I’ve looked and looked and can’t find a class on building car bombs or soliciting suicide bombers in the class list over at Hamburg Technical University.
So should I just toss out my notion that there is some root of modern Islamist terrorism to be found in the soil of the antiwestern academy?
Not so sure.
Here’s the issue. Sageman suggests that the future warriors simply drifted into a local mosque, and – alienated and lonely – they fell under the spell of the imam.
When they became homesick, they did what anyone would and tried to congregate with people like themselves, whom they would find at mosques. So they drifted towards the mosque, not because they were religious, but because they were seeking friends. They moved in together in apartments, in order to share the rent and also to eat together – they were mostly halal, those who observed the Muslim dietary laws, similar in some respects to the kosher laws of Judaism. Some argue that such laws help to bind a group together since observing them is something very difficult and more easily done in a group. A micro-culture develops that strengthens and absorbs the participants as a unit. This is a halal theory of terrorism, if you like.
So here’s the problem. If you read the – rants – of the extremist imams, how in the world do you bridge across to thinking that they make any sense at all? How do you go from hanging out with your fellows to accepting what is essentially a fascist theocracy?I think of it as the “standing at the mosque door” question.
When you stand at the mosque door and hear things like this:
“At any rate, if we return to our discussion of the heart of the matter. First of all, we must realize that Allah obligated us to disseminate this religion all over the globe. And first, it should be spread through outreach and calling people to Allah’s word, through pleasing words, gently, and through good deeds. Through letting people hear Allah’s words and showing them Islam. However, if we run up against someone who opposes this path and attempts to obstruct the spread of the upright religion and the light, and to obstruct their reaching others – in this case it is a duty to fight such a person. And Allah said: ‘Fight them until there is no more strife and Allah’s religion reigns supreme.’
“We don’t agree with those who disavow this completely and say that the religion [of Islam] doesn’t use the sword. No. Islam uses the sword when there is no other alternative. Therefore wisdom, as the religious authorities say, consists in utilizing each thing in its proper place. If there is need for the sword, then it is wise to use the sword, and if the occasion requires kind words and outreach, then it is wise to utilize them.”
And to me, there are at least two parts to it.
First, how is it that, in a century that conquered fascism, we ignored this kind of passionate fascist belief for so long? I read things like this once in a while before 9/11, and was amused. “Wow, those guys are nuts,” I used to think.
But we tolerate them. We tolerate them in our cities, as opposed to compounds in rural Idaho, where their white counterparts tend to pool. Why? Because we believe that no one who isn’t white can really be racist.
Why? Because the academic annti-Western left today sees the world through a very simple lens.
I stress very strongly, not the left at large or overall. It’s a very small tradition of anticolonial, pseudo-nationalist radicalism that eclectically and often incoherently grabs what it needs from Marxism, poststructuralism, postcolonial theory, and even conservative thought now and again (though often in unacknowledged ways).
It is also a tradition that is completely unable to face its own contradictions. Churchill’s much-cited remarks on 9/11 are an indication, for example, of the underlying moral incoherence of his writing (and writing like his). The principles that are used to value some lives (Iraqi babies dying under sanctions) and not others (people in the World Trade Center) have no underlying ethical or moral foundation: they’re purely historicist and instrumental. The original sin of modernity is seen as the expansion of the West; it is perceived as a kind of singularity that utterly destroyed or erased historical experience to that point. The only moral vector, the only capacity to act immorally or to commit evil, descends from that original sin. If you’re associated by social structure with that expansion, you are bad. If you are a victim of it, you are good.
Norm Geras touched on the same point:
In affecting the general alignment of most of the socialist left in the conflicts that have preceded and followed the events of September 11, 2001, all this effort that I have tried briefly to characterize might just as well not have taken place. For even if more advanced models of theoretical explanation are now available to the left, it nonetheless seems to suffice in any given international conflict to know that on one side is the United States, and that the United States is a capitalist power that always has designs on the natural and human resources of the rest of the world. If you know this, everything else falls instantly into place; all other levels of analysis, all other considerations, are superfluous. They can either be ignored altogether, or they can be conceded in passing, but as merely secondary and hence ignorable in practice. The political alignments are always defined by the primary determinant-imperialism. But how does this differ from imperialism’s being the only thing, with every other social, political, or ideological reality merely epiphenomenal, taking its place and meaning within the whole from the one true cause?
So on one hand, we turn a blind eye to beliefs that – if they were voiced in a Protestant church in the late 20th century – would be on the front page of the newspaper. But we don’t talk about them, because to do so would disrupt the tacit understanding that any statement – any rage, any claim – is valid if it is addressed against the hegemonic West, or more particularly, the United States.
And on the other, we immerse people in a community that believes that those claims – that everything wrong in the world is the result of Western history. So now, you’re lonely and far from home, in a society where you feel slighted – where you were once the best-educated, richest young man on the block. And now you’re another poor, unhappy student.
And why?
Well, because of the West, of course.
And if you come to believe that – and I have friends from New York who do – how much easier is it, standing at the door of the mosque – to go ahead and step inside.
First, it is unfair to say that this crazy leftist anticolonial attitude is unbiased. The colonialism of the West led to large structural changes in the Middle East, and arguably a large weakening of the Ottoman Empire. There were other factors leading to its decline, such as trade agreements (abused by Europeans) and industrialization of the West. The result of the eventual fall of the OE was, in part, the former dictatorships of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now, assuming that the point I just made is agreed on (I hope it is) the resulting regimes are, to some extent, the West’s fault. To add insult to injury, the meddling of the US led to Osama and Saddam (which is admittedly glazing over a bit, but we aren’t missing much). And they are (were in Saddam’s case) the big Satans to our land of Protestant Paradise.
To say that the left only thinks the US’s motives are capatilistic and greedy is probably mostly correct. But not for strict adherence to an ideology or doctrine. Because for the most part, it is probably true. The fact is that the United States, historically and in the present, is a sociaty based largely in pragmatism. Fights in Africa are not genocide, because that would require our intervention, and that evokes memories of notably horrid failures.
To say that our goals were humanitarian or moral is to ignore the basic principles of international relations. The current international milieu is little different than that of the Greeks or Romans. Talk and moral attitudes are the last resort of the weak (usually Europe), and the powerful (usually us) take what they please. Thucididies would be proud.
To be fair, you also must look at the reality of the identity of a student. More than just these particular students, but at the student in general. It was students that caught our eye in China with the whole Tiananmen Square massacre. Students organized protests against the ‘Man’ in the 60’s and 70’s here in the US. To say that students who feel that the current international political environment are hostile based solely on basis of religion and nationality are silly. The fact is students, Christian, American students, have done violence against the state and were lauded only 30 or 40 years earlier.
Finally, I don’t condone any of the actions of terrorists, any more than I condone the subsequent invasions and military campaigns of the United States. The point is, however horrible September 11th was, to point the blame at the Middle East without recognizing their valid claims against us is ridiculous. No one deserves to die, and that applies equally to all Peoples of the Book (and even some of us athiests).
Oh, and you apparently didn’t see Welding Technology, Chemistry of Hazardous Materials, Electronic Devices, and Sensorics. Or Project Management, Management and Communication Rhetoric, and International Business Management.
(A) The Ward Churchills of the world are not a small minority. The anti-western, anti-imperialist attitude that is described above is (IMHO) the most widespread ethical system currently on this planet. It provides a comprehensive (albeit simple) system of morality to Muslims, Christians, Blacks, Whites, Europeans — you name it. I’d also submit that it is, in every reasonable construction of the word, a religion. It is an all-embracing, alogical, ahistorical system of morality that tells how to be good, how to recognize evil, how to be redeemed, how to be protected and revenged, etc. etc. It is the world’s newest and largest religion.
(B) My best friend was killed at the WTC. I had the privilege of knowing him for decades prior to that, all the way back to when he and I first learned about the Nazis, Eichmann, and the banality of some evil. He was well aware that financial workers are participants in a system that brings great joy to some, and great misery to others, and sometimes a great roller-coaster ride between joy and misery. To them it is just work, but to many of those affected it means life and death. (Ditto for many other things besides finances, BTW)
Both he and I would be offended by the sophmorically and deliberately confrontational tone of Churchhill – but I doubt he would have been completely dismissive of the message. I say this because I know that one of his major considerations in choosing an employer was precisely his desire to be part of an ethical organization that provided honest financial data (vs. pumping out false numbers to benefit a few insiders at the cost of the ignorant multitude), stayed away from raiding pension funds, and so on.
Focus on the message, not the messenger. There are great flaws in America, and we can all work to improve our country. Mass murder of financial workers is unjustified – whatever the ‘root cause’ crowd says. In this case, the root cause is an “ideology of terror and Arab imperialism”, to quote an Iranian/Syrian lecturer I spoke with just yesterday.
And, to reinforce the point, that ideology of terror and Arab imperialism can never be recognized as what it is by those who subscribe to the world’s newest and largest religion.
The comment by ‘E’ represents the common ignorant ideology of many, brought up in the mindset of binaristic reductionism,where everything is reduced to ‘the good’ and ‘the bad’ as in a simplistic soap opera.
The 18th century territorial expansion and changing socioeconomic mode of the West was due to population explosion, not to any ‘personality quirk’ of the West. The peasant economies and tribal modes of the colonized lands were locked into stable, no-growth, no-change systems because their populations did not grow, as did the West’s population.
Most certainly, this population expansion in the West led to large structural changes IN THE WEST, such as the switch from a peasant local economy to a market capitalist economy, and then, a switch from agriculture to industrialism, and a switch from isolation to expansion. The writer, ‘E” doesn’t seem to know about these factors and instead relies on the invalid ‘personality’ definition of the West as ‘colonial’ or a ‘Type A’ personality. Nations don’t have personalities. You have to understand demographics and economies.
You cannot view the colonized countries, particularly the ME, as passive peasants. The Ottoman Empire was deeply involved in the its own expansionist agenda and the transition, and – the movement into a dictatorship is not the fault of ‘the West’. What moved the ME into dictatorships rather than towards democracy? With the development of oil, those nations themselves experienced an exponential growth of population, BUT – they did not move into a civic mode of governance, which empowers all citizens, but retained a closed tribal mode, which empowers only an elite sector and reduces the rest of the population to – worker ants. They chose to remain tribal; they chose to reject empowering their citizens. The West rejected tribalism in the 15th century and moved into a civic and democratic mode, by itself. The Middle East refused to do this – and its religious fundamentalists are still rejecting, openly and publicly, the very notion of democracy, and the notion of empowering their own citizens. There is no way that this can be dropped at the West’s feet, despite ‘E’s attempts to do so.
Capitalism does not mean ‘greed’. ‘Greed’ is a personality trait and nations aren’t persons. Capitalism promotes individual entrepreneurship and the accumulation of surplus – which enables a growth, rather than no-growth economy. If your population is increasing, you have to move into capitalism – or else, rely on the World Health and US-UN to feed your people. The ME’s only wealth is oil; it supports extravagant elites and the rest of the population – lives within a mediocre life-style. It makes no plans for empowering its citizens to move into the global economy, no plans for a post-oil economy. This is their own fault.
The Greeks and Romans? What’s your point? ‘Talk and moral attitudes are the last resort of the weak’? This sounds like something from a fascist tract. A moral attitude MUST be at the base of decisions. The US’s moral attitude is freedom and democracy. Rome was a ‘just society’ – until it fell under the sway of authoritarian Christianity. Plato was a totalitarian, at heart.
And ‘E’ seems to reject, holistically, any violence. He rejects the actions of the USA, which resulted in freeing the Afghans from the tyranny of the Talibans; he rejects freeing the Iraqis from the tyranny of Hussein. Would he also reject the actions of the USA and other nations, in freeing Europe from Hitler?
No-one deserves to die? What a simplistic and naive – and pompous – statement. If no-one deserves to die – than, what are you prepared to do to prevent such actions by tyrants?
What Marc Sageman is saying looks correct to me. Armed Liberal, sorry but your objections make no sense to me.
“So here’s the problem. If you read the – rants – of the extremist imams, how in the world do you bridge across to thinking that they make any sense at all?”
I said before, Armed Liberal, you are primed to respond to Martin Luther King, because this is your culture and what he said appeals to your higher values, sentiments and aspirations. (You do not have to be specially religious for this to be true, just a fine representative of your culture.) Whereas evidently you are not primed to respond in the same way to the appeal of Islam. And with Muslims who are ideal representatives of their culture, which the worst terrorists are, it’s the other way around: they are primed to respond to Muslim appeals to their highest and best values and sentiments, and they are not primed to respond to infidel appeals.
I know you find this theory unpersuasive, but it seems to me to be so obvious I can’t think of anything to add to it. It’s. That. Simple.
As for us, and why we refuse to react to this, why we tolerate it even though it often goes so far that the only real choices are fighting and submission and we submit under the guise of toleration – that’s a complicated matter, and I think it has deep roots in human nature (hence the global effectiveness of jihad and the generally disunited and inadequate response it has met from the prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him) on), and in our own far-from-ideal civilisation (with our wars over heresy and allegedly incorrect doctrine, worse than that which any other civilisation has habitually inflicted on itself, and our unhealthy consciences) as well as in “bad philosophy” and so forth.
I think we should deal with all that (and more) in its own difficult thread, not get it mixed up with the simple reality of what the enemy is like.
We are dealing with (or rather being dealt with by) healthy, normal, admirable people who alas for us are excellent representatives of a religion and consequently a culture where there’s a strong predisposition to respond warmly to certain appeals and to fixate on doing various things to infidels that we do not want to have done to us. Get used to it.
In reply to David Blue, I disagree with your assessment of SOME people as “representatives of a religion (and culture)…with a ‘strong predisposition to respond warmly to certain appeals and to fixate on doing various things to infidels that we do not want to have done to us”.
My first question is – what’s your proof? Is this predisposition genetic? Proof? How do they come by this ‘predisposition’ and what, exactly, is a ‘predisposition’? Please provide scientific answers.
Since I very strongly doubt that you can come up with any logical or empirical proof for the existence of an inherent predisposition, then, could you please provide proof that the basic, original Islam, as outlined by Mohammed, is a terrorist religion? I doubt that you can do so.
Why is a Muslim terrorist, i.e., someone who considers that people of another religion, are infidels and worthy of death – an attitude similar to the medieval Christian definition of heresy – why is this individual, to you, ‘healthy, normal, admirable’? You are obviously a moral and cultural relativist and view what each ‘bloc’ or ‘set’ does, no matter how heinous, is valid, for its behavior is valid only to itself, cannot be compared, cannot be critiqued – for each set is isolate and does not participate in a wider humanity. That’s a grave conceptual error.
Why? Because these different religions and cultures are actually subsets, not self-sufficient, self-defined, isolate planets whirling off on their own. Their commonality is that they refer to the same species – homo sapiens. Nothing you can say, promoting relativism, can deny this fact. We are one species; we all have the same capacity for reason and ethical standards – and – we can all be trapped within feudal tribal dysfunctionalities, dictatorships, sheer corruption – and can also – move into open societies that acknowledge our common humanity.
Therefore, your cultural relativism, which totally rejects common humanity – is invalid.
E:
The colonialism of the West led to the weakening of the Ottoman Empire? Exactly the othe way round, IMHO.
The Ottomans declined from being able to beat or at least stalemate major European states in the 16th to mid-18th centuries, to the point of getting whipped by the Balkan League in 1912. A decline largely due to their economic, political, military and cultural stasis during a period of steady Western advances.
The Europeans took advantage of Ottoman weakness, but were also concerned with the problem, within Ottoman lands and between each other, that Turkish ineffectiveness and misrule created.
As for Afghanistan, any connection between that and the Ottomans are tenuous in the extreme.
In part, the successor regimes to European dominion were shaped by that experience. Short as it was for some, e.g. 1918-1948 at most for Iraq, it disastrously (albeit from understandable motives) attempted to create modernised states on the basis of narrow, often undemocratic (and increasingly so) elites, whether traditional, Westernised, or both.
However, the pre-existing conditions of the Middle East, the very conditions which had played a key role in Ottoman decline, were at least as important.
The combination of these socio-economic and cultural factors, the experience of European dominance, and the Arab political responses to both produced the various regimes of the late 20th century Middle East: the ethno-party based dictatorships, royalist-clan-traditionalist immobilism, radical clerical theocracy, etc.
To say _”the meddling of the US led to Osama and Saddam”_ is not merely _”glazing over a bit”_ but oversimplifying to the point of caricature. Particularly as the US arguably had much _less_ impact than other external actors: Britain, France, USSR.
_”No one deserves to die … even some of us athiests”_
Well, I hope that applies to _this_ atheist.
But no one? Under no circumstances of law or morality or necessity whatsoever?
I cannot subscribe to that.
As an old Labour Party member said: _”sometimes with fascists you’ve just got to kill the b****rds.”_
Or a more prominent socialist:
_”Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me.'”_
George Orwell
E: “Talk and moral attitudes are the last resort of the weak (usually Europe), and the powerful (usually us) take what they please. Thucididies would be proud.”
That bears no reasonable relation either to Thucydides’ famous semi-reconstruction of an Athenian speech, or to any part of Thucydides’ intentions or attitudes, or to the state of American-continental European diplomacy. “Thucididies would be proud.” Isn’t the sort of statement I would expect from anyone who had even fairly skimmed Thucydides.
Instead of using post #1 by E as a starting point, I recommend the documents Armed Liberal linked to, and this (“Peace, joy, harmony – and murder”) on female suicide bombers. (link) Read the short piece Norm links to, consider his – as it seems to me – very cogent summing up, and share your opinion on how much these women are responding to our bad philosophy (we surely put out plenty of it) and how much they are responding to things in their own culture. I’ll be interested to hear how people think the scales balance on that
“In reply to David Blue, I disagree with your assessment of SOME people as “representatives of a religion (and culture)…with a ‘strong predisposition to respond warmly to certain appeals and to fixate on doing various things to infidels that we do not want to have done to us”.”
Okey-dokely.
“My first question is – what’s your proof? Is this predisposition genetic? Proof? How do they come by this ‘predisposition’ and what, exactly, is a ‘predisposition’? Please provide scientific answers.”
Well, why do you want “scientific answers”? I would have thought history, religious texts, definitions and so on were appropriate here. Tell you what, you provide proof in chemistry, physics, and – let’s say – oceanography and astronomy that I need to provide you with “scientific answers” and then I’ll worry about it.
No offence intended, but I’ve learned that when people demand, say, archaeological proof that the goddess Isis is really, truly the goddess Aset or something of that nature, generally they’re just trying to raise the bar too high for anyone to get over it. It’s not worth discussing anything on that basis.
“Since I very strongly doubt that you can come up with any logical or empirical proof for the existence of an inherent predisposition, then, could you please provide proof that the basic, original Islam, as outlined by Mohammed, is a terrorist religion? I doubt that you can do so.”
First since you are making such a big play of demanding “proof” you “prove” that such “proof” is needed.
Of course if you want to back up and accept a discussion in terms appropriate to the material we are discussing, that’s different.
“Why is a Muslim terrorist, i.e., someone who considers that people of another religion, are infidels and worthy of death – an attitude similar to the medieval Christian definition of heresy – why is this individual, to you, ‘healthy, normal, admirable’? You are obviously a moral and cultural relativist and view what each ‘bloc’ or ‘set’ does, no matter how heinous, is valid, for its behavior is valid only to itself, cannot be compared, cannot be critiqued – for each set is isolate and does not participate in a wider humanity. That’s a grave conceptual error.”
You’re having so much fun answering your own questions and bravely defeating your own assumptions, I think I’ll let you continue doing so and bow out here.
In reply to David Blue
First- you misunderstand the term ‘scientific’, which doesn’t apply to the natural sciences but means ‘objective’. I repeat my question – would you please supply scientific proof that cultural behavior stems from a ‘predisposition’. What is this predisposition? What is the proof that it exists? Your whole argument depends on this – or – it ceases to be an argument and is demoted to your personal opinion.
You then continue your attempt to get out of answering by setting up a red herring tactic of a false analogy with an argument relying on opinion rather than fact (Isis).
Your third attempt not to answer my basic question – is yet another diversion – your trying to get me to start another discussion on ‘the necessity for proof’.
Look – your whole post is grounded on the notion of ‘predisposition’. I question that notion and ask for proof that such a thing exists. You are desperately trying to get out of answering.
Your fourth rejection of my question, asking for proof of your basic assertion, is to denigrate me, personally, as ‘having fun answering’ my own questions. …and stating that this is the reason why you will not answer.
Nope. The reason that you refuse to answer is because you have no proof; your basic assertion is false, unprovable and specious. Therefore, your conclusions are similar.
Next time – be prepared to substantiate and argue for your assertions. Don’t just pontificate from the pulpit. And..watch that cultural relativism. It’s a bad hole to hide in.
While we’re on the subject of colonialism let’s remember that the United States has never had colonies in the Middle East. We bought stuff from them. They bought stuff from us. Quelle horreur!.
Our colonies: the Phillipines, Puerto Rico, Haiti (briefly), Cuba (sort of). A handful of coaling stations and Pacific Islands.
Have we interfered in the internal affairs of Middle Eastern countries? Sure. But that’s lowering the threshold of colonizing to meaninglessness. Every demarche becomes colonization. The European colonizers of the Middle East included Britain (definitely), France, Italy, Germany (sort of). The issue of anti-colonialism as an explanation of hatred of the United States is a red herring.
Dave Schuler:_The issue of anti-colonialism as an explanation of hatred of the United States is a red herring_
The issue is not wether the US is in fact a colonialist power, but wether it is perceived as such by people who oppose it. Any population which has borne the yoke of colonialism will perceive powerful outside interests getting involved in its affairs through the prism of colonialism. All perceptions are filtered through experience. This fact alone helps to explain the support for the insurgency in Iraq by people who have no interest in living under a theocratic state (particularly one run by the likes of Zarqawi). If the US can decisively demonstrate that it has no colonial designs on Iraq support for the insurgents will wane substantially. The election is the first step. The definitive proof will come when an elected Iraqi government asks US forces to leave, and the US pulls up stakes, salutes, and goes home.
David Blue –
I’ve gotta disagree that this (the propensity to terrorism) is a ‘core feature’ of Islam – as opposed to Islamism. There’s an objective test: If it was, we’d be seeing a whole different level of terror from the 10b Muslims worldwide, who, I guessing ,spend most of their time practicing dentistry, plumbing, and raising children like the rest of us do.
I do think that Muslim culture – and political history – may make stepping through the door somewhat easier.
But if what you say is true, the war I want to, and believe we can, avoid is on. I don’t think it is and I think we have time to keep it from happening.
A.L.
After-thoughts:
Armed Liberal, I should say this is an interesting post with links to stuff that I think we should be discussing. That I pretty well wholly agree with Marc Sageman does not invalidate that.
laocoon, commiserations of the death of your friend. I should have said that before.
Dave Schuler: “The issue of anti-colonialism as an explanation of hatred of the United States is a red herring.”
(David Blue nods head)
Dave Schuler: “The European colonizers of the Middle East included Britain (definitely), France, Italy, Germany (sort of).”
And the Soviet Union? Was Afghanistan “close enough for government work”? (I think it was.)
That’s precisely what the issue is. The two instances are dramatically different. In the case of a current or formerly colonizing power some suspicion is warranted. When the United States is treated with the same—or greater—hatred than the actual colonizing powers that speaks only to the ignorance or bias of the “population which has borne the yoke of colonialism”.
Let’s make an imperfect analogy. When a woman is raped does that deputize her to shoot any man who comes near her? It may explain it but it would not excuse it. And the onus is on her not to behave that way rather than on men to demonstrate their innocence in advance.
Anything else is burden-shifting.
This fact alone helps to explain the support for the insurgency in Iraq by people who have no interest in living under a theocratic state (particularly one run by the likes of Zarqawi).
Nonsense. If we’ve learned anything in the last two weeks it’s that support for the “insurgency” (more likely Ba’athist coup Version 2.0) isn’t that deep except among Sunni Arabs. And let’s face facts: Sunni Arabs can’t resume their place at the top of the pecking order by democratic means. They either settle for what they can achieve by those means (which explains some of the movement we’ve seen since the election) or they resist.
There was a Frontline a couple weeks ago, “Al Qaeda’s New Front,” echoing Sageman’s point about terrorists being radicalized abroad. I don’t remember whether they mentioned him in the show, but they have a blub about him on their “website.”:http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/front/etc/today.html
ET:
Umm, actually there is a whole branch of cognitive neuroscience dealing with the biology of belief. We are *genetically and memetically preprogrammed* to be more receptive to some ideas than others. Here is a good book on the subject.
“How We Believe by Pascal Boyer”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805074791/102-9795054-2845765
At home, and abroad, the problem with Islam is a refusal, for the most part, to accomodate modernity.
Women are oppressed, in all areas of life, and have fewer rights and responsibilities. Social mobility is low, and prospects for improved economic/family life are diminishing. The entire GDP of the Arab States in 2000, excluding fossil fuels, was less than Finland, population 6 million.
Where Islam by state action (Turkey, Maylasia) has been forced to make concessions to modernity, life and opportunities have improved. Notably, in Europe, Islam has been able to operate much as it does in Saudi Arabia. No/few concessions to modern life.
The Academy does not take this failure to task, but instead excuses it. Other nations and peoples and religions have been subject to the most brutal colonialism and wars, yet have prospered. An examination of say, Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, and Maylasia versus say Oman, Qatar, UAE, Oman, and Morrocco is instructive.
States that keep down the kleptocracy to manageable levels, allow private space for life, moderate oppression of women, stress technical education, and keep the Mosque as much as possible out of the ministries do well as much as they adhere to these principles. States that don’t … don’t.
This isn’t very complex, it’s basic good government. Nothing to do with Colonialism (the Koreans were left with nothing after the Korean War; Singapore was a tiny, ethnically conflicted nation at independence).
Well, Armed Liberal, I would point out how little you, I, or any of the commentors appear to know about the religion, the culture, and the people of Islam.
Putting colonialism and leftist academics aside for a moment, it seems to me that the way to find out about where this conflict has come from, is to look at the contemporary world from the social and religious point of view of the Islamic people who live in the Middle East and elsewhere, rather than constantly trying to prove that point of view to be wrong.
What does the world look like on the other side of the Green Line in Palestine? How does the United States appear to a Believer on the Hajj in Saudi Arabia? Have you ever even asked those questions of yourself? Of a Muslim in America? They are around, you know, though they generally, for good reason, keep a very low profile.
Maybe they have their own reasons for being who they are and acting the way they do. And maybe we will understand them better if we ask just what their own reasons might just be.
So, Joseph, do I have to play “some of my best friends are Muslims” to qualify??
Yes, I’ve read somewhat widely from the (translated) materials available, read Benny Morris, Said, Lewis, and Cleveland – among others.
And yes, I think I have some limited idea of what the world looks like to a Palestinian.
But here’s the question…I have some idea of what the world looks like from Hannibal Lecter’s POV as well.
Does that imply that I’m to stand meekly under his knife??
Simply put, the Palestinian Arabs (to pick one flashpoint) got screwed by the colonial powers, then again by their Arab neighbors who refused to take them in, then again by their homicidal and kleptocratic leadership.
I’ve said it before and will say it again. If Gandhi (not the blogger) had led the Palestinian people in 1976, there would most likely have been a Palestinian state by 1979.
A.L.
Obviously I posted #13 before I read #12.
I do think the war is on. There is no possible way we’ve had 11 September 2001, and Beslan, and other horrors and I personally could accept that we’re still not in a global jihad. I couldn’t say with a straight face after New York and Washington and Bali and Beslan: “What if this went too far?” It has gone too far.
But I think it can be called off. It’s like trying to nip in the bud a shark feeding frenzy – not a likely thing. (And my metaphor is deliberately mixed and awkward.) But it is possible. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t have had that amazing long interlude where Muslims basically felt they had no hope of beating the European powers, and the power of Islam and the excitement of jihad (with the prospect of the brutal pleasures of victory) were at an extraordinary, atypical low.
What I think George W. Bush is doing, in effect, is trying to put out the fire before any bigger stocks of combustible material go up. (Again with the metaphors!) That’s one of the reasons I support him passionately.
I think he is winning. My evidence for that is the same as yours that we are not in a war with Islam at all. Why is it so quiet?
Because on and directly after 11 September, 2001, we saw a bloodthirsty global mob start to form, excited by our seeming weakness, the sight of our wounds, our tears. We heard the beginnings of a billion voices and more screaming for blood and souls for Allah. The impulse to it was: look at America, bloody and on her knees: it must be – jihad time! (ululations sound effects here) I think if the American President had acted like Jimmy Carter or perhaps (thank God we’ll never know) Al Gore might have, we would now be looking at death in the millions, not thousands, the collapse of American power, and the rise of Salafist states (which would then play “you go first” in giving up power to merge as a Caliphate). It was the worst crisis since the world was minutes away from a false alert starting a nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the Unites States of America.
But as it turned out, it was not time for would-be jihad heroes to win glory (and form new identities) at the expense of demoralised and weak Christians, Jews and sundry Western infidels. Rather it proved to be the time to back up and shut up or face swift and humiliating defeat. Both the regimes (Afghan and Iraqi) that didn’t even make a diplomatic pretence of commiserating with the Americans after 11 September, 2001 are now gone. That was very necessary. And the gathering mob was chilled, and it stalled, and it mostly went home. Thank God (and George, and Tony).
That won’t hold forever. We need a plan. But George has one. Let’s hope it works.
We have at least proved that even under fairly unfavourable circumstances you can back these people up without wide slaughter. That’s good. Because unlike Trent Telenko I doubt that if push came to shove we could steel ourselves to shove. So the morally right way to hold our vital ground (if there is one) is the only way.
I do not think there is a significant difference between you and me in what we want.
I’m reminded of a minor American debate in your Civil War about whether the Confederates were traitors and should be treated as such, or whether they escaped that label because the Confederacy really was a foreign power, in which case all Confederate territory was conquered enemy territory, and it and the populations in it should be treated as such. Abraham Lincoln, a very good and wise man said: no. First we restore all the states to their right roles in the Union, and then afterwards we can debate in perfect innocence (that is without any practical consequences) whether there was a time when our Southern neighbours were foreign belligerents or whatever. But they would in fact again be fellow citizens and nothing else.
In the same way, I would like to get to a point where we could debate in perfect innocence whether we prevented a war or whether we were once in a war but cut it off early.
Final issue (for me): can we ever get beyond a fierce and wary self-preservation in relation to Islam? History says no and I say no. We could never have been anything but wary with the Nazis, we could never be anything but wary with the Soviets, we have to be wary with Red China, and we can never prudently regard Muslims as less dangerous than Communists.
You have some idea what Jesus was like, and we have an idea how nasty Christianity can be anyway. (Jolting transition there. Sorry, but bear with me because this is vital.)
Good Muslims don’t draw nearer to Jesus (in spirit or in imagination and aspiration, depending on your theological views), they draw nearer to their prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him).
This was a good day’s work for Muhammed:
Tabari VIII:122/Ishaq:515 “The Prophet commanded that the ruin should be dug up. Some treasure was extracted from it. Then Muhammad asked Kinanah for the rest. He refused to surrender it; so Allah’s Messenger gave orders concerning him to Zubayr, saying, ‘Torture him until you root out and extract what he has.’ So Zubayr kindled a fire on Kinanah’s chest, twirling it with his firestick until Kinanah was near death. Then the Messenger gave him to Maslamah, who beheaded him.”
After the robbery, torture and murder, the Prophet (peace be upon him) “enjoyed” the victim’s wife as well. Why not, she was a captive. This is Islam in its purest, highest, original and uncorrupted form.
The Prophet (peace be upon him) did many, many things that were much, much worse from my infidel point of view, and had many other days that weren’t as bad, but when he was still about as far from Jesus (or Buddha or Confucius) as anything human could be.
Do you think that we are influenced by our most sacred heroes, and Muslims are not? I would not believe it. Nobody human, no human culture, is not going to drift towards its sacred figures to some extent. When the figure is very foundational, like Muhammed, the sole author of the Koran and the subject of all those hadiths and the sacred systems of laws built on them, it’s going to be a lot. That influence will always be there. It is the spirit of Islam. If it’s not heeded today, it will be heeded later. Sooner or later (usually sooner), in one generation or the next, good Muslims who are well adjusted and responsive to their culture will heed the call of its guiding spirit. History shows this.
That’s why you, from your culture, are primed to respond to Dr. King’s letter, and a good, healthy Muslim is primed to respond to the sort of mosque talk you referred to.
Of course there are Muslims who are good by my infidel standards – many millions of them. Bravo to them! Hurrah for them! Long life and health and every blessing to them! Go, go, democracy in Iraq!
But I will not bet on Muslims in general turning out to be Huckleberry Finns, with their malformed consciences urging them one way but inexplicably better hearts triumphantly guiding them in the opposite direction. I’m sorry, but that’s not the way to bet, and it will never be the way to bet.
PS:- “I’ve gotta disagree that this (the propensity to terrorism) is a ‘core feature’ of Islam – as opposed to Islamism.”
I think we do have a real disagreement here, but I think there’s also a smidgin of merely verbal disagreement where we can clear up any inadvertent appearance of conflict.
Islam does not have an in-built tendency to engage in what we regard as terrorism. Our ideas are of no importance to Islam.
Islam does have jihad as a core feature, and that involves a mix of things we could regard as terrorism (like killing), things we think of as objectionable but not in our “terrorism” box (like sex with captives, instant dissolution of captives’ marriages, temporary marriages and so on), and things we wouldn’t even think of (like making the children at Beslan pray to Allah, because Allah is the greatest and must be superior).
The most distinctive thing in jihad is actually not the slaughter (which, however, Islam will always be strongly inclined to, far more than most other religions). It’s the plunder. The Muslim regulations on dividing the spoils have no parallel in any other religion. The ancient Semitic peoples had no equivalent to this body of sacred law. You will study the code of Hammurabi in vain looking for a precedent. The Egyptians were nothing like this. The Greeks, the Romans, the little we know of Carthage, China, India, Japan – wherever you look the answer is no. As soon as you see thinking in conformity with the Muslim passion for dividing the spoils (including forced sex) religiously/legalistically, you can say for sure: “I know who you are. Nobody else is like that.”
(Which is not to say that the holy law of Ancient Israel regarding war was not nasty. But it was different. In other areas, Islam copied heaps of stuff wholesale. Not here.)
Now, that goes with raiding. That’s where Muhammed (peace be upon him) got his plunder and his captives. And I say that too is in the DNA of Islam. Mohammed Attah (peace be upon – oh to hell with it) and his men saw themselves as carrying out a raid like the raids of Muhammed and the early Muslims.
That is terrorism – from our infidel point of view. And not incidentally, because of the suicide aspect (which is undesirable from a Muslim point of view), but in its essence.
I think that yearning to raid and to enjoy the satisfactions of raiding, in this world or in the vivid, sensual paradise that Muslims want to get to, is an aspect of the psychology of jihad and it is therefore part of a core feature of Islam. I think that this aggressive appetite will never end while Islam endures. It’s in the Koran, it’s in the life of Muhammed, it’s urged pervasively, it informs Muslim history, it primes men (and historically it has been men) to respond to certain appeals, and it’s not optional.
If I understand you correctly, you don’t think so. You think the stuff we would regard as terrorism is only a core feature of Islamism. If I understand you correctly, that’s our key substantial disagreement.
It’s a big, real disagreement, with big consequences depending on which way you call it.
In reply to Jinderella- No, I don’t agree with the assertion that we are ‘genetically and memetically preprogrammed’. Genes don’t support thoughts. If that were the case, we would be unable to innovate. There would be, over history, no innovation and no capacity for development of new technology, societies and etc. Furthermore, there’s no such thing as an inherent or preprogrammed ‘meme’. I deal in information dynamics and can assure you that it hasn’t been found.
What David Blue is ignoring is the population demographics, economic and political realities of the Middle East States. I don’t have time to go into a long post, but, essentially, a people are not trapped within an ideology. Therefore, saying that Islam has a jihad and so on, ignores that other religions also have their own isolate and other-destructive tendencies – and above all, ignores that a religion is not a system separate from a social, economic and political reality, but is intimately linked to those deeper realities.
Islam is a tribal religion (as is Judaism) and focuses on a kin-based population and an economy based around control of the land as capital. When the population moves beyond the capacity of a tribal organization and a tribal or peasant agriculture, the ideology (religion) will and must change. This is what has happened in the ME over the past 3 decades; the population has increased exponentially, far beyond the capacities of a tribal political mode which discriminates against the majority and empowers only one family, and far beyond the capacities of a no-growth peasant economy.
The Muslim world has been tribal for centuries and what we are now seeing is the struggle within a system when its ideology and its economic and political systems become dysfunctional. The reality is that they must become, economically, industrial. To do this, they must become democratic and empower their citizens to participate in political and economic decision-making. And, our current industrialism is global, therefore, they must interact with Others. Their religion has functioned within a state that was no-growth, no-change, kin-based, hierarchical and so on. This mode of life won’t economically support them, and politically, will embitter the majority who are left out of decisions. That’s what has led to the violence – that explosion outward, because internally, these states have, as they attempted to ‘not change’, become dictatorships.
The Islamic religion can be open, can reject violence – and can adapt to a global interactive population and economy.
So- I disagree that it is a clash of civilizations, as D. Blue seems to be suggesting. The problem is a feudal political mode, retained for centuries by the ME, is no longer functional – and it is that mode, the non-democratic tribal mode, which is the key. This is what must be changed. The religion is a vocalization, but not the ‘root cause’.
By the way – with reference to Andrew Cage’s statement that ‘all perceptions are filtered through experience ‘ – I’ll disagree with this ‘mind as a blank slate’ theme. You are ignoring the basic human capacity for logic and reason which can and must cut through experience. If we didn’t have this capacity, we couldn’t discover what we cannot see (the quantum levels) or mathematical logic or innovate and so on.
ET:
“cite: Religious Thought and Behavoir as Byproducts of Brain Function By Boyer”:http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~pboyer/BoyerTiCS.pdf
“cite: Relative contributions from kind- and domain-concepts to inferences concerning unfamiliar exemplars. by Boyer, Bedoin, and Honore”:http://artsci.wustl.edu/%7Epboyer/BBH.pdf
“cite: The cognitive foundations of cultural stability and diversity by Sperber, Hirschfeld”:http://www.dan.sperber.com/Sperber&Hirschfeld.pdf
“cite: The God Gene by Hamer”:http://www.randomhouse.com/doubleday/catalog/display.pperl?0385500580
“cite: Adaptationism for Human Cognition bt Atran”:http://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/documents/disk0/00/00/05/74/index.html
There’s tons of stuff like this. Alot of the current research is supported by fMRI scans.
And, sure, you inherit memes, or “culture genes” (Wilson’s term) along with your culture. They are only preprogrammed in the sense that everyone around you is a carrier.
*OT:* Umm, I haven’t seen a post on it here, but Katzman & Co. are nominated for several categories in the JIB (Jewish/Israeli blogger) awards– vote “here”:http://autumndream.net/israellycool/allf.php
In reply to jinnderella – no, I’ll continue to disagree. You don’t inherit ‘cultural genes’ or ‘memes’. I disagree that they even exist.
No, everyone is not a ‘carrier’. Each person has learned their sociocultural identity in a different manner. There may be, in a small community, a relatively homogeneous sociocultural identity, but in a large community, this disappears and the reality is multiple sociocultural norms.
So, in addition to the fact that you LEARN sociocultural behavior from a number of diverse sources in a large society, but, this learned behavior is not input to a blank slate scenario. The human mind is capable of reason, of logic, of rational analysis, and therefore, can CHANGE these concepts.
So- I totally disagree with the ‘meme’ reductionism. I prefer semiotics.
But, thanks for the book list; I’ll try to take a look at some of them.
I don’t think that stability and diversity are ’caused by’ cognition, but by energy dynamics. That is – a society with a low energy processing will be more stable than a society with high energy processing.
“If Gandhi (not the blogger) had led the Palestinian people in 1976, there would most likely have been a Palestinian state by 1979.”
Really? Do you suppose that Gandhi could have persuaded the Israelis that the Palestinians simply weren’t going to disappear as the Israelis took over all the land?
Arial Sharon finally came back to reality a little while ago and initiated “disengagement”, the first real concession, not to a Palestinian state, but to something more basic, the permanence of the Palestinian presence in that land.
Luckily, Yasser Arafat died immediately after, so the problem has at least a chance now of being solved.