Dangerous Expansions: A Brief Note on Mr. Soroush's Religious Debate

PREFACE: In recent years, to synchronize Islam with modern aspects of life has became the most important worry of some of the Iranian religious intelligentsia, and it has also provoked attacks and counterattacks in both frontiers of conservatives and reformists.

Mr. Soroush is a talented person who is known both inside and outside of Iran by his huge amount of work that he has done on Islamic studies. One of his greatest ideas is to outline a theory in which religion stands for the very basic spiritual, cultural, economical, and ethical needs and cannot be treated as a source for all the rules that we need to survive in the modern world. This hypothesis means to remain Muslim and to derive or to invent some new rules and to use them instead of the old traditional ones that were based on the belief that Islam is a complete source of rules for all times. He mentions very important valid and useful points. But, in his way he claims that all of religions are corrupted and felt far apart from their original state and since he has built his own theory on the ground of Islam and he has to extend his hypothesis to make something out of it, he extends his axiom of "very basic needs", to the heart of Islam. Here we have nothing to do with the core of his hypothesis. All we want to do is to determine whether or not his theory expansion is valid. Among his lines Mr. Soroush uses, but does not wholly accepts, a tale made by Akhbarioun or some of other Shiite groups that Qoran is corrupted like Bible and because of that we cannot trust it to be our ultimate source of rules. He does not accept this, but he tends to use it as reinforcement for his theory.

I

Some philosophical terms cannot be expanded to rule as mathematics axioms

By use of some aspects of philosophy of mathematics and set theory, we can conclude that some of the philosophical conceptions, terms or axioms cannot be expandable to mathematics. Smallness of portion or subset, for instance, in comparison to the whole set or the main set is one of the most valuable principles of any philosophical system that is also valuable in Euclidean geometry and in fact is the superior of the Euclidean geometrical axioms that the whole classical geometry is based upon it. But this axiom cannot be valid in certain fields of the Set Theory. Suppose Z stands for the set of integer numbers and N stands for natural numbers, thus, we have two sets as follows:
Z = {…,-1, 0, 1 …} and N = {1, 2 …}
By expansion of the axiom we got to conclude that since N is a subset of Z, then Z has more number of elements than N which is natural according to the axiom. But it is not true anyway. The numbers of elements in both sets are equal. The cardinal number (by definition the number of elements which an infinite set can possess) of N and Z are both represented as א!! This result is very natural in the set theory which is the base of the modern age of mathematics and related sciences like modern physics and besides, denies such an expansion.

II

Expansion of philosophical ideas to be combined with religious thoughts is not always valid

We saw by part I that we cannot expand any philosophical idea to any field we deserve to proof our hypothesis. Now we can also prove that expansion of philosophical ideas to combine them with religious thoughts is not always creative and valid too. In this case Mr. Soroush has extended his theory from a pure pragmatic and also experimental point of view to, at the first step, substantiate his modern concept of challenging applicability of religious presumptions, and next he tries to push the limits of religious thoughts to put them behind the bars of his theory and he claims some unnatural idea enough weird for a Muslim thinker that is questioning the originality of Qoran.

III

An Anti-Modern Approach

Here we reach a critical point that I have mentioned before in my post: The Road to Destruction. Instead of fitting his theory to get it some flexibility and freshness, Mr. Soroush tries to manipulate the very basic belief of a religion – a predefined system of axioms and relationships- to fit it in his own theory which outlines a paradox, that is, of course, not peripheral but too essential to be abandoned.

IV

Final Denial

By part III, it can be resulted that he has done more than a premature judgment. First he denies the most important axiom of the included system – that his own theory is based upon it – which is the originality of Qoran, which it is, indeed, not a challenge but to destruct his own debate basis. Second, he has repelled his own claim that is to fund a brand new set of conceptions based on Islam to fit within the contemporary sociological conditions. Simply he denies himself!

Of States and the Media – Section One (An Introduction to Modern Connections)

I – Red Alert: Funeral Drums for Pinochet

I

As we all know, states do not govern the whole media channels in western countries. In ME countries or other totalitarian regimes it's not the same. States govern the media and decide what should be published and what should not. Social Development criteria may suggest the ratio of official state tribunes to independent tribunes as a good factor. Of course by independence, I don't mean some ultimate independency for this kind of media; we all know that media giants are divisions of multinational companies that may also have news agencies, movie distributors, weekly magazines, newspapers, and websites and so on... Not at all a direct result of democratic states – it's a wonderful truth that if you've enough money you can make a dog to be the next president of United States – it's a matter of the historical background that puts western media channels over their national governing systems. It's not also the economical power, in ME we've ha large number of men who have top rates in economical power ranking but they never think about media. Al Jazeera network is the first step to create and to manage some kind of independent media in the Middle East that is not a spokesman of the government. So, we can put Al Jazeera in the first lane and ignore the rest. On the other hand, Bin Laden is the man who knows well about media and their effectiveness out of his limited boundaries. By now, no Islamic state – even the most hard-liner - have not any attempt to support Bin Laden directly, but that's not the case that why he chose Al Jazeera for his use. It's a modern point of view to choose an independent media – as we described what we mean by independency – to have a voice in the modern world. (I do not like Al Jazeera personally, because of its Pan-Arab ideology, but we do not talk about our very personal interests here of course!) So we can see that Bin Laden has the most modern method to deal with the West through the media channels!

II

Lack of awareness causes more serious problems for that second group of states they have been attacked by western media and they reply to their respective countries! A, hits you and you hit back B who is a partner of A. But they attack you if your media has been attacked them. This relationship results in premature behavior of the second group of states. Simply they cannot defend themselves. By restricting the media inside their own countries, these states dig their graves by opposing the public opinion across the world. It's like a slow decay, some kind of stigmata! May be it's the end of the age of traditional totalitarian regimes forever. They have no way to escape from this reality that if they allow the media inside to act normally they will face the danger of criticizing and need to be replaced, and if they do not allow this, on the other hand, the pressure of modern connections will smash them from outside. As I noted in the first section and due to our recent review, Bin Laden has more chances to survive in the modern world! Saddam was the second victim of the closed ring of official media system after Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and Bin Laden still exists on the face of the planet. I like to note here that by this analyze – like the case of Al Jazeera – the origin and the goal of some terrorist team like Al Qaeda are none of our business. However Al Qaeda is not a state and there are a lot of difference here between him and i.e. Bahrain government, Al Qaeda has fans to care about all over the world.

III

Most of the second group states have a fake image of a so called "public support". Presented in mass exhibition of protests and meetings hold by governments themselves, they count on imaginary support and believe in an illusion of certainty. It has been written in NWO bible that changing the first group as independent islands in the world to a subgroup of the first group is unavoidable. The second group media publish those public supports and instead the first group, not criticizing the rule of the second group media, just proofs the inefficiency of the states and not their media directly. This can be the third reason for how difficult is to survive in a modern world full of media connections for traditional totalitarian regimes.

(Artwork: The Labour by Sarah Rahmati)

Modern Superstitions

First of all I like to mention that the idea behind inventing the superstitions – regardless of the system they invented inside of it – is to use people beliefs as their own slavery chains. Due to this fact, we can see that a modern society can have its own superstitions too. When people don’t know much about their religion, priests can invent more and more tales and add them to the religion and after a long time replace the basic facts of the religion by their own damned tales.
In a modern society strategy owner, states, philosophers and sociologists can invent more and more superstitions and feed people and like the previous case turn the people to addicts of those hobbits and beliefs again. On the other side, lack of awareness can cause even more serious problems in both cases. When people choose to be blind, when they choose to be slaves instead of free men, they feed themselves with misconceptions and misunderstandings instead of facts, whether those facts come from their religion or a specific philosophical system. Avant-gardes in modernizing the third world countries always suggest an enforced renaissance:

"We got to kick out the religion and its superstitions. It worked well in Europe so long ago."

All right! Kick out then, but be aware of not to substitute the old superstitions with new ones. Every time a new religion came to Iran, past time beliefs and traditions penetrated to the core of the brand new religion. If we consider the historic tradition – what is the core of any worthy sociological theory – we find out that the disaster always happened so far by such avant-gardism. If you want to kick out the superstitions you can purify the religion itself. Suggest people to think about what they already have. It's a crime to undermine the old traditional values and not to let the science to create new values based on the new world order suggested by north; otherwise you destructed the whole society. Also spoke Dewey.

Look at Japan as a good example of what happens by enforcing our desired renaissance:
70 percent out of their movie industry products are pornographic movies it also has the highest rate of suicide commitments in the world. Look at South Korea, their presidential candidates are directly suggested by WTO and ought to follow their policies and guidelines.
On the other side the south west Asia and also Latin America suffered more than these for instance the credit provided by IMF to prevent the economical collapse of UK government in 1976 was about 4 Billion USD. In 1994 this amount raised to 48 Billion USD for Mexico and 3 years after reached 60 Billion USD for South Korea. These countries are well known to our avant-gardes as progressing economical giants. After the world accepted the turn off to New World Order suggested by north and started modernizing the third world, the results were very interesting to review: from 1960 to 1991 the share of very rich personalities raised from 70% of worldwide income to 85%. The pure value of income for only 385 men of the richest was equal to that of 2.3 Billion poor men. This period was the time to modernizing whether optional or by enforcing the same economical policies by IMF and WTO. In Indonesia modernizing by those policies enforced by Korean fairs resulted in such a disaster:

"The boss calls us dogs, pigs or whores this is what happens every day. We work from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Our income is less than 2 USD a day (60 USD a month. less than 600,000 Rls.) We always have to stay for extra work time often extended to 9 p.m. By this extra work we can earn 10 cents per day. We live in a 2*3 meters room for 16 USD a month. 2 liters of water cost 10 cents and we have to pay 1.5 USD each day for the worst kind of food to survive."
(Source: IOC. cit. The Communist Manifesto Now, Socialist Register, 1998)

People think that if the world's leading economical powers are against our modernizing will then we can do it by ourselves! (That's the most ridiculous idea I have ever heard because their benefit is to just modernizing us to turn our whole nations to their own slaves as they has done in those mentioned regions.) You've just raw resources to sell out as national treasures or you have to invent the technology required to process the raw material into valuable goods. You have to start over from their industrial revolution to invent your own technology. They will not borrow that to you for free my independent friends! Even worst you've to start over from their 13th century!

In brief, modernizing the third world has been a disaster both in cultural and industrial fields. If we do not accept this damned progress we will be called uncivilized and barbarous.
The modern western civilization is based on slavery and stealing third world resources and not kicking out the religion. Religious beliefs in US have never been so tight during recent centuries.

We'll discuss more on this issue in our next posts.

Sex and Capitalism II - Feminism

Human rights in third world countries always function as pressure tools to isolate their respected nations by so called public opinion if they decide to get wild against any local or global profit of WTO and its policies all around the world. This process is entirely independent of the governing regime. Domestic pressures have to apply, not to pressurize the governing state, but to challenge people beliefs and turn them to a form that can accept Sex Tourism and Prostitution as normal economical tools and even participate in these trades with a clear conscience. When they face a society in which prostitution and sex business are traditionally taboos, they destroy the origins of that tradition by every means they can.

Feminism founded to guarantee the equal rights for women with those of men. This movement extended itself to known human right facts and then became the main arguing issue in debates of the third world especially in Muslim countries. Feminists of Muslim countries challenge public opinion and even government to force them to accept the values of what they call the modern world.

Prostitution is one of these issues. Feminists are against illegal traffic of women and children by any means. They are against any social phenomena like prostitution caused by poor economical conditions, but if prostitution can freely be chosen by any woman they say that it’s a normal right for every woman to be a prostitute if she wants and nobody can interfere her work except for providing proper health conditions to prevent disease (by recent studies more than 90% of sex workers have to continue their job by any means.). Everything is just alright! You can choose to be a prostitute by yourself. It's your right. Everybody is happy. But carefully look what is undermined by this "right"? The entire society will socially accept prostitution that was the most shameful job of all times, as an honorable job. If it resists, the whole nation, its government, its religion and beliefs will be called uncivilized and against humanity and the whole nation may face global restrictions and might be accused of violation of human rights. This will not be done just by the heads of WTO and their governing media. This time domestic pressure applies itself to undermine the traditions. People accuse those who cannot believe in this propaganda: uncivilized, religious and barbarous.

Feminism teachings also provide the social bed for undermining marriage. This belief directly increases sex costumers and spreads prostitution as well. Illegal traffic was once against humanity; now, how about legal traffic? They are happy to be prostitutes and they will be even happier if they can "work" in those areas that can provide them more social right and security, money and more costumers. They are free workers so they can choose were to work. This has been established in any country that had sold its religion and traditions before to be called civilized. So they migrate to countries with those satisfactory conditions. The more they migrate to a specific region the more its Sex Tourism will grow. Hotels, airlines, restaurants and many others benefit very well. These regions already exist in our world. Look at Thailand, Dubai, Philippine and other sexual and "hot" regions for the most important examples. Governments can provide even more and more policies that make it easy for anyone to migrate to those countries or regions – otherwise they will be accused to restrict their free women and violating the WTO policies - but do not forget that they want their own share of cake! These workers if remain in their countries can make money for the state, why the governing regime allow them to migrate without leaving a penny?

So, the legal traffic will be planned by governments to reserve their rights in this huge trade. Governing regimes has no moral boundaries to limit the trade to legal ways. Now those free women chosen to be prostitutes will tread simply as goods and new raw resources. Importing and exporting women will be the direct results of the growing wave of feminism in Muslim countries.

The Road to Destruction

When Imam Muhammad Ghazzali wrote his famous book - Tahafut al-Falasifa - as a counter attack to the heart of Islamic Philosophy - away from all of his other challenging works - the belief that philosophy can never ever have a fundamental and basic relationship with Islam became strong and then powered with a theory resource that has used the same terminology of philosophers this time.
He has not just answered the doubts provoked by Ibn Sina and Farabi, but simultaneously proved that for challenging a philosophical concept you have to be a philosopher and use their own terminology to be known and to be analyzed by others, even if you cannot believe in those axioms and logic relations between the phenomena in that specific system. This paradox proved itself that one cannot criticize a system without accepting its own metaphysics, regardless of how it may be in the opposite of his own limits and faith.

The danger arises right here! If you study to be a philosopher to challenge their ideas or to deny them, you may never get back to your original state. Because of many theories and confusing ideas in different lines of study you may loose your self-confidence and retire your mind by believing in one of those which you study or even create your own collage of philosophical concepts to rest your mind a bit. It's not over yet! Even if you do not confuse this way, as long as you are in that system you no further can criticize that. You may find paradoxes or you may feel and fill the gaps, it's just enlightening and improving the stability and reliability of the system and not criticizing. The more the system is fundamental to the main branch of sciences – because of its applicability – the hard it will be to challenge.

If the first case happen or if in the second case you know somehow that your rule as a critic is over, you'll have no energy at all to challenge the system; you'll become a part of its history. May be the main reason to invent a new philosophical system - especially an axiomatic theory of concepts - is to rest the mind in its own house of cards.
No more you'll be able to challenge yourself in that system. You have just created your own paradise and as Hilbert mentioned once about Cantor's Set Theory nobody can throw you out of it. You enjoy your peace within your philosophy. The challenge is over. Either your system remains for a thousand years or it fades and disappears as many other systems did in a decade or so, you simply would destruct your own faith and would forget your primary goal. If you try a counter play and decide even to challenge your own system your mind will resist. It will not deal its peace with any possibility to grow. All your planes will turn to scribbled lines and this time you declare war against your inner self. You declare war to defend your faith but your mind resists, it consumes your energy to fight you.
I can compare this horrible possibility to HIV virus infection. Your mind situation can be compared to a low battery laptop that has hanged for a while. If you try to turn it off, it's suicidal and in the best case can lead to madness. If you try to let it be, it'll torture you and at last if you decide to restart it, the batteries will run out!

So I pray to Allah by using the words in Koran:
"On no soul doth Allah Place a burden greater than it can bear. It gets every good that it earns, and it suffers every ill that it earns. (Pray :) "Our Lord! Condemn us not if we forget or fall into error; our Lord! Lay not on us a burden Like that which Thou didst lay on those before us; Our Lord! Lay not on us a burden greater than we have strength to bear. Blot out our sins, and grant us forgiveness. Have mercy on us. Thou art our Protector; Help us against those who stand against faith." 002.286

Sex and Capitalism

It is an accepted but so wrong belief in Iran that sexual freedom in western countries really affected freedom degree of human mind. As we go deeper into the inner layers of societies both in Iran or anywhere else, we find out that the fact behind this so called "freedom" really bounds up the ability of mind.
What's the main idea behind free porn satellite channels? As we all know, this industry has a huge amount of income for its runners so how they can ignore this?
When you search within the most favorite photo stocking websites the search items stored in their search history will show you the most interesting items as:

arms , beautiful, beauty, breast, girl, legs, lingerie, nylons, pantyhose, seductive, sexy, shoes, woman, Erotic, artistic nude! (This is the brand new name – and artistic enough - for the growing sexual cancer among photographers and also a money machine for agents of models all around the world) and so on…
Updated medical references suggest that both homosexuality and even pedophilia can be treated as normal sexual behaviors. With keeping these so scientific discoveries in mind nobody can be dubious about normality of masturbation that is a direct result of a huge wave of propaganda about sexual freedom and sexual hobbies in TV shows, music clips, movies and films, photography and literature. Masturbation especially for men has a great disadvantage in shortening the needed time to reach the orgasm in long run. When you have such a problem you have to use their delay sprays and tablets. That's ok! Don't panic! After a while, by separating your love and your sexual behavior you feel that something's missing. You'll need either to consult your physician – that's really impossible for most of Iranians regardless of their level of education – or to say goodbye to joyful sex forever. People will suggest you to try Viagra or other similar brands in fucking industry and when you look at yourself you'll find at a glance that you have become their slave forever. They feed you with their free channels, new methods of intercourse and self-stimulation and so on, and based on Newton's laws in classical mechanics you pay dearly. Just like a heroin addict you "pay" this time to see more, to learn more, to fuck more, and you pay and you pay. Every single breath now turns to a USD for the huge industry.

We'll discuss a little bit more about erotic literature in next posts. The main theme will be the similarity between the ideological thinking and ideological literature – as it was in USSR – and erotic literature – as it is today.

Le Banc en Hiver

When Deep Blue defeated Kasparov, people wondered if what Kubrik has indicated in his science-fiction 2001: A Space Odyssey is on the edge of reality. For me, there's no fear because of technological advantages that may lead to a complete retiring of human mind.
A machine, regardless of how it can be used and without noticing its power of calculation and semi-mind state is still something which needs human kind as its user. A microprocessor can never have a meaning without someone to manage it and use it. If a machine can have feeling which we see in most science-fiction movies, it will feel useless and depressed without having a human user!
So, there's nothing horrible with these machines yet and may be forever. But if you ask me, what am I afraid of? I'll have an answer in hand:
In my point of view, metal benches are more scary things than microprocessors. They have their independence of use. They are creatures which do not need men to give them meaning. if nobody turn on a PC for 100 years, it'll remain quiet calm and it may feel useless. But a bench does not; he can stand still for 100 years without needing someone to seat on him. And this fact looked so terrible to me. We created so simple things that do not need us anymore!