Saturday, October 16, 2004
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One way to have a balanced view of yourself is by trying to see yourself through the eyes of your enemy. If most people hate doing that it may be because they are too infatuated with their own positive image of themselves and they dread the prospect of seeing the negative. What if the enemy makes a good case?
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To be infatuated with one’s own image is the surest symptom of being a dupe to propaganda.
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A reader writes: “How do you know there will come a time when churches and mosques will become museums? Are you a prophet?”
No, I am not because I base my assertion on the past, on history and what is commonly known and accepted as fact. After all, is not the future an extension of the past? Consider the fate of Greek and Roman temples. Consider the fate of the 1001 churches of Ani. As recently as last year, 42 churches were closed down in the Detroit area. What happened to the mosques in Spain? And what will happen to the mosques in America when a weapon of mass destruction claims 100,000, perhaps even 1,000,000 victims, and the terrorist responsible for this holocaust is discovered to have found safe harbor in a mosque?
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If, on the other hand, you assert that our religion, being superior to all others, is destined to shatter all historic precedents, I ask: “Are you saying that because that’s what you were told as a child or is it because you really think so?”
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Sunday, October 17, 2004
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On the radio this morning, an interview with Jimmy Breslin, a well-known Irish-Catholic writer and the author of THE CHURCH THAT HAS FORGOTTEN CHRIST. When asked what he thought about good Catholics who believe in the Pope and go to church every Sunday, he replied: “They are sheep.” Next question: “You mean they can’t think for themselves?” “That’s right!”
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Since I am in the business of exposing prejudices and fallacies, I am sometimes accused of having my share of them. If I do, I hope they are not those of a good Armenian or a good Christian, but those of an honest human being.
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A good Armenian: Can anyone define him? It is not at all unusual for a good Armenian to be a bad Armenian in the eyes of another self-appointed good Armenian. The same could be said of a good Christian, a good Muslim, a good Protestant or a good Sunni.
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Religion generates infidels. Where there are orthodoxies there will be heretics. And every ideology will have its share of dissidents, and sometimes the dissidents will be right and the ideologues dead wrong.
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Where there are top dogs there will be underdogs. As an underdog of underdogs, or a double underdog, I don’t feel the need to identify myself with them. I am one of them.
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Could an Armenian be a top dog in the Ottoman Empire or the Soviet Union without betraying not only a fraction of his Armenianism (however you care to define that label) but also his humanity?
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The problem with labels is that they tend to reduce or even dehumanize the other. For an Armenian, the label Turk comes with a heavy burden of history, and we are all creatures of the past. But to be creatures of the past does not necessarily mean being its slaves.
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When I wrote recently that a man does not need a cathedral in which to pray, a reader wrote: “How do you know? Why do you project your own predilections on others?” This reader may not be aware of the fact that it was the construction of a cathedral in Rome that split the Church into Catholics and Protestants, and this split was the cause of many wars, one of which lasted a hundred years.
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Sometimes I feel like a Muslim among Christians, and like a giaour among jihadist Muslims. Some readers think what I say is so eccentric and odd that I might as well be an enemy of the people. I have every reason to suspect that these readers confuse spin and propaganda with fact and reality. Or, as Jimmy Breslin says, they think not like men but like sheep. They view the past and present, that is to say, reality, through the eyes of bishops, imams, and politicians. And the world continues to be in an unholy mess because people don’t trust their own judgment and prefer to accept the judgment of spinners and propagandists. But ignoring our judgment is also ignoring that which separates us from animals.
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Propaganda dehumanizes. Political and religious leaders don’t say that because if they did, they would expose themselves as dehumanizers and the real enemies of mankind, and more precisely, wolves in shepherd’s clothing.
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