Biologists today often talk about variation in order to avoid the implication of “progress” in evolution.

As for progress. There is progress and there is regress. These are relative terms.

The dialogue is going nowhere, so suffice to say from my end that you’re absolutely wrong to claim that I, or Mishal and Sela, stereotype and trivialize Arab Sunnis in some “orientalist” manner. Your ignorance in this regard is glaring and clearly reflects a lack of basic acquaintance with the relevant literature. Having been trained in Religious Studies (with Islam one of my areas of focus) as well as taught “comparative religions” for many years (i.e., having been a student of religions—and specifically Islam—for over three decades now), this is the very first time anyone has ever accused me of having “refused to accept the agency of religion in the Arab world.” For the record, I’m not a Marxist when it comes to religion even if there was more than a little truth in some of the things Marx himself had to say about religions (the late Ninian Smart [brother of J.J.C.—”Jack”—Smart] and the contemporary philosopher John Cottingham comes closest to articulating what I think about such things). I suppose my putative denial of such agency is why editors have solicited articles from me on, for example, constitutionalism, democracy and civil society in the Islamic world, and why I’ve been asked to write on the likes of Hasan al-Banna (founder of the Muslim Brotherhood), Sufis (Islamic mystics) and Islamic philosophers for edited volumes. Where you are wise in such matters they, alas, judged poorly.

Please feel free to pass along copies of your published work in this field and let me know of courses you teach on these topics as further evidence of the considerable knowledge and expertise you clearly possess on matters about which you’ve expressed yourself with such confidence here.

Anyway, a pity you’re not a biologist – but a pleasure to exchange views nonetheless.

As more than a few of the relevant analysts and experts have noted in some detail

How many is a “few” and what criteria do you use to decide which of these alleged “analysts” are ‘relevant’ or not?

for all intents and purposes, Hamas has in many respects ignored and even regretted the wording of its Charter.

If there are “many respects” how about sharing one or two with us? Perhaps Hamas’ idea of “regret” differs from the rest of humanity, who would expect the Charter to be officially torn up and many apologies for both its evil intent and hysterical historical howlers, that make The Protocols look like a Disney cartoon.

It’s clear you have not read any of the well-known and representative studies of Hamas: by Tamimi, and by Mishal and Sela, for instance.

From what I have posted here, how do you infer what I have read? But I will say my choices in reading rarely take into account whether the book is “well-known” and by whom? What could you possibly mean by a “representative study of Hamas”?

Call me old-fashioned, but I simply do not rate academics in general who write on contemporary politics.

What I do pay careful attention are the acts and pronouncements of the groups themselves. And allow me to tell you, you are wrong. Both sharia and the caliphate rate very highly in the cognitive spaces of the Hamastanian.

As Mishal and Sela note, “Hamas’s victory can be explained by social and economic considerations of the Palestinian electorate rather than ideological identification with the Islamic movement’s political agenda.”

As you clearly rate the analyses of academics, I am afraid to inform you that this is common garden variety ‘orientalist’ stereotyping and trivialising of Sunni Arabs. Like much of the western marxist left, it simply refuses to respect the agency of religion in the Arab world, instead seeing Islam as an expression of false consciousness; a reaction against the alleged centuries-old imperialist injustices and crimes of Europe and its racist white christian imperialists.

And: “Hamas is well aware that it had not been elected on the basis of its Islamic Charter

Once more, as I said above, this is irrelevant to the thread topic of Utopia. And as I said above, you do not have access to the events, speeches, interviews, rallies, writings. etc. of that election.

As this post is getting a bit long, I shall return to the remainder later.

I don’t – to me natural selection is all about getting the edge on the next population along (or, to some extent, the next individual along) within a given ecological niche. (I’m not a biologist, btw.) Roll forward a few thousand years and what were previously adaptive features may have become maladaptive, and vice versa. The only ‘best’ is ‘best fit to a particular niche’, and that’s only really another way of saying ‘better than the others around at the time’.

(are you a biologist? can you answer my question in 64? really, you would be a life-saver!)

belle, surely there were precursors but pre-Darwin there was no consensus on any evolution, & as far as Hegel, it was a dynamic yes, but within a context of movement to something Ultimate; and that’s exactly what Darwinian evolution (if Phil allows me to use the anachronism) is not, it moves, but not to something ultimate, or even something predictable.

(talking of Darwin will attract biologists – can somebody help me whether one of Darwins non-essential secondary hypothesis was ever tested: the supposed fact that organisms under duress were more apt to create offspring that presented significant modifications? No tricks, just want to know and not being a biologist an answer here could save me a lot of time)

(unless they’ve first arranged for them to stop prospering)

As this is a thread dedicated to the recalibration of existing words; what’s wrong with it anyway? After all, if you’re optimistic that humanism will prevail because it’s the best idea out there then you don’t need to believe in Providence to be reasonably convinced that things will turn out in a way that can be labeled, after the facts, as having been very providential.

That really is remarkably trite.