The Mapping Shari’a project [1] endangers tolerance. Tolerance is the meaning of truth as tolerance. The source of this in our conception of Reason is nothing less than the source of our era in Science and History, that is, in symbol and Second Intention; and in Time. Reason, the conception of which we now associate with the Enlightenment is manifest for its actual source in the French Revolution. It is in that event that Reason first realizes Certainty for symbol matched to indeterminate matter as it is conceived to do in science. It is important to clarify this at the outset of A Preliminary.
This Certainty is owing to what Descartes conceives as coincident for matter as object, that is for all existence in indefinite and identical matter, with the subject. The subject in this case is Mind or Pure Intellect; in fact mathematical physics. In other words the coincidence of object and subject for all existence (the Real) is realized for Certainty by symbol. This means symbol is itself indefinite and identical for its object in mathematical physics. This object, geometric figure, is at once symbol and geometric figure in World, that is, in "Body" --actually matter. This, the so-called Mind Body problem, is in fact what drives the transformation of Reason (of Thought) and of Speech. The aim, achieved almost immediately, was to raise the universal mathematics to the position of supreme authority among men. This explains why the basis of this mathesis universalis is not experience or nature. It is instead Thought, in the meaning that Thought is Being.
That Descartes, and all of science ever since, is able to realize this Thought in our experience is his great feat; indeed it is a feat of symbolic mathematization of all existence as based in the coincidence I just described. And so this is how indiscriminacy in Speech was founded, this explaining to you the second sentence of the first paragraph: Tolerance is the meaning of truth as tolerance. Speech as incoherent, that is for Certainty-indiscriminacy. But this, as a moment's reflection will teach you, makes Certainty the aim of existence, in a Word: History as telos.
Certainty, being readily retained for such speech –i.e., the order of discourse in the Open Society (although the rationalization of this aspect, implicit in motion, is only subsequently worked out by Hegel) is the final result. This result, as I say manifest in the French Revolution, is again nothing more than the coincidence of the Real and symbol established for matter (which is what Hegel "works out" or completes). As for how this is possible, namely to go from symbolic calculations to Robespierre --and from reason to terror and the Age of Reason to tolerance-- you will have to wait for this demonstration in the course of A Preliminary). I can tell you at least that the answer has to do with this "Real" coincidence of matter (meaning all Body) as indefinite and identical, and with its symbolic conception. Sometimes it is referred to as “symbol-generating abstraction” to side-step the precise source of it, which is embarrassing to science and reason conceived and understood as the standard of reason.
Even so, abstraction bears all of its meanings in this euphemism: a rendering or reduction of things by concept, of concept itself, and finally of the concept as actual in life. (This, Second Intention realized, or its Primary Intention, is the basis of "figurate extension". As the cornerstone of what makes science the replacement of any other possible Thought in our era, it is the clue or answer how it is possible to go from mathematical physics --really algebra for the symbolic mathematization of all existence-- to its realization in Self, Society and World.) And, in the realm of speech where this realization is the Open Society, democracy, again tolerance as truth simply, this is identifiable as the Law of Contradiction reversed. Speech, this is to say, is the infinite regress.
This is how it comes about that speech is cyclical in Hegel at its end point where it is taken by him (and also, in practice, by us) to be absolute Wisdom. As for the action of this in actual and everyday life of Western societies, this effect being what we all experience daily in the Open Society, every predicate is identical to every single person to whom a claim can be credited in speech understood as action or simply motion. All beings and all of their speech is equal to all beings and all their speech. And this is the doctrine of “right”; of democracy, and so forth. Now this is not ineffectual for human action, for participation in existence or for talking, arguing, governing and the like. It is Open; the Open Society. PC. The overall name or principle describing what I have just said here –itself a literalization of figurate extension or what is the exemplar of science, of mathematical physics and the mathesis universalis –is then exactly Tolerance. PC, “political correctness” the outer form or the name of the Truth of Existence, is what I have denominated the Redirection.
Where the Mapping Shari’a project is concerned, the application of this Truth manifests as PC, this explaining what is meant in the first sentence of the first paragraph, thus: The Mapping Shari’a project endangers tolerance. Now it is obvious, at least as a sociological datum why our Elites and governments are receptive to the New York Times, to CAIR, and to the ACLU. In the case of Muslims being encouraged and permitted to immigrate to the U. S. (and to other Western societies), their teaching of Shari’a or the effects of it in terrorism and ordinary intolerance is tolerated as an expression of extraordinary or distended Tolerance. We see it as democracy and science v Racism. That this response –an extremity of absolutist arrogance unequalled in the course of human life --is a very high form of indiscriminacy and irrationalism in our experience at the same time this experience prompts a confusion in us, is our paradox. Open is Closed? But this is only because we associate reason, science and democracy, with tolerance and democracy as highest virtue. Consider a different response; one more rational and discriminating although, to be sure, unsettling beyond words.
There is a convergence underway before our eyes. Of Islam and our Elites and the State --society. In truth the sum of these manifestations is perceived as paradoxical because something queer has happened over a course of human life. A rational conception of what is actually happening is conveyed by this word, treason; or by this word, betrayal. If we are not forever, and unto death, to mistake the wood for the trees, what is happening before our eyes is the State and its authorities are transferring the ultimate means of existential rule to the Muslims (and to themselves, some few with full comprehension; most with none). The ultimate means of existential rule is the authority to kill. In effect, Shari’a transfers its own teaching (universal for all of Islam –and you are fooled on this as a matter of what has been done to speech, and to ordinary experience), in effect a basis to murder; which is then transferred back to Muslim immigrants, and to Islam, by Western societies and their authorities.
At that point the basis in Islam for murder becomes a right (in Western societies) to kill the men and women in those societies, as effectual rule. This, our felt conception of right in reason, explains the opposition on the part of the Elites and the State to "profiling" Muslims. You must see in this paradox what is meant in saying the correct description of American order is totalitarianism in its resting phase; or what makes it in fact immoral to vote. You vote for the equation of tolerance and treason, although we experience this as a paradox for indeed we know nothing else to do about it but “debate the issues, and to vote”.
Here then is the most tangible instance of the Redirection as the Completion of the Whole in the Part (which I have not explained here, but you can surely see what it must be). This, the effect of science and democracy, is a re-articulation of individuals and society, the human Terms of Existence. As we experience our life today in the U. S. and in other Western democracies, the reality we are experiencing is Absence; our diminishing as men, and the withering of our place on earth. I just defined this, and it is now comprehensible to you as totalitarianism in its resting phase. The World State in process toward the realm of peace itself, viz., totalitarianism in its active phase. The realm of peace would be the Historical certainty of object and subject as in science; what I described above. Here it is in a nutshell from a very great authority. "The disappearance of Man at the end of History...is [the correction of the] Error, or in general, the Subject opposed to the Object...." [2]
The convergence we are experiencing as paradox and confusion is the correction of this Error in opposition of Subject and Object. Can you grasp what the coincidence of Subject and Object will be?
It is now becoming apparent that the threat of Islam only realizes a greater threat of Western societies to their own peoples. Of course these peoples are no longer peoples in any case. This is the direct result of multiculturalism, and in truth representative of the entire Agenda of the Open Society. The “distance” from the French Revolution to the American Revolution; to the accumulations of revolutionary transcendence in the Redirection is years of time, of course. But this is a transcendence, in fact the Completion of the Whole in the Part articulate in Science (Certainty) – OpenSociety-History (Uncertainty). This, a mechanical reciprocity, is the visible Reciprocal or what is driven by its invisible Reciprocal in science. The “distance,” this is to say is simultaneity; the Truth of Existence.
The State and Elite execution of "PC" on behalf of Muslims and Islam is the supreme occasion of existential transformation of rule or betrayal. Mapping Shari’a must understand in contending with Islam, which grants to Muslims an authority to murder understood as rightful killing, that “Muslim-Americans” have been granted a still higher authority by the United States government and our Elites. Here, as in other Western societies, Tolerance (PC) conveys to these Muslims as citizens the power granted to them by Islam to murder as killing. This is now to be converted, by Islam and Muslims, by Muslim-Americans, to a right to murder. Muslims understand this as do Western Elites. The high court of Iran this year (2007) overturned lower court decisions of murders in which the defense of these murders was Islam. It is only a matter of time –the “transcendence” is beyond us now-- until Elite Western lawyers make this case in Western societies. This, a palpable instance of convergence (one among many), is a “concretization” of multiculturalism not less than Israel’s “sacrifices of [Jews] for peace” in the Peace Process of PM Rabin, of Mr. Peres and others. But the reasoning we know today as “the peace process” is coeval with the founding of Israel. Here is an example.
In an argument (1951) made by the Israeli high court in the case of Hungarian Jews turned over to the Nazis in 1944 by then head of the Jewish Agency (the pre-state Israel “government”), Israel Kastner was acquitted (1951) of proven complicity in the murders of 800,000 Hungarian Jews. The Government’s lawyer for the defense (Abraham Cohen, later Chief Justice) arguing these Hungarian Jews were “ideologically dead,” men witnessed effectual convergence of the new Zionist state with the Germans’ totalitarianism in the active phase.[3] Men later witnessed the Jews prosecution of Eichmann in Jerusalem. He was the man who took the Jews effectively handed to him by Kastner. When Israel executed him (using the occasion –to this day-- to boast of the unJewish act of capital punishment) Jews were rightly glad. But they were also confused. They knew very little about Kastner; or for that matter, about Zionism. As for the place of the Jews in the Redirection –for it is that which is of the Jews that is redirected {by Science (Certainty) –OpenSociety-History (Uncertainty)} –it is ultimate and pertinent. Indeed the fact is, unless I am very much mistaken, the place of the Jews in the Redirection --consider only the bond of CAIR and the ACLU-ADL or PC-toleration, withal the subject of this Introduction --bears hard upon the "Direction."
For now, you may properly understand this is the Redirection of Western societies if you know the sole natural law teaching, that is, the sole transcendental teaching of right known to the Redirection is that of the right to murder as killing, first in nature or the State of Nature. This right becomes, in all societies now conceived as artifacts, Terms of Existence not-given along the lines I explained above (in effect, totalitarianism in the resting phase), as the right to peace, and the promise of it according to this same natural law. In effect, this teaching is of a World State.
To be sure these are not more than the aspects, academic moments of the convergence of Islam and Western Elites now acting out before us, and in us. We are now poised to inquire in this A Preliminary how it has come about –but not in any historical or otherwise familiar explanation of our participation in existence according to what it is we are to explain-- that Science (Certainty) and OpenSociety-History (Uncertainty), that is, [Thought and Speech] are guiding Western societies and its peoples toward suicide and certain annihilation. Just as it is these societies, their governments and Elites along with all the institutions of peoples (starting with language), which are, as more dangerous to us than Islam itself, enabling Islam to transform its own murderous teaching as killing into a right to murder us, so it is likewise the fact that it is our two most cherished truths of existence in Science and Democracy which are driving our governments and our Elites to guide us into our destruction; with our assistance and applause.
1]This “Introduction,” first appeared on the IASPS website as a “Weekly Essay.” The Shari’a [Islamic law essential to all schools of Islam] Project is an ongoing undertaking of SANE to evaluate all of the mosques, schools and other Muslim sites in America according to the level of threat posed, to the U.S. citizen and to national existence. The goal is “to map each location on a digital interactive map, to identify, index, and grade each group as to the particular sect, its school of Islamic jurisprudence, what that means relative to the threat potential, the Jihad threat level, and other pertinent information about the key leadership, the associated businesses, and proximity to schools, infrastructure and national security installations.” Weekly SANE Update, vol. 2, No., 16
2] Kojeve, 158-159n6.
3] This grotesque comparison is incomprehensible to actual men for the same reason that opposition to democracy, to say nothing of its reciprocity with science, is incomprehensible just now; in our age. The “Truth of Existence” or what is “in us” explains how this has come about. But it is well to qualify this. The basis of what is incomprehensible is “in us” means what is “grotesque” to our understanding is the measure of what is in its nature impenetrable. Our limits are democracy and science. But then why write about it? A Preliminary, undertaking consideration of this question, compels our raising this here, in the Introductory pages.
RJL
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