Catholics & Non-Catholics Dialogue Thread

[Clean Water]

3 minutes ago, chrysostom said:

What are some of those?

That poverty is the #1 abortifacient and any "prolife" advocate who claims to be prolife but makes war on the Church's century old call for universal health care is full of s h I t and only interested in using the unborn, not in saving them.

[Clean Water]

56 minutes ago, Clean Water said:

Truths on how the Church in 2018 is still making Saints of women who were murdered and saying they're Saints of Purity. And how offensive it is to women and how bad it is for a Church who has lost it's moral credibility. As if sexual victims who don't die are less holy or they are somehow to blame for their experience. And as if women can't tell the difference between rape and sexual temptation. And that rape would somehow have anything to do with if a woman is still a virgin. Here's the article: www.commonwealthmagazine.org/her-too

Can't edit but to make clear the question is not if Anna deserves to be a Saint. She 110 percent does and is. She was martyred for the faith and showed so much courage and faith. That point is made clear in the article. It's a great read if you have time.

[Peace]

39 minutes ago, Clean Water said:

That poverty is the #1 abortifacient

No. RU-486 is the #1 abortifacient.

39 minutes ago, Clean Water said:

and any "prolife" advocate who claims to be prolife but makes war on the Church's century old call for universal health care is full of s h I t and only interested in using the unborn, not in saving them.

Either that, or they believe that private systems are the best means of providing quality health-care to the overall population.

 

[Anastasia]

58 minutes ago, Clean Water said:

Could our icons help dispel racist attitudes? How would your parish respond to a crucifix with a Christ that is Black?

Byzantine icons have been depicting Jesus Christ as a Mediterranean for ages. Chinese have painted His as Chinese. Ethiopians as an Ethiopian. Spaniards as a Spaniard. Russians as a Russian. It is normal for each nation to depict Jesus as their own, with their own national/racial features because it expresses their closeness to Him, the attachment to Him. 

However, when someone begins deliberately using icons and other sacred things for "reducing racisms" the result is always superficial and to those who understand the role of the icons quite offensive. If in the hypothetical church there are black people they can of course to commission an icon of Jesus to some black iconographer who can make a naturally (not deliberately) black Jesus, black Jesus coming from his personal spiritual experience. However, there is a difference between the desire of black people to have an icon of Jesus Who looks more like them, out of their spiritual needs and the desire to do this "to reduce racisms". The second is very wrong.

In my opinion, racist attitudes (both ways, white to black and black to white) and all other wrong attitudes can only be dispelled via true Christian life = union with Christ. 

[Ice_nine]

8 hours ago, Era Might said:

Nobody is whining. If you're not interested in the thread, then go to another one. This is a phorum. I started a thread for discussion. Some of us like discussing things. If that's not your thing, then please don't waste my time telling me how much of a stupid loser I am, or try to derail the thread because you're not interested in it.

I didn't call you a stupid loser. I'm taking somewhat of an issue with you telling me to leave. Starting a thread doesn't mean you own the thread. This is the internet hoss. I'll waste my time how I want.

I realize I'm being kind of a nudge. Don't take it too seriously.

[Peace]

49 minutes ago, Ice_nine said:

 Starting a thread doesn't mean you own the thread.

It's my thread now. I hijacked it.

[Era Might]

2 hours ago, Clean Water said:

Yeah exactly. And to be clear God bless the group you described above. The fact they were friendly is a great thing. You can't blame people for seeing the world through the lens they see it. Until the Holy Spirit prompts them to expand their view. And only God knows when that time is for every person and whether they accept or reject the invitation to see the experience of others they hadn't previously considered. Pope Francis has prompted this and a lot of folks have ignored him and written him off. So much hate was thrown his way by Conservative Catholics when he invited NBA players to the Vatican for Black Lives Matter discussions. Reading the comments on Catholic Connect (a big Catholic IG page) was sad. It was comment after comment of contempt and hate for the Holy Father and the players discussing this issue at the Vatican. Same thing when he accepted the Hawks Jersey for Martin Luther King Jr birthday and standing with Black Lives Matter.

 

I've been seeing Catholicism in other contexts as well. I started following Black Catholics (that's the page) on IG. The handle is @blatholics. Also @blackcatholicmessenger is another great page. A bunch of knowledge and history shared on these pages. Theconservative/trad/racismdoesn't existcrowd-media is so loud and dominating that it drowns out most of the other views and experiences. But the other views are out there you just have to find them and make sure you're not sucked completely into the previous. I've found a bunch of IG pages in the last year of Black Catholics shareing their truth and experiences. It's been great. Also a lot of amesome female accounts (White and Black) who aren't sucked into maga Catholicism and have a lot of truth to offer. Truths about abortion and healthcare ect. Truths on how the Church in 2018 is still making Saints of women who were murdered and saying they're Saints of Purity. And how offensive it is to women and how bad it is for a Church who has lost it's moral credibility. As if sexual victims who don't die are less holy or they are somehow to blame for their experience. And as if women can't tell the difference between rape and sexual temptation. And that rape would somehow have anything to do with if a woman is still a virgin. Here's the article: www.commonwealthmagazine.org/her-too

 

There's so many great Black Catholics. I've been glad to learn how many more there are then I imagined. God bless Mr. Garvey. Thanks for the book recommendation, "The Philosophy & Opinions of Marcus Garvey". I need to read it. Being "truly woke" as you say is frowned upon. Just the other day Bishop Barron went on about it on Twitter. One great comment was from a Black Catholic named Nate. He used to write for Word On Fire but last summer his article was rejected by Barron and not allowed to be published. Here's what he said, "Back when Word On Fire declined a blog of mine basically for mentioning Trump and the Trads undersirable "flashpoints", to quote the editor....I realized there is a  problem. The modern Catholic apologetics movement has the same awareness issues as any other White American zeitgeist. It's telling that two major talking points of American Catholicism were off-limits to me a Black Catholic but Barron has free reign to pontificate on the Black Liberation movement with apparently NO meaningful knowledge of who's on the ground and why."

 

Gloria Purvis who was fired by EWTN for speaking up against racism had a great post. Here's what she said, 

“Researchers at {Stanford} examined how American Christians articulate their image of God. They arrived at a startling finding with significant social implications. They discovered that when people view God as a white man, they also are more likely to believe that white men are better suited for positions of leadership and authority than women or Black people. The chief researcher, psychologist Steven Roberts, summarized the major conclusion of his team’s studies: ‘Basically, if you believe that a white man rules the heavens, you are more likely to believe that white men should rule on Earth.’” - U.S. Catholic magazine

Could our icons help dispel racist attitudes? How would your parish respond to a crucifix with a Christ that is Black?

I hear a variation of this sentiment expressed on these signs whenever I share Black images of Jesus or and Mary etc.....

This is a picture of protestors of Bishop Harold Perry, the 1st publicly recognized Black Bishop ordained in the U.S., in NOLA in 1965.

(I can't post pictures but it's a picture of White Catholics holding up signs that says Jesus Did Not Choose Non White Apostles.)

Oh I know all about the Catholic apologetics scene! I go way back to the Golden Age of apologetics. This was before I even found Phatmass. I was a faithful subscriber and reader of stuff like This Rock magazine and Envoy Encore and and then Catholic blogs when they first started emerging. I remember when Gerry Matatics, a well-known apologist, went rogue and became a sedevacantist and then Robert Sungenis kind of followed him, and I was reading stuff like a bizarre website called Novus Ordo Watch and this must-read Rad Trad book called The Great Facade bwahahahaha. Good memories! I would stay up til 1AM to watch Mother Angelica Live reruns, this was before she had her stroke and went off the air.

Anyway the reason I say all this is to say I know how the religious mind works. Sometimes I would go to Mass 2 or 3 times on Sunday, spend hours and hours and hours praying before the tabernacle, pray 15 decades of the Rosary, recite the Liturgy of the Hours, go waaaay out of my way to attend Latin Mass, spend hundreds of dollars having masses said for dead people. I can tell your heart is in the right place and even though all those things I did were unnecessary, looking back, I did them sincerely and I don't regret them because it helped me grow as I groped in the dark for a God I thought I knew but was really ignorant of. I don't believe in God anymore because now I know him, I don't need to believe in him, I talk to him face to face, like Father and Son. He lives in me, I no longer need to go see Him in a tabernacle. But I found him there, too, before I found Him inside myself. He had to hide himself for many years before he could show me His face and tell me my name.

It sounds like you're becoming more and more conscious of a world beyond the world inside our little religious minds. That's really why I started this thread, to encourage you to keep the faith and keep expanding your mental and spiritual horizons. Don't get bogged down in too much superfluous stuff, the world isn't hanging on your shoulders, we were created to be happy and joyful and simple. These are serious times we are living in and it's a shame if we don't really know what's going on, who we are and where we're going. Life is not a mystery, there is only one God and he is our Father, all of us, without exception. Love is the answer to all our problems, it's a very simple problem that we make complicated. I won't be on Phatmass for long, but while I am here I wanted to share a piece of my heart and hopefully get to share a piece of someone else's heart. This is what we're here for. I understand we all have opinions and ideas, but those count for very little in real life. So thanks for sharing your story and I hope we can continue stepping outside the narrow confines of our usual conversations!

"God is love and he who lives in love lives in God, and God lives in him."

[Peace]

I think it is downright hilarious that @Era Might created a dummy account named @Clean Water and is literally having a conversation with himself because nobody else would co-sign his BS.

[Anastasia]

34 minutes ago, Era Might said:

Anyway the reason I say all this is to say I know how the religious mind works. Sometimes I would go to Mass 2 or 3 times on Sunday, spend hours and hours and hours praying before the tabernacle, pray 15 decades of the Rosary, recite the Liturgy of the Hours, go waaaay out of my way to attend Latin Mass, spend hundreds of dollars having masses said for dead people. I can tell your heart is in the right place and even though all those things I did were unnecessary, looking back, I did them sincerely and I don't regret them because it helped me grow as I groped in the dark for a God I thought I knew but was really ignorant of. I don't believe in God anymore because now I know him, I don't need to believe in him, I talk to him face to face, like Father and Son. He lives in me, I no longer need to go see Him in a tabernacle. But I found him there, too, before I found Him inside myself. He had to hide himself for many years before he could show me His face and tell me my name.

The problem with “gnostics” is that they ignore the fact that Christ is God and Man both, the Divinity is expressing itself in the perfect human psyche. It means that “finding God” and being in union with Him does not abolish “little human things” like rosaries etc., as the numerous Catholic and Orthodox Saints confirmed. Just like the Lord who, being the Son of God and in union with His Father, still prayed regularly, often using formal Jewish prayers (Psalms), any person on so-called “spiritual path” still needs those little things – in fact the further he goes the more he needs them, to keep him on a right track. In fact, it is well-known sign of so-called “prelest” (“spiritual delusion” in Orthodoxy) when a person drops “little human things” = formal prayer, Mass, devotion etc because he thinks he is in union with God.

St Seraphim of Sarov still kept reading the Gospels and other books and prayed his rule so as St Teresa of Avila and other mystics. What they have never done though is to claim publicly that they obtained union with God. Actually, they spoke very little, mostly giving short advices to others who came to seeks their advice.

I wrote this not so much for you because I know that such a delusion prevents a person from perceiving the truth but for those to whom your texts may give wrong ideas.

[Ice_nine]

57 minutes ago, Peace said:

I think it is downright hilarious that @Era Might created a dummy account named @Clean Water and is literally having a conversation with himself because nobody else would co-sign his BS.

It does seem fishy but . . . Era is an OG. I actually liked the guy for the most part, from what I knew of him. For that reason alone I don't think that's what he's doing, and if that is what he's doing that would be very sad and (I'm not a doctor but,) indicative of some serious mental issues that I wouldn't find funny.

And I'm only talking about him like he's not in the room because I assume he's probably ignoring my posts at this point. More power to him.

[Machine_Washable]

17 hours ago, Era Might said:

Since not everyone on Phatmass is Catholic or Christian, and not all Catholics agree with each other or even see the world from the same vantage point, I'd like to open a dialogue thread for an inter-religious dialogue. The purpose of this thread is not debate specifically, although it may include debate, but instead to propose your view of God and of the world that we live in, here and now, and what, if anything, you would propose to other human beings living in this world.

If you're Catholic, this is your chance to make a defense for the relevance of your religion, in reality and not in theory, and *to be challenged* with other points of view, either from non-Catholics or from other Catholics who see the world differently. If you are only on Phatmass to discuss Catholicism on its own terms, or on your own terms, then this is not the thread for you.

The purpose of this thread is not to "convert" anyone to anything, but to question each other, question ourselves, and ask whether we are actually living in the same world, or whether we are all locked inside separate realities with no hope of finding common ground. I start this thread in accordance with the Catholic Church's own request at the Second Vatican Council:

"The Church, therefore, exhorts her sons, that through dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions, carried out with prudence and love and in witness to the Christian faith and life, they recognize, preserve and promote the good things, spiritual and moral, as well as the socio-cultural values found among these men."

--Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions "Nostra Aetate"

If you consider yourself a Christian or a believer in God, then the purpose of this thread is to ask who is this God we believe in, and whether we can call ourselves brothers, or whether we are in fact enemies. This is not the thread for Catholics to debate intra-Catholic politics like traditionalism, etc. The focus should remain on more fundamental questions about God and religion, what it means to believe in God in 2021, what is expected of us as believers and/or as human beings in a global world of 8 billion people.

If you're not interested in this discussion, then that's fine, and I don't know if anyone will be interested, but if you *are* interested, please engage in the thread in the spirit of what I laid out above. I will follow up with some thoughts of my own to get us started.

There is a lot here. But basically I believe there is god but Allah (swt) and Prophet Muhammad (saw) is the messenger of Allah(swt). We are put on this earth to submit to the will of God(swt) 
 

There are three creeds in mainstream Sunni Islam. While I don’t believe any of them are perfect, and mostly formed in response to the introduction to Greek ‘problems’ that were being discussed by Jewish and Christian thinkers in Damascus when it was conquered by Muslim armies and have become somewhat irrelevant, I generally adhere to the Athari creed. 
 

We do not really ask ‘who is this God (swt) we believe in’. A big part of the Athari creed is that it is not for us to interpret the modalities that God (swt) uses to describe Himself(swt). So although the Qur’an makes it very clear that God(swt) is not a being in space and time it still says that Allah(swt) is above the earth on His (swt) throne. So if you ask an Athari “where is Allah (swt)” they will say “above us on His (swt) throne”. An Athari in America and Australia would say this at the very same moment and both be correct. 

[chrysostom]

7 hours ago, Clean Water said:

That poverty is the #1 abortifacient and any "prolife" advocate who claims to be prolife but makes war on the Church's century old call for universal health care is full of s h I t and only interested in using the unborn, not in saving them.

I am open to a range of healthcare policies and I'm a fan of whatever works to both raise the standards of healthcare and also disseminate it to the largest population, which includes of course those most in need. There are always going to be strengths and weaknesses to different systems, and it is impossible to guarantee that everyone will have a great experience with healthcare since all systems staffed by humans will exhibit dysfunction in their own way. But yes we ought to do our best to achieve humane outcomes. But one solution may work in one country but not another, depending on a lot of factors like social makeup, climate, economic development, corruption, food chain. That to me screams "prudential judgement".

Then again, prudential judgement doesn't mean that just any choice is a good one. Some choices are bad.

[Peace]

6 hours ago, Ice_nine said:

It does seem fishy but . . . Era is an OG. I actually liked the guy for the most part, from what I knew of him. For that reason alone I don't think that's what he's doing, and if that is what he's doing that would be very sad and (I'm not a doctor but,) indicative of some serious mental issues that I wouldn't find funny.

And I'm only talking about him like he's not in the room because I assume he's probably ignoring my posts at this point. More power to him.

Yeah you are right. It’s sad. I was wrong to say it is funny.

 I think I’ve been here about 6 years now. I actually remember him being cool too.

My main issue with him now is not his quackpot Deepak Chropra woo-woo nonsense, and I still respect his desire for various forms of social justice. 

It’s that he has become an outright enemy of the Church. Maybe I am the only one who thinks that, but I honestly believe it. I think that he comes here primarily to discourage others from practicing the Catholic faith.

Don’t quote me, but from what I recall this last time he left the Church because he wanted to commit sexual sins and found the Church too restrictive in that regard. Perhaps this is the same situation as many other Catholics who leave the faith, but still know deep-down that what they are doing is wrong, so they go out of their way to spew false information and attack the Church as evil or irrelevant, to justify the choice in their own mind.

But regardless, I don’t think it matters what his issues are. If ten years from now I decide to start spreading falsehood here, someone should correct me. You don’t get a free pass to spread BS unchallenged because you have been here a long time. 

2 hours ago, Machine_Washable said:

There is a lot here. But basically I believe there is god but Allah (swt) and Prophet Muhammad (saw) is the messenger of Allah(swt). We are put on this earth to submit to the will of God(swt) 
 

There are three creeds in mainstream Sunni Islam. While I don’t believe any of them are perfect, and mostly formed in response to the introduction to Greek ‘problems’ that were being discussed by Jewish and Christian thinkers in Damascus when it was conquered by Muslim armies and have become somewhat irrelevant, I generally adhere to the Athari creed. 
 

We do not really ask ‘who is this God (swt) we believe in’. A big part of the Athari creed is that it is not for us to interpret the modalities that God (swt) uses to describe Himself(swt). So although the Qur’an makes it very clear that God(swt) is not a being in space and time it still says that Allah(swt) is above the earth on His (swt) throne. So if you ask an Athari “where is Allah (swt)” they will say “above us on His (swt) throne”. An Athari in America and Australia would say this at the very same moment and both be correct. 

Do you guys have “rankings” among people you consider prophets?

You also have Jesus as a prophet correct, but it seems that Muhammad is held in higher esteem, which is natural him being the author of the Qur’an.

[Era Might]

5 hours ago, Machine_Washable said:

There is a lot here. But basically I believe there is god but Allah (swt) and Prophet Muhammad (saw) is the messenger of Allah(swt). We are put on this earth to submit to the will of God(swt) 
 

There are three creeds in mainstream Sunni Islam. While I don’t believe any of them are perfect, and mostly formed in response to the introduction to Greek ‘problems’ that were being discussed by Jewish and Christian thinkers in Damascus when it was conquered by Muslim armies and have become somewhat irrelevant, I generally adhere to the Athari creed. 
 

We do not really ask ‘who is this God (swt) we believe in’. A big part of the Athari creed is that it is not for us to interpret the modalities that God (swt) uses to describe Himself(swt). So although the Qur’an makes it very clear that God(swt) is not a being in space and time it still says that Allah(swt) is above the earth on His (swt) throne. So if you ask an Athari “where is Allah (swt)” they will say “above us on His (swt) throne”. An Athari in America and Australia would say this at the very same moment and both be correct. 

Thanks for sharing!

Honestly I don't know much about Islam as a religion. I know more about it from a historical perspective because I read a lot of history, the ancient religious milieu that you refer to is very interesting. One of my favorite little stories of history that I've always remembered is about the collapse of the Umayyad dynasty and the transition to the Abbasids, representing the shift in power from Damascus to Baghdad. As I recall, the Abbasids killed all the Umayyad leaders, but one of them survived the slaughter and escaped from Damascus all the way to Spain, and re-constituted the Umayyad dynasty in Spain.

I used to live in Harlem, New York City which has a lot of black Muslims. I rented a room and one of the other renters was a black Muslim. He was a good guy, he had like 13 kids, I didn't ask but I suspect he had just gotten out of prison. But he was an early riser like me so I'd be up at 5AM and would hear him in his room, listening to an Arabic chanting, and he would have his door open and I'd see him on his knees prostrate on the ground, repeating with the chanting, "Allahu Akbar." But I met a lot of Muslims there (obviously, it's New York City). I used to eat at a Middle Eastern restaurant and sometimes when I would go to pickup the food I'd have to wait because the guy would be prostrate on the floor saying his prayers. I remember talking to a guy from Yemen at the corner store, Muslims run a lot of the small businesses in NYC. I told him he was the first person I've ever met from Yemen. But even outside of NYC today I see a lot more Muslims in America, something I didn't see so much 20 or 30 years ago. It's a globalizing world...

I'd like to know what that phrase means to you, "to submit to the will of God." I met a homeless man once in Los Angeles, I was waiting for the bus and he saw that I was carrying my Bible. He started talking to me about the Bible and quoting Psalm 91 from memory:

He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High
Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress;
My God, in Him I will trust.”

Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him;
I will set him on high, because he has known My name.
He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble;
I will deliver him and honor him.
With long life I will satisfy him,
And show him My salvation.

He talked about how God delivers us, not for anything we do or know, but merely because we have known His name, because we have acknowledged Him, submitted to Him. He told me it only takes 10 minutes a day to pray, what you have to do is go to a secret place and get down on your knees, and do absolutely nothing except acknowledge the name of God, to give him 10 minutes of pure acknowledgment, and that's enough prayer for the day. I've never forgotten that man, he taught me what it means to pray. And I remember vividly, he had a sort of dramatic way of speaking besides being homeless, and he told me, "God can turn a king into a beggar and a beggar into king, just like that," and he snapped his fingers to make the point. I've met a lot of people like that in my life, messengers of God who make their point, deliver their message, and are never seen again.

God says in the book of the prophet Jeramiah: "Call to me and I will answer you, and show you things great and mighty which you have not known." Jesus said that if we seek then we will find, if we ask then it will be given. I believe God is our counselor, that he conceals nothing from us, that he will teach us all things, all wisdom, if only we ask and listen. That's how I understand the "will of God," not as something inscrutable or outside man, but something that is readily available to us if we use the active intelligence of our mind and listen to the Almighty. He says in the book of the prophet Isaiah, "Come, let us reason together." God reasons with us, because he created us to be intelligent and to use our intelligence. Life is not a mystery and neither is God.

So I'd ask, what does the will of God mean to you here and now, in 2021? What does God want of us, of mankind, today, not in theory but in the actual world we live in? There are more than a billion Christians and more than a billion Muslims, and that's not going to change. I'm currently reading a book called The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers which begins in the year 1500, before the "European miracle" in which Europe advanced ahead of the rest of the world. In 1500 the oriental and Muslim empires were roughly equal with the disunited kingdoms of Europe, and in fact what we know in the West as the Middle Ages has been called, from a global perspective, the Age of Chinese Dominance. The long history of Christian and Muslim violence is well-known. I'm thinking for example of the great Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama who burned alive a ship of Muslim pilgrims returning from Mecca. He locked all the men, women and children inside the ship and burned them alive. This is the sort of thing that happens when religion becomes a source of division and rivalry and greed, as if God needs us to fight over Him. As a Muslim, what do you think about the global state of the world today and God's will for it?

Here's a song you might like called "Jerusalem" by an African artist name Alpha Blondy. I believe in Pan-African unity, and you can't have Pan-African unity if you don't have Christian-Muslim unity. All Africans are brothers, it doesn't matter what their religion is, and I believe that Africa is the model for the rest of the world. The unification of Africa will only be possible if Africans show the rest of the world what it means to live as brothers, to "dwell in unity" as the Bible says. This video is a tribute to Jerusalem as the land of the three religions.

From the Bible to the Koran
Revelation in Jerusalem
Shalom!

Salaam Alaikum!

You can see Christians, Jews, and Muslims
Living together and praying

Amen!
Let's gives thanks and praises!

Edited February 26, 2021 by Era Might

[Era Might]

Just saw this interesting essay in the London Review of Books on the idea of the "Muslim World":

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n05/elias-muhanna/reinventing-islam

Five hundred years after Ibn Khaldun’s death, the idea of the caliphate returned – briefly – as a symbol of group feeling among Muslims. Cemil Aydin’s book explores this moment in the late 19th century, when Muslim revivalists and political activists began rallying around the faded office of the caliphate as part of a groundswell of pan-Islamic solidarity. The significance of that moment was enormous: it not only planted the seeds of modern Islamist movements but, Aydin argues, created the very idea of the Muslim world. A standard view of Islamic political history holds that the Muslim world was most vivid as an imagined community during the age of its great medieval empires: afterwards, it gradually weakened until European colonialism shattered it for ever. Aydin thinks this has it ‘precisely backwards’: ‘In fact, Muslims did not imagine belonging to a global political unity until the peak of European hegemony in the late 19th century, when poor colonial conditions, European discourses of Muslim racial inferiority, and Muslims’ theories of their own apparent decline nurtured the first arguments for pan-Islamic solidarity.’ It was the imperial encounter and the reactions it inspired from colonised subjects that created the idea of the Muslim world.

This is a story of the racialisation of religion. During the first half of the 19th century, the main players on the world’s political stage were large, multiconfessional, multiethnic, multilingual empires. Despite their differences, the Ottomans, British, Russians and French were similarly committed to a view of empires as agents of universalist values, engaging with one another as equal partners. Although the 19th century witnessed dozens of wars between these powers, they worked together to maintain the imperial balance and even to legitimise one another through lavish state visits and strategic alliances. The logic of imperial cosmopolitanism trumped ethnic and religious solidarities.

Between the 1820s and 1880s, according to Aydin, something changed. A new ‘consciousness of racial and geopolitical unity and difference’ began to challenge the imperial consensus. Before the 1800s, he suggests, it would have been natural for a French colonial official to regard Muslim subjects within the French Empire as importantly different from the Muslim subjects of the Ottoman Empire: the fact that they shared a faith wouldn’t have led him to assume they belonged to a single racial group or political community. But during the second half of the 19th century, a new political order began to obscure the differences between Muslims from as far apart as Montenegro and Malaysia, India and Egypt, and the idea of a unified global Islam started to coalesce. In the first half of the century, ‘there were no hegemonic and monolithic narratives of Islam versus the West’; by the 1880s, they were everywhere.

The precipitants of this shift are complicated. Perhaps most important was the clamour for independence from Ottoman rule by Greek, Serbian, Romanian and Bulgarian communities. The Balkans had been part of the Ottoman Empire since the mid-16th century, but with the First Serbian Uprising of 1804-13 they began to slip from Istanbul’s grasp. Greece got its independence in 1830; Romania and Bulgaria in 1878. Aydin suggests that Christian liberation movements like these, in the heart of Ottoman Europe, were an inspiration to anti-colonial struggles among Muslim communities elsewhere. The imperial framework would reassert itself – first in the Crimean War, and again during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 – but the Ottoman-Russian War of 1877-78 marked a point of no return. It was the first war to exhibit ‘a full mobilisation of Muslim and Christian identities globally, with the racialised distinction between Muslims and Christians overshadowing imperial logic’. By the early 1880s, Aydin argues, Europeans increasingly saw Muslims as a racial rather than religious group: the descendants of an inferior ‘Semitic’ race. Rather than contesting this racial claim, however, thinkers such as the Syrian scholar and editor Rashid Rida and the Indian jurist Syed Ameer Ali ‘thickened the racial discourse by proudly talking back to an imagined European imperial centre’, adding to a growing literature on medieval Islam’s contributions to science, philosophy and art. In combating the theories of Ernest Renan and other Europeans who held that Islam was fundamentally fanatical and opposed to rational thought, 19th-century Muslim thinkers ‘essentialised Islam and Muslim identity on their own terms’ by conjuring an image of a glorious civilisation that had simply fallen on hard times.

As a political project, pan-Islamism would fail: the solidarity that had developed between Muslims in India, Turkey and Indonesia as a result of the common experience of colonial racism retreated in the years following the First World War. In time, it would be replaced by ideologies such as Third Worldism and pan-Africanism, and of course the rise of nationalism during the period of independence. But its legacy endures, Aydin suggests, and not only in the language of Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood. Even today’s well-meaning efforts by liberals to resist Islamophobia through the promotion of Islam as a tolerant, progressive religion run the risk of essentialising what has never been, historically speaking, a unitary phenomenon. ‘More than Wahhabi and other fundamentalist interpretations of Islam,’ Aydin writes, ‘it was the Muslim-ness constructed in the conversation between European Orientalists and Muslim modernists that created current obsessions with Islamic texts, cut off from a millennium of diverse Muslim religious and political experience.’ In other words, it’s not just the idea of Islam as menace that is problematic: it is the idea of Muslimness as such.

[Era Might]

On 2/26/2021 at 12:47 AM, Ice_nine said:

It does seem fishy but . . . Era is an OG. I actually liked the guy for the most part, from what I knew of him. For that reason alone I don't think that's what he's doing, and if that is what he's doing that would be very sad and (I'm not a doctor but,) indicative of some serious mental issues that I wouldn't find funny.

And I'm only talking about him like he's not in the room because I assume he's probably ignoring my posts at this point. More power to him.

Lol. No, I wasn't having a conversation with myself. I was trying to stoke some conversations with other human beings, and I'm thankful that I succeeded with one person. Otherwise, I realize now that trying to converse with religious people, or about religion or spiritual topics, on the Internet is a waste of time. I'm not a social media user and I haven't been a forum contributor for some years, but I figured I would stick around for a while and try to create some positive vibes. To be honest, all I see on Phatmass is a gathering of the usual suspects, like the diehards who meet after Mass for coffee and donuts. Then you have the zealous and pious and young people who just want to make sure correct doctrine is maintained. And then you have the little cliques and the defenders of the forum against outsiders. And then here and there you have a few good threads that are worth something. But overall, I see nothing on Phatmass worth sticking around for unless you're a pious conservative white Catholic. I agree with @Clean Water that there are some bad vibes here stemming from the orthodoxy and conservative element. I went out of my way to try and stoke some conversation. Within an hour I had a barrage of comments basically just telling me to go away, how I'm creating dummy accounts to bloviate with myself, how I'm spiritually deluded, how I'm whining because nobody wants to join my club. I realize that there's nothing on Phatmass that's going to benefit me in any way, least of all spiritually. And no I'm not whining or complaining that people are mean, I don't live on the Internet, this is not real life and I'm not confused about that, but I'm just giving you some feedback. You people are supposed to be have the True Faith, and if you think Phatmass represents that, then I don't want anything to do with Catholics. And none of this is a criticism of @dUSt, I respect him and he's always been a cool dude, but it's just too cliquish and narrow-minded around here and I don't see any reason to come around anymore.

What I really want to say before I leave is that whatever our failings, God is real and he lives in each and everyone of us, without exception. Everyone has a reason and a season in life, and I hope you all stay happy and healthy and full of the life and love that only the Father can give. Take care!

[Clean Water]

1 hour ago, Era Might said:

Lol. No, I wasn't having a conversation with myself.

We are different people. I'm guessing Mediators of Meh could figure that out with a simple IP check. 

1 hour ago, Era Might said:

I'm not a social media user and I haven't been a forum contributor for some years, but I figured I would stick around for a while and try to create some positive vibes.

You should join Instagram. Follow a couple of the accounts I mentioned. You'll quickly find more and your insight and thoughts will be appreciated. Also it's not a toxic platform as far as dialogue goes like Twitter and Facebook. Definitely more chill.

 

1 hour ago, Era Might said:

To be honest, all I see on Phatmass is a gathering of the usual suspects, like the diehards who meet after Mass for coffee and donuts. Then you have the zealous and pious and young people who just want to make sure correct doctrine is maintained. And then you have the little cliques and the defenders of the forum against outsiders. And then here and there you have a few good threads that are worth something. But overall, I see nothing on Phatmass worth sticking around for unless you're a pious conservative white Catholic.

I think it stems from PM being a Trad website. It just comes with it. Even if PM is progressive on other things like hip hop. And even if it's creators aren't racist. It's just the spirit of that movement that gets attached. The Trad movement longs for the days and times when Blacks and Women had no rights. And it even creeps into non Trad but Conservative movements in the Church. Black Lives Matter was denounced and vilified strongly by both groups. Even though Pope Francis stood with them and offered his support. Go visit Catholic Answers IG or Twitter. There's no forum now so that will have to do. But you have all of these Catholics who hold most of the same views on race and how Black folks should feel and react about last summer. Which is to react like Candace Owens. That's the acceptable response in their opinion. Catholic Answers still gives guys like Steve Ray a platform. He's pushed a bunch of white supremacist garbage after the murder of George Floyd. Trent Horn has come out and said systemic racism doesn't exist. And he's loved for it. Go read Patrick Coffin's posts. It's enough to push a person to the point of wanting nothing to do with Catholics who think this way. I wonder how a guy like Lecrae or someone like him would feel coming across that stuff? Would they even want to consider becoming Catholic? Or if they visit Phatmass and on the front page is an article trashing Amanda Gorman's poetry and saying she's better not in the Church. Along with a bunch of racist undertones and dog whistles in the article. What would they think reading that.

 

1 hour ago, Era Might said:

but it's just too cliquish and narrow-minded around here and I don't see any reason to come around anymore.

I think you should pop in every once and awhile and share your truths. They're needed and you never know who will come across them and have their heart opened up to them. 

1 hour ago, Era Might said:

What I really want to say before I leave is that whatever our failings, God is real and he lives in each and everyone of us, without exception. Everyone has a reason and a season in life, and I hope you all stay happy and healthy and full of the life and love that only the Father can give. Take care!

Amen brother. And please don't ever completely write off the idea of going to Mass. Sit in the back or whatever. But their is spiritual power in Confession and the Eucharist. I also pray the Rosary everyday and have had some cool supernatural/spiritual things happen as a result. God is alive and communicates with us. I know you know this. And I love how you always emphasize he's inside us. Amen.

7 minutes ago, Clean Water said:

And even if it's creators aren't racist.

*its

11 minutes ago, Clean Water said:

But their is spiritual power in Confession and the Eucharist.

*there

 

I have to quote since I can't edit. What a crazy rule lol Not allowing certain posters to edit.

[Peace]

2 hours ago, Era Might said:

 I was trying to stoke some conversations with other human beings,

In your second post you wrote things that are outright disrespectful and false about the Catholic Church. Then when somebody refutes what you wrote you sit back and say "Oh I just wanted to have a pleasant conversation. Stop being so nasty."

This is some passive-aggressive, hypocritical BS.

2 hours ago, Era Might said:

and I'm thankful that I succeeded with one person. Otherwise, I realize now that trying to converse with religious people, or about religion or spiritual topics, on the Internet is a waste of time. I'm not a social media user and I haven't been a forum contributor for some years, but I figured I would stick around for a while and try to create some positive vibes. To be honest, all I see on Phatmass is a gathering of the usual suspects, like the diehards who meet after Mass for coffee and donuts. Then you have the zealous and pious and young people who just want to make sure correct doctrine is maintained. And then you have the little cliques and the defenders of the forum against outsiders. And then here and there you have a few good threads that are worth something. But overall, I see nothing on Phatmass worth sticking around for unless you're a pious conservative white Catholic. I agree with @Clean Water that there are some bad vibes here stemming from the orthodoxy and conservative element.

I went out of my way to try and stoke some conversation. Within an hour I had a barrage of comments basically just telling me to go away, how I'm creating dummy accounts to bloviate with myself, how I'm spiritually deluded, how I'm whining because nobody wants to join my club. I realize that there's nothing on Phatmass that's going to benefit me in any way, least of all spiritually. And no I'm not whining or complaining that people are mean, I don't live on the Internet, this is not real life and I'm not confused about that, but I'm just giving you some feedback.

More "woe is me" hypocritical BS.

All the criticism you received you brought on yourself, with your childish "Please nobody read what Peace wrote or interact with him" post, after I responded to your initial post with a perfectly reasoned reply.

You don't want to have a conversation with anybody. Stop fronting. What you want is "Yes men" who will gleefully join in on your attacks on the Catholic Church. If they do not join in on your attacks, then you whine like a baby and end the conversation. This is exactly why practically the only person you are having a conversation with in this thread is someone ( @Clean Water ) whose first 5 posts on this forum have been 90% negative attacks on the Catholic Church. If someone is not spending 90% of his energy attacking the Catholic Church, you don't want to have a conversation with him.

You are full of ish and everyone knows it.

2 hours ago, Era Might said:

You people are supposed to be have the True Faith, and if you think Phatmass represents that, then I don't want anything to do with Catholics. And none of this is a criticism of @dUSt, I respect him and he's always been a cool dude, but it's just too cliquish and narrow-minded around here and I don't see any reason to come around anymore.

Oh please man you have been saying that you are going to leave Phatmass for 5 years! You will be back in short time with the same BS, and your BS will be refuted. So get on with it.

[Peace]

48 minutes ago, Clean Water said:

I think it stems from PM being a Trad website. It just comes with it. Even if PM is progressive on other things like hip hop. And even if it's creators aren't racist. It's just the spirit of that movement that gets attached. The Trad movement longs for the days and times when Blacks and Women had no rights.

And it even creeps into non Trad but Conservative movements in the Church. Black Lives Matter was denounced and vilified strongly by both groups. Even though Pope Francis stood with them and offered his support. Go visit Catholic Answers IG or Twitter. There's no forum now so that will have to do. But you have all of these Catholics who hold most of the same views on race and how Black folks should feel and react about last summer. Which is to react like Candace Owens. That's the acceptable response in their opinion. Catholic Answers still gives guys like Steve Ray a platform. He's pushed a bunch of white supremacist garbage after the murder of George Floyd. Trent Horn has come out and said systemic racism doesn't exist. And he's loved for it. Go read Patrick Coffin's posts. It's enough to push a person to the point of wanting nothing to do with Catholics who think this way. I wonder how a guy like Lecrae or someone like him would feel coming across that stuff? Would they even want to consider becoming Catholic? Or if they visit Phatmass and on the front page is an article trashing Amanda Gorman's poetry and saying she's better not in the Church. Along with a bunch of racist undertones and dog whistles in the article. What would they think reading that.

Lecrae will think the same thing that he thinks about every other Christian denomination in the US, that She has serious problems with race that need to be addressed. Lecrae has already spoken about having faced racism in white evangelical communities and other Christian communities that he has been part of.

Sure, the Catholic Church has serious issues with respect to race. Let me clue you into something pal, every Christian denomination in the US has serious issues with respect to race. So does every religious group, the atheists, the conservatives, the liberals, the satanists, every large company, and the mom-and-pop store on your corner.

This mythical person who leaves the Catholic Church because She has race issues had better leave the US and go live in the land of milk and honey where race issues do not exist.

[Clean Water]

29 minutes ago, Peace said:

This is exactly why practically the only person you are having a conversation with in this thread is someone ( @Clean Water ) whose first 5 posts on this forum have been 90% negative attacks on the Catholic Church.

Peace be with you Peace. No they haven't. They've been negative against particular trads and the movement itself. The statements regarding facts about Papal Bulls or Bishops not publically calling racism a sin until 1979 are just tough realities. Throughout out my posts I talked positively about Mass, Confession, The Eucharist, and The Rosary.

 

17 minutes ago, Peace said:

This mythical person who leaves the Catholic Church because She has race issues

Didn't say that. Just suggested not dealing with those who hold the views. I praised Pope Francis for standing with BLM and inviting NBA players to the Vatican to talk about the issues. He's on the right path regardless if a bunch of Catholics hate it and tear him down for it. When the Atlanta Hawks posted the video of him receiving the MLK Jersey he received a ton of love from non Catholics. It was great to see.

27 minutes ago, Peace said:

Sure, the Catholic Church has serious issues with respect to race. Let me clue you into something pal, every Christian denomination in the US has serious issues with respect to race. So does every religious group, the atheists, the conservatives, the liberals, the satanists, every large company, and the mom-and-pop store on your corner.

Here's the thing. There's Black voices in the Church who need to be heard. But all we get is Ewtn, Church Pop, ect. The voices that need to be heard are silenced. It's a problem. These voices should be on the forefront. Black Catholic Messenger articles should be on the front page here. Voices who are speaking about these issues should be raised instead of being silenced by guys like Bishop Barron who goes on the Rubin Report complaining about wokeism. He should be publishing Black Catholic articles by guys like Nate instead of rejecting them because it will hurt Word On Fires analytics.