"The new generation holds that they
live freer than the old.
That's a mistake. We received our
beatings from the parents.
The young people get them directly
from life." - Waldemar Bonsels, author
Timeline of Culture & Politics
The early Sumerians had discovered
astronomy, the wheel,
the writing system, alphabetization,
the school system, the legal system,
the bicameral congress, and the beer.
For the first time the Sumerians had
recorded rules and laws for
living together in writing.
Anu, Narmer, Huángdì,
Noah, Abraham, Hatchepsut, Kha,
Thutmosis, Ramses II, Mošes, Ahărōn,
Echnaton, Dâniyal, Nebûchadnezzar,
David, Salomon, Kongzi, Sunzi, Kūruš,
Dārayavahuš, Aléxandros, Qín Shihuángdi,
Aśoka, Hanibal, Makabi, Cleopatra,
Citizens of Old Greece didn't have
much power in the governments
Monarch and Oligarchy.
Athens developed the government
Democracy where citizens
make the decisions.
The foundations of philosophy
and science had been set by
Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato.
Senatus Populusque Romanus -
Senate and people of Rome.
This formula marks the
republican constitution.
Augustus, Paulus, Phoebe, Lydia, Yunia,
Plutarch, Josephus, Clemens, Zarathustra,
Caesar, Spartacus, Zenobia, Mānī, Hypatia,
Constantinus, Karl, Muhammad, Al-Mamūn,
Ziryab, Sindbad, ibn Fadlan,
Duan Chengshi, Theophanu, Khan,
The centers of origin of
agriculture and its global spread:
There were not just traders,
scholars and warriors who
moved along the Silk Road,
but also ideas, religions and
whole cultures went from
East to West and back.
In the South Africans and
South-Asians exchanged stories.
Salādīn, Federico II, Mansa Musa I.,
Zhong Kui, Polo, Ibn Rušd,
Luther, Katharina von Bora,
Panchacutec, Zhū Yuánzhāng,
Trang Hungdao, Motēcuhzōma II,
Elizabeth I, Süleymān, Osman, Mehmet,
Hus, Vesalius, Fāsīladas, Sinan,
Pocahontas, Nzingha a Mbande,
In 875 the first documentated
flight experiment in history
has been prepared in a Moorish
workshop in Spanish Al-Andalus.
The Islamic poet and physician
Abbas ibn Firnas got far as 200m.
Up to the 16th century Jesuit
missionaries had told about the
scientific standard
attained already in China.
Film = "Electric shadow"
If the Chinese would've
complemented a lens
with their 'Laterna Magika'
the film theater would've been
invented two thousand years earlier.
The Four Great Inventions:
papermaking, the compass,
gunpowder, and printing
(both woodblock and movable type).
The Chinese invented technologies
involving mechanics, hydraulics,
and mathematics applied to horology,
metallurgy, astronomy, agriculture,
engineering, music theory,
craftsmanship, nautics, and warfare.
A sophisticated economic system
in China gave birth to inventions
such as paper money during
the Song Dynasty (960-1279).
The invention of gunpowder
by the 10th century led to an array
of inventions such as the hand cannon,
exploding cannonballs, and
rocket bombs with aerodynamic wings.
The first rocket launch
handed down through the centuries
took place in 1232 in the empire.
In war against the Mongolians
the Chinese used it as a kind of rocket.
The Mongolians won and later caused
the plague in Central Asia.
After the crusades in the 12th century
the New Templars had established
a new form of banking system.
They gained a good reputation
in early Renaissance Italy.
The famous Medicis set up their
bank in 1397. They are known as
members of the Freemasons
who influenced the Vatican.
They almost had the whole
European financial system in control.
The Swiss state has been founded by
Knights Templars back then. Their
privatized bank system is unique
worldwide. Their military is connected
since then with the Vatican state.
Venetian trade routes
in medieval Europe:
For a relative short period
the emperors of the Ming Dynasty
opened the gate to the West.
The Chinese Armada, a swimming city,
ruled the oceans for 350 years.
Zhèng Hé's Treasure ship from 1405
was 6 times larger than
Columbus' Santa Maria in 1492.
With the first world trade with Arabian and
Italian trading powers, the Chinese passed
on their artworks and gastronomy.
All countries since then
have enriched themselves
mutually with new knowledge.
In 1644 China had been attacked
again by the Mongolians.
The Manchurians took over
the until then superior
Ming dynasty and ushered in
a traditionalist epoch.
In 1500 Wan Hu developed further
the rocket propulsion.
Leonardo Da Vinci sketched
the first model of a robot.
In 1670 the Flamish Jesuit missionary
Ferdinand Verbiest invented in China
the first ever self-propelled vehicle
- the first automobile.
Zheng Zhilong, Fugger, Khlesl,
Tulsidas, Kabīr, Sūrdās, Meera Bai,
Samoset, Squanto,
Hagendorf, Tanba, Chigi, de Groot,
Erasmus, Cromwell, Pyotr I,
Voltaire, Washington, Paine, Franklin,
Jefferson, Smith, Idalgo, Grégoire,
Olympe de Gouges,
Kósciuszko, Napoléon,
Tecumseh, Maria W. Stewart, Lincoln, Alexandrina Victoria, Marx, Engels,
Weber, Velestinlis, Krupp, Rhigas,
Bertha Suttner, Hannah Arendt, Buber,
Emily Davison, Emmeline Pankhurst, Dolores Ibárruri, Oppenheim, Jaurès,
Virginia Woolf, Josephine Baker,
Isaura, Windthorst, Bertholdi, Muir,
Mary Kingsley, Pulizer, Yan Chuyun,
The steam engine ushered in the industrial
revolution that stretched out one after
another on Europe, America, Japan and the
Orient. The steam engine intensified
the free world trade.
Monnet, Alice Paul, Herzl, Gandhi,
Attatürk, Rosa Luxemburg, Yip Man,
Chaplin, Churchill, Owens,
Sophie Scholl, Adenauer,
Kissinger, Guevara, King, Malcolm X,
Senghor, Kennedy, Agnes Bojaxhiu,
Dylan, Sall, Wojtyla, Wałęsa, Nathan,
The United Nations - founded as
a symbol against the ideology
"Lord and master in one's own house!"
Democracy lives on basic values
like tolerance and the peaceful
debate with the dissident.
Only in mutual exchange, if need
in argument, we overcome hurdles
and break down prejudices.
Lewis, Gyatso, Muhammad Ali, Lee Junfan,
Leung Ting, Waalkes, van Clief, Chan,
Reagan, Gorbachov, Tutu, Mandela, Peres,
Yusuf, Falcone, Borselino, Jobs, Gates,
Abdel Nasser, Rabin, Kohl, Chai Ling,
Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Pu Zhiqiang,
Jane Goodall, Blair, Bush, Gore, Bergoglio,
Annan, El-Baradei, Aung San Suu Kyi,
Beverly Giesbrecht, Moore, Prantl,
Putin, Angela Merkel, Obama,
Michelle Obama, Xi Jinping, Ki-moon,
Liu Xiaobo, Liu Xia, Klitschko,
Zhiyong, Liao Yiwu, Malala Yousafzai,
Alice Nkom, Kasparov, Swartz, Vujicic,
Nawal El Saadawi, Lee Kwan Yew,
Mbembe, Kerry, Gauck, Steinmeier, Modi,
Junker, Schulz, Biden, Sanders,
Francis Shaw, Latif Derian,
Tawakkol Karman, Jo Cox, Nikki Haley,
Bedford-Strohm, Loretta Lynch,
Roxas, Barbara Hendricks, Trudeau,
Nicola Sturgeon, Theresa May,
Yau Wai-ching, Joshua Wong, Long Hair,
Nathan Law, Eddie Chu,
Prestley, Dylan, Hitchcock, Tina Turner,
Jackson, Lucas, Spielberg, Elton John,
Oprah Winfrey, Whitney Houston,
Angelina Jolie, Merryl Streep, Clooney,
DiCaprio, Cate Blanchet, Russell Crow,
Kate Winslet, Rihanna Fenty, Johnson,
Macron
The prevalence of Abrahamic
and Dharmic religions:
The largest world-petroleum reserves
are in and around Saudi-Arabia:
"Property monopolized or
in the possession of a few
is a curse to mankind."
- John Adams, the 2nd US-President
Democratic institutions and
conducts are necessary
to guarantee human rights.
Zhèngdàng 正当
Justice
In China today the politicized effect
of enlightenment is not negative for
the communist propaganda.
Enlightenment is the anticonfucian
movement that strives for a new
national China and where the
communist party followed from.
Communism means:
Everyone is working for everyone.
Everyone is equal.
And hence everyone is doing well.
The teachings of human rights,
which were spread by
the Buddhist king Ashoka,
are also enshrined
in Chinese tradition.
Though since the revolt of Tian'anman
in Beijing 1989 the rulers there
have great fear of losing control
of the gigantic population.
The bull as sign of
stock markish optimism
"I sincerely believe that banking
establishments are more
dangerous than standing armies."
- Thomas Jefferson,
the principal author of the
Declaration of Independence
and the 3rd US-President
"The version of gem stones
increases its price, not its value."
- Ludwig Börne, drama critic
"If you want to make someone rich
you must not increase his goods
but reduce his necessity."
- Epicurus Ἐπίκουρος, poet
The ego is constantly creating the illusion
of separateness of all being and keeps
the carousel of suffering going.
The eastern wise men would say:
It's not about what oneself can bear
but what they can bear.
Through the illusion of our
imaginary personality and the
following result of identity
the mind commits predefined
roles and subsequently
behavioural patterns in order to
be able to fulfill these roles.
"If the people would understand
the money system,
we would have a revolution
before tommorow morning.“
- Henry Ford, industrialist (convinced
anti-Semite and Nazi-friend)
"To have what one wants
is wealth, though doing it
without wealth, is power.“
- George B. Shaw, literary critic
Mobility is the trade mark of the modern age
"The worst effect of capitalism is
that one believes, everything what he pays
belongs to him.“ - Martin Walser, author
"Bad company
corrupts good character"
(from the Thaïs, quoted in the
first Book of the Corinthians 15:33)
The mosque is not just a place
of worship, of meeting,
it's also a place of
law and education.
Ayasofya "Holy Wisdom"
a former Byzantine church,
later a mosque, and now
a museum in Istanbul.
The 1,700 year old Ayasofya is
also constructed earthquake-proof
- built by the Orthodox Christian
Mimar Sinan (1490-1588) the greatest
architect in that time.
The Belur Math Temple
is notable for its architecture that
fuses Hindu, Christian and Islamic
motifs as a symbol of unity
of all religions
Hari Mandir ਹਰਿਮੰਦਰ ਸਾਹਿਬ
The Golden Temple of the Sikhs
in Amritsar, India
In Chinese philosophy of
architecture they attach
value to the order of space.
One can burn his old house of wood
in order to make a fresh start.
The Basilica of Our Lady of Peace
in Yamoussoukro, Ivory Coast
- the largest church in the world,
constructed '89 at a cost of $300 mio.
"There is a right of the wise,
not of the stronger.“
- Joseph Joubert, essayist
Synopsis of sociology, ethics, political science, economics & jurisprudence
קולטור תרבות فرهنگ چاند ثقافة ܡܪܕܘܬܐ ثقافه সংস্কৃতি সংস্কৃতি संस्कृती
རིག་གནས། ސަގާފަތު संस्कृति Մշակույթ فرهنگ کلچر ວັດທະນະທຳ
ਸੱਭਿਆਚਾਰ ثقافت 文化 文化 วัฒนธรรม సంస్కృతి பண்பாடு സംസ്കാരം
문화 文化 კულტურა Маданият Культура Култура Κουλτούρα Kulttuuri
Vùn-fa Kultura Kultur Culture Cultura Cultuur Kültür Kalinangan
Culture is the quality in a person or society that arises from a concern for
what is regarded as excellent in arts, letters, manners, scholarly pursuits,
but also in law, morality, religion, economy and science.
Culture is a development or improvement of the mind by education
and the behaviors and beliefs characteristic of a particular social, ethnic,
or a form or stage of civilization, as that of a certain nation or period,
the claim to power of certain classes
or even scientific and philosophical-anthropological perspectives.
Dualism
About the art of discussion the sceptic Michel de Montaigne declared,
why the people don't really debate, if they believe doing it, because namely
they aren't right but they want to beat the other. He says, the victory
that I win over myself in the middle of battle of words,
by bowing to more persuasive arguments by my opponent, makes me much prouder
than one who I carry off thanks to his weakness.
Political apathy is consequence of anti-pluralistic populism by fascistics between
the dynamic of the Realm of Societies and the Static Nature of the Realm of States or lobby-republics.
Most of the ethical questions have material aspects just at first glance.
Forms of incorrect conducts like digital addiction, data misuse,
violence glorification, or cybermobbing are based on certain attitudes and habits.
Democracy lives on criticism and diversity of opinions and is capable of maintaining them.
In the congress there has always been voices of dissent.
The person's dignity is the basis of equality.
Difficulties of the most diverse forms of discrimination derive from it
that split and humiliate dependent on racialist, economic, social, political, geographical or other differences.
No matter which preference one has everyone chooses his own way to the other one.
These ways though don't lead to the same goal. If one only puts on what makes a distinction between
others this could mean separation and isolation. But if this is anything to go by what makes us similar
it could lead to communitarianism, to shield in the whole identity.
These are both forms that lead to a group formation, to isolation.
If one looks for what is just like us, one ends in a ghetto,
and not in a wide level in which man comes together in accordance with one's ideas.
One feels an affinity through mutual identity on which one is reduced,
that narrows down, instead of meeting with a variety of people with whom one has got lots in common.
Universal doesn't mean uniform.
It just means that one plays with the outward appearance,
that identity is not reduced on the purely superficial.
The objective observation of truth is often replaced by a more or less spontaneous, subjective view.
The objective morality makes room for individual ethics in which everyone
can determine and demand for oneself the norm to act,
that he follows only this norm. The crisis is getting worse when
the capability takes over the function of a value. The consequence of it then
are manipulations of all kind and man feels more and more unsure;
he has the impression he lives in a society that doesn't offer any certainty and
any ideal and of which ideas of value are chaotic.
"Who wants to recognize right must have doubts before in the right way." - Aristotle
Multiculturalism is reduced on a sum of monoculturalisms.
The reason why there's a crisis of multiculturalism is that too many
collective laws were granted instead of individual laws.
"Much money, more right", is the class action.
The West have done a lot for freedom and diversity so that they sometime give
privileges to communitarian groups but not to other groups.
Universalism is a philosophy without claiming the absolute truth. It says: we look at others as people
like us, and try to find out to what extent we can help them to emancipate oneself
without dominating them.
That's the difference between universalism and imperialism.
Generally it concerns the status quo scenario and the celebrating of liberal democracy
with its common interests.
On the way of playful imitating tradition is a happening passing on of historico-cultural
facts and conditions with respect to its formative socio-economic contents.
"Tradition is a Lantern. The foolish hold on to it,
the clever allow it to lead the way." - George B. Shaw
Crime Story
Every dynasty and society is made up of different periods.
With the inner European war the heyday of arms industry and killer-mafia began.
With alcohol smuggle the criminals earned more than 100 Mio.$.
Al Capone was the king of Chicago. His teammates spread out round Las Vegas, Hollywood,
and the entire Western world. These syndicates were able to bring
the whole financial system to a standstill in the shortest possible time.
1929 the New York Stock Exchange went into free fall.
Then the National Socialists came and with the help of the CIA they founded
the "American Nazi fifth column agents" which only has been judicially uncovered in the Seventies.
The costs of World War II had to be carried by the Americans as well.
Hence the money was missing for their own structural modernization.
In all emerging economies corrupt intrigeurs have mixed over and over
with politicians and businessmen.
Conspirationism has become a system against the system. In logic of conspiracy theorists
the piece of circumstantial evidence has evidential value.
The principle of criminology is: Nothing remains concealed.
Martin Luther King (1929-1968): "We are tending to determine
success after the level of our salaries or the size of our cars rather than
after the degree of our willingness to help and the measure of our humanity."
In 1979 President Jimmy Carter had warned in public: "We are at a turning point in history.
Too many others now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption.
Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns."
With the election victories of Margaret Thatcher 1979 and
the US-presidency of Ronald Reagan 1981 a neo-liberal revolution has begun
which profoundly changed capitalism by reducing more and more their social aspects.
This era went to an end with the crisis of real estates in 2007 which brought the world
down into economic low and opened a time of economic and political insecurity.
The food prices in the poor countries increased up to 300% because of the speculators.
The FBI began publicly warning in September 2004 that
there was an epidemic of mortgage fraud perpetrated by the banks.
But when 9/11 hit the administration transferred at least
500 white-collar FBI specialists out of dealing with white-collar crime eventhough
we were entering the greatest wave of white-collar crime in the history of the world.
The FBI says that 80% of the mortgage fraud losses
are induced by creditors and lenders, the current CEOs of the intitutions.
The Ministry of Finance don't ask the banks what they are gonna do with the money.
And not having asked them the banks are not required to tell.
The big money subjects the globe unrelentingly to the profit.
The financial groups prevent everything, what can be regulated,
and still they gold-plate their own world.
The network of the financial giants Larry Fink ("BlackRock"),
Mario Draghi (EU-Central bank, former "Goldman Sachs"),
Ben Bernanke and Philipp Hildebrand (US-bank of issues), Lloyd Blankfein ("Goldman Sachs"),
Tim Geithner (Department of the Treasury), Jamie Dimon ("JP Morgan")
is allowed by politicians because the ruling doctrine of
neo-liberalism of the so-called free markets is required.
Similar to Monopoly there are single players at the end who monopolize the rest of the world.
The perpetrators of the conflicts in the sub-regions have a feeling
of inferiority caused by poverty, subordination, and dependency.
100 years after the British-French mandate in Iraq and Syria
and 50 years after the rebellion of Wahabbite sects and Jihadists in Saudi-Arabia
the "IS-Nation building" has also taken over the principles of Western capitalism.
Through the disposal of oil and plundered cultural treasures into the West
terrorists had cleaned up an extra fortune.
Roman influence
The Phoenician seafarers, descendants of Canaan, had formed the first cartel.
King Herod I, the Roman client king of Judea, suceeded in uniting
the empires in the region of Palastine in 41 BC.
He'd ordered to build the first artificial haven in Ceasaria.
But after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem by
Roman combats in 70 AD the Jews were scattered all over the world.
It needed new pillars of faith. Beside Torah, the Mishnah and Talmud
came into being that regulates the Diaspora.
The togetherness of cultures in Alexandria ended with the Romans.
The best engineers and architects from Egypt, Greece and
the Middle East were ordered to Rome to optimize machines and
to construct great buildings. The Colosseo in Rome was funded
from the haul of the Jewish War. Jerusalem had been destroyed
despite of the diplomatic resistance by Josephus.
The price of gold decreased by half in Syria.
The traditional gladiatorial combats had ended at the time of Constantine.
In 300 the Roman emperor ushered in the ideology of the 'masculine' church.
For antique rulers religion and politics were inseparable.
For that reason the egocentric Constantine 'the Great' has tied
Christianity to the state. With it he prepared the way for Roman christianization.
The quick spread of early Christianity is based on Paul's intensive correspondence.
His followers (amongst them women like Phoebe, Lydia and Yunia
together with her husband Andronikos) installed a proper
letter system that worked like a modern communication network.
______________________________________________________________________________________________ethics
Western Ideals & Oriental Traditions
The History of Banking begins with the first prototype banks of merchants
of the ancient world that made grain loans to farmers and traders
carrying goods between cities; recorded as having occurred
at about 2000 BC within the areas of Assyria and Babylonia.
Later on in ancient China, India, Greece, and especially in the
Roman empire where lenders based in Jewish temples made loans and added
two important innovations: the accepting of deposits and the changing of money.
The Egyptian battle of Megiddo followed with
the first tin-trade in Minor Asia that ushered in the Bronze Age in 1457 BC.
30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)
are regarded to the Ten Commandments.
Even the UN main building is designed after the law boards.
With the decoding of the eldest Hebrew text outside the Bible on
a 3,000-year-old clay tablet, the most significant find since the discovery
of the legendary scrolls of Qumran in 1947, it's about social welfare that
was supposed to protect foreign people, widows and orphans in Ancient Israel.
Theologian Prof. Reinhard Achenbach from the University Münster reported:
"Our principle today to give legal protection to foreigners in court
and to protect socially disadvantaged persons in a welfare state
goes therefore back to Ancient oriental times.
Create rights for the slave and the widow, create rights for the orphans
and the strangers! Defend the right of the minor, defend the right of the poor!"
Therefore the protective laws for disadvantaged persons belonged to
the eldest laws of Israel. The expert emphasized that the Israelites took up
with it older Canaan and Egyptian traditions.
In the Ethiopian kingdom of Aksum ኣኽሱም the Southern world trade began to flourish
Cultural Orientation
With the new discovery of gold near Mecca in 600
religious zealots began with the Arabic seizure of power
in the ancient Roman Mediterranean region.
They'd used the gold in order to unite the tribes.
The Islamic bank system is a financial system with no rate of interest.
Al-Andalus, "land of the light" - Europe's primary culture.
The first windmills were built in Afghanistan in the 7th century as described by Muslim geographers.
European universities were influenced in many ways by
the medieval university institutions in the Islamic world.
The University of Al Karaouine in Morocco has been founded in 859 AD
by a woman named Fatima al-Fihri.
The Chinese and Arabian world at that time have had a significant lead on fields of
technology, medicine, literature, mathematics, physics and astronomy.
The technological inventions of the Greeks, Romans and Chinese
have been developed further by Arabian scholars in the 7th century.
Extraordinary scientific and artistic works came into being.
There have been researching, experimenting and writing.
So an astounding collection of knowledge handed down resulted
in exchange between Europe and the Orient.
In this way Jews and Arabian Muslims have brought their old knowledge to Europe.
It's almost unknown that the first European philosopher,
who made equal rights subject of discussion, was an Andalusian Muslim.
People were quite literally more advanced in equalities than some are today.
Until the 16th century women were allowed to teach theology.
Some Muslim scholars developed incredible ideas.
The first windmills were built in Afghanistan in the 7th century
as described by Muslim geographers.
These were introduced to Europe through Islamic Engineers in Al-Andalus.
In view of the new dominant culture Christian theologians
feared the decline of their own religion.
At that time it was written:
"My comrades of faith are reading the poems of the Arabians with pleasure.
They study the Muslim philosophers and theologians,
not to disprove them for instance but to obtain an elegant Arabian Style!"
In the Arabian caliph empire of the 8th century pragmatic alliances
were prevalent instead of fanatic enthusiasm.
The cities in today's Spain were established on the model of Bagdad .
Christians and Jews came to an arrangement with the new dictators.
Christian monks in this time had names like Mohammad, Hussein, Achmed.
In Europe they have kept this knowledge in the monasteries
and protected them from Vikings and other robbers.
The crusaders have transported elements of material culture
of the Islamic world to the Christian.
Jerusalem - the center of the world.
Christian and Jewish pilgrims were always welcome there
because they brought money into the region.
The Europeans learned to know new ideas,
such as Arabic numbers, art works and stories of "1001 nights".
In 1009 Islamic zealots came to power in the Holy Land.
Christian curches were destroyed, pilgrims were murdered.
The Christian-orthodox kingdom of the emperor from Byzantium
was threatened by these Muslims in his perception.
He asked the Pope for military support against 'the godless heathen'.
In 1095 it was according to his plan. The words of Pope Urban aroused
a hysterical mass movement. "God wants it!", was chanted by the crowd.
The so-called crusaders and the knights of the Teutonic Order
had killed in the end 30,000 people.
An experience that engraves the relationship of the religions until today.
As like the Romans before, Christian missionaries, Jewish and
Arabian traders have told about a rich country in the Far East.
Palestine is the bridge-head for the trade to Asia and
a source of great wealth and riches.
In 1165 the crusaders had been forced off by the troups of Calif Nur'ad Din.
For pope Alexander III the dream of a so-called "kingdom of heaven" has broken into pieces.
Then the Mongolian warriors came.
The Venetian Marco Polo had tried to build up direct trade relations.
The European traders went to Xanadu and met Kublai Khan.
In 1282 Marco Polo reported manned and ritual hang-glider ascents.
The flourishing trade with Arabia and China had lead Europe to a new cultural age.
Then the new Spanish rulers tried to find with Columbus the Western route to China.
Xanadu / Shàngdū 上都, the summer capital of the Mongolian ruler Kublai Khan
during his Yuan Dynasty in occupied China
In the 14th century Capitalism came into being in Italy
where money, power and faith were remixed.
The Gold of Africa had been changed into "ducats" in Venice.
The traders established then the Arabic banking system and
financed in this way the new sciences and works of art.
The process of the 14th century have influenced decisively
the modern legal system. Because the swearing of the accused,
who besides had the right to file contradiction, belongs to the legal proceedings of the inquisition.
The women in the Renaissance in Rome were one of the most powerful in the world.
The Roman aristocratic families have been warring with one
another and they dictated to the Pope what to do.
Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia from the Borgia-Clan has succeeded in winning around
the majority of the cardinals through bribery and therefore manipulated
the vote of the new pope in his favour.
As Pope Alexander VI. he was the first who has liberated from them
and ushered in, just like Innocent III and Clemens V before,
a dark era of corruption, intrigues and violence.
So with Martin Luther in 1517 it had come to a division of the church
and afterwards to a separation of state and religion.
Gutenberg's letterpress printing intensified the religious change.
With the French translation of the stories of One Thousand and One Nights
Antoine Galland had put oriental moralism to Europe
With Martin Luther's mad rush against Jews, who didn't want to convert,
many were put to flight again, among them also the entrepreneur
Gracia Mendes Nasi. She developed an escape network that saved hundreds
of Jews from the Inquisition. In Constantinople (Istanbul)
Jews and Muslims were able to work and live together furthermore in peace.
In the 16th century the Gold of the Azteks, Maya and Inca
turned into money of the Europeans!
The trade with silver from the Andes became the basis of globalized economy.
In this period Queen Elizabeth ruled with a rod ouf iron.
The location of the Brits on the sidelines had driven the sailors out to the sea.
The naval warfares against Holland had been waged on all seas.
In Indonesia over 6,000 islanders had been slaughtered by the Dutchmen.
The flourishing world trade in the 17th century in Amsterdam
with Turkish tulip-bulbs turned to be the first speculative bubble
and ruined whole generations in the end. Christian pilgrims from Britain and
the Netherlands fleed in this way to the East coast of North America.
Newton's universal laws, the technical rejuvenation and
Kant's philosophy of enlightenment have marked a turning point
in the renaissance and the beginning of industrialization.
Adam Smith established classical national economics.
Thanks to the English the train advanced to means of transportation in demand.
In the beginning of the 19th century George Stephenson invented a new form of
wheel and developed the fastest machine. The textile industry in Manchester
became a force of an epic economic radical change in Britain and Central-Europe.
"Manchester-capitalism" was spreading out like a virus.
In 1618 there's a climate in Central Europe that had been determined with hate and
agitation by dogmatic Catholics and supporters of the new reformed church.
The American war of independence and the lack of bread in Europe
had set off the Great Revolution in France.
In times of radical change when power begins to crumble the dispensation of justice
turns to an instrument of retention of power.
Judges make incorrect judgements for reasons of state.
In the 18th century the Europeans lead fierce fightings in the name of freedom
of the individual as well as the people. Domination systems and social orders
had been changed, the first democracies came into being, values like equality,
justice, and freedom have left a lasting impression on European mentality.
1789 the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
stated that the government received its power from the people
and strengthened individual rights and equality.
Abbé Grégoire was a supporter of universal suffrage.
He stood up for replenishment of the declaration of human rights
from 1789 in order to expand the principles of the French Revolution on all people.
His suggestion was based on the natural state that is between the nations.
China, in 1840.
From a branch in Canton European tradesmen were doing business with a highly lucrative trade:
They payed the exportation of tea, silk and jade with opium
that was eligible in China, because it's strictly banned.
Dirk Struan's company "Noble House" was able to profit the most
from the illegal opium-trade. The West had spiked China with drugs.
When the Chinese emperor burned the opium and chased away the Europeans
out of Canton the fizzy trade source threatened to dry up. But at his instigation
he annexed the British Army in 1841 the supposedly insignificant island Hongkong.
Struan founded here together with European tradesmen a soon flourishing trade colony.
China had lost the Opium Wars that ended with the uneven contracts of Nanking
in 1842, and with the final opening of the Chinese markets.
The Taiping-revolt 1850-64 had been a symptom of inner destabilization.
The religiously and socially motivated Taiping-movement demanded the abolition
of private property and equal rights of man and woman.
Their bloody crush had cost 20 million human lives and reinforced the outer dependence of China.
Aslike the Shaolin monastries before Hongkong was also a place of refuge for expatriates
who revolted against the Qing-dynasty, and at the same time an origin of revolution.
January 1901 the President of the society for Chinas' rebirth, Prof. Yan Chuyun, had been assassinated.
British-French forces took control of the Forbidden City and occupied
it together with Americans, Germans, Russians and Japanese
until the end of the Second Drug War in 1901.
The Xinhai Revolution of 1911 overthrew the corrupt Qing dynasty,
ending two millennia of monarchical rule, opening the gate for progress. Yet the revolution did not change the tragic fate of the Chinese people, who continued to suffer under colonial hegemony and feudal pressures. The Revolution was a catalyst for the people
eager for progress following the spirit of Sun Yat-sen.
Afterwards the communist party led the people to Nationalist rejuvenation.
With the following World Wars and the Cultural Revolution, set into
motion by Mao Zedong, the once highly cultural Middle Kingdom had collapsed.
Mao and his Red Guards formed a new irreligious empire in line with marxism.
After 1978 Western companies support the inhuman regime in China for profitable purposes.
"Market-leninism" changed the nation to a giant factory.
After Mao's death his colleague Deng Xaoping knew how to make the most of nascent fractionalism
(parliamentary party-formation) within the Communist leadership
for his political goal, China's modernization through market-oriented pragmatism.
The conflicts of classes have tightened up turbocapitalism.
The Ottoman story:
With the industrial revolution the former (Western) Byzantine and later tolerant
Ottoman empire was more and more at the mercy of European forces.
Russia wanted to use their influence more intensely in Southeast-Europe.
Great Britain and France backed away from this Russian expansion
because they didn't want to lose the connection to India.
After a war against Serbia in 1876 the powers contemplated an
autonomy both for two provinces in the Bulgarian region
and for Bosnia and Herzegovina.
When the Ottomans rejected this the Russians occupied the entire Balkans.
With the peace treaty of San Stefano 1878 the Ottomans
had to acknowledge the independence of Romania, Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria.
The by Bismarck initiated contract of Berlin revised many articles of San Stefano.
Financially the Ottomans get completely into dependence of the European superpowers.
With the construction of the Baghdad-train to the raw materials
inventory in Iraq the Deutsche Reich was getting somewhere.
In the first Balkan war 1912 Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, and
Montenegro combined against the Ottoman empire.
After the political assassination by a Serbian rebell in 1914
the "Young Turkish" forged an alliance with Germany and
Austria-Hungary, and the British-French allies tried then
to rule the Ottoman center beside Syria and others.
By extension there was an Arabic revolt.
At the end of the 19th century the Arabic Muslims went with British imperialist,
archeologist, and secret agent Thomas Edward Lawrence "of Arabia" to rebellion
against the Ottoman empire that finally became to Turkey in 1917.
The nationalist movements had desintegrated the multiracial state
and General Atatürk's resistance against the occupying powers
divided the rest of the empire into controversial spheres of influence.
In 1947, the United Nations General Assembly recommended the adoption and
implementation of the partition plan of Mandatory Palestine.
On 14 May 1948, David Ben-Gurion, the Executive Head of the
World Zionist Organization and president of the Jewish Agency for Palestine,
declared "the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as
the State of Israel", a state independent upon the termination of
the British Mandate for Palestine, 1948.
The Jewish settlement of the West Bank began in 1967.
In the post-war period European imperialism had broken down.
Pressurized by the UN, Great Britain, and the US, the Dutch accepted
the independence of Indonesia. It came to civil war and massacres on
hundreds of thousands of communists, supposed suporters and political
opponents, when Suharto and Anti-communist generals made
the Communist party responsible for an attempted coup.
Concurrently centuries-old disapprovals against Chinese minorities
broke out and lead to genocide of the Chinese people in Indonesia.
Since then religious and racial hatred has been poked in China as well.
In the Arabian World there has been dispair for 200 years
- colonized by the French, Italians and the British.
During the first World War 250,000 men from Morocco, Algeria, and Tunesia
had been recruited by France and Great Britain.
Then the Arabians shaked off colonialism,
during the difficult post-war period they get puppet governments
which are partially financed by the Europeans,
which have used torture. The West have inserted for it suspected terrorists.
Since then the muslim communities are in conflict with the politicians.
Here the Islam gives the people native feeling and spiritual security.
Since Sadam Hussein, who wanted to turn Baġdād again into a center of
the Arabian world, they know that the monarchy of the old Persians and
Arabian caliphs doesn't fit in this world anymore.
Western powers have failed in democratization in the Middle East.
Europe have underestimated their potential for economic and racial reasons.
Usama Bin Laden was fighting together with Americans and Afghans
against the Russians. When the Arabic countries were occupied
by the Americans after the Gulf Wars, the Saudi-Arabian son of
a billionair began to plan the counterstrike in 2001.
Publicist Peter Scholl-Latour: The government of the West is based on hypocrisy.
Speculative casino-capitalism cannot satisfy the whole world.
Their trillion-dollar military superiority is suddenly helpless towards the asymmetrical war.
They have an ideal - democracy, freedom of speech, free elections
- and they want to carry this like a religion into other cultural environments
which are partially not suitable for it.
And with these declarations of respectable values
they support regimes that are disposed towards the West at the same time.
Islamism, a collective term for different political ideologies,
has been constantly oppressed by the dictators.
In this way the extremist Islamists were celebrated like heroes.
Any form of extremism is a challenge for man and woman.
Sectarian Islamistic groups particularly in the Sudan, in Mali, Nigeria,
Tansania and Kenia are causing huge problems. Furthermore the Muslim brotherhood
was taking over big parts of the Arabian world while
"those people, who don't have the loudest voices, need our leadership urgently",
stated the former prime minister Tony Blair.
The West have failed in helping the people in Iran.
The democratic key question is always how the majority treats the minority.
Abdel Bari Atwan the editor-in-chief of the Arabian newspaper
"Al Quds al Arabi" appealed in 2014 to the participants of the conference
of the "Organisation for Islamic Cooperation" (OIC) in Saudi-Arabian Mecca
to finally overcome the confessional tension in the region.
"We have to learn to emancipate ourselves from the ideologic and ethnic tensions.
Afterwards solidarity will be set by itself."
In the Qur'an there's no statement that plans a legal measure
against those who leave Islam in order to accept a different faith.
Canadian Islamic scientist John Andrew Morrow translated
in his book "The Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with
the Christians of the World" from 2013 six letters by the prophet to
monks of the Sinai-monastry as well to Christians in
Persia, Assyria, and in Nadschran near Mecca in the South of today's Saudi Arabia:
"...those who declare one's support for the religion of Christianity
in the East and West of the Earth, near and far,
Arabic and non-Arabic, known and unknown."
They must not be followed, nor the judges their work and the monks lose their monastery.
"Nobody is allowed to destroy a house of their religion
or purloin something from it in order to give it to Muslims."
Theologian Mouhanad Khorchide (2014)
is promoting for an up-to-date interpretation of the Qu'ran:
There's the "science of revelation reasons in the Qu'ran"
that had established itself in the 8th/9th century.
Even back then they'd asked for the reasons to which certain verses
had been announced in order to understand them better in
historical context. One should learn to read between the lines.
Just now they try to develop hermeneutics from it.
In Islamic theology there are key statements that have ahistorical
nature which aren't directed at the whole society.
Theologians are teaching muslims to comprehend the words in the Qu'ran
in historical context or otherwise it'd be misinterpreted. Aim and principle of
the Qur'an is order and justice for the whole society, not just the Muslims.
"Punishments must not be interpreted word-for-word."
"And if you assume that your wives commit breach of confidence,
talk about it with them and withdraw from the private parts
or avoid intimacies and beat them."
Koran-quotations like these are for Khorchide a good example
to pay attention to the historical context of the revelation.
In that time the women were murdered or beat up with the slightest suspicion.
The message of God in this verse to the people back then
is to be taken as a devaluation of violence against women.
Nonviolent methods have priority, stated Khorchide.
A word-for-word interpretation however (like the Salafists)
would legitimize violence against women.
It depends on reading between the lines and asking for the real statement behind.
For the 40-year old theologian from Münster in Germany it's important
not to reduce the Qur'an with its 6,236 verses on a juridical set of rules
and regulations - particularly merely 80 verses are meant in the sense of the law.
"Appeal for reason and common sense."
The theologian pleads for liberty and reason instead for blind obedience.
God doesn't want any marionettes who are simply executing orders.
"God is not a dictator who expects them to obey only him", Khorchide said.
Man should comprehend and analyse instead
why we're on the world and what could be our assignment.
Liberal thought
Abracadabra, Simsalabim, Aladin and his magic lamp,
Ali Baba and the 40 robbers, Sindbad the seafarer -
these fairy tales were written in the 9th century.
The story of Sindbad has a true background. It's about an Arabian trader who
reached China from the Indian ocean during the Tang-dynasty,
though went down on the way back near Indonesia.
The famous stories of "Thousand & one night" are a Potpourie,
of human passions like drama and eroticism,
which belongs to Islamic culture just as the Qur'an.
In Islam it's not demanded to reject pleasure or Entertainment.
The strict picture ban in Islam had caused that for the artists in this cultural
environment the written word turned to be a richer source of inspiration.
In the Middle Ages literature, arts and philosophy have prospered in the liberal climate of Bagdad.
The Mu'tazilah dared to maintain that God can be realized
through bare reason without the revelation of the Qur'an.
An awakening of liberal thought,
stimulated by Ancient Jewish and Greek philosophers,
that turned Bagdad two generations long to a cosmopolitan city of the spirit.
The Mu'tazilah were an elitist movement. They haven't reach the general public
while the traditional Qur'an scholars had contact to most people.
And a political system or a government that relies on the support of the general
public has to count lastingly on the traditionalists rather on elitists.
The later Caliphs bowed to the will of religious zealots.
Muhammad had turned an ancient phylogenetic society into one single nation.
He pronounced an ethical programme of justice.
This had placed the whole Arabians and many peoples,
who then accepted the Islam, to a higher culural level.
Muhammad described Judaism and Christianity as part of Islam.
In Islam Jesus was regarded as a true man and true God at the same time.
Jesus and the prophets are seen as the martyrs of faith to God.
In view of the historians no one, except Jesus, has changed history so persistently like Muhammad.
1400 years old is the relationship between the Occident and the Orient,
Christianity and Islam. The willingness to be aggressiv was mutual.
The origin of Islam is in Mecca whose prehistory began with a cosmic event.
A meteor that had striked there.
The stone that fell from heaven is regarded as a divine sign
and became a basis for pilgrims. Long before the birth of Islam
they had built around the stone a place of ritual worship to the gods.
Al-Kaba (kubus, cube) is a cubic building and the central shrine of Islam.
The beginnings of Islam were in the company of mysterious phenomena.
A man called Muhammad was at the center of Muslim traditions
whose search for true faith has always lead to a cave near Mecca.
Cleaning and fasting were part of his rituals.
Muhammad criticized the Hellenistic-influenced christology.
The arrogance of the Greeks had bothered him
because they themselves can be idolized with it.
In 610 it seemed that the seeking has found answers to his questions.
The divine messages of a heavenly being were unequivocal and clear,
they tell about Jihad. "Recite, recite!", was ordered to Muhammad after all.
Muhammad is to announce the message of Islam, the dedication to God.
Over 20 years long he stood in contact with Angels,
which dictated him the holy scriptures of the Qur'an.
The messenger of God is to be the bridge between the absolute out of space and time
and the human being inside of space and time.
Jihad = exertion, fight, effort. Jihad denotes the concept of being a better Muslim
"Striving in the way of the One and true God / Allah".
It is false to reduce Jihad to so-called 'holy war'.
War is always leading to brutalization of man and sets free his drives
in order to destroy the enemy, and to spread fear and horror.
There's no "Holy War". War is the will of man alone.
The laws of God ("You shall not murder") cannot be conjugated.
The Islam forbids the groundless use of violence against people
regardless of their race, ethnicity, or religion.
"Whoever condemns a person it is as though he has condemned all mankind."
This vers of the 5th Sura of the Qur'an is lead willingly to the field
by muslims in order to illustrate the peaceableness of Islam.
"Do not kill anyone whose killing Allah has forbidden" (Surah 17:33)
This is the Book about which there is no doubt, a guidance for those
conscious of Allah - to top Who believe in the unseen, establish prayer,
and spend out of what We have provided for them,
And who believe in what has been revealed to you and what was revealed
before you, and of the Hereafter they are certain in faith.
Those are upon guidance from their Lord, and it is those who are the successful.
Indeed, those who disbelieve - it is all the same for them whether
you warn them or do not warn them - they will not believe.
Allah has set a seal upon their hearts and upon their hearing,
and over their vision is a veil. And for them is a great punishment.
And of the people are some who say, "We believe in Allah and the Last Day,"
but they are not believers. They think to deceive Allah and those who believe,
but they deceive not except themselves and perceive it not.
In their hearts is disease, so Allah has increased their disease;
and for them is a painful punishment because they habitually used to lie.
And when it is said to them, "Do not cause corruption on the earth," they say,
"We are but reformers." Unquestionably, it is they who are the corrupters, but they perceive it not.
And when it is said to them, "Believe as the people have believed," they say,
"Should we believe as the foolish have believed?" Unquestionably,
it is they who are the foolish, but they know it not.
And when they meet those who believe, they say, "We believe";
but when they are alone with their evil ones, they say, "Indeed,
we are with you; we were only mockers."
But Allah mocks them and prolongs them in their transgression while they wander blindly.
Those are the ones who have purchased error in exchange for guidance,
so their transaction has brought no profit, nor were they guided. (Surah 2 / Al-Baqara)
After Muhammad's natural death in Medina two Arabian chiefs of clans asserted
themselves as his successor to manage his political and religious heritage.
The office of the caliphs fell on Usman,
sheikh of a rich family who called themselves Umayyah.
But Muhammad's cousin Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib also layed claim to the caliphate.
His followers named themselves Shia Islam, 'party of Alī', the today's Shiites.
661: When Alī was recognized as head of the Muslims
an assassin murdered him in front of all people.
Alī's son Hussein held the Umayyah responsible for that and attacked them.
And the supporters of the prophet were caused to fall out since then.
The "Sons of Umayyah" had asserted themselves brutally against
the Alī's followers and created the first Arabic state.
They moved the seat of government from Mecca to Damascus, the 'pearl of the Orient'.
Nevertheless the later Muslim chroniclers described the Umayyah
as rotten branch of the trunk of Islam.
So it was not about religious questions. The ultimate cause of these conflicts
was Muhammad's omission to regulate his succession.
With the dispute of the clans an Islamic dogma arised with very own traditions and rituals - the Shiites.
The Talmud wiped out the Jewish variety,
the ecumenical councils divorced Christianity in orthodox and heretics
A Persian wiseman, Mānī, had caused a book religion that purported,
to lead Jewry, Christianity, Buddhism and the teachings of the ancient Persian
founders of a religion Zoroaster (Zarathustra) together.
And the Sassanides assigned scholars who filled the thin as well dark tradition
of zoroastric verses in a global theology.
The Roman Emperor Justinian went even further while he gathered the Roman
dispensation of justice in order to put the worldly order to the side of the divine.
Muawiya (603-680) wanted to understand why God had entrusted him with world domination
and how he was able to keep this reign in a long term.
With it he had been experimenting with different beliefs and doctrines
which were quite casually accessible.
The Dome of the rock in Jerusalem, the holy city of the Jews, became a symbol
of these experiments. The Umayyah were fascinated by their religious Impetus.
The more the Umayyah and their following show themselves to be arrogant rulers
the bigger the wish for universally valid moral and social guidelines, and for an celestial authority.
Religion & politics
The promised Messiah says: "The God of Islam is that God which is reflected in
the laws of nature and creation. The Islam isn't introducing a new God but that God
which is realized through the inner light and conscience and the heavens and the earth."
Islam means complete adoration in God.
Every religion shoud be lived with the same passion and adoration in the One God.
Muhammad's Islamization in respectful ratio to other religions.
The common prehistory of Jews, Christians and Muslims began in 1760 BC with Abraham.
Abraham is the ancestor of Moses, King David, King Solomon, Mary,
Jesus of Nazareth and Muhammad.
The Qur'an urges to be lenient: The Islam is the only true religion.
We must respect the Christians and the Jews because parts of their doctrines are true.
Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah, stands out strongly in the Qur'an.
15 Sures and 93 Verses from the Qur'an are related to
Isa ibn Maryam 'Jesus Son of Mary‘. He is described as:
a symbol of God, child prodigy, miracle healer, God's servant,
child of Abraham and son of the virgin Mary.
The Qur'an even knows details from the life of Jesus that are missing in the Bible.
But for the people in the Orient Muhammad from Mecca is the last prophet.
Muhammad's divine mission was to lead believers to the right path.
The belief that God, Jesus and the Holy spirit are alike is regarded as a false doctrine.
This is one of the origins of conflicts in the later centuries.
Religion can therefore be served easily as an ideological justification.
The Islam is the law of God. Democracy is the law of man.
Sharia (Islamic legal system) is a very flexible term
that is decisively filled with the intention of politicians. Sharia means praying. Sharia means giving.
Literally translated Sharia means "Way to the water source".
The Muslim wants to live after the rules of the Arabic Qur'an
and not only after the rules of the Sharia.
The rules of the Sharia are based on the teachings of the Qur'an.
It doesn't just consist questions of faith but also guidelines of daily life.
Since the birth of Islam these rules are interpreted new again and again by religious scholars.
The meaning of the Sharia is different from region to region.
For many the key question is not what the Arabic Qur'an says
but what the Qur'an says in opinion of the Muslim scholars.
For the modern Muslim in Christian influenced Southeast-Asia
the rules of the Sharia are above the guidelines of the board of directors.
And the all-embracing doctrines of Islam are above the laws of the Sharia
that are determined by rich politicians.
Countries like Malaysia are serving only partially as a role model for democracy in Islam
German-Turkish Islam critic and publicist Necla Kelek:
Since the 11th century there was only the shariah.
Most of the Islamic countries today are Hadith-countries,
they're living after the recommendation of the prophet.
The Ulema, the religious scholars, weigh it up and determine
which of it has influence in which form.
The shariah is the word of God that's raised to earthly law.
That's the dilemma in which the Islam stucks today. These are no prejudices, this is reality.
The Islamic world have to converse with eachother at last.
We Muslims can't always say: Take us as how we are.
Religion and politics are often separated and divided.
For them these rights are indispensable which are given to man by his creator.
Even the Western values have their foundation in religion.
With the contract of Medina the prophet Muhammad recorded the fact that
the Jews belong to the community with all rights and duties in society
Christians of Yemen have negotiated with the prophet in the mosque
about the acceptance of heretics in Islamic history.
The poems of Abu Nuwas who was homosexual as known
were accepted and spread further in the Islamic world.
The freedom of speech in the sense of debate culture has great tradition
in the golden age of Islamic renaissance and history.
Wahhabism/Salafism is a sect that came into being from an internal change
of Hanbalit doctrines. Founded in the 18th century by Al-Wahhab
this movement has been accepted by the Saudi-dynasty.
After the foundation of the Saudi-Arabian empire Ibn Saud made out of it his
state doctrine which is rejected by all directions of Islam.
________________________________________________________________________________________economics
Financial Cycle
"Development aid is when the poor people of a rich country
spend money for rich people of a poor country." - Denis Healey, politician
"The secret of successful stock market deals lies in recognizing,
what the average citizen believes that the average citizen does."
- John Keynes, mathematician, politician, economist
Ethic banking
Our money system today is a monoculture.
40% of all prices are pure interest payments.
Politics is a system of changing rules.
The financial experts are expecting from the government to be ready to reform.
More and more economists are emphasizing again and again
the high reliability of the Islamic bank system.
It's listing a constant upward trend. It's global business in a globalized world.
Even back then it's been predicted that the Islamic bank system is growing
more than the conventional. And we see that now particularly in Malaysia.
The investments in these banks there are rising much faster than in conventional.
Very few Islamic banks are actually affected by the economic crisis.
Certain deals which conventional banks are working with like speculation deals,
financing through involvement of another person, or loan business with rates
of interest, making money out of money, are plainly forbidden.
The transparency to invest only in real existent values,
the order of every financial insecurity, revealing all costs are guidelines for the Western bank system.
Risk and profit should be shared between financial backer and borrower
The majority in the West will think this is revolutionary.
They are "used" to the capitalistic system.
If it's about using our ressources and helping people
we should try to work together with all religious groups.
In view of the consumers the Islamic financial system is neither worst nor better
just because it's Islamic. The only thing what counts are the conditions.
The new 'ethic-banks' consider the Islamic system as a model.
Dr. Mustafa Nasution: "All sections of the population should profit from the
Sharia financial system. Not just people with money.
Because we are part of world economy most of the people are working in a
capitalistic system. This means: People with money are gaining more than others."
Poverty and depts are going hand-in-hand. The gap between rich and poor
is getting bigger because of a greedy Western system.
"The term of welfare has to be seen as a Whole.
Welfare in earthly life as well in the next life. One has to do well also on economic basis."
In our system money is created by someone who borrows long.
Money comes into being only this way. This means:
All the money stands opposite a credit and reversely.
If the state America has debts totalling 14 Bio.$
then someone differently has 14 Bio.$ credit balance.
If Germany pays 42 Bio.$ rates yearly someone differently get credited 42 Bio.$.
In Germany we have debts totalling 2 Trillion € and
5 Trillion € financial assets of private budget.
The perfidious thing about the financial system is that this money masses together
with very few people in the course of decades and
the majority won't get anything out of it.
Half of the citizens won't gain anything from these 5 Trillion €.
And the richest 10% have the greatest part.
The majority must work out these rates because the own debts will be payed either way.
The state took up a lot of money in their name. They act as guarantor for this.
And as citizens they don't just have to guarantee,
they also have to pay these rates yearly over their taxes.
The interest of the company will be converted on the product.
When they do shopping they pay the rates of the industry.
For the citizens it doesn't matter where the debts in the system are lying, he pays it all the time.
So long as the citizen get less money for his own investment,
than he pays on the other side from this field, he's financing this for the few super-rich.
At the outset one can do that unproblematically because this pile of debts
and with it the interest burden in the whole system is relatively little.
At the end it goes up explosively.
That's the feeling, what many people have, that on the one hand
one has the impression things have been going right and at the same time
more and more people subjectively have the feeling that
it goes wrong and everything is getting more expensive.
The people must give away more and more of what they work for this interest charge
in the whole system which are collected from very few
up to a point when the citizens are not able to go on.
Then it comes for centuries every couple of decades to a collapse of the system.
Then it always comes to a severe reappropriation of these moneys from the top
down to the people again. This goes either over a strong inflation,
over a currency reform, over extreme tax incidences.
We have reached again the bottom of this cycle and now this radical change comes bottom-up.
The difference of interest and compound interest
Stockbroker Dirk Müller: If Joseph would have invested one cent for Jesus at that time in Galilee
what would've happen if he would've forgotten this money and
it would've increased on and on.
The result would be: 195 Million globes of pure Gold.
No man is able to think exponentially in this dimension, we are pointed to think linearly.
What happens if one is withdrawing the rates every year?
One leaves the rates and it pays interest yearly.
2000 years later the result is only one Euro. The difference of interest and compound interest is
one Euro to 195 Million globes of pure Gold in 2000 years.
If one understands this ultimate problem of our western economic system
then one knows why this cannot work out endlessly.
It has to collapse or at least it must be balanced.
Bet on the future
Speculation produces an increasing instability of capitalism.
Upswing and fall, over-investment and recession, stock market booms and financial fusions.
Speculation is a future-orientated game with prognosis.
Facts are interpreted, numbers are analyzed, chances and risks are calculated.
Predictions will be made, fantasies created, anticipations resulted.
They trade in time. Future anticipated and speculated.
Through speculation the market finds fulfillment in its purest form.
Speculation is the rational stabilizing core of economy.
And economy is a game of chance. It is veritably a bet on the future.
Those who have caused the financial crisis with their false financial products,
so far as they didn't go away and work again at Barclays in London,
they continue their work as always. They speculate again with
high-risk financial products of which one doesn't know how it turns out.
And the bad thing is, that there's also the fact that meanwhile at the stock market
they even do speculative deals on food
- they speculate on rice, cereal, corn - as objects of speculation,
so that their prices have risen by 100% at the stock exchange.
If this happens in normal life, speculating on the livelihood basis of
millions of people, they would be graded as extremely criminal.
Exchange trading and financial jugglers meanwhile have an unhealthy measure in influence in our lives.
Long since share value and corporate liquidity go separate ways.
Today computer-algorithms purchase and sell the shares.
The problem is the mass:
The course sinks when the client sells his shares automated.
Through course decreases other sellings set off automatically, and thus others in turn - a chain reaction.
And that all happens so fast that no man is able to control or to stop it.
And some don't even want to stop it because they have bet on fallen prices,
aslike when someone put one's money on the last horse in horse-racing.
With this development the financial world has become completely independent.
What happens there in a beat of an eyelash, has nothing to do anymore with real economy.
The machines are ruling us. Without our notice.
Legal government action would only take effect if the great majority of
the financial centres of the earth would be in agreement and pull together.
Otherwise business will only shift.
Though that all will not happen before the whole financial industry is down
and a change of one's views begins in the hardliners of politics and economy.
While we speculate on the stock market into the future we pass on our hazardous waste to the future.
The Power of the bank
The G-20-Nations had settled a 15-points program for the reform of
the international financial structure. Including an increased bank supervision,
the closure of the offshore-window, the installation of a finance-transaction tax.
The international financial markets have proved themselves as stronger as
the democratic voted governments, because the British and the Republicans
in America didn't take part in it. These people are sabotaging everything
what belongs to the financial structure.
They have learned that they are able to speculate to the utmost.
And if things fall through, Uncle Sam comes by and finance it by the taxpayer.
These banking institutions have become so gigantic in the meantime
that the state cannot let them go bankrupt otherwise millions of people
would loose their property. So one should reduce the power of the bank.
These bankers are controlling the skills of the world and not the voted politicians.
Our world gross national product of 50 Billion $ is that what is produced on the earth.
But simultaneously we have a money supply of 150 Billion $, that means,
we have 100 Billion $ which is due to no real economic value.
It's free floating money in the hand of 50,000 investment bankers and brokers.
A structured reform might be the most important thing that is in store for politicians.
The stock market traders could help out with it, that in the financial world itself
they listen to reason, that a reform is essential to life.
Market based society
A recent worldwide study recently showed
the dramatic effect of social situational factors on what
we would generally view as dispositionist character traits.
The study, entitled Markets, Religion, Community Size,
and the Evolution of Fairness and Punishment, tested, through games,
the fairness and punishment instincts in 15 diverse world populations.
The authors found that market integration positively correlated
with measures of fairness, while community size correlated positively with punishment instincts.
The authors believe the study emphasizes that
‘prosociality is not solely the product of an innate psychology, but also reflects norms and institutions
that have emerged over the course of human history.’
In large, market based societies, norms of fairness and punishment developed, evolutionarily,
in order to help ensure the continued successful completion of mutually beneficial market transactions.
The Ressources
Cash valuable fossil fuel like crude oil, oil shale, coal, gas,
as well the commodities wood, precious and basic metal, rare earth elements,
nutrition, and water secure the people's wealth and make cultural progress possible
in combination with intention and imaginativeness.
A new market is booming that harnesses nature economically.
The capitalists are now making nature to merchandise.
The market value of living nature is climbing because the amount of biological variety is going back.
Economy and banks are taking possession of the living ressources
of Earth. They convert environment into speculative capital assets
and make animals and plants to financial products.
The Euro is too strong for weak national economies.
A non-growing economy is much more difficult to control.
Democracy doesnt work in impoverished countries.
Abundance and overproduction are the sources of poverty.
Half of all foods is ending up in trash!
The worldwide speculation with land is increasing.
Escalating food prices are increasing the commercial pressure
to global land surfaces. Peasant farms without spending power
and titles of property are suppressed more and more frequently.
In Africa the struggle for raw materials has changed.
In the past the Europeans and Americans wanted them to be in control.
Today they are not compelled anymore to do something, they now have the choice
between the aggressive West or the greedy Chinese or Saudis.
Chinese as Indians, Indonesians, and Malayans
foster relations with Africa already since 1000 years.
In that time hundreds of Asians have been living together
with the Natives at the East African coast.
They understand how to make quickier decisions.
However the already sparse drinking water, food and sand ressources
(for concrete production) are getting more and more meagre.
Air, water, sand and oil are the most consumed economic commodities.
The sand, that's supposed to be in the beach, is stucked in the dams.
The unjust distribution of goods and the increasing inequality between
the rich and poor are the causes of violence, terror and war.
In many places of the world armed conflicts are justified with
totalitarian claims to power and fundamental convictions.
The 85 richest people have got greater assets than the 3.5 billion poorest together!
Many deals between the companies and governments in
the Southern countries are not of advantage to the natives.
In Africa big holes yawn in the ground after the firms from
Europe, USA, and China had won oil and other mineral resources.
The cultivation of food in developing countries for
the Industrial nations is increasing worldwide hunger.
The hunger has largely to do with the absurd subsidy of European food exports.
Because they are damaging the agriculture there.
Almost the whole harvest is feeded for the meat production.
"The more they produce for the North, the higher the prices,
in particular, when food production is not sufficient worldwide",
says Secretary-General of World famine aid, Wolfgang Jamann.
Another cause and effect for price increases is the growing usage
of arable farmland for Bio-petrol and animal feed.
Only half of the cereal production are getting into the human food chain.
Jamann called it a scandal that the international community didn't
agree on "courageous rules for a fair world trade system" up to now.
Bio-fuel is replacing fossil fuel that is very risky and dangerous
to drill for. Nobel laureate Prof. Hartmut Michel:
"But if we use 30,000 km² for the production of bio-diesel then we can
substitute only 2% of diesel and gasoline through bio-diesel."
The food prices are increasing globally because plant-based fuel
is now in competition with fossil fuel. Bio-petrol is allegedly grown within a short time
eventhough these plantations can be used only once in a long term.
Chargeable to the so-called "Thrid world" they are trading concealed with "Gene-foods".
The yield of transgenetic plants, like soy, corn, canola, or Cotton,
can be increased with genotypical manipulations.
Their cultivation befalled 10% of utilizable space of land.
The countries were used as field laboraties.
The worldwide available food is enough to feed everyone,
Pope Francis accentuated. "Each and every person must be aware,
how he can contribute to the realization of the right on food."
Diplomacy couldn't have been managed worldwide without the mission.
It's not just paradoxical that i.e. the cocoa farmers in West Africa
have never seen chocolate. The rich are extending their positions of power
and they are only interested in material, terrestrial problems.
The poorer people want to know everything about heaven and paradise,
and they dissociate themselves from a carnivore system.
The economic graben between nation-state and world region
are discussed on both sides of the globe.
The result after periods of colonial imperialism, exploitation,
demographic narrowing, missing legal securities,
excessive speculative deals with food and inordinate arms trading of
Americans (45%), Russians (25%), Germans, French, Brits, and Chinese:
_______________________________________________________________________________________metaethics
Solidarity - Right, Ethics & Morality
Technology changes society.
Visions of projects, machines and constructions exist so long as mankind.
Some of the technical visionaries believe that there are no limits.
It's the endless story about an endless running machine
and the endless belief in technical improvement and its universal feasibility.
Whether fire, wheels, radio, theatre, beer, football, guns or skyscrapers,
all have made a massive difference to the way we work, live and play.
Computer technology accelerates the change and
raises whole new issues every society has to tackle.
It stretches the limits of law.
After 30 years of anarchy, inflation, and reparation
the industrialists left the field clear for the extremist moneymakers.
Glyphosate, coal, diesel engine, aircraft/ship emissions, and pylons.
Man is like a cell in the planetary organism,
Growth without limits is like a spread of cancer.
Control, computation, speculation, resentment, hedging, dominance,
pride, arrogance, manipulation, striving for power, guilt, and fear
belong to the negative aspects of our selfish bearing.
Aslike Adam Smith before Weimar political criminologist
Gustav Radbruch noticed: "Where they don't even strive for justice
their managed order can only be claims to power, never legal norms."
"German irrationality was living further in big parts of the Third World
as a ferment of a 'nationalization of the masses' (Mosse 1976)
even under the sign of an anti-imperialistic 'fetching valuation',
not at least in diverse 'socialist' masks.
Aslike in Germany and Europe in the 20th century as well
at the capitalist periphery they've dispossessed, bourgeoisly edited, distorted,
and misused orally passed on premodern mass cultures for the invention of
nationalistic contructs in order to board the 'nice machine' culturalistically.
That marxism has reinterpreted this process to a 'liberation movement'
was always due to the own ideological march luggage of the mechanistic
definition of improvement which hyped the capitalist modernization
and nationalization to 'historical necessity."
BfW-chief Cornelia Weitzel regards 1989/90 as a clear break:
"Development policy wasn't used anymore as an instrument
of the Cold War and therefore debased.
After the Second World War the development cooperation
was carried on in order to position geo-strategically each of the own power bloc.
Seeing that this interest ceased to apply the government of Somalia
for instance has been dropped straight away which
has lead there to the decline of the state."
As education is a threat for extremists, as is enlightenment for capitalists.
The transition to democracy in the Middle East and North Africa
had endangered some of the ethnic and religious minorities.
In 2011 hundreds of thousands of Tunesians, Egyptians and Libyians
have used networking opportunities
in order to organize extensively against dictatorship, injustice and oppression.
Within weeks they managed to drive many rulers out of the office!
Under the term "religious animosities" we summarize different reprisals,
more or less when minorities are forced into following religious norms or plagued through third.
In the Islamic world there's a fight in the foreground against gender-apartheid,
the deprivation of the woman and against an education policy
that separates the world in friend and enemy.
Against self-aggrandizement and obsolete religious thought patterns.
When frustration comes into being
Islamists can conquer the hearts and heads of the people.
In order to prevent this Egypt has to come to a key role.
The fascist version of Islam carries out a simple subdivision of the world:
In believers who get everything right and nonbelievers
who whenever they turn up they bring disaster.
Many reformers had to pay their attempts with their lives.
The muslim feeling of isolation and the moral superiority towards
the outside world have lead to a "cultural incest".
Greatest deficit of Islam is its attitude to individuality and personal development.
The uphold of norms and life styles which are not up-to-date anymore.
Though in states like Syria women are legally better protected than in the West.
'The final emancipation of the woman is beyond the recognition of her common sense,
so her ability to reflexion, speculative thinking and decision.'
"Female reason is the big subject of the modern age. All rights are lead from it:
citizenship, economic independence, contraception,
the 'Habeas Corpus' of the woman", philosopher Geneviève Fraisse explained in 2016.
Political power is a type of power held by a group in a society which allows
administration of some or all of public resources, including labour and wealth.
There are many ways to obtain possession of such power.
At the nation-state level political legitimacy for political power is held by
the representatives of national sovereignty.
Political powers are not limited to heads of states,
however the extent to which a person or group
such as an insurgency, terrorist group, or multinational corporation
possesses such power is related to the amount of societal influence
they can wield, formally or informally. In many cases this is not contained
within a single state and it refers to international power.
Power is a complex social interaction between those who
command and those who obey.
For power to be effective there must be consent, cooperation, and obedience.
Broad-based defiance of the authority of those
who hold power may significantly erode it or overthrow it.
Some opinions representative of Enlightenment, 19th century, modern,
and post-modern views on the relationship between
political power and concepts of justice, good and evil.
The author Machiavelli described in his work "The ruler" from 1532
the methods in order to obtain and keep sovereignty and power.
There are many historical examples of destructive
and senseless use of political power.
This happens mostly then when too much power is concentrated
on the hands of a few people,
with no space for political debates, public criticism, and
other forms of social correctives.
Demonstrations of abuses of power are despotism, tyranny, and dictatorship.
Most of the solution strategies contain sharing of power, e.g. in democracy,
limiting of power of individuals or groups, and setting up of fundamental right
for all individuals through legislation of a Charta of human rights.
"For a generation and for the tide of history the moral qualities of the leading personalities
are maybe of greater significance than intellectual accomplishments." - Albert Einstein
"Unity of Europe was a dream of a few. It became hope
for many. It is today a necessity for all." - Chancellor Konrad Adenauer
In public "Europe" has been understood without the East. The "West" without the South.
Right on their doorstep they've ignored the war in Kosovo
and later the UNHCR-warnings. Only after a quarter million dead
bodies, millions of severely injured, they began here to get into causes.
The old and new democracies of the union during the global upheaval
were directed of necessity at the running engine.
German neo-liberals weren't less intransigent than Americans and Brits back then.
Populists from the ethno-nationalist scene were allowed to expand up to Ukraine.
Parallel to the welcome gestures in Kenia, Ethiopia,
Lebanon, Jordania, Turkey, India, Sweden, Germany, and Canada for which volunteers,
Christians, Jews, and Muslims were the competent office and not politicians or other
jingoistics to whom redistributions and cultural universalities literally run past,
at the side of bigoted pejorative ethnophaulists
who define oneself only over position and possession
and neglect common values and rights, and stir up opinion against cultural diversity
despite of background and history, without correcting themselves afterwards.
"One of the great advantages that entail power and wealth lies in that
one doesn't ever have to apologize for anything." - Noam Chomsky, nachdenkseiten.de
Slave traders and traffickers in human beings in the Mediterrenean and in Egyptian
Sinai were preying on Thousands of families who had to flee from the completely
undersupplied refugee camps and pay 20 times as much for a voyage to Europe.
In Lybia the most brutal militants should take care of the boat-refugees.
European fishing boats were stealing away the food from the Africans and in the next
moment misanthropic bureaucrats lashed out at children and parents from
North Africa, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan,
Mali, Eritrea, Sudan, and Somalia and Mexico, Bengladesh, Myanmar.
The elitist helpers were particularly stipulated with some brainwashed adolescents
who have had direct contact in the war zone.
The Americans have put money into the refugee camps before the European bank
saviors and are the first who frankly have admitted their mistakes in the post-war period.
The Europeans do not want a German Europe, the centralist club-state role represents
their knowledge on universal, to the whole belonging interactions which now often
meets the needs of ideologists as well as complex enterprise data centers.
Rationality and emotionality compliment one another,
aslike politics and sports or nature conservation and progress.
One's lagging behind in intercultural development because
they've been trying to preserve their concord in national tradition.
In this way many in the outer environment incline to spread more uncertainty
than certainty, in the wake of completely outdated walled up ideals
and projections from the past.
The nurses, soldiers, teachers, artists, etc. are degraded financially by politics.
Emotionally tinted semi-knowledge in such a cheeky media democracy
cannot be put into perspective automatically through a direct exchange of views.
With social inequality the anger gauge rises and one tries to save face
with tedious relativism and idiom of consumption.
In a real culture it's about how one works for one another,
communicate with one another on equal terms
in order to learn from one another and nominate the common.
To hold it in high regard requires spiritual constructive notice about the value,
achieved over the traditional exchange of experiences.
With dialogue and integration one should provide mutual performance to have
one's eye on worths and identities.
The exchange, the information symmetry of progressive and regressive ideas and
elements in this connection is staged only vigorously and with capacity of suffering.
The game ball has frequently been misused from time to time, more or less,
by fanatic nationalists and the lay people were hitting also with typical Schadenfreude.
Team sport has sometimes been equated with a form of war,
in a party-insane, frigid meritocracy with less far-sightedness, sense of tact,
and a lot of pretence and pronounced competitive thinking.
The radical monopolisation of power follows from the even interaction between
esthetic and rational components which can facilitate the bringing together
of politics, science, arts, and ethics if one applies it in appropriate, proportional, and
vitalistic way. The outcome is a result from the interplay of a range of factors.
Digitalization is passing on to the capitalist principle of profit optimization,
in charge of the necessary acceleration, and stretches it up to all cultural areas.
Within any system there are the groups 'general' and 'other'.
In the petty they're breeding sly pendants who've learned to part on
acrimonious terms if it's not beneficial to oneself to use tactics to the powers that be.
The relations with Hongkong that stands for innovation, education, and culture
are of significance for the economy among others, since 1997 the former British colony
is a special administrative region of the People's Republic of China.
Today's nature and animal crime is kept up by self-determined traders from East and West.
In parts of India and China many animals are now tortured and killed in pursuit of profits.
The still growing bound of animal conservationists in China is present though because
Buddhism is still the most spread religion there despite of the new doctrines.
What we do with animals is the same we do with humans, goes the Dharmic string,
mostly lived by 150 million Chinese Buddhists, next to 80 million Communists,
circa 100 million Christians. In Islamic tradition it's similar.
The coherent strategy requirement is, to push these hidden figures and valencies forward
and invest in legal commitment beside the programs and arts
that concretely help the victims and partly persecuted protagonists.
Other-worldly the spotlights also in non-democratic countries there are countless who
accomplish physically as mentally more than one could receive in medial sound.
Morality comes from Oriental tradition and emphasizes
concept of value and concerted action on common ground.
Power, money, conquest, suppression and slavery
make certain interest groups happy, though slavery today
exists in the intentional manipulation of food, drugs, and as well in the
manipulation of the public, authorities, and media.
All these activities influence man, animal, and nature
just in purpose to accomplish individual and unknown joint interests.
Showing naivety the treacherous are circling around and reproduce
oneself in familiar round at the 'table reserved for the regulars'.
As a rule one has right and duty in one's hands and
aslike in all well-tried cultures they widen their horizon step by step
to obtain more understanding for other people and groups.
At the end of the day it depends on the ability to make a reasonable valid resolution.
"Respect, ethos, and fairness" are not a matter of jurists but of culture.
History consists of decisions that are made by voters and politicians.
The relevant demands the absolute
The first of the 10 commandments underlies all the others and is the basis
of human life. Only a tragic illusion was able to lead certain lines of thought
to place absolutely the world and the people.
Who deciphers the language of creation without prejudice,
while he takes the beauty into consideration but also the limits of
earthly things, has no trouble to realize the truth:
The world as it is beautiful is a finite reality that leads to the infinite;
the relevant demands the absolute.
His fundamental criterion and the motivation for his work as a politician
must not be success, and certainly not material gain.
Politics must be a striving for justice, and hence it has to establish
the fundamental preconditions for peace.
Naturally a politician will seek success, as this is what opens up for him
the possibility of effective political action.
Yet success is subordinated to the criterion of justice, to the will to do
what is right, and to the understanding of what is right.
Success can also be seductive and thus can open up the path towards
the falsification of what is right, towards the destruction of justice. Augustinus:
"Without justice – what else is the State but a great band of robbers?"
We have seen how power became divorced from right, how power opposed right
and crushed it, so that the State became an instrument for destroying right
– a highly organized band of robbers, capable of threatening the whole world
and driving it to the edge of the abyss.
To serve right and to fight against the dominion of wrong is and remains
the fundamental task of the politician. At a moment in history when man has
acquired previously inconceivable power, this task takes on a particular urgency.
Man can destroy the world. He can manipulate himself. Even now,
Solomon’s request remains the decisive issue facing politics today.
For most of the matters that need to be regulated by law,
the support of the majority can serve as a sufficient criterion.
Yet it is evident that for the fundamental issues of law,
in which the dignity of man and of humanity is at stake,
the majority principle is not enough: everyone in a position of responsibility
must personally seek out the criteria to be followed when framing laws.
In the third century, the theologian Origen provided the following
explanation for the resistance of Christians to certain legal systems:
“Suppose that a man were living among the Scythians,
whose laws are contrary to the divine law,
and was compelled to live among them ...
such a man for the sake of the true law, though illegal among the Scythians,
would rightly form associations with like-minded people
contrary to the laws of the Scythians.”
This conviction was what motivated resistance movements to act against
totalitarian regimes, thereby doing a great service to justice and to humanity as a whole.
For these people, it was indisputably evident that the law in force was actually unlawful.
Yet when it comes to the decisions of a democratic politician,
the question of what now corresponds to the law of truth,
what is actually right and may be enacted as law, is less obvious.
In terms of the underlying anthropological issues, what is right and
may be given the force of law is in no way simply self-evident today.
The question of how to recognize what is truly right and thus to serve justice
when framing laws has never been simple, and today in view of the vast extent of
our knowledge and our capacity, it has become still harder.
How do we recognize what is right?
In history, systems of law have almost always been based on religion:
decisions regarding what was to be lawful among men
were taken with reference to the divinity.
Unlike other great religions, Christianity has never proposed a revealed body of law
to the State and to society, that is to say a juridical order derived from revelation.
Instead, it has pointed to nature and reason as the true sources of law
– and to the harmony of objective and subjective reason,
which naturally presupposes that both spheres are rooted in the creative reason of God.
Christian theologians thereby aligned themselves with a philosophical and
juridical movement that began to take shape in the 2nd century B.C.
In the first half of that century, the social natural law developed by
the Stoic philosophers came into contact with leading teachers of Roman Law.
This pre-Christian marriage between law and philosophy opened up the path that
led via the Christian Middle Ages and the juridical developments of
the Age of Enlightenment all the way to
the Declaration of Human Rights and to our Basic Law,
with which our nation committed itself to
“inviolable and inalienable human rights as the foundation of every human community,
and of peace and justice in the world”.
For the development of law and for the development of humanity,
it was highly significant that Christian theologians aligned themselves against
the religious law associated with polytheism and on the side of philosophy,
and that they acknowledged reason and nature in their interrelation
as the universally valid source of law.
This step had already been taken by Paul in the Letter to the Romans,
when he said: "When Gentiles who have not the Law [the Torah of Israel]
do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves ...
they show that what the law requires is written on their hearts,
while their conscience also bears witness ..." (Rom 2:14).
Here we see the two fundamental concepts of nature and conscience,
where conscience is nothing other than Solomon’s listening heart,
reason that is open to the language of being.
If this seemed to offer a clear explanation of the foundations of legislation
up to the time of the Enlightenment, up to the time of the Declaration on Human Rights
after the Second World War and the framing of our Basic Law,
there has been a dramatic shift in the situation in the last half-century.
The idea of natural law is today viewed as a specifically Catholic doctrine,
not worth bringing into the discussion in a non-Catholic environment,
so that one feels almost ashamed even to mention the term.
Fundamentally it is because of the idea that
an unbridgeable gulf exists between “is” and “ought”.
An “ought” can never follow from an “is”, because the two are situated
on completely different planes. The reason for this is that in the meantime,
the positivist understanding of nature and reason
has come to be almost universally accepted.
If nature is viewed as “an aggregate of objective
data linked together in terms of cause and effect”,
then indeed no ethical indication of any kind can be derived from it.
A positivist conception of nature as purely functional, in the way that
the natural sciences explain it, is incapable of producing any bridge to ethics
and law, but once again yields only functional answers.
The same also applies to reason, according to the positivist understanding
that is widely held to be the only genuinely scientific one.
Anything that is not verifiable or falsifiable, according to this understanding,
does not belong to the realm of reason strictly understood.
Hence ethics and religion must be assigned to the subjective field,
and they remain extraneous to the realm of reason in the strict sense of the word.
Where positivist reason dominates the field to the exclusion of all else
– and that is broadly the case in our public mindset –
then the classical sources of knowledge for ethics and law are excluded.
This is a dramatic situation which affects everyone,
and on which a public debate is necessary. Indeed, an essential goal of this address
is to issue an urgent invitation to launch one.
The positivist approach to nature and reason, the positivist world view in general,
is a most important dimension of human knowledge and capacity
that we may in no way dispense with.
But in and of itself it is not a sufficient culture
corresponding to the full breadth of the human condition.
Where positivist reason considers itself the only sufficient culture
and banishes all other cultural realities to the status of subcultures,
it diminishes man, indeed it threatens his humanity.
Where there are concerted efforts to recognize only positivism as
a common culture and a common basis for law-making, so that all the other insights
and values of our culture are reduced to the level of subculture,
with the result that Europe vis-à-vis other world cultures is left in a state of
culturelessness and at the same time extremist and radical movements
emerge to fill the vacuum.
In its self-proclaimed exclusivity, the positivist reason
which recognizes nothing beyond mere functionality resembles a concrete bunker
with no windows, in which we ourselves provide lighting and atmospheric conditions,
being no longer willing to obtain either from God’s wide world.
And yet we cannot hide from ourselves the fact that even in this artificial world,
we are still covertly drawing upon God’s raw materials,
which we refashion into our own products.
The windows must be flung open again, we must see the wide world,
the sky and the earth once more and learn to make proper use of all this.
The emergence of the ecological movement in politics since the 1970s,
while it has not exactly flung open the windows,
nevertheless was and continues to be a cry for fresh air
which must not be ignored or pushed aside,
just because too much of it is seen to be irrational.
Young people had come to realize that something is wrong in our relationship with
nature, that matter is not just raw material for us to shape at will,
but that the earth has a dignity of its own and that we must follow its directives.
If something is wrong in our relationship with reality,
then we must all reflect seriously on the whole situation
and we are all prompted to question the very foundations of our culture.
The importance of ecology is no longer disputed.
We must listen to the language of nature and we must answer accordingly.
Yet I would like to underline a further point that is still largely disregarded,
today as in the past: there is also an ecology of man.
Man too has a nature that he must respect and that he cannot manipulate at will.
Man is not merely self-creating freedom. Man does not create himself.
He is intellect and will, but he is also nature, and his will is rightly ordered
if he listens to his nature, respects it and accepts himself for who he is,
as one who did not create himself.
In this way, and in no other, is true human freedom fulfilled.
Let us come back to the fundamental concepts of nature and reason,
from which we set out. The great proponent of legal positivism, Kelsen,
in 1965 abandoned the dualism of "is" and "ought".
He had said that norms can only come from the will.
Nature therefore could only contain norms if a will had put them there.
But this would presuppose a Creator God, whose will had entered into nature.
"Any attempt to discuss the truth of this belief is utterly futile", he observed.
Is it really pointless to wonder whether the objective reason that manifests itself
in nature does not presuppose a creative reason, a Creator Spiritus?
The conviction that there is a Creator God
is what gave rise to theidea of human rights,
the idea of the equality of all people before the law,
the recognition of the inviolability of human dignity in every single person
and the awareness of people’s responsibility for their actions.
Our cultural memory is shaped by these rational insights.
To ignore it or dismiss it as a thing of the past would be
to dismember our culture totally and to rob it of its completeness.
In the awareness of man’s responsibility before God and
in the acknowledgment of the inviolable dignity of every single human person,
it has established criteria of law:
it is these criteria that we are called to defend at this moment in our history.
(Enzyklika Caritas in veritate)
Morality is a sense of behavioral conduct that differentiates intentions, decisions,
and actions between those that are good (or right) and bad (or wrong).
In modern moral psychology, morality is considered to change through personal development.
A moral code is a system of morality (for example, according to
a particular philosophy, religion, culture, etc.)
and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code.
Immorality is the active opposition to morality, while amorality is variously defined as
an unawareness of, indifference toward, or disbelief in any set of moral standards or
principles. Morality has two principal meanings:
In its "descriptive" sense, morality refers to personal or cultural values,
codes of conduct or social mores
that distinguish between right and wrong in the human society.
Describing morality in this way is not making a claim about what is objectively right
or wrong, but only referring to what is considered right or wrong by people.
For the most part right and wrong acts are classified as such because
they are thought to cause benefit or harm, but it is possible that
many moral beliefs are based on prejudice, ignorance or even hatred.
This sense of the term is addressed by descriptive ethics.
In its "normative" sense, morality refers directly to what is right and wrong,
regardless of what specific individuals think.
It could be defined as the conduct of the ideal "moral" person in a certain situation.
This usage of the term is characterized by "definitive" statements such as
"That act is immoral" rather than descriptive ones such as
"Many believe that act is immoral." It is often challenged by moral nihilism,
which rejects the existence of any moral truths, and supported by moral realism,
which supports the existence of moral truths.
The normative usage of the term "morality" is addressed by normative ethics.
Philosophical theories on the nature and origins of morality (theories of meta-ethics)
are divided into two classes:
Moral realism is the class of such theories which hold that
there are true moral statements that report objective moral facts.
For example, while they might concede that forces of social conformity
significantly shape individuals' "moral" decisions,
they deny that those cultural norms and customs define morally right behavior.
This may be the philosophical view propounded by ethical naturalists,
however not all moral realists accept that position (e.g. ethical non-naturalists).
Moral anti-realism, on the other hand, holds that moral statements either fail or
do not even attempt to report objective moral facts.
Instead, they hold that morality is derived either from an unsupported belief that
there are objective moral facts (error theory, a form of moral nihilism),
the speakers' sentiments (emotivism), or any one of the norms prevalent in society
(ethical subjectivism, in particular moral relativism).
The moral relativist holds that there is no correct definition of right behavior,
and that morality can only be judged with respect to the standards of
particular belief systems and socio-historical contexts.
This position often cites empirical evidence from anthropology of
sharply contrasting views of "good" as supporting its claims.
Theories which claim that morality is derived
from reasoning about implied imperatives (universal prescriptivism),
the edicts of a god (divine command theory), or the hypothetical decrees of
a perfectly rational being (ideal observer theory), are considered anti-realist
the robust sense used here, but are considered realist in the sense synonymous with moral universalism.
Optimist: "The glass is half-full."
Pessimist: "The glass is half-empty."
Realist: "Yep. That's a glass, alright."
Idealist: "One day, cold-fusion from a glass of water
will provide unlimited energy and end war."
Capitalist: "If I bottled this and
gave it a new-agey sounding name, I could make a fortune."
Communist: "This drink belongs to every single one of us in equal measure."
Conspiracist: "The government is fluoridating the water for mind-control purposes."
Sexist: "This glass isn't gonna refill itself..."
Nihilist: "The glass does not exist, and neither do I."
Opportunist: "There's a funny t-shirt in here somewhere."
__________________________________________________________________________________philosophy of law
Interdependence - E-Democracy & Religion
Civil-rights campaigner Dr. Martin Luther King had exemplary
converted religious Inspiration into worldly will to change.
Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu are standing together for two universalisms.
Mandela stands for the universalism that came from political humanism.
And Tutu's fight against racial segregation is based on Christian universalism.
All ways can lead to universalism. Catholic = all-embracing.
Catholicism and Islam are religions that overcome
the tribal and ethnic identity, that strive for something greater.
The issue today is that there are people who want to reduce this denomination on narrowed identity.
"We Catholics, we Muslims and the others."
In this way Universalism is becoming to communitarianism, to the separated, instead of being one element.
Theologian Johannes Reimer explained: "The New Testament community
is labelled of multiculturality". The church leadership in Antiochia
for example has been 'thrown up' linguistically and culturally
according to the report of the Acts of the Apostles.
"They haven't been looking for local or national identities
but for a paramount identity in Christ. It unites this community."
Some want to ban religion from their centre in the name of multiculturalism and tolerate at most in private.
The root of extremism lies on education, on inadequate willingness to a full dialogue.
Poverty and unemployment induce many people to
an aggressive attitude and repeatedly question the system.
Traditionalists were trying to rearrange inter alia the history of religion
and unnecessarily heat up with it a tense atmosphere.
Worldwide conflicts have its cause generally not in religious communities,
but definitely in energy policy and in politics of self-interest.
Religious differences are typically interweaved with conflicts about money, land and water.
Religious communities have remembered daily that beyond material striving
there is a spiritual dimension that is a central characteristic of the human being.
"Religion in this sense can also be a social capital and
it can strengthen moral involvement", Herman van Rompuy said.
All the time we're inclined to give God a moral function
or make him understandable with a metaphysical explanatory model.
Luckily, for most in the world religious consciousness is structured
more easy-going which sees grounds for cautious optimism.
So these elements of the subjective play a completely legitimate role.
Religion must not be confused with Metaphysics and Morality.
Consolation and overcoming of fear are elementary for the whole society.
In the face of visions like the loss of meaning, fear and escape to bustle
the yearning to be appreciated, relief and concentration is growing.
The journalist and Catholic Alexander Görlach and
politician Björn Böhning argue with eachother in their book "Freedom or Anarchy?"
about faith, conservatism and values in a digitized world.
Religion has always been formed by liturgies, community and linguistic codes
and served as a kind of cultural memory of the society.
These social networks show these aspects as well because they have an own language.
Many of the online-members do trust the center of the institution in California,
aslike good Catholics trust the Pope. Christianity believes in the free will of man,
but others see him as communicative and consuming and therefore it has no touch with the metaphysical.
Görlach concluded: "So this social network would change the user interface
of the human, and not the Backend". The net secularizes the society. Böhning writes:
"The promise of religion, a better after life, finds no access to the net.
The Internet itself is the place where people strive for happiness - and whether it's just apparent."
There are stocks of human relations, advisors or social platforms,
replacements for the incomplete real world, even though a fabricated, pledged country.
In addition the Internet is the fastest connection of our time.
Böhning thinks: "Religion that is geared towards imparting of values,
thoughtfulness or pause, will always have problems to endure this spirit of the times".
Mission is in conflict with all forces which make human lives sellable.
Mission is cheerful and they face everyone, they are criticizing
culture, education, science, economy and life style.
God wouldn't have become human if he'd refuse the secularization.
The very fact that the birth of Christ was told first to the shepherds
and not to the priests reveals that God didn't want to separate the religious sphere from the worldly.
The spread of Christianity had succeeded because the Christians
get involved with Rome and then with the medieval kings -
at the price of inconsistency and the dependence of power.
"For the development of law and for the development of humanity,
it was highly significant that Christian theologians aligned themselves
against the religious law associated with polytheism and on the side of
philosophy, and that they acknowledged reason and nature
in their interrelation as the universally valid source of law." - Joseph Ratzinger
The nature of the church is 'communicatio and communio'.
Paul has written letters to communities that have been on the other side
of the common world at that time. So the church has always been used to
communicate with the social media and in the social media.
The church is widely distrusted by 20% of the entire population.
But the social works of the church have trust of the society by over 70%.
This means, people still believe the church is capable of having an eye on them.
However they are not interested in the motivation.
Their worry about man, their care and welfare, the social deeds
are ordered by Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago.
Otherwise the church would be a sect if they would only act and pray.
The imagination of good can also be the friend of evil.
This is a religious and moral perception.
Right and morality in modern times are not founded on
the will of God but on human autonomy.
Secular legal systems are obliged to religious neutrality and
claim the precedence of validity over government rights, whereas in
orthodox versions of Jewry, Christianity and Islam legal religious order
are basically paramount to human rights.
In Islam and in Christianity there is great variety of religious interpretation,
and yet in both religions there are controversies about human rights
that is connected to the claim of truth in religious norms.
In Islam the Quran is considered as the direct word of God, the Sharia is in force as
eternal devine right. The subject of islamic discourse is not the question
if Sharia is valid and universal, controversal is what belongs to
devine legislation (Shari'a) and what belongs to human legal finding.
Islam-scientist Olivier Roy says: "The key question is not what the Quran says
but what the Quran says in opinion of the muslims."
It's not about the "true being" of Islam but it's about the exegesis of the community.
According to Markus Tiedemann and Rainer Forst the reason of human rights
required fundamental ethics, a "moral language".
Not the reason but subjective recognition of the human rights is decisive.
For all muslims religion is an important point of reference of thoughts about human rights.
All citizens in a democracy have equal rights and duties before the law.
The popular behavioral criticism of migrants –
lack of education, bad English, handing down traditional customs,
macho and violence culture – denotes phenomena
that can have its cause in cultural and social context.
A reduction on "the Islam“ as responsible factor is irrelevant.
If one associates "honour killing“ with religion,
ascribes an act to an ideology and not to a culprit, it is caused in rhetorical rejection
from liberal achievements of criminal principles.
The Iranian jurist and theologian Hamideh Mohaghegi criticized
that Islam in the West is associated to often with misogyny and acts of violence,
but is "the meaning giving way of life" for millions of migrants.
Fear would be poked instead of approaching one another impartially.
Especially Muslim women suffer from it and they get stigmatized
"on every level of the society".
The instrument of resistance is often the ban on headscarfs
that is defined as non-intuitive or willing to subordinate by women,
says the jurist who wears a headscarf by herself.
Religion should be a matter of the people, not the state.
The legal system is "better prepared for it than the society in which it's in force“.
Because the big question remains that how Muslims organize themselves,
in order to participate in freedom of worship in the same way
like the institutionalized churches. Here is space for politics.
Jurists often overestim