Saturday, April 02, 2011

I am so bored with the old antiquated cliches of Bernard Lewis: the man lives in 19th century Middle East

""Americans often think of limited government in terms of "freedom," but Mr. Lewis says that word doesn't have a precise equivalent in Arabic. "Liberty, freedom, it means not being a slave. . . . Freedom was a legal term and a social term—it was not a political term. And it was not used as a metaphor for political status," he says. The closest Arabic word to our concept of liberty is "justice," or 'adl. "In the Muslim tradition, justice is the standard" of good government. (Yet judging from the crowds gathered at Syria's central Umayyad mosque last week chanting "Freedom, freedom!," the word, if not our precise meaning, has certainly caught on.) "" (thanks "Ibn Rushd")