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In reality, Islamist enmity toward the infidel West, such as was manifest on 9/11, is not a consequence of a small, unrepresentative group “hijacking” a religion whose “teachings are good and peaceful.” On the contrary, the kind of Islamist hostility that drove Islamist terrorists to act on 9/11 and all too many other occasions is deeply rooted in centuries of Islamic tradition.
He goes on to make the point that Muslims really are trying to take over the world.
I think there's a couple of things wrong with this perspective. First, looking through Islamic religious texts from a few hundred years ago is not a particularly good way of finding out what 1 billion people think today. If you look through the old religious texts of Christianity and, yes, Judaism, you will find much of the same sentiment expressed by almost everyone. Most, if not all, religions consider all other religions illegitimate, and would think it a good thing if everyone switched to their own. Even Judaism, which does not require conversion of non-adherents, espouses the belief that when the Mashiach comes, all will see its truth, and the Jewish religion will reign supreme over the entire world. It would be a big mistake to conclude from this, however, that Judaism really seeks to take over the world.
Second, I doubt most Muslims are aware of even a few of these texts, much less subscribe to and act on their contents. Following Rubinstein's logic would be like holding all Jews responsible for the opinion of R' Elchanan in one of his tshuvot.
Of course, there are a whole bunch of Muslims out there who do think it's important to kill people, but it makes more sense to think of them as crazy people than to assume they are representative of the feelings of 1 billion people. Most sane people do not find it tenable to kill for their beliefs. The fact that these few Muslims do should not make us think that Islam per se requires such an attitude, but that some crazy people, whose particular pathology happens to take an Islamic tint, do.
It's worth noting that religious induced violence is no stranger to any of the Abrahamic religions. I don't think that anybody would think it fair to say that religious crazies like Baruch Goldstein or Yigal Amir demonstrate that Judaism is inherently violent. And, of course, Christianity is no stranger to bloodshed. In fact, when considering whether it makes sense to think of Muslims in a conspiracy to take over the world, it may be instructive to ask from whom they are taking it. Probably the Christians, who have already taken it over. And how did they take it over? Not by giving out free candy. (Although that was definitely part of it.)
12 comments:
Enlightenment modernity was very good at getting groups to drop extremely illiberal doctrines by making it the price of admission. Modern liberalism, by assuming that everyone should be allowed in as a matter of birthright, ironically has taken away the main motive for liberalization. A Muslim has no reason to abandon or denounce doctrines such as that apostates deserve to die because he knows that such beliefs will not cause Westerners to kill him or even strip him of full citizenship rights.
>A Muslim has no reason to abandon or denounce doctrines such as that apostates deserve to die because he knows that such beliefs will not cause Westerners to kill him or even strip him of full citizenship rights.
Well, firstly, that's only assuming he held such beliefs in the first place. I don't think that we consider Reform Jews to be Jews that decided to give up their fundamentalist intolerance in exchange for joining country clubs. Rather, most of them never cared what the Gemara said about saving the life of a gentile on Shabbos.
Second, there are loads of reasons why someone would want to join a liberal culture. If anything, I don't really see the incentive of someone coming from a restrictive culture to a liberal culture, full of the things he professes to hate, and using the democratic methods he despises so much to attempt to create another restrictive space. He should just save himself the trouble and stay where he was. If someone is immigrating to an open society, one assumes it's because he or she sees value in living in the open society - whether it be economic freedom or sexual liberation or whatever. Sure, you have your evangelical types, but most people coming to open societies are not attracted by the openness because they're open to being closed.
The real genius of liberal societies is not that they force you to assimilate - such coercion would likely only toughen one's resolve - but that they make assimilation look so awesome. We don't mandate that you check your fundamentalism at the door, as a "price of admission." It's completely up to you. But you'll find it very difficult for yourself on the one hand sow your wild oats, while on the other, believing that sexuality should be repressed, for example.
It's why I think generally people are far too quick to write off liberal societies as weak.
Back in the nineteenth century, one of the reasons the Reformers gave for dropping Zion from the siddur was precisely so that no one would question their patriotism.
You underestimate the value of having other people tolerate you while you can get away with not tolerating them. It is the perfect system, you get all the benefits without having to pay any of the consequences. I do not assume that all or even most Muslims are anti-West fundamentalists. That being said anti-West fundamentalists have been capable of exploiting the system for their benefit. The Danish cartoons and the Southpark Mohammed piece being censored are good examples of this. Radical Muslims can make threats safe in the knowledge that there will be no consequences.
>Back in the nineteenth century, one of the reasons the Reformers gave for dropping Zion from the siddur was precisely so that no one would question their patriotism.
But my argument there would be that Germany in the 19th century was not really that tolerant a place, because it made such measures feel necessary. Therefore, it doesn't possess all the strengths of a truly tolerant liberal society.
>Radical Muslims can make threats safe in the knowledge that there will be no consequences.
Well, that's not entirely true. Although the United States is leery of criminalizing threats, our fellow Western societies across the Atlantic are not so restrained.
Additionally, if you actually engage in violence or a conspiracy to commit violence you will find yourself in all sorts of consequences, especially if you're not a citizen.
Moreover, what you say about the protection that liberalism gives to radical Islamists applies equally well to radicals of all faiths.
My argument, I guess, is in the long run it won't really matter. A liberal state gains more by being more accepting than by being less tolerant. Sure a couple of goons may get away, but they will have an increasingly harder time convincing others to follow them. Most people will choose the Great Satan and a good time over a pious life on the outside.
I tend to try to strike a balance between an ideal liberal State and allowing it to function. In essence I want the most liberal State that can maintain itself as a liberal State without collapsing. There is something to be said about a situation where you have to think twice about what you say lest someone think you are rejecting the legitimacy of the government. This goes for radical Haredim as well as for Muslims.
Whatever problems the United States may have it pales in comparison to Europe where they have completely ill prepared to handle Islamic pressure.
How about having a liberal State that makes sure that it is actual liberals who benefit from it and not just ideological parasites, which play the system? For example I offer the following proposal by Orson Scott Card: http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2007-10-28-1.html
>There is something to be said about a situation where you have to think twice about what you say lest someone think you are rejecting the legitimacy of the government.
No there isn't. That would be a terrible state! Honestly, what kind of libertarian are you? :)
>How about having a liberal State that makes sure that it is actual liberals who benefit from it and not just ideological parasites, which play the system?
Because that kind of defeats the whole point of liberalism. It's not hard to see how the term "anti-liberal" would just be applied to all subversive or unpopular people.
More directly, though, a few radical Muslims don't really pose a threat to liberal societies. The same constraints apply to them as to anyone else. I.e. if they want to murder someone, they'll find out pretty quickly that a liberal justice system couldn't care less about their religious feelings. Additionally, why would I want to live like a violent ascetic when I could live like a hedon?
>Orson Scott Card
I found his essay pretty stupid. I think it's all a piece of this Daniel Pipes/Mark Steyn hyper-paranoia of the Muslim threat.
Basically, he draws a distinction between Muslims and everyone else, for pretty much no reason, and says that Muslims are uniquely radical, and that therefore their radicals are super-crazy, etc and therefore we must subject anyone who calls themselves a Muslim to unique regulation. It's the most anti-liberal argument you can make.
I operate with a two sided liberalism. I will tolerate anyone willing to accept the legitimacy of the liberal State, for everyone else it is a State of war. Just as I have little interest in feeding people who wish to simply rely on government welfare without putting into the pot, I have no interest in protecting people who are not willing to give me the same in return. Card is very specific that he is willing to apply this logic to all religions. Notice that his starting premise is a defense of the hard ball tactics used to bring the Mormon Church in line and he is a Mormon. For my own, I would actively seek to use these tactics against Haredim.
>Card is very specific that he is willing to apply this logic to all religions.
He says that, but he doesn't mean it. Even though he recognizes that most Muslims have no such desire to kill infidels, he believes that the literal wording of the Koran makes these views "mainstream" Islam. Therefore anyone professing to be a Muslim, either an individual or organization, has to be regulated. There are plenty of Catholics and Protestants out there who do crazy violent things - why mustn't the Protestant congregations face the same scrutiny? He argues this even though he says that Islam is a decentralized faith with no Church that makes binding decisions in the US. Indeed, he argues this, he says, because of that. We might have something to talk about if the default assumption was that if you worshipped a religion then you don't desire to kill anyone - unless proven otherwise. But that does not seem to be his assumption vis a vis Islam. Instead, if you're a Muslim, we assume you want to kill infidels. But if you're a Protestant, we assume you belong to a loving faith.
Secondly, even if we would apply this across the board, it's stupid. Either we are worried that you will kill somebody, in which case we have actual conspiracy law, so we don't need special religious conspiracy law. Or, you're just a big talker, or, like OJs, think that you have to kill Amalekites but are uncomfortable with the idea or something like that. In any case, you're not going to actually kill anyone, so why should we involve the government in religion?
>Notice that his starting premise is a defense of the hard ball tactics used to bring the Mormon Church in line and he is a Mormon.
His justification for why the US outlawed polygamy is stupid, and telling. (I would say the Supreme Court was stupid, too.) The point isn't because the rest of us find polygamy distasteful, but because your right to contract, or marriage (however you understand marriage) ends at my face. Polygamous marriages are inherently detrimental to the equality between the sexes, and will lead to abusive relationships vis a vis fathers and children, husbands and wives, etc., not to mention the hell it would pay with the estate system. All these things the state has a right to monitor. A bunch of self-righteous jackasses that talk about killing "infidels" is no more dangerous than yeshiva bochrim in the dorm talking about how they'd like to stone the mishkav-zacharniks, and do not require state monitoring or scrutiny.
There no regulation of Muslims being called for. All we want are a few basic statements of principle from heads of major Islamic organizations, mainly that they are committed to working in an open society and are willing to allow Muslims to convert without any fear of retributive violence. The same thing would apply to Protestants and Jews. For example I would strip of their citizenship any Haredi who believed that non-Jews are a different species of being from Jews.
Sorry for the late response, but it's been a crazy couple of days. Not enough time for thoughtful blogging.
>There no regulation of Muslims being called for.
Maybe. I may have read too much into Card's approval of the Mormon treatment - where the Church was unincorporated and their assets seized.
>All we want are a few basic statements of principle from heads of major Islamic organizations, mainly that they are committed to working in an open society and are willing to allow Muslims to convert without any fear of retributive violence.
Firstly, from what I understand, this is roughly the stated position of most large Muslim organizations working in the US. I might be wrong, however.
Second, what good would this really do you? Terrorists tend not to be members in good standing of the Muslim equivalent of the RCA. Let's say CAIR agrees to make your declarations - does that stop the next underpants bomber? As Card recognized, Islam does not have any church that can speak with any authority - there's no way to enforce CAIR's fatwas on anyone. For this to be meaningful, you'd have to have a state that would be much more involved in individual Muslims lives in particular.
Third, I'm opposed to punishing thought. (I think you go further than Card - Card would just take away their tax-exempt status, but you would strip them of citizenship.) To me, up until someone actually commits an act, I don't think the state should get involved. If a Muslim or a Charedi wants to think me life undeserving of life, the state shouldn't interfere until he takes such action as to render his beliefs practicable. Again, I feel that current criminal law is adequate protection from religious violence.
Fourth, letting the state decide which beliefs are acceptable and which are not, strikes me very much as regulation of religion. From a neutral standpoint, all religions contain intolerant and ridiculous elements. Why stop at refusing to recognize conversions? Many Muslims practice female circumcision (or genital mutilation, if you prefer), as do many Jewish males. Mormons believe some pretty crazy stuff, if you take the Book of Mormon at face value (which is how Card takes the Koran). Perhaps the state should administer an oath of office to Mormons that they not believe crazy batsh*t things? I think a devout Mormon President who believes that Jesus appeared to a 19th century drunken frontiersman outside of Buffalo, NY presents a bigger threat to democracy than some pimply teenagers making threats on a chat forum. And, mutatis mutandis, for other religions. I worry that Card and you have drawn some strange circle around Islam (maybe not you so much) rendering it uniquely violent, and uniquely threatening to Western democracy. I find his distinction between Christians belief that in the "end of days" all people will be Christians and the Muslim belief that everyone else are infidels to be not very convincing. One person's "divine intervention" is another person's future fatwa. How does he think this "divine intervention" will play out, anyway? Have you seen the video game Tribulation Force?
This has nothing to do with “crazy” beliefs. It is just a matter of acting in good faith. Are the members of various religious groups serious about living with other people from other faiths in a liberal society? If I do not believe that you are acting in good faith, I do not care what religion you belong to, I am not going to be party to any citizen agreement with you. CAIR would have to make statements and they are going to have to convince me. Otherwise it becomes a “them or me” choice for the rest of society.
I have not played the video game Tribulation Force, but I have read some of the books and I would point out that in a strange sense it is quite “philo-Semitic.” These are the sort of apocalyptic crazies I can agree to be citizens with.
>It is just a matter of acting in good faith. Are the members of various religious groups serious about living with other people from other faiths in a liberal society? If I do not believe that you are acting in good faith, I do not care what religion you belong to, I am not going to be party to any citizen agreement with you.
Part of the difficulty here is what you mean by "good faith". To me, a well-ordered liberal society functions not so much because every single person in it has agreed to the social contract, because it's plainly obvious that everyone hasn't even thought about it. It functions because there are rules (which everyone is mostly aware of) that govern societal interactions, and the state possesses methods for ensuring such compliance as mandated by the rules.
So, again, I don't care if CAIR makes a "declaration". All I care about is that the law provides great enough disincentive for anyone at CAIR to promote violence in such a way as to make violence probable. I believe the law does this already.
As you've already pointed out, to you, it's all about trust. So, even if CAIR makes a very "tolerant" declaration ("We love converts to Judaism!"), there's still a good chance that you would not trust them. In which case, we're stripping citizenship on the basis of ill-defined guidelines of who and who isn't "trustworthy".
Can I really trust an evangelical Christian who says he really loves Jews, when I know he believes that in the future I'll be faced with a choice of eternal hell-fire or Jesus Christ? What would his reaction be if his pastor told him that future was now, and to offer me my eternal hellfire?
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