Banning Peaceful Assembly for the Health of the Corporate State

"Yet unlike the bathhouse, which was semiprivate and enclosed, away from public view, the coffeehouse constantly offered itself as a spectacle, which, tempting and visible, beckoned to the surrounding markets and neighborhoods throughout the day light hours and into the night. The allure was powerful. Many religious observers were alarmed precisely because it diverted so much traffic from older areas of public congregation. In sixteenth-century Istanbul, they lamented, the mosques now stood empty, as worshippers--including many members of the religious establishment--whiled away their hours in the inviting precincts of the coffeehouse" (James Grehan, "Smoking and 'Early Modern' Sociability: The Great Tobacco Debate in the Ottoman Middle East (Seventeenth to Eighteenth Centuries)," American Historical Review, Vol.111, No.5, Dec. 2006)

James Grehan notes that the primary motivation for coffee and tobacco bans in the middle east of the Islamic Ottomans were the same as bans in our modern and enlightened scientifically Christian times: Fear of a power group losing its ability to dominate and disseminate information. And as in the past, these fears are sold to us under the guise of caring, health, and morals.

Grehan says there "were pervasive anxieties about shifts in consumption and sociability, which seemed to undermine long-standing social hierarchies. By the late sixteenth century, the Ottoman state.........had become concerned about possible blurrings of rank and distinction...."

According to Grehan, coffee and tobacco were "bringing together a diverse cross-section of Istanbul society." This is always a problem for those who like looking down on the rabble.

When different classes, levels of education and social status mix it threatens the false order of those who can only thrive in a society of fear. When diverse people are brought together in an unguided and unorganized manner they realize how interesting the world is and that those of disparate groups are human too. It makes it pretty difficult for despots to create hatred and fear of a group when the groups socialize together all of the time.

This Bard belongs to several segregated genetic groups. He has been shunned, spit upon, and called names. The Bard can no more quit being a member to his inherited genetic group than a Jew could in Nazi Germany, or a Black person on a hot night in 1920, or an American of Japanese descent after Pearl Harbor.

And even though mistreated because of his genetic inheritance, the Bard does not believe in mistreating or segregating or making experiments of those of different genetic inheritance than himself. This is evil to him. The Bard cannot espouse self-righteousness or hate of others when he is himself a sufferer of hatred. He cannot be a hypocrite in the name of religion, science, health, or morals.

James Grehan spends much time on the Muslim legal scholar 'Abd al-Ghani al-Nablusi (1641-1731), who was much revered in and after his time, but has fallen due to our modern "intolerant conservatism." Grehan says of al-Nabulsi:

"Beyond his efforts to build a solid defense for smoking, al-Nablusi had much broader complaints about anti-tobacco authors. He saw their arguments as growing out of unhealthy self-righteousness that clouded their judgment. In essence, they were simply imposing their prejudices on others by improperly citing a legal tradition that called on all believers 'to command the right and forbid the wrong.' Al-Nablusi did not dispute the validity of this doctrine, but asked whether anyone alive was fit to apply it" (emphasis added).

It seems that the coffeehouse, the tavern, the place of peaceful assembly plays a very similar role as Jesus does. This is why we see an increase in smoking bans, which lead to a closure of taverns, less sociability in the yuppy coffee bars, and binge drinking in the remaining youth bars. These public gathering places threaten the order of the arrogant who order the masses.

"Whenever you see a cloud rising out of the west, immediately you say, 'A shower is coming'; and so it is.
"And when you see the south wind blow, you say, 'There will be hot weather'; and there is.
"Hypocrites! You can discern the face of the sky and of the earth, but how is it you do not discern this time?" (Luke 12:54-56).