In advance of our screening of Jack Shaheen’s film (based on his book by the same title), you may wish to look at the following review available via the NMH Virtual Desktop and ProQuest: William Booth, “Cast of Villains, The Washington Post, June 23, 2007. (More on the history of polemical attacks on Muslims)
More food for thought from historian Martha Nussbaum. This quotation comes from her recent book on threats to democracy in India, a book prompted by violence between Hindus and Muslims in 1992.
Nussbaum sees the problem originating with individuals. For her, the battle rages not between civilizations (no clash of civilizations here), or even between groups in a nation, but inside, within each person. She writes:
“The ability to accept difference – difference of religion, ethnicity, of race, of sexuality – requires, first, the ability to accept something about oneself: that one is not lord of the world, that one is both adult and child, that no all-embracing collectivity will keep one safe from the vicissitudes of life, that others outside oneself have reality. The ability requires, in turn, the cultivation of a moral imagination that sees reality in other human beings, that does not see other human beings as mere instruments of one’s own power or threats to that power. In effect, we are talking about the defeat of infantile narcissism.”
Martha Nussbaum, The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India’s Future (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press at Harvard University Press, 2007), 334.
Write a response to an idea or combination of ideas from this assignment — due next class.
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