Cross-posted over at the Corner:
While President Obama’s comment that bin Laden was “not a Muslim leader” may have made good sense as propaganda, as a statement of fact it was nonsense.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Irshad Manji reacts to the president’s assertion:
Bin Laden and his followers represent a real interpretation of Islam that begs to be challenged relentlessly and visibly. Why does this happen so rarely? “Moderate” Muslims are part of the problem. As Martin Luther King Jr. taught many white Americans, in times of moral crisis, moderation cements the status quo. Today, what Islam needs is not more “moderates” but more self-conscious “reformists.” It is reformists who will bring to my faith the debate, dissent and reinterpretation that have carried Judaism and Christianity into the modern world. Sounding the call for reform is no way to win a popularity contest in the Muslim community. After the 2005 London transit bombings, I delivered a radio commentary disagreeing with Feisal Abdul Rauf, the moderate American imam who later fronted the campaign for an Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero. He had issued a statement about the London terror strikes, assuring journalists that according to the Quran, “Whoever kills a human being…it is as if he has killed all humankind.”
“Not quite,” I explained with regret. “The full verse reads, ‘Whoever kills a human being, except as punishment for murder or other villainy in the land, shall be regarded as having killed all humankind” (my emphasis). For the British jihadis, I went on, “villainy in the land” describes the boot prints of U.S. soldiers in Iraqi soil. This otherwise humane Quranic passage gives aspiring holy warriors a loophole to exploit. I closed by suggesting that moderate Muslims join moderate Jews and Christians in admitting to the nasty side of all our scriptures. The following week, a Muslim acquaintance emailed me. Peeved that I would “go after moderate Muslims,” she curtly counseled me to “wash laundry in the backyard”—that is, to discuss our internal affairs privately. But what takes place among Muslims affects countless lives outside the fold, so our business is everyone’s business. When it is “moderates,” not extremists, who treat you as a traitor for advocating liberal democratic values, something has corrupted the moderates themselves.
That something is identity politics. Even in the seemingly tolerant Muslim communities of America, the politics of identity stands in the way of reinterpretation and reform
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Not for the first time. Not for the last.
Read the whole thing.
“Bin Laden and his followers represent a real interpretation of Islam that begs to be challenged relentlessly and visibly. Why does this happen so rarely? “Moderate” Muslims are part of the problem.”
Moderate muslims dies in tens of thousands every year for doing just that. The overwhelming majority of victims of islamic terrorism is moderate muslims. I find this quoted statement rude and obnoxious.
I have a hunch a big number of fundamentalist Muslims falls victim to terrorist attacks, too, every year. Al Qaeda-style terrorism is pretty indiscriminate and doesn’t usually quiz its victims with regards to their opinions.
It strikes me as a pretty empty complaint anyway, the fact that Islamist terror mostly kills Muslims is pretty irrelevant to the problem the author points out. The unwillingness of many “moderate” Muslims to tackle and accept the dark side of their religion and the security risk it poses, especially when in dialogue with outsiders is a simple reality. I personally know very moderate Muslims who are still convinced Israel rather than Muslims did 9/11.
It’s no different from how many middle-class blacks refuse to condemn the criminal underclass mentality dominant in many black communities and instead focus on supposed systemic injustices etc. And in both instances the culprit is rightfully as the author points out, identity politics.
The supposed “unwillingness” of moderate muslims to address the fanatics in their midst is only a problem to those who don’t know that the problem is being addressed all the time in the Muslim world.
Seriously. Watch Al Jazeera for a few hours and you’ll see the issue being addressed. I complained about this alleged “unwillingness” to a Muslim friend back in 2004 and he looked at me like I had two heads.
Irshad Manji has been selling books based on this b.s. for years, which shows that merely asking a question in the right way or stating that something is such-and-such without providing an ounce of evidence can turn a non-issue into a “legitimate” one in this country merely by being picked up by the pundits of one “side.”
There’s your “identity politics” for ya right there, MikeH. You think you know something about an issue because you’ve been spoon-fed a narrative. Look out for that beam in your eye.
(By the way, belief that Israel is responsible for 9/11 has nothing to do with “bin Ladenism,” or “militant Islam,” or whatever you’re calling it. If anything, it’s a slap to bin Laden’s face to give credit to a non-Muslim. What do you supposed those people were cheering that day on the streets of Damascus? If you want to prove that someone is a religious radical, you need to point to something religious about them that is radical, not an entirely separate issue altogether.)
Sean, weren’t you the guy ripping Razhib Khan for supposedly not knowing anything about real Muslims? I’m surprised you even dare to show your face here again after your crap got exposed that badly.
One would think at least you’d be less of an assumptious prat after that episode. I mean what is it with you and knowing better than Muslims what Muslims think or do? I keep seeing liberal non-Muslim Islamophiles attack Muslim critics of Islam. It must be some sort of pathology. I guess it’s just like a black Republican is an Uncle Sam to them, like it was okay for white liberals to mock Condoleeza Rice and Clarence Thomas in racial ways?
Similarly, you assume that I am “spoon-fed” a narrative, because of course a different view from yours cannot be based on anything but that. Maybe you’re the one spoon-fed a narrative? Who knows.
Regardless, your post doesn’t really offer anything except “oh but I know this Muslim writer is full of crap, I know this because a Muslim friend told me something bla bla”. No evidence, not even a real argument.
And it doesn’t take a genius to see the connection between Muslims denying Muslims did 9/11 and unwillingness to discuss or accept mass-murderous terrorism as a a problem directly connected to their religion. Think about it, maybe run it past a Muslim buddy to see what they think?
First, I’d ask how many of the “moderate” Muslims killed by terror were actually Shiite Muslims killed by Sunni Terror, or vice versa. There’s a lot of that in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and that hardly counts as being martyred for the sake of moderation.
Second, I’d like to point out, again, that terrorism is really a small concern. In the West, dying in a terror attack is about as likely to happen as getting struck by lightning or winning the lottery. outside of 2001, in fact, I’d bet that odds are better for lightning and lotteries.
The real concern is Molly Norris, Ezra Levant, Kurt Westergaard, Theo Van Gogh and others. THIS is the threat to our liberty, not the chance of dying in another 9/11. Yes, the two are not entirely unrelated, but the bigger consequence that both conservatives and liberals need to look to is the threat to free expression, and “moderate” Muslims are just as hostile to any criticism as their “fundamentalist” coreligionists.
What I want to know is, where are the left-wing Muslims?
@MikeH: Yep. I’m the guy who assumed that Razib, writing as “David Hume,” was not a Muslim. We chatted that one out, and both realized we had assumed more than was warranted. I’m not surprised you missed that.
I’m also not surprised that you missed the way Razib engaged me after that episode: thoughtfully, and with more respect than either of us showed at first blush. That’s because some people on this site know how to dial it back when it turns out the other person does know what they are talking about. Razib established that. You haven’t.
Now, on to your argument (or lack thereof): “Regardless, your post doesn’t really offer anything except “oh but I know this Muslim writer is full of crap, I know this because a Muslim friend told me something bla bla”. No evidence, not even a real argument.”
Again, I invite you to watch Al-fricking-Jazeera some time. It’s chock-full of the very sort of “moderate Muslims addressing the problems within their midst” that you claim isn’t happening, and it’s by far the most popular TV network in the Middle East.
The newspapers in Cairo, Beirut, Kuwait, Dubai and Doha (the cities whose pressed I’m familiar with) all print this stuff on a regular basis. Al Azhart University, the center of Sunni Islamic Study, and possibly the oldest university on earth, has been pushing back against violence in the name of Islam for decades.
My only point was that the claim that moderate Muslims are “unwilling” to address the extremists in their midst is poppycock. It wasn’t true 9 years ago when the claim first appeared, and it is exponentially less true now. All they lack is media coverage iin this country for their efforts–but of course, it’s far more useful to keep scaring people with the spectre of secretly extreme Muslims.
Re: Spoon-dfed narratives: The fact that you believe that not much is being done is obviously the result of something other than careful study of the issue, therefore, you got it from somewhere, and you believed it. That’s what I meant by you having been “spoon-fed a narrative.” You want to contest me on this, Mr. Sneering Condescension? Do you actually believe you reached your conclusion based on something other than US media of some sort? Please. At least acknowledge where you get your information.
@Poli: How nice it is to write this: Good points. I’m not sure “moderation” is the sort of thing that lends itself to martyrdom :-), but either way I’ve never noticed any difference in local attitudes toward terrorists based on what sect they belong to, nor in attitudes of the family of the deceased.
And it can’t be said enough: terrorists pose a vanishingly small threat to America, and Muslim terrorists an even smaller one. The threat they do pose is in getting us to change the way our society functions.
There you go with your assumptions again. I don’t even live in America and I interact with Muslims every day. I highly doubt my views would be what they are if I knew the problem only from the New York Times or any other U.S. media source.
And the problem we’re talking about is that Muslims – in my experience both from utterances of Muslims I know and Muslim community leaders whose proclamations I am quite familiar with, living fairly close to a mosque – are unwilling to accept that the extremism and the resultant violence are not an aberration coming from disgruntled extremists but rather a direct consequence of many of the beliefs that form the religion of Islam and a pretty fair conclusion to take from study of the Koran and other Islamic writing. There is of course some differentiation and there are some Muslims who address these points for sure, but that’s not the consensus I experience. What I get are arguments designed to either downplay the issue, distance it from the religious substance (and themselves) by making it into a social and political issue, deflect blame on outside forces (Colonialism!), make it out to be an issue of a tiny “misguided” or “confused” minority. In fact I’ve gotten that vibe from you in previous comments.
By the way, I have to go with the take of the Islamic associations here or the fittingly named local Al Aqsa Islamic Center rather than discussion panels on Al Jazeera.
“And the problem we’re talking about[*] is that Muslims… are unwilling to accept that the extremism and the resultant violence are not an aberration coming from disgruntled extremists but rather a direct consequence of many of the beliefs that form the religion of Islam and a pretty fair conclusion to take from study of the Koran and other Islamic writing.”
You make the same fallacy here that some of the “New Atheists” make when they attribute behavior to religious doctrines, without considering cultural factors that, among other things, emphasize one set of doctrines over another. (I’m echoing Razib’s point that “Religion emerges as a social enterprise through social consensus, and references to scripture are often post hoc rationalizations.” http://secularright.org/SR/wordpress/2011/03/11/literal-reductiveness-angelic-and-demonic/#more-5528) It is simply naive and simplistic to cherry-pick a passage from the Koran and assert that it’s all the religion’s fault.
Which is another way of saying that if Christians and Jews were as slavish in their interpretation of the Bible as Muslims are imagined to be in their interpretation of the Koran, they would be stoning their children to death for disobedience all across the bible belt.
News Flash: the reason your Muslim friends don’t accept your characterization of their book as the source of bin Laden’s doctrines is because they disagree completely with your conclusion. Is there violence in the Koran? Yes. And it’s deplorable. But more deplorable than Joshua’s genocide of the Canaanites in Exodus? Yet somehow, Christians have found a way to (mostly) quit with the religiously-motivated violence. Methinks there is more than religion going on here….
Now then, given that religion isn’t the only contributing factor to violence, what could the other causes be? Colonialism? Well, there have been an awful lot of explicitly anti-colonialist writings from colonized people. You don’t suppose they had a point, do you? Social issues? Those couldn’t possibly affect the way religion is interpreted at a given time and place, could they?
“Naw, couldn’t be! That’s Librul talk!”
That’s what you sound like when you dismiss out of hand the notion that a people’s poverty, lack of opportunity, history of enslavement, etc. might possibly affect the way they behave. And when you scoff at the notion that anything but religion is the cause. It’s the response of a simpleton.
Btw, isn’t part of the case for a free market that the masses in places where there is no opportunity yearn to have said opportunities? Wouldn’t people with boots on their necks be more likely to lash out? As a conservative, you should be all over the idea that tyranny is a driver for outbursts of violence, or at least that such episodes are less likely in a true “land of opportunity.” Why is it that only western businessmen get credit for being adversely affected by big government from some people?
* For the record, the statement I responded to, which prompted your response, was the idea that the problem isn’t being addressed by Muslims. You are the one who shifted the argument to “they refuse to acknowledge that Islam has anything to do with it.” Please cut out the informal fallacies.