Listening to the lovely bells of Winchester, one of our great mediaeval cathedrals. So much nicer than the aggressive-sounding “Allahu Akhbar.” Or is that just my cultural upbringing? pic.twitter.com/TpCkq9EGpw
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) July 16, 2018
Yes asshole, obviously it is indeed your cultural upbringing. Or at least the bigoted cultural aspects you’ve consumed and, at times, vomit into the ether.
The comparison itself is disingenuous as fuck. Church bells are far more analogous to the Islamic call to prayer than someone saying something in an aggressive manner. I suppose he could actually be referring to that, but it really doesn’t matter – the point of the tweet was to trigger the snowflakes and do a little Islam bashing.
Maybe it’s the more open-minded portions of my cultural upbringing talking, but I very much enjoyed the Adhan when I heard it in Turkey and Egypt. Or, maybe I’m just a sniveling SJW that’s too much of a coward to denigrate Islam and embrace my superior Judeo-Christian heritage.
Whatever, fuck Richard Dawkins.
It was egg-frying hot in Jeddah but I opened the windows of my hotel room at the appointed time and watched the sun come up as the muezzin called the faithful to prayer. The echoes of his voice really brought it down to me: I was in arabia. It was beautiful and haunting and I wanted to know what he was singing. Later, I asked my point of contact if he could explain and he said simply and gently, “it is not for you.”
Americans are fighting over whether it’s OK for a football player to kneel during the national anthem, and Richard Dawkins is still an asshole. Neither of those surprises me. I am surprised to learn that Dawkins is still a going concern. Does anyone give a shit what he thinks? Why?
If I recall correctly the christofacists ring their fucking bells at set times, to call the faithful to prayer and to show dominance. The Muezzin is better.
I’m inclined to think this bigot should listen to “Kyrie: Call to Prayer” (video (alternative audio, from the recording, which I recommend !)), from David Fanshawe’s African Sanctus: “A key moment in the conception of African Sanctus came at the beginning of Fanshawe’s 1969 journey, in Egypt. Sitting in a Christian church he heard the muezzin of a nearby mosque calling the faithful to prayer, and imagined this beautiful sound in counterpoint with Western choral harmony.”
Disclaimer: I’ve met Mr Fanshawe (who sadly died eight years ago). Really nice guy.
Very cool, thanks for sharing!
blf@#3:
I’m inclined to think this bigot should listen to “Kyrie: Call to Prayer”
Damn. That lead-in sends chills down my spine.
Dawks science advocacy is good. His general confronting of religious conformity and privellege is good. Outside that not so good.
This one is particularly silly. “I like the religious culture I grew up with and not that other nasty muslim one”. Ugh.
First of all, people living next to churches often find church bells ringing to be fucking aggressive.
Second, yeah, asshole, it’s not just your upbringing, it’s also you, personally, deciding at every point in your life to be a western chauvinist instead of approaching other cultures with a sense of open mindedness, a desire to understand and to learn.
Really, I’m grateful for my parents bringing me up in such a spirit, even though their approach wasn’t without some well-meaning Orientalism and appropriation.
Funny enough, I was able to work through those parts and come to a wider understanding of cultures. Probably because I wasn’t convinced that I know more about those people than they know themselves.
For religious songs that send chills up the spine, may I recommend Yasmin Levy’s version of the “Keter” prayer from the Jewish liturgy?
Yasmin Levy is always recommended.
One of the most hauntingly beautiful moments in my life was rolling into a misty coach station in Istanbul at 4am as the dawn call to prayer broke out. Ethereal voices echoing through the dark and the fog, calling me into an alien city and promising mystery and adventure.
One of the more interesting cross-cultural experiences I have had in my long life happened in February several years ago on the topside deck of a Nile River cruise ship waiting to pull away from the dock in Luxor, Egypt. As the evening call to prayer was heard from the local mosque, Kenny G playing ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ was heard coming from the speakers lining the deck. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect.
The deluded scientist Richard….
How could some of the scientists permit themselves to make a claim that would necessitate knowledge as extensive as the scheme of the universe, when their knowledge of the total scheme of being is *close* to zero, when confronted with a whole mass of unknowns concerning this very earth and tangible, lifeless matter, let alone the whole universe?
Do scientific discoveries and knowledge cause such a scientist to conclude that matter, *unknowing and unperceiving*, is his creator and that of all beings?
Some people regard matter as independent and imagine that it has itself gained this freedom and elaborated the laws that rule over it. But how can they **believe** that hydrogen and oxygen, electrons and protons, should first produce themselves, then be the source for all other beings, and finally decree the laws that regulate themselves and the rest of the material world?
What is called science by the *science-worshippers* of the present age and regarded by them as equivalent to the sum total of *reality*, is simply a collection of laws applicable to a single dimension of the world. The result of all human effort and experimentation is a body of knowledge concerning a minute bright dot comparable to the dim light of a candle-surrounded by a dark night enveloping a huge desert of indefinite extent.
All praise is due to ALLAH, the Lord of the Universe.
For further research – click >>> http://www.al-islam.org/god-and-his-attributes-sayyid-mujtaba-musawi-lari/lesson-3-god-and-empirical-logic