“This world itself exists by reason of a mystery, and the name for the mystery, for the cause of this being of the world, of which man is a component, is referred to as ‘God.'”
“This world itself exists by reason of a mystery, and the name for the mystery, for the cause of this being of the world, of which man is a component, is referred to as ‘God.'”
“Out of the misty sea of myth, questions emerge; chaos arises… Only gradually can all these meanings of the uniqueness of being be developed.”
A conflict so complex and all-encompassing that the two sides can be said to operate from “different interpretations of reality” may be somewhat simplified, at least as a matter of speech, if, setting aside for now any claims as to whose reality is more real or nearly real, we presume that both ideologies represent or emanate from distinct and comprehensive politico-religious worldviews, in other words are based on different creeds, and that both the problem and any solution must therefore be syncretic.
As far as I know, there is no single prophet of anismism, and that lack of a prophet may be appropriate if not inevitable to this particular anti-ideological ideological stance. If there could be such a prophet, however, Anandamayi Ma on first glance seems to fill that role well, which is to say incompletely and therefore completely, paradoxically and therefore simply, because her anismism extended crucially to the question or her own existence as a self.
The religious affiliation of no religious affiliation among the so-called Nones may amount to a kind of popularized phenomenology or ambulatory deconstruction, the realized impossibility of the declaratory faith, potentially an actuality of belief independent of whatever verbal reduction or sign, if also potentially a condition of incoherence, of chaos not system, moral infantilization rather than advancement.
In Egypt, what Hussein Ibish calls “accommodation” would for Islamists, as well as for the felool, equate with capitulation, under the longer term prospect of extinction. This prospect is deemed intolerable, just as the proposed or traditional “accommodations” of liberal or other minority aspirations under Islamist or nationalist-authoritarian regimes may be perceived as intolerable to those “accommodated.”
Hussein Ibish sees the workings of a master plot, not quite the same as a the plot of a mastermind, in Morsi’s Egyptian maneuvers. Yet the strengths of Ibish’s criticism undermine themselves: The picture of Egypt that emerges – of the real Egypt rather than the Egypt of liberal aspirations – is of a nation dominated by non-liberal forces, in which the primary negotiations are effectively two-sided, between the forces of the nationalist-military deep state and of the Islamists.
On, appropriately enough, July 4 of this year, via Twitter as @hhassan140, Hassan Hassan (“HH” below) offered a provocative summary of an article on Islamists and the Arab Spring by Hussein Ibish (@ibishblog, “HI”). A colloquy between Hassan, Ibish, and myself (“CM”) ensued, its terms anticipating the same arguments, and the same situation, that informed that tweet of Hassan’s at the head of my “1st Précis.”