Nearly everyone who discusses the issue of extremist Islam (or “Islamism,” the wedding of Islam to state government) suggests that the solution lies in the community of moderate Muslims: those who have the ability to recast the faith in a way that can tame its outliers. People who have suggested this include, for instance, Maajid Nawaz and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
This sounds like a good solution, but it depends on the existence of a community of Muslims who don’t just reject terrorism, but reject fundamentalism and certain widespread tenets of Islam (homophobia, hatred of apostates, oppression of women) inimical to Enlightenment values.
The only Muslims I know are ex-Muslims, so I have no idea whether such “moderate” Muslims are ubiquitous. I hope so, but others think not. One of them is Suraiya Simi Rahman, an ex-Muslim and pediatrician who lives in Los Angeles. She previously lived in Bangladesh, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt, and for many years was a pious Muslim in the Midwestern U.S., even donning the hijab for a while.
Rahman is now an atheist, and has written a strong claim about the rarity of moderate Muslims, even in the U.S., on Dan Fincke’s blog Camels with Hammers. Her piece was originally posted on her Facebook page, but was removed for “violating community standards”, no doubt because of complaints from Muslims. If you read it, though, it’s not offensive at all; but does argue that there are far fewer moderates than we think.
I have no experience of immersion in Muslim communities, but Rahman has, and so you should read her piece, “Moderate Muslims have hit their ‘wall,’” even if you disagree with it. She claims, for instance, that the female shooter in California, who had no obvious history of violent extremism, may be a fairly common type:
. . . and now with the California shootings, it has reaffirmed for me, that indeed, when it comes to being able to tell a moderate from a radical in Islam, you can’t.
You really can’t tell until the moment before they pull the trigger, who is moderate and who is jihadi. Tashfeen has broken our moderate backbone, by revealing that she lived among us, unnoticed, normal, experiencing motherhood, enveloped in our secure community and yet, had radicalized.
And that’s the problem, that there are many others like her with exactly the same beliefs, who may not have been ignited yet by a radical cleric, but if the opportunity presented itself, they would follow. They’re like a dormant stick of dynamite, waiting for the fuse to be lit. The TNT is already in there.
The “wall” that Rahman mentions in her title refers to a self-imposed limit beyond which even moderate Muslims don’t venture: it represents abrogation of the literality of the Qur’an, as well as abandoning critical tenets like punishment of apostates and blasphemers, and the notion of hell.
Rahman further claims that it is the isolation that these beliefs impose on young Muslims in America that makes them susceptible to the blandishments of terrorist groups:
The young girls from Europe and the US who have traveled to Syria to join ISIS, have done so because they’re looking for what all teenagers are looking for, a sense of identity, to differentiate themselves from their parents and find a separate identity, the thrill of rebellion, adventure. They can’t date, drink or dance, so they might as well Daesh.
Rahman’s solution is, like many before her, to call for a more humanistic Islam that rejects Qur’anic literalism. But at the end of the piece, I think she realizes how problematic this is—after all, most Muslims throughout the world are Qur’anic literalists—and just calls for Muslims to abandon their faith completely.
At this juncture in history, when so many people are calling on the community of moderate Muslims to help deal with their extremist coreligionists, it behooves us to see if such a community even exists. Certainly there are many Muslims who are moderates, but when we say “moderate”, we must realize that what Westerners mean is not just Muslims who abjure terrorism, but those who embrace the values of democracy and Enlightenment, rejecting the demonization of nonbelievers, gays, apostates, and blasphemers, and embracing a religious pluralism—including those who don’t believe at all.
I don’t have experience to know whether such a community exists. The 2013 Pew Survey of worldwide Muslim belief suggests that it’s sparser than we think.
h/t: Grania
I can tell you one thing: What we are now hearing from ex-Muslims like Rahman are things we non-Muslims from Muslim countries (Iraq, for me) grew up *knowing*. We have a 14 century history (of Genocide, oppression, forced conversion, you name it) with Islam, and we long ago came to the conclusion it is atheism or an Islam so watered down it no longer resembles anything close to what it is now.
That “wall” is real. Qur’an is literal. There is no interpretation. Mohammed is the “perfect” human example and the hadith teaches one how to live like him. There is no criticism or changing meanings – that is blasphemy.
So…good luck modernizing the religion. It is very unlike other religions in this way. Christianity had mechanisms in its theology that made modernization possible (e.g., the Bible is open to interpretation, Jesus specified separation of religion and government, there was space created in the New Testament to accept progressive meanings behind verses, etc.) Islam has none of these things.
Due to the nature of theology itself, however, I think Islam still has the capacity to develop the mechanisms which allow religions to evolve (assuming it hasn’t already.) They’re still touching base with God/Allah. They’re still insisting that in the final analysis there’s divine guidance involved in interpretation.
That element is both a blessing and a curse. It allows believers to go virtually anywhere and still sincerely believe they’re getting back to the original intent of the Author of All Things, the pure heart of their faith. Liberal humanist interpretations can no more justify themselves by this standard than conservative repressive interpretations — and vice versa. They can go radical in either direction, good or bad.
It all comes down to sects. Even the Amish have sects. The resulting offspring … varies.
It is now; it largely was not prior to the printing press. It is no coincidence that the Protestant Reformation took hold when people suddenly had more access to read the Bible for themselves. Even now the Church states that it is the guiding and authoritative body for interpretation: “Within the broader current of the great tradition, the particular contribution of patristic exegesis consists in this: to have drawn out from the totality of Scripture the basic orientations which shaped the doctrinal tradition of the church and to have provided a rich theological teaching for the instruction and spiritual sustenance of the faithful.”
Before the printing press, interpreting the Bible differently than the Church resulted in heresy charges (and technically still does but doesn’t carry the threat of death with it), so Christianity being open to interpretation is hardly a necessary feature of the religion.
The conflict in Islam between Sunnis and Shiites is evidence enough that Islam is also open to interpretation. They’ve been killing each other over their differing views for the whole history of the religion. There’s no reason in principle why alternate interpretations that are more humanistic cannot take hold, but that diverges from the question as to whether there’s enough Muslims with those views to make a difference in practice.
The Sunni/Shi’a split is due to the question of who would be the successor to Mohammed, not theological disputes. Although there are some differences today (Shi’a prioritize sharia/sunn’a verses as told by Mohammed’s successors rather than Bakr’s – although both sects adhere to all sharia/sunn’a), the differences do not contribute to the mechanisms that would be necessary to modernize Islam that existed within Christianity. The printing press made these mechanisms more widely available, but they didn’t *make* them. Islam offers no such mechanisms. They will have to be made up by the modernizers, and good luck to them.
In the Ottoman empire, the Qur’an would be called out by the muazzin, over and over, for everyone to hear every word. In fact – it is only in modern times that more people have stopped reading/memorizing it fully. This has contributed to modernized *Muslims*, rather than a modernized Islam.
I think the only hope is Muslims exposed to secularism so much like Christianity changed due to the influence of secular values (it is even going on today with acceptance of homo sexuality) Islam can too.
I have worked with/for many liberal Muslims and I am friends with some liberal Muslims. They hold exactly the same values I do as a liberal. There is also Tarek Fatah who speaks out against Islamists and against forcing Islam on non Muslims. And then there is Turkey – a country that has struggled for secularism despite it’s strong Islamic roots. All these things give me hope but one thing is for sure, liberals need to support these Muslims, not the ones that threaten liberal values.
Turkey is slipping to the Dark Side. I’ve even suspected that we, a neighbor of Turkey, should prepare to accept secular refugees. Last night, I heard for first time of such a case: a Bulgarian-born Turk living in Turkey since 1989 is now sending her child, an 8-grader, to a high school in Bulgaria. The child doesn’t even speak the language properly, but the parents feel they cannot wait.
I wish the West would support secular Turkey. This is a war of ideas and it will be a long one. That sounds kind of jihadist but I mean to keep the war in the realm of ideas and discussion not actual killing.
Iran and Afghanistan were once moderate and secular too.
That’s just the point though. I’m hoping the Internet does to Islam what the printing press did to Christianity. Those mechanisms certainly were not there in 1500. The Bible is full of contradictions and people can pick and choose what to believe, dismiss violent parts as allegory or cultural narratives, and the do. The same thing can be done reading the Koran. Christianity when dominated fully by the Catholic Church did not provide the mechanisms; the Church held that it is the authority and people are not to deviate from its teaching.
I’m also not sure that an argument over Mohammed’s successor isn’t a theological dispute. Presumably the successor is blessed by Allah. In my book, arguments over whether a supreme being blesses your views is theological. The practical fallout of that is Shia Muslims are following imams they believe to be divinely ordained whereas Sunnis elect Caliphs. I don’t think the centuries of bloodshed have resulted because these Caliphs all teach the same exact theology as the imams.
Perhaps the internet can play that role for Islam. I was listening to a part of Sam Harris’s Nov 22nd Podcast with Douglas Murray while driving to work this morning – it’s a couple of hours long so it’s a few commutes worth – Murray made the point that the internet can be enough of a source of information to inculcate doubt into the mind of would-be jihadis to make them rethink their certainty (google contradictions in the quran – it seems to be as bad as the bible).
In essence I don’t really care about someone else’s beliefs as long as they don’t affect my life or the wellbeing of others. If doubt stops them blowing themselves and others up it’s a good thing. Murray suggests an information campaign. Certainly the conversation is worth a listen if you have some time to spare – or a drive/flight. Had not heard Murray before, but he manages some great and entertaining rants along the way.
http://www.samharris.org/podcast (or wherever free podcasts are sold :))
But the internet also seems to be the taproot for radicalizing western Muslims and the primary means for recruiting jihadis from among the radicalized.
The internet is definitely a “two-edged sword”: it is wonderful at rapidly spreading knowledge and truth; equally wonderful at enabling the spread of truly demented, false, and/or unverified notions (there are people claiming that the Paris attacks, and now, even the San Bernardino killings, were faked, “false-flag” operations)- I do feel that the truth will win out, eventually.
What I AM concerned about is the type of “selective censorship” such as the removal by Facebook of Rahman’s piece where, once again, we see people thinking that “free speech” means the right to exclude anything that might upset us. Tthe internet is still essentially the “Wild West” so far as constraints on free speech are concerned (in the Western world, anyway): if you don’t like the rules on one site, you can always go to another where you can say whatever you want in the manner that you want to. Of course, in doing so, you’ll probably run into someone saying something YOU don’t like, as well as those who take an active interest in challenging and/or attacking YOUR ideas- once again, courtesy of “free speech”. Be prepared to defend your ideas!
The greatest thing about the internet is its unprecedented anonymity concerning comments and discourse: in olden times, to express one’s opinions publicly, or even face-to-face with one other person, opened one up to the possibility of physical violence- on the net, one can rapidly make one’s opinions known with little chance someone will show up at your door. Not only that, but your comments will possibly be viewed by thousands of others beyond the one you are addressing. When I debate Creatards and literal Babble believers, I’m not doing it so much as to try to sway THEM- most of them are too far gone for that; I’m doing it for the sake of those looking on, who are still, “on the fence” so far as the truth of a matter is concerned.
“When I debate Creatards and literal Babble believers, I’m not doing it so much as to try to sway THEM- most of them are too far gone for that; I’m doing it for the sake of those looking on, who are still, “on the fence” so far as the truth of a matter is concerned.”
That’s why I bother arguing with people whose ideas are ‘wrong’. Not so much (in most cases) in the hope of persuading them, because they’re usually a lost cause, but for the benefit of onlookers. I imagine most commenters are similarly motivated.
cr
I’ve said the same things here a week and two ago, but fellow commenters just called me names.
In my country (Bulgaria), we have 10% “Muslims”, but they are OK, because most of them are actually atheists.
I know several very kind, tolerant and noble Muslim believers of Mideast or North African origin. How they manage to be such good people? My impression: by a cognitive dissonance of a cosmic magnitude. To my opinion, this cannot be a basis to build a working, free society.
I read one philosopher’s article recently where he suggested that radical Islam is a post enlightenment (rather than pre enlightenment movement). His argument was the large percentage of ISIS volunteers who had grown up in well-to-do middle class families in the West. Somewhere along the way they develop a hatred of it.
In Saudi-funded Sunday school, perhaps?
That is not unusual. Back in the Cold War days there were many Communist sympathisers who came from middle-class backgrounds. Not to mention such groups as the SLA (the Patty Hearst kidnappers).
People of that age are idealistic and their idealism can easily be directed in any direction.
I do recall, a couple of years ago, when Assad was the bogeyman and going to fight against him (whether for ISIS or not) was almost respectable. This was before ISIS revealed its utter loathsomeness.
cr
It may true that the text is supposedly literally true, and that many (or even most) Muslims believe it. However, if you recall the English translation posted a while back, there were to be *15* introductions/commentary. Literalism is, ironically, compatible with many schools of textual interpretation and tradition – like it is amongst fundamentalist Protestants (to say nothing of the literal interpretations of some stuff by Catholics, Jews, etc.). One can hope that this can perhaps be a “way in” to questioning. (Can’t be the only one, but maybe a component …)
It’s not clear to me how such a community could come to exist, given that it’s often dangerous to espouse moderate beliefs.
Historically in western Europe, heretical beliefs were increasingly protected by secular authorities, but this mechanism appears to be absent in much of the Muslim world and doesn’t seem likely to appear.
It’s not clear to me how such a community could come to exist.
It is hard to imagine.
Just look at how Sufism (a mystical and spiritual, as well as largely apolitical and non-violent interpretation of Islam) is treated in the mainstream Muslim world. It’s almost universally despised.
Heretical beliefs are protected even now in the West (no one can protect you from all violence, then or now, but from state sponsored violence at least). So maybe the West is where it will come from.
Alternately, Atatürk, the Shah of Iran, and other less savory characters could be thought of as examples of what you say is absent (at least with a bit of spin). A lot of the Middle East has regressed in recent history, as photos Jerry showed a few days ago of unveiled women in Iran or Afghanistan attest. So it is the case that not that long ago we have seen examples of secular authorities providing a space for a more modern expression of Islam in many of these places. Those secular authorities were often brutal and problematic in other ways, but I can’t help but wonder if opposing those has let the best be the enemy of the good, or even the tolerable.
“Those secular authorities were often brutal and problematic in other ways, but I can’t help but wonder ”
Yes, democracy hasn’t been a step forward for the Middle East; on the flip side, secularism is associated with those despotic regimes, so decades of “progress” were rolled back in a heartbeat.
I see no way forward. The current situation is stable from an engineering perspective…deviation from equilibrium generates restoring forces.
You’re lumping Atatürk in with the Shah? Iran might have had its own Atatürk had the CIA not deep-sixed Mosaddegh. And the Middle East might be a much different place for it today.
Sadly, what Atatürk wrought is now instead imperiled by Erdoğan and his cronies.
No, that wasn’t my intention. I regretted the proximity in the sentence almost as soon as I clicked post. I should have said, “There was Atatürk, and even despots like the Shah at least provided a space for a less regressive Islam…”, or something of that sort.
I don’t know about Ataturk, but in the case of Iran, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” applies …
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An excellent piece and makes a very important point. I suspect one that Sam Harris and others would approve. The more we understand the religion and look at the statistics the more it looks like a very long road.
From the Los Angeles Times: “Last week’s San Bernardino shooting rampage by Malik and her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, which killed 14 and injured 21, has cast a fresh spotlight on the teachings of Al Huda [female shooter attended school following her teachings], part of a vast patchwork of Islamic seminaries, Koran prayer groups and other religious institutions that operate outside Pakistani government control and are often accused of fueling radicalism.”
http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-school-san-bernardino-fundamentalist-20151207-story.html
Yes, Al Huda has had a noxious influence on Pakistani women. Headscarves and veils were on the decline in urban Pakistan in the 70s and early 80s. Al Huda has played a major role in reinstating these practices. The worst thing is they run schools and indoctrinate children.
A couple of years ago I visited a school run by these people: Generation’s School, in Karachi. And when I went to the library, I saw a giant portrait of Haroon Yahya beside those of Steve Jobs and Einstein. I think the caption on the wall was “Inspirational People”. Surreal stuff. And his books (including, I remember, the Atlas of Creation and the Holocaust Lie) were displayed rather prominently. And this is not some madrassah. It is considered a top-notch A-levels and O-levels school in this city.
Einstein, who as everyone knows was Jewish. Things are not always black-and-white.
cr
There is this group:
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7009/muslim-reform-movement
We reject interpretations of Islam that call for any violence, social injustice and politicized Islam. We invite our fellow Muslims and neighbors to join us.
We reject bigotry, oppression and violence against all people based on any prejudice, including ethnicity, gender, language, belief, religion, sexual orientation and gender expression.
We are for secular governance, democracy and liberty.
Every individual has the right to publicly express criticism of Islam. Ideas do not have rights. Human beings have rights.
We stand for peace, human rights and secular governance. Please stand with us!
Who could argue with any of those points?
Well (as has become depressingly typical) a number of liberals do.
I’ve seen widespread criticism of the Gatestone Institute and this Muslim Reform Movement as being a right-wing, conservative, Islamophobic think tank run by John Bolton.
It reminds me of the criticism of Ayaan Hirsi Ali (we don’t need to deal with any of her ideas because she works for right-wing think tank!).
Atheism in the Islamic world has a much better chance of changing things than moderation because it doesn’t require lying. If the Quran has one central theme it is that religious moderation = unbelief. Moderators are infidels. To attempt to moderate such a book is oxymoronic.
The atheist movement in the Islamic world will eventually surpass the moderation movement and make it look as silly and futile as it is.
I think this is exactly right. We just have to wait out the cycle of violence as Islam eats itself.
With Christianity, it required a lot of waiting.
Christianity took a long time but the internet and globalism are two giant, relatively new, factors.
However, they seem to be working against the West.
Unfortunately at least one actor has nuclear weapons (Pakistan, and likely one should say India and Israel in the same breath, because of the nature of enemies/conflict areas, etc.), so waiting it out might be awkward.
Asra Nomani’s Muslim Reform Movement has just nailed its 95 Theses to the door of the Washington D.C. Islamic Centre (literally).
Here’s the text:
PREAMBLE
We are Muslims who live in the 21st century. We stand for a respectful, merciful and inclusive interpretation of Islam. We are in a battle for the soul of Islam, and an Islamic renewal must defeat the ideology of Islamism, or politicized Islam, which seeks to create Islamic states, as well as an Islamic caliphate.
We seek to reclaim the progressive spirit with which Islam was born in the 7th century to fast forward it into the 21st century. We support the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by United Nations member states in 1948.
We reject interpretations of Islam that call for any violence, social injustice and politicized Islam. Facing the threat of terrorism, intolerance, and social injustice in the name of Islam, we have reflected on how we can transform our communities based on three principles: peace, human rights and secular governance. We announce the formation of an international initiative: the Muslim Reform Movement.
We have courageous reformers from around the world who have written our Declaration for Muslim Reform, a living document that we will continue to enhance as our journey continues. We invite our fellow Muslims and neighbors to join us.
DECLARATION
A. Peace: National Security, Counterterrorism and Foreign Policy
1. We stand for universal peace, love and compassion. We reject violent jihad. We believe we must target the ideology of violent Islamist extremism in order to liberate individuals from the scourge of oppression and terrorism both in Muslim-majority societies and the West.
2. We stand for the protection of all people of all faiths and non-faith who seek freedom from dictatorships, theocracies and Islamist extremists.
3. We reject bigotry, oppression and violence against all people based on any prejudice, including ethnicity, gender, language, belief, religion, sexual orientation and gender expression.
B. Human Rights: Women’s Rights and Minority Rights
1. We stand for human rights and justice. We support equal rights and dignity for all people, including minorities. We support the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.
2. We reject tribalism, castes, monarchies and patriarchies and consider all people equal with no birth rights other than human rights. All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. Muslims don’t have an exclusive right to “heaven.”
3. We support equal rights for women, including equal rights to inheritance, witness, work, mobility, personal law, education, and employment. Men and women have equal rights in mosques, boards, leadership and all spheres of society. We reject sexism and misogyny.
C. Secular Governance: Freedom of Speech and Religion
1. We are for secular governance, democracy and liberty. We are against political movements in the name of religion. We separate mosque and state. We are loyal to the nations in which we live. We reject the idea of the Islamic state. There is no need for an Islamic caliphate. We oppose institutionalized sharia. Sharia is manmade.
2. We believe in life, joy, free speech and the beauty all around us. Every individual has the right to publicly express criticism of Islam. Ideas do not have rights. Human beings have rights. We reject blasphemy laws, which are a cover for the restriction of freedom of speech and religion. We affirm every individual’s right to ijtihad, or critical thinking, and seek a revival of ijtihad.
3. We believe in freedom of religion and the right of all people to express and practice their faith, or non-faith, without threat of intimidation, persecution, discrimination or violence. Apostasy is not a crime. Our ummah–our community–is not just Muslims, but all of humanity.
We stand for peace, human rights and secular governance.
Please stand with us!
Affirmed this Third Day of December, Two-Thousand and Fifteen
#MuslimReform
Twitter: @TheMuslimReform
Instagram: @TheMuslimReform
Facebook: Muslim Reform Movement
Email: MuslimReformMovement@gmail.com
Scroll down here for a list of signatories. This could be significant as I understand that MSM has dropped people like Reza Aslan and Dean Obeidallah as Muslim reps in response to San Bernardino, and gone with Maajid Nawaz and Asra Nomani instead.
http://www.change.org/p/muslims-and-neighbors-we-support-the-muslim-reform-movement
I wish them all the best of luck.
That is a wonderful declaration.
I am a non-believer, but have many Christians, Jews, Native Americans and Muslims in my extended family and find them in full agreement with the above. I also know the local imam who is from Kenya, and is a wonderful, peaceful, loving person who has several close Jewish and Christian friends, including a rabbi and a Unitarian minister.
I think the ISIS or DAISH and the Al Qaida are just organized criminals hiding behind a religious cloak.
AC
Considering the billion and a half or so Muslims in the world… some Sunnis… some Shias… some non participants, but still Muslims as is true with other religions. There are hundreds of millions who are.
The radicals terrorists who claim Islam as their faith are no more mainstream than the Skinheads and KKK advocates are Christians.
The difference is that the latter are readily rejected as such.
Tarek Fatah, Qanta Ahmed, Fred Maroun – just 3 names which came to my mind while I was reading this post. And there are many more. A new initiative by moderate Muslims (meaning: supporting democracy, freedom and human rights in the Western sense) was launched three days ago: https://www.facebook.com/Muslim-Reform-Movement-462078103964443/ and gives even more hope.
Yes, these people are living in the West but we don’t know about real attitudes of people living in countries where stating that they are against a literal interpretation of Koran can get them a death sentence.And still, there are some who say it openly with incredible bravery. Two countries, Tunisia and Egypt show that it is enough to curtail a bit the power of the mosque and people are starting to behave differently.
I just posted a link to her Patheos piece on my Facebook wall, and I encourage everyone else to do the same on yours if you can.
Recently Ayaan Hirsi Ali has decided a good solution to Islamism is conversion of Muslims to Christianity. It’s as if she has run out of hope for moderate Islam and is really saying it won’t work.
So, whether Muslims convert to atheism, or Christianity or some other strain of thought, it looks like there isn’t much of a middle ground.
I don’t think that her statements were recent. She has them in ‘Nomad’, published in 2010.
She’s changed her mind; her latest book, Heretic, supports not conversion but a recasting of the Qur’an as a more allegorical document, as well as four other changes to Islam. They don’t include conversion.
It was probably not a helpful view.
Really? And what is a helpful view? We need to be realistic here and avoid placing our ideals and expectations on people who face real and present danger if their views vary from what is considered acceptable in their religion.
I guess the thought was that Muslims feel a need for religion and rather than sending them to the cold shower of atheism, they could take a step in the right direction by converting to Christianity first. However welcome that might be, I’m sure a lot of Muslims would find that condescending and absurd. Not many would take it seriously.
According to ISIS there are too many moderate Muslims and they are arbitrarily persecuted or executed when possible. So yes, that’s one answer provided within the framework of Islam.
Here are a few moderate muslims:
hXXps://youtu.be/nA3xN5ptZXM
(replace ‘XX’ with ‘tt’)
I am reminded of my criticism of the Scarlet Letter. All Hester had to do was move to another town then I wouldn’t have to read the story because there wouldn’t be any story to tell.
Any member of our society can live a morally acceptable life if they learn to think for themselves and remove mob mentality from dictating their views.
I suspect if the audience in this video were taken as individuals in a neutral environment and were promised anonymity, they might quibble a bit on some of these points, or even deny some of the text outright. On the other hand the the vision of normal, average Muslims portrayed in the video is pretty terrifying. These are not people I would want to welcome into my community or associate with.
I am personally of a mind to say that moderate Muslims are pretty common, but they are not common in predominantly Muslim countries. Many Muslims to not support Sharia Law, and are openly tolerant toward other religions, gays, and so on. Such Muslims become more common in Western countries. I know of quite a few practising Muslims that I would consider moderate.
To me the critical question is this: “What should happen to apostates?”
The answer to that goes far to determining whether a Muslim is moderate or not.
GBJ, the wording of the question is important. ‘Sharia conditions being met and in ideal Islamic state, should apostates be killed?’ Or whatever question you want as long as you have the preamble.
Here’s Maajid Nawaz ending the career of Mo Ansar, an ex-bank clerk and self-appointed ‘community leader’ who used to wander around the twittersphere, blagging appearances on British TV as the spokesman of the British umma. Until his fraudulent taqqiya was exposed in 1 minute by Nawaz. Ansar has never recovered. 2 minute vid to watch a man’s entire dignity and credibility collapse.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9hgUc0t9r0
Thanks for that video clip, Dermot. Maajid Nawaz is one who deserves great support.
+ a large number
One pattern I have noticed in recent days is the amount of Islamists who don’t know Koranic Arabic.
In the Nawaz-Ansar video above, judging by Ansar’s look when Nawaz translates the Arabic for him, I would say that he doesn’t understand Arabic. It looks to me that he has just found out what Nawaz is talking about.
There’s a vid up on youtube in which some Koranic scholar humiliates Anjem Choudary and proves to his face that he doesn’t understand basic Arabic.
And in the Maryam Namazie Goldsmith’s tape, there is the episode when the Libyan lawyer woman speaks in Arabic and the Islamic Society girls loudly protest that they don’t understand what she’s saying. One of Maryam’s supporters has to explain that the Libyan woman is quoting the Koran.
It seems to me that these Islamists are getting away with even more BS than we thought. x
I remember on one video Richard Dawkins was in a debate or panel discussion including a Muslim scholar or imam. Richard tried to pin him down – “do you believe in death for apostasy”. The Muslim squirmed and twisted and tried to evade. Richard wouldn’t let him go and asked him repeatedly. I don’t remember for sure but I think the moderator changed the subject. But, Richard had made his point.
“I remember on one video Richard Dawkins was in a debate or panel discussion including a Muslim scholar or imam. Richard tried to pin him down – “do you believe in death for apostasy”.”
He was stuck between a rock and a hard place. He didn’t want to say yes, but knew if he said know he would have opened himself up to accusations of heresy from fellow Muslims.
*no, not know :p
Check.
That video you mention is on YouTube. I believe the crux of topic under discussion was about Sharia law in the UK. The interviewer did eventually come back to the Muslim guest and pin him down on Richard’s question. The man finally answered that, yes, under Sharia law the penalty for apostasy is death. He qualified it by saying “in Muslim countries.”
Richard does a great job simply by getting religious people to admit openly what they actually believe, thereby exposing the uncomfortable truth.
Thanks for filling in some details.
I think that guy was supposed to be a “moderate” Muslim.
I want to point out that ex-Muslims, like ex-Mormons, ex-JW, ex-Scientologists, ex-Christians, etc., may not be the best people to seek as experts about a religion, because they definitely have a grudge, justified no doubt, but not the best people to calmly discuss a matter of religion. Everyone has a right to talk though.
Are devoutly religious people better to talk to about religion? After all, we hear about the War on Christmas and other “persecution” everyday. A lot of it seems pretty hysterical and devoid of calm discussion.
I think ex-Religious are exactly the right people to talk to. I doubt that they hold a grudge. People who have once been believers are probably more sympathetic to the religious way of thinking. They understand the way the mind can be tricked into accepting a dogma and probably feel a sense of relief at having survived it. The next position after sympathy and understanding is a desire to encourage others to seek freedom in the same way they did.
I politely disagree on the logic of that. Would an ex-drug addict whose life was destroyed by substance abuse not be the best person to speak about the dangers of drugs?
Probably not the best person. We all know the stereotype of the excessive zeal shown by reformed ‘sinners’ (whatever their sin was).
An ex-drug-addict is more likely to blame the drugs than their own defects of character. In particular they are likely to assume that occasional drug use almost inevitably leads to addiction as it did in their case.
Same with reformed alcoholics.
While their experience is a warning of what *can* happen, it needs to be weighed up against statistics. What percentage of drug users are addicts, what percentage of drinkers are alcoholics, what percentage of the religious are fundamentalists? What percentage of commenters here have no life outside the Internet? 😉
cr
The Muslims I’ve known are pretty liberal. But I’m in New York and most people of any religious persuasion are pretty liberal, so my sample is certainly not random. The data shows that U.S. Muslims are more moderate. Depending on what we want to define as moderate, it is good news that the majority of Muslims worldwide do not feel suicide bombings are ever justified.
Also, given that the majority of U.S. Muslims believe there’s multiple ways to paradise, that is good news, for it is reflective of secular influence. Many liberal Christians say the same thing, yet there is nothing traditionally within these religions that says there are many paths. We all know Christians do fine with cognitive dissonance over many aspects of the religion; there’s no reason to think that Muslims cannot do the same and relegate the violent aspects as just a narrative on the culture at the time the Qur’an was written, despite the obvious questions about what the point of those verses are if they don’t mean anything now.
“The data shows that U.S. Muslims are more moderate.”
Having looked at the Pew numbers here I find them troubling. We have a global median of 72% of Muslims saying suicide attacks are never justified, and 81% of American Muslims. That’s not a particularly large difference. It’s even worse when we see that 7% of U.S. Muslims and a global median of 8% of Muslims say such attacks are sometimes justified to defend Islam.
Given that the latter numbers are the same as Indonesia, and Iraq, I wonder how American Muslims positions on things like apostasy, blasphemy, and Sharia stack up.
On the conversation within US Muslim communities, here’s Asra Nomani from yesterday with an Aslan-type ‘no-problem-here denialist, Dalila Mogahed. Go to 5:35 to see Nomani say there are dodgy preachers in US mosques and Mogadeh’s facial reaction: it looks like, ‘Don’t let the cat out of the bag, Asra.’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zpGaLP_76Q
I agree that 19% of Muslims thinking suicide attacks can be justified is a lot of people, which is still scary. However, it’s still clear that a majority don’t support terrorism. The way this question is framed is also vague and there may (or may not) be huge differences in opinion on what “ever justified” means. Middle Eastern Muslims may think it’s justified to kill infidels. American Muslims may think it’s acceptable if it is done as a sacrifice on the battlefield to take out the enemy and never appropriate in civilian areas. There’s likely a wide range of belief in between these two extremes.
It would be useful to know where these people stand, particularly when it comes to justifying it when it comes to a military versus civilian situation. Without more context, it is hard to say whether this is more or less scary than American opinions on drone strikes. 48% of Americans are very concerned about endangering the life of civilians while 32% are somewhat concerned. That leaves 20% who aren’t concerned, which is right in line with the number of Muslims who think blowing people up with suicide vests is okay on some occasions. What is the difference between the two other than in the suicide case, the attacker is also left dead?
I don’t know any Muslims personally, but I do communicate with many everyday during my job as an English tutor at a Canadian college. The city has a very large immigrant population, most of whom are Muslim or Sikh.
Most of the Muslims I tutor seem to be fairly moderate. Some have even come to me with papers in favour of same-sex marriage, against discrimination and the death penalty, and so on. Many of the writers of these papers even wore hijabs (never a niqab or burqa in my experience).
That being said, I have also had a few Muslim students with more traditional beliefs that you might expect: anti-abortion, pro-death penalty, highly sectarian, etc.
Which group outweighs which? I haven’t the slightest idea, but all of these students, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Hindu and more, co-exist here, and I have not heard of any sectarian violence or bullying of any kind.
Her essay is an interesting look from the inside at how some Muslim communities here may isolate their children and raise them more religiously as a reaction to living in a non-Muslim society. The paragraph below reminded me of Mark Twain’s “The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg”:
I worried though, about the Internet, about radical recruiters posing as friends, finding willing and malleable clay in our unformed children. For we would keep them unformed. We would shield them from western influences in order to protect them, only to create a rift that could be exploited as an entry point. We would in essence be leaving our children vulnerable to radicalization.
I have some muslim friends and acquaintances, and some of them are devout in terms of praying toward Mecca every day. I could not describe them as anything other than “moderate”, and I hope I am right about it.
“I could not describe them as anything other than “moderate”, and I hope I am right about it.”
It’s funny how often I will hear people say “all the Muslims I know are moderate” full stop. Do they really think if they weren’t they would behave differently, or tell them otherwise? Of course if you have opinions that are unpopular you aren’t going to share them. Most of my acquaintances where I live here in Alabama have no clue I’m an atheist.
So I’m curious where you think this line of reasoning should end. If I have Muslim friends or colleagues who seem like reasonable and decent people to me, am I supposed to still harbor some degree of suspicion toward them regardless of my impressions of their character, simply because they’re Muslim?
“If I have Muslim friends or colleagues who seem like reasonable and decent people to me, am I supposed to still harbor some degree of suspicion toward them regardless of my impressions of their character, simply because they’re Muslim?”
Well I never assume I know what anyone actually thinks, or feels about anything. Unless they have nothing to lose or gain by telling the truth. So I guess I’m skeptical where most people are concerned. My point was what I wouldn’t do, and that’s present my anecdotal experience as though it’s evidence.
Or as though it’s proof of anything, because the way it’s usually said is “every Muslim I know is moderate” therefor most Muslims are moderate.
There are two problem with that, the one I already mentioned, and the fact that it’s less likely that Muslims who aren’t moderate will be associating with you.
The question that Dr. Coyne asked is whether any Muslims are moderate, not whether most of them are. I have no idea whether the latter is true or not, but based on the experience of several people commenting here (and my experience as well), it’s pretty clearly the case that moderate Muslims exist.
“The question that Dr. Coyne asked is whether any Muslims are moderate, not whether most of them are.”
I don’t think that was an actual question. I’m sure there are people who are Muslims in name only, and I suspect PCC knows that. The real question is whether that’s as common a phenomenon in America as it is among Christians, and I personally don’t believe it is.
The post is titled with a question, and I hope this is an exception to the rule that the answer is then usually no.
I prefer to talk about universal human rights rather than Enlightenment values. The latter is no doubt perfectly accurate, but the former cuts out potential misunderstandings about “Western values colonizing the world”.
(To say “We reject the universality of human rights” is more quickly recognizable for what it is, than “We reject materialistic neo-colonialist Western Enlightenment values”.)
Yes, Yakaru, it is important to be clear on your wording. Contrast the UN Universal Human Rights Charter with the Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, agreed in 1990 in Cairo as a direct response to the UN Charter.
So that when a double-speaking Islamist like Tariq Ramadan says, ‘I support human rights’ we hear one thing but he means another, whist appearing to the average hearer to Mr. Reasonable himself. And he can even claim to be honest.
That’s what the Muslim Reform Movement is addressing in its manifesto which I posted earlier, numbered 8. Under B1, they specifically adhere to the UN version, thereby rejecting the Islamic Cairo version. x
Thanks for highlighting that. And for your other comments on this thread — catching up at the moment!
You’re welcome, Yakaru. On the subject of catching up on liberal/rational Muslims, one would need to follow Maryam Namazie’s twitter and especially her facebook feed. She links often to secularist Muslims in the Muslim-dominated countries.
Her project is to draw our attention to the liberal Muslims who are at the coal-face from Morocco to Indonesia. Over time, she disassembles one’s assumptions about the monolithism of the Islamic world: there are incredibly brave people out there, not as celebrated as Raif Badawi or Ashraf Fayadh, who do our secular, democratic work for us.
I only wish I had bookmarked all these stories. That’s why, when you consider the Arab Spring, I am virtually certain that the initial impulse of all those revolutionists was towards some sort of inchoate secular, democratic polity and not towards an Islamic or Bonapartist state – what they ended up with.
I still wish that the story of the 1979 Iranian revolution, from which Maryam Namazie ended up fleeing, were more popularly known in the west. It really came that close to being a popular democratic revolution, but for its hijacking by Khomeini and the usual cover and support for him by Tudeh, the Iraqi Communist Party.
Maryam calls herself a Communist but in all other respects she appears a completely admirable woman. One hopes that she, along with Maajid Nawaz, will advise Cameron: and the same goes for Asra Nomani and Ayaan in the US with Obama.
Allele akhbar. x
Been following Marayam Namazie for a some time. Didn’t know she calls herself a communist. I guess for some, that’s the *least* objectionable thing about her! I really have no idea why she is so viciously attacked by the left.
I wonder if / hope that the rather shocking polls about Muslims supporting Sharia etc, are partly a result of lack of exposure to secular ideas and lack of reflection. I hope this might change swiftly, for a proportion of them at least, with some public education.
“Didn’t know she calls herself a communist. I guess for some, that’s the *least* objectionable thing about her! ”
I don’t find that objectionable at all. But then not every country shares the US phobia about communism or even socialism. I’d want to know more specifics about her political beliefs before I knew whether to find them objectionable or not.
cr
Yep — I meant that ironically. I have no objection to her being a communist. I’m surprised none of her detractors have picked up on it, given that they’re so busy trying to find things to get upset about.
Robert Spencer goes after her for Communism – no surprise there. What surprises me is that she is happy to call herself that given the Iraqi CPs disastrous role in the Iranian revolution: basically, first Khomeini, then us. Exactly paralleling the tactics of the German Communist Party in 1933: first Hitler, then us. Trotsky was jumping up and down in frustration at this suicide but by then he’d been exiled.
You may know the story from the start of WWII: Hitler talking to the Ambassador of Norway (which had given Trotsky sanctuary and then expelled him). Hitler asked the legate who he thought might win the coming war: the Ambassador responded, “Trotsky.” Hitler’s face darkened but the Norwegian was wrong. x
Dermot C
I hadn’t heard that story about Trotsky. (I’m a quarter of the way through a huge single volume printing of Deutscher’s bio.)
I’ve noticed that CP leaders are often more interested in a rotation than a revolution!
I read Deutscher years ago: a page-turner, IIRC. But I remember finding him a bit slippery, esp. in his Stalin biog: I seem to recall him wandering into the apologist camp, but I could be mistaken. Orwell didn’t trust Deutscher. x
I’ll keep an eye on Deutscher when it comes to Stalin. I almost regret buying that version now, because I’ve since learned that the publisher, Verso, has rather distasteful ethics–
“The publishing house has done something I have not seen since the passing of communism: denounced its dead author for his ideological deviations.”
The denounced author is Hitchens, and the story about by Nick Cohen is here–
http://new.spectator.co.uk/2013/03/hitch-fight/
Dave Rubin’s interviewing Nick Cohen tomorrow. Thx. for the Cohen/Hitchens piece. x
Should be good. Thank you!
I live in the south of France and we have lots of Muslims. I’m openly gay and none of them have tried to stone me yet- I suppose that’s a good sign. Isn’t it?
“I live in the south of France and we have lots of Muslims. I’m openly gay and none of them have tried to stone me yet- I suppose that’s a good sign. Isn’t it?”
No members the Westboro Baptist church have stoned any gay people to my knowledge, but I suspect they would support a law making it legal.
I’ll re-phrase, I’ve never been treated with any form of lack of respect from Muslims even though I don’t adhere to their ideology.
I don’t think we should presume people are idiots just because they were born into a particular socio-cultural environment. Isn’t Jimmy Carter from some odd Christian sect?
“I don’t think we should presume people are idiots just because they were born into a particular socio-cultural environment.”
Who is presuming anyone is an idiot?
The presumption is anyone born into an Islamic environment cannot think critically. I doubt that’s the case.
“The presumption is anyone born into an Islamic environment cannot think critically.”
Well in my opinion anyone who believes in God, and follows a religion, by definition isn’t thinking critically about their beliefs.
I don’t think that makes them an idiot it just makes them irrational.
My point is being born to an Islamic family doesn’t necessarily make someone religious. At the moment people are generalizing the whole affair. There are Syrian atheists, there are Iranian gays and there are Moroccans who drink champagne. Yet they’re all branded Muslims because they’re brown-ish. How fair is that?
“My point is being born to an Islamic family doesn’t necessarily make someone religious.”
Oh OK, you’ve change the discussion. You originally referred to “Muslims”, not people born into that culture.
Given that change I see nothing you’re saying that I disagree with.
…”those who have the ability to recast the faith in a way that can tame its outliers.”
Just appreciating a well-written line. Maybe it is the rhythm to recast the faith and can tame its outliers. It’s enjoyable to read.
I think that my work colleagues and neighbors who are Muslim are all moderate.
I really think that they (most of them) treat religion the same way moderate, liberal Xian USians do: They mouth the expected words, claim to believe the stuff; and then they carry on their lives as if none of it were significant (aside from outward appearances and keeping those up — it’s a show, in large part. And nostalgia. And a community to be a part of.)
Exactly. Muslims, like Christians, are moderate precisely to the degree that they ignore their religion. Unfortunately they are a few hundred years behind in this project.
As I read this I think, how many Christians meet this definition of moderate? Not many Southern Baptists, I can tell you. Nor Scientologists, for that matter. Nor a lot of religious sects. I suppose there are enough moderates overall to win the day, but one does not have to look very far in any direction to find a non-moderate in this sense.
Strange that Iran wasn’t included in this survey.
I’ve known some pretty moderate muslims living in Western countries (UK, Canada, Australia) over the years. So yes, “moderate” Muslims do exist. Whether moderate muslim communities exist – that is something I cannot comment on. If there are – and I’d be surprised if there were none – then they need to be more visible, for sure.
If they’re a moderate muslim community, they’d be less visible, not more. The more moderate, the less visible.
Google (images) ‘iranian women 1970’ for example. (Or ‘iraqi women 1970’ – same thing). Most of those women would probably be – nominally – muslim of some sort. And they’re fashionably dressed, so far as I can tell – they’d pass muster in Paris.
There are only a very few black sacks.
So how could you tell they’re muslim?
If one can go by standards of dress, both Iran and Iraq were ‘moderate’ muslim communities before everything turned to shit.
I look at those photos from 1970 and I feel desperately sorry for those Iraqis and Iranians (and that is, probably most of the population) who are now being oppressed by the religious nutters.
cr
“The forceful removing of hijab (Islamic code of dress for women) in Iran signified a special part of the contemporary Iranian history under the rule of Reza Shah Pahlavi during which Iranian women and girls were banned from wearing hijab including various kinds of chador, veil, and headscarf.”
http://www.iranreview.org/content/Documents/The-Removing-of-Hijab-in-Iran.htm
I just read it. Dictatorial of the Shah to enforce a dress code, but it ends:
“a great many of Iranian women who had been forced to abandon the Islamic cover in the era of Reza Shah, were given relative freedoms under the second Pahlavi monarch and following the fall of Reza Shah. This enabled them to restitute their Islamic hijab.”
Reza Shah abdicated in 1941. So by the 1970’s, I’d assume there was a fairly free choice in what women wore, and Googling seems to suggest a very large percentage chose to wear western-style dress.
cr
Suraiya Simi Rahman’s thesis is that there are moderate Muslims and there are radical, fundamentalist, violent Muslims, but YOU CAN’T TELL THE DIFFERENCE. She uses Tashfeen Malik, the female San Bernardino terrorist, as an example. She was extremely and increasingly devout, but under the radar. Invisible. The implication is that the more devout, the more dangerous. That makes sense to me, and the same holds true for Christianity or any other religion.
“The more devout, the more dangerous” So true. Mother Theresa was particularly devout.
Okay, makes sense to me and is what we already thought and knew. This IS the question: ARE there really “moderate” Muslims? I think there are, but like you said, in America, they are probably 1st-generation immigrants. They are profoundly fundo, but benign.
It’s their KIDS, the second/next generation that’s problematic. Their parents didn’t allow those kids to integrate into American society as much as they should have, and now those kids have a confused identity. WHO AM I? Some of them are drifting AWAY from their Muslim communities and from Islam, perhaps; but OTHERS are dashing to Daesh.
From: Why Evolution Is True To: karooma24@yahoo.com Sent: Monday, December 7, 2015 10:31 AM Subject: [New post] Are there really “moderate” Muslims? #yiv9638400545 a:hover {color:red;}#yiv9638400545 a {text-decoration:none;color:#0088cc;}#yiv9638400545 a.yiv9638400545primaryactionlink:link, #yiv9638400545 a.yiv9638400545primaryactionlink:visited {background-color:#2585B2;color:#fff;}#yiv9638400545 a.yiv9638400545primaryactionlink:hover, #yiv9638400545 a.yiv9638400545primaryactionlink:active {background-color:#11729E;color:#fff;}#yiv9638400545 WordPress.com | whyevolutionistrue posted: “Nearly everyone who discusses the issue of extremist Islam (or “Islamism,” the wedding of Islam to state government), suggests that the solution lies in the community of moderate Muslims: those who have the ability to define the faith in a way that can ta” | |
I live in Toronto and I have a number of gay Muslim friends, though they may only be culturally Muslim – they profess a faith in God/Allah, they celebrate holidays like Eid, some of them fast during Ramadan, most abstain from eating pork, a few abstain from alcohol. I don’t know that they constitute or belong to a moderate community, though, as most of them don’t attend mosque regularly.
What do they think should be the price of apostasy?
“The world won’t be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.” -Albert Einstein The moderate Muslims know who the radicals are and won’t do anything about it. The pair in California had been radicalized for quite some time. Their relatives and friends had to know.
I’d wager that all the large Muslim communities operate under Shariah law. The moderates are the buffer between the radicals and the rest of the world. There are radical Imams in every community looking for It’s happening in Belgium now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-_492NT3K4 We had 3 kids radicalized in a city not far from here and it is a “moderate” Muslim community.
Were the 2 in California a sleeper cell? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Sleeper_Cell How many more are there?
“Their relatives and friends had to know.”
Why?
Consider an ordinary (i.e. non-muslim) serial killer or mass murderer. Almost invariably their next-door neighbours and even their immediate family never suspected a thing.
Unless the California pair wanted to make themselves known, why would anyone suspect? Rule no 1 of the Secret Terrorists Handbook is: Do not tell anybody your evil plans.
cr
Syed’s father radicalized his son himself, by his own admission. He knew that Syed was obsessed with Israel and tried to calm him down, saying that in 2 years there will be no Israel!
For Syed, all female Muslim millenials in the USA were not a suitable pool to choose a wife from, so he took a bride from Pakistan, a country endemic for extremist Islam. Of course, there are many nice Pakistanis wishing freedom. However, Tafsheen was devout, wore a hijab, then upgraded to niqab. Nobody suspected they were extremests? Give me a break!
Someone above mentioned the “standards of dress”. I find it a good indicator. If a woman in a Western country covers herself, she is either an Islamic fundamentalist or is under the control of someone who is. I have no idea why so many Westerners delude themselves with the idea that hijabi women may be integrated and tolerant and enlightened and so on. Perhaps because it is painful to realize the magnitude of the problem, and the fact that it is self-inflicted.
No I’m not going to give you a break. Or Donald Trump. There is no way Syed’s father can be generalised into Bill Fish’s sweeping statement “The moderate Muslims know who the radicals are and won’t do anything about it.”
I would concede that wearing the full black-sack deal in a Western country does suggest a degree of fundamentalism. Even so, the percentage of those who go on to commit terrorist acts is tiny.
cr
At the risk of being lumped in with unsavory people, I must ask if you are saying that fundamentalist religion is not complicit in the creation of violent religious extremists.
No I’m not saying that at all.
What I am saying is that it’s ridiculous to make a blanket statement “the moderates know who the radicals are and do nothing about it”. If by ‘radicals’ is implied ‘terrorists’.
Radicalism by itself is not illegal, though it may be cause for suspicion. But if the radicals take the elementary precaution of not ranting too loudly, who’s going to know?
cr
I agree that it is too much to demand from a parent to e-mail the FBI: “My son is a Muslim extremist. Please keep an eye on him!”
When the child is already radicalized, it is too late. The parent has to act before this.
So it is mind-boggling to me that some Muslim parents in the West isolate their children from their native peers, teach them that as Muslims they are superior and should not become “too Western”, put headscarves on their daughters’ heads… and then play: “Oh how innocent I am! Pity me!” when the child takes the lessons to heart.
The colleagues and neighbors of Syed and Tashfeen – mostly non-Muslim – must have known about the family’s fundamentalism, though were helpless to do anything. Why do they (the survivors, I mean) now claim that the couple seemed OK? This is why I wanted a break.
I know little about Trump. (You know, I cannot vote in these elections, so no use to educate myself very much.) I don’t like that he is an antivaxer, but nobody’s perfect. Besides, after Obama, I’d like even a donkey in the White House.
Colleagues? Yes, that’s quite plausible that they knew they were Muslim, but how would coworkers go about differentiating an extremist from a merely conservative believer? I don’t think an extremist would start broadcasting crazy things around an office full of people.
As far as the neighbors knowing? It’s doubtful. My current experience living in the same suburban home for 9+ years hasn’t resulted in me knowing any of my neighbors particularly well. In fact, I don’t even know the names of the people living next door. There are still neighborhoods in the U.S. that are more communal, but I think a large segment of the country has social circles largely unrelated to the people living in close proximity to them. Maybe the neighbors knew something about Farook, but it’s very possible they knew nothing as well.
“How would coworkers go about differentiating an extremist from a merely conservative believer?”
I now understand why my views differ from those of most commenters here.
I lump together conservative Muslim believers and openly violent extremists into a single high-risk group. Therefore, I claim that the colleagues knew they had a high-risk person among them, though they couldn’t do anything about it (until he came back with the gun, and it was too late then).
I see causality between fundamentalist Islam and terror (and all other associated disastrous phenomena). It is true that only few fundamentalists ever become violent. However, I cannot remember any other case where people are told to cheerfully ignore a known risk factor just because it is lethal in a small minority of cases. We are told that, because only a small minority of fundamentalist Muslims become terrorists, their uncontrolled immigration must be continued and even increased.
To me, Islam is like lysogeny. I can easily imagine a bacterium telling its peers that they mustn’t worry about importing a lysogenic phage into the colony, because it only rarely switches to the lytic cycle.
Because most adults haven’t imagination as wild as mine to portray rational bacteria, I’ll make another analogy.
Pro-life doctor: Madam, why do you wish to abort your beautiful fetus?
Pregnant patient: Because he was found to carry a mutation dooming him to retinoblastoma.
Doctor: I guess, you spent the night searching the Web about this condition?
Patient: Yes, and I was terrified.
Doctor: But you must have read that a single working copy of the Rb gene, which your fetus has, is enough to prevent malignant transformation.
Patient: Yes, but I know also that this single copy is inevitably lost in some cells during development, leading to multiple sites of malignancy in both eyes by age 2.
Doctor: This is because parents don’t care for their children well enough and so predispose their originally fine cells to malignant transformation. You will give your son healthy foods and antioxidant supplements, you will treat his cells well and then they won’t get transformed.
Of course, Muslims in the West (and, in the long run, all Muslims) can renounce fundamentalist Islam. However, I don’t see how this could happen if the dominant ideology in the West is that fundamentalist Muslims are as good as any other group of humans (actually, better than non-Muslims who tend to be bigoted against them) and when they become radicals, the fault is in the bad Westerners for not giving them every single thing they want.
I too lump conservative Muslims into a higher risk group as it is the group from which extremists arise. But I don’t see what you are proposing coworkers should have done. Call the authorities? Declare that they think a coworker is a conservative Muslim and therefore in a group that is a higher risk to be a threat? They’d need some credible evidence of a threat to even launch an investigation. And that’s where the secrecy comes in. The extremists who broadcast their intentions are the ones who end up being thwarted.
But perhaps I should also rephrase the question with regard to his coworkers. How would they know whether he’s a Muslim like Maajid Nawaz or a Muslim like Mohammed Atta? Outward appearance isn’t likely to tell you anything. It would come down to what information he shares or odd behaviors. Suppose he’s introverted. In my office, a majority of people are introverted. They show up to work, do their job, and leave. I’d have no way of discerning if any of these people might have radical views if they have little interaction with their coworkers on topics other than job duties.
I too lump conservative Muslims into a higher risk group as it is the group from which extremists arise. But I don’t see what you are proposing coworkers should have done. Call the authorities? Declare that they think a coworker is a conservative Muslim and therefore in a group that is a higher risk to be a threat? They’d need some credible evidence of a threat to even launch an investigation. And that’s where the secrecy comes in. The extremists who broadcast their intentions are the ones who end up being thwarted.
But perhaps I should also rephrase the question with regard to his coworkers. How would they know whether he’s a Muslim like Maajid Nawaz or a Muslim like Mohammed Atta? Outward appearance isn’t likely to tell you anything. It would come down to what information he shares or odd behaviors. Suppose he’s introverted. In my office, a majority of people are introverted. They show up to work, do their job, and leave. I’d have no way of discerning if any of these people might have radical views if they have little interaction with their coworkers on topics other than job duties.
The guy who sat next to me in the office committed suicide one day. (No he wasn’t religious and he didn’t endanger anyone else). Obviously the question was, did he show any signs? Well, no. He was quiet and a little bit moody – and I mean a little bit, not very. He was sociable enough when spoken to. Certainly no odder than anyone else.
He must have been deeply depressed, but it never showed.
cr
There’s a joke in a Jonathan Coe book.
In Coventry, no. 16 who never speak to no. 14 always drop in a Christmas card next door. ‘Merry Christmas, from all at number 16’.
In November the next year, the no. 16 family is found dead in a mutual suicide pact. The suicide note reads, ‘Goodbye, Cruel World. From all at number 16’. x
“Even so, the percentage of those who go on to commit terrorist acts is tiny.”
My problem are not as much those who commit terrorist acts as those who don’t. Those who e.g. came to Denmark as immigrants and then in 2006 stabbed it in the back and behaved as mortal enemies of the Danes.
For myself I’m an atheist, born in South Carolina in 1943 and raised in Missouri by Methodist parents (I escaped church as soon as I left for the MU at age 17).
I’m personally acquainted right now with a number of faithfully praying, mosque-attending Muslim families whom I positively know to be horrified by Islamicist extremism (the kind of brutality practiced in Saudi Arabia, the jihadi terrorism in Iraq, Syria, N. Africa, Afghanistan, Pakistan & Bangladesh).
Moreover, they meet the all of the criteria set forth by gluonsprings: they are “not just Muslims who abjure terrorism, but those who embrace the values of democracy and Enlightenment, rejecting the demonization of nonbelievers, gays, apostates, and blasphemers, and embracing a religious pluralism -— including those who don’t believe at all.” (Some of us take “the values of the Enlightenment” to extend to denying the authority of holy writ — e.g., to discarding miracle as explanatory in history or natural science, the age of the cosmos, the theory of evolution. But I agree with gluonsprings that buying into these additional Enlightenment values is irrelevant for deciding who counts as a “moderate Muslim.” A small few of those toted up below are uncomfortable with gay marriage, but none demonizes gays.)
The parents in these households raised and are raising their children in the same spirit.
Household 1 (2 senors, children living on own);
Household 2 (2 parents, 3 adult children);
Household 3 (4 adults, 1 child);
Household 4 (3 adults, 3 children);
Household 5 (2 parents, 2 adult children);
Household 6 (3 adults, 3 children);
Household 6 (2 seniors, children grown);
Household 7 (2 adults, 1 child);
Household 8 (2 adults, child on the way);
Household 9 (2 adults, 2 children);
Household 10 (2 adults, 2 children);
Household 11 (2 adults, 1 child);
Household 12 (2 seniors);
Household 13 (2 adults, no children as yet);
Household 14 (single male in Islamabad);
Household 15 (2 adults, 1 child);
Household 16 (2 seniors);
Household 17 (2 adults, 2 children);
Household 18 (single female in Orlando;
Household 19 (single female in Palo Alto);
Household 20 (2 adults, no children as yet);
Household 21 (single male in Fayetteville)
That’s off the top of my head. It comes to 45 adults, with 21 non-adult children among them.
Not included in this count are the many members of the extended families of several of these households, in Bangladesh & Pakistan. (I know at least 2 score of these as well, and they are also angry at what they regard as the perversion of Islam I’ve described. I can’t speak for the children, but all the adults are also tolerant of my non-belief. And they’re not ashamed of showing it before their kids.)
In fact, there is not a single Muslim with whom I am personally acquainted who supports the craziness we’re speaking of, though some of them have reluctantly resigned to living under dictatorship or corrupt oligarchy. But the Muslims I know here in the States are politically active, and vote for progressive causes and candidates to boot.
My experience of course is from a certain point of view narrow. It’s certainly anecdotal, in no way based on well-gathered statistics. But it is evidently far wider than that of lots of Americans.
Correction: It’s not my definition. I was quoting our host from above the fold. I don’t think it’s a bad definition, but it’s not mine.
Not one of them have a Constitution of a secular character. But then neither dose the UK. They are in fact living that which their religion propounds. Why the ones here want their religion and govt mix with the largest military ever to exist on the planet at their disposal. However how do we deal with 1.6 billion without getting them to treat us as enemies, and yet not curtail our support for pluralism? We see that Saudi Arabia, the nexus of all this is our ally. Which seems insane yet even now they are fielding their mostly equipped by us military against their wayward son Da’esh. A Frankenstein created by them, the US and the remnants of Iraq. While the US silent war on everyone in whatever country the US fields their armed drones which is predominately Muslim keep slaughtering marriage caravans and funeral caravans etc. If the US planners want a long term enemy, then stirring up the Muslims is the key and it is working swimmingly. Swimmingly in blood mostly spilled by Europe through NATO and the USA as leader.
We could instead be spending time secretly education the young in something better than theocracy. Many of them are against it anyway.
“If the US planners want a long term enemy, then stirring up the Muslims is the key…”
Replace “Muslims” with “Germans” and you get the logic of Munich, 1938. Replace it with “Russians” and you get the logic of the shameful appeasement of Russian aggression continuing to this day.
Do not appease the enemy. Do not feed the crocodile. If Muslim civilians manage to cope with terrorists operating from their countries, then there will be no drones. Education is no answer against an armed doctrine, only military force helps. I’m glad that nobody suggested solving the Yugoslavia wars by educating the Serbs, otherwise we’d still have a war next door.
Back in 1991 or 1992 Atatürk predicted that the next world war would be between Christians and Muslims and it will the the US that calls the tune. (Muslims replacing Communists as the global menace.) He was unfortunately correct.
I don’t know which Ataturk you mean, but I don’t think the US called the tune. I agree with those who think that the key event which marked the “new” conflict was the fatwa against Salman Rushdie in 1989. It showed that fundamentalist Muslims haven’t renounced their aspirations for global domination, that they are ready to use intimidation and violence to achieve their goal, and that a dangerously high number of Muslim immigrants in the West have fundamentalist views and are disloyal to their host countries. When the West took no contra-measures, fundamentalist Muslim logically concluded that the West was ripe for conquest.
Can it be, as the linked Pew survey states, that Afghanistan now ranks at the top of the pops with 99 percent of its Muslim population wishing to live under sharia law?
When they deposed the Taliban in the Fall of 2001, coalition forces were greeted as liberators; the citizens of Kabul celebrated their liberation by shaving off their beards and doffing their burqas.
What folly has been our policy there since then!
No, the Afghans had unrealistic expectations. Like here in Eastern Europe – when the Berlin Wall fell, there was an euphoria, then many were disappointed by the long and painful transition for democracy and became nostalgic for communism.
I don’t know what is wrong with Westerners, always seeking the fault in themselves and regarding their sworn enemies aspiring for world domination as nice people.
So, because Western policy has been a folly, a crowd of ordinary Afghans decided to lynch Farkhounda? No. They decided to lynch Farkhounda, because they are who they are.
Seems to me Afghanistan went bad, in large measure at least, because the US took its eye off the ball (after bin Laden escaped from Tora Bora) to ramp up for the invasion of Iraq.
Obama, who ran in 2008 on a platform that Afghanistan was the “good war” that should be vigorously pursued, has been unable to staunch the snowballing deterioration there.
We’ve nothing to show now for all the blood and treasure spilled there, except for some brief initial payback exacted on al-Qaeda, and its Taliban hosts, for knocking those towers down.
Anyway you cut it, it’s a tragedy.
I read Ms. Suraiya Simi Rahman’s piece and I cannot find anything in it I disagree with. There was a bunch of other crap I was going to write for this, but I will skip to the main point. The more we learn about the couple that perpetrated the massacre in San Bernardino, the more it seems like they essentially “self-radicalized.” Things began to fall into place when it came out that Syed Rizwan Farook, the US-born half of the murderous duo, met his bride-to-be, Tashfeen Malik, online. The whole mail-order bride scheme (I wonder if it means something that it rhymes with meme?) has been around for some time and the spam emails for “Hot Ukrainian Women Want to Marry You!” are almost as ubiquitous as are those for “Natural Male Enhancement.”
I live in the very red state of South Dakota and know all too well how difficult it can be to find a suitable romantic partner when one is a minority. It does not take much imagination to see how ISIS could modify the “mail order bride” meme as a means of radicalizing young Muslim males in predominantly non-Muslim countries around the world, especially when a pilgrimage to Islam’s holy sites is expected of all practising Muslims.
On top of this, I was listening to NPR over my lunch break, and they were speaking to an “expert” on terrorism and he made the point that groups like ISIS seem to be learning from the play book of sexual predators in how they seduce people online. Made sense to me…
Reference: “http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2015/12/07/muslim-community-outreach”
Interesting and scary…
Quite a few years ago, when I lived in Stanley, Idaho (pop. 69), I had one of the few Internet connections in town. I allowed some horny, lonely local young men to use it to cruise mail-order-bride sites for incredibly hot (according to the photos) Russian and Ukrainian eligible women. One of them followed up and it didn’t go well. She was imagining New York City, not rural Idaho.
He shoulda passed it off as north Jersey west of I-287 …
However, most people today find their partners online.
I once read of the experience of Pervez Hoodbhoy (physicist, educator, progressive) lecturing physics students in Pakistan. He commented on the devastating floods that had just taken place in Pakistani Kashmir. One student, to general approval, bayed all pious and self-satisfied that such things happen when society begins to stray from the word of Allah. This was at a higher center for science learning!
I’ve had several Muslim friends (mostly of South Asian backgrounds) growing up. They were upper middle-class, attending top drawer schools. One moment they’re any other normal kid – swapping Dire Straits tapes, chatting about Return of the Jedi etc. But whenever Islam came up they happened to espouse birdshit crazy ideas. They had a chauvinistic view of Islam, perched above Newton and Einstein on the hierarchy of knowledge. Their disdain for non-muslims was entrenched and a matter of course. Their views on blasphemy were unsettling. They were moderate in way, but still very unlike other friends who were not of muslim background. A notable exception were Muslims who follow the Aga Khan as their spiritual leader. They were in most respects as modernized as any Westerner. Funnily, they are not regarded as muslims by other muslims.
I concur that even moderate muslims are peculiar in how tolerant and progressive they are. But there have been rays of hope. The acclaimed William Dalrymple maintains some of the most tolerant and culturally sophisticated civilizations has been under muslim Mughal rule (there are always exceptions). And then there’s been the remarkable Ataturk who modernized the Ottomans. A sustained secular push and more than a handful of charismatic leaders may eventually transform Islam one day.
The critical issue then may be a capacity for considering secularism as ‘progress’ as opposed to worldliness being a corruption from a previous perfection. Along with secularism comes the idea that you ought to be able to reason with your enemies and come up with workable compromises. They aren’t defined upfront as a contaminated group which will (or must) some day be purged.
I have a friend who grew up comfortably middle class and became a radical communist in the 60’s. She can still sip lattes in comfortable chairs in coffee houses while decrying Western civilization in general and capitalism in particular. Her views on what needs to go are unsettling, since they include reason and science. She’s no longer Communist: she’s become Spiritual.
The ability to compartmentalize shouldn’t be looked on as a skill.
I think that all people try to win over their enemies and come to compromise only when it is clear that a victory is impossible.
Now, the West keeps pushing for a compromise with Muslims, for a dialogue with immigrants (?!) – so what is the logical reaction of the Islamists? To decide that the West is losing and knows it, so no compromise is needed and no dialogue (except to deceive and win time), just pushing for victory.
There definitely are moderate Muslims. In the UK I can think of Yasmin Alibhai Brown (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasmin_Alibhai-Brown) and Mishal Husain (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mishal_Husain) in particular. Sadly they appear to be in a minority.
Yee-esss…Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, proof that you can be simultaneously a moderate and an idiot. A case study, like Diane Abbott, of how inexplicable some long and successful careers are. Here’s Yasmin in full-on batty mode. x
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8dpAwxdbMA
According to the US Census Bureau the US population in 2014 was 319 million. According to PEW’s 2014 religious survey, about 0.8% are Muslim, or about 2.55 million Muslims. AFAIK none of the mass killers in 2014 were Muslim, however because mass murder/terrorist attack numbers are so low relative to population we should probably just take an average over many years. In which case, we can point to 3 events since 2009: the Ft. Hood shooting in 2009, the Boston bombing* in 2013, and the San Bernadino mass shooting in 2015. That’s about 0.5 events per year or about 0.20 mass killings/million Muslims/year. In contrast, the numbers for the US population at large is about 0.12 mass killings/million/year. So its higher, but in the same order of magnitude. And in absolute terms, its still a very low number; one person out of every 5 million in any given year.
As far as I’m concerned, any peaceful law-abiding citizen counts as “moderate enough” in my book, no matter what political ideology they espouse or how much they bluster. In rhetorical speak I might refer to people with unusual or non-mainstream views as non-moderates. Folks like Ken Ham would count there; he’s not typically considered religiously ‘moderate.’ But from a dangerousness perspective, I would consider him moderate/normal as he poses no more violent threat to other citizens than the next guy.
So, with that big build up, I have to say that looking at the data and according to how I count ‘moderates’, yes the overwhelming majority of Muslim Americans are moderates. They obey our laws. Commit crimes and acts of terror in about the same frequency as non-Muslims. Unless we’re willing to tar everyone else with the label ‘violent terrorist’ because of the acts of the 300+ non-Muslim mass shooters this year, we should not tar the Muslim population with that label either. At the same time, I’ll completely understand if people object to my definition of ‘moderate’ as being too broad.
*Note that the citation later about per capita killings only counts shootings, not bombings. So I am overestimating the rate of ‘killings’ by Muslims because I’m including events that wouldn’t have been included in the other statistics. But I think its better to overestimate in this case, lest someone complain that I’m not including important events such as Boston.
That threshold doesn’t work for me. I don’t think that a Christian who excuses attacks on Planned Parenthood clinics while declining to set a bomb themselves is “moderate enough”.
Excellent analogy. Frankly, I am shocked by the level extremism can reach even in such a civilized, modern society, advanced in every respect.
I like this analysis. Thanks. Though I agree with GBJames below that I might want a slightly broader definition of moderate… people calling for or openly approving of violence while not committing it themselves don’t quite count, because they are inciting violence. But it’s going to be very hard to quantitatively assess that, so your analysis is a good starting place.
“I might want a slightly broader definition of moderate… people calling for or openly approving of violence while not committing it themselves don’t quite count, because they are inciting violence.”
“Don’t quite count”? Not even close imo. We would NEVER categorize a Christian who applauds the killing of an abortion doctor as a moderate, he would be at best categorized as a fundamentalist bordering on extremist. We seem to use a different standard where Muslims are concerned, if you aren’t committing violence you’re a moderate.
I wanted to add that even if you categorized a fundamentalist as someone who would support a theocracy I suspect American Christian support for one would be almost non-existent if it entailed the types of rules, and restrictions that sharia law entails.
What’s actually funny is that many middle eastern countries were in the process of modernizing. It’s just that they were modernizing in the wrong way: Communism, during the height of the Cold War.
I don’t have to tell you what covert actions America carried out in response to that.
I think that the consequences of US policy, both then and now, were/are negligible. I definitely see a tendency in Americans and other Westerners to grossly overestimate the US influence and responsibility. I suppose this gives an illusion of control.
It could be argued that the true Muslims are Daesh, “formally known as ISIS “they hate the word Daesh apparently as its a pejorative aconym in Arabic, see below” because they follow the Quran to the letter’
By Alice Guthrie on 19/2/15
So what does Daesh really mean? Well, D.A.E.SH is a transliteration of the Arabic acronym formed of the same words that make up I.S.I.S in English: ‘Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’, or ‘لدولة الإسلامية في العراق والشام’ (‘al-dowla al-islaamiyya fii-il-i’raaq wa-ash-shaam’). That’s the full name chosen by the organisation, and – when used in full – it’s definitely how they want to be referred to. In Arabic, just like in English, that phrase consists of six words, four of which make it into the acronym (‘in’ and ‘and’ are omitted) : ‘دولة dowla’ (state) + ‘إسلامية islaamiyya’ (Islamic) + ‘عراق i’raaq’ (Iraq) + ‘شام shaam’. That last word, ‘shaam’, is variously used in Arabic to denote Damascus (in Syrian dialect) ‘Greater Syria’ / the Levant, or Syria – hence the US-preferred acronym ISIL, with the L standing for Levant. In Arabic there is a single letter for the sound ‘sh’, hence our transliteration of the acronym having five letters, not four. And the vowel which begins the word ‘islaamiyya’ becomes an ‘a’ sound when differently positioned in a word, hence the acronym being pronounced ‘da’ish’ when written in Arabic, and the ‘a’ coming over into our transliteration of the acronym. Of course the amazing Arabic letter ‘ع’ which begins the word for ‘Iraq’ is unpronounceable to an anglophone, and can’t be written in Latin letters, hence the use of an ‘e’ (or occasionally an ’e) in the transliteration.
Still with me? Nothing mysterious there – or nothing that anyone who speaks Arabic wouldn’t be able to explain. It’s not a previously existing word in its own right. It does indeed now mean ‘tyrannical, despotic, murdering fundamentalists who claim to be Islamic and claim to be a state’ but only as a result of how it sounds (more on that in a minute) and as a result of the associations that quickly attach to a neologism, in the same way that they have attached to the word ISIS. So it’s not based on any previous – or mysterious, or quasi-mystical Eastern – meaning.
And so if the word is basically ‘ISIS’, but in Arabic, why are the people it describes in such a fury about it? Because they hear it, quite rightly, as a challenge to their legitimacy: a dismissal of their aspirations to define Islamic practice, to be ‘a state for all Muslims’ and – crucially – as a refusal to acknowledge and address them as such. They want to be addressed as exactly what they claim to be, by people so in awe of them that they use the pompous, long and delusional name created by the group, not some funny-sounding made-up word. And here is the very simple key point that has been overlooked in all the anglophone press coverage I’ve seen: in Arabic, acronyms are not anything like as widely used as they are in English, and so arabophones are not as used to hearing them as anglophones are. Thus, the creation and use of a title that stands out as a nonsense neologism for an organisation like this one is inherently funny, disrespectful, and ultimately threatening of the organisation’s status. Khaled al-Haj Salih, the Syrian activist who coined the term back in 2013, says that initially even many of his fellow activists, resisting Daesh alongside him, were shocked by the idea of an Arabic acronym, and he had to justify it to them by referencing the tradition of acronyms being used as names by Palestinian organisations (such as Fatah). So saturated in acronyms are we in English that we struggle to imagine this, but it’s true.
All of this means that the name lends itself well to satire, and for the arabophones trying to resist Daesh, humour and satire are essential weapons in their nightmarish struggle. But the satirical weight of the word as a weapon, in the hands of the Syrian activists who have hewn it from the rock of their nightmare reality, does not just consist of the weirdness of acronyms. As well as being an acronym, it is also only one letter different from the word ‘daes داعس’ , meaning someone or something that crushes or tramples. Of course that doesn’t mean, as many articles have claimed, that ‘daesh’ is ‘another conjugation’ of the verb ‘to crush or trample’, nor that that is ‘a rough translation of one of the words in the acronym’ – it’s simply one letter different from this other word. Imagine if the acronym of ‘Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’ spelt out ‘S.H.I.D’ in English: activists and critics would certainly seize the opportunity to refer to the organisation as ‘shit’ – but I think it’s safe to say that no serious foreign media outlet would claim that ‘shit’ was another conjugation of the verb ‘shid’, nor a rough translation of it. Of course, that analogy is an unfair one, given the hegemonic global linguistic position of English, not to mention the heightened currency of scatological words; but there is a serious point to be made here about the anglophone media’s tendency to give up before it’s begun understanding non-European languages.
Thanks for that, most interesting.
Actually Isis did have a prior meaning, she was a major Egyptian goddess. I would think any egyptologists would be thoroughly pissed off by these thuggish DAESH morons usurping the name. And a few businesses will have had to change their name – I seem to recall a hair salon and a driving school in Auckland for instance.
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Oops, that was a reply to Mike.
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I read about a US family who conceived a daughter after years of trying and so thought that only a goddess’ name was worthy of her. So they named her Isis. They couldn’t know how things would develop.
That is rather sad, I think Isis is (or used to be) a nice name.
Or as Ricky Gervais commented, “not many boys being named Adolf these days”
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