1-- LIMITED GOOD *1 VERSUS UNLIMITED GOOD*2:

• -Haggling: the idea of people competing of scarce resources on the basis of barter; haggling is a time-honoured tradition precisely so that a fair price can be struck and resources are not unfairly moved from one set of hands to another. This is a zero sum game. No winners, no losers. Of course, if one can take advantage one might, weighing the risks of revenge by an injured party.
• -Revenge: To New Zealanders, the concept of revenge or Utu should not be foreign. The idea is a balancing of the scales so that there are no resources moved from one set of hands to another. E.g. murder of one life must be rectified by murder of another.
• -Usury: Islam charges no interest,-- yet the whole Western monetary system is built on interest charges. How can this be? Put simply, in the West we believe the pie can grow and those who make capital available to grow the pie deserve a share of the spoils. In the East all that is happening is that some are getting richer at the expense of others, which can only lead to envy, strife, struggle and tumult.
• -A biblical illustration: Genesis 30.25-31.9. How might a Westerner have retold this same story with our own worldview assumptions in view? (Note especially the comment in ch 31.9).

2..DYADIC VERSUS INDIVIDUAL:

3..SHAME & HONOUR:

• -What did Shimei do that represented a challenge to David's honour? How did he shame (take honour from) David?
• -What did David's soldier try to do? Why?
• -Why did David stop him? How did David think the scales (limited good) were being balanced?

• -The language of tolerance only works in societies that believe in unlimited good. Promoting pluralism, democracy and free-market economics represents a challenge to Muslim honour.
• -Israel dwells in land that once belonged to Allah, who has now been 'shamed' by its loss. That loss must be avenged and the land regained to save face.
• -Islam is not necessarily a peaceful religion as GW Bush claims; the Qu'ran encourages defensive Jihad to meet any challenge to Muslim (Allah's) honour. The West with its global outlook challenges Islamic honour at many points. Any invasion of Iraq, for instance, will to Muslims look like an attack on Allah's honour. The West's economic theory, which we try to export, runs completely counter to Muslim ideals and cannot be accommodated.

*1 We must note that the West believed in limited good until the advent of the Enlightenment, The Reformation and the Colonial Era; in other words the early-modern period represents a shift in Western thinking. It was the Protestant entrepreneurs, who opened up the banking systems of Europe, -- worked with secular heads of state to break the power of the medieval Roman Catholic Church and its controls over trading. In the Middle Ages there were as few as 80 commercial trading days in the year because of religious festivities, veneration of the saints etc; the Catholic church stifled economic growth in Europe.
*2 These are sociological concepts.
*3 All the states of SE Asia are under threat. Even Singapore pays for mosques to be built, but churches must be paid for privately.
*4 Bin Laden has all the hallmarks of a false-Christ. He survived a bomb landing at his feet in the Afghan conflict with the Soviet Union; the bomb did not explode. He confessed that at that exact moment he knew Allah was calling him to his Jihad. Bin-Laden is a classic charismatic prophet-leader.
*5 The buildings had Gothic cathedral-like arches at its base and looked, to me at least, to be inspired by the great cathedrals of Europe.
*6 A Muslim who converts to another religion, by the way, is almost always murdered, for precisely these reasons.
*7 I do feel however the devil uses cultural ideas to inspire men to evil. This is what the language of the "powers" suggests.
*8 His was an offer of Jihad, by the way!