From: hermi@function.mps.ohio-state.edu (Lotfi Hermi)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.arabic,soc.culture.turkish
Subject: Re:  The Question of Culture
Date: 26 Dec 1992 21:53:34 -0500
Organization: Department of Mathematics, The Ohio State University
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: function.mps.ohio-state.edu

Hubey Writes: 


>YOu've lost me here. Which Ibrahim's descendants were Hanafites ?? The
>Ibrahim in the supplication is Abraham (father of Ishak and Ismail).

>Besides that, If you mean one of the four Sunni schools (by
>Hanafites), then you'd probably have more arguments on your hands.
>Hanafites are traditionally known as the more (most) liberal of the
>schools.

Hanif in arabic means puritan,  the Hanafites (before Islam) were the puritans
who used to live in the Arab peninsula and were on the religion of Ibrahim
and Ismail, they revoked the worship of stones.   The hanafite group you are
talking about are related to Abu Hanifah.

You write:

1) Ajam (acem) in Turkish means easterner-colloqually as the word
acemi means a novice in something. Ajam (Acem) also means --in
Turkish, strangely enough--both Persian and non-Arab at the same
time, whereas in Arabic I believe in means 'foreigner'. So now
the Turks are foreigners.

Answer:

In pure linguistics, Ajam means somebody who does not speak the arab language
this applies to all the nations of the world.  However, historically it came
to mean the Iranians, specifically, and to a certain extent, the Turkish people
of central asia.  

You add:

2. Turks were and are still considered in Arabic history as
foreigners who dominated. I'll leave aside the excesive Nasserite
rhetoric, such as calling Turks animals.

Answer:

Not true and I challenge you to produce any schredd of evidence that Arabs
thought Turks as animals, it is the western  dicease and envy that still 
eats your heart and tries to separate the Turks from their natural extention,
the Muslims, and the Arabs with whom they share a good proportion of their 
history.

You write:

Now we clearly have an asymmetric situation. Turks accept Arabs
as people of the book, people of the Prophet, superior to them,
so that they can offer supplication to 'aala aali' of 
Mohammad and Abraham (which still lacks interpretation) while the
Arabs can still refer to Turks as foreigners.

Answer:

I challenge you to produce evidence for such hatred statements, it is 
evident you don't understand neither our deen nor our culture.  Every muslim
arab or ajam says the supplication of benediction to Muhammad and Aal Muhammad
for the bounty that Allah gave them through this prophet.   

You add :
 
CRusaders, the Arab world was divided.  The Turkish slave soldiers
took over parts of the Arab world before the Crusaders came.

Answer: 

Arab never and will never think of Turkish domination as that of a 
foreign force, and I challenge you to produce a shred of evidence from histo-
rical books about that era.  Turks entered Arab politics because they have 
been there through out,  Since the Abbasides.

>And finally, this still says nothing about the original point of
>what the post was about.  Cultural imperialism comes in many forms.

Among which is the spread of lies, and the work of propaganda.

>Great. The hell is also a Middle-Eastern hell. The Greeks' hell
>(Hades) and  I think the Scandanavian  hell was cold.  And heaven 
>is also full of things that lack in the ME-- cool waters, and trees.

Hell has two blows, one in the winter , and one in the summer,  as  reported
in our tradition.  When, you will feel it , you will remember this discussion.

You add:

I think there's a little confusion here. Western culture is certainly
ethnocentric if by culture you  mean only clothes, food, music, poetry
and the like. On the other hand a lot of its products are universal. 
This universality is not dependent on the cultural and geographical
area in which it was developed. It withstands the test of flow of time
and change in geographical space. It is this part of western culture
that  was hegemonistic for a while. And whose fault is that ? The
Ottoman reactionaries refused to take it. Now, it seems a foregone
conclusion, that even the most illiterate priest cannot fight against,
that science is a good idea and is universal. I don't find any other
kind of 'truth' to be as universal as that. Do you ?

Asnwer:

What did it offer to the world, subjugation and dominance.  The French
used to dump their waste and garbage by the Somali shores, while talking 
about the environment, and while the famine was raging there.  As long as
things do not touch their society, things are fine and they talk about 
international achievements... and bla bla bla...

>A simple case in point--interest rates. Do people still expect
>answers to the problems of a modern economy from 7th century
>Arabia--no algebra, no calculus, no machines, no computers
>,no paper money, no nothing.


These are tools that people use to serve their ideal, be it eastern or 
western, be it local or universal, be it religious, or secular...etc.  I guess
you don't know that the ground for the Western cultural revolution of the 
middle ages were but a continuation of the Work of Muslim spain.  But I guess
your hatred to all what is Islamic, and every thing that has a flavor from
the Arabic culture is abviously void from your thinking.   For me this 
discussion is over, for I have better things to do in life.  

Lotfi



Newsgroups: soc.culture.arabic