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2007-07-03 India-Pakistan

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Posted by Fred 2007-07-03 00:00|| || Front Page|| [7 views ] Top

#1 Education for literacy has historically been about developing the ability to read the holy books - here the Bible, there the Koran. That it tends to set people free is an unintended consequence.

Posted by Glenmore">Glenmore 2007-07-03 07:32|| 2007-07-03 07:32|| Front Page Top

#2 That it tends to set people free is an unintended consequence.
Possibly, but OTHO, I'm not sure being able to read the k'or'an' will enlighten pakistanis; problem of islam is at its source, and reading the ko'r'an is looking straight at this source.

Posted by anonymous5089 2007-07-03 07:51|| 2007-07-03 07:51|| Front Page Top

#3 READING the Koran gains nothing. But the ability to read the Koran means one is also able to read the newspaper or 'Satanic Verses', etc. Literacy doesn't make a person think and learn, but it does enable one to do so. That's why most of the American South forbade teaching slaves to read prior to the Civil War. IIRC, in the Middle Ages only the clerics could read, and they liked it that way - even as late as my youth Catholics were told not to read the Bible themselves, but to have it read to them at Church, so they would not misunderstand it.

Posted by Glenmore">Glenmore 2007-07-03 08:40|| 2007-07-03 08:40|| Front Page Top

#4 It wasn't that only clerics could read, Glenmore. There were lots of lovely, illuminated Book of Days in the High Middle Ages for ladies to read in the solarium when they tired of embroidery. It's just that only clerics were systematically taught to read and write... with middling success. There *are* problems with reading scripture literature without context -- that's how Spinoza passed straight through Judaism to atheism without noticing that he missed the turn off. ;-) Part of the problem with the jihadis is that they cleave to the Koran and the most rigid, humanity-rejecting threads of Islam while ignoring the more liberal historical threads. Granted, so has the general thrust of Islam, but still.

Posted by trailing wife 2007-07-03 09:58|| 2007-07-03 09:58|| Front Page Top

#5 even as late as my youth Catholics were told not to read the Bible themselves, but to have it read to them at Church, so they would not misunderstand it.

Absolutely correct, My wife is catholic, and has NEVER read the bible, the church tells her what it says. (Yeah right, squelch lerning at the source.)

Posted by Redneck Jim 2007-07-03 17:18|| 2007-07-03 17:18|| Front Page Top

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