Steve Smith points me at an honest-to-god (or God) great diary at Daily Kos.
The diarist eloquently makes a point I’ve tried to make a number of times about the left of MLK Jr:
I don’t think anyone could seriously make the argument that Dr. King was a sellout,
a person of weak moral stamina,
that he compromised with society or accepted marginalization.
Nay, he stood strong – continuously willing to speak out and when necessary suffer for his beliefs. Expecting not exceptions, but real change in the laws and attitudes he challenged, realizing that neither would come lightly.
Yet, significantly Dr. King managed to do something that we too often overlook. He disagreed – strongly. He challenged injustice – but he did not divide.
He drew lines not to exclude others but to demand change. Recognizing change would not come instantly, he still refused to fall into the trap of hating and demeaning his adversaries.
He Did. Not. Divide.
He refused to allow even those who persecuted him to become a “Them.” He recognized that whatever the conflict, we will ultimately have to live with those we now oppose and if we are to break the cycle of oppression, not merely change who’s in power, then we have to start breaking the cycle in our everyday lives.
Cathy Seipp died today, and as little as she tolerated fools, she’s someone who I think would have gotten that point easily. So in her honor, let me suggest that we all remind ourselves of a base truth – “that whatever the conflict, we will ultimately have to live with those we now oppose.”
Works for me. Thanks, Cathy, and thanks ‘its simple IF you ignore the complexity’…
Good for you, AL! I think this really IS the answer.
It’s not easy. You have to be “wise as serpents, and gentle as doves”. Don’t forget the “wise as serpents”. (In some translations, it’s “dragons”.)
I hope we’ve had a pretty good lesson over the past four years about how effective it is to blast away at people. You’re pretty much guaranteed to solidify your enemies against you, and attract more and stronger enemies.
We’re actually starting to make slow and tentative progress with North Korea and Iran, since we’ve ratcheted back the hostility. When you start labeling each other the “Great Satan” and the “Axis of Evil”, it makes it harder to work out a peaceful deal.
Martin Luther King knew that you could appeal to that of God inside everyone, even your worst enemies. You might not succeed (nothing always works), but you might, and it works better, in the long run, than solidifying their enmity.
I don’t expect to reach the “Bomb Iran” fans that hang around here, but it’s worth continuing to try, even if it mostly fails. It might sink in over time.
“Who would Jesus bomb?”
Armed Liberal: “… whatever the conflict, we will ultimately have to live with those we now oppose.”
No.
We are up against a system. At the heart of the system is the religion of Allah, but it doesn’t end there. (If it did, we would no have seen similar things happening decades ago when Islamic cultural aggressiveness wore the mask of “Arab nationalism”.) This religion shapes cultures, and in these cultures, values, principles, policies and actions follow in train.
“Our struggle is not about land or water… It is about bringing, by force if necessary, the whole of mankind onto the right path.”
Ayatollah Seyyed Ruhollah Khomeini, 1980
“The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies – civilians and military – is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it …”
– Osama Bin Laden’s declaration of war, 1998.
Imam Samudra greeted his death sentence for the Bali blast, in 2002, with the cry “Infidels die!” It may reasonably be doubted that he meant the “die!” bit in the purely metaphorical, spiritually uplifting way that apologists for Islam claim jihad is about.
“Remember, the main duty of Muslims is jihad in the name of God, to raise arms against the infidels, especially now the United States and its allies.”
– Imam Samudra, in his book Me Against the Terrorist!
Principles follow inexorably from Islamic values. Policies follow inexorably from principles. Acts follow inexorably from policies, as inexorably as the timer of a bomb ticking down.
Moreover, cultures of hate, shaped by a religion of domineering menace, generate endless freelance aggression: Muslim thugs raping, mutilating, vandalizing, stealing and so on, enough to keep non-Muslim populations in decline where Islam dominates.
Islam divides the world into the good camp of Islam and the evil camp of not-Islam, of war. The camp of Islam must dominate the camp of evil everywhere. Such domination is menacing, often violent, and intentionally humiliating; in sum, it is aggressively and implacably tyrannical, and infinite in its ambition. There is no square inch of habitable land anywhere that according to Islam is not supposed to be dominated by Islam.
If ultimately we have to “live with” men like Mohammed Atta, or even punier specimens such as Mohammed Reza Taheri-Azar, or even more sordid creatures such as Bilal Skaf and his pack rape gang, that will mean we will have been subjugated by an evil cause, an evil force.
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Beard: “Martin Luther King knew that you could appeal to that of God inside everyone, even your worst enemies.”
You can appeal to the God inside men like Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. That God is Allah. He calls for jihad. He calls for striking terror into unbelievers. He calls for mutilations. He calls for death. These calls extend to the ends of the Earth and the end of time. And He has no love for those who do not obey Him.
That’s why we have to limit and diminish the stock of resources available to the enemy. Given the malice of this enemy, that’s the way for us to defend ourselves.
#2 from David Blue
You could be talking about the Catholic Church, the Cromwellian Puritans, the Neo-Cons and for that matter any number of true believers at points throughout history. I is very easy to demonize and very difficult to come to accommodations with people who are diferent than you are. If anything, Martin Luther King’s life, along with that of Nelson Mandela, Mohandas Ghandi, et. al. proves this.
What ever happened to the only thing we have to fear is fear, itself. That seemed to be enough to beat fascism.
TOC, No, that also required military might and a willingness to use it brutally (see Dresden, firebombing of Tokyo, Nagasaki, and Hiroshima).
David Blue [#2] writes:
bq.
_Principles follow inexorably from Islamic values. Policies follow inexorably from principles. Acts follow inexorably from policies, as inexorably as the timer of a bomb ticking down._
This is a pretty naive, deterministic view of religious values and political behavior. If this were so, is there a reason why it should apply to Muslims more than Christians? And if it applies to Christians equally, why are we not all following the Sermon on the Mount? Or, perhaps, slaughtering all the Philistines we get our hands on, with their women and children, depending on which values one decides to hold dearest?
And yes, you have a fine bunch of bloodthirsty quotes from various Islamic extremists. It wouldn’t surprise me if you could find similar quotes from Eric Rudolph, or Pat Robertson, or our own JIm Rockford, who is so fond of the idea of bombing Iran. The extremists do not represent the population as a whole.
That said, there are situations where extremists end up taking control of the behavior of the population as a whole. I know as a fact that there are plenty of Muslims who would be perfectly happy to live in peace with Christians and Jews, and who are not motivated by the quotes you cite. I am sorry that they are too gutless to stop the extremists. But it’s silly to argue that they don’t exist at all.
You have created an artificial reality, much like what you see in the movies, where the Bad Guys are evil through and through, so the only way you can deal with them is to kill them. Then of course you are justified in killing them, because there is no alternative. But the real reality is much more complex, and has many more opportunities to change people’s minds, and to change the behavior of whole populations.
So, let’s be careful about this: How would you test the idea that every Muslim is inexorably bent on the destruction of non-Muslims, contrasting it with my hypothesis that that opinion characterizes a smaller population of extremists who happen to be influential right now, surrounded by a larger population who would (under the right circumstances) be willing to live in peace with us?
Let’s pretend to be scientists about this. Is there a prediction we can test, that would discriminate between these two hypotheses?
Your turn. . .
#5,
Beard.
When Christians begin murdering a few hundred people every day (on average) I’ll start to take notice of them.
If we get a few murders a year I’m going to keep my eyes open, however you have to look at how serious is the threat.
M. Simon [#6],
Um . . . I seem to have pushed a button, and that answer popped out.
But it wasn’t an answer to my argument. Which was an argument against David Blue’s naive, deterministic model of how political behavior follows from religious belief.
Whether Christians are out there murdering lots of people or not (say, Serbians in Kosovo) is actually irrelevant to the argument. My point is that the world Muslim community is not united in following the bloodthirsty quotes that David Blue provides. Even if far too many people do follow them, slavish adherence to those religious teachings is not why.
To think otherwise is to live in a mythical world, which serves one poorly when struggling against problems in the real world.
#3 from TOC: #2 from David Blue
You could be talking about the Catholic Church, the Cromwellian Puritans, the Neo-Cons and for that matter any number of true believers at points throughout history.
Yes and no.
Yes because I do draw practical predictions and recommendations from the implications of the prevailing religion, cultures, values, principles and policies.
For a fantasy example, if a bunch of flamboyant African Pagans had thought it a good idea to move to Cromwell’s England to practice their religion in style, my recommendation to them would be: no, you won’t be able to live and practice your religion openly there, securely and unmolested, given the flavor of religion that now prevails in Cromwell’s England, and the culture and politics that also prevail there, informed by this religion.
It is equally reasonable to say right now: look how non-Muslim minorities (and even majorities!) go into decline where the power of Islam prevails or is sufficiently felt. That shows that the system of Islam is inimical to us, and that we should not do anything to empower it anywhere we want to continue to live well. This is just practical self-defense.
Given the total system, it’s unreal to suppose that the last step will not happen, that acts that follow from the religion and the influences of the religion will not occur, with consequences for us.
No, because the recommendations flow from the specific religion, the cultural influences, the values, the principles, the policies and the habits and kinds of people that arise.
It’s specific. The problems you have with Islam are not the same problems you would have with victorious Aztecs, for example. Neoconservatives do not believe the same things as Torquemada, they create and then operate in a different social environment, and so they act quite differently.
There have been true believers throughout history. But they have not all believed the same things, and radically different consequences have followed from radically different beliefs. The religious zealotry of Akhenaten led to a catastrophic do-nothing foreign and military policy, and a lot of novel and rather neurotic-looking art. The true believing zealotry of the followers of Muhammed (pbuh), with an entirely different content, had entirely different consequences.
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#3 from TOC: I is very easy to demonize and very difficult to come to accommodations with people who are diferent than you are. If anything, Martin Luther King’s life, along with that of Nelson Mandela, Mohandas Ghandi, et. al. proves this.
The issue at hand is more specific than that. It’s about Islam encouraging the negative attitudes towards and forms of aggression against various classes of non-Muslims, especially former Muslims who’ve opted out.
Islam draws the line against former Muslims, and it allows and encourages their punishment, even to death.
Our appropriate response when others threaten our new friends is to stand shoulder to shoulder with them. “Death for Adil Zeshan? No you don’t!” Or, “Death for Salman Rushdie? No you don’t!” Or “Death for Hirsi Ali? No you don’t!”
That is where the line has to be drawn. If someone contributes to the threat against ex-Muslims in Australia, then sooner or later, and preferably sooner, I want them out of the country, and if it’s all the same to us if their resources are more or less, I want them to be less. And “contributing to the threat” is not just being likely to be the one that wields the knife, it also includes supporting preachers with bad attitudes and contributing resources and moral support to institutions that maintain a system of laws that say, year after year, generation after generation, that it’s all right to denigrate, exclude, threaten and punish those who reject Islam and leave it.
If people establish their own mosques where divine law is said to be that Islam means only pacifism, and anyone can leave Islam without any consequences in this world, great.
If people support mosques that in turn implicitly (or explicitly) support menace and aggression against former Muslims and various classes of non-Muslims such as Jews and non-believing women, not great. I want less of that. And I want less of those who contribute to that.
And yes, that means dividing, and planning to have less resources in future on the wrong side of the necessary line, the line that protects our civilization and true tolerance, as opposed to the false, counterproductive tolerance of implacable enemies.
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#3 from TOC: What ever happened to the only thing we have to fear is fear, itself. That seemed to be enough to beat fascism.
#4 from Fred is correct.
David Blue [#8]:
bq. _If people establish their own mosques where divine law is said to be that Islam means only pacifism, and anyone can leave Islam without any consequences in this world, great._
Is that your standard for tolerating someone’s religion? Christianity has come somewhat closer to that point in the last part-century, but it hasn’t reached it yet.
bq. _If people establish their own churches where divine law is said to be that Christianity means only pacifism, and anyone can leave Christianity without any consequences in this world, great._
David Blue [#8]
bq. _look how non-Muslim minorities (and even majorities!) go into decline where the power of Islam prevails or is sufficiently felt. That shows that the system of Islam is inimical to us, and that we should not do anything to empower it anywhere we want to continue to live well._
What about Turkey? Or Indonesia?
Those are both predominantly Muslim countries in which non-Muslim minorities have lived reasonably comfortably for many years.
Yes, there are Islamist movements in both countries that are trying to change that. But that supports my point, not yours. That is, that the oppressive aspects of Islamic societies occur when certain groups take power. It is the result of a particular Islamic faction, not Islam itself.
This makes an important difference when considering how to defend onesself against threats from Islamic extremists.
If one (like you) believes this is intrinsic to Islam, they seem forced into a near-genocidal position of trying to exterminate an entire religion. If we could bring ourselves to do this, we would no longer be recognizably American, so The Great Experiment would have failed.
However, if this is a faction within Islam, rather than essential, then we can find allies within Islam itself, to help Islam transform itself to live as part of the modern, civilized world.
I believe that you and I share that last goal. But your position on the nature of Islam makes it more difficult for you or anyone else to realize it.
#5 from Beard: David Blue [#2] writes:
Principles follow inexorably from Islamic values. Policies follow inexorably from principles. Acts follow inexorably from policies, as inexorably as the timer of a bomb ticking down.
This is a pretty naive, deterministic view of religious values and political behavior. If this were so, is there a reason why it should apply to Muslims more than Christians?
Yes, many reasons. I’ll only mention three, and that should be enough.
(1) Many divine instructions in Christianity are so absurd, impractical, or immediately fatal that they have to be ignored in practice. For example, Jesus, that’s God, implicitly invites his followers to show their faith in him by drinking strong poison.This gives a Darwinian advantage to sects within Christianity that are more willing to set aside the plain letter of God’s word in favor or interpretations that seem to be more practical. The non-snake handlers have an understandable edge over the snake-handlers.
(2) Christianity has a concept of a secular sphere of authority “Give unto Caesar…” over which much ink has already been spilled.
(3) Compared to any other religion I’m aware of, including Islam, Christianity has an unmatched vice of being absurdly, insanely, intolerably vicious over petty points of doctrine, justification, faith, quirks in the diagramming of the Trinity and so on. With the consequence that the viability of Christendom as a whole has historically been placed under stain by too much excessively vicious sectarian fighting.
With the consequence that to keep going and prosper, Christianity in its American form has accepted heavy taboos on suppressing freedom of speech, sectarian bloodshed and so on. And that turned out to be a great idea for everyone.
Where those taboos are in force, the Christian vice is paradoxically turned to a mighty virtue and an engine of progress. And where those taboos are not in force (as they are not, with, say, the Lord’s Resistance Army) then Christianity is a horrifying religion, or a noxious component in a syncretistic religion; but it’s hard for those backward and bloody elements to compete with the zealous upholders of new-model free-speaking Christianity.
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#5 from Beard: And if it applies to Christians equally, why are we not all following the Sermon on the Mount?”
This is no more sensible than to ask: how can there be any acts of masturbation or sex with contraception in Catholic countries, since the Pope forbids them?
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#5 from Beard: Or, perhaps, slaughtering all the Philistines we get our hands on, with their women and children, depending on which values one decides to hold dearest?
Well for the Jews, first find yourself an Amalekite.
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#5 from Beard: And yes, you have a fine bunch of bloodthirsty quotes from various Islamic extremists.
That’s not the point. These are not just quotes from fringe-dwellers. The Ayatollah Khomeini was anything but. These are quotes that illustrate the top-down influence of Islam under the example of the Prophet (pbuh) and the Koran. The great theologian (Khomeini) applies Islamic values to the modern world to give principles (stating the aim and the stakes of the fight). Osama Bin Laden as a Sunni not being in Khomeini’s chain of command but clearly at a much lower level of teaching authority translates the general demand for bloody Muslim aggression into real world policies on how this is to be carried out. And lower level jihadists killing and otherwise carrying out jihad and giving their reasons. The guy with the knife or the bomb strapped to him is not getting these ideas from nowhere. This is how the system produces these walking munitions. That must be understood.
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#5 from Beard: It wouldn’t surprise me if you could find similar quotes from Eric Rudolph, or Pat Robertson, or our own JIm Rockford, who is so fond of the idea of bombing Iran. The extremists do not represent the population as a whole.
No, there are no genuinely equivalent quotes, because the point of the quotes is that they illustrate the system of jihad and sharia, and there is no equivalent system. Random quotes from people who are angry at what is going on are not the same thing at all.
Jim Rockford is not part of a theologically driven system of indoctrination for holy war. It’s absurd to make these attacks on individuals alarmed by jihad, and I think playing the man not the ball like this is an indication of weakness.
(Which said: I and Jim Rockford have very different ideas, and he can defend himself from there on.)
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#5 from Beard: That said, there are situations where extremists end up taking control of the behavior of the population as a whole. I know as a fact that there are plenty of Muslims who would be perfectly happy to live in peace with Christians and Jews, and who are not motivated by the quotes you cite. I am sorry that they are too gutless to stop the extremists. But it’s silly to argue that they don’t exist at all.
That is your straw man. It has nothing to do with me.
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#5 from Beard: You have created an artificial reality, much like what you see in the movies, where the Bad Guys are evil through and through, so the only way you can deal with them is to kill them.
Again, playing the man, combined with fantastic mis-statements like this, indicates a weak position.
#5 from Beard: Then of course you are justified in killing them, because there is no alternative.
More of the same.
#5 from Beard: But the real reality is much more complex, and has many more opportunities to change people’s minds, and to change the behavior of whole populations.
Anything would be more complex than your straw men here.
#5 from Beard: So, let’s be careful about this: How would you test the idea that every Muslim is inexorably bent on the destruction of non-Muslims, contrasting it with my hypothesis that that opinion characterizes a smaller population of extremists who happen to be influential right now, surrounded by a larger population who would (under the right circumstances) be willing to live in peace with us?
Let’s pretend to be scientists about this. Is there a prediction we can test, that would discriminate between these two hypotheses?
Your turn. . .
This is not scientific at all, it is a straw man game.
#9 from Beard:
David Blue [#8]:
If people establish their own mosques where divine law is said to be that Islam means only pacifism, and anyone can leave Islam without any consequences in this world, great.
Is that your standard for tolerating someone’s religion? Christianity has come somewhat closer to that point in the last part-century, but it hasn’t reached it yet.
I am not in favor of tolerance for every stripe of Christianity. Mowing down guys like David Khoresh and practically suppressing churches like the Branch Davidians is fine by me. And yes, when a religion will not let anyone flee the madhouse, that crosses a line.
My standard depends partly on history. Japan needed a new, pacifist constitution, and so does Islam.
A cult with only an averagely threatening history, by reasonable standards of comparison, that likes to talk about its warrior kings, shouldn’t have to change that. Let the Jews talk about King David all they like. Let admirers of Rome worship Mars all they like – Romans committed extraordinarily few crimes for religious reasons, as opposed to fighting for reasons of state. The Bahais can have their warrior ideas, and the Sikhs theirs (with few reservations), and the same for Hindus (with few reservations). Suspicion falls on those with really, really bad records, not everyone.
It would be reasonable to ask Christians to be a bit more careful than others in preaching blood and thunder, in view of their history, except that they do that already with a lot to spare.
On a global and historic scale, Islam really is unique for its doctrine and record.
We do not have a “religion” problem. We have an Islam problem.
And after such evidence as we have seen that there is an Islamic problem, I would need to see correspondingly impressive proofs that there is no longer an Islamic problem, and that there will not be one again, like as soon as the pressure comes off.
If there is no such proof, then we have to proceed on the reasonable assumption that extraordinarily dangerous and stubborn enemies have not changed their spots.
#10 from Beard: David Blue [#8]
look how non-Muslim minorities (and even majorities!) go into decline where the power of Islam prevails or is sufficiently felt. That shows that the system of Islam is inimical to us, and that we should not do anything to empower it anywhere we want to continue to live well.
What about Turkey? Or Indonesia?
Those are both predominantly Muslim countries in which non-Muslim minorities have lived reasonably comfortably for many years.
What amazing examples. That is not how East Timorese I’ve talked to characterized their situation. It does not correspond to the situation of the Dayaks, or the Chinese in Indonesia, or Hindus, or Christians … it is an amazing thing to put up Indonesia as an example of a place where non-Muslim religion is not under the kind of ugly Islamic pressure that leads to decline.
Turkey also is not an example I would accept, though it would take longer to argue it, because of the cult of the Turk created by Mustafa Kemal. (The Turk is not of any other religion than Islam, and Turkey is not a place where religions other than Islam can thrive.)
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#10 from Beard: Yes, there are Islamist movements in both countries that are trying to change that. But that supports my point, not yours. That is, that the oppressive aspects of Islamic societies occur when certain groups take power. It is the result of a particular Islamic faction, not Islam itself.
This makes an important difference when considering how to defend onesself against threats from Islamic extremists.
Never mind extremists, for a moment. The moderates will impose laws, and worse, unwritten laws, that grind down every religion other than Islam. When women who do not act as Islamic standards suggest are seen as “uncovered meat” that is quite enough pressure to shape conduct. Where Islamic susceptibilities must be respected, free speech is at a disadvantage, and non-Muslims cannot enjoy all the rights – including the right to seek converts to their religion, whatever it is – that Muslims have.
For those who adhere to other religions, to approve of the empowerment of the system of Islam is folly.
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#10 from Beard: If one (like you) believes this is intrinsic to Islam, they seem forced into a near-genocidal position of trying to exterminate an entire religion. If we could bring ourselves to do this, we would no longer be recognizably American, so The Great Experiment would have failed.
No, this “genocidal” and “extermination” stuff is the usual straw man tactics and smearing, that’s all.
I advocate wary hostility to a demonstrably hostile system. I advocate less Islam where possible. I advocate less resources for Islam, less resources for a system that history has shown is likely to pit those resources against us. I advocate prudent suspicion against those who have proved they are suspect, as they are following a program that aims at world domination. And I look to former Muslims as our great hope, our shining new friends who we must accept and militantly protect.
If you want to argue contrary positions, above all on my key point, the militant willingness to fight for the safety and dignity of those who reject and abandon Islam, OK, do so.
If you want to argue that fighting for freedom, above all the most critical and relevant freedom, freedom of religion for those who abandon the system of our enemies, is contrary to the Great Experiment, go ahead and do so.