The following is a commentary on exerts from the Biography of Moses Maimonides by Abraham Joshua Heschel
“The Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, and Byzantines who took possession of the land never succeeded in getting the long established inhabitants, the crude Berber people, to mature sufficiently to share in their culture. Only the militant missionaries of the Koran could accomplish this. But even though the Berbers adopted a faith in Allah and in his prophet Mohammed, along with Arab mores and manners, they were never fully integrated into Arab cultural circles, nor did they ever fully merge into the vast Arabic world.”
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaAbeed (Arabic: عبد, plural Abeed عبيد or El Abeed العبيد) is a derogatory term in Arabic meaning “slave” and is usually applied as an insult to Black people to invokestereotypes. The name has been explained as an allusion to the submission that Muslims owe to Allah. Meyer dismisses this as “efforts by propagandists [to] explain the term away [that are] at the least, disingenuous”.
Usage in Herodotus’ histories wikipedia
In Book 4, Herodotus mentions for the first time the term earth and water in the answer of king Idanthyrsos of the Scythians to king Darius. In Book 5, it is reported that Darius sent heralds demanding earth and water from king Amyntas I of Macedon. In the 6th book, Darius sent heralds throughout Hellas bidding them demandearth and water for the king. In Book 7, he recounts that when the Persians sent envoys to the Spartans demanding the traditional symbol of surrender, an offering of soil and water, the Spartans threw them into a deep well, suggesting that upon their arrival at the bottom, they could “Dig it out for yourselves.”
The demand for earth and water symbolized that those surrendering to Persians gave up all their rights over their land and every product of the land. Giving earth and water they recognized the Persian authority over everything; even their lives belonged to the king of Persians. Then negotiations would take place to specify the obligations and the benefits of the liegemen.
The phrase earth and water, even in modern Greek, symbolizes unconditional subordination to a conqueror.
BACK TO MY PARAPHRASING:
At first it was acceptable for Jews to be Pseudo-Muslims because in these countries privacy is highly respected, you can do whatever you want in your home, (with your 6 year old “wife”). But Jews were not allowed to pray in the streets or to even gather without attracting suspicion. Apostacy is punishable by death in the Muslim community.
Years ago, when Myspace had Groups and a philosophy forum, I wrote my fundamentalist drift theory which showed an emergent property in evangelizing and proselytizing ones beliefs. I first observed this pattern in the Jehovah’s Witness religion in which I was raised, the bigger the religion got the more dumbed down it got. As you include people of different ethnicities and cultures you also include their prejudices, sensitivities, and issues. When you make them all equals and you keep lowering the bar you make desirable virtues, equal to superstitious vices. What happens is that you have to remove everything that offends anybody. You end up with a sterile environment in which nothing meaningful can be communicated. I refer to this as the meritocracy of butthurt. It creates a disparate impact in favor of the stupidest most easily offended, most violent people. It is a false forced equality. Wisdom and Ignorance are not equal are they?
The thing is that in order to sell your message to boost your number in order to increase and expand your authority you need to make stupid people feel that your belief system has something to do with them, that they have some influence or control over it, that they have a voice. In a rational relationship between a rational and irrational person, the irrational person benefits more than the rational person, and they for better or worse lead by virtue of being stupider, sensitive to their own issues and judgements, and feelings of correctness. You have to be able to exert an influence on this element to ameliorate themselves and aspire to something that is indeed better than they are, just as children have to grow up and make themselves suitable for the world and society and not the reverse.
I witnessed this pattern repeat, on Facebook, and then with the Dawkinites, the followers of Richard Dawkins, and then I noticed again as the same pattern repeated in the United States itself. The positive freedom, Freedom of Speech slowly turned into Freedom from speech. Female communication rituals were being forced on society.
Here is the other thing, Israelites were a nomadic people for a long time, they got persecuted by almost every civilization. The reason they started loaning money, even though usury is forbidden by Kosher law, is because they weren’t allowed to own land anywhere so that they could put down roots, so in order for them to have some manner of appreciating interest. Israel needs to stay right where it is or else a greater evil and problem will ensue with history repeating yet again, worse than before. Muslims need to deal with it. Not only does Islam want and intend to spread itself all over the earth, since time immemorial they have wanted to completely eradicate the Jews. Israel is not the cause of the problem. The intolerance and violent stupidity of Islam is the problem. There, I said it, I feel better.