>How nice to have Charles dredging up old posts
just to trash me.
>Thanks ever so much.
>Two comments.
Yeah, one month is ancient history now, right?
>1). Is it sensible to say that Calvinism was
created by secret agents of >capitalist elites
and therefore is not a real religious current?
Or would it be >more sensible to say that
capitalism and Calvinism interacted in a way
that >produced a specific variant of Protestant
Christianity? Plug in Wahhabism >here.
Are the implied answers of your rhetorical questions in anyway necessarily contradictory? Certainly the Cromwellian English supported Calvinists on the continent. It's one reason Milton wrote so much. One of the Islamic scholars I cited didn't limit discussion of secret agents or empire games but explicitly made the parallel between Wahhabism and British Calvinism in an historically informed discussion. I think there is something to the idea that Wahhabism has appealed to those furthering British and American interests in the ME because of religious and philosophical reasons.
>2). Citing theological arguments from versions
of Islam that consider >Wahhabism a heresy is a
good way to find conspiratorial allegations, but
>hardly a sound research methodology. I can find
Protestant websites that >call the Catholic
Church the Whore of Babylon and Satan's agents
on earth. >So what?
I think theology is about as legitimate at sociology myself--but then I'm an anti-social science agonostic.
>I understand that Wahhabism is unpopular among
most Muslims. We have >discussed this on the
list. It is discussed in my web page collection
on the >subject. Please do not strain so hard to
crush the gnat of my opinions. >They are just opinions.
But your response to Joanna was so ungenerous and unfair that I felt compelled to write something to re-confirm just how little you do know or are willing to share.
Charles Jannuzi
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