MS Evans - re the Islam vs Judaism comparison, there is one essential aspect of Judaism that is left out of your comparison, that is, the importance of rabbinical interpretation of the Torah since ca 500 BCE, and relatedly, the predominence of the 'oral Torah' and the Talmud over the written Torah. For almost one and a half millennia, the Bible has been seen as a difficult and often contradictory text that cannot be followed without interpretation and often, adaptation to a contemporary context. The Enlightenment surely built on these tendencies but it does not by itself explain the inter-religious differences you emphasize.
Excellent analysis Alice as usual, the question that follows is how do we move out of this cycle of punishment and moral policing and would economic independence and self sufficiency for women and marginalised communities be enough in these communities? Also are there any examples where this has happened?
if we look to the USA's Old Republic (roughly 1830s to some point after WW2), we actually find a number of historical examples where economic independence and self-governance mechanisms empowered marginalized groups, even if not always intentionally on the part of the systems primary designers (Jackson and Van Buren) as envisioned during their time; or uniformly. The key was the system’s decentralized architecture: mass-member political parties, local capital control (like mutual banks, S&Ls, old style credit unions, and municipal utilities, etc etc), and localized education governance enabled immigrant communities, working-class constituencies, and even women’s networks to wield real political and economic influence. While the system certainly had limits, especially in the South (where in some deep ways it actually never took place) and for Black Americans (although the great shame and historical tragedy is that more and more Black Communities were gaining access to it and using it to uplift in the decade or so before its demise, maybe that played a role in some going along with its demise?) when democratic structures were available, they showed how subgroups could build institutions that provided autonomy and uplift
from the perspective of the USA's Old Republic, which emerged around roughly the 1830s, it’s worth thinking about how many beneficial cultural and social transformations it had were not imposed from the top down but emerged from the bottom-up, and the system's primary designers (Jackson and Van Buren), like your self, thought institutional redesigns can have large effects on culture. Think of radical components like mass-member political parties, locally controlled schools and scientific institutions, and regionally diffused and even localized capital structures.
MS Evans - re the Islam vs Judaism comparison, there is one essential aspect of Judaism that is left out of your comparison, that is, the importance of rabbinical interpretation of the Torah since ca 500 BCE, and relatedly, the predominence of the 'oral Torah' and the Talmud over the written Torah. For almost one and a half millennia, the Bible has been seen as a difficult and often contradictory text that cannot be followed without interpretation and often, adaptation to a contemporary context. The Enlightenment surely built on these tendencies but it does not by itself explain the inter-religious differences you emphasize.
H. Gordon
Excellent analysis Alice as usual, the question that follows is how do we move out of this cycle of punishment and moral policing and would economic independence and self sufficiency for women and marginalised communities be enough in these communities? Also are there any examples where this has happened?
if we look to the USA's Old Republic (roughly 1830s to some point after WW2), we actually find a number of historical examples where economic independence and self-governance mechanisms empowered marginalized groups, even if not always intentionally on the part of the systems primary designers (Jackson and Van Buren) as envisioned during their time; or uniformly. The key was the system’s decentralized architecture: mass-member political parties, local capital control (like mutual banks, S&Ls, old style credit unions, and municipal utilities, etc etc), and localized education governance enabled immigrant communities, working-class constituencies, and even women’s networks to wield real political and economic influence. While the system certainly had limits, especially in the South (where in some deep ways it actually never took place) and for Black Americans (although the great shame and historical tragedy is that more and more Black Communities were gaining access to it and using it to uplift in the decade or so before its demise, maybe that played a role in some going along with its demise?) when democratic structures were available, they showed how subgroups could build institutions that provided autonomy and uplift
from the perspective of the USA's Old Republic, which emerged around roughly the 1830s, it’s worth thinking about how many beneficial cultural and social transformations it had were not imposed from the top down but emerged from the bottom-up, and the system's primary designers (Jackson and Van Buren), like your self, thought institutional redesigns can have large effects on culture. Think of radical components like mass-member political parties, locally controlled schools and scientific institutions, and regionally diffused and even localized capital structures.