The mustard seed in global strategy

http://eepurl.com/bv-f

Spengler – Mar 26, 2008

. . . Osama bin Laden recently accused Benedict of plotting a new crusade against Islam, and instead finds something far more threatening: faith the size of a mustard seed that can move mountains. Before Benedict’s election, I summarized his position as “I have a mustard seed and I’m not afraid to use it.” Now the mustard seed has earned pride of place in global affairs.

See also:

Are the Arabs already extinct?

http://eepurl.com/bv-G

Spengler – Mar 26, 2008

. . . Life is not possible without meaning, and meaning does not exist outside of culture, especially for a people defined not by political circumstances or territory but by language, namely the Arabs. In his essay “Poetry and Apoetical Culture”, Adonis makes the remarkable claim that the nature of Koranic revelation destroys the possibility of poetry, and with it the possibility of life. Before Islam, the Arabic language was rooted in poetry; after the advent of Islam, poetic language became impossible.

——

The modern intellectual is separated from the world of faith and God by his veil of vanity. He dishes snark and ridicule and above all he is cool.

Abraham Joshua Heschel has always been my favorite lantern in the darkness of the modern desire to reject God and religion:

“How embarrassing for man to be the greatest miracle on earth and not to understand it! How embarrassing for man to live in the shadow of greatness and to ignore it, to be a contemporary of God and not to sense it. Religion depends upon what man does with his ultimate embarrassment, embarrassment not only precedes religious commitment, it is the touchstone of religious existence … What the world needs is a sense of embarrassment. Modern man has the power and the wealth to overcome poverty and disease, but we are guilty of misunderstanding the meaning of existence”.