faith and sacrifice, especially as they occurred in the Hindu religions. In this installment, I’ll be turning to the details of the views of two particular philosophers who wrote extensively on the subject of faith in particular, Søren Kierkegaard and Paul Tillich.
A Satanist Reads the Qur’an
I want to know why Islam has been so successful, seemingly more so than any other modern religion, in convincing people to abandon this world for some other world and to construct what remains of them in this life around what awaits them in the next. I would know, is this truly what Muhammad intended? As much as I have fallen in love with the mystical Sufi poetry of Rumi and Hafez, and as much as I respect Islam’s singularity of vision, I see this religion as one of the greatest fonts of nihilism in the modern world. Is this nihilism reflected in the religion’s sacred texts? Are these texts misunderstood and misrepresented in Islam as Christian and Jewish texts are in their respective religions?
Paradise Lost as a Sacred Text
Should Paradise Lost, John Milton’s 17th-century epic poem concerning the fall of Satan from Heaven, be considered a sacred text, especially with regard to the Satanist?