I officially finished my course of "Beginners" Latin study, so I'm moving on to working my way through Caesar's De bello gallico. In the course of my study, I discovered that I really enjoy learning foreign languages, which has apparently become a hobby of mine. I'm thinking about returning to Knoxville next summer for a part time job that would leave me time to take a course in Spanish or German at UT. German would help me in grad school, but I've found I mostly know languages that other people I meet don't know. I often meet Spanish- or Italian-speakers from Europe or Central/South America, but I speak neither of those languages. To be more hospitable to the folks I meet in the states, I'd really like to learn one of those languages, even though neither would help me much in my future studies. After learning Latin, a more practical language might be a good step.
Finally, I've started reading Tariq Ramadan's Western Muslims and the Future of Islam (another great find in a used bookstore). For those who don't know, Tariq was received a faculty appointment at Notre Dame, only to be denied a Visa to the US after a lot of dilatory tactics at the Department of State. Reading his book, I'm very disappointed he couldn't be part of life at Notre Dame, because his goals resonate well with Notre Dame's. Both are attempting to articulate a method of expressing the fullness of their respective faiths in an often antagonistic culture. Surprisingly, I have found that the two people I'm most reminded of in reading Tariq are Professor MacIntyre (in his remarks on "Islam, Modernity, and Us") and Pope Benedict (in his insistence on reason). Tariq outlines, among the basic principles of Islam, that God is transcendent and creator; that his dominion, and that of his Revelation, is universal in scope; that all creation is "Islamic," that is, submissive to God's will, and thus a source of Revelation; and that human beings are incomplete and thus yearn for completion and fulfillment in God alone. Of course, though each of these themes have their counterparts in Christianity, there are substantial differences, also in the anthropologies and philosophies of Islam and Christianity, but Tariq's account of Islam is thoroughly reasonable. Naturally, he misunderstands Christianity in many of the ways I would expect him to, but so has Benedict "brusquely" treated Islam here or there. Let me offer one excerpt from Western Muslims:
A living faith makes it possible for the intellect to accept signs beyond simple elements of nature, and active reason makes it possible for faith to understand and also to acquire more self-understanding, and in that way to draw closer to the divine: "Of all the servants, those who know are those who are open to the intimate awareness of God." Blaise Pascal had an apt expression: "The heart has reasons that reason does not know," thus differentiating the two realms of faith and reason (even though this formula has often been--wrongly--reduced to an opposition between the emotional and the rational). From an Islamic point of view, the relationship between the heart (where the first longing, the first breath toward faith takes place) and the intellect (which responds to the call of this breath and takes up the quest) might rather be expressed this way: the heart has reasons that reason will recognize. Apart from the expression, the difference is profound.I am eager to see Tariq's practical insights about Muslim life in Western Society, which he intends to expound in the second half of the book, after outlining the fundamental principles of Islam in the first. And I'm still kind of upset with the State Department.
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