Brass crescent awards

If you read what Scott Martens writes on Fistful, Juan Cole’s Informed Comment or Jonathan’s Head Heeb, you just wouldn’t be tempted to describe them as “uncritical”. Once again, Ophelia, your _a priori_ view of how the world must be is getting in the way of you seeing how it actually is.

(And, for the record, I’m sure there are many many interesting blogs by Christians out there.)

“respectful=:marked by or showing respect or deference”

which I think means not critical.

Out of curiosity, how do we know that Juan Cole isn’t Muslim himself? His biographical page (linked from his blog) says that “[h]e married the former Shahin Malik in Lahore in 1982, and they have one son, Arman, born in 1987 . . . .” Isn’t it possible that he became Muslim himself somewhere along the way? Has he ever said?

Incidentally, why did he change his name from “John” to “Juan”? His genealogy page begins with this listing: “John (Juan) Ricardo Cole (b. 1952 in Albuquerque, N.M.).”

John (Juan) Ricardo Cole in bio

but

Juan R. I. Cole on page.

So he’s not only changed his name but also added another name “I”.

Cole definitely deserves a “shifty award”

There’s also a suggestion that John/Juan is Bahai – since he writes about it alot.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jrcole/bahai.htm

That Juan Cole is former Baha’i is no secret, considering he has mentioned it at least once in a blog post.

Google turns up a “personal statement”:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jrcole/bahai/1999/persdec.htm

Ophelia opines : –
“Where’s the site that hands out the Brass Cross awards for the best blogs by Christians? Along with awards for blogs that engage respectfully (which I suppose means uncritically?) with Christianity?”

Assuming you’re serious, it’s surprising you’ve not come across this : –

http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/

or this : –

http://www.livejournal.com/users/bellatrys/

and maybe this is still going: –

http://blogs.salon.com/0001772/

They’re not going for awards, probably because there are a host of Christian blogs and in the US they can sort out their own publicity. Muslim ones, in general, can’t and don’t. The blogosphere isn’t permeated with Muslim imagery, concepts and culture, so there’s a move to give a little publicity to Muslim blogs. For a militant atheist of course this is a bad thing, anything that even mentions religion must be denied the oxygen of publicity (poor old Fafnir).

“I am so keen to explore the diversity of the Christian blogosphere. What could possibly be more fascinating.”

I don’t think Ophelia is telling the truth here. I doubt it matters.

Ralph — I don’t go around asking about random people’s religion. But when the whole point of the discussion is that somebody is holding a bloggers’ contest for (a) Muslims and (b) non-Muslims, isn’t it rather to be expected that someone might say, “Gee, I don’t know, should this blogger in category (a) or (b)?” If someone was holding a contest for Christians, or Hindus, or whatever, it’s only logical that questions will arise as to where the contestants are to be classified. Good grief.

As for wondering “why their name is this and not that,” well, if your co-blogger Mr. Burke went by the Spanish name “Timoteo,” and it turned out that his real name had been “Timothy” at some point, wouldn’t it occur to you to wonder if there was some interesting story behind the name change? Maybe not — if you’re the most uncurious person on earth.

Ophelia—if you’re actually interested in the Christian blogosphere, here are some blogs to check out.

Southern Appeal (Catholic)
Eve Tushnet
The Evangelical Outpost
The Right Coast (Gail Heriot in particular)
Russell Arben Fox (Mormon)

Well, if you keep changing my hypothetical from an extremely unusual decision to a completely normal decision, it’s no wonder that you wouldn’t be curious. In other words, for a “Timothy” to go by the nickname “Tim” is utterly routine and normal. Hence not something to be curious about.

But my actual example was to ask what if “Timothy” switched to a different language and started going by “Timoteo”? You wouldn’t be curious? Or what if a “Peter” started saying his name was “Pyotr”? Or what if a “Paul” started using “Pavel”? You’re really saying that you wouldn’t wonder if there was some fascinating story behind the decision to reverse-Anglicize a name? Even if you wouldn’t be curious yourself, do you really think that it is justified to call it a “strange insinuation” for someone else to be mildly curious?

Giles, the baha’i religion is from the middle east, where it was created in the XIX century, given this I think it is logical that it would attract mostly those Western people who learnt of it because of their interest in the Middle East.

DSW

Obviously Jaume, most religions are from the Middle East.

But the interest in Middle Eastern Politics amongst Bahai’s seems to me to be very high – I’m again thinking about Kelly as an example.

Gary, I wasn’t about to list all the blogs in that category. But it was an oversight not to list yours, and I apologise — a product of blogging whilst in a hurry. I’m going to amend the post to include you.

Indeed Luc, but where was the nomination for “most respectful non-christian blog”?

Blimey. This comment thread is no doubt deceased, but I feel as if I ought to clear up a couple of things. Gary, yes, that is a misreading on your part. My point (or ‘snark’ if you will have it so) was certainly elliptical, but I wasn’t implying what you take me to have been implying.

“But I do believe that Jonathan Edelstein might be at least as surprised as I am to have it implied, as Ophelia does, that either of us is “Christian”;”

I didn’t (at least in intention) imply that at all.

“as surprised as I am at the notion that “respectful” in the slightest way implies “uncritical.””

As I pointed out in my reply to Chris’ reply to me – that was a question. Not an assertion, a question. That’s why I put a question mark after it – because it was a question. I wasn’t sure what the word meant in that context. I ventured a guess, but the guess was interrogative.

“That last simply astounds me; is the fact that courtesy and intellectual honesty are separable concepts truly little known?”

Well since I’m not sure what ‘respectful’ means in this context, I don’t know if it means simply ‘courtesy’ or something else. And ‘respectful’ does sometimes get used (I could point you to some discussions of this on B&W if you’re interested) to mean, well, cautious about criticising, to put it no more strongly than that.

“It’s equally unclear to me why, as I take Ophelia’s snark to imply – and I welcome correction regarding any misreading on my part – I should be either uncurious about, uninterested in, or automatically disrespectful of, a writer expressing views Christian, Muslim, Jewish, atheistic, Hindu” etc

No, that’s not what my ‘snark’ is meant to imply. My question was just a dog bites person type question.

“But I’m even more surprised if an intelligent commentator didn’t take note of the different position a minority culture has in a majority culture, and found taking some little interest in the lesser-known culture worthy of ridicule.”

Well that’s exactly what I was wondering, and the kind of answer I was hoping to elicit. Except not phrased exactly that way. Did you phrase it that way on purpose or have people simply lost sight of the distinction between religion and ‘culture’? The category was blogs by Muslims. Islam is a religion.

Now I’ll tell you exactly why I find ‘taking some little interest in the lesser-known culture worthy of ridicule’. Because that interest is not matched by some little interest in an even lesser-known – and far more minority, weak, vulnerable, under threat – ‘culture’ than that of Islam: the ‘culture’ of secularists from majority-Muslim countries who work for human rights and feminism and get roundly ignored while people fawn over catgories like ‘blogs by Muslims.’ That’s why. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, take a look at the articles section at B&W: you’ll find a good few articles by such people, who get way less attention (and, indeed, ‘respect’) than they ought to. That’s why.

“Plus, I hear Islam has been in the news from time to time of late; obviously, it’s best to know as little as possible about it, or to only read attacks on it from outsiders.”

Exactly. Which is why one would think criticisms (not ‘attacks’) from insiders would be of interest.

“But that brings us back to the notion that to be intellectually honest, and maintain one’s ability to be critical, one must be discourteous and lacking in intellectual curiosity. Or something.”

Nope.

“I’m really not clear what Ophelia’s POV is, frankly”

I hope I’ve managed to shed a little light on the subject. (And I do realize that, as I said, my comment was cryptic.)