By Russell A. Berman · Thursday, February 28, 2008 “In a leading article entitled ‘Industry of Death,’ which was to become famous, Hassan al-Banna [founder of the Muslim Brotherhood] explained to a wider public his concept of jihad—a concept in which the term Industry of Death denotes not something horrible but an ideal. He wrote, ‘to a nation that perfects the industry of death and which knows how to die nobly, God gives proud life in this world and eternal grace in the life to come.'”
—Matthias Küntzel, Jihad and Jew-Hatred (New York: Telos Press, 2007), p. 14.
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By Russell A. Berman · Monday, February 25, 2008 Under the headline “Regulators Now Spooked by Ghost Stories,” Reuters published an account on February 14 of a new act of censorship in China, as part of the lead-up to the Olympics. The General Administration of Press and Publications has stipulated that video producers have three weeks to report incidents of “horror” in their material, as well as content involving “wronged spirits and violent ghosts, monsters, demons, and other inhuman portrayals, strange and supernatural storytelling for the sole purpose of seeking terror and horror.”
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By Russell A. Berman · Monday, February 18, 2008 In recent public debates, no label has carried more denunciatory power than “neo-con,” and no discussion has been more confused. In a recent essay, Peter Berkowitz has shed some welcome light on the misunderstandings around the term, reminding us of the principles of neo-conservatism and their origins in the thinking of Daniel Moynihan and Jeanne Kirkpatrick. But that was a long time ago, and, as the saying goes, what have you done for me lately? Critics of the Iraq War regularly blame it on mysterious neo-cons, hiding in the wings, working their conspiracies, although none of the political leaders—Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell—has any neo-con credentials. Why then the direction of ire against neo-conservatives, rather than against conservatives? Why is “neo-con” such an attractive epithet for those who enjoy slinging mud?
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By Telos Press · Friday, February 15, 2008 Hear Matthias Küntzel, author of the controversial Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11, speak at two New York City events in March:
Thursday, March 6
6:00 pm
Columbia University
301 Uris Hall
(Uris Hall is directly north of Low Library, to the left of the Campus Walk as you enter from Broadway at 116th Street)
www.columbia.edu
See the live webcast! Thursday, March 6 at 6:00PM EST. Click here or copy and paste the following URL into your web browser: http://puck.gsb.columbia.edu:8080/ramgen/livestream-u3/live.rm
Saturday, March 22
6:30 pm
The Cooper Union’s Wollman Auditorium (Engineering Bldg)
(located at 7 East 7th Street at Third Avenue)
How: Astor Place stop on the #6 line or 8th St. stop on the R train, or a short walk from Union Square subways
Admission is Free
www.cooper.edu
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By Russell A. Berman · Thursday, February 14, 2008 Thursday is book day at Telos. We use this time and space for posts about books, authors, and all sorts of writing, considered in light of the sorts of questions that are at home at Telos. As with all our blogs, you are invited to post a comment. If you have a book review that you’d like to post here, or some other comment on the worlds of writing, drop a line to us at telospress@aol.com.
J. Peter Pham has reviewed Matthias Küntzel’s Jihad and Jew-Hatred, in the journal American Foreign Policy Interests. The review is available here (in PDF format).
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By Adrian Pabst · Monday, February 11, 2008 Among the many myths that govern academic and public debates about the meaning and future of Europe, none is more persistent than that of secularization. The story goes something like this. After the dark ages and the “wars of religion” in the seventeenth century, Europe embarked on a slow but steady trajectory away from religion and faith and toward science and reason. Aided by the Protestant Reformation, the Treaty of Westphalia established the principle of “cuius regio, eius religio,” thus enthroning the primacy of the state over the Church and politics over religion. As a result, clerical and political absolutism sanctified by Rome was abandoned in favor of popular revolutions and democratic principles. Gradually, hereditary empires and absolute monarchies gave way to constitutional rule and the self-determination of sovereign nations and their enlightened leaders. The Enlightenment and the Revolution of 1848 cemented the independence from God and the priesthood and drew the battle lines between the wave of progress and the forces of reaction that culminated in the French separation of state and church in 1905. The triumph of positivism and the advent of science and technology did much to discredit the anti-modernist stance of Roman Catholicism.
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