Long ago, back in the good old days, to be Christ-like you had to deny sex, marriage, and family. While many see the portrayals of Christ as closeted gay, he was more likely celibate. Christianity was antimarriage, procelibacy. Modern Christians claiming a family position are deviating from the first several hundred years of the church as well as the bible–the old testament is where it says to be bountiful, a barren women is a curse, and the man must perform his sexual duties and not spill his seed onto the ground. Kristen Upson-Saia a scholar of early christianity writes:

The earliest Christian communities considered heterosexual marriage to be fraught with problems and was thus to be avoided. Christian leaders argued that married people were too distracted by their familial obligations to be wholly devoted to God. Rather, they argued that the ideal sexual state for Christians was celibacy. They asserted that since the angels in heaven were asexual, Christians ought to remain single in order to live on earth already “as angels.” They believed that Jesus would commend single and celibate Christians for “making themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:10-12). Finally, given that God’s nature was virginal (literally “uncorrupted”), they claimed that Christian virgins shared God’s very nature and were thus best able to commune with God.

This base of celibacy is common to many religions including Buddhism, Brahmanism, Hindu Ascetics, and Greek Cynics. By the time Christ came along, the mideast had been ravished of most of its natural resources and issues of population were common. Being antipagan meant going against the Roman law to have family.

Although the most dedicated Christians remained unmarried, heterosexual marriage and intercourse was tolerated in some cases. For those who could not control their lust, marriage absorbed their sexual impulses, keeping them from committing worse sexual sins. (Note here that marriage is defended not as a “good,” but as better than other evils.) One of the only reasons to regard marriage as inherently good was that it produced children and that Christians who participated in procreative intercourse participated in God’s creation.

Yes, that would be the backdoor to sex; you don’t have to be celibate because if you procreate you participate in god’s creation. Hmm, sounds like Rastafarianism where they believe making love to one women is like making love to all women and so they’d like to. Also, a great way to guilt and shame as control–guilt that men lust and shame to women as seductress. Asceticism and celibacy are a response to the wanton material acquisition of populations gone awry to depletion of resources and resulting hardship–at which point you either go to war or starve. As humans go we haven’t learned how to live in balance with resource.

In Samuel, Old Testament, Amnon rapes his half sister. Old order semites were more then lustful but rather embarrassingly rapacious. Ultraorthox antisexuality is another withdrawal from the world

It was not Christians, but the pagan state that labored hardest to defend marriage. The poor conditions of life in the ancient Mediterranean made for regular population crises (each woman needed to have approximately five children to maintain a stable population). Thus, the state regularly incentivized marriage and procreation. Emperor Octavian (aka Caesar Augustus), for instance, introduced three waves of legislation that rewarded married people with children (e.g., with tax incentives, expanded rights and released obligations) and penalized the unmarried (e.g., taking away rights of inheritance or rights to hold office). Similarly, small tribes within the Roman Empire also prized procreation for the perpetuity of their line. This explains why tribes like the Jews endorsed sexual arrangements that maximized procreation (such as polygamy and Levirate marriage), lamented barren women and denounced all non-procreative behavior (including same-sex coupling).

A “History of Private Life, Revelations of the Medieval World:”

Ideally a women divided their time between prayer and various kinds of handiwork… Yet all the prayer and all the work (group activities, much as males hunted and made war in groups) did nothing to appease the men, persuaded as they were that women were by their very nature perverse and possessed with fantastic anxieties. What, men asked, do women do together when they are alone, locked up in the chamber? The answer was: nothing good.

While I could tease a lot of meaning from this, for now, the point is the development of honor and preservation of virginity precisely because of men’s paranoia that women would be promiscuous. Promotion of sex for procreation only helped keep women in place while men could philander. And both, ideally avoided joyful pursuits whether nonreligious singing or frivolous dancing. Christians have this in common with Muslims. This antiworldy, antisexual, and constant cloistering of women is historic for both Christianity and Islam.

Alexander Sanger writes it is American protestants (WASPs as we used to call them) that reacted to Irish Catholics arriving in the US and decided to preserve WASPdom by criminalizing abortion.

Physicians alone were not able to bring about the criminalization of abortion. At the beginning of their campaign in the 1840s and 1850s, they aligned themselves with the Know-Nothings, a fledging political party of nativists opposed the tide of Irish-Catholic immigration into America, which had begun to increase exponentially with the potato famine…

It did not escape Protestant notice that immigrant Catholic women had large numbers of children, while native Protestant women were having fewer. Since few new birth control methods had been introduced at this time — although there were the beginnings of condom and diaphragm manufacturing — the Know-Nothings suspected that Protestant women were using abortion as their method of birth control. Hence, the Know-Nothing men readily joined the AMA crusade to criminalize abortion. As contraceptive options increased in the course of the 19th century, those who favored the white Protestant hegemony also supported the criminalization of contraception. As one prominent physician said in 1874: “The annual destruction of fetuses has become so truly appalling among native American (Protestant) women that the Puritanic blood of ’76 will be but sparingly represented in the approaching centenary.”

Ever since Catholics arrived at St Mary’s on the East coast, protestants have feared their US imposition of power–the reformation and counter reformation are still held dear. The secular, religious tolerance of John F Kennedy has much to do with his running for presidency as a Catholic. Upson-Saia concludes rightly.

Given this history, those who wish to appeal to tradition to comment on same-sex marriage must recognize two things: First, Christians who cull the tradition of Christian sexual ethics cannot seize only those aspects of the tradition that support their opposition of same-sex coupling while leaving behind other aspects of the tradition that criticize their own heterosexuality. If one wants to uphold the strand of pro-procreative logic in the early Christian tradition, she must recognize that the tradition requires her also to oppose all other forms of non-procreative sex acts that are performed only for pleasure, including those of married heterosexual couples, and to endorse sexual arrangements that maximize procreation (such as polygamy and marriage at a young age). Moreover, she must also acknowledge that early Christians considered heterosexual marriage and intercourse to be far inferior to Christian celibacy and in need of its own defense.

Second, the pro-heterosexual marriage stance of the Roman state was driven by issues of demographics, not morality. And while we’ll soon see what the court understands to be the state’s interest in the allocation of marriage rights, it’s surely the case that our state faces none of the same pressures regarding under-population as did Roman backers of heterosexual marriage in antiquity.

Once again material culture relates to antiquated ideology. The material reason disappears but the ideology remains and is held fast as absolute.

Jim Newman, bright and well

www.frontiersofreason.com

Cristina Rad has a great video on rape in Islam. First she notes that it is getting less politically correct to bash Islam on Youtube and then she notes there are conservative groups that bash Islam but their true hatred is racism of people who are brown.

She quotes a radical moderate that insists, using one verse, that “men are not allowed to inherit women against their will” and hence if you truly believe you won’t force women to do anything. Rad shows this phrase is in the context of dead relatives; it is not about rape in general but within the family. She then quotes the Koran allowing the rape of captives and then shows a video stating the Mohammed said a women must not refuse a man in the bed even if she is  by the stove. He then states that husband can never rape a wife by definition.

She follows up with a quote where Mohammed says women are fields which can be seeded by men as they will. Men can legally rape their wives. Most of us have heard that Muslims must follow the conduct of Mohammed. He married a 6 year old and consummated it at 9 or 10. Liberals and conservatives alike claim that early marriage was more the norm. They also quote how girls come to first menstruation more early in modern industrialized society, which means a 9 year old was far more likely to be prepubescent. Any society, old or recent, that cares for women and babies knows you should not have sex and you should not have children when you first have biological capability. Not to mention the horrors of a women having to submit to a husband generally and the utter power differential of a child versus an adult.

Jim Newman, bright and well

www.frontiersofreason.com

Not wanting to evidence bias I had denied that Jihad was the ideology behind the Boston bombing. I was wrong. It is too easy to blame every act of terrorism on Islam and the Koran. It is also important not to guess until you know and I was dismayed at the fear other apparent mid easterners had to take on as anger was generalized to the innocent; just looking swarthy made you suspect. And yes, I am being sensitized by liberals that claim we are islamophobic. In this case it was a personal Jihad and not attached to a terrorist organization. It is also true that terrorist regimes tell potential members to carry out Jihad on their own, free from attachment to any group. Jihad has always meant religious war, it is fundamentally violent.

CNN and AP report that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was shot multiple times, and suffered a throat injury, wrote to investigators that he and the elder Tamerlan were self-radicalized and carrying out a jihad against perceived enemies of Islam. Presumably, that would be America.

Since the Koran is filled with so much fascism it would be better to say peaceful Muslims are radical and these killers are fundamentalists. We hippies used to be called radicals and it had nothing to do with violence but the distance from the accepted cultural ideology of the time. Perhaps, I am putting too fine  a point on it.

Salon wrote a year ago, “Five Atheists Who Ruin it for Everyone Else,”  that more people are killed by lightning than terrorists. It listed Sam Harris, Bill Maher, Penn Jillette, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and SE Cupp as the ruinous atheists.

Most grating, for someone who wrote a book titled The Moral Landscape, Harris’ “War on Islam” zealotry is numerically unjustifiable. You’re four times as likely to die of a lightning strike than you are from a terrorist attack, and yet this constitutes the gravest threat to Western civilization, but 100,000 (at least) civilian casualties in Iraq is mere fodder for thought experiment apologia.

What the quoted Reason article covered were Americans killed in this country and Americans killed abroad. What Harris is talking about is all people in the world and the growing menace that will come to the states if Jihad is left unchecked. It is the words of the Koran that direct and inspire Jihad and it is the kind temperance of radical Muslims that insist that Islam is peace, albeit submissive peace.

Jim Newman, bright and well

www.fromntiersofreason.com

Turkey is trying to enter the EU and has difficulty with its secular governance run by a fundamentalist Muslim prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

First, let’s not use the word extremist anymore as fundamentalist is more correct; an extremist would say, meh, you have no need to be Islamic, criticism leads to wisdom, no need to submit to authority; an extremist might say Mohammed says people should be free to do what is right in their hearts, women must be in control of their bodies, education is more important than obedience; an extremist would say the Koran can mean many things to many people and they are all true paths to virtue as no one can read it and not be moved correctly. So many kinds of extremism but to be more true to Islamic verse is to be more fundamental.

A fundamentalist looks at their sacred text as pure, without error; insists that deviation is misinterpretation; insists that one must submit and that submission is essential for all; does not allow for criticism as a path to wisdom; ensures that education supports the fundamentals.

But I have come to praise Fazil Say, a brilliant pianist who is emotive and technical, a rare combination. As bound, a pianist can be technical or emotive. The implication being you can play the piece exactly or take some liberties to get the feeling across. Some pianists are sloppy expressive like Horowitz, some are expressive and accurate like Rubinstein, and some are caricatures of pop fantasy pornography like Liberace. Russians like Richter were often strong and yet expressive, able to thunder on the keys and yet soften in an agonizing expression of restrained, even tortured, emotion.

It takes tremendous discipline to insist on playing a piece well, precisely, and yet expressively, as the temptation is to either follow the music exactly or to play with improvisation either with more heart or more speed. Understanding what the composer meant is often key but can feel confining. At some point a brilliant pianist goes into the head of the composer and seems to channel the music. To play a Liszt piece as if it were Chopin or vice versa loses the piece.

It sounds exacting and seems antithetical to Jazz but musicians who improvise well immediately get what it means to be in the groove and can instantly assess another musician whether they are getting it or not. These flights of apparent fantasy nevertheless have their rules and constraints. In the same sense a poet can be liberated or confined by the structure of the verse; a painter freed or chained by their media; a writer let loose by grammar or expressive in transgression.

Artists often express what is to be in the future. They have a sense of what is going on that is often intuitive and yet effable. They speak to us without overt conversation. They are dangerous in they appeal to us without explanation. Plato wished to control the music of the people because he knew its powers of persuasion without premise. Music, a great art, is Circean, an unabashed enchantment of the spirit that suspends conventional morality. For this, fundamentalist Islam does not allow nonreligious music into their hearts and minds, condoning arabesques and geometric patterns but no more.

Fazil Say is not alone says the sign. Fazil Say has gotten in trouble for tweeting:

… Say joked about a call to prayer that he said lasted only 22 seconds. Say tweeted: “Why such haste? Have you got a mistress waiting or a raki on the table?” Raki is a traditional alcoholic drink made with aniseed. Islam forbids alcohol and many Islamists consider the remarks unacceptable.

… The charges against Say also cite other tweets he sent, including one – based on a verse attributed to famous medieval poet Omar Khayyam – that questioned whether heaven was a tavern or a brothel, because of the promises that wine will flow and each believer will be greeted by virgins.

A citizen complained:

Emre Bukagili, a citizen who filed the initial complaint against Say, said in an emailed statement that the musician had used “a disrespectful, offensive and impertinent tone toward religious concepts such as heaven and the call to prayer”

Say received a sentence which was suspended but if he criticizes again in five years will lose the suspension. Turkey is a confused state wishing to be secular and yet wishing to be Islamic. Turkey borders East and West.

Turkey has a history of prosecuting its artists and writers, and the EU has long encouraged the nation to improve freedom of speech if it wants to become a member of the bloc.

Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk has been prosecuted for his comments about the mass killings of Armenians under a law that made it a crime to insult the Turkish identity before the government eased that law in an amendment in 2008.

In 2007, ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, who received death threats because of his comments about the killings of Armenians by Turks in 1915, was shot dead outside his office in Istanbul.

If I have heard the Moonlight Sonata once I have heard it a thousand times.  It is a rapture of a piece that has long called to me. I heard it played on a beautiful German, clear-coated, Mahogany Steinway that sailed to America with us in 1961–where I would fall asleep in the back underneath–its redolent soundboard above me, a mixture of wood, finish, metal, dust, and the floor beneath me. Soon I heard the piece misplayed, as it was being learned, by so many students who loved it that it took on a caricature of its own

Say plays it beautifully. Every note has a depth, is never rushed, and has a beginning middle and end. A kind of expression that is given care to plying the maximum range of sound from the action of a hammer striking, caressing, cloying the string. Every note tells the story. It is indeed like the moon that casts a light on a darkened world mixed with sight and cloaking. The darkness beguiles in its cover and the moon teases glimpses.

Ludwig Rellstab hailed it as the light of the moon on Lake Lucerne–hence the name attributed later.  Berlioz said of it that it “is one of those poems that human language does not know how to qualify.” Beethoven, exasperated at its popularity, said ”Surely I’ve written better things.” It is an introduction that leaves one lingering.

Eric Henderson plays it on guitar. It feels rushed. The notes don’t linger on the ear. The limits of the guitar require a near-brutish emphasis on vibrato that introduces a phrasing and rhythm.

As contrast to show the range of a guitar, I found Segovia’s cover of Villa Lobos Prelude #3 (couldn’t find Moonlight) where you can hear how a guitar note can be its own story.

Here is a fantastic version by ThePianoGuys. It takes the reflection and makes it into a celebration, a playfully intense journey into light.

Classicists used to worry that their music would die and yet it has been brought live, refreshed, revigorated.

It would be a crime against humanity to imprison a brilliant pianist simply because he makes remarks critical to a fundamentalist Islamic regime that has lost touch with beauty and humankind.

Jim Newman, bright and well

www.frontiersofreason.com

Imam Feisal Rauf is being sued for fraud.

The imam and former spiritual leader of an Islamic community center and mosque near ground zero is accused in a new lawsuit of defrauding donors to his nonprofit organizations of millions of dollars, using the money for personal real estate, lavish trips and a luxury sports car.

Rauf denies.

In a statement, Mr. Abdul Rauf and his wife, Daisy Khan, an officer at the two organizations, said that they “emphatically deny the allegations contained in that lawsuit.”

Nevertheless.

Mr. Deak said in the suit that he donated $167,000 between 2006 and 2008 to a project to combat anti-Muslim sentiment. Instead, the suit alleges, Mr. Abdul Rauf used the money for entertainment and other personal purposes.

The lawsuit also accuses the organizations of not reporting on their tax returns approximately $3 million that the Malaysian government donated to the two organizations. Instead, according to the suit, that money was also taken by Mr. Abdul Rauf for his personal use.

You have to wonder at the intent of Rauf. Was he sincere in desiring to improve relations and just stupidly committed fraud or is he generally slimy?

In 2010, Mr. Abdul Rauf was the public face of the Islamic center in Lower Manhattan that was to be built several blocks from the site of the Sept. 11 attack. He left the project in January 2011, amid tensions with its co-founder, the real estate developer Sharif El-Gamal, who owned the former coat store at 51 Park Place where the 13-story center was planned.

The state department sent him abroad.

The imam’s two nonprofit organizations are dedicated to educating the public about Islam and improving relationships between Muslims and people of other faiths. Mr. Abdul Rauf has been sent on speaking tours of the Middle East sponsored by the State Department.

I have to wonder at the sincerity of the mosque in the first place. It seemed, though legal, in incredibly bad taste. If I wanted to improve relations with other faiths I wouldn’t build a center for worship but rather a public museum of education, philosophy, and philanthropy. Building  a place of worship emphasizes the disparity and difference rather than community, sharing, and exploration.

One also has to wonder if Islam is a totalizing and successful moral religion how this happens.

Jim Newman, bright and well