Osama bin Laden is dead

All puppies are born beautiful, playful, optimistic.  Some become damaged, depressed, dangerous.  I pray for them all.

Osama bin Laden is dead.  Bin Laden’s dismal writings, Qutb’s Milestones, Maududi’s works, now lie with Mein Kampf, National Socialism, Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book, hard to read, significant but history.

The turgid prose and atavistic nihilism of such sad and damaged men is not the model for today’s optimistic, devout, young, Muslim scholars in Cambridge or for the Arab Spring.

Turn instead to beautiful writing, a joy to read.   There was a religious fundamentalist political revolution in England too.  In 1647 The Levellers held The Putney Debates, (re-published by Verso, ISBN -13: 978-1-84467-175-5 in 2007.)

St Mary is revered by Christians and Muslims.  The ideals and aspirations voiced in her church in Putney, London, in 1647, now ring through the mosques of the Mediterranean.

The young are decent, optimistic and the future.  My family believed in them then: I believe in them still.

Paws4Now

Jock

A Rhododendron Spring