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Hope on the Islam Front
Two little pieces of what looks to me anyway like hopeful signs: that Europe is looking to Australia’s model for how to cope with immigration, and that there may be more atheist, agnostic or otherwise apostate Muslims than we know.
From Quillette, an interview with a Pakistani-Canadian Muslim writer, Ali Rizvi. A few good quotes to give the flavor:
Liberals have often squandered the opportunity to have an honest and morally responsible conversation about [Islam]. And by doing so, they left a void, which has been filled by opportunists from the far-Right, who want to have this dialogue in an irresponsible and xenophobic way.
Many freethinkers and disbelievers in the Muslim community who saw what happened to Salman Rushdie, even in the West, will think twice before coming out. Liberals are not supporting the people that they should be supporting, and they have compromised on their own values. That’s how terrorism works. They want to curb terrorism, but they’re not curbing it, they’re already victims of it.
But then, the Internet came around. Here in the West we use it mainly for sharing cat videos and we enjoy that, but for [Muslims in the Middle East], it is a window onto a world that they had no idea existed at all. These are people who are born and raised there, who didn’t go on vacation to the West like I did. Muslim youth globally are being more exposed to secular influences. They’re seeing Hollywood movies that are now uncensored, and they are thinking about these things, comparing them to their own life. And yes, the conservatives are very worried about this.
Rizvi sees the rise in extremism and terrorism not as signs of Islam’s strength, but of the opposite — its desperate attempt to prevent Muslims from drawing the obvious conclusions from what they can now know about the world.
I hope he’s right.
How, though, to hold the line on immigration into Europe long enough for the Muslim world to, at last, reform along Western lines? I could offer lots of inexpert advice (and have, in these virtual pages) but Gatestone reports something more practical in the works:
From Gatestone
Four years ago, the Australian government sparked criticism after it ran an advertisement aimed at discouraging asylum seekers from traveling illegally to the country. “No Way“, the poster read. “You will not make Australia home. If you get on a boat without a visa, you will not end up in Australia. Any vessel seeking illegally to enter Australia will be intercepted and safely removed beyond Australian waters”.
and:
Last year, EU officials came to Australia for help. At a recent summit, European Union member states agreed to copy the Australian model of turning back the migrant boats and sending them to third-countries, to centers there run by local authorities, on the model of the Manus Regional Processing Centre in Papua New Guinea, which was used to house migrants turned away from Australia. Italy is now looking to create similar reception centers on the southern border of Libya.
What do you think, Ricochetti? Reason for optimism or mere aspirins offered to a continent with a metastasizing cancer?
Published in Islamist Terrorism
As an immature male may I assure you that it isn’t as important as it seems. Bada**es are loved because they stand for something good. Bada**es are only honored in comic books if they defend women, children, or a decent working joe.
True Nihilism is men killing each for fun or profit. That doesn’t inspire people. To join ISIS or the KKK you need to be a bada** for something more noble. At least more noble in your own mind. (Nobility in the mind can be totally toxic but it can be self-reinforcing.)
Why does unbelief lead to religious freedom? Furthermore, what kind of unbelief are you advocating for? What are we human in unbelief?
Because then religion matters less, and therefore it matters less if one is right or wrong or a combination of these.
Show me an Age of Faith and I’ll show you an Age of Pogroms.
Religious. For now. Though I think some scepticism about all of our dominant ideologies (Marxism, Capitalism, Feminism….ie the ones that seem to have replaced religion in the West) is a Good Thing.
Er…..?
“Anglosphere” member, too…
Secularization and separation of mosque and state allows freedom of conscience; freedom for an internalized, individualized practice and freedom from the life-and-limb-threatening consequences of sharia – as currently taught and enforced – for Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
@nandapanjandrum
Decent secularization is of course, great. But I don’t see the connection with weakening religion and the advancement of human rights.
I like to call that the Sam Harris fallacy. That once we get rid of religion we will all get along and respect natural rights (even though they don’t exist).
I see no reason to believe that Homo Sapiens are naturally inclined towards natural rights and natural rights have their intellectual origins in the Judeo-Christian tradition. I think it is more likely that if Islam fades away another horrible ideology with religious overtones will take its place.
As Chesterton put it, “When men choose not to believe in G-d, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”
In case I wasn’t clear: I’m neither suggesting a weakening of religion, nor a choice not to believe in God. I’m positing a de-linkage of the identification of an (established) religion with the law-making and enforcement power of secular government – as those from the Anglosphere brought to our shores – eventually. I’m well aware of GKC (“The Apostle of Common Sense”). Sam Harris’s thoughts in relationship to what I’m saying are even less relevant than usual. Thanks all the same…
More like a move towards the law of the jungle.
I’ve probably said this before, but I’ll say it again (what the heck): Christianity and Judaism both had some built-in (if arguably accidental) (or miraculous?) advantages when it came to making a space between Church and State. The Hebrew Scripture makes it pretty plain that God takes a fairly dim view of the possibilities for enlightened leadership and only reluctantly allows the Israelites to have a king. Thereafter, there is considerable emphasis on the human weaknesses —often lethal—Kings bring with them. And then, of course, the destruction of the Temple, the expulsion and Jewish diaspora more or less ensured that Judaism would have to develop without reference to political or military power.
Christianity, meanwhile, began as a small sect that was, at best, tolerated by the state and, at times, actively persecuated by it. So for roughly three centuries—the same centuries in which Christianity was consolidating, closing its canon and laying down its creed—the Christian church and “State” were separate.
This is not to say that Christianity has not had its moments of throne-control, only that there is an enduring space between religious life and political/military life that offers room for human beings to pursue science, medicine, engineering, literature etc. without being burned at the stake (much).
And Christianity and Judaism share a Bible that enshrines all of this in and as the Word of God—a book that isn’t the product of one time, place and (mas o menos) mind, but is rather an anthology that in its own structure embodies a God that emerges out of paradox and discussion rather than diktat. (Again—plenty of Diktat in Christian history, but the Bible doesn’t demand it.)
Islam, on the other hand, self-consciously and explicitly combines church and state, both in its founder (who was a political and military as well as religious leader) and in its scripture. Islam is a totalizing worldview in which there is nothing in a human life that Allah does not have something to say about. Thus, I fear, there is no natural space wherein believers can create, experiment and discuss without fear of committing apostasy—for which the punishment is death.
In theory, Islam could be cherry-picked into a softer, kinder faith. I hope that’s the case, anyway. But Theodore Dalyrymple pointed out that, unlike Luther, Calvin or the Catholic reformers, the Islamist Jihadis can see with their own eyes what reform actually looks like. They can see—just as clearly as Zafar—what happens when you let the old rules bend. Its all around them in Britain and Europe and they (like the rest of us) don’t like what they see—promiscuity, abortion, addiction, dependency, tolerance of what they regard as perversion and all the fruits (as they would count them) of allowing the mind to open.
On the other hand, of course, there is the extraordinary technological success of the West. Which they also want and need…only without allowing the freedom that makes such human accomplishment happen.
So….I dunno.
Plus we got these two gems:
My guess it that the Founding Fathers were thinking about Mathew 22:21 when they stuck in that “free exercise of religion” thingy in the 1st Amendment.
What a freakin’ miracle, eh?
So, so easy to go the other way…
Agree. That’s what the West is so awesome to live in today.
I think it’s scepticism about God etc that got it there. But it’s hard to argue a counter factual.
Also the Wars of Religion. They learned from history.
Mostly.
And that’s the big question, isn’t it? I have a saying frequently used for persons (usually though not always male) that goes like this: “God is tapping you on the shoulder right now with a chopstick. Is the chopstick enough, or are you planning to wait for the two-by-four?”
Btw, friends, I’m two-thirds of the way through The Great Game and halfway through The Closing of the Muslim Mind. Whew, quite a workout so far, but I should finish both this week. ST, the post is percolating.
Which Wars of Religion?
I am quite sure that they learned from history. For them not to have learned from history they would have been stupid.
Speaking of which, is the House of War learning the wrong history lesson from the House of Islam, the other way around or is there not yet enough history there to draw a couple or three informed conclusions?
Islamist Jihadis will never finish killing apostates. There is always one more human who can’t meet the gold standard.
Ok, well, maybe the last one…or, umm, maybe not.
Other than the brothers and sisters in digi-multicam and other sand-inspired “greens”, I haven’t seen enough of the strong-forceful horse to tell; and the fact that their bridles were held for so long by those a world away, who knew dressage alone, hasn’t helped much as yet…Will we ever want to learn? (I’m catching your gloom and doom, ST; or maybe I no longer have my eyes wide shut. See my reading update, in another comment [#46], above.)
I think self love (or ego) is always a problem when trying to draw a sober lesson from history.
Does history say I’m awesome compared to everybody else? That sounds compellingly rational to me!
Does history, rather deflatiny, tell me that I’m the same as the rest of the herd? Unconvincing! Boo hiss!! Look again!
Don’t know how that addresses any of my points but thank you so much all the same.
The world is divided into the House of Islam and the House of War, the Dar al-Islam and the Dar al-harb. The Dar al-Islam is all those lands in which a Muslim government rules and the Holy Law of Islam prevails. Non-Muslims may live there on Muslim sufferance. The outside world, which has not yet been subjugated, is called the “House of War,” and strictly speaking a perpetual state of jihad, of holy war, is imposed by the law. The law also provided that the jihad might be interrupted by truces as and when appropriate. In fact, the periods of peace and war were not vastly different from those which existed between the Christian states of Europe for most of European history.
The law thus divides unbelievers theologically into those who have a book and profess what Islam recognizes as a divine religion and those who do not; politically into dhimmis, those who have accepted the supremacy of the Muslim state and the primacy of the Muslims, and harbis, the denizens of the Dar al-harb, the House of War, who remain outside the Islamic frontier, and with whom therefore there is in principle, a canonically obligatory perpetual state of war until the whole world is either converted or subjugated.
Z, you might find Angelo Codevilla’s writing informative re: terms and usages. But, House of War/House of Peace might be transliterated terms from the Quran, as well. (I have trouble linking when I’m using my iPad, but I’ll add one when I’m at the PC.) The Wars of Religion Kate refers to tore Europe apart, country by country, in civil unrest over government sanction of the practice of Protestantism of various flavors, and Catholicism. (Links to come.)
Thanks, @simontemplar! You were faster than I…
I’ve also added Dr. Zuhdi Jasser’s “The Struggle for the Soul of Islam” to my reading. I need to turn in now, but will be back. Thanks Kate, for hosting us again!
Agreed. I found the link above to the execution of Daniel Pearl
to be a useful review of history.
Or we can go way back in history also:
Baloney. I don’t believe it and I won’t pretend it makes sense in itself or as a basis for policy.
Easy for me to say because I don’t have any investment in making that POV right.
If someone needs to use pretzel logic to get around it I don’t care.
Islam and the Survival of the West-Doctrines for Oppression and Deception, Part 3 of a Series by Mike Scruggs:
According to the Prophet Muhammad’s words, it is permissible to deceive non-Muslims about Islam’s true nature, beliefs, and objectives. This crafty and widespread doctrine of deception is called taqiyyeh and may be found in Sura 16:106 of the Koran.
But Simon, that could be you!!