Another Muslim cracks due to psychological strain—this time a Saudi—and kills someone. As of yet, there’s no great hullabaloo in the media or blogs about it being the actions of a crypto-jihadi. I guess we can be grateful for that…
As Arab News reports, Abdulsalam Al-Zahrani was a doctoral student in cultural anthropology. Other reports, as this one from The New York Times, say that he was under enormous financial pressure, failing to get financial aid to conduct his doctoral field research, and panicking as a result. He sought to change his department—a rather desperate move at the doctoral level—if it would lead to financial assistance. The fact that Al-Zahrani is being charged with second-degree murder. that is murder with no premeditation, and suggests that authorities are accepting that this was the action of someone who simply lost it. That’s little consolation for the professor who was killed, his family, and the university.
Saudi student accused in US professor’s murder
Barbara Ferguson | Arab NewsWASHINGTON: A graduate student from Saudi Arabia was charged on Saturday with killing a retired anthropology professor, a specialist in Islamic and Middle Eastern studies with whom he had worked.
Abdulsalam Al-Zahrani, 46, a native of Saudi Arabia studying for a doctorate in cultural anthropology, was charged with second-degree murder, and is being held without bail after a brief arraignment.
Al-Zahrani allegedly pulled out a six-inch kitchen knife and stabbed Richard Antoun, 77, an emeritus professor of anthropology and peace activist, four times in the chest in the professor’s campus office Friday.
The two knew each other through the anthropology graduate program.
On Sunday, members of the Islamic community gathered in Johnson City to remember Antoun and to denounce the act of violence that took his life.
…
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December:08:2009 - 09:55
Peace activists always seem to go out by being attacked by some psycho.
“Kopuz said Antoun was scheduled to participate in a seminar on Sunday at Temple Israel in Vestal, exploring Christianity, Judaism and Islamic days of rest and other aspects of religious practice.”
Perhaps Al-Zahrani was jealous that he had lost funding to more enlightened ideas. Gee I wonder why he lost funding. Somethings it doesn’t take more than two seconds to say. I second the notion!
December:08:2009 - 12:34
This is what you get when you bring in those garbage to states. I am an immigrant and I have lived with muslims for a long time. We are all infidels in their eyes no matter how good you are to them they will come and bite you. US will wake up when something big really happens.
December:08:2009 - 14:46
It takes a special kind of hate to kill somebody with a knife. That type of attack is much more personal than standing back and pulling a trigger from a distance. The upstate New York Islamic community now has another knife-wielding-muslim mess to clean up. While I feel for this professor and his family, I also feel for the local Muslims and the task at hand that they face.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/02/16/buffalo.beheading/index.html
December:08:2009 - 15:01
From the NYT article:
“It’s tragically ironic that he would fall victim to someone who had been paranoid and delusional about his identity,” Dr. Straight said. “Dick had spent his whole life trying to understand people and their identities.”
Hmmm. Not sure what he is basing that on, or whether he is just trying to make sense of the act in cultural anthropology terms.
The Saudi was apparently highly regarded, and his actions mourned as “one of our own”. Funding for the fieldwork portion of his studies, to be conducted in Dearborn Michigan, could have been not awarded (he didn’t actually lose funding in that sense) because of the political (as in internal politics of granting agencies and disciplines).
Changing departments at that level is not common but happens for a variety of reasons between overlapping departments as these 2 are: wanting to change superviser, wanting to shift the topic, wanting to take the topic in a different direction, funding, future job prospects, bonking the chair’s wife (happened to a classmate–he found a departmental home in a related department, where his course work would be crediteed).
December:08:2009 - 15:15
I find it odd that the reporter chose to publish interviews from the mosque where the suspect never went and Muslims whom he never associated with rather than his family and fellow grad students in the same department. Why give this story an “Islam” twist at all?
December:08:2009 - 15:31
Chiara, your classmate sounds lucky. Many profs refuse to take grad students from another department, citing the principle, “He’s your problem!”
Forty-six is pretty old to be a grad student, and starting dissertation research over again at that age, even if you can gather a new committee, must be extremely painful. The years – even decades – spent seeking a particular degree may seem utterly wasted, and treatment by profs of the student can appear unjust. The wonder is that we only hear of such an incident in the U.S. every couple of years, not every month or so.
December:08:2009 - 16:24
Solomon2–I agree that there is a hunt for a non-existent Islamic twist in this. It is rather more related to graduate studies, how they are funded and especially what that means in the US (where lack of certain types of funding also means no health insurance, no access to social services, etc). More often grad students simply abandon studies that would have done a lot of good, or commit suicide. Homicides are rare but happen. As in the case of junior faculty Valery Fabrikant at Concordia University who killed his department Chair and other colleagues, whose accusations of research fraud, and poor treatment were true, although the choice of response inappropriate, there may be more ethical conflicts to this than meet the eye.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valery_Fabrikant
46 is older to be doing a graduate degree, and few who haven’t done graduate studies as a route to being able to APPLY for an academic position appreciate how stressful this can be.
December:08:2009 - 18:41
1) One of my blog posts is titled, “The Proposed Islamic Conquest of Western Civilization”. How likely is it that you think I would ignore pursuing an “Islamic twist” to a story if I thought there was some merit in it?
2) Hey, Concordia is Canadian, not American!
3) …although the choice of response inappropriate, there may be more ethical conflicts to this than meet the eye.
What, in your opinion, would have been an “appropriate response” by Fabrikant?
December:08:2009 - 19:11
I don’t see any Islamic angle. There may be but so far it is just one evil / unbalanced person doing bad things. We will probably get more info in the next few days. We had all better stay away from educational institutions – lots of murders lately even in Ivy League schools (yale, harvard, etc…). Just a few days ago at ASU (Arizona) a student shot himself during a meeting with a professor. I have had a some distant contact with Academia, and their egos are big and petty, and the fights can be fierce, but usually they just throw sharp words at each other. The money, scholarship, and /or jobs aspect is difficult to understand. Millions of college students at all levels are having these serious issues without killing others. Unless the killer explains himself (if he can), we may never know what happened in those last few minutes. This was a tragedy, for sure.
December:08:2009 - 20:12
Solomon2
1) No. I fully trust you to leave no Islamic twist unturned, which is why I thought we were in agreement on this one–seems like no Islam was involved, just a severe case of grad studentitis.
2) Yes! We have unis in the great north strong and free! I think the analogy holds, in the spirit of Academia, North Americanness, and even Nafta (trust me it had an impact on academia).
3) A more appropriate response would have been to resist the temptation for what still seems to him to be justifiable homicide. He would have been better to take a position elsewhere in Montreal (McGill, UQAM, U de Montreal), nearby in Quebec, in the rest of Canada, in the US (You have so many!!!), or anywhere else in the world. That is what most who are on temporary contracts attempt to do, especially if they feel particularly unvalued where they are (more than the usual overworked and underpaid). There are also all kinds of grievance committees, appeals processes, internal legal procedures, etc. Others, when not promoted or successfully tenured, have used a lawyer to have the decision “modified”. Usually they are reassessed the following year (instead of 3 years later), and, lo and behold, found to have made the cut.
December:08:2009 - 22:09
There are also all kinds of grievance committees, appeals processes, internal legal procedures, etc. Others, when not promoted or successfully tenured, have used a lawyer -
Perhaps you are unaware of the wave of “good governance” reforms that invaded many graduate schools in the 1980s and 1990s. Crafted by lawyers specializing in academic affairs, these reforms succeeded in a drastically reducing reported academic conflicts of students, sometimes to zero. University attorneys justified this approach as “protecting the institution”, but it was done by essentially gutting all the procedures you listed or making them unusable to many students, while the appearance of their existence is maintained.
Such graduate students who run into trouble at institutions so afflicted will be treated like poison: they have no place or no body to turn to and no one to inform or advise them; their fellow graduate students are just as befuddled and cannot help them; department heads and advisors won’t speak usefully to them; deans may not have been appointed or may be removed from their posts by higher-ups; university lawyers will explain that their job is to protect the U. so the student must fare for himself; provosts will be unavailable to meet with; duplicate enrollment records may exist, with one showing that student is enrolled for coursework only, not a degree; students may even find that the best academic lawyers off-campus are themselves on retainer from the university and can not help them. Furthermore, it’s not like going to an outside lawyer will earn a penniless graduate student money in the short term, nor force good will upon the people the student needs to guide him to finish his degree. I understand that the final coup de grace is that when the student asks the U. to deliver sealed transcripts to prospective employers, the documents are quite illegible or printed on special paper that cannot be duplicated or scanned, leading to automatic rejection of the applicant by the HR department.
Universities have tread this path before in history, and all such paths go downhill. The student’s only defense seems to be not to enroll in such an institution in the first place, or to depart one that adopts this “good governance” approach at the very first opportunity.
I have no idea if Binghamton U. adopted “good governance” reforms in whole or in part. But if it has, don’t you think Al-Zahrani’s actions may be a little more understandable?
December:08:2009 - 22:36
clean up on aisle 2
December:08:2009 - 22:56
ratherdashing
at aisle 2…maybe only a pickle jar cracked not an entire shelf was dismantled
December:09:2009 - 04:44
This along with the previous discontent about Turki Al Humidan case are being played into the whole conspiracy theme that United States of America and its agencies are fabricating crimes to Saudis.. we have adults playing broken telephone game for journalism and thats not exclusive to Arab/Muslim journalists I guess.
To me it seems like the petty high schooler who assaulted his teacher one day grew up to stab his professor. I hope the investigation would view his records in Saudi files and check if he assaulted an educator before for a disagreement.
December:09:2009 - 07:53
@ sparky,
heh. Where’s the stock boy when you need him?
December:09:2009 - 09:35
@ratherdashing
We don’t need the stock boy. People should clean up their own mess
Rectifiying many things is in order not just an entire reshelving but a brand new interior design
December:09:2009 - 10:25
Marie… I can really tell that you are an immigrant.
December:09:2009 - 12:46
Solomon2–your original question to me was about Fabrikant. His best recourse would have been to seek a position elsewhere, and then pursue legal recourse if necessary. As you pointed out Concordia is in Canada, where we are not generally as litigious as the US and where University governance sounds better than what you describe. I know because I treat students for a living, and also teach theme (grad students mostly in both cases but undergrads too). Grad students are both more vulnerable and better protected that junior professors (whom I also treat).
I never said that Al-Zahrani’s actions were incomprehensible. I do understand them. However, I did say and maintain that he would have had a better outcome with one of a number of other solutions. Even Norman Finkelstein, the brilliant but reviled former grad student now perpetually wandering professor, found enough allies in the system to keep going. That Al-Zahrani didn’t, or didn’t think he had, is tragic all round.
December:09:2009 - 14:52
Perhaps matters have improved in Canada since William Cude wrote The Ph.D. Trap Revisited. (He didn’t get his doctorate because his dept. denied him an Oral.)
I still find it curious that Arab News would seek to put an Islamic twist on something that as far as we can tell doesn’t have one, while ignoring angles that would be relevant. It’s as if Islam was the primary concern, and no other aspect of Al-Zahrani’s life – who with and where he ate meals, the library where he studied, his thesis questions, the opinion of fellow students in his department – mattered one iota, just the possible impact upon a Muslim community that scarcely knew Al-Zahrani existed. Why does Arab News insist upon viewing matters this way?
December:09:2009 - 17:22
I’m not familiar with the book but thanks for the reference. It happens that there are dreadful supervisers but someone else usually steps in and the result is a delay not a homicide.
It also happens that grad students are distracted by life or never should have been grad students despite being very bright and successful undergrads (I see LOTS of those). Or it happens that others, parents, spouses, don’t really want them in grad school, for whatever reason. Right now, one of my best friends is about to NOT get her MSc in Canada, (she has other grad degrees from the State University of Moscow), mostly because she has an evil superviser, she fed into this situation instead of changing as I told her weekly for 9 months until it appeared to be to late to do so without a delay in her studies, then I told her bi-weekly, and then she got married to an American hypochondriacal loaf about (in the name of his art), who encourages her to quit, telling her alternatively she is already qualified (not true) and that she will never get it (not true). He claims he didn’t get his Masters because of his Hitlerian superviser. On the other hand, he is very far from Masters material, bright but not sufficiently research oriented, and too narcissistic to deal effectively with people. His intelligence is more practical than the highly theoretical field he chose to be in. He prefers she stays home, drives him around the city to doctors’ appointments, and 5 minutes walk from their home ot get his Canadian social insurance card (gasp he would have to work then!), and both of them live off her father’s money.
Somehow I think he doesn’t want a wife with an MSc, and given her marks and her national scholarships, one who should be a PhD. Better he should keep her away from the influence of the supportive professors in her department, including the chair, and especially me. Me, because I edit her thesis for her (structure and grammar), teach her the system and how to strategize completion of her thesis even though her prof is being wretched, send her comical, motivating, and occasionally stalinist propaganda notes in Russian, and tell her to finish fast and do a PhD. I am the root of all evil, in other words.
However, if you read the acknowledgments in theses, this is a common story embedded in the “My utmost gratitude to my superviser, Dr X who always held me to a high standard, my wonderful husband, who was my best support, and to my friend who made me laugh and went for coffee”.
About Arab News–maybe Islam in this case is an excuse for his other issues.
December:09:2009 - 23:37
I am very interested in what research Al-Zahrani was doing especially before the HOMICIDE
December:10:2009 - 01:34
I think the Islamic angle is the advertising strategy – a story with an Isamic angle sells widely and brings more audience.
Academic research can indeed become a highly lonely and tension-ridden activity. If one doesn’t get funds, is doing PhD at 46 (which means most probably he was retraining to get a job in the West) and has to carry the additional load of research in a changed department, it can really make one hyperanxious. But normally, even an extreme result would be a psychiatric disorder or suicide and not homicide. I wonder what kind of topic he was working on, if there were ideological diffrences between his professor and him and if there were conflicts based on this which he felt he couldn’t resolve without compromising himself. Having changed the department once, it may not have been easy or possible for him to change again.
December:10:2009 - 10:00
From Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_T._Antoun
which has good references including to the 46 page academic publication by Al-Zarhani as the basis of his thesis:
Antoun served on the three-person doctoral dissertation committee that was to judge al-Zahrani’s dissertation on “Sacred Voice, Profane Sight: The Senses, Cosmology, and Epistemology in Early Arabic Culture”
There are links to the article for those who are interested. So far I have had access to the abstract only which is enough to suggest he is doing interesting work that may not be easily fundable given it highly philosophical nature, the time period and subject matter, and the priorities of funding in Islamic Studies/ Near Eastern Studies/ Anthropology.
Antoun was not his primary superviser, or thesis director but a committee member, so he probably had sought his help previously about his topic, funding and relationship with his primary superviser/thesis director. Sometimes the nicest profs are the most resented when they cannot work a miracle.
The wiki site also has the emails Al-Zarhani sent to Al Watan about an article in the Israeli newspaper Maariv.
December:10:2009 - 11:05
Maybe his stay in the US not all about his ACTUAL RESEARCH and people caught on to that. OR Perhaps in this case he really was schizo because he thought Jordan spies were watching him and he had stated he thought he was being persecuted because he was Muslim.
I don’t see anything wrong with his dissertation title…
Those are just my initial thoughts…
Chiara I didn’t see the email part in wiki. Thanks
December:10:2009 - 11:13
The wiki article perhaps gives some clues. There may be ideological differences between the professor and the student, though he was not this student’s advisor.
December:10:2009 - 11:33
I am certain there are ideological differences!
I was curious about the research. Perhaps people sensed something about this dude. I don’t know really. I do know that people might seriously be persecuted because of their faith, but that is the time they should sink into survival mode and show the world that they are worth something not by violence but by building themselves and others a brighter future.
December:10:2009 - 17:37
Sparky–it is the very last reference, and the last one under External Links.
It goes straight to Googlish aka Google translate to English of his Arabic letter to Al Watan:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ar&u=http://www.watan.com/feature/16247—-q——-q-.html&ei=76saS9bVLo6Vtgeb6qTdAw&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CC0Q7gEwCTgK&prev=/search%3Fq%3DBinghamton%2BAbdulsalam%2BAl-Zahrani%26hl%3Den%26rls%3Dcom.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox%26rlz%3D1I7ADBF_en%26sa%3DN%26start%3D10
December:10:2009 - 17:52
For those who like reading academic papers in Anthropology (on the philosophical end of it) here is the most accessible link to the full paper which is something of a precis of his thesis topic:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/23867750/Sacred-Voice-Profane-Sight-the-Senses-Cosmology-and-Epistemology-in-Early-Arabic-Culture
It is very well written and shows great promise. As I said above sad all round that a better way out of his distress wasn’t found.
December:10:2009 - 18:26
Well written? I found it a compendium of bafflegaff, but I guess that’s the norm for the field now… Not a single declarative sentence in the piece.
Yes, I could understand it; yes, it made a certain amount of interesting sense; no, it wasn’t worth the effort. The subject matter, however, would have been worth studying in detail. As it was, IMO, the paper just danced around the edges, hinting about differences in the way a culture preferred to absorb information.
December:10:2009 - 18:51
That was the point. It is written in standard academic-ese from my perspective. It is the prelude to the thesis which will fill in the details and the proofs. It is very good for a pre-thesis paper. However, it is sufficiently philosophic that he would have a hard time getting funding which is why he probably applied to the interdisciplinary department that he did.
December:11:2009 - 00:35
Hold on.
I see the tradition of the earphone game which I have played with my second graders. “The title of this paper doesn’t match the research up to page three give me a few more pages and we will see.”
O.k. pass this one 5 times orally or aurally (lol). I mean I get it that oral = aural. How many times do we have to say “oral/aural”? K After the 5th time
“Tiles of paper match research foresee.”
December:11:2009 - 01:12
But his point was that oral ≠ aural! Similar, but different senses involved.
December:11:2009 - 01:34
to me oral/ aural is one in the same…meaning BOTH not written…
You can’t have one without the other can you? You can speak but if there aren’t ears no one hears and no one will hear if no one speaks. Just write it down!
December:11:2009 - 02:09
Another reason to have things written down: Auditory Processing Disorder
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_processing_disorder
December:11:2009 - 02:51
Chiara your link in 26 has been blocked in Saudi.
Can someone copy and paste or something!
December:11:2009 - 03:49
Oops Chiara I meant @27 not @26…
I wonder what is so secretive about it. I wasn’t that interested in it until I saw it was blocked. Geeshhhh
December:11:2009 - 06:40
After reading his paper in entirety, I can conclude yes he is smart. However, I have to say he has spent too much time in the world of absence. Definitely he lost his mind and sight of the knowledge of presence. Sad indeed! ON the Jinni Kick sure to drive anyone who is already displaying any signs of a schizo really off the edge!
Did the Jinn whisper into his ear to murder the professor?
And to honor the slain professor, I promise myself to read his writings as well.
December:11:2009 - 12:59
“This is what you get when you bring in those garbage to states. I am an immigrant and I have lived with muslims for a long time. We are all infidels in their eyes no matter how good you are to them they will come and bite you. US will wake up when something big really happens.”
What if we said the same about you? Your comment is unwarranted and filled with ignorance.
anthrogeek10
December:11:2009 - 13:24
The original in Arabic:
http://www.watan.com/feature/16247
(will not print in Arabic characters here I tried)
The original Googlish with his comments, all on Oct 22, 2009:
Tel Aviv University: “The Arabs are the deeper failure in the history of mankind” ..
Under the title “Science racism” newspaper “Maariv” to the racist statements for d. Hevtan Dan lecturer at the University of Tel Aviv in a special session before the “students” are the words of senior officials in the security services and political rights.
The newspaper pointed out that the participants in the session listened to the comments racist insults against Arabs in the interior in particular, and Arabs in general.
Among the statements quoted him as saying “The Arabs are the biggest failure in the history of mankind,” and “There’s nothing disturbed more than the Palestinians” and “the Arab world, the deeper failure, and does not say that have undergone political correctness miserable.”
It also quoted him as saying, “When Israel launches sophisticated satellites into space, the Arabs are coming out with a new type of chick peas.” The saying this in the context of explaining the theory of security in Israel in a program of diplomacy and security for senior managers.
And the Iran-Iraq war, described as “seven years of fun,” and said he was “in the Arab world are shooting at weddings to prove that there are one weapon only, at least, capable of fire.”
The newspaper described the records as one of the most influential academics to senior officials in the security services and political rights. He is known for his views of these many years.
The newspaper quoted him as his claim “that the quotes attributed to him are for a laugh. The portion of these words spoken in the lecture hall or passing conversation has been removed from the context.”
He also claimed that “supply project in the cartoon humor, which distorts and misleads when it displays the message from the records. The allegation that these statements reflect the message is to recognize the profound contempt for adult students, on the assumption that the student ignores the systematic research and well-documented and balanced for long hours, and develops the consciousness on the basis of observations marginal like this. ”
In response to a question about whether students despise when he speaks this way, he said that “students do not need him. There is no group of people has failed significantly to the achievement of goals set by the front like the Arabs. When he tried to work in any Arab as far failed .. the failure of the Arab world deeply, and does not say that he was subjected to poor standards of political correctness, “as he put it.
Anton Shalhat: Sample Barrz for the information of the racist Israeli Orientalism ..
Commenting on these statements, writer and researcher Anton Shalhat Hevtan that Dan is a notable example of the “science Orientalism” Israel, which draws from the swamps of white racism.. What he said and later claimed that, as a “humor” can be found between the folds of “research” and his articles. Therefore, this claim is a false claim in its entirety.
“What I am thinking of these articles is that of the owners of” theory “which claims that the Arab world lacks the qualifications required in order to deal with modern reality, and that this is not about a crisis or difficulty passing spot, but a structural problem, and that” the Arab and Islamic terrorism ” is a Tnafisi community is helpless!.
“I do not need to remind Hevtan the contributions of Arabs in human history, over the days through, and if it was based on his racist remarks to the modern time, which can not obscure the fact that his position toward the Arabs in general and to the Palestinian people in particular positions are infected with racism, and aims to serve political goals do not jibe with the real-time scientific study Blvd.
Shalhat researcher also pointed out that it was known that such Hevtan of “elites” Zionism still ignore the existence of this people, let alone their rights, to justify practices of ethnic cleansing and war crimes committed against him, which began to penetrate the awareness about it among the world public opinion, finally .
He may be new in these remarks is that they Tndfr in the atmosphere of racism and fascism _it more and more in recent years, and have the umbrella of official government and legal proceedings.
He said: “There remains what is unfortunate is that our response to this atmosphere did not live up to the required level, who can put an end to these appearances, is expected to worsen.”
Remarks Dan Hvtan: indicators for the system and a bloody escalation of the Israeli street
For its part, condemned the People’s Committee for the Defense of Freedoms Hvtan statement, said that the words of Prof. Dan Hvtan from the University of Haifa that “the Arabs are the most difficult error of humanity” and the subsequent words and concepts more racist but a sign of how low the Israeli apartheid and colonial discourse to the spread of the closest to the Nazis.
The committee added in a statement received 48 site a copy of the Arabs: “Considering Hvtan of the most influential experts on Israeli security intelligence, and his words came in his lectures at the University of Haifa in the National Security College and to students who are officers of the Mossad and Shin Bet and Military Intelligence, what douche by Hvtan reflects the nature of the academic institution and is a prelude to the escalation of the bloody and racist Israeli regime and the street.
The Commission on the freedoms flowing from the Commission on the follow-up to the concepts that come by Hvtan and other security establishment will be translated into practice against each of the deadliest Palestinian or Arab is a platform to step up prosecutions Academy of Political and bloody attacks.
The Commission also stressed that it is through vehicles is exerting intensive efforts for the escalation and expansion of the international campaign to boycott Haifa University and the entire Israeli academia and the boycott of Israel as a system of racial colonial dangerous, and such a campaign consists of a deterrent to racism and protective of victims.
The statement concluded by saying that the Freedoms Committee report abuse Goldstone UN with the Arab masses at home and repression and political prosecutions during the Israeli aggression constitutes a favorable background for the escalation of the international campaign in response to escalation of racial colonial towards all people, including the Arab masses in the interior.
Abdulsalam Alzahrani: aalzahr1@binghamton.edu
I completly agree…even if these statements are made by the ugliest soul on earth, the soul of a quintessential sick animal-without-a-tail israeli orientalist…why should we be upset…we are people ruled by the most corrupted blood-sucking, sadomasachistic (sadist with us and masachist with their overseas lords), demented, ignorant and incapable gangs, deprived in body and mind, deformed in consciousness (we must erase this word from the Arabic dictionary…it is superfluous without a referent in the real world…our world)…
6
Abdulsalam: … They have produced people incapable of believing in life unless there is a mufti supporting one’s belief with a line from the quran or the books of lies (ie alhadeeth)…one grand mufti who allowed the youth to fight the infidals in Afghanistan once said the earth was flat squarer and another said we did not evolved like all organisms but created miraculously by the dexterous hands of god
8
Abdulsalam: … So here we have ignorant religious men regurgitating yello books and religious satillites reproducing wet dreams and on top of that yello journalism propagating stupidity and callousness…and the youth are imprisoned between attarheeb wa ttargheeb of education that reaches the depthes of their unconsciousness and the threat of force…with this system they are dehumanized, turned into disoriented beasts full of guilt and meanness …their freedom has been squeezed out of them.
9
Abdulsalam: … If you are not fooled by this system of education you will be forced into a course of reeducation by the security forces…incarserated and casterated and tortured (our prisons are full of people who say I am not convinced)…the irony is that most of these people are raised within the Sultan/Qadhi system and believe it…so the system is not working and only now because it has failed to work that it’s been reexamined and overhaulled!)
10
Abdulsalam: …
Backward trible medievalist interpretation of religion imprisoned within worldviews long defunct upholding a system of rule, outwardly modern inwardly trible, propelled by corruption, injustice, coercion, secrecy and lack of transparency, and the absence of the minmum sense responiblity…
11
Abdulsalam: …
With that an army of security forces baught by money and a few quranic verses…how can freedom flourish? how could critical thinking reexamine the inherited assumptions? how could sensitive consciousness awake at the atrocities committed against the weakest segment of the population? how could a sense of responsiblity flourish?
12
Abdulsalam: …
Now I have to say something to this idiot who said the Arabs are the grossest fuilure in the history of human beings. No failure equals the Israeli…your were f… up under a tolitarian rule in europe and the rule failed and you want to replicate it!!! how stupid is this? what failure is this? Einstein himself refused to join you doomed enterprience and Freud himself thought that you were theafts sealing even the moral innovatons of other people even the hummus you have stolen, the land, the water, resources of Phalistine…you are a bunch of psychopath theaves and murdurers…everyone is against you because of your unethical immoral criminal actions…you killed children!!! what else you want to be convinced that you are shame of humanity
14
December:11:2009 - 16:28
@28 Chiara,
That makes my brain hurt.
December:11:2009 - 17:59
# 39 made my brain and fingers hurt. As requested I copy pasted and had to take out the intercalated Arabic manually as well. If you read Arabic and you aren’t blocked I would suggest reading the Arabic. Otherwise if you are good enough with Google translate and back translating you can get closer to real English. His emails were originally in English and so I would suggest just focussing on them and knowing they were in response to an anti-Arab article in an Israeli newspaper. He is obviously harder on Arab governments than on the Israelis or Jews.
#28 ie his article, I find very interesting and intend to spend more time on it. It is written in standard pre-PhD thesis academic-ese in cultural anthropology, and was probably his required thesis proposal, or the theory part of it, or a course paper, which will serve as the basis for his thesis.
Oral and aural are certainly distinct and he makes reference to auditory not aural which has further specific meaning as he intends to show. Auditory is the higher brain function of processing heard sounds/language, rather than the lower neurological function of hearing itself (aural). One of my students used to write in her MSc thesis drafts that the tapes were analyzed orally, no matter how many times I explained, wrote out, and demonstrated by pointing to the relevant body parts that the 2 are distinct–unless she was eating the tapes, they were analyzed aurally.
A friend’s daughter was just diagnosed with auditory processing disorder–not pretty for academic or social functioning.
To some extent this is just interesting, it in no way explains how he lost the plot so thoroughly, and killed that particular professor in the way he did. It does show that academia lost 2 contributors, the Prof’s already established contributions and his potential ones.
December:11:2009 - 21:04
@39 Google translator hurts my brain even more LOL
Anyhow thanks for the post
I agree that his research while a little bit interesting wasn’t proving anything other than he honestly believed in a sacred voice and profane sight and tried to prove that the rest of the Arabs do too based on a few quotes of the Quran some taken completely out of context. The hadeeth he uses to support that narrations were ordered by the Prophet not to be written down (was it a weak hadeeth or false). I think there was a lot of agenda behind his research…