On the Insanity of Arguing that Islam is Static and Monolithic
Here is how Shiites marked the end of Ashura in Iraq:
Here's how they marked it in Turkey:
You could argue that there is no Koranic or historic support for blood donation to mark the end of Ashura (and logically you couldn't be on sounder ground, given that blood donation did not exist in the sixth century). And yet these Muslims are indeed--obviously--re-reading and re-interpreting this tradition:
Male Shiites typically commemorate the holy day of Ashura by beating themselves with chains until they bleed, in memory of the pain and bloodshed endured by their ancestors during the Kerbala war. But for four years now, both male and female Turkish Shiites, also known as Caferis, have instead been donating blood to the Turkish Red Crescent, or Kızılay.
“I am donating blood to help people in need get better,” Ennur Mehmetoğlu, 31, told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review on Thursday, adding that he had also donated blood last year. “Otherwise, I would have beaten myself until I bled, as our religion’s tradition requires.”
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Dec '10
Re: On the Insanity of Arguing that Islam is Static and Monolithic
Truly inspiring.
Oct '10
Re: On the Insanity of Arguing that Islam is Static and Monolithic
As a regular plasma donor, I feel pretty good about seeing so many people donating blood products. Claire - was this clinic set up specifically to mark Ashura or is it a year-round facility that got a surge of donors because of the occasion?
Re: On the Insanity of Arguing that Islam is Static and Monolithic
That's a mobile clinic, but one can of course donate blood year-round. This subject is interesting to me because I suspect there's a chronic shortage of blood donations in Turkey. I'm guessing this because of the number of emergency appeals for blood I receive on Facebook and Twitter and sometimes by e-mail--usually to the effect that someone dying right now needs a donation of a specific type of blood. Either the blood clinics are dangerously low on reserves or willing shamelessly to lie to boost reserves when they're low. I'm curious to know which, given my interest in Istanbul's state of readiness for a major earthquake, which is generally dismal.
May '10
Re: On the Insanity of Arguing that Islam is Static and Monolithic
I haven't been able to follow the whole discussion with Andy McCarthy.
Does anyone argue that Islam is static and monolithic?
Re: On the Insanity of Arguing that Islam is Static and Monolithic
katievs: I haven't been able to follow the whole discussion with Andy McCarthy.
Does anyone argue that Islam is static and monolithic? · Dec 17 at 6:56am
Sure. It's the essence of the argument of Islamists, and mirror-imaged in those who say all there is only one proper way to interpret the Koran (literally), therefore Islam itself has always been, must be and will always be antithetical to Western liberal values. Andy doesn't make this argument--I stress this, because he's been accused of this, but it's simply not so. He does, however, fear that the better theological arguments are on the side of those who do.
Re: On the Insanity of Arguing that Islam is Static and Monolithic
The article quoted is a little off, I think. It's been a while since I looked into Shi‘ite theology, but I'm pretty sure the ‘Ashura processions are not to commemorate their ancestors’ suffering, but express their sorrow and repentance for the guilt of their spiritual ancestors, who called for Muhammad's grandson (by Ali), Husayn, to come claim the leadership of the community only to leave him hanging out to dry when the rival claimant Mu‘awiya (not of the Prophet's house, and viewed by Shi‘ites as not really a Muslim, and a tyrant, usurper, and murderer) showed up at Karbala with a big army, resulting in the slaughter of Husayn, his followers, and his family (including his small children).
In this way, it's analogous to some of the more lurid Passion Play practices in the Philippines or the Penitentes in the American Southwest.
Incidentally, participants in many places simply have a barber nick a vein in their forehead with a razor so they a painless and quickly healed, though dramatically bloody, wound, and their self-flagellations are symbolic. But, as in any religious devotion, you do have people going whole hog…
Re: On the Insanity of Arguing that Islam is Static and Monolithic
Pretty cool that "blood atonement" can be going to the Red Crescent, I gotta say…
May '10
Re: On the Insanity of Arguing that Islam is Static and Monolithic
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
katievs: Does anyone argue that Islam is static and monolithic? · Dec 17 at 6:56am
Sure. It's the essence of the argument of Islamists, and mirror-imaged in those who say all there is only one proper way to interpret the Koran (literally), therefore Islam itself has always been, must be and will always be antithetical to Western liberal values.
Is this not a conflation of two very different kinds of arguments, viz. the theological and the historical?
I mean, as a Catholic, I believe (and would be perfectly willing to argue and discuss the matter rationally, point by point) that Protestantism represents a deviation from the fullness of Christianity. I believe that the fullness of Christian Revelation is embodied in the teachings of the Church and the lives of the saints.
But I would be insane to hold that Christianity is (as a matter of historical fact) static and monolithic.
So, to me, there is nothing strange in a person's holding both that Islam is neither static nor monolithic and that there are true and false, valid and invalid interpretations and cultural manifestations of it.
May '10
Re: On the Insanity of Arguing that Islam is Static and Monolithic
Let me put it this way. The evidence you present here is historical evidence, which to my way of thinking, doesn't tend at all against the theological case for Islamism.
Re: On the Insanity of Arguing that Islam is Static and Monolithic
Well, Islamism qua Islamism is a 20th-century phenomenon ginned up by ideologues under the influence of Western totalitarianisms. If you want to know what Islamism works as, take "Muslim" for "workers" or "Germans" and "unbelievers" as "capital" or "Jews" and "caliphate" for "communism" or "thousand-year Reich" and apply your understanding of Leninism or Nazism. It's the old "we need to take over the world in the name of the Good" story. It's dressed up with Islamic theology—and some of it works well in this context (and the stuff that doesn't is disregarded)—but it's an pseudo-historical appeal to a never-existing Islamic past.
Like Wahhabism—or virtually every protestantism, to borrow unfairly from your example—it's presented as the restoration of the true, eternally valid order intended by the religion's founder against the corrupt, historically-contingent extant version of the religion.
Re: On the Insanity of Arguing that Islam is Static and Monolithic
That it's not theologically contingent can be seen in the essential similarity of the Vilayet-e Faqih, “the State of the Jurisprudent,” which is to say the Iranian clerical-fascist regime, and the caliphate ideology of al-Qa’ida, the Muslim Brotherhood, etc. These ostensibly represent the ideal end states of Twelver Shiism and a purist Sunnism—traditions that are radically opposed—and yet they look not quite indistinguishable.
Oct '10
Re: On the Insanity of Arguing that Islam is Static and Monolithic
Bill Walsh
Well, Islamism qua Islamism is a 20th-century phenomenon ginned up by ideologues under the influence of Western totalitarianisms. If you want to know what Islamism works as, take "Muslim" for "workers" or "Germans" and "unbelievers" as "capital" or "Jews" and "caliphate" for "communism" or "thousand-year Reich" and apply your understanding of Leninism or Nazism. It's the old "we need to take over the world in the name of the Good" story. It's dressed up with Islamic theology—and some of it works well in this context (and the stuff that doesn't is disregarded)—but it's an pseudo-historical appeal to a never-existing Islamic past.
Dec 17 at 9:36am
I agree. Islamism (or Islamofascism) seems to be the middle eastern version of Rousseau's "general will".
Oct '10
Re: On the Insanity of Arguing that Islam is Static and Monolithic
Bill Walsh
Well, Islamism qua Islamism is a 20th-century phenomenon ginned up by ideologues under the influence of Western totalitarianisms. If you want to know what Islamism works as, take "Muslim" for "workers" or "Germans" and "unbelievers" as "capital" or "Jews" and "caliphate" for "communism" or "thousand-year Reich" and apply your understanding of Leninism or Nazism. It's the old "we need to take over the world in the name of the Good" story. It's dressed up with Islamic theology—and some of it works well in this context (and the stuff that doesn't is disregarded)—but it's an pseudo-historical appeal to a never-existing Islamic past.
Like Wahhabism—or virtually every protestantism, to borrow unfairly from your example—it's presented as the restoration of the true, eternally valid order intended by the religion's founder against the corrupt, historically-contingent extant version of the religion. · Dec 17 at 9:36am
I'm not following what you mean. Are you saying that Islam is inherently moderate and peaceful and that this radical interpretation of Islamists (or Wahhabists, etc.) is an aberration or do I have completely backwards?
May '10
Re: On the Insanity of Arguing that Islam is Static and Monolithic
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
katievs:
Sure. It's the essence of the argument of Islamists, and mirror-imaged in those who say all there is only one proper way to interpret the Koran (literally), therefore Islam itself has always been, must be and will always be antithetical to Western liberal values.
That I think is true. If Islam is not antithetical to Western values, then its texts would have no problem harmonizing with those of the Greek epistemologists and the Renaissance and Enlightenment European scientists and political philosophers. It hardly does so and I believe that Islam is non-violent to the extent that its not taken seriously by its practitioners.
May '10
Re: On the Insanity of Arguing that Islam is Static and Monolithic
Isn't the difficulty rather that it's more of an appeal to authoritative texts? In religion, those count for a lot.
Re: On the Insanity of Arguing that Islam is Static and Monolithic
bereket kelile
I'm not following what you mean. Are you saying that Islam is inherently moderate and peaceful and that this radical interpretation of Islamists (or Wahhabists, etc.) is an aberration or do I have completely backwards? · Dec 17 at 10:29am
I'm saying neither. Islam has a wealth of resources in the Koran and example of the Prophet for those who want to argue that it commands violence (defense or, less commonly, offensive) against non-Muslims. Various schools of interpretation have considered them operative or not operative at a given time. It's sort of the converse of the problem of suicidal pacifism in Christianity, for which one can make a pretty solid scriptural argument. Historically, you're dealing with state actors for the most part, and they seem to have had an amazing ability to have holy wars coincide with the needs of their monarchies.
Wahhabism and Islamism are however identifiably recent (eighteenth and twentieth-century A.D.) off-shoots—heresies, if you will, by canonical standards. Both make the radical claim that they represent the one true Islam and that traditional Muslims are juridically equal to non-Muslims—i.e., objects of war, enslavement, etc.
Re: On the Insanity of Arguing that Islam is Static and Monolithic
katievs
Isn't the difficulty rather that it's more of an appeal to authoritative texts? In religion, those count for a lot. · Dec 17 at 12:05pm
Well, sure, and it counts for more in Islam than in most, but the question of interpretation comes up as it does in every religion. Whose interpretation is most valid? The al-Qa’ida guys have two things working in their favor in that regard: a torrent of Saudi money proselytizing Wahhabi-style Islam as the Sa‘uds' part of the deal paying off their religious establishment in the wake of the Juhayman seizure of the Great Mosque in 1979 (predicated not least on the corruption and worldliness of the Saudis, its stewards), and the massive influence of anti-Western philosophy (Fanon, Marx, etc.) in the Westernized institutions in which almost all of these guys have studied.
Pick up the late Laurent Murawiec's book The Mind of Jihad for a very nice step-by-step walk through the origins of Islamism, including the most world-historically influential church social in the history of Greeley, Colorado.
Re: On the Insanity of Arguing that Islam is Static and Monolithic
Also, Hamid Algar's little book on Wahhabism is a good introduction on that topic for the more historically-minded.
May '10
Re: On the Insanity of Arguing that Islam is Static and Monolithic
Bill Walsh
Well, sure, and it counts for more in Islam than in most, but the question of interpretation comes up as it does in every religion. Whose interpretation is most valid? The al-Qa’ida guys have two things working in their favor in that regard: a torrent of Saudi money... the massive influence of anti-Western philosophy (Fanon, Marx, etc.) in the Westernized institutions in which almost all of these guys have studied.
They also have the willingness to use violence and intimidation to see to it that their view prevails. (The Soviets didn't need to convince a majority that they had the correct interpretation of Marx. They just had to convince them that resistance was too dangerous.)
And, as Andy said in one post I read, their view does seem more coherent as a view--more consistent with the texts and tenets of Islam.
May '10
Re: On the Insanity of Arguing that Islam is Static and Monolithic
Whenever this topic comes up I remember Mark Steyn saying in response to the claim that Islam just needs a Reformation:
"I'm very much afraid that Islam has had its Reformation and Jihad is it."