Muselmann in German means "Muslim", and it is not always known with a good image. In the past there was a nursery song, "K-a-f-f-e-e, K-a-f-f-e-e, trink nicht so viel kaffee! Nicht für Kinder ist der türkentrank, schwächt die Nerven, macht dich blaß lassen und krank. Sei doch kein Muselmann, der ihn nicht lassen kann!"
I got this song from the 1930's of interviews Gil Anidjar, author of The Jew, the Arab: A History of the Enemy with Nermeen Shaikh.
Anidjar referred to it as an example of how Europeans see the Islam. As Judaism, it is positioned as the "enemy". When Europe was formulated itself, "the enemy" was needed. To distinguish it out, uniting it into.
The unfriendly perception also be found in Hegel's view. Influential German thinker called Islam as a Religion der Erhabenheit, a religion that considers what is worshiped is so sublime and glorious so that the followers should obey solely to toughen laws. They see themselves as servants, not as powerful subjects. They live in alienation.
After Hegel, the attitudes towards Islam as a religion -- that makes people "can not afford anything" -- continued until the 1940s. Hitler came to power and he sent thousands of people to massacre camp, most of the Jews. There were no Muslims who enrolled in these places, but in Auschwitz, the word "Muslim" turned out to be called.
Primo Levi -- Italian poet of Jewish descent who at age 25 was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp -- recorded it. Levi was locked shortly, since 1943 until 1945, the year of the Hitler's fall. But his notes of life in hell burned into the people's memories.
Se questo e un uomo published in 1958 (English version: If this is a man). In it we are introduced to the categories of prisoners: those who crushed. They are Muselmanner: "People are drowning ... ... nameless masses ... not-human beings who run and work in silence ...". People hesitate to call them life, or to refer to their death as "death". They were too tired to understand what was the meaning of death.
In the prison camps, Jews who were already crumbling called "Muselmann", showed what kind of image in Germany about Muslims at that time: a useless human being, like a garbage, people shackled and restrained by religious law, the people who actually live estranged from moving and changing continuously.
Marx called the religion as "the opiate": something that can entertain but make humans look like lame. Presumably the influence of Hegel imprints there: the religion enslaves. Marx also called for the release, and the whole of modern European thinkers actuated the secularization: leave the commandment of God and welcome the human ability; remove the religion from life.
Here I want to go back to Anidjar. What's interesting about his opinion is that the secularization began when religion was about to establish its power: in Spain and Portugal, in the 15th century.
At that time the Catholic power was consolidating its victory after the last Muslim kingdom's fall. The Church -- with its inquisition -- set the rules "limpieza de sangre" : the people who had just become Christian must be "pure-blood ", not Jewish or Arab descent.
But thus the old religion provisions was abandoned. Sacrament no longer works, because it is useless to mark repentance or conversion. The power of the Inquisition -- the tracer judge a person's faith -- is more effective than the provision of God. Inquisitor character in the famous Dostoyeski story even more powerful than Jesus.
And that was the beginning of secularization. But that means no cracks that separated the religious and the secular. Religious symbols was continued. The difference was God had been replaced by the church leaders, ayatollahs, clergy, and religious ministry. The secular and the religious were linked in a temporal power.
But that does not mean it comes from liberation. Even with the powers overshadowed by the God's aura anyone would easily be tempted to demand that it was obeyed forever in a perfect imitation. There's a new God, there's the new slaves. There was an oppression and, in extreme form, there were the Muselmann. Here the Muselmann no longer a "Muslim" with a dark image. In repression "Muslim" becomes something universal: anyone, anywhere, at any time, the oppressed.
Thus, the exemption is not coming immediately as secularization. Liberation can only be achieved through resistance to the repression. In order that there's no more power which will repeat the oppression, the resistance must have meaning, and it is only possible when the beginning is the testimony. Not only the testimony of those who see it, but the testimony of those who bear it : The victims. But not just any victim.
In Quel che resta in Auschwitz, (English version: Remnantas of Auschwitz), Giorgio Agamben cited Primo Levi about the "true witness". This witness was not like him, who's out of the hell. The "Complete" witness should be prioritized are those who can not get out, people who drowned, no longer able to speak: the Muselmann.
***
[CZ-lacalifusa011613]
I got this song from the 1930's of interviews Gil Anidjar, author of The Jew, the Arab: A History of the Enemy with Nermeen Shaikh.
Anidjar referred to it as an example of how Europeans see the Islam. As Judaism, it is positioned as the "enemy". When Europe was formulated itself, "the enemy" was needed. To distinguish it out, uniting it into.
The unfriendly perception also be found in Hegel's view. Influential German thinker called Islam as a Religion der Erhabenheit, a religion that considers what is worshiped is so sublime and glorious so that the followers should obey solely to toughen laws. They see themselves as servants, not as powerful subjects. They live in alienation.
After Hegel, the attitudes towards Islam as a religion -- that makes people "can not afford anything" -- continued until the 1940s. Hitler came to power and he sent thousands of people to massacre camp, most of the Jews. There were no Muslims who enrolled in these places, but in Auschwitz, the word "Muslim" turned out to be called.
Primo Levi -- Italian poet of Jewish descent who at age 25 was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp -- recorded it. Levi was locked shortly, since 1943 until 1945, the year of the Hitler's fall. But his notes of life in hell burned into the people's memories.
Se questo e un uomo published in 1958 (English version: If this is a man). In it we are introduced to the categories of prisoners: those who crushed. They are Muselmanner: "People are drowning ... ... nameless masses ... not-human beings who run and work in silence ...". People hesitate to call them life, or to refer to their death as "death". They were too tired to understand what was the meaning of death.
In the prison camps, Jews who were already crumbling called "Muselmann", showed what kind of image in Germany about Muslims at that time: a useless human being, like a garbage, people shackled and restrained by religious law, the people who actually live estranged from moving and changing continuously.
Marx called the religion as "the opiate": something that can entertain but make humans look like lame. Presumably the influence of Hegel imprints there: the religion enslaves. Marx also called for the release, and the whole of modern European thinkers actuated the secularization: leave the commandment of God and welcome the human ability; remove the religion from life.
Here I want to go back to Anidjar. What's interesting about his opinion is that the secularization began when religion was about to establish its power: in Spain and Portugal, in the 15th century.
At that time the Catholic power was consolidating its victory after the last Muslim kingdom's fall. The Church -- with its inquisition -- set the rules "limpieza de sangre" : the people who had just become Christian must be "pure-blood ", not Jewish or Arab descent.
But thus the old religion provisions was abandoned. Sacrament no longer works, because it is useless to mark repentance or conversion. The power of the Inquisition -- the tracer judge a person's faith -- is more effective than the provision of God. Inquisitor character in the famous Dostoyeski story even more powerful than Jesus.
And that was the beginning of secularization. But that means no cracks that separated the religious and the secular. Religious symbols was continued. The difference was God had been replaced by the church leaders, ayatollahs, clergy, and religious ministry. The secular and the religious were linked in a temporal power.
But that does not mean it comes from liberation. Even with the powers overshadowed by the God's aura anyone would easily be tempted to demand that it was obeyed forever in a perfect imitation. There's a new God, there's the new slaves. There was an oppression and, in extreme form, there were the Muselmann. Here the Muselmann no longer a "Muslim" with a dark image. In repression "Muslim" becomes something universal: anyone, anywhere, at any time, the oppressed.
Thus, the exemption is not coming immediately as secularization. Liberation can only be achieved through resistance to the repression. In order that there's no more power which will repeat the oppression, the resistance must have meaning, and it is only possible when the beginning is the testimony. Not only the testimony of those who see it, but the testimony of those who bear it : The victims. But not just any victim.
In Quel che resta in Auschwitz, (English version: Remnantas of Auschwitz), Giorgio Agamben cited Primo Levi about the "true witness". This witness was not like him, who's out of the hell. The "Complete" witness should be prioritized are those who can not get out, people who drowned, no longer able to speak: the Muselmann.
***
[CZ-lacalifusa011613]
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