[lbo-talk] Islam and Muslims (was Doug and Islam)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 3/17/07, Carl Remick <carlremick at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu>
> >
> >... I'd just read a review of a new collection
> >of McCabe's work, which I'll append to suggest that it isn't all a
> >"bucketload of mumbojumbo"
>
> >       Herbert McCabe, Faith within Reason, ed. Brian Davies
> >       (London: Continuum, 2007), 173 pp.
> >       Reviewed by Kim Fabricius
> >
> >... This, in short, is McCabe's take on the prodigal son as he comes to his
> >senses. "The rest of the story is not about the father forgiving his
> >son, it is about the father celebrating.... This is all the real God
> >does, because God, the real God, is just helplessly and hopelessly in
> >love with us. He is unconditionally in love with us." ...
>
> Gee, what a lovable lug God is after all!  Knowing the Almighty is such a
> Mr. Softie deep inside makes me forget all about cancer, Alzheimer's
> disease, birth defects, Guinea worm disease, etc., etc.
>
> If this isn't a bucketload of mumbojumbo then I don't know my mumbojumbo.

The only people who take deep interest in theology are atheists and
religious professionals such as theologians, religion studies
scholars, and some of the more learned clerics.  For the other
believers, especially the poor, who are of interest to us, theology is
not the point.  Community and service (across the political spectrum)
and collective liberation (on the left side of it) are the point.  As
Marxism in practice has ceased to be an ideology of liberation and has
instead become an ideology of progressive capitalist development minus
transition to socialism in many countries (with some exceptions such
as Cuba, Nepal, and Venezuela), the poorer half of the world are
likely to turn to religion more than ever.
-- 
Yoshie