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Go Home "I Do Not Say That All Muslims Are Terrorists, But I Have...

THE SPINE NOVEMBER 17, 2009

"I Do Not Say That All Muslims Are Terrorists, But I Have Noticed That An Alarmingly High Proportion Of Terrorists Are Muslim"

BY MARTIN PERETZ

These are Christopher Hitchens' words (in Slate), and so you are not surprised to find them sharp, even cutting. Doubtless, some of you are provoked. But please don't repair to the self-righteous. Self-righteousness is an awkward response to the truth.

Given the "seven salient facts" about Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan easily assembled by Hitchens I doubt that even President Obama would want us to withhold judgement on the killer. He, too, as clearly made his own. Even unto grasping the justice awaiting the culprit in the hereafter. Understandably, as Philip Elliott of the Associated Press wrote on Saturday, Obama would prefer that Senator Joe Lieberman and Representative Peter Hoekstra not press for hearings in their respective Senate and House committees. But I believe there is zero chance for that restraint to hold. And why should it? 

Hitchens' salient facts illumine the propensity of government agencies (and respectable journalistic institutions) to avert their gaze from realities that would get them into murky places they have learned to avert. For example: the point at which you have to admit "that an alarmingly high proportion of terrorists are Muslim." Or that "political correctness" now subverts domestic and military intelligence from doing their jobs.

The Obama administration has announced that immigration reform is next on its legislative agenda. I am personally disposed to a rather open Emma Lazarus-inflected policy: "I lift my lamp beside the golden door." We cannot simply dispose of immigrants we've decided, after years and years of winking at them, to call "illegals." But we also don't know how to keep unwanted--by whom, by the way?--aspirant immigrants out.  We do not know either how properly to judge asylum cases. 

And then there is the protection of liberal values with regard to civil freedoms, religion, family policy and violence in the home, sexuality, education. Does a society have the right to insure the safety of its virtues that are distinctly American or western? Some of you, I assume, are already furious. Well, go ahead and cancel your subscription.

Here's another way of posing this dilemma. Has Holland the right to remain Holland? England the right to remain England? France the right to remain France? And what about Rotterdam, Manchester, Paris?

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154 comments

Of course, Hitchens even wrote a (short) book about Mr. Jefferson in order to make the case that 18th century Muslims were terrorists (you know, the pirates against whom President Jefferson chose to send the US Navy). I suppose an "alarmingly high" number of 18th century Muslims were terrorists. What percentage were pirates? I don't know. Maybe Mr. Peretz knows.

- raylward

November 17, 2009 at 5:43pm

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Hitchens thinks all religions a stupid Marty, including yours.

- WandreyCer

November 17, 2009 at 6:32pm

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I don't know if this comes as news to you, Marty, but a president and a journalist have two different jobs. The journalist (or commentator) is allowed to say more or less what she or he wants. The president, on the other hand, represents the laws and constitution of the United States, and these laws and constitutional provisions have a problem with the notion of delivering judgments before the facts are in -- especially when an actual trial is pending.

- ironyroad

November 17, 2009 at 6:37pm

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We have 1.5 million Arabs in this country and you're foaming at the mouth over whether we'll be able to maintain our "American" values? First of all, how many of these people are raving lunatics. Secondly, you're starting to sound frighteningly like Pat Buchanan. If we lived in France and the numbers and nature of the immigrants were different, I'd say, "Well, you might have a point . . . ." But we don't, and you don't. Yesterday you went on about the Somalians. A few bad boys who decided to join a gang thousands of miles away. Maybe you should get foamed at the mouth about the thousands of US-born-and-bred gangsters in this country who kill innocents by the week. Oh, I forgot, that wouldn't help build support for Israel so why bother. And don't get on me about being a Jew-hater to any of you who want to pounce. Marty's gone loco.

- MOLLYSIMON

November 17, 2009 at 7:00pm

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Mr. Peretz comments are similar to many of the comments regarding Blacks in the 1960's. Back then the Newspapers and News Shows identified suspects in criminal investigations by race and often had photos of these black criminals. A lot of suburban folks who had little contact with Blacks made the same analogy as Mr. Hitchens. Seems like a lot of these criminals are Black. Nowadays, the suspects race is withheld unless it's materially relevant. Is Mr. Peretz really trying to revisit some of these older shibboleths of liberal policy? It's really hard for the NYT to identify the religion of these suspects when it's really not relevant to the crime.

- CRS9TNR

November 17, 2009 at 7:46pm

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WandreyCer "Hitchens thinks all religions a stupid Marty, including yours." I thought you said that Hitchens wasn't a bigot?

- jacksondyer

November 17, 2009 at 8:19pm

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MOLLYSIMON "We have 1.5 million Arabs in this country and you're foaming at the mouth over whether we'll be able to maintain our "American" values? First of all, how many of these people are raving lunatics." I assume that this was a question. Anyway, if you want to find out how many of them are raving antisemites let your son put on a skull cap and walk into one of their neighborhoods.

- jacksondyer

November 17, 2009 at 8:24pm

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CRS9TNR "Mr. Peretz comments are similar to many of the comments regarding Blacks in the 1960's." In what way are they similar?

- jacksondyer

November 17, 2009 at 8:24pm

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Wandrey, yes, Hitchens thinks all religion is stupid, and dangerous-stupid too, with Islam tilting more toward the dangerous-stupid, as opposed to harmless-stupid, end of the spectrum. The so-called new atheists cropped up -- or, decided to talk about what they thought anyway -- all at around the same time. It wasn't a coincidence. It was a reaction, I think, to a couple of things: (1) 9/11 and (2) Bush -- that is, the freshly felt evil influence of religious belief in international and domestic affairs. Bill Maher's movie ends with visuals of mushroom clouds and a sermon predicting the apocalypse at the hands of religious fanatics. Perhaps it's hyperbolic, but the idea that the world as we know it could end prematurely by the hand of an Islamo-fuck does not strike me as far-fetched as it did on 9/10. For myself, even if I think that all religious belief is, let's say, misguided, I don't necessarily regard all religious belief as equally abhorrent or equally dangerous when preached to those who are inclined to take it seriously.

- jhildner1

November 17, 2009 at 8:50pm

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Jackson, you're changing the subject. In answer to your suggestion, though, I say I love my son. Enough not to let him walk around parts of Compton--with or without a skull cap. There are bad people everywhere who want to do bad things. The point I'm making is that here in America we are not in danger of becoming over-run with Sharia--though Marty seems to get his rocks off waving that phantom menace. Along with the idea that Arab immigrants as a group aren't as American as the rest of us.

- MOLLYSIMON

November 17, 2009 at 9:11pm

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If memory serves me correctly, every factor save the invocation of the name of Allah while committing murder can be said of the terrorists who have cold bloodedly murdered obstetricians who perform abortions in this country. All of those factors save the Allah akhbar can also be said about the lunatics now selling t-shirts, onesies and teddy bears that say, "Pray for Obama" and cite Psalms 109:9 ("May his children be orphans, his wife a widow") inspired by rabies infected Republican rhetoric in Congress. Whatever you do to Isalmic groups and leaders who preach the return of the caliphs and the practice of terror and their followers who buy guns and fertilizer you must do to radical Christian leaders who preach death and advocate for and cheer on those who murder doctors and invoke the God of Israel as justification to murder our President, and their congregants and Facebook followers who openly buy multiple guns with scores of rounds of cop killing ammunition at weekend gun shows. If there is a consensus in Congress and state legislatures to do that, it has escaped me.

- Shane Fergessen

November 17, 2009 at 11:00pm

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Molly Simon says that "we are not in danger of becoming over-run with Sharia." True for most us, but our country has been thrown into conflict with Sharia believers. And there are believers among us who are potential actors of violent jihad. They have had a chilling effect on our willingness to understand events, terming all anti-Sharia sentiment Islamophobia, as though Islam were a race/ethnicity and not a militant messianic political religious ideology with global ambitions. Islamic states are trying to squelch criticism of Islam and Sharia through law suits and "anti-hate" laws in many countries, including those in the European Union. Which is ironic considering the 24/7 abuse heaped by Islamic preachers on Christianity and Judaism on Arabic (and other languages) satellite television. In their view, Buddhists, Hindus, pagans, and atheists don't even qualify for the dubious "protected" status (dhimmi-hood) accorded to Christians and Jews under Islam. We must understand Sharia and what it dictates to Muslims about their relations to non-Muslims. Most Muslims believe in Sharia. It explains the ferocity of their resistence to Western intrusion in their world. It explains why they want to spread Islam beyond its historic lands. Under Islam, the penalty for apostasy is death. Young American and Canadian Muslim women have been killed by their families for dating non-Muslims or merely enjoying the more innocent prerogatives of most American teenagers. Those are known as "honor killings". Today, in Ohio, the life of a 17-year old Sri Lankan girl, Rifqa Bary, is in danger, because she converted to Christianity, left her abusive Muslim parents, and fled from Ohio to Florida. She has been returned, like a run-a-way slave, to Ohio. The child welfare authorities are likely to return her to her parents who will likely have her killed. The Islamic defense organizations have supported the parents. The authorities refuse to take Sharia seriously. Sharia is an offense to all of our liberal values. It must be vigorously exposed and opposed. We are threatened by Islamic sharia.

- amidut

November 17, 2009 at 11:04pm

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Ah touche Jackson, you always catch things I leave out, thank you. I don't agree with Hitchens, I find him amusing and well reasoned in his book but alas, atheism seems to be a gene I do not have. Is atheism bigotry? I think it can be, you're right. In his case, I wouldn't call it that. He's an equal opportunity religion basher. He's very astute on Islam without being a hate monger, which we desperately need. It's just that using the well argued words of a known atheist to somehow support his looney rantings against a specific religion, as if we'd forget Hitchen's whole ouvre. It's very Marty-esque. Not the sharpest tool in the shed. Marty's post sounded verbatim like something in a letter between WASPS in the 20's and 30's about Jews. I know, my Grandmother left me lots of them written to her, arguing against the work she was doing advocating for Jews in Europe. The letters writers were often Ivy Leaugers too. It makes me equally sick.

- WandreyCer

November 18, 2009 at 6:46am

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Mr. Wild. I suppose your posit is roughly analogous. Especially concerning the martyr type. I'm not going to tease out the problems with your example beyond the fact that ' hypocrisy ' is a living and contending concept as a counterweight per the Christian claim. It's not likely too many Muslims regard Major Hasan as having violated Islamic tenets. And therein lies the problem. Many may think that violent jihad is not a very good idea for whatever reason. But there is ground for sanction governmentally speaking per Koranic dictate.

- jacko

November 18, 2009 at 6:58am

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I'm not going to tease out the problems with your example beyond the fact that ' hypocrisy ' is a living and contending concept as a counterweight per the Christian claim. should be ' hypocrisy ' is a living contending concept contained within the Christian consideration. Sheesh. I've gotta get some sleep.

- jacko

November 18, 2009 at 8:07am

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"I know, my Grandmother left me lots of them written to her, arguing against the work she was doing advocating for Jews in Europe. The letters writers were often Ivy Leaugers too." Could you provide a few quotes from your grandmother's letters that Marty's words remind you of? And can you provide a context to these letters, for example, a repeated record of Jews terrorising non-Jews, planting bombs, committing violence upon the bodies of non-Jews, for the sake of promulgating the virtues and greatness of Judaism? Were Jews ever in the same position of Islamic minorities in the West? Aren't there mechanisms that protect Muslims from the random wrath of the mob?

- noga1

November 18, 2009 at 8:18am

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WandreyCer “I don't agree with Hitchens, I find him amusing and well reasoned in his book but alas, atheism seems to be a gene I do not have. Is atheism bigotry? I think it can be, you're right. In his case, I wouldn't call it that. He's an equal opportunity religion basher. He's very astute on Islam without being a hate monger, which we desperately need.” No atheism need not be bigotry, though, the current fashionable atheists tend to be bigots for the most part. Hitchens book which I read is unconvincing, (like most of his books that I have seen) he seems to believe that ancient Hellenistic culture was more moral, more rational than ancient Judaism. This is palpably false. Even a cursory acquaintance with some ancient writers, (Herodotus, Thucydides, Plutarch, etc.) shows that the ancient Greeks like the Romans were a particularly superstitious group of people who thought nothing of despoiling whole peoples and selling them into slavery. What Hitchens and many other pop atheists don’t seem to understand that while religion may be false (in the sense that one can’t prove the existence of a god or gods) it isn’t therefore irrational as the systems of a Maimonides, a Thomas Aquinas shows. Islam too, if one accepts its premises is a rational faith. Rationality is not the same as truth. It would be far better for Hitchens to have said what many other honest non religious people have said, “I don’t believe in god” and live it at that. His own non-belief has the zeal of the missionary, wanting people to adopt his belief system. And missionaries are often bigots.

- jacksondyer

November 18, 2009 at 10:30am

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down in Ciudad Juarez 7 people a day are being killing by drug violence, the cartels will kill anyone who gets in their way, from Law enforcement to the families of other cartels. In addition, there is an active sex slave trade that winds its way up from Central America to the brothels of America. There is a serious and sustained war of terror here (in Mexico) and in the streets of many American cities (unless you believe that 15 year old Honduran girl really wants to be a prostitute). Most of these cartel members are nominally Catholic. Must be something in the holy water. I am with Molly, Marty has gone loco. Look, I have nothing against arguing there is a sickness in Arab and Islamic culture, a combination of rage, feelings of superiority/inferiority, ignorance, etc. When the Taliban kill a group of their fellow citizens in Peshawar by truck bombs, I find it utterly insane that these mutts consider it some kind of great victory, but Marty does go over the edge with his obsessiveness. There are no Muslim boogiemen hiding under your bed. And lest we revel in our own moral superiority, if the environment does go over the tipping point and we have serious and catastrophic climate change, then we have to admit it was we superior Americans that bear the brunt, and we will end up killing far more than the worst tyrants in history, and we know the danger is there, yet Republicans would rather shriek in terror at the sight of a Muslim than consider getting off our oil addictions.

- blackton

November 18, 2009 at 11:10am

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"And lest we revel in our own moral superiority, if the environment does go over the tipping point and we have serious and catastrophic climate change, then we have to admit it was we superior Americans that bear the brunt, and we will end up killing far more than the worst tyrants in history, and we know the danger is there, yet Republicans would rather shriek in terror at the sight of a Muslim than consider getting off our oil addictions." Very sensible, but unless the Democrats start taking the terror threat more seriously, the Republicans will use the issue to their advantage in next year's election. "There are no Muslim boogiemen hiding under your bed." Not under my bed, but have you checked under Marty's bed lately?

- jacksondyer

November 18, 2009 at 11:28am

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i absolutely agree jackson, our oil addiction and arab terrorism go hand in hand. Why Obama and the Democrats don't make this a Crusade is beyond me. If we are going to blow a hole in our budget let's do it on energy. Where I live all of the electricity is supplied by a huge wind farm in La Ventosa, the campesiños in the area pitched a fit, but the whole region has benefited. Wind power can now be generated at about .04 cents a kwh, which is competitive with fossil fuels. As to what is under Marty's bed, I think I will pass on that.

- blackton

November 18, 2009 at 11:50am

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I do not say that all Men are Rapists but I have noted that an alarmingly high proportion of Rapists are Men.

- kinninmont

November 18, 2009 at 1:04pm

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Blackie, we can't even get this crowd to drill for OUR OWN oil. I'm all for wind and solar, but wake me when they provide even 1% of overall US energy. It will be decades. There is no principled way to oppose drilling for US oil. It would provide jobs, and every barrel produced is one less we don't buy from people who hate us. For those who worry about oil spills, I say when do they start? We've been pumping oil in the Gulf for decades - where are the spills? The Dems can't crusade because they are in the enviros pockets. The politically popular energy sources can't produce enough energy, and the sources thaht produce energy aren't poltically popular. At least on the Left.

- butchie b

November 18, 2009 at 2:32pm

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kinninmont "I do not say that all Men are Rapists but I have noted that an alarmingly high proportion of Rapists are Men." If you are speaking of penile rape then the analogy doesn't work as only men have the instrument necessary for rape. This is why we developed penal institutions of incarceration. Are you suggesting the setting up of Islaminal institutions of incarceration?

- jacksondyer

November 18, 2009 at 2:32pm

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The Dems are useless, B & B. Here is a story that increased my blood pressure: "Push to curb credit-card rates fades Democrats resist consumer outcry" By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff | November 18, 2009 "WASHINGTON - Efforts in Congress to cap credit-card interest rates are faltering because of opposition from Democrats and a lack of specific support from the White House, despite growing consumer outrage over a rush by banks to impose rates as high as 30 percent." http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2009/11/18/support_wanes_for_curbs_on_credit_card_interest_rates?mode=PF

- jacksondyer

November 18, 2009 at 2:36pm

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This is a shout out to tgossard. Hey Tom ( if you don't mind my calling you that ) Umm. I owe you an apology for putting on a sharp edge last week. It wasn't at my best to say the least. By my lights you have been a decent sort and didn't deserve the what and how I tossed in your direction. I beg your indulgence.

- jacko

November 18, 2009 at 2:47pm

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butchie, I have no problem with drilling, the problem is that the places to drill are deep water and are far more expensive. To give an example, Cantarell runs about $5 a barrel (in line with Saudi Arabia), Chincotepec is much more. I am not just talking about Wind and Solar and green energy, I have no problem with nuclear as well, but fossil fuels have no future. By the way, there are a number of countries where wind provides significant energy sources. In Denmark it is nearly 25%. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Denmark If Denmark can do it, we sure as hell can, don't give me any bullshit why we can't. With the great plains, extensive coasts, high mountains, etc. we can do it, we have more than enough wind, we just lack the balls.

- blackton

November 18, 2009 at 3:09pm

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Butchie B, et al, If we drill for what's left of US oil, we would still not be able to meet our energy needs in the foreseeable future. Also, what environmental price are you willing to pay? There's a lot of hoopla about the gas underneath the Marcellus shale formation in NY and NJ counties within 50 miles of NYC. That's also the watershed with drinking water for 20 million people. Gas drilling is destructive and leaves a lot of toxic residues in the soil. Talking about the Alberta oil sands, getting at it is also destructive and expensive. There is a high ratio of energy input to output in Alberta. Those two-mile drilling shafts offshore are expensive. Unfortunately, Allah put most of the cheap oil in the Islamic world. Not to mention that Mexico is running out of oil and Venezuela is not so friendly these days. We have found out how expensive it is to occupy the oil regions and how toxic their religion is. We have evolved a way of life designed to waste the most energy possible. Why do we build tract houses out in the Arizona and Nevada desert? Why all those sprawling suburban developments in the hot steamy southeastern US? Why do we favor automobiles and suburban sprawl over walkable towns connected by reliable mass transit? Energy analysts like Amory Lovins have argued that we can save a lot of energy from housing, transportation, and industry to reduce energy imports. Amory should set a good example for us and move down from Snowmass, CO into an apartment in Boulder or Denver. We need to up the taxes for petroleum consumption, fix the zoning laws, encourage denser settlements, and improve rail and bus choices for more Americans.

- amidut

November 18, 2009 at 3:17pm

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Obviously I have no problems with Marty getting down with it. He's a bit pissed because the tenor of our famous subject was being framed by many with a strange apologetic perversity. The very thing which allowed this to happen in the first place.

- jacko

November 18, 2009 at 3:20pm

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Butchie, the biggest problem with increased oil drilling anywhere is that it really doesn't harm the bottom line of Muslim extremists with oil under their sands. Oil is a globally priced commodity, so as long as global demand keeps increasing or even remains steady (read = demand from China, India and other growing markets), then the price of oil will stay high enough for oil-rich governments to keep making money and for that money to keep buying mischief. We don't import that much of our petroleum from the Persian Gulf anyway (15% IIRC), and none of that petroleum is for energy generation. What we really should do is a major push for cars that are powered by something other than gasoline and to share that technology worldwide.

- wildboy

November 18, 2009 at 3:55pm

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"we have more than enough wind, we just lack the balls." Great slogan! Pretty much sums up most of American politics at the moment.

- ironyroad

November 18, 2009 at 4:26pm

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"Umm. I owe you an apology for putting on a sharp edge last week. It wasn't at my best to say the least. By my lights you have been a decent sort and didn't deserve the what and how I tossed in your direction. I beg your indulgence." jacko, no prob, and thank you for - do you mean to say "I apologize" or in other words. If yes, thanks very much, of course I accept. If by saying "I beg your indulgence" you are asking me to forgive you, certainly, no hard feelings at all. Thanks for responding so graciously! Yours sincerely, Tom. :) (note: I don't usually (actually hardly ever) express myself taking such obsessive care to observe and analyze somebody (anybody) else's choice of words and language, to speculate as to their intended meaning - in other words "read their (your) mind" in an effort to respond carefully thoughtfully and sincerely instead of acting like a smart-mouthed asshole which I'm sorry to say I indulge myself at somebody else's expense.) I often appreciate what you say and how you say it in these threads, cuz it helps me think and learn stuff I value very much - unlike the dreck I used to read elsewhere but now avoid since it's a total waste of my valuable time and energy.

- Tgossard

November 18, 2009 at 5:20pm

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If Peretz quotes Hitchens then all religions are assisnine when looked at logically. Only a nutcase would still believe them, whether they be Jewish, Christian or Muslim. As for Hassan how about a hearing on why our nation's lawmakers are so gutless and stupid as to give any terrorrist (McVey, DC Sniper, Jewish Defence League, AL Qaeda) the weapons of mass destruction Hasan so easily got outside of Ft. Hood.

- adolbe

November 18, 2009 at 5:36pm

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If a Jew committed an act like Hasan--highly unusual in this country with Arab reared Americans--would that be indicative of something?? Is Bernie Madoff typical of Jewish ethics today? I am from extended family of liberal, honest universal minded Jews who fought for civil rights etc. Yet something in me suggests that Madoff might be just that. I like above post by AudreyCer

- adolbe

November 18, 2009 at 5:40pm

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Tgossard acting like a smart-mouthed asshole is ever so much fun though. irony, the slogan was unintentional, comes with being a smart-mouthed asshole I guess. Adolbe, sorry bro, but the teachings of Christ are not the least bit asinine. In 2,000 years since then we haven't improved upon his story in the slightest. 20 years after Hitchens is dead, he will be forgotten by all but his loved ones, and after they pass he will be forgotten by all. I have seen some of his interviews, the guy is a miserable prick.

- blackton

November 18, 2009 at 6:20pm

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"(McVey, DC Sniper, Jewish Defence League, AL Qaeda) " It is important to note that for adolbe, the Jewish Defense League comes before Al Qaeda, when he thinks of terrorists. It is what Martin Amis shrewdly identified as the rabid Leftist inexorable need to fetishize balance: " In the summer of 2006 I came back to live in the UK after two-and-a-half years in South America. I maintain that I had not become more of a fascist in the interim – at the feet of a Galtieri, say, or at the knee of a Pinochet. But in politics it is surprisingly easy to move from side to side while staying in the same place; and the middle ground, I discovered, was not where it used to be. The extent of the shift became dramatically clear to me on live television, when I appeared on Question Time(the BBC’s interactive discussion show) and was asked about our progress in what was now being called the Long War. The answer I gave was, I thought, almost tediously centrist. I said that the West should have spent the past five years in the construction of a democratic and pluralistic model in Afghanistan, while in the meantime merely containing Iraq. In Afghanistan we have already seen, not the “genocide” eagerly predicted by Noam Chomsky and others, but “genogenesis” (in Paul Berman’s coinage) – a burgeoning census. Since 2001, the population has risen by 25 per cent. Meanwhile, too, needless to say, the coalition should have been tearing up the earth of Waziristan in its hunt for the remnants of al-Qaeda. At this point I started looking from face to face in the audience, and what I saw were the gapes and frowns, not of disagreement, but of disbelief. Then a young woman spoke up, in a voice near-tearful with passionate self-righteousness, saying that it was the Americans who had armed the Islamists in Afghanistan, and that therefore the US, in its response to September 11, “should be dropping bombs on themselves”! I had time to imagine the F16s yowling in over Chicago, and the USS Abraham Lincoln pumping shells the size of Volkswagens into downtown Miami – in bold atonement for the World Trade Center, for the Pentagon, for United 93, United 175, American 11, and American 77. But then my thoughts were scattered by the sound of unanimous applause. We are drowsily accustomed, by now, to the fetishisation of “balance”, the groundrule of “moral equivalence” in all conflicts between West and East, the 100-per-cent and 360-degree inability to pass judgment on any ethnicity other than our own (except in the case of Israel). And yet the handclappers of Question Time had moved beyond the old formula of pious paralysis. This was not equivalence; this was hemispherical abjection. Accordingly, given the choice between George Bush and Osama bin Laden, the liberal relativist, it seems, is obliged to plump for the Saudi, thus becoming the appeaser of an armed doctrine with the following tenets: it is racist, misogynist, homophobic, totalitarian, inquisitional, imperialist, and genocidal. "

- noga1

November 18, 2009 at 6:30pm

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JacksonD - Here's a link to a post from Van Jones, former Special Advisor for Green Jobs in a pre-Obama post from Huffington Post from 2005. He is disputing the allegations that Blacks are more likely to be criminals. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/van-jones/are-blacks-a-criminal-rac_b_8398.html I got this on the 2nd hit from a Google Search on 'Race & Crime'. I could probably pull a few examples from the Kerner Commision Report from 1968, but that's hard copy and harder to search & share. Basically the argument from the 1960s was defending Blacks against various portrayals in the media as criminals.

- CRS9TNR

November 18, 2009 at 6:31pm

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CRS9TNR "JacksonD - Here's a link to a post from Van Jones, former Special Advisor for Green Jobs in a pre-Obama post from Huffington Post from 2005. He is disputing the allegations that Blacks are more likely to be criminals." You haven't shown a connection between Marty's post about Islamic terrorism (who have already killed tens of thousands world wide, including thousands here) and the portrayal of Black Americans in the 60's as criminals. The analogy doesn't work for many reasons.

- jacksondyer

November 18, 2009 at 6:42pm

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adolbe “If Peretz quotes Hitchens then all religions are assisnine when looked at logically. Only a nutcase would still believe them, whether they be Jewish, Christian or Muslim.” What ignorant nonsense, badly written too. Your assertion is illogical, adolbe, are you a nutcase? “As for Hassan how about a hearing on why our nation's lawmakers are so gutless and stupid as to give any terrorrist (McVey, DC Sniper, Jewish Defence League, AL Qaeda) the weapons of mass destruction Hasan so easily got outside of Ft. Hood.” This gives you away as a rabid antisemite. When did a member of the “Jewish Defence (sic) League go on a killing spree in this country? Moreover putting the JDL next to al Kaida but leaving out say, the KKK or some other White supremacist group tells us a lot about you. (Not to mention your British spelling of defence.)

- jacksondyer

November 18, 2009 at 6:49pm

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adolbe “If a Jew committed an act like Hasan--highly unusual in this country with Arab reared Americans--would that be indicative of something??” Another nutty proposition from adolbe. Had any Jew massacred a dozen people in the name of his religion you would be one of the first to call for a pogrom. “Is Bernie Madoff typical of Jewish ethics today?” Is he? You tell us adolbe? “I am from extended family of liberal, honest universal minded Jews who fought for civil rights etc.” No you are not. You are probably not even an American given the way you write and spell. “Yet something in me suggests that Madoff might be just that.” Tell us about that something, adolbe. Could that something be stark Jew hatred? “I like above post by AudreyCer” There is no AudreyCer, adolbe. The name of the poster is WandreyCer. You are deluded all the way around, aren’t you?

- jacksondyer

November 18, 2009 at 6:55pm

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“Is Bernie Madoff typical of Jewish ethics today?” Is he? You tell us adolbe? " He did tell us: “Yet something in me suggests that Madoff might be just that.”

- noga1

November 18, 2009 at 7:00pm

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"Is Bernie Madoff typical of Jewish ethics today?" Touche, adolbe.

- MOLLYSIMON

November 18, 2009 at 7:06pm

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noga1: "He did tell us: 'Yet something in me suggests that Madoff might be just that.'" Adolbe is deluded. He also said that: "I am from extended family of liberal, honest universal minded Jews who fought for civil rights etc.” If this is the case, who is representive of Jewish ethics, Madoff or "adolbe?"

- jacksondyer

November 18, 2009 at 7:45pm

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If this is the case, who is representive of Jewish ethics, Madoff or "adolbe?" Or is it Molly Simon?

- jacksondyer

November 18, 2009 at 7:46pm

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molly, ".."Is Bernie Madoff typical of Jewish ethics today?" Touche, adolbe" You don't really believe that Bernie Madoff is typical of Jewish ethics, do you?

- malahat

November 18, 2009 at 7:53pm

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"I am from extended family of liberal, honest universal minded Jews who fought for civil rights etc.” Suuuuuuuuure you are...

- malahat

November 18, 2009 at 7:55pm

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Amis is a compelling narrative artist, both in fiction and in reportage and opinion, but while I'm inclined to agree that he skewers a new type of postcolonial left-authoritarianism in the UK in the passsages you quote, Noga, I don't think that it's necessarily fetishizing balance. What he describes sounds more like a rigid ideological framework held by people who imagine themselves to be supple and open-minded thinkers. The fetishizing of balance we see more often here is not an attempt to "balance" Hamas and the IDF or the U.S. Army and AQ in Iraq or Nazis and American liberals (all of which have indeed been offered at one moment or another) but rather an inability to take a rational look at a claim before balancing it with a ludicrous counter-claim, NOT because the reporter/author is ideologically committed to the counter-claim but because it's a new ethical responsibility to do so: so when X claims e.g. that data clearly shows income inequality has risen sharply in the U.S. since 1970, reversing the tendency at mid-century (provably true), the MSM feels to need to give air time to some corporate shill who denies or dismisses the provable truth and asserts without challenge that everyone is richer.

- ironyroad

November 18, 2009 at 8:08pm

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Jacko says: "It's not likely too many Muslims regard Major Hasan as having violated Islamic tenets." That is a statement that requires factual support if it is not to be taken as bigotry.

- dhurtado

November 18, 2009 at 8:14pm

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I think Molly is being sarcastic with that touche remark. jackson, after that asinine remark by adolbe I didn't read the next posting so I did miss that classic convolution: I am from extended family of liberal, honest universal minded Jews who fought for civil rights I hate to say it Jackson but the atrocious grammar is not indicative of being a non native speaker. Have you ever read some of the comments on the Daily Beast? Or any of a number of non subscriber political sites? Anyway, I have a theory that adolbe is the bastard child of George Walton and ndmac. Hasn't it been wonderful since walton went away? I can read postings in peace, though I am starting to find the whole Hasan threads tiresome, there is not much more to be said without getting redundant. This is a world where the Taliban in Pakistan considers it a great victory to blow up their own people in markets in Peshawar. And the Pakistani victims families blame Israel.

- blackton

November 18, 2009 at 8:27pm

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blackton “I hate to say it Jackson but the atrocious grammar is not indicative of being a non native speaker. Have you ever read some of the comments on the Daily Beast? Or any of a number of non subscriber political sites?” Perhaps, but they don’t usually spell defense “defence” as the Brits do. Besides I have read lots of British posters with very bad grammar and worse logic. “Anyway, I have a theory that adolbe is the bastard child of George Walton and ndmac. Hasn't it been wonderful since walton went away? I can read postings in peace, though I am starting to find the whole Hasan threads t ... view full comment” Bite your tongue, Blackton or curl your fingers whenever you get the urge to type the above mentioned names. Let’s let sleeping dogs lie in their own dung. “I can read postings in peace, though I am starting to find the whole Hasan threads tiresome, there is not much more to be said without getting redundant.” I agree. Soon we’ll move to another Marty obsession. Probably the coming terrorist trials in NY now that “President Barack Obama… expressed certainty that they'll be found guilty and executed” http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics/AP/story/1340673.html H eis probably right, but he should have kept his mouth shut. “This is a world where the Taliban in Pakistan considers it a great victory to blow up their own people in markets in Peshawar. And the Pakistani victims families blame Israel.” Yes, and this is not the worse example of la locura del mundo.

- jacksondyer

November 18, 2009 at 8:46pm

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"I Do Not Say That All Muslims Are Terrorists, But I Have Noticed That An Alarmingly High Proportion Of Terrorists Are Muslim"" Kinninmont responds: "I do not say that all Men are Rapists but I have noted that an alarmingly high proportion of Rapists are Men." Kinninmont probably assumed that the posters here would understand the rejoinder. Apparently not. To my mind, the point is that the fact that a high proportion of men are rapists does not imply that all men are rapists, that most men are rapists, or that most men approve of rape. Or to use a perhaps more apt analogy, if it were true that a relatively high percentage of violent criminals are black, that would not imply that all or most blacks are violent criminals, or that most blacks approve of violent crime. Now of course, one can come up with all kinds of distinctions between blacks and Muslims, between violent crime in the United States and terrorism, etc. But the point is the logical fallacy in inferring from the fact that all Bs are As, that all As are Bs.

- dhurtado

November 18, 2009 at 9:07pm

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“Kinninmont probably assumed that the posters here would understand the rejoinder. Apparently not. To my mind, the point is that the fact that a high proportion of men are rapists does not imply that all men are rapists, that most men are rapists, or that most men approve of rape. Or to use a perhaps more apt analogy, if it were true that a relatively high percentage of violent criminals are black, that would not imply that all or most blacks are violent criminals, or that most blacks approve of violent crime. Now of course, one can come up with all kinds of distinctions between blacks and Muslims, between violent crime in the United States and terrorism, etc. But the point is the logical fallacy in inferring from the fact that all Bs are As, that all As are Bs.” Oh what nonsense, K’s proposition wasn’t strictly logical since it had an existential component to it. The difference between Muslims and Men or Blacks is that the first term is not biological while the other terms are. Hence it’s not a question of racial bigotry as some posters would like to believe. If there is a case for racial bigotry to be made it’s against Hasan and people of his ilk. He is the one who murdered his fellow soldiers because they weren’t Muslims. Although this inversion doesn’t work either even if he killed them because they were infidels, since being an infidel is not a biological condition neither.

- jacksondyer

November 18, 2009 at 9:25pm

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"... But the point is the logical fallacy in inferring from the fact that all Bs are As, that all As are Bs" Uh, excuse me for my lack of understanding your rejoinder to the rejoinder, but who was inferring that on this thread?

- malahat

November 18, 2009 at 9:34pm

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"It's not likely too many Muslims regard Major Hasan as having violated Islamic tenets." dhurtado:That is a statement that requires factual support if it is not to be taken as bigotry. Okay. Let's resituate. I find it highly likely that Muslims are fully familiar with the arguably defensible provision for Jihad as executed by Hasan as accorded within Islam. One must needs be careful lest a danger of hazardous Fatwa be visited upon ones person and family. Thanks for helping me clear that up. That is the first time anybody has ever thrown the term bigot in my direction. Then again maybe I am a bigot because I find the whole thing obscene.

- jacko

November 18, 2009 at 10:21pm

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I don't like any religion, and it may be that I don't like Islam most of all, although I probably need to know more to make that a definitive verdict. Suffice it to say, I've read lots of despicable holy crap and lots of unconvincing apologies for it. Either way, I refuse to bow to the fallacy that disliking ideas is a form of bigotry. Religion is great at setting itself apart from criticism. But religion is just a set of ideas that people regard as important, so that when you attack the idea, it's taken personally. Sort of like when you argue with your parents about politics. Maybe it's time to grow up a little bit. Antisemitism is Jew-hatred; a hatred of a people. What I'm talking about is idea-hatred, and, as far as I'm concerned, all ideas are on the table, and none is immune from criticism. It would be odd if the worst ideas -- that is, religious ideas -- were the least vulnerable to public attack. But, that's where we are. At least Bertrand Russell could write "Why I am Not a Christian" 80 years ago without the Church of England signing out a fatwa. Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes a screenplay, and Theo Van Gogh is murdered, and Ali is a marked woman. Russell and Ali have two things in common, which is their high regard for freedom of thought. I will await a Powerpoint presentation as clear and convincing as Hasan's that points me to the portions of the Holy Koran that disavow "offensive jihad" and truly espouse instead universal love and respect, the portions that disavow "submission," the name of Theo Van Gogh's movie, and truly espouse instead intellectual freedom and the separation of mosque and state. Let's see those passages, and my esteem for the "religion of peace" will increase, at least relative to all the other mumbo-jumbo out there. Meanwhile, spare me the "bigotry" barb.

- jhildner1

November 18, 2009 at 11:00pm

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"Non Believers" http://drybonesblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/non-believers.html

- jacksondyer

November 18, 2009 at 11:04pm

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Jackson, You did exactly as I predicted. You identified a difference between Muslims, on the one hand, and Men/Blacks that is completely irrelevant to whether the inference you wish to draw is logically valid. The proposition that because most acts of terrorism are committed by Muslims, then all or most Muslims must be predisposed to terrorism is an example of a fundamental logical fallacy.

- dhurtado

November 18, 2009 at 11:06pm

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Here's a link to an article on pajamasmedia by Raymond Ibrahim on "Nidal Hasan and Fort Hood: A Study in Muslim Doctrine". http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/nidal-hasan-and-fort-hood-a-study-in-muslim-doctrine-part-1/

- malahat

November 18, 2009 at 11:16pm

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b -- I think the thrust of many of the comments in these several threads, including Peretz' comments, have has been that Islamic Jihadism is representative or characteristic of Islam writ large. At minimum, certain posters here have refused to deny that they are making that inference. Jacko, I actually am not able to follow your "resituation." Probably my fault I understood your first statement to be that most Muslims are likely to believe that Hasan's actions conformed to Islamic tenets. It appears to me that you are (sarcastically) saying the same thing with your "resituation." Generalizing from the few to the many is pretty much what prejudice is.

- dhurtado

November 18, 2009 at 11:17pm

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Jhildner, I am not sure whether you are addressing me, but I fully agree that it is not bigotry to disagree with or criticize religious ideas. But I do think it is bigotry to infer from the actions of a tiny minority that Muslims generally have a propensity for violence or approve of jihadist terrorism.

- dhurtado

November 18, 2009 at 11:30pm

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...The proposition that because most acts of terrorism are committed by Muslims, then all or most Muslims must be predisposed to terrorism is an example of a fundamental logical fallacy.... I have not followed every nuance of every argument on this thread but this statement is indubitably right. But that fallacy was not Hitchens’s point, though it may have been someone else’s. He said, as Peretz quotes, (excuse all the caps) "I Do Not Say That All Muslims Are Terrorists, But I Have Noticed That an Alarmingly High Proportion of Terrorists Are Muslim." It is a permissible inference from that alarmingly high proportion that there is something in the Islamic water that leads some of its adherents (that "some" forming the 'alarmingly high proportion') to act this way, which inference is worth thinking and worrying about. As for our ability to criticize Islam on these, or other, grounds, or any set of religious beliefs on rational grounds, I could not agree with JHildner more.

- basman

November 18, 2009 at 11:37pm

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dhurtado, I think you're missing the point, which may be everyone else's fault. Nobody is saying that "all or most Muslims must be predisposed to terrorism." Nobody is inferring that "Muslims generally have a propensity for violence." It could be, though, that their religion inspires, helps along, is congenial to bad shit, and disproportionately so. It's not as though (a) ideas don't matter at all, and (b) all ideas are the same -- always mere excuses for doing what you would do anyway. These are the improbable premises of those anxious to consider every factor behind radical Islam except the most obvious -- Islam. Tibetans don't slaughter people, though they have a bigger beef. Maybe part of the reason is that theirs is a religion of peace.

- jhildner1

November 18, 2009 at 11:47pm

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"Sixty Hours of Terror" Jason Motlagh http://www.vqronline.org/webexclusive/2009/11/19/motlagh-mumbai-attacks/ "The Mumbai attacks of were both audacious and harrowing. Jason Motlagh described the scenes of great heroism and horrifying cruelty that left over 160 people dead...."

- jacksondyer

November 19, 2009 at 12:12am

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Basman: "It is a permissible inference from that alarmingly high proportion that there is something in the Islamic water that leads some of its adherents (that "some" forming the 'alarmingly high proportion') to act this way[.]" I cannot agree with that Basman. The predicate is not that "an alarmingly high proportion" of Muslims are terrorists, but that "an alarmingly high proportion" of terrorists are Muslims. Terrorists, as dangerous as they are, constitute an infinitesimally small percentage of the world's population, and an extremely small percentage of the 800 million Muslims around the world. The dominance of terrorism by professed Muslims is a very recent phenomenon. In recent decades it has been perpetrated by Northern Ireland Catholics, Puerto Ricans, Central Americans, and Americans, just to name a few. So I am not sure that it is a permissible inference that there is "something in the Islamic water" (whatever that means) that leads them to kill non-Muslims. And even if it is a "permissible" inference, a more valid inference, in my view, is that they are adherents of a violent sect that is not supported by mainstream Islam. As to the beliefs of that sect, I fully agree that they are properly the subject of vigorous criticism. But I think we need to be very circumspect about the belief that there is generally "something in the Islamic water," because it is very likely to lead to prejudicial treatment of Muslims based simply on the fact that they are Muslims.

- dhurtado

November 19, 2009 at 12:16am

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dhurtado "Jackson, You did exactly as I predicted. You identified a difference between Muslims, on the one hand, and Men/Blacks that is completely irrelevant to whether the inference you wish to draw is logically valid." Your use of logic suffers from a categorical confusion. I suspect though that you already knew that. There is a huge difference between a biological category and a grouping of peoples based on faith. Besides many Muslims are white so your comparison makes absolutely no sense.

- jacksondyer

November 19, 2009 at 12:16am

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dhurt, I think this is the example of the logical fallacy in inferring from the fact that all Bs are As, that all As are Bs -"adolbe", who infers from the fact that all Bernie Madoffs are Jews, that all Jews are Bernie Madoffs. " 11/18/2009 - 2:40pm EDT | adolbe If a Jew committed an act like Hasan--highly unusual in this country with Arab reared Americans--would that be indicative of something?? Is Bernie Madoff typical of Jewish ethics today? I am from extended family of liberal, honest universal minded Jews who fought for civil rights etc. Yet something in me suggests that Madoff might be just that..."

- malahat

November 19, 2009 at 12:24am

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I need to repost this and I urge everyone to read the article. While we get side tracked on how many Muslims are terrorists we miss the larger point. The kind of terrorist’s acts inflicted on their enemies is similar to the tortures devised by the Nazis. They seem to consider their enemies especially Jews as non human: "Sixty Hours of Terror" Jason Motlagh http://www.vqronline.org/webexclusive/2009/11/19/motlagh-mumbai-attacks/ "The Mumbai attacks of were both audacious and harrowing. Jason Motlagh described the scenes of great heroism and horrifying cruelty that left over 160 people dead...." I also suspect that it's easier not to deal with the horrid realities of these attacks than to face up to them and call them by their right name.

- jacksondyer

November 19, 2009 at 12:25am

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Jhildner, I have been following all of these many threads on this topic, and it is my reading that certain people have indeed been making the claims that you say nobody is making. At minimum, they have refused to repudiate those claims when confronted with them. If it is in fact accurate that nobody is making those claims, then halleluiah! Of course, people keep making the claim that Islamic holy writings (e.g., the Koran) actually teach violence against and murder of non-Muslims, as you seem to imply. I simply don't have the time right now to personally research that claim, but I have not seen anything on these threads or the sources linked to therein that actually support that claim. To the extent violent jihad is a teaching of the Koran or of Islamic religious leaders, then it clearly should be condemned. But it is not at all clear to me that the majority of Muslims are actually adherents of such a teaching.

- dhurtado

November 19, 2009 at 12:26am

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Jackson, My logic suffers from nothing. You could use any groups of people or things. E.g., it does not follow from the fact that all humans are animals that all animals are human. It does not follow from the fact that all alcoholic beer is an alcoholic beverage that all alcoholic beverages are beer. It does not follow from the fact that all rooks are chess pieces that all chess pices are rooks. Likewise, it does not follow from the fact that most contemporary terrorists are Muslim that most Muslims are terrorists or approve of terrorism.

- dhurtado

November 19, 2009 at 12:36am

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b1462, agreed.

- dhurtado

November 19, 2009 at 12:37am

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Hurtado "Of course, people keep making the claim that Islamic holy writings (e.g., the Koran) actually teach violence against and murder of non-Muslims, as you seem to imply." "164 Jihad Verses in the Koran" http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Themes/jihad_passages.html

- jacksondyer

November 19, 2009 at 12:38am

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Jackson, I fully agree with you that we should get away from obsessing about how many Muslims are terrorists and focus on the terrorism itself.

- dhurtado

November 19, 2009 at 12:40am

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dhurtado, okay, I didn't read the thread that way, and certainly not Hitchens or Marty, but maybe you're picking up on something I missed or misread. I do want to dispute this "tiny minority" business, however, although I wish I had more data in front of me. For now, we'll make do with a Pew poll back in 2002 that asked 38,000 members of Muslim countries the following question: "Some people think that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets are justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies. Other people believe that, no matter what the reason, this kind of violence is never justified. Do you personally feel that this kind of violence is often justified to defend Islam, sometimes justified, rarely justified, or never justified?" I won't give you all the results, but the numbers who answered "often" or "sometimes" were quite high -- 73 percent in Lebanon, 43 percent in Jordan, 33 percent in Pakistan, 27 percent in Indonesia -- and much higher if you include "rarely." Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, Iran, Sudan, Iraq and the Palestinian territories weren't polled. My guess is that the numbers in those countries would have been closer to Lebanon than to Indonesia. In any event, these are hardly "tiny minorities" who are sympathetic with the frequent or occasional use of terrorism "against civilian targets" in order to "defend Islam." I recommend to you The End of Faith by Sam Harris if you have not read it already, which cites the above poll, and pretty much says, in clear, forceful language, what I think about this topic in his fatwa-friendly chapter "The Problem with Islam." He has this to say, in summary: "By any measure of normativity we might wish to adopt (ethical, practical, epistemological, economic, etc.), there are good beliefs and and there are bad ones -- and it should now be obvious to everyone that Muslims have more than their fair share of the latter. ... [T]he world is filled with poor, uneducated, and exploited peoples who do not commit acts of terrorism, indeed who would never commit terrorism of the sort that has become so commonplace among Muslims; and the Muslim world has no shortage of educated and prosperous men and women, suffering little more than their infatuation with Koranic eschatology, who are eager to murder infidels for God's sake. We are at war with Islam. It may not serve our immediate foreign policy objectives for our political leaders to openly acknowledge this fact, but it is unambiguously so. It is not merely that we are at war with an otherwise peaceful religion that has been 'hijacked' by extremists. We are at war with precisely the vision of life that is prescribed to all Muslims in the Koran, and further elaborated in the literature of the hadith, which recounts the sayings and actions of the Prophet. A future in which Islam and the West do not stand on the brink of mutual annihilation is a future in which most Muslims have learned to ignore most of their canon, just as most Christians have learned to do. Such a transformation is by no means guaranteed to occur, however, given the tenets of Islam." Those tenets, including the reality of how they are believed and thought about today, are discussed in some detail in the rest of the chapter. I found it convincing and scary as hell.

- jhildner1

November 19, 2009 at 12:40am

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The predicate is that an alarmingly high proportion of terrorists are Muslim. It confuses the argument to note that the numbers of Muslims that form that alarmingly high number are but a miniscule percentage of all Muslims or that the numbers of terrorists are an even more infinitesimal percentage of all the people in the world. Either the fact of terrorism is noteworthy or it is not. If it is then the latter infinitesimal percentage is irrelevant. Either Muslims form an alarmingly high proportion of these terrorists or they do not. If they do, then the infinitesimally small percentage of them as amongst all Muslims is an irrelevance. The relevant categories are the comparative groups that comprise all terrorists. The permissibility of the inference is at this point not a matter of formal logic but a judgment about what conclusions are relevant to draw from a body of facts. Something in the Islamic water means that within the Koran and Hadith which plays a formative part in Muslims forming an alarmingly high number of terrorists. (As a slight digression from the argument I note that my fellow Canadian Irshad Manji is outspoken on this strain in Islam, urges mainstream Muslims to be less passive about and more outspoken about it and urges in effect the need for a kind of civil war within Islam so as not to allow it to be high jacked by militants. She is very critical of the relative mainstream Muslim quietism in the face of the “alarmingly high proportion.) If you care to, chew on this, sent to me by a friend quite a while ago which goes to what you are trying to explain away. I don't recall whether my friend wrote this for some purpose or got from some other place. _____________________________________________ "...Is Islam a peaceful religion that has been "hijacked" by terrorists? The usual meaning of Islam in Arabic is not "peace" but "submission." Muslims all over the world burst into joyful, spontaneous celebrations when the hijacked jetliners slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Islamic governments were afraid to show "too much" public support for the war against terrorism. Further, all the governments that covertly support terrorism are centered in the Muslim world. There is a deep and powerful strain of violence within Islam. According to the historic understanding in Islam there is no separation between mosque and state. Bernard. Lewis explains: "In pagan Rome, Caesar was God. Christians were taught to differentiate between what is due to Caesar and what is due to God. For Muslims of the classical age, God was Caesar, and the sovereign—caliph or sultan—was merely his viceregent on earth. This was more than a simple legal fiction. For Muslims the state was God’s state, the army God’s army, and, of course, the enemy was God’s enemy. Of more practical importance, the law was God’s law, and in principle there could be no other. The question of separating church and state did not arise, since there was no church, as an autonomous institution, to be separated. Church and state were one and the same." This means that, in the historic Muslim understanding, Islamic society is or should be a theocracy—a society in which God himself is the monarch, reigning on earth through subordinates. In the earliest days of Islam, the subordinate was the prophet Mohammed, who founded Islam and conquered the Arabian Peninsula. Thereafter the subordinate was the caliphs and in the centuries after Mohammed’s death they expanded Muslim society by conquering peoples as far west as Spain and as far east as India. In the process, they absorbed half of Christian civilization. Eventually, the power of the caliphs waned, and new leaders—such as the Ottoman sultans—were the subordinates. Throughout it all, God himself was regarded as the ruler of Islamic civilization. That Islam sees itself as a theocracy is important for how it regards itself and for the behavior of Muslims. First, it means that Islam is not only a religion. It is also a political ideology. If the government of the Muslim community simply is God’s government, then no other governments can be legitimate. They are all at war with God. As a result, Muslims have typically divided the world into two spheres, known as the Dar al-Islam—the "house of Islam" or "house of submission" to God—and the Dar al-Harb, or "house of war"—those who are at war with God. Second, it means that Muslims have believed themselves to have a "manifest destiny." Since God must win in the end, the Dar al-Harb must be brought under the control of Muslim government and made part of the Dar al-Islam. Third, since the Dar al-Harb by its nature is at war with God, it is unlikely that it will submit to God without a fight. Individual groups might be convinced to lay down their arms and join the Muslim community by various forms of pressure—economic or military—that fall short of war. In history some groups have become Muslim in this way, either fearing Muslim conquest, desiring Muslim military aid against their own enemies, or aspiring to good trade relations with the Muslim world. But many peoples would rather fight than switch. This has been particularly true of Christians, who have put up more resistance to the Muslim advance than have pagan and animistic tribes. Because of the need to expand God’s dominion by wars of conquest, Islam’s ideology imposes on Muslims the duty to fight for God’s community. This duty is known as jihad (Arabic, "struggle, fight"). Although it is binding on all Muslims, it has been particularly incumbent on those on the edges of the Muslim world, where there was room for expansion. Only by continual jihad could the manifest destiny of Islam to bring the world into submission to God be fulfilled. As eminent French sociologist Jacques Ellul notes, "Jihad is a religious obligation. It forms part of the duties that the believer must fulfill; it is Islam’s normal path to expansion." A fourth and final consequence of Islam’s view of itself as a theocracy is that in theory all Muslims should not only form one religious community but should be subject to one government as well—God’s government, a kind of Muslim superstate. Yet this has not happened. Muslims have been ruled by different governments since the early days of Islam. The fact that Muslims are not united under a single government is due to a variety of historical factors. As Muslim territory expanded the problems with the idea of uniting all Muslim peoples under a single government became all too obvious. Islam grew from a tribal base, and tribal societies are not known for stability. The factions and rivalries that are inherent in such societies manifested as Islam grew and made it difficult to keep Muslims under a single head. Another factor that kept a stable Muslim superstate from developing is the fact that—especially in a pre-technological world—local areas have to be governed locally. Large empires have had to cede large amounts of autonomy to local governments, and therein lay the seeds of their eventual dissolution. As local governments grew in power, they desired more and more autonomy, desiring eventually to throw off the yoke of their masters and to be truly independent. As a result, even in the classical period of Islam the Muslim community was divided politically, with rivalries between various parties—for example, between the Ottomans and the Persians, who maintained a tense and sometimes violent rivalry for centuries. The conflicts within the Muslim community helped slow its expansion and helped lead to stagnation and decay. A threat also was growing in the non-Muslim world. Europe for centuries had been terrified by the Muslim advance, with continual warfare on its borders to the west and to the east as Christians struggled at first to check the Muslim advance and later to reclaim their homelands. The fight was not easy for Europe and, for a long time, it did not go well. Lewis notes of medieval Christendom: "Split into squabbling, petty kingdoms, its churches divided by schism and heresy, with constant quarrels between the churches of Rome and the East, it was disputed between two emperors and for a while even two popes. After the loss of the Christian shores of the eastern and southern Mediterranean to the Muslim advance, Christendom seemed even more local, confided in effect to a small peninsula on the western edge of Asia which became—and was by this confinement defined as—Europe. For a time—indeed, for a very long time—it seemed that nothing could prevent the ultimate triumph of Islam and the extension of the Islamic faith and Muslim power to Europe." As chronicler of Muslim expansion Paul Fregosi notes, "‘From the fury of the Mohammedan, spare us, O Lord’ was a prayer heard for centuries in all the churches of central and southern Europe. Fear of the jihad has not entirely vanished even now, particularly among peoples who have known Muslim domination." Muslims conducted raids to capture slaves as far west as England and Ireland. They attacked Iceland. And they plunged deep into Europe. They captured Sicily and invaded the Italian mainland. "Naples, Genoa, Ravenna, Ostia, and even Rome itself were all for a time pillaged or occupied by the Saracens. Human beings became a cheap and abundant commodity. In Rome, in 846 . . . the Muslims even looted the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul, and the pope had to buy off the invaders with the promised tribute of 25,000 silver coins a year. Pope Leo IV then ordered the construction of the Leonine Wall around the city to protect St. Peter’s from further assault." The threat continued for centuries, with Muslim forces laying siege in 1529 and 1683 to Vienna, the capital of the Holy Roman Empire, located in the heart of Europe. But as Islam stagnated, new doors opened to Europe, particularly through the discovery of the New World and the vast material resources it offered. As Europe grew economically, technologically, and militarily through its colonies and the rise of global trade, the balance of power shifted, and the Islamic world became vulnerable. Even before the discovery of the New World, Christians in both western and eastern Europe had begun to reclaim their conquered homelands from Muslim dominion, and the tremendous new resources that Europe had at its disposal as a result of the Age of Exploration only made things worse for Muslim aspirations to world political supremacy. Their own governmental structures—particularly the Ottoman empire—began to lose power and disintegrate, with Europeans stepping in to take control as colonialization progressed. For three centuries the Muslim world lost ground, and by the first half of the twentieth century almost all of it had been reduced to being colonies or protectorates of European powers. Lewis notes, "By 1920 it seemed that the triumph of Europe over Islam was total and final. The vast territories and countless millions of the Muslim peoples of Asia and Africa were firmly under the control of the European empires—some of them under a variety of native princes, most under direct colonial administration. Only a few remote mountain and desert areas, too poor and too difficult to be worth the trouble of acquiring, retained some measure of sovereign independence." What was the Muslim reaction to this alarming sequence of developments? In the seventeenth century it had begun to sink into Muslim consciousness that something was desperately wrong in the world. Though Muslim society had previously been more advanced economically and in some ways culturally than European society, it began to dawn on Muslim leaders that the barbarian infidels of Europe were catching up and in certain ways were ahead of Muslim society. It is difficult for Westerners to realize just how crushing a realization this was, but it was devastating given Muslim self-perception. The triumphal advance of Islam seemed to confirm to Muslim minds that they were the chosen of God and that civilization itself was identical with Islam, with only ignorant barbarians and infidels outside its borders. In What Went Wrong?: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response, Bernard Lewis notes that Christian Europe was seen "as an outer darkness of barbarism and unbelief from which there was nothing to learn and little even to be imported, except slaves and raw materials. For both the northern [European] and southern [African] barbarians, their best hope was to be incorporated into the empire of the caliphs, and thus attain the benefits of religion and civilization." Shock and awe thus were the responses of Muslims as they saw their civilization collapsing and their former enemies—Christian Europeans—seizing control of their homelands. How could this happen? How could God’s people suffer such a reversal of fortune? How could their former might be so completely outclassed by the overwhelming economic and military might of Christendom, whose religion was their only serious rival for the role of a world faith? Angry about the present and fearful of the future, Muslims began a process of introspection, explains Lewis. "When things go wrong in a society, in a way and to a degree that can no longer be denied or concealed, there are various questions that one can ask. A common one, particularly in continental Europe yesterday and today in the Middle East, is: ‘Who did this to us?’ The answer to a question thus formulated is usually to place the blame on external or domestic scapegoats—foreigners abroad or minorities at home. The Ottomans, faced with the major crisis in their history, asked a different question: ‘What did we do wrong?’" A debate followed, with various Muslims trying to analyze and propose remedies for the developing situation. "The basic fault, according to most of these memoranda, was falling away from the good old ways, Islamic and Ottoman; the basic remedy was a return to them. This diagnosis and prescription still command wide acceptance in the Middle East." These twin explanations for the recent misfortune of Islam—that it was caused by a failure to observe Islam in its pure form and by the malicious meddling of foreigners (first Europeans and now Americans)—bode ill for tomorrow. European domination of the Muslim world was short-lived, ending in the 1960s with the close of the de-colonialization that followed World War II. Yet it had an enormous effect on the Muslim psyche. This effect was somewhat muffled by the Cold War and the tense balance of power between the Western and Soviet spheres. The new Muslim states—the borders of which had been largely and not always skillfully drawn by the withdrawing colonial powers—were too weak to be assertive and fell into the orbits of either of the United States or the Soviet Union. Nationalistic assertiveness was subsumed during the tense, global standoff. But with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, matters changed. At first, some hailed the event as "the end of history," but other, wiser observers pointed to new dangers in the world, including Islamic militancy. Samuel Huntington presciently warned that the end of the Cold War would lead to a period he referred to as "the clash of civilizations." A major flash point he envisioned in this conflict, unsurprisingly, was between Islam and the West. "After World War II, the West, in turn, began to retreat; the colonial empires disappeared; first Arab nationalism and then Islamic fundamentalism manifested themselves. . . . [The] centuries-old military interaction between the West and Islam is unlikely to decline. It could become more virulent. The Gulf War left some Arabs feeling proud that Saddam Hussein had attacked Israel and stood up to the West. It also left many feeling humiliated and resentful of the West’s military presence in the Persian Gulf, the West’s overwhelming military dominance, and their apparent inability to shape their own destiny." Huntington noted a common consensus that an inevitable clash between Islam and the West, a clash initiated by the former, was soon to come: "On both sides the interaction between Islam and the West is seen as a clash of civilizations. The West’s ‘next confrontation,’ observes M. J. Akbar, an Indian Muslim author, ‘is definitely going to come from the Muslim world. It is in the sweep of the Islamic nations from the Maghreb to Pakistan that the struggle for a new world order will begin.’" That confrontation came with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and the inauguration of the war against terrorism. What did the terrorists hope for? They hoped for a conflict with the West that would end the long, dark winter that Islam has experienced. They hoped that the fortunes of their religion and civilization would be reversed. They hoped for a war that would smash the might of the West and allow a wave Islamic revolutions to sweep away the worldly tyrants ruling Muslim nations. They hoped for a return to purer, stricter Islam, free of Western corruption and values. They hoped that the blessings of God would descend upon their civilization, allowing it to return to its rightful place at the head of nations, with a resurgence of Muslim nationalism that would give birth to the Islamic superstate that long had eluded them. And they hoped for a new wave of expansion that would allow Islam to establish its destiny of bringing the entire world under Muslim control. In the famous al-Qaeda "dinner conversation" found on videotape in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden expressed the view that the war he initiated would lead to a wave of Muslim expansion not seen since the religion’s first century, when it consumed half of Christian civilization. These dreams of a renewed, purified Islam, of the overthrow of existing Muslim governments, of a triumphant smashing of the West, and of expansion through a new jihad are far from confined to bin Laden and his terrorists. They are the dreams that inspire the seething rage of "the Arab street," which so often breaks forth into violent demonstrations at political events beyond its control. Within the Muslim world, government officials have been trying to cling to power in the face of rising anger on their streets. Trying to buy time, they have funded radical Islamic schools, media establishments, and even the terrorists themselves, hoping to direct and diffuse ineffectual Muslim rage toward the West as a scapegoat. The West has responded with the war against terrorism, which Muslim governments would like to see succeed in ridding their society of its most radical elements, which seek their overthrow. Yet they hesitate to support the war too much lest they hasten their own demise through coup d’ etats. Some in the West have suggested trying to cure the economic roots of the dissatisfaction and despair in Muslim society that contribute to radicalism and terrorism. The problem is not lack of wealth. Many Muslim countries are oil-rich and have had money in abundance for decades, yet the elites have refused to pursue policies leading to greater economic prosperity for their populaces. Instead, they have enriched themselves and shut their own people out of economic development. Many in the West have proposed trying to spread freedom and democracy in the Muslim world, thinking that greater political involvement and opportunity would help dry up the roots of terrorism. While democracies generally have done better helping secure economic development for their populations, it is unclear how freedom and democracy could be brought to the Muslim world. It would mean effective regime change in the countries in question, and it is unlikely that many countries would change their own regimes voluntarily, though some might be pressured into making reforms in this direction. To introduce any form of truly representative government in many countries would require armed intervention, as it did in Afghanistan. There is then the question of how democracy could be sustained in the Muslim world. Muslims have no historical experience of Western freedom and democracy. Middle Eastern society is still largely dominated by tribalism, which has a tendency to subvert the democratic process, with one tribe coming into power and then brutally suppressing its rivals. The only halfway democratic Muslim country is Turkey, which actually is a country where the military holds power but does not govern. It allows political parties to vie for and exercise governance within Turkey, but only on condition that they do not transgress limits set by the military. If genuine democracy were achievable, what would the results be? Given the current state of the Arab street, the results would not be pretty. In his analysis, Samuel Huntington argued: "Many Arab countries, in addition to the oil exporters, are reaching levels of economic and social development where autocratic forms of government become inappropriate and efforts to introduce democracy become stronger. Some openings in Arab political systems have already occurred. The principal beneficiaries of these openings have been Islamist movements. In the Arab world, in short, Western democracy strengthens anti-Western political forces." The introduction of freedom and democracy to the Muslim world is thus fraught with problems and, in any event, is not a solution to problems in the short term. One thing that can be done in the short term—as illustrated by the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq—is the use of military force. Could this help? It certainly has dealt a tremendous blow to the al-Qaeda terrorist network, even though that organization is not yet out of business. Some have argued that the use of military force will inflame Muslim hatreds and produce a new crop of terrorists. Undoubtedly some Muslims will become terrorists on the pretext that the West has used force. But then some Muslims would become terrorists if the West didn’t use force. Indeed, to a significant degree the al-Qaeda terrorists of September 11 were the product of the view that the United States was a faltering, weak superpower that could be defeated just as the Soviet Union had been humiliated in Afghanistan. Muslims respect strength. They cheer whoever displays it. Regardless of how many times their towns change hands during an armed conflict, the populace will turn out to cheer their newest liberators, whether they are genuinely on a mission of liberation or not. Due to its effectiveness in dealing at least temporarily with problems in the Muslim world, the use of military force in finding a long-term solution is likely to be essential. It certainly must be wielded with discretion and in keeping with the Church’s just war doctrine, but its use is likely unavoidable. It also is certainly not sufficient. Military force will have to be used in conjunction with other initiatives, including diplomatic and economic ones. Can the historic connection between Islam and violence be broken? Some would argue that it can. After all, our own forebears in Christendom were more violent than we are. Europe was riven by conflict between petty kingdoms for centuries, but eventually a society developed from it that is stable and not at constant war with either itself or its neighbors. Perhaps Muslim society could be led or forced down the same path. Perhaps. But the proposition is not quick, easy, or certain. The development of a stable Europe took centuries of bloody conflict that finally wore out the resolve of Europeans to keep killing each other and prompted them to try a different path. This was not achieved until, in the first half of the twentieth century, Europe underwent two massive convulsions of violence, the First and Second World Wars. Key to both of these was the intervention of the United States, which at the end of the Second World War pacified Europe and refused to let its states continue to pursue their bitter, historic rivalries in ways that could destabilize Europe and lead to another war. Post-war Europe also was united by an outside threat: Soviet Communism, which dominated Eastern Europe. It was the continued presence of U.S. forces in Western Europe during the Cold War that helped protect it from Soviet invasion while new, more healthy political and economic ties were developing between its states as they sought to form a united front against the Soviet threat. The sequence of events that led to the current state of affairs in Europe is unique and may not be repeatable. Trying to force the Muslim world down the same path is an uncertain proposition, and, even if it could succeed, it might well require the same dramatic military interventions and conflicts as the pacification of Europe. It might require world wars and cold wars. And then there is a factor that makes the pacification of Islam less likely than the pacification of Europe. It is simplistic to characterize any of the major religions as being strictly "of violence" or "of peace." As Solomon pointed out, "For everything there is a season; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time for war, and a time for peace" (Eccles. 3:1, 3, 8). That’s the way life works in a fallen world, and every religion capable of serving as the basis of a culture has recognized both the need for peace and the need for the use of force in certain circumstances. Sects that are totally pacifistic have to rely on the good graces of others who are willing to use force to protect them, while sects that are totally given over to violence do not survive long since they kill themselves off or are broken up by their neighbors as a matter of self-protection. For a religion to serve as the basis of a culture, it must seek to preserve peace but also be willing to use force. All major religions tend toward this mean. Yet some religions are far more prone to violence than others. Among the major religions, Islam is by far the most violent. This may be seen by comparing it to the religions most closely related to it, Judaism and Christianity. Though belief in the true God goes back to the dawn of mankind, Judaism in its traditional form was founded by Moses, who, if evaluated politically, could be considered a warlord, leading the tribes of Israel toward the Promised Land and the conquest that would follow. The Old Testament contains numerous commands to use violence to protect and promote the nation of Israel. This potential for violence is reigned in, though, by the fact that Judaism is a religion for just one ethnic group confined to one territory. Christianity, by contrast, is a universal religion, meant for all peoples in all countries. It has much greater breadth, and much lower intrinsic potential for violence. Its founder—Christ—was a martyr, who refused to fight to save his life. Though the New Testament acknowledges that the Old Testament revelation is from God, it does not contain new commands to use violence, as Christianity was not to be allied from its birth to a state in the way Judaism was. The fact that in Christianity church and state are distinct means that as a religion Christianity has less potential for violence since it is not called upon to use force in the way a state is. This, coupled with Jesus’ own example and his "love thy enemy" teachings (e.g., Matt. 5:44), gives Christianity less innate potential for violence. In contrast, Islam’s founder was a warlord who rose from nowhere and who by his death was the undisputed master of Arabia Peninsula. The holy book he produced is filled with commands to use violence in the service of its religion and nation. This potential for violence is similar to that possessed by Judaism except it is immensely augmented by the fact that Islam views itself, like Christianity, as a universal religion meant for all peoples in all countries. It also makes no distinction between church and state and is thus a political as well as religious ideology. As a result, Islam has been willing to employ violence on a massive scale, as illustrated by the first century of its existence, when the Islamic Empire exploded outward and conquered much of the known world. The attitude of Islam toward using violence against non-Muslims is clear. Regarding pagans, the Quran says, "Slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them. If they repent and take to prayer and render the alms levy, allow them to go their way. God is forgiving and merciful" (Surah 9:5). This amounts to giving pagans a convert-or-die choice. Regarding violence against Jews and Christians, the Quran says, "Fight against those to whom the Scriptures were given as believe in neither God nor the last day, who do not forbid what God and his messenger have forbidden, and who do not embrace the true faith, until they pay tribute out of hand and are utterly subdued" (Surah 9:29). In other words, violence is to be used against Jews and Christians unless they are willing to pay a special tax and live in subjection to Muslims as second-class citizens. For them the choice is convert, die, or live in subjection. The Quran also has stern words for Muslims who would be slow and reluctant to attack unbelievers: "Believers, why is it that when you are told: ‘March in the cause of God,’ you linger slothfully in the land? Are you content with this life in preference to the life to come? . . . If you do not go to war, he [God] will punish you sternly, and will replace you by other men" (Surah 9:38-39). And, of course, there is the promise of reward in the afterlife for waging jihad in this one: "Believers! Shall I point out to you a profitable course that will save you from a woeful scourge? Have faith in God and his messenger, and fight for God’s cause with your wealth and with your persons. . . . He will forgive you your sins and admit you to gardens watered by running streams; he will lodge you in pleasant mansions in the gardens of Eden. This is the supreme triumph" (Surah 61:10-12). It must be pointed out that there are people of peace and people of violence in all religions. There are violent Christians. There are peace-loving Muslims. Changing historical circumstances do much to bring out tendencies toward violence and peace among the followers of different religions. Yet, even when these qualifications are made, it is clear that Islam as a religion and an ideology has by far the greatest tendency to violence. There are, indeed, many Muslims who desire peace, but, their views often do not count for much in Muslim society. Author Serge Trifkovic notes: "Some critics may object that this account of Islam in the modern world does not pay much attention to Islamic moderation, to the everyday wish of everyday Muslims for a quiet life. This is not because such moderates are rare, but because they are rarely important. Religions, like political ideologies, are pushed along by money, power, and tiny vocal minorities. Within Islam, the money and the power are all pushing the wrong way. So are the most active minorities. The urgent need is to recognize this. Our problem is not prejudice about Islam, but folly in the face of its violence and cruelty. And in any case, the willingness of moderates to be what are objectively bad Muslims, because they reject key teachings of historical Islam, may be laudable in human terms but does nothing to modify Islam as a doctrine." The prospect of modifying Islam’s doctrine regarding violence is problematic. Although some Muslims in history have tried to "spiritualize" the Quran’s declarations regarding violence, there is always a countervailing fundamentalist push to return to the sources of Islam and take them literally. Indeed, this reaction is what characterizes the Wahhabite movement that dominates Saudia Arabia and inspired Osama bin Laden’s ideology. Philosopher Roger Scruton notes that in the Wahhabite view, "whoever can read the Quran can judge for himself in matters of doctrine." This attitude, which is tantamount to an Islamic version of sola scriptura, is likely to prove as durable in Muslim circles as it has been in Protestant Fundamentalist circles. As long as that is the case, there will be fresh waves of Muslim "martyrs" willing to take the Quran’s statements on killing literally, apply them to today, and then hurl themselves into combat with whomever they perceive as "the Great Satan." We have seen the roots of Islamic violence in the life and teachings of Mohammed. We have seen that world events have conspired to place Islam and Christianity in a conflict of civilizations that has stretched from the sixth to the twenty-first century. What the future holds is unknown. What is known is that Islamic civilization has a strong tendency to violence that stretches back to the days of Mohammed and that has begun to flare up in resurgent terrorist and revolutionary movements. The conflict with militant Islam may last a long time—centuries, potentially—since even if curing Muslim society of its violent tendencies is possible, it would involve ripping out or otherwise neutralizing a tendency that has dominated Muslim culture since the days of its founder. This is not an easy task, for Muslims willing to make the change would be portrayed as traitors to their religion, amid renewed calls to practice Islam in its original, pure, and more violent form in order to regain the favor of God. The signs of the times suggest that we are, indeed, in for a "clash of civilizations" that will be neither brief nor bloodless. But what also is known is that God has a plan for history and that his grace can work miracles. It is yet possible that—through one means or another—God will bring about a more peaceful world in which militant Islam either is not a threat or nowhere near the threat that it is today. If this is to happen, our cooperation with God’s grace will require prayer, courage, resourcefulness, and a realistic understanding of the threat we are facing. Until then there can be no illusions about Islam and its endless jihad...."

- basman

November 19, 2009 at 1:24am

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Jhildner, I agree that the quote from Sam Harris presents a scary prospect. But I fear it may be Harris's words themselves that are scary and dangerous. I will have to withhold judgment until such time as I can read his book, but if the best evidence of his conclusion that we are at war with Islam is the Pew poll, then I think it is baseless. Putting aside that I know nothing about the methodology of the poll or the demographics of the sample, there is a large difference between the belief that violence against civilian targets in defense against one's enemies may be justified, and the belief that all non-Muslims are enemies of Islam and should be killed. And then look at the question. It is prefaced by a statement that legitimizes the view that violence against civilians might sometimes be justified: "Some people think that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets are justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies. Other people believe that, no matter what the reason, this kind of violence is never justified." The implication is that the general views about this are about evenly split, and then the respondent is asked to express his or her view. Not all that surprisingly, a large number of respondents answered somewhere in the middle. It would be interesting to know how many people answered that violence against civilian targets is "sometimes" justified as opposed to "often" justified. Note also that the question is asked with regard to defending Islam from its enemies, implying a circumstance under which an Islamic country is under attack. It does not strike me as even radical that people might think it is "sometimes" justified to attack civilian targets in the context of war. How many hundreds of thousands of civilians were targeted in WWII in Europe and Japan?

- dhurtado

November 19, 2009 at 1:27am

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Basman, I don't have time right now to read the excerpt, but let me say, as I think I have said several times now, that I am not trying to explain away or minimize jihadist violence, nor even that it represents an extremist strain of Islam. My argument is that it is not representative of Islam writ large. And my conern in making that point is that we don't engage in prejudicial treatment and scapegoating of Muslims based purely on their religious affiliation. The numbers are directly relevant to my point. Jihadists are an extremely small percentage of Muslims, and so to infer from the fact that most terrorists are Jihadists that most Muslims are Jihadists or Jihadist apologists is simply not valid.

- dhurtado

November 19, 2009 at 1:40am

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the Muslims even looted the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul, and the pope had to buy off the invaders with the promised tribute of 25,000 silver coins a year. Pope Leo IV then ordered the construction of the Leonine Wall around the city to protect St. Peter’s from further assault True, but don't forget those German knights seven hundred years later: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sack_of_Rome_of_1527_by_Johannes_Lingelbach_17th_century.jpg

- ironyroad

November 19, 2009 at 3:36am

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"True, but don't forget those German knights seven hundred years later:" Irony. you should listen to this discussion with Bernard Lewis about the Crusades: "The McAlvany Weekly Commentary" "The Middle East In Perspective: An Interview With Bernard Lewis" http://www.mcalvany.com/podcast/?p=104

- jacksondyer

November 19, 2009 at 7:43am

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"Divisions of the world in Islam "Dar al-Islam" The House of peace "Dar al-Harb" The house of war. "Dar al Harb (Arabic: دار الحرب "house of war") refers to areas outside Muslim rule, as opposed to Dar al Islam. The precise designations of such territories can vary widely according to the speakers idea of who is and is not a Muslim, and which governments are or are not Muslim in practice. The inhabitants of the Dar al-Harb are called harbi (Arabic: حربي), as opposed to dhimmi (second class citizens of the book - Christians and Jews) or kufr (non-believers, pagans). According to ancient law, a harbi does not even have the right to live. To enter the territory of Islam (Dar al Islam) he needs a safe-conduct pass called an aman. The term has meaning today for Islamist extremists." http://www.mideastweb.org/Middle-East-Encyclopedia/dar-al-harb.htm

- jacksondyer

November 19, 2009 at 7:56am

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Hey Tom. Thanks. It's all mutually beneficial as far as I'm concerned. You're a decent gent with an interesting take on ' all of this stuff... and more.' Again... thanks for the space, implied and otherwise. Jack

- jacko

November 19, 2009 at 8:28am

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dhurtado: I'm having some difficulty accepting the idea that you don't understand the distinctions being made here. It seems as if you are being purposefully obtuse while admitting that you are relatively unarmed about these matters in contention. I take your honestly owned unarmed insistence as both virtue and vice. By inference I can allow that you value a kind of generosity which speaks well of your intentions for collective affirmation. I just wonder at what point does this insistence become a hazard born of wishful accounting of the human condition and manifest as a kind of blind faith which refuse to inform or be informed. I don't know....you tell me if these intentions have a kind of dogmatic aspect in their own right.

- jacko

November 19, 2009 at 9:27am

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And.... please feel free to run wild if it is your inclination. Yes. I contend that there is an inherent problem with Islam as manifest today. The main of which has to do with license to, so called, righteous violence and the fruits of believer distinctions as born in the Islamic reference of applied literature, holy books, etc. That said, my previous post is an invitation to other explorations as well. And yes, holding someone elses coat while they attend the fight is complicity of a more dishonest design. Not less.

- jacko

November 19, 2009 at 10:20am

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dhurt, The only example I found in this thread of the logical fallacy in inferring from the fact that all Bs are As, that all As are Bs was "adolbe"'s post.

- malahat

November 19, 2009 at 10:28am

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amidut and wildboy - Fine, do those things. And yes, I'm aware that oil is a world market and that we can't satisfy our oil/energy needs by drilling. Drill anyway, especially offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. I live in FL, but it's past time. Neither of you resonded to my point, which is one of nat'l security. Every US/Canadian barrel of oil we produce/consume is one less that we will buy from people who hate us. Drilling isn't a panacea, but nothing is. The sooner the better.

- butchie b

November 19, 2009 at 10:53am

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"On Assignment: While Thousands Gather" By TYLER HICKS http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/assignment-15/?hp "Cloaked in a brown wool shawl and carrying an iconic walking stick, the figure of a man emerges from a dense early morning fog. He is part of Tabligh Jamaat, a missionary movement that spreads revivalist Islam through its followers, who travel the world on preaching missions. The movement convenes in Raiwind, Pakistan, once a year. Attended by as many as 1.5 million people, it is the largest gathering of Muslims outside the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. American authorities believe the movement incubates jihadists. They say Richard Reid, John Walker Lindh and Jose Padilla are examples. But many educated Pakistanis and some American academics argue that it’s a peaceful group whose reputation has suffered from militants who simply happened to have taken part in its activities. (Jane Perlez discussed the movement and its critics in this 2007 article in The Times.)...."

- jacksondyer

November 19, 2009 at 11:14am

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Jacko, If it is true that mainstream Islam is an inherently violent theology and that Muslims generally are predisposed to terrorism and violence against non-Muslims, then it would indeed be hazardous to deny or ignore it. On the other hand, there is a grave danger in drawing that conclusion because it can result in discrimination against and mistreatment of Muslims, which would be immoral in its own right, and which could be a self-fulfilling prophecy, causing a clash between Islam and the "West" that is created as much by us as by them. It seems to me that the prudent approach is to take jihadism seriously, without insisting on characterizing Muslims generally as predisposed to violence against non-Muslims, or on characterizing the conflict as a war with Islam. b -- at minimum, no one on this thread, as far as I can tell, has denied that you can infer from the fact that the majority of terrorists are Muslims that majority of Muslims are engage in or support terrorism. But let me ask you, what is it that we should take away from the premise that the majority of terrorists are Muslim?

- dhurtado

November 19, 2009 at 11:16am

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....at minimum, no one on this thread, as far as I can tell, has denied that you can infer from the fact that the majority of terrorists are Muslims that majority of Muslims are engage in or support terrorism.... __________________ Who has said that? I don't say it. There's a position short of that but longer than that this premise evinces no problematic inferences.

- basman

November 19, 2009 at 11:32am

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dhurt, "...But let me ask you, what is it that we should take away from the premise that the majority of terrorists are Muslim?" Let me ask you!

- malahat

November 19, 2009 at 11:33am

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dhurt, (sorry, I didn't cut 'n paste properly) "at minimum, no one on this thread, as far as I can tell, has denied that you can infer from the fact that the majority of terrorists are Muslims that majority of Muslims are engage in or support terrorism. That's seems to be the point that I think that you're missing. No one has stated that the majority of Muslims are engaged in or support terrorism, so what's there to deny?

- malahat

November 19, 2009 at 11:36am

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“If it is true that mainstream Islam is an inherently violent theology and that Muslims generally are predisposed to terrorism and violence against non-Muslims, then it would indeed be hazardous to deny or ignore it. On the other hand, there is a grave danger in drawing that conclusion because it can result in discrimination against and mistreatment of Muslims, which would be immoral in its own right, and which could be a self-fulfilling prophecy, causing a clash between Islam and the "West" that is created as much by us as by them.” This doesn’t make sense. Hurtado wants it both ways. The real question is: is there more danger in denying that Islam is inherently violent towards non Muslims, or in confronting that fact and persuading Muslims that it will be in their interest not to resort to violence? We need to make them an offer they can’t refuse.

- jacksondyer

November 19, 2009 at 11:49am

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Blackton, I wasn't being sarcastic. You miss the point adolbe was making. Using Marty's logic one could say that, "I do not say that all Jews are (financial) frauds, but I have noticed that an alarmingly high proportion of financial frauds are Jewish." Madoff is not a reflection of Jewish ethics. He's a reflection of his own, dark and sociopathic self. Though some people, the inverted mirrors of Marty, would say such things. Actually, Jeffrey Goldberg best sums up my thinking on the whole Hassan massacre: "My main worry is that we'll suffer other attacks like this one if we keep ourselves from looking squarely at the possibility that Islamist ideology has infiltrated at least some corners of the American Muslim community." This is not hysteria speaking. This is not suggesting that we'll be taken over by sharia. This is not, as you so aptly put it, looking for Arab terrorists under our bed. It's stating the obvious without denigrating Islam. That kind of reason isn't possible for Marty anymore. He's either lost his mind or been overtaken with fevered excitement at slurring Islam with what his deranged mind thinks is perfect logic.

- MOLLYSIMON

November 19, 2009 at 12:05pm

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bl: However, you are suggesting that the majority of Muslims would be inclinded toward terrorism because of the nature of Islam.

- MOLLYSIMON

November 19, 2009 at 12:07pm

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Molly, No, I am not. Where do I say that?

- malahat

November 19, 2009 at 12:10pm

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Molly, I didn't read it the way you did: If a Jew committed an act like Hasan--highly unusual in this country with Arab reared Americans--would that be indicative of something?? Is Bernie Madoff typical of Jewish ethics today? I am from extended family of liberal, honest universal minded Jews who fought for civil rights etc. Yet something in me suggests that Madoff might be just that. "Yet something in me suggests that Madoff might be just that (typical of jewish ethics today)." is the kicker. I also think even if he was making the point you claim he was making, it is pretty tasteless to reply to one insult with another. If I am going to criticise Marty, I would rather stick to what he wrote and rebut it and stay away from insulting analogies. Bernie Maddoff is the furthest thing from my mind and I would wonder about someone who comes up with that thought.

- blackton

November 19, 2009 at 1:09pm

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dhurtado: In case you haven't noticed there IS a clash between Islam and the West. As we speak. The foundational documents of the U.S. are the very antithesis of those which Islam professes to yield authority to. Can you imagine the Declaration of Independence or The Constitution ever arising from the bosom of Islam? Can you imagine an elaboration on God given rights, free will and its responsibilities ever being the topic of an Islamic head session much less an authoritative commission of agreed consent which would defer to the same transcendent convictions? We have fought wars which have cost precious blood and treasure even with imperfect motivation yet still bowed before these convictions. I don't advocate mistreatment of anybody. The Golden Rule still holds proper as it should. But neither should we apologize for the sake of an outsized notion of relative imperfection. That is a kind of perverse and counterproductive narcissism. It has no bearing upon the principles which gird. Good manners are one thing. To elevate manners to a status of primacy at one own expense is quite another. Why is it that your concern for collective assumptions is paramount only when it comes to the West, specifically the U.S. but not much of a consideration of relevance in reference to Muslims and their beliefs? Why is this standard applicable in only one direction?

- jacko

November 19, 2009 at 3:34pm

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dhurtado, I think you're bending over backwards to explain away that poll. It's obviously asking about acts of terrorism, not in defense of a nation but of "Islam," that *target* civilians. I don't think you would see the same level of support for such acts among other populations. Anyway, there's a bigger picture here. We're not talking about a few isolated incidents. Sharia law is primitive and disgusting. The treatment of women throughout the Muslim world is among the world's great evils. Islam was born in politics and conquest, and it makes no distinction between religious authority and political authority -- no separation of mosque and state. Christian fundamentalists believe that the Bible is the literal, inerrant word of God, while Christian moderates pick and choose among that untidy literary assemblage we call the Bible. Among Muslims, that's not an option -- the Holy Koran is the Holy Koran. As practiced, Islam is a more fundamentalist faith. Perhaps Christianity was at one time too, but that was hundreds of years ago, and even today's Christian fundamentalists do not seek to take over the levers of government, abolish the secular Constitution, and establish Christian law. The mainstream view of the Islamist, which is right there in Islam and supported by larger numbers certainly than those who support terrorism, should seem to you shocking -- not the benign expressions of a different culture. Muslims, culturally speaking, have a long memory, and that memory carries with it a running tally of Islam's glories and defeats. Right from the start, Islam is conceived not just as a spiritual identity, as we in the West think of religion, but as a global power, and the religion is bound up with the politics of the region. To neatly separate it out, as we do here, is to make a "mirror imaging" error -- to assume that others think as we do. It's not always true. I came to the Hitchensonian view on this question after reading the books of Bernard Lewis, Sam Harris (as already mentioned), more recent books like "A God Who Hates" by Wafa Sultan -- a memoir of a strong-willed girl growing up in Syria, "Infidel" by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, "Why I Am Not a Muslim" by Ibn Warraq, a class on Jewish-Muslim conflict in the Middle East that I took in college, the reaction in Europe to the Danish cartoons, the Koran itself, and the endless, insipid apologies for bad ideas that one must endure if you don't want to give offense. I would ask that you keep an open mind. I very much endorse your concern about mistreatment of Muslims in the U.S. I'm a liberal, and I believe in freedom of thought and conscience and religion and speech. But I'm not very tolerant of the illiberal, and that's the issue we're faced with in the Muslim world.

- jhildner1

November 19, 2009 at 6:54pm

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dhurtado "Jackson, My logic suffers from nothing." "Your logic" is a faux logic.

- jacksondyer

November 19, 2009 at 7:24pm

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12:05pm EDT | MOLLYSIMON “Blackton, I wasn't being sarcastic. …..Using Marty's logic one could say that, "I do not say that all Jews are (financial) frauds, but I have noticed that an alarmingly high proportion of financial frauds are Jewish."” You have invented this whole cloth. There is evidence to support Marty’s claim about terrorists. (Take the total number of terrorist incidents, since 2001 years and see how many where committed in the name of Islam how many for other causes.) Then take the number of financial fraud cases also world wide and see how many were committed in the name of Judaism. Then you will be able to know for sure that “a high proportion of financial frauds are Jewish." Do you have any evidence to support such an assertion?

- jacksondyer

November 19, 2009 at 7:32pm

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Basman quotes me: "....at minimum, no one on this thread, as far as I can tell, has denied that you can infer from the fact that the majority of terrorists are Muslims that majority of Muslims are engage in or support terrorism...." And then asks: "Who has said that? I don't say it. There's a position short of that but longer than that this premise evinces no problematic inferences." I said that at minimum no one DENIES it. Jackson, in particular, has pointedly refused to deny it. That said, it may very well be that there is a position short of that, but no one has articulated it save you, saying essentially that it must mean there is "something in the Islamic" water. You must admit that is rather cryptic.

- dhurtado

November 20, 2009 at 9:39pm

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b1462 asks: "That's seems to be the point that I think that you're missing. No one has stated that the majority of Muslims are engaged in or support terrorism, so what's there to deny?" The discussion starts with Hitchens making the statement, and Marty adopting it, that ""I Do Not Say That All Muslims Are Terrorists, But I Have Noticed That An Alarmingly High Proportion Of Terrorists Are Muslim." I then ask the question, what is the signficance, then, of the statement that "an alarmingly high proportion of terrorists are Muslim? Are you saying the the Muslim terrorists are representative of Islam or that the majorithy of Muslims engage in or support terrorism? That's what there is to deny, and I still have not read any denial of that proposition, save maybe by Basman.

- dhurtado

November 20, 2009 at 9:47pm

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Jackson says: "The real question is: is there more danger in denying that Islam is inherently violent towards non Muslims, or in confronting that fact and persuading Muslims that it will be in their interest not to resort to violence? We need to make them an offer they can’t refuse." b1462, do you now see what I mean? "Islam is inherently violent towards non Muslims." You can't get much closer than that to stating that Muslim terrorists are representative of Islam or that the majority of Muslims at least approve of terrorism against non Muslims. So rather than merely confront the jihadists and persuade them that iit is n their interest not to resort to violence, he wants to do that to all of Islam.

- dhurtado

November 20, 2009 at 9:56pm

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Molly Simon, fwiw, I agree with you completely. You have said it better than I have in many posts.

- dhurtado

November 20, 2009 at 9:59pm

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Blackton, I agree that it is despicable to suggest that Madoff might be typical of Jewish ethics. Nevertheless, I think it is valid to draw an analogy between the contention that Hasan's actions are typical of Muslim ethics and the a contention that Madaff's actions are typical of Jewish ethics. There is nothing unseemly about that analogy because MP is a Jew who writes AS a Jew. Thus the analogy to Madoff should be particularly offensive to MP and, hopefully, would drive the point home that is position is hypocritical.

- dhurtado

November 20, 2009 at 10:09pm

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Jacko, by your standards, we are also at war with China, Russia, and much of Central and South America. And I can't criticize bigotry in one place without simultaneously criticizing all of the world's bigotry? Stick to the point. Should we regard ourselves at war with Muslims and therefore discriminate against Muslims?

- dhurtado

November 20, 2009 at 10:19pm

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Jhildner, There is no question that there is an extremist, violent strain (or strains) of Islam. The question that I have now posed ad nauseam is whether that violent strain is representative of Muslims generally. Of course we need to confront Jihadism head-on, but what reason is there even to posit that Jihadism is representative of all Muslims unless the purpose is to discriminate against Muslims. Indeed, the idea that hundreds of millions of Muslims believe that it is OK to murder non-Muslims just because they are non Muslims is to me so counterintuitive that I think the burden of proof is on those who make that claim. I will keep an open mind, but let me ask you: Have you read materials that have a different view of Islam than that portrayed in the sources you have studied? I have no doubt that people could write the same kinds of condemnations of Christian fundamentalism. In fact, I don't think I agree with the statement that "even today's Christian fundamentalists do not seek to take over the levers of government, abolish the secular Constitution, and establish Christian law." I think they would do exactly that if they had the power to do it. But would it be valid to extrapolate that agenda to all persons who profess to be Christian? With respect, I don't think I am bending over backwards to explain away the poll. I think I am questioning the methodology of a poll (polling is a highly manipulable discipline) that has produced what is for me a counterintuitive result. But even taken at face value, the poll does not establish that the respondents believe that it is the duty of all Muslims to kill non Muslims, or that Islam is at war with the West.

- dhurtado

November 20, 2009 at 10:59pm

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dhurt, "...The discussion starts with Hitchens making the statement, and Marty adopting it, that ""I Do Not Say That All Muslims Are Terrorists, But I Have Noticed That An Alarmingly High Proportion Of Terrorists Are Muslim." I then ask the question, what is the signficance, then, of the statement that "an alarmingly high proportion of terrorists are Muslim? Are you saying the the Muslim terrorists are representative of Islam or that the majorithy of Muslims engage in or support terrorism? That's what there is to deny, and I still have not read any denial of that proposition, save maybe by Basman." See my response to Molly. But lemme get this straight, and sorry for this typographic double take. Hitchen's stated proposition is, "I Do Not Say That All Muslims Are Terrorists, But I Have Noticed That An Alarmingly High Proportion Of Terrorists Are Muslim". From Hitchen's statement you conclude that Hitchen's proposition is logically equivalent to or directly implies that "Muslim terrorists are representative of Islam or that the majority of Muslims engage in or support terrorism?" Huh? Wozzat? dhurt, honestly, I just don't understand your logic. I simply cannot get to your Point B from Hitchen's Point A.

- malahat

November 20, 2009 at 11:52pm

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dhurtado "b1462, do you now see what I mean? "Islam is inherently violent towards non Muslims." You can't get much closer than that to stating that Muslim terrorists are representative of Islam or that the majority of Muslims at least approve of terrorism against non Muslims." Give it a rest Hurtado. Like it or not Islam is a religion which sees itself as the true and last revelation of Allah and it has as its mission the spreading of the message and having all peoples accept it as the true and only faith. It will use whatever means it can in order to force people to submit to the “true faith.” This is why it is inherently violent towards those who will not accept it as the true faith. Christianity used to be like that too but since the reformation and the enlightenment it has learned to compromise.

- jacksondyer

November 21, 2009 at 12:13am

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My, my Hurtado is having a field day here after everyone else has abandoned this thread. dhurtado "Molly Simon, fwiw, I agree with you completely. You have said it better than I have in many posts." See Molly, Hurtado agrees with you. You therefore must be right and ‘a disproportionate number of financial cheats are Jews.’ Of course I asked you to back up your claim with statistical data, but so far, nada.

- jacksondyer

November 21, 2009 at 12:17am

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dhurtado, you're not I think advocating a reasoned look at the facts. You ask why it is worthwhile to posit that radical Islam has something to do with Islam -- what strikes me as an obvious point. Because surely it is worthwhile to know the roots, the causes, and, yes, the extent of radical Islam. Moreover, in my last post, I tried to expand the picture beyond the relatively narrow focus of acts of terrorism to the nature of Islamic states and societies and, in particular, their mistreatment of women and their demand of political and personal submission to Islamic authority. You choose not to acknowledge those issues. Are they "counterintuitive" as well? Perhaps you believe that these things, though done in the name of the Holy Koran and justified by the Islamic faith, have nothing whatever to do with the religion, the culture, the ideas, and beliefs of those who do them, and instead are merely jerks being jerks, or that the real beefs are purely secular, ordinary, and perfectly explained by every factor other than Islam. That strikes me as an odd assumption to make -- one born of a desire not to give offense rather than a desire to know the truth of the matter, a sort of wishful thinking and willful blindness to the problems of violence, misogyny, antisemistism, and illiberal, repressive government that plagues the Muslim world today. All of the secular factors we might think of surely play a role, and, perhaps, a huge role, but they work in tandem with a religious tradition that is congenial to the atrocities done in the name of Allah in particular, and not generally in the name of Christ or Yahweh or the various Eastern philosophies. There are exceptions, of course, but Islamic terrorism is a problem in a way that, quite obviously, say, Christian terrorism is not. Of course there are views of Islam that are not so bad. (I say "not so bad," because I'm loath to describe any religious beliefs as truly good, but that's another argument.) Of course there are millions of Muslims whom we would all regard as good guys, and many of those are victims of their Islamic societies and cultures. There are a few prominent Muslims attempting to pull Islam, kicking and screaming, into a Western sort of modernity, although not I think as many as we might suppose or hope. Others basically reject unattractive tenets of their faith, as most Western Christians do, laboring under forces that, thank God, can be more powerful than religion -- assimilation, decency, empathy, freedom and the cultural primacy of those things. Many others resist, and a source of that resistance is a religion that, quite plausibly and, if you believe it to be true, rationally too, counsels in favor of just such resistance. I repeat that nobody is talking about "all Muslims" -- a straw man you repeatedly put back up, even as it is repeatedly knocked down. The *extent* of bad ideas, though, is a relevant issue. I think that a cursory look at the Muslim world reveals that bad ideas -- bad Islamic ideas, in particular -- are widespread. You suggest that Christian fundamentalists would seek to take over Western governments in the name of Christ if they had the power to do so. I'm not sure to what extent that's true. But, the point is, they don't have that power, because their numbers are simply too low, and their society's commitment to secular government is simply too great. The same, of course, can't be said about the Muslim world, and that's the problem -- an Islamic problem, to be precise. The practical implications here are hardly limited to the question, Should we discriminate against Muslims? The answer is, emphatically, of course not. That would be totally counter to the very values I'm arguing are trampled in the Muslim world in the name of Islam. However, as we confront threats from and the crises in the Middle East, it might serve us well to know what's going on. For example, one might suppose that the Israeli-Palestinian crisis is a mere question of land. Perhaps not. Perhaps the depth and character of the conflict have something to do with Jews in particular establishing a Jewish state in the heart of the House of Islam -- a religious affront. For example, one might suppose that attitudes toward the West, and America in particular, are a straightforward matter of recent history and freshly felt grievances that are essentially secular in nature. Perhaps not. Perhaps our conflict really is a holy war, though not on our side. Causation is tricky business when there are a lot of causes. What I'm suggesting is that Islam is one of them, and that that might tell us something worthwhile about the nature of our adversaries and the nature of the crises in the Middle East. As it happens, I endorse Obama's words and gestures of respect, his marked preference for diplomacy even when it *may* not yield results, and his insistence that, from our point of view, it is *not* a holy war, even as he insists that Western values are universal. I'm not advocating a particular foreign policy here, and I tend to be more dovish and more pragmatic than those associated with the view that I'm articulating. (Most such people were in favor of the Iraq war and foresee, in a thinly veiled way, war in Iran. I think, actually, that my view counseled more suspicion of and concern about Iran from the start, that the Bush administration has done a good and proper job of botching the whole mess over there, and that the Iraq war was, to use Obama's word from his Senate campaign, "stupid," but that too is another argument.) I'm not a "spiritual" guy. I don't like that word, because I don't know what it means and it strikes me as trite and insipid, and I reject the prospect of a spiritual, metaphysical reality that anybody could possibly have the first clue about or claim to know. But I, like everyone else, have profound feelings about my life and life generally, and I believe, not as a matter of objective fact but deep feeling, that, if you will, God is love. There are some religious traditions that teach that. I might be more sanguine if I thought that Islam, on the whole, were among them.

- jhildner1

November 21, 2009 at 2:28am

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dhurtado: Jacko, by your standards, we are also at war with China, Russia, and much of Central and South America. And I can't criticize bigotry in one place without simultaneously criticizing all of the world's bigotry? Stick to the point. Should we regard ourselves at war with Muslims and therefore discriminate against Muslims? jacko: Are you purposefully bending the content of my contributions for the sake of some other unarticulated reason? Your response to me and others require that I should consider the possibility. So much for drying paint fascinations. jhidner (with some provisos) has rather eloquently and cogently put forth distinctions that get my nod. Your insistences, however, are making me nod off. Collective unity by force is spiritually dead. Even as we sit among our coffee and confections our pleasant demeanors will eventually reveal a regard for power and disposition for its manifestation personally and thus collectively. If you offer up your Islamic belief as a basis for your conclusions I would be foolish not to consider the foundational particulars as having a major influence upon your priorities. If you regard my disagreement with those foundations as being bigoted I have to wonder what it is that you are afraid to explore. Surely as the word bigot is a whole cloth dismissal and indictment. So jujitsu... What's it going to be?

- jacko

November 21, 2009 at 9:06am

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b1462, Jackson is probably right that it's time to give this a rest, but let me try one more time. I don't go directly from A to B. From A, which is the statement that not all Muslims are terrorists but a high proportion of terrorists are Muslim, I ask the question: Well then, what should one infer from the premise that most terrorists are Muslims? (1) That Muslim terrorists represent a majority of Muslims? (2) That they are supported by a majority of Muslims? (3) That mainstream Islamic theology supports or foments Jihadism? (4) That there is a strain of Islam that has an ideology of violence and is very dangerous? And whatever your inference is, what does that mean as to how we should treat Muslims in our society and around the world? It is perfectly legitimate to ask those questions. If someone said, "I don't believe that all blacks are criminals, but I notice that an alarmingly high proportion of criminals are black," it would be perfectly legitimate to ask them what they infer from the premise that a high proportion of criminals are black. That black criminals are representative of blacks generally? That the majority of blacks have a propensity for crime? That there is something in black culture or subculture that drives blacks to commit crimes? And what does that mean with regard to how blacks should be treated in our society? Some here are sure to point out that being black is an immutable physical characteristic whereas being Muslim is to adhere to an ideology. True, except that, rightly or wrongly, being black in America is defined not only by physical characteristics (e.g., skin pigmentation) but by culture as well. But in any event, the differences between religious identity and racial identity do not negate the legitimacy of the questions.

- dhurtado

November 21, 2009 at 10:02am

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b1462, Jackson says: "Like it or not Islam is a religion which sees itself as the true and last revelation of Allah and it has as its mission the spreading of the message and having all peoples accept it as the true and only faith. It will use whatever means it can in order to force people to submit to the “true faith.” This is why it is inherently violent towards those who will not accept it as the true faith. Christianity used to be like that too but since the reformation and the enlightenment it has learned to compromise." You see. Now Jackson has come right out and said it. Is he right?

- dhurtado

November 21, 2009 at 10:06am

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Jackson, I am sure that Molly Simon can speak for herself, but you are misreading her post. She said: "Using Marty's logic one could say that, "I do not say that all Jews are (financial) frauds, but I have noticed that an alarmingly high proportion of financial frauds are Jewish." Madoff is not a reflection of Jewish ethics. He's a reflection of his own, dark and sociopathic self." Molly thus repudiates the proposition that Madoff is a reflection of Jewish ethics. That said, I do understand the distinction you are making: There is empirical evidence that a high proportion of contemporary terrorists are Muslim; there is no evidence that a high proportion of financial frauds are Jewish. But it nevertheless could be asked as a thought experiment, if the latter proposition were true (that a majority of financial frauds turned out to be Jewish), would that justify the inference that the majority of Jewish people are frauds? Or to frame the issue another way, why should Muslim people not be as offended by the contention that Hasan is representative of Muslims as Jewish people would be by the contention that Madoff is representative of Jews?

- dhurtado

November 21, 2009 at 10:26am

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Jhildner, Your posts are always interesting to read, but they also are often rather lengthy. If you will be around later in the day I may have some responses.

- dhurtado

November 21, 2009 at 10:29am

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Jacko, I am certainly capable of misunderstanding what people say. That is why I ask questions. It is up to you whether to answer them and/or whether to become defensive about it. YOU asked ME: “Can you imagine the Declaration of Independence or The Constitution ever arising from the bosom of Islam? Can you imagine an elaboration on God given rights, free will and its responsibilities ever being the topic of an Islamic head session much less an authoritative commission of agreed consent which would defer to the same transcendent convictions?” My response is no, but you could easily substitute for “Islam” in your passage “China,” “Russia,” and other religious and political ideologies around the world. So if those differences in values mean that there is a “clash” between the West and Islam, then there also is a “clash” between the West and those other cultures. Now how is that bending the content of your posts rather than merely responding them? You then said: “Why is it that your concern for collective assumptions is paramount only when it comes to the West, specifically the U.S. but not much of a consideration of relevance in reference to Muslims and their beliefs? Why is this standard applicable in only one direction?” I must admit that I don’t understand with certainty what you mean by my “concern for collective assumptions.” I assume (and correct me if I am wrong; I don’t want you to think I am bending the content of what you say) that you are referring to my concern about potential bigotry and prejudice against Muslims. Since you don’t know me, you could not possibly know that my concern about bigotry is paramount only when it comes to the West or the U.S. That assumption on your part is, with all respect, a much worse transgression than me supposedly misconstruing your comments on this blog. But the topic of these threads has been precisely whether the indisputably dangerous and deleterious ideology of “Jihadists” or “Islamicists” can be extrapolated generally to “Muslims and their beliefs.” To suggest that I should, in this discussion, criticize Muslims and their beliefs generally is to beg the central question at issue.

- dhurtado

November 21, 2009 at 11:15am

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dhurtado "Jackson, I am sure that Molly Simon can speak for herself, but you are misreading her post." Really, she said not. So you are wrong again. Do me a favor and stick to your own script. You have trouble enough defending your own position without taking on the added burded of defending someone's else's erroneous views.

- jacksondyer

November 21, 2009 at 11:40am

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Molly, I am still waiting for the evidence that a "disproportionate number of financial cheats are Jews."

- jacksondyer

November 21, 2009 at 11:41am

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dhurtado: I'm finished with this 'conversation'. Perhaps you are sincere at which point I must allow that there is a communication impasse. There is a substantial categorical difference between nationality, skin color, or any of the distinctions you cite and a foundational belief system and consequent manifestation of powers and justice understandings. Period. End of story. For my part I wish you well though we will ever be of contention on these particulars.

- jacko

November 21, 2009 at 11:47am

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dhurt, "...You see. Now Jackson has come right out and said it. Is he right?" I don't read Jackson's "it" as your "it".

- malahat

November 21, 2009 at 1:12pm

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...and that's the nub of it.

- malahat

November 21, 2009 at 1:16pm

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"I don't read Jackson's "it" as your "it". " Thank you, bl. Hurtado is from another planet. To clarify, I said that the religion of Islam "is a religion which sees itself as the true and last revelation of Allah and it has as its mission the spreading of the message and having all peoples accept it as the true and only faith." None of this is controversial. Ask any Muslim. I added that, "It will use whatever means it can in order to force people to submit to the “true faith.”" By whatever means I meant either violence of peaceful persuasion and historically Islam has resorted to both methods. Doesn't mean that most Muslims agree with the most violent tactics used by Jihadists today, but is does mean that their tactics are not an aberration in the history of Islam and the link to the website which detailed all the verses in the Koran in which the faithful are exhorted to Jihad it’s also not a theological aberration as so many non Muslim apologists like to believe.

- jacksondyer

November 21, 2009 at 2:06pm

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Jackson (by the way, are you the same Dyer who writes on Contentions?), I did write a reply, but because I was in such a hurry to get to a parents meeting at my kids' school, I neglected to post it. By the time I got home, that window was long gone, and I was just too pooped to bother reposting. I didn't think it mattered. But I'll try now. I won't have stats, because that's not the nature of my argument. Also, I don't care if dhurtado agrees with me. I think he makes reasonable arguments. If you're going to put him in the same pile as certain mutually disliked others, I just can't go there. My point is that Marty is being an hysteric. And that the vast majority of muslims in this country are patriotic and mean no harm. But that, unfortunately, as Jeffrey Goldberg puts it, certain "corners" have been "infected" with a strain of extremist Islam. If you're going to tarnish Muslims and say that they are violent by their religion's nature, I'm going to disagree. I think we in the west have perpetrated far more evil body-count for body-count. Just look at the last century--if numbers are what drive you. As for the Madoff remark, yes, I believe that Marty's remarks--which are disgusting--could be used against Jews if the word "Jews" were inserted into the argument. You'd have to be stupid to think I agree with this contention. Only that there are plenty of anti-semites who make it on a daily basis. And in their mind, Jews like Madoff commit their frauds because they have not accepted Jesus. For you to argue that a Jew would have to commit fraud in the name of God for it to be equivocal is really getting away from Marty's point. He's talking not about whether Islam is inherently violent, but whether the culture--the one existing in the US--is. Forgive me if I read what's-his-name's Madoff reference incorrectly. I assumed he was using it in the way I was. And I still assume so, by the way. As for bl, he has continuously argued that there is something inherently wrong with Islam--he need only go through his posts. I have agreed with bl on other occasions, but not on this thread. (I was about to call it a string.) I'm done. I've said everything as clearly as I can. Not sure if you're off for the night, but I'll check in in a little while. I'm curious to see if you have any response. And I hope you know that even though we've disagreed, I still have a lot of respect for your opinions. I haven't read through any of page three's responses yet, by the way.

- MOLLYSIMON

November 21, 2009 at 7:32pm

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Molly, As for bl, he has continuously argued that there is something inherently wrong with Islam--he need only go through his posts. I have agreed with bl on other occasions, but not on this thread. ( Uh, No, Molly, I haven't, continuously, sporadically or otherwise. Here are all the posts I made on this thread, other than on this page, which you said you haven't read yet. You won't find me arguing that on this page, either. 11/18/2009 - 4:53pm EDT | bl462 molly, ".."Is Bernie Madoff typical of Jewish ethics today?" Touche, adolbe" You don't really believe that Bernie Madoff is typical of Jewish ethics, do you? 11/18/2009 - 4:55pm EDT | bl462 "I am from extended family of liberal, honest universal minded Jews who fought for civil rights etc.” Suuuuuuuuure you are... 11/18/2009 - 6:34pm EDT | bl462 "... But the point is the logical fallacy in inferring from the fact that all Bs are As, that all As are Bs" Uh, excuse me for my lack of understanding your rejoinder to the rejoinder, but who was inferring that on this thread? 11/18/2009 - 8:16pm EDT | bl462 Here's a link to an article on pajamasmedia by Raymond Ibrahim on "Nidal Hasan and Fort Hood: A Study in Muslim Doctrine". http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/nidal-hasan-and-fort-hood-a-study-in-muslim... 11/18/2009 - 9:24pm EDT | bl462 dhurt, I think this is the example of the logical fallacy in inferring from the fact that all Bs are As, that all As are Bs -"adolbe", who infers from the fact that all Bernie Madoffs are Jews, that all Jews are Bernie Madoffs. " 11/18/2009 - 2:40pm EDT | adolbe If a Jew committed an act like Hasan--highly unusual in this country with Arab reared Americans--would that be indicative of something?? Is Bernie Madoff typical of Jewish ethics today? I am from extended family of liberal, honest universal minded Jews who fought for civil rights etc. Yet something in me suggests that Madoff might be just that..." 11/19/2009 - 7:28am EDT | bl462 dhurt, The only example I found in this thread of the logical fallacy in inferring from the fact that all Bs are As, that all As are Bs was "adolbe"'s post. 11/19/2009 - 8:33am EDT | bl462 dhurt, "...But let me ask you, what is it that we should take away from the premise that the majority of terrorists are Muslim?" Let me ask you! 11/19/2009 - 8:36am EDT | bl462 dhurt, (sorry, I didn't cut 'n paste properly) "at minimum, no one on this thread, as far as I can tell, has denied that you can infer from the fact that the majority of terrorists are Muslims that majority of Muslims are engage in or support terrorism. That's seems to be the point that I think that you're missing. No one has stated that the majority of Muslims are engaged in or support terrorism, so what's there to deny? 11/19/2009 - 9:07am EDT | MOLLYSIMON bl: However, you are suggesting that the majority of Muslims would be inclinded toward terrorism because of the nature of Islam. 11/19/2009 - 9:10am EDT | bl462 Molly, No, I am not. Where do I say that?

- malahat

November 21, 2009 at 7:52pm

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And on a lighter note, I think this is the longest thread I've ever seen on TNR - 3 days and (counting this one) 123 posts.

- malahat

November 21, 2009 at 8:08pm

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Please forgive me, bl. I may have confused you with someone else.

- MOLLYSIMON

November 21, 2009 at 8:18pm

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No problem, Molly. Of course you are forgiven!

- malahat

November 21, 2009 at 8:20pm

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Please forgive me, bl. I may have confused you with someone else.

- MOLLYSIMON

November 21, 2009 at 9:10pm

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Oops! I double-posted.

- MOLLYSIMON

November 21, 2009 at 9:11pm

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MOLLYSIMON “Jackson (by the way, are you the same Dyer who writes on Contentions?),” What is contentions, Molly? “My point is that Marty is being an hysteric. And that the vast majority of muslims in this country are patriotic and mean no harm.” People think that hysteria means foaming at the mouth, or having an exaggerated view of reality. Hysteria takes different forms the most prevalent of which is to quietly and passively distort reality. Marty may be wrong, though I didn’t read him as saying that most Muslims in this country are out to get non Muslims. They probably are pacific, as you say, but how do you know they are patriotic? “If you're going to tarnish Muslims and say that they are violent by their religion's nature, I'm going to disagree. I think we in the west have perpetrated far more evil body-count for body-count. Just look at the last century--if numbers are what drive you.” You seem to have trouble reading what I wrote: religions demand more of its adherents than they can deliver. Jihad is a duty in Islam. That doesn’t mean that every Muslim is going to go out and try to convert the infidels. The same with Christianity, “imitating Christ” is a moral obligation for Christians. Most Christians obviously have not practiced this obligation. The same with Judaism, “studying Talmud Torah and keeping the Mitzvot” is an obligation in Jewish life. Most Jews don’t do that, do they? It’s important to make a distinction when talking about a religion between the demands of the religion and the actual behavior of its adherents. The irony is that in Christianity and in Judaism the more Orthodox the adherent the more pacific he is bound to be the way that say, Quakers and Lubavitchers practice their faith. In Islam however, the more orthodox the believer the more he or she is likely to practice Jihad at some level, both internal Jihad and external Jihad. Marty is correct in pointing out that the behavior of Jihadists does not go counter to their religion while the behavior of say Crusaders (even if they were blessed by Popes) or those of members of Yaakov Teitel’s band do go counter to the religious doctrines and values of their faith. Saying so doesn’t make him hysterical, though, he being carried away by this subject. He need to focus on harder and more important issues such the health care, the economy and foreign policy. I suspect that Marty is being lazy and has picked an issue that will arouse outrage and comments and one in which not a lot of thought is required. “As for the Madoff remark, yes, I believe that Marty's remarks--which are disgusting--could be used against Jews if the word "Jews" were inserted into the argument.” I don’t care if you agreed with those antisemites who would turn every possible argument on any issue against Jews. The fact that you even notice what antisemites might say makes me think that you are reaching for the lowest common denominator of an argument to counterattack Marty Peretz’s view about Islam. Yes, they are out there as even the Forward as noticed lately: “Internet: The Hatred Super-Highway” http://forward.com/articles/119142/ And with some humor in Tablet: “Defender of the People: Sniffing out anti-Semitism, overt and imagined, takes its toll on an Israeli visiting Europe” By Etgar Keret http://www.tabletmag.com/life-and-religion/20898/defender-of-the-people/ “For you to argue that a Jew would have to commit fraud in the name of God for it to be equivocal is really getting away from Marty's point.” I already addressed what I take to be Marty’s point about Islam above. Yes, Molly, for the analogy to be valid the fraud committed by Jews has to be done in the name of Judaism or to advance Jewish interests. (This is what Jihadists do; they act in the name of their faith.) The reverse is the case with Madoff. He hurt a lot of people financially most of them Jews and some where even his friends. End of story.

- jacksondyer

November 21, 2009 at 9:47pm

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Advice: If you want to switch to page two in the middle of a comment you're writing, don't: It will be wiped out. Jackson: Firstly, it's not for me to question other Americans' patriotism. That way lies McCarthyism, though I will leave you with this: A couple of weeks ago my husband returned from a boy scout camping trip with my son and told me about a Muslim group who stood with the rest to salute the flag. "Saying so doesn’t make him hysterical, though, he being carried away by this subject. He need to focus on harder and more important issues such the health care, the economy and foreign policy. I suspect that Marty is being lazy and has picked an issue that will arouse outrage and comments and one in which not a lot of thought is required." We mostly agree, then. I never really thought about him as actually caring how much we post. I guess he enjoys the numbers. Who knew? He's also being perverse: There's a tone of hopefulness--look out world, Israel already knows this, but the Muslims are out there and plotting. "The fact that you even notice what antisemites might say makes me think that you are reaching for the lowest common denominator of an argument to counterattack Marty Peretz’s view about Islam. Yes, they are out there as even the Forward as noticed lately: “Internet: The Hatred Super-Highway” http://forward.com/articles/119142/" First you attack me for noticing what anti-semites say, then you link to an article about just that. Wow. News flash. Anti-semites are on line. And they're out there. "The irony is that in Christianity and in Judaism the more Orthodox the adherent the more pacific he is bound to be the way that say, Quakers and Lubavitchers practice their faith." Even more ironic, then, that the Orthodox are the ones who shoot Palestinians and set fire to their orchards. Anyway, there's plenty in the talmud and bible about stoning gays and adulteres, about how to treat your slaves, etc. to make even our bible less than "pacific." By the way, at some point I'm going to answer, "Fine, we disagree," to one of your posts, because I suspect this could go on for weeks. Months. Years.

- MOLLYSIMON

November 22, 2009 at 2:25pm

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MOLLYSIMON “Jackson: Firstly, it's not for me to question other Americans' patriotism. That way lies McCarthyism, though I will leave you with this: A couple of weeks ago my husband returned from a boy scout camping trip with my son and told me about a Muslim group who stood with the rest to salute the flag.” Not good enough, Molly. You introduced the issue of patriotism without proof and hearsay testimony is not allowed. Moreover, McCarthyism isn’t the worst thing that could happen to people in a country. While the drunken sot McCarthy was yelling his head of about Communists real communists in Russia were killing their enemies by the thousands. In 1948 while a number of former communists whiners went before Congress in comfort and safety Jewish communists were put on trial in Czechoslovakia and sent to the gallows. Don’t talk to me about McCarthyism as if it were the equivalent of Moscow show trials. “He's also being perverse: There's a tone of hopefulness--look out world, Israel already knows this, but the Muslims are out there and plotting.” I don’t know what this is supposed to mean. “First you attack me for noticing what anti-semites say, then you link to an article about just that. Wow. News flash. Anti-semites are on line. And they're out there.” No, Molly, I said that just because antisemites will point to Madoff and see a Jewish swindler doesn’t mean that you can’t point to a Jihadist and see a Muslim murderer. We don’t take our cues from antisemites, do we? “Even more ironic, then, that the Orthodox are the ones who shoot Palestinians and set fire to their orchards.” Well, they are scum and they are also in a tiny minority and most Orthodox Jews in Israel reject their actions and say so. “Anyway, there's plenty in the talmud and bible about stoning gays and adulteres (sic), about how to treat your slaves, etc. to make even our bible less than "pacific."” Wrong there is nothing in the Talmud about stoning gays and adulterers. That is in the Torah and not in the Talmud. In fact the Talmud made the enforcing of the death penalty almost impossible. “By the way, at some point I'm going to answer, "Fine, we disagree," to one of your posts, because I suspect this could go on for weeks. Months. Years.” Not at this end, it won’t.

- jacksondyer

November 22, 2009 at 4:11pm

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Speaking of killing Gays: "Kill gays” preacher feted at City University" Your View, November 22nd 2009, 4:36 pm "“The Vice Chancellor of City University London, Julius Weinberg, should resign. He is refusing to take any action after the Islamic Society hosted a fundamentalist preacher, Abu Usamah, who advocates the murder of gay people and of Muslims who give up their faith,” said human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell. Abu Usamah was recorded on Channel Four’s television documentary, Undercover Mosque, as saying: “Do you practice homosexuality with men? Take that homosexual man and throw him off the mountain.” On Muslims who leave the faith he said: “If the Imam wants to crucify him, he should crucify him. The person is put up on the wood and he’s left there to bleed to death for three days.” Abu Usamah was also filmed deriding women as “deficient”, inferior to men and intellectually “incomplete.”" http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/11/22/%e2%80%9ckill-gays%e2%80%9d-preacher-feted-at-city-university/ There is also a strong and healthy debate in England about Islamization with many people who grew up Muslim fighting it. "Stop the Islamisation of Europe and the Madness of Stephen Gash “Kill gays” preacher feted at City University" http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/11/22/stop-the-islamisation-of-europe-and-the-madness-of-stephen-gash/

- jacksondyer

November 22, 2009 at 4:28pm

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Jhildner, I’m not sure you are still monitoring this thread, but because remains recently active, I will take a chance by posting this response to your post from a couple of days ago. First, you say: “You ask why it is worthwhile to posit that radical Islam has something to do with Islam.” No, that is not what I ask. I ask what is the purpose in positing “that Jihadism is representative of all Muslims.” Clearly there is a relationship between Jihadism and Islam, at least to the extent the Jihadists claim to be acting in accordance with Islam’s precepts. Similarly, there is a relationship between homophobic murderers and Christianity to the extent the murderers claim to be acting in conformance with the Bible’s condemnation of homosexuality. But that is clearly much different than the proposition that homophobic murderers are representative of all Christians or of Christian theology. (I recognize that Jihadism is vastly more pervasive than homophobic murder, but I use the analogy to illustrate conceptually what I am saying.) As to the broader issue of the “nature of Islamic states and societies,” yes, I acknowledge that Islamic societies are highly flawed in the ways you describe. So are many other societies. It is a very broad and complex topic, and, unless you are trying to draw a connection between that and the inference that most Muslims are terrorists or approve of terrorism, I don’t see the point of further discussion of it here. You erect another straw man: “Perhaps you believe that these things, though done in the name of the Holy Koran and justified by the Islamic faith, have nothing whatever to do with the religion, the culture, the ideas, and beliefs of those who do them, and instead are merely jerks being jerks, or that the real beefs are purely secular, ordinary, and perfectly explained by every factor other than Islam.” No, I don’t believe that Jihadist terrorism has “nothing whatever to do” with the Jihadists’ religion, culture, etc. By definition, the Jihadists are purporting to act in the name of their religion. But again, that is not the same as the proposition that Jihadists or their apologists are representative of Muslims generally, or that their interpretation of Islamic theology is held by most Muslims. Moreover, I can only speculate, but I indeed think it is highly plausible that the Jihadists are actually driven by sociological factors and prejudices for which their professed religion is merely a pretext, including an intense resentment at the way the West has left the Arab world behind in terms of modernity and economic development. That said, Jihadist terrorism is not “perfectly explained” by anything. And it is indeed, in current times, by far the most virulent form of terrorism and cannot be ignored. You say: “I repeat that nobody is talking about "all Muslims" -- a straw man you repeatedly put back up, even as it is repeatedly knocked down.” Allow me to correct that slightly. I have said, or meant to say, that there is a claim by some in this discussion that Jihadism is representative of Islam, or, said another way, that it is representative of all Muslims. “Representative of” allows that there are exceptions, but does not allow that the “representative” is an exception or in the minority. YOU may not be saying that Jihadists are representative of Muslims, but others here have essentially said that, or have refused to deny that proposition when asked whether that is what they are implying. Otherwise, I would not be wasting my time. Let’s take just a couple of examples: JD (quoting me): “’If it is true that mainstream Islam is an inherently violent theology and that Muslims generally are predisposed to terrorism and violence against non-Muslims, then it would indeed be hazardous to deny or ignore it. On the other hand, there is a grave danger in drawing that conclusion because it can result in discrimination against and mistreatment of Muslims, which would be immoral in its own right, and which could be a self-fulfilling prophecy, causing a clash between Islam and the ‘West’ that is created as much by us as by them.’ “This doesn’t make sense. Hurtado wants it both ways. “The real question is: is there more danger in denying that Islam is inherently violent towards non Muslims, or in confronting that fact and persuading Muslims that it will be in their interest not to resort to violence? We need to make them an offer they can’t refuse.” Do you not think it is a fair inference from JD’s post that he believes Islam is inherently violent toward non Muslims? Or this: “Like it or not Islam is a religion which sees itself as the true and last revelation of Allah and it has as its mission the spreading of the message and having all peoples accept it as the true and only faith. It will use WHATEVER MEANS it can in order to FORCE people to submit to the ‘true faith.’ “This is why it is INHERENTLY VIOLENT towards those who will not accept it as the true faith.” JD later backpedaled and said that he did not mean to include violence as being comprised by the term “whatever means.” But I think his words were not ambiguous. Forgive me for reacting to what people actually say. I fully agree with you about the complexity of causation. And religion has a profound effect on peoples across the world and across history. I have no objection whatsoever to exploring the role of religion on the various conflicts in the world. What I object to is the narrow proposition that Muslims are inherently violent toward non Muslims, with the implication, then, they we would be justified, or example, in excluding Muslim Americans from the military or from law enforcement agencies, subjecting citizens to surveillance solely because they are Muslim or of Arabic descent, or harassing or otherwise discriminating against Muslim Americans. I am certain that you do not draw that inference, but surely there are those who will.

- dhurtado

November 22, 2009 at 6:46pm

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Jackson: "Not good enough, Molly. You introduced the issue of patriotism without proof and hearsay testimony is not allowed." I'm not in court, Jackson. I'm talking about my husband witnessing a touching example of the melting pot. But you want numbers, here are numbers: From a Pew poll: Overall, Muslim Americans have a generally positive view of the larger society. Most say their communities are excellent or good places to live. A large majority of Muslim Americans believe that hard work pays off in this society. Fully 71% agree that most people who want to get ahead in the United States can make it if they are willing to work hard. The survey shows that although many Muslims are relative newcomers to the U.S., they are highly assimilated into American society. On balance, they believe that Muslims coming to the U.S. should try and adopt American customs, rather than trying to remain distinct from the larger society. And by nearly two-to-one (63%-32%) Muslim Americans do not see a conflict between being a devout Muslim and living in a modern society. This seems to show a positive view of America. If you want numbers showing just how much they love this country, I can't find any. Can you find numbers for something so specific for other recent immigrants? "Don’t talk to me about McCarthyism as if it were the equivalent of Moscow show trials." I was doing no such thing. In fact, I had no idea we were arguing about the evils communism. I was merely saying that one objective of McCarthyites was to question the loyalty of some Americans. Which isn't to say there were no Americans with dangerously close ties to the Soviet. There were. But McCarthyism spent most of its time hunting down innocent people--a danger we could face. "We don't take our cues from anti-semites do we?" Why on earth did you assume I did? I was merely pointing out that anti-semites will often generalize about Jews from a few, i.e. Madoff, and that if we do the same about Muslims, we're just as guilty. "No, Molly, I said that just because antisemites will point to Madoff and see a Jewish swindler doesn’t mean that you can’t point to a Jihadist and see a Muslim murderer." When did I say we couldn't? You're arguing a point I never made. I would also say that if you were to break down Wall Street frauds over the past two decades, you'd find a high proportion of them were Jewish (remember the eighties?). To deny this is to deny that Jews make up a disproportionate number of people in finance--that is, the proportion of Jews in finance in no way reflects the proportion of Americans who are Jews. Now, do the frauds represent Jewish morals and ethics? No. Just like Hassan does not represent the majority of American muslims, even though there are extremists among them who wish harm on America or who want to commit terrorist acts. But like Wandrey, I refuse to say that this religion incites violence any more than any others do. There's just too much a history of religious prosecution in the Christian world--too many Christians have killed in the name of God even in this last century. In fact, they've hounded us far more than any muslims. Especially the Persians, who tolerated us for centuries far better than they did in Europe. Is there a growing extremist element in Islam. Yes, but I suspect it has a lot to do with political oppression and economic impoverishment. And as I said above, it's infected corners of American muslim society. Denying that is stupid. Anything beyond is hysteria. Especially based on the numbers above. "Well, they are scum and they are also in a tiny minority and most Orthodox Jews in Israel reject their actions and say so." The irony still fits. But you're right: It's not religiousity that makes them commit atrocities. It's extremism. Ironic, then, that those who think of themselves as the most religious are capable of breaking their religious laws. Anyway, in my previous post, I questioned why you linked to that article. I did find the article upsetting, was particularly angered by her image of a guard at a concentration camp flicking his cigarette into a pile of ashes of murdered Jews. The tone I took there is not reflective of my respect for your arguments. My argument comes down to this: Do you really believe that the majority of Muslims in this country wish harm on America? I've said so before and I'll say it again: Political correctness can be a dangerous thing, as Hassan proves. But tarring with a wide brush can also lead to danger.

- MOLLYSIMON

November 22, 2009 at 8:47pm

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Jhildner, I recommend to you Molly Simon's post. Not that you believe the majority of Muslim Americans wish harm on America, but that I am not the only one here who perceives that such a sentiment is afoot.

- dhurtado

November 22, 2009 at 9:54pm

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I am skipping Hurtado screed. Molly: "My argument comes down to this: Do you really believe that the majority of Muslims in this country wish harm on America? I've said so before and I'll say it again: Political correctness can be a dangerous thing, as Hassan proves. But tarring with a wide brush can also lead to danger." The poll you cited asked some pretty narrow questions. I'd like to see a poll that asks Muslims if they would like to see shariah law instituted in the US.

- jacksondyer

November 22, 2009 at 9:54pm

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How about answering Molly's question Jackson: "Do you really believe that the majority of Muslims in this country wish harm on America?"

- dhurtado

November 22, 2009 at 10:13pm

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"I would also say that if you were to break down Wall Street frauds over the past two decades, you'd find a high proportion of them were Jewish (remember the eighties?)." This is at best debatable at worst it's based on some pretty base stereotyping. Assuming you could define who is and who isn't Jewish on Wall Street I would like to see some actual figures about the percentage of Jews on Wall Street and out of those how many were charged and convicted of fraud. (The 80’s btw are getting to be closer to 30 than to 20 years from today.) So how about some real data, Molly? In your zeal to exonerate Muslims who have resurrected some of the worse antisemitic stereotypes about Jews. This isn’t the first time you did that, Molly. You can believe what you want about Muslims but as long as you are afraid to allow your son to walk about with a yarmulke in a Muslims neighborhood it’s all empty words.

- jacksondyer

November 22, 2009 at 11:35pm

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Speaking of "how many Jews." Not everyone thinks that it doesn't matter: "Too many Jews" "For the second time (the second time that I know of, that is), someone writing in the Independent thinks it is a matter of note that two members of the committee that will conduct the inquiry into the Iraq war are Jewish. On this occasion the person making the point is Oliver Miles:".... http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2009/11/too-many-jews.html

- jacksondyer

November 22, 2009 at 11:46pm

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You're moving the goal posts, Jackson. I gave you the best there is. Though I'd love some numbers (I'll try to find them) on how many Christian fundamentalists (and not-so-fundamentalists) think America is a Christian nation. And who believe that America should be led by Christian law. So far, Huckabee's polling strongest among the Repubs. Much more worrisome than Palin, actually, who's second. He stands a chance of being their candidate. And he doesn't believe in evolution. That scares me. By the way, I wouldn't let my son wear a kippah in a black neighborhood, either. For the same reason I wouldn't let him wear one in an Arab neighborhood.

- MOLLYSIMON

November 23, 2009 at 1:35am

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Jackson, Interesting and depressing link, by the way.

- MOLLYSIMON

November 23, 2009 at 1:36am

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Well that's an interesting proposition there, Molly. And so what influences would you consider the current American jurisprudence system to have brought us to where we are today? I also wonder what a Christian law might look like. I rather expect that it would be subject to a kind of scrutiny and contention in an evolving kind of way. Much like what we have today. Proviso being Judeo-Christian in character. But then maybe you have some better idea. How about it?

- jacko

November 23, 2009 at 12:36pm

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My apologies. So what influences do you think primary as having shaped the legal system which we enjoy today? Etc...

- jacko

November 23, 2009 at 12:42pm

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I would say that this statement: "By the way, I wouldn't let my son wear a kippah in a black neighborhood, either. For the same reason I wouldn't let him wear one in an Arab neighborhood." does not comport well with this statement: "My point is that Marty is being an hysteric. And that the vast majority of muslims in this country are patriotic and mean no harm." I know she speaks of blacks and Arabs in one statement and of Muslims in the second, but I get a sneaking suspicion that she wouldn't allow her son a kippa even in a Pakistani community. In other words, any neigbourhood with a markedly Islamic population. My question is, if Marty is hysterical, paranoid and bigoted in his statement, what can we make of Molly's statements? Is it about the difference between theory and practice? That is, in theory, most of the Muslims are peaceful but it is no contradiction simultaneously to take precautions in case they are not? I mean, I really don't understand. Perhaps MS would be so kind as to explain why it is wrong for Marty to say what he said but right for Molly to say what she said?

- noga1

November 23, 2009 at 2:14pm

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Noga, honey, it's called called class and money. I'm sure he'd get the shit beaten out of him in an Appalachian neighborhood--once they figured out what he was. And by the way, being an anti-semite doesn't preclude love of one's country--which is my main point--even though it may seem paradoxical to love one's country and hate certain inhabitants. There are plenty of bigots who fought bravely in World War II. Go figure.

- MOLLYSIMON

November 23, 2009 at 8:00pm

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Oh really? I must have missed that class thingy, since the "white working class" (or whatever it is you call them in your place) did not seem to feature in your statement that "I wouldn't let my son wear a kippah in a black neighborhood, either. For the same reason I wouldn't let him wear one in an Arab neighborhood." And BTW, I thought Arab Muslim Americans are doing very well in the US, and are more likely to belong to the middle classes than "those classes" you speak of. Why would they mind your "class and money"?

- noga1

November 23, 2009 at 8:41pm

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Or what about the middle-class whites--the ones who chased my older, semitic-looking brother (yarmukah-less, no less) down the street, calling him a dirty Kike. Sorry, America's a complicated place. There are lots of places Jews aren't welcome--from working-class Deerfield to middle-class Dedham. And there are lots of places we've been able to succeed beyond our wildest imaginations. But if you want to put all the hate onto the Arabs because it fits your cramped world-view, go ahead. Miss counting any more angels on the head of that pin?

- MOLLYSIMON

November 23, 2009 at 10:04pm

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In what year was your brother chased down the street by people with baseball bats?

- jacksondyer

November 23, 2009 at 11:45pm

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"But if you want to put all the hate onto the Arabs because it fits your cramped world-view, go ahead. " Sorry. That wasn't me. That was you, when you said: "By the way, I wouldn't let my son wear a kippah in a black neighborhood, either. For the same reason I wouldn't let him wear one in an Arab neighborhood." After you scolded Marty for uttering the exact same sentiment : "I Do Not Say That All Muslims Are Terrorists, But I Have Noticed That An Alarmingly High Proportion Of Terrorists Are Muslim" If you genuinely disagreed with Marty, you would never ever have made that statement. Which to me suggests total lack of self-awareness at best and hypocrisy at worst. Perhaps you shouldn't rush in so fast to hammer others, before you actually untangle your own convictions, eh?

- noga1

November 24, 2009 at 8:51am

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dhurtado, The question of the extent of radical Islam is a factual one that should not get us worked up. I raised before one data point you didn't like suggesting that there is perhaps greater support for radical Islam among Muslims in the Muslim world than you supposed when you characterized such supporters as a "tiny minority." Even putting that debate to the side, we see other data points that are troublesome: The imposition of Sharia law is widely supported in the Muslim world, and misogyny, antisemitism, and repressive, Islamic government and culture are plainly endemic -- no poll required. You ask whether radical Islam is "representative" of Muslims. I take you to mean, do I think that violent Jihad typifies Muslims? I don't think so, but I think some other horrible things do typify Muslim beliefs in some places, and, although terrorism does not typify Muslims, sympathy with religious violence may well be more widespread than you suppose. But my comments were never about the character of Muslims, but rather the character of Islam. I notice you use those two things interchangeably, but they're not. Some religious beliefs and traditions are more congenial to certain evils than others. To deny that is to assume, strangely, that every belief system is equally good. Jihad and all those other sins I mentioned have, I fear, a comfortable home in the Islamic faith, and that the radicals may be getting their religion more right than the moderates. Christianity is a trickier business, because the Bible is a self-contradictory smorgasbord. It *requires* picking and choosing. But, the overall thrust of Jesus's message is plausibly universal love, and that is a well-supported reading of the actual materials. A Christian can argue to the homophobe that he really is placing undue emphasis on a few passages to the exclusion of the whole spirit of the thing. I'm making the suggestion here -- though, as I said initially, I think I would have to know more to make it a definitive verdict -- that it's somewhat harder for the Muslim of peace to similarly make an honest, rigorous, theological argument that Islam really is a religion of peace. It may well be easier for the bad guys to rack up a lot more debating points, if both sides accept at the outset that Islam is the true faith and that the Koran is the inerrant word of God. When I say that, I'm sensitive to the following: I'm not an expert, so these are tentative notions and not definitive conclusions. Further, even if I were an expert, these statements impugning Islam-as-religion would be seen by some as greatly insulting. But, we're back to my initial point that it's not bigotry in my view to criticize bad ideas, and I think that we could use a lot more frank, inter-faith, public discussion about religious beliefs and ideas, and that such discussion, in order to be honest, must have room for criticism.

- jhildner1

November 24, 2009 at 4:14pm

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Well, J, I take it that you don't know, any more than I do, that the Koran and other Islamic holy writings are any less a "smorgasbord" than is the Bible (particularly when you factor in the Old Testament). For all I know, the Muslim Jihadists are cherry-picking from the Islamic holy writings in the same way that the violent homophobe is cherry-picking from the Bible. That said, my perception regarding the ills of Arab/Islamic societies is the same as yours. But it is not my purpose here to try to analyze the nature of Islamic societies or to compare them to other societies. My point has been very narrow, and it goes back to how the discussions on these several threads began. In the wake of the Fort Hood shootings, certain commentators, Peretz among them, expressed acute irritation that other commentators cautioned against jumping to the conclusion that Hasan was an Islamic terrorist. For the Peretz types, the fact that Hasan is Muslim was sufficient to raise a presumption of Islamic terrorism, and the subsequent allegation that he yelled "Allah Akbhar" at the time of the shooting was enough to cinch it. Others objected that we needed more information before drawing that conclusion. Some of them feared that a perception that he was an Islamic terrorist would foment discrimination and even violence against Muslim Americans. So they didn't want to draw an inference of Jihadist violence unless and until it was shown to be true. That spawned the discussion of whether Muslims are inherently violent toward non Muslims. I think that is a dangerous notion. And I am highly skeptical that it is true.

- dhurtado

November 24, 2009 at 8:17pm

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This seems to fit into this thread: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdbZADTxQOQ&feature=player_embedded

- noga1

November 25, 2009 at 9:48am

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Yes. What the clip seems to demonstrate is that mainstream Muslims, at least in American, condemned Hasan's crimes.

- dhurtado

November 25, 2009 at 10:03pm

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That is, at least in "America."

- dhurtado

November 25, 2009 at 10:13pm

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If anyone is still reading this thread: "Religious-biased motivated hate crimes 2008" Anti-Jewish 1,013 Anti-Catholic 75 Anti-Protestant 56 Anti-Islamic 105 Anti-Other Religion 191 Anti-Multiple Religions, Group 65 Anti-Atheism/Agnosticism/etc. 14" **Total 1,519 ** From the FBI crime report. Given that the percentage of Jews in the US is miniscule compared to other minority groupings the anti Jewish crime numbers are amazingly high. Notice the relatively low anti Muslim crime numbers in this report!

- jacksondyer

November 26, 2009 at 11:41am

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