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Let’s Leave Islamic Theology to Actual Muslims
Over the weekend, a British aid worker named David Haines was beheaded by ISIS. British Prime Minister David Cameron was appropriately outraged by the murder. Slightly less appropriate was his decision to use the incident as an excuse to play mufti for a day. From Cameron’s remarks reacting to the Haines’ beheading:
“The fact that an aid worker was taken, held and brutally murdered at the hands of ISIL [ISIS] sums up what this organization stands for,” Cameron said in an address to the British people. “They boast of their brutality; they claim to do this in the name of Islam. That is nonsense. Islam is a religion of peace. They are not Muslims, they are monsters.”
That last sentence, with its suggestion of mutual exclusivity, is perhaps the most telling of all: whatever is Muslim can’t be monstrous. Whatever is monstrous can’t be Muslim.
This echoes President Obama, who, in his speech to the nation last week pronounced:
ISIL is not “Islamic.” No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim.
“No religion condones the killing of innocents?” This is the great Empirical President, right? (And, by the way, this is not an exclusively liberal phenomenon. Rand Paul echoed the Presidents’ sentiments and George W. Bush was also fond of the “religion of peace” formulation).
All of these public figures are playing fast and loose at the intersection of “is” and “ought.” Their interpretation of Islam is that any version of it that veers into violence is necessarily heretical. That’s fair enough (though not by any means self-evidently true), although one suspects that it’s a conviction born out of a need to fit Islam into a multicultural groove rather than out of any real engagement with the faith’s intellectual tradition.
It’s also superfluous. Whether Islam as practiced by ISIS conforms to the faith’s metaphysical essence is a question for theologians. For Western statesmen, all that’s relevant is that the bloodthirsty, imperialist version of Islam practiced by ISIS is accepted by a critical mass of self-identified Muslims who see it as a license for murder on a scale limited only by imagination and resources.
I suppose the point of these rhetorical exercises is to attempt to delegitimize the radicals. But whom are we trying to convince? The extremists themselves? They couldn’t care less about our opinions. Moderate Muslims? Do we think there’s a contingent out there who were still on the fence after the beheadings but were nudged over to the side of reason by the religious expertise of Barack Obama and David Cameron? Are we trying to convince our own citizens? Is the assumption that they’re too dim to recognize that not all Muslims are barbarians without putting it in bold print?
I don’t recall Franklin Roosevelt feeling the need to say that Nazis weren’t true socialists. This is a moment for Western resolve, not for after-school specials. Let the Islamic world sort out its own theological disputes. For those nations in ISIS’s crosshairs, the focus needs to be on defeating them, not on working out where they fit in their faith’s taxonomy.
Published in General
“I dunno…I really enjoy the beheadings, but this Cameron guy says we have it all wrong! Gosh, what a conundrum.”
For those nations in ISIS’s crosshairs, the focus needs to be on defeating them, not on working out where they fit in their faith’s taxonomy.
You asked to whom these declarations were aimed, it is the peoples of the nations in the crosshairs. You have to know who your enemy is in order to effectively fight against them.
Hold on, I’m all verklemmt.
It is amazing. I am retired for two years now, and, listening to Obama and Cameron, I feel like I am back in a faculty meeting discussing the “disproportional” number of minority students involved in acts of violence and disruption and hearing the denials. The left has finally gained complete control of western governments, and they are just as absurd in this role as they were when their power was limited to school administrations.
I just tried to add to the above, but, apparently, the editing option doesn’t work, so let me just add another comment.
When I worked in the schools I often said that the one place I felt most likely to need my concealed weapon in the course of my normal life was the one place I could couldn’t carry it. The left managed to make schools which should have been one of the safest places in the world one of the most unsafe places. Now they are doing the same to the western world.
Frankly, by parroting Muslim propaganda, I can’t help but wonder if these politicians are trying to curry favor with Muslim, as the officials in Rotherdam did…
As far as where ISIL got the idea for all these beheadings:
“Beheadings at ‘record levels’: Saudi Arabia executes dozens in deadly August”
http://www.news.com.au/world/middle-east/beheadings-at-record-levels-saudi-arabia-executes-dozens-in-deadly-august/story-fnh81ifq-1227037172765
I can’t get links to work in the combox, but you can google No True Scotsman.
Thank you Troy. I have been meaning to write a post to this effect. I certainly am tired of western politicians throwing themselves upfront to act as defenders of Islam. There are a billion + muslims in this world and they can certainly defend the virtues of their faith against pretenders better than any western politician if they choose to, and if not, then well…here we are!
Obama has no excuse for his restrained rhetoric, although his muslim background I’m sure is the main reason that he seeks to draw the distinction between the decent moderate muslims that he grew up with and saw on a daily basis for a time in his youth.
Cameron is simply covering his ass and trying to not incite riots in the suburbs of the major cities where, unlike in the US, there are very large muslim populations. Making sure that moderate muslims there don’t feel lumped in with the radicals is a matter of political necessity in a country where 25% of the population is muslim.
Should read 5% of the population, not 25%. Stupid broken editing function!
The civilized world should tell tell the Muslim world “Either you become a religion of peace, or you will be destroyed.” Sadly, I believe it’s come to that.
The civilized world should tell the Muslim world “Either Islam becomes a religion of peace, or you will be destroyed.” Sadly, I believe it’s come to that.
And yes, I think the comment editor is broken . . .
One must remember that David Cameron does not really have much authority to say who does and who doesn’t get to enter the UK. That responsibility rests with Brussels. If he sounds like he’s pandering to Britain’s muslim population it’s (at least partially) because the EU forces him to act with one hand tied behind his back.
According to the Lisbon Treaty, the UK “cannot exercise competence” in the area of freedom, security, and justice “where the Union has done s0”.
The European Parliament might take action if a few Germans, French, and Italians lose their heads.
Muslim extremists beheading American citizens does not tarnish the Muslim faith in the eyes of leftish Democrats, journalists. Let Christians oppose abortion, certain forms of birth control and they are pilloried in the press and demonized by the Democrats. If Muslims in America voted Republican they would receive much harsher treatment.
I just want to be perfectly clear… I’m not allowed to say Barack Obama isn’t a true Christian (based on his viewpoint about partial birth abortion (killing of innocents, btw) and the fact that he attended a Church where Baptism isn’t SOP), but he’s allowed to say people who call themselves, “Islamic So-and-so” aren’t true Muslims. Do I have that right?
As someone pointed out earlier, it’s not just the stunning arrogance and hypocrisy, it’s that this gets moderate Muslims off the hook for rehabilitating the image of Islam these savages project. ISIS needs to be more of a problem for Muslims, not less of one. Religion of peace? Show me.
He does. He could hold a referendum and convince the UK to leave the EU…
Where is the outrage of moderate Muslims? Why have we not heard from moderate Muslims denouncing the barbarism of ISIS?
Troy,
You are right on the target. We should never allow ourselves to be sucked into a never ending argument about Muslim theology. It is sufficient to understand that Jihad is both historically and currently a common Muslim belief. Jihad is the cause of the behaviors which we find most abhorrent. Jihad by definition is an unlimited declaration of unconditional war on all non-Muslims. For me this is the only litmus test. If a Muslim will not renounce Jihad then we must consider ourselves at war with him because he has declared war on us. If a Muslim state has no interest in Jihad and in fact has a great deal to fear from Jihadists then they are the perfect ally. Such a state would prosecute a war against the Jihadists with great vigor. They would need no prodding and probably a visit by Kerry would only be a wet blanket.
Regards,
Jim
You should follow Tarek Fatah on Facebook?
I have left Islam to the actual Muslims. They’re the ones that preach death to apostates. They’re the ones that speak of the day when even rocks will shout out “There is a Jew behind me. Kill him” (paraphrase, but the gist is accurate). Jesus implored his followers to be fishers of men. Mohammed told his to go out and raid caravans. He’s the one that beheaded every grown male of the Qurayzan Jews (to the point of making young men drop trow and looking for pubic hairs to see if they were old enough to slaughter). I’ll go ahead and take them at their word. If “Islam is peace”, I’ll eat my hat. It does make a difference.
Troy, I agree that politically correct formulations, calibrated to take the sting out of forceful language and thought, are superfluous. What’s worse, they’ve burrowed into the western psyche to the point that they’re part of our native tongue. To what result?
Mark Twain wrote that, “Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.” Similarly, that political correctness which obfuscates or blurs our sharp focus on the evil confronting us, is the merely the last whimper of obeisance a victim whispers before the knife is drawn across the throat.
I just find it so interesting that a cadre of politicians who find my objections to people who self-identify as [fill in the blank with the requisite politically correct group identity], regardless of their actual sex, or circumstance, or anything else, evidence that I am some sort of hateful bigot.
Because if the dog’s tail self-identifies as a leg, that makes it one, right?
Or not. (http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/abrahamlin125047.html. Links still not working for me, although I see that they are working for some).
Yet when an organization which calls itself “Islamic,” which invokes “Allah” at every opportunity, and which is dedicated to establishing the Muslim Caliphate, self-identifies as “Islamic,” those same people can’t wait to explain to us why it is no such thing, and they are hailed as paragons of diversity and tolerance.
It’s pretty simple, really. A tail is a tail, and a leg is a leg.
And the Islamic State is . . .
Oh, wait. I don’t want to commit a social solecism of epic proportions. Let me look it up and find out what the right answer is.
Why should moderate Muslims involve themselves in denouncing something that people keep assuring them has nothing to do with Muslims, or even with Islam? They get a free pass to disengage.
To do this, the Muslims would have to deny the First Pillar of Islam, that there is only ONE GOD, Allah, and the Muhammad is his Prophet. This would also mean denying that the Koran is the direct Word of Allah, through Muhammad, through the Angel Gabriel, and to be believed implicitly.
How could they do this and remain Muslims?
Islam is a Religion of Peace to Muslims who are in the House of Peace. What they don’t mention is that the rest of us are in the House of War. Muhammad is very explicit in Suras (Chapters) eight and nine about that.
I strongly suspect that there are two Korans. One with those two suras left out, and all the other verses exhorting violence left out also. I’ve listened to the Koran recited on the internet in English, reading along in my translation. The violent verses were simply deleted.
I would really like to know how much the ordinary Muslim really knows about the religion and the Koran and Hadith.
Could it be that the only explanation for Obama and Cameron is that they are ideologists and blinded by their ideology? Multiculturalism is an ideology.
As the Scots are doing around whether they should remain united to England!
Except that the Scots explicitly want to be a part of the EU, which means they won’t have any control over their immigration policies either.
Why do I hear many more non-Muslims saying what is and isn’t Muslim than Muslims? One could argue that those Muslims who would otherwise speak out are afraid to speak out, but doesn’t that mean that there isn’t any majority, or even plurality within Islam that agrees that ISIS, et al isn’t Muslim?
On a related note, whee are all the “Mormonist” and Amishist terrorists and beheaders?