Islamophobia, Sam Harris and Glenn Greenwald

One of the more maddening aspects of modern discourse is the attempt to interject the concept of racism into internecine ideological conflicts where it really isn’t appropriate. For example, some anti-Zionists label Zionism racism, and the state of Israel a racist state. And yet conversely, some supporters of the Zionist project label those who reject or criticize aspects (or the totality) of the state of Israel anti-Semites, a subset of racism. Though some of these accusations are justifiable (e.g., many ‘National Religious’ elements of Israeli society exhibit views analogous to racial nationalism, while much of the anti-Israel sentiment in the Arab world is crassly anti-Semitic), in many cases the accusation is misleading, and dodges the substantive issues at the heart of the debate (Arabs are second class citizens in Israel, but non-Muslims are much more marginalized in neighboring states, making accusations of prejudice seem rich to me). For example I put myself in the category of someone who is skeptical of the long term project of a Jewish democratic state in the Middle East. Yet I also do not think the ‘Israel issue’ is particularly important in the grand scheme of world affairs, and believe that the fixation on the oppression of Palestinian Arabs specifically is driven by ethnocentrism (Arab Muslims privileging their own concerns, Muslims identifying with co-religionists) and the character of the oppressors (elite Israeli society is still Western oriented, and therefore Western critics judge it by the standards of Western society, not Middle Eastern society).

These issues are even more prominent today when it comes to the Muslim question. The reality is that the Islamic world is hell for non-Muslims, and fear of Islamic populations is justified on empirical grounds. Not only is the Arab Spring moving in an illiberal religious-populist direction, but atheists are being killed in Bangladesh, and anti-Christan pogroms are regular occurrences in Pakistan. Recently there has been a internet debate between Glenn Greenwald and Sam Harris on the question of “Islamophobia.”

Below the fold is a guest post on the issue from Jackson Doughart which I think is well worth ruminating upon.

Harris vs. Greenwald
By Jackson Doughart

This week, the secular liberal writers Sam Harris and Glenn Greenwald showcased a deep disagreement about Harris’s criticism of Islam. The feud began when Greenwald “tweeted” an article from al-Jazeera by Murtaza Hussain, which accused Harris and his fellow New Atheists of Islamophobia, based specifically on Harris’s claim from 2006 that the faction currently making the best sense of the threat posed by Islam is actually fascist, and not liberal, because so many Christian fundamentalists are able to appreciate the genuine beliefs of fanatical Muslims. Subsequently, Harris castigated Greenwald for supporting Hussein’s column, suggesting that it was a slander portraying him falsely as a racist. Now, Greenwald has published a lengthy post at The Guardian, articulating his belief that there is a pernicious relationship between the ideas of Harris & Co. and anti-Muslim sentiments.

Greenwald rightfully points out that his choice to circulate Hussain’s column did not necessary imply his endorsement thereof, not compel him to defend it. And he is also right to suggest that this exchange serves as an opportunity to open a debate about the relationship between criticism of Islam and irrational anti-Muslim animus. However, I think that Harris deserves to be defended from the charges laid in Greenwald’s own essay, especially given the effort he has made to clarify that the target of his objection is Islam, and not Muslims. But of course, it is that distinction that Greenwald is challenging. Given space limitations, I will focus on just three of Greenwald’s arguments, each of which are, in my view, faultily reasoned and do not support Greenwald’s thesis.

First, Harris’s claim that “Islam is uniquely threatening” apparently suggests irrational bigotry, and undermines his position of “rational atheism”. This complaint confuses the egalitarian nature of Harris’s starting point of subjecting all religions to reasoned criticism with his inegalitarian conclusion: that Islam is a more dangerous religion than others. On Greenwald’s account, an anti-religious argument must reach the conclusion that all religions are equally harmful in order to avoid the charge of bigotry. But surely what matters is the means of the argument, not the end. Otherwise, the books are cooked in favour of all religions being equally problematic, which is clearly not the case, and there would be no point in the atheist argument going any further than stating that all religions are false, which is a different claim entirely.

Furthermore, an insistence upon an “equality of outcomes” for comparative analyses of religion would open atheism to the actual variety of unsavoury reasoning that Mr Greenwald despises. An anti-Muslim bigot purporting to reason atheistically would, following the “equal outcomes” maxim, only have wildly exaggerate the harms of non-Islamic religions to justify making the same criticisms that Harris makes, only without the evidence that Harris has presented.

Secondly, Greenwald writes that Harris’s beliefs, whatever their origin, justify U.S. militarism and are therefore suspicious. This is an illogical criticism. As I understand it, Harris’s argument for the deployment of the American military against Islamic fundamentalism (in the context of Afghanistan) goes as follows:

P1 = The United States can use force, either preemptively or reactively, when it is legitimately threatened (as supported by international law).
P2 = Doctrines of fundamentalist Islam inherently threaten the United States because they motivate followers to commit acts of violence against her.
P3 = The Taliban regime was animated by doctrines of fundamentalist Islam, as evidenced by its harbouring of al-Qaeda until 2001.
Therefore, the United States was justified in using force against Afghanistan in 2001 and would be justified in doing so again in similar circumstances (i.e., where there would be an analogous circumstance to P3).

Greenwald’s argument, meanwhile, seems to be that because the conclusion is wrong, either P2 or P3 (perhaps both) is false. But he doesn’t actually address the claims themselves, except to maintain that they must be wrong since he disagrees with the conclusion. In order to be logical, he would have to attack the conclusion based on the faultiness of one of the premises. But doing so would be unhelpful to the case he wants to make — that Harris’s espousal of P2 is rooted in an antipathy or hostility toward Muslims. Clearly, evidence for that assertion would have to come from somewhere other than Harris’s reasoning here.

Thirdly, the policy prescriptions that follow from Harris’s condemnation of Islam (e.g., profiling Muslims at airports, the use of torture in some circumstances, and steadfast support of Israel) target Muslims, and can therefore, selon Greenwald, be rightfully described as anti-Muslim. But if Harris’s reasoning (apart from his motivations for reasoning in the way that he does) is correct, how could such policies target anyone but Muslims? Muslims are, after all, the followers of Islam, so if the policies against Islam are defensible on there own merit, how could the fact that Muslims are affected by them be an objection? If Greenwald disagrees with Harris on those policies, why not just debate the policies instead of attributing support for them to prejudice, especially when Harris has offered clear reasons for his position.

This last objection would be more convincing if membership in the group were involuntary, as in the case of ethnicity. But Islam is a set of chosen ideas that animate the people who believe them to behave in certain ways, utterly unlike an ethnic affiliation which is not chosen. On this ground alone, drawing any equivalence between racial prejudice and opposition to a religious belief is false.

Two final points: Greenwald uses the term ‘Islamophobia’ in his piece as though it were a legitimate concept, even though he acknowledges that criticism of Islam is legitimate (unless other religions are not subject to the same criticism) and makes a point of explaining that he is specifically referring to ‘anti-Muslim animus’. But ‘anti-Muslim animus’ and ‘Islamophobia’ are not, and cannot be, synonymous. The term Islamophobia lexically connotes an irrational fear of Islam, not Muslims (and as Ayaan Hirsi Ali has pointed out, there is nothing irrational about fearing Islam), and was intentionally coined by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation to refer to criticism of Islam, not animus toward Muslims. Using that expression lends credibility to the notion that there is something vicious about criticising Islam, when even Greenwald agrees that this is not the case.

Finally, Greenwald acknowledges that many people, including Muslims, do bad things ‘in the name of religion’. But this choice of words indicates that he is not actually conceding anything. The upshot is that Islamic fundamentalists do not commit acts of terror ‘in the name’ of Islam; they do it because of Islam, or at least because of their understanding of what Islam commands them to do. But the quarrel here is evidently with that interpretation of the faith, not merely the people who act according to it.

I write this defence as someone who disagrees profoundly with Sam Harris’s fundamental moral philosophy of consequentialism — a disagreement that I assume to be shared by Mr Greenwald. But Mr Harris’s appraisal of the threat posed by Islam (not uniquely, certainly, but nonetheless more pronouncedly than other faiths) is cogent, whatever its ideological or philosophical roots. Whether Harris is therefore right about policies that follow is an open question, but one whose answers do not intrinsically delegitimise his beliefs about Islam and certainly cannot convict him of any form of bigotry.