On his own website, which bears an overly self-deprecating title, Ed Suominen discusses and criticizes the tenets of Islam—as he did the tenets of his own former faith, Laestadianism.
Don’t be put off by the title of his piece,”Why I am an Islamophobe“, for it’s actually a very reasonable and throughtful discussion. But I don’t think the title does it any favors, for “phobia” implies unreasonable fear, and Ed argues that his fear is reasonable. The Merriam-Webster online Dictionary defines “phobia” as “an exaggerated usually inexplicable and illogical fear of a particular object, class of objects, or situation,” and Ed argues that his fear is perfectly justified by Islamic scripture and history.
On the other hand, it’s a provocative title, the word “Islamophobia” has been flung around misleadingly as a synonym for “racist” or “Muslim-hater,” and it does call attention to the article. I just hope people can get beyond the title and read the piece, which I highly recommend as civil, educational, and copiously referenced. Towards the end of the piece, after Ed has dissected the Qur’an and the nature of Islam, he explains his position. I’ve left the footnotes in to show the documentation:
In his recently published dialogue with Maajid Nawaz, Sam Harris recalled how the Islamic State had “been burning prisoners alive in cages and decapitating people by the dozen and gleefully posting videos attesting to the enormity of their sadism online.” These atrocities, he observed, “represent what they unabashedly stand for.” 19 Yet, when “one asks what the motivations of Islamists and jihadists actually are, one encounters a tsunami of liberal delusion.” 20
Nawaz acknowledges many of the difficulties Harris raises throughout their discussion, and laments “regressive leftists” (his words) who “have a poverty of expectation for minority groups, believing them to be homogeneous and inherently opposed to human rights values.” 21 Regarding the Islamic State, he notes that more “violence does not necessarily equate with greater religious conviction. Each group is deeply convinced of its approach to achieving Islamism in society, and both face much danger in pursuit of that goal.” Not only do “they differ in methodology,” but they also very much despise each other.” Islamic State, for example, “would kill members of the Muslim Brotherhood” in Egypt.22
His efforts to salvage something separate and worthwhile from “Islamism” are commendable, but knowing that various Islam-inspired groups hate each other as well as everybody else doesn’t make me feel much better about Islam itself. My “Islamophobia,” a term I accept for myself despite its pejorative intentions, is a very reasonable aversion to Islam. It is not a phobic (i.e., irrational) fear at all, but an entirely sensible response to something very dangerous.23 Frankly, I wouldn’t want either the Islamic State or the Muslim Brotherhood anywhere nearby.
Ed’s exegesis of the Quran differs from that of the very few who read the text as metaphorical, which is a). hard to do since the book speaks very plainly about the horrors of hell and the punishment of unbelievers, and b). not the usual practice of Muslims, the vast majority of whom read the Qur’an as the literal words of Allah. The editors of The Study Qur’an, a book I wrote about recently, have gamely tried to show that the Quran’s calls for violence, and its demonization of nonbelievers and apostates, should be understood in light of the historical context, and shouldn’t be appropriated by modern Muslims. I haven’t read The Study Qur’an, but I have read the Qur’an, and I find such an interpretation dicey—though well motivated—given the pervasiveness of violence and hatred in the book.
I’ll close with another recommendation to read Ed’s piece, which is longer than most blog posts, and add one other excerpt—Ed’s gloss on Ibn Warraq’s book Why I Am Not a Muslim:
“Western Islamic apologists and modernizing Muslims continue to look for democratic principles in Islam and Islamic history,” says Warraq, noting many reasons why their search will be in vain. Perhaps most glaring is the legal inferiority of women, whose testimony in court is worth half that of a man, whose movements are strictly restricted, and who are prohibited from marrying non-Muslims. Non-Muslims of either sex who live in Muslim countries suffer their own form of subjugation, while atheists and apostates from Islam can expect only death. (Warraq notes Islam’s hypocrisy in welcoming converts who move in the other direction.)
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Ed Suominen reads like a reasonable kinda guy. On his interpretation of the Koran: what you often get from apologists is the startling response that you can’t have read it. Well, yes I have and that’s precisely the problem.
No, it’s not an enchanted book, you only have to read it to compare it to Mein Kampf. The ‘I have a beautiful Koran’ reply is so common that you almost doubt your own reading comprehension. It’s almost like stepping into an alternative universe: or Saudi Arabia. x
Not only has he read and given a good account of the book he digs into the reality of Saudi and the condition. The issue of ISIS may just be phase two of more to come and isn’t that a lovely thought.
“Well, yes I have ”
Ah, but have you read it in the original Arabic?
Yeah, that’s another one. And you can call them out on that as well, because you may find that they don’t know it either. Anjem Choudary doesn’t understand Arabic, nor Mo Ansar (I’m pretty certain), nor the young women at Goldsmith’s Islamic Society.
So when Sam Harris calls it a ‘magic book’, for the apologists that’s probably right: all you have to do is intone it and it somehow makes you holy. I suspect that for a lot of Islamist apologists, Arabic might as well be Klingon. x
Another thing that seldom gets mentioned in these discussions is that, unless you are a Muslim, you believe that the Koran is false, or at least you are not convinced it is true. Metaphorical, allegorical, or literal, it hardly matters if you don’t believe it, but just try get people to state that.
Of course, it is just as hard to get Christian theologians to state what they believe, too. But they often say, “No, of course I don’t believe that, my beliefs are more sophisticated than that.
“it hardly matters if you don’t believe it, but just try get people to state that.”
Why wouldn’t a non-believer state that? I certainly do, which is why I have limited patience for theological debates with believers.
On the other hand, it depends on your definition of “matters”.
Dang it, you caught Dermot and me both. We couldn’t possibly have understood the book without access to the original language!
It reminds me of an excuse that my old über-Protestant church made for Luther writings that disagreed with their special interpretation of Lutheranism. Those “unbelieving” translators messed things up!
So, faced with a foreign language requirement in college twenty years ago, I decided to take up German and wound up becoming quite fluent in it, going way beyond the coursework out of my interest in things Lutheran. The library at the University of Washington had (perhaps still does) a huge collection of musty old Luther writings, many in the original German. (Anyone else ever checked out a book with the last datestamp 20 years earlier?)
The biggest revelation I got from poring over those and comparing them to the supposedly suspect English translations was that the translators had done a fine job.
It’s pretty amusing in retrospect: That little Lutheran sect thinks it is the only true church, and yet on that point (as well as others) they sharply disagree with Luther himself, who strongly denounced the idea of any single outward assembly of true believers on earth. (One can understand why he felt that way, given the Pope’s claim to have the only keys to the kingdom.) It really amazes me that the group is chugging along, its members blissfully ignorant of such a devastating problem with the very foundation of their beliefs. But I guess that’s religion for you.
They do the same thing with the NT and Greek. For instance the infamous Luke 14:26 says very clearly in the Greek, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and his mother and his wife and his children, etc., then he can’t be my disciple.” The Greek word is misei, an elementary, high frequency word meaning clearly “hate”.
The apologists and modern translators have now been translating it as “love less” to mask the extremism of the sentiment. Greek both Koine and Classical are very capable of saying “love less” if that’s what they really want to say.
There is apparently no end to religious mendacity.
It really helps to know the ancient languages to unmask their deceptions.
Suominen’s choice of the word “Islamophobe” is technically incorrect, but his detractors are going to call him that anyway so shove it in their faces.
Yes, it’s a shame we don’t have a word like “Islamaversion.” (I like “Islamabhorrence” even better but that might be too inflammatory…)
I saw, if you like, another term that I certainly had not thought of and this one concerned the killers in San Bernardino. From the FFRF article calling it perverted love.
That they could drop off the 6 mo. old and then head on over to the event and kill 14 people. Who does something like that without the motivation of religion?
Indeed, the baby part of the story…it’s hard to conceive of any stronger evidence that fundamental Islam perverts humanity!
And, we might add, religion poisons everything.
Suggested response (especially to regressives): what makes you an Islamophile? x
That was a very sobering peace. His analysis of youth in Saudi Arabia is especially unnerving: …packed full of unemployed and entitled youth who have no work ethic, useful knowledge, or positive role models to fall back on once the handouts stop. A large part of what their educations have been about is the hatred of others, repression, and jihad. This is indeed a powder keg that hasn’t yet been lit. He only speculates as to what will happen when the oil and water are gone, and these multitudes are left to their own devises. He said it well with: “Watch out world, things are just getting started.”
We don’t need to ban all Muslims from America or the Western World, but we do need to break ties with a part of the world that is so antithetical to liberty, peace, human decency, progress and justice. For oil, we’ll look the other way from the most vicious atrocities. Watch out world indeed. *shiver*
What a satisfying essay–full of facts, well-documented, and most of all eminently readable and persuasive. I hope that publicity such as Valerie Tarico’s AlterNet interview with Suominen, republished in Salon, will result in enough reader curiosity that many more people will find his blog and read it. An article like this really should be in some less click-baity publication; say, The Atlantic or the New York Times.
The claim that the Koran advocates violence is completely valid. The claim that it is unique in this regard is certainly not.
“I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh” (Deut. 32:42).
Their advocacy of tribal violence is a compelling reason to avoid organized religions period.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/03/08/dark_passages/?page=full
You’re absolutely right, Frank. You might appreciate my short story “Jehu’s Jihad,” which puts some narrative meat on the bones of a truly awful account of religious violence in the Hebrew Bible: http://blog.edsuom.com/p/jehus-jihad.html
As a side point (certainly not to defend Trump) but his proposal is not unprecedented: In 1980 Jimmy Carter deported Iranian students and closed the borders to all Iranians.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=33233
That would be a reasonable reaction to the Iranian takeover of the US Embassy in Teheran. Carter, I think correctly, viewed it as an act sanctioned by the Iranian government in violation of (among other things) diplomatic immunity; and retaliated by closing US borders to Iranians.
But Muslims are not citizens of a state, they’re followers of a particular religion. Unless you can claim that Islam per se is inimical to the US, and/or that those who head it (and there’s no Pope of Islam) have sanctioned the acts of terrorism we have seen, it’s tough to justify a religious test for entry to the US.
I think a test of the core values of US society could be given. Do you support: free speech, freedom of religion, including the right to leave it, separation of religion and state etc.? Rule of thumb: those responders who qualify for Hell are most likely to qualify also for US residency. And the first to fill the quota must be those “Muslims” who flee Islam and know it.
Of course, a fundamentalist may lie in order to be let in. However, this would be a giant step forward compared to the present situation, when sworn enemies of Western civilization are let to immigrate in droves and are even considered better than the evil atheists, because at least “believe in something”.
When I visited the USA ages ago, at the interview in the embassy they asked only about my income.
“Of course, a fundamentalist may lie in order to be let in.”
Current US visa applications already ask seemingly bizarre questions about terrorism & espionage – to which nobody would ever conceivably answer “yes”. But they are there for a good reason – it’s because fraudulent misrepresentation on any such application means that a visitor can pretty much be summarily deported. And I believe fraudulent misrepresentation on such forms may also invalidate subsequent Green Card status or even U.S. citizenship.
So, an “ideology test” could serve some purpose, even if the worst applicants would certainly lie.
I need to re-read Suominen’s post carefully; but I think a distinction needs to be drawn between what the Qu’ran says and how Muslims (in general) act, just as we are readily prepared to draw a distinction between what the Bible (particularly the Old Testament) says and how Jews and Christians (in general) act; and I don’t think Suominen draws it.
There is a rather different view of radical Islam discussed in Kenan Malik’s post yesterday on his website, Pandaemonium, https://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2015/12/10/olivier-roy-on-european-jihadis/. Malik refers to a talk given by the French sociologist Olivier Roy, http://www.eui.eu/DepartmentsAndCentres/PoliticalAndSocialSciences/People/Professors/Roy.aspx, at a conference on terrorism sponsored by the Bundeskriminalamt (the German federal criminal police) last month. Here’s a link to the conference, http://www.bka.de/nn_195186/EN/Publications/AutumnConferences/2015/autumnConferences2015__node.html?__nnn=true, and you’ll see an abstract and presentation by Professor Roy. I’ve only skimmed them, and you might start with the abstract, but he seems to be suggesting that the European jihadists are more skinheads, or perhaps the Red Army Faction or Baader-Meinhof gang, with an overlay of Islam, rather than Muslims with an overlay of terrorism.
You have a reasonable point about the distinction between awful holy book teachings and the actions of decent people who claim to revere the particular holy book in question. I did quote one such decent person, Maajid Nawaz, in a paragraph following Jerry’s first quote above that I think at least indirectly helps in that regard:
“Nawaz also attempts to draw a distinction between Islam and what the Islamic State is doing, as he and millions of other decent Muslims must. ‘Islam is just a religion,’ he says, contrary to what we have seen above from Ibn Warraq about totalitarianism. ‘Islamism is the ideology that seeks to impose any version of Islam over society. Islamism is, therefore, theocratic extremism. Jihadism is the use of force to spread Islamism. Jihadist terrorism is the use of force that targets civilians to spread Islamism.’”
Trying to explain jihadist atrocities as a search for “identity, recognition and meaning” in which “a literal reading of the Qur’an and a strict observance of supposedly authentic religious norms” is sought “to mark themselves out as distinct and provide a collective identity” (Malik) may have some merit; I’ve seen in my old church how hard-liners are rewarded with the feeling of being “in the center of the flock” and given social acclaim within the group. But it also seems to have uncomfortable similarities with the protests of liberal Christians that only uneducated rubes really believe what the Bible says about Adam and Eve and Noah and condemning homosexuality. These people really, truly believe in the religion that the decent Muslims and Christians are trying to hang onto while distancing themselves from its unsavory aspects.
Seems to me you’ve dodged the main point of Derek’s comment, which might be rephrased as follows: Sure, Koranic scripture itself might *seem* upon a superficial reading to incite violence, but how does it square with actual statistics on the behavior of those that actually read and revere that scripture??
It’s one thing to observe that Islamists often use scripture to justify violent crimes; quite another to suggest that this indicates an actual causal component whereby Islamic scripture compels Muslims to take up arms against civilians. While it’s not uncommon to see such a suggestion made, it simply isn’t borne out by the data. Statistically you have no greater chance of being harmed by a Muslim than by any other demographic. Even when you isolate for the types of attacks we label as “terrorist,” the odds of being killed or injured by a Muslim are lower than or equal to all other groups. In fact, Muslims are half as likely as the national average to justify violence against civilians, despite what one may think the Koran requires them to believe.
I find it a strange usage of the word “reasonable” to indicate being in discord with all the known facts about the actual statistical danger posed by members of a given demographic group.
Therefore, I think a better indicator is to look at whole societies built by member of this or that religion or secularists. It is difficult to deny that the degree of freedom, democracy and overall advancement are inversely correlated to the presence and strength of Islam in the society in question.
If I am given a choice to which Muslim-majority country to move, I’d first ask (like Jesus) to be spared this, then I’d opt for Albania, which may be poor and have a myriad of other defects but at least has a strong and sincere secularist community.
In Europe’s recent history, there has been plenty of non-Muslim terror (IRA, ETA, Baader-Meinhof etc.) Currently, I don’t know any other still active terror groups except Islamic. Individual terrorists – yes, but not organized groups. When Asnar tried to frame ETA for an act of Islamist terror, his lie was caught immediately.
Besides, no other terror aimed filmmakers because of a movie or cartoonists because of cartoons, no other terror had religious motivation, even the Catholic and Protestant terror in Northern Ireland, and no other terror was done by recent supremacist immigrants aspiring, with much success, to subdue the host society. Therefore, I think that ordinary native Europeans are right to consider Islamist terror more important than all other sorts put together.
I don’t know about the USA, but I don’t believe the statistics that is often cited. The recent US terror acts are: Dylann Roof’s church shooting, the Colorado Springs murders and the San Bernardino murders. In number of victims, the former two combined are almost equal to the three. That is, the terror done by the 1% Muslims in the USA equals that of all other demographics combined.
That’s not a very empirical answer, I’m afraid. Here are some actual statistics on the number of attacks in the EU that were related to Islamism over the last few years.
http://thinkprogress.org/world/2015/01/08/3609796/islamist-terrorism-europe/
Well, I gave specific acts of terror. That site, which by my observation is quite off-the-wall, gives some numbers and bars that look to have been sucked from one’s fingers, as we say. If there are any facts at all behind those numbers and bars, they must be manipulated by Islamophiles who call terror act every hate crime done by a non-Muslim while calling it a “workplace violence” when an Islamist beheads infidel women who have resisted his Islamism.
You may have mentioned that the number of victims is more important to me than the number of terror acts. This is because Islamist terror tends to be more lethal than non-Islamist terror. Why? Because non-Islamist terrorists are lone and only in exceptional cases (Brejvik) manage to bring a huge death toll, while Islamists often act in pairs and groups. Why this difference? I suppose, because non-Islamist terrorists fear that whoever hears of their plans would out them, while Islamists easily find other Islamists who are happy to kill infidels.
Again I must marvel at how empirical and level-headed you are. You say you were able to “observe” that the piece I linked to was “off the wall.” Do tell!
Rather than substantiate your response with any data of your own, you simply dismiss data you don’t like as deriving from “Islamophiles.” Please note that the classification of the cited attacks as acts of terrorism come from that infamous Islamist sympathizer organization, Europol.
You don’t specify, so I can only guess, why I am supposed to take comfort in being one of 77 people killed by a lone gunman rather than one of 130 people killed by 7 perpetrators. I thought we were talking about reasonably assessing the actual risk of being harmed or killed by an Islamist or Jihadi, in such a way that it justified a “reasonable” fear of Muslims living next door. There is neither in this thread nor in the linked article by Ed Suominen, not a single substantiation of that supposed risk. Not a single one. You all would make terrible actuaries.
I suspect Ed’s piece is a response to world-wide terrorist attacks, Chris. Vast majority are Islamist and huge numbers.
In the West, too, but here the Islamophilic propaganda and lies are much stronger.
Please substantiate.
In this century:
Successful public transportation bombings in Europe: I remember 3 by Muslims (London, Madrid and Burgas), 0 by non-Muslims.
Successful shootings in Europe: I remember 4 by Muslims (in Toulouse and Montauban in 2012, two in Paris this year, one in Copenhagen) vs. 1 by non-Muslim (Brejvik).
Successful stabbings: 1 by Muslim (Theo van Gogh) vs. 1 by non-Muslim (Marwa el-Sherbini).
This data is meaningless unless expressed as a relation to overall violent acts, and to the relative risks one is thereby exposed to. That’s how we decide whether something is an actual statistical danger, not by wetting the bed or fixating on the specific implements of violence.
Remember, we are not merely talking about the risk of being harmed by Islamic terrorists. We are talking about risk being great enough to justify treating people with suspicion merely for belonging to the same religion, and revering the same holy texts. Here in the US you have a markedly higher chance (though still a very very small chance, statistically) of being hurt or killed by a fundamentalist Christian than a fundamentalist Muslim. And yet for some reason, Christophobia is not a word. Any guesses why not?
I repeat, Muslims in the USA are a meager 1% while Christians are the majority. It is difficult to estimate what percentage of either is fundamentalist. Even if you prove that the 1% does, say, only 25% of terror acts, what exactly have you proven by this in terms of relative risk?
The USA has to deal with its “pro-life” Christian terrorism. It is an internal US problem. Meanwhile, every other country is free to accept US Christian immigrants or not. For the record, many Muslim-majority country don’t have such a thing as naturalized citizenship. You inherit your father’s citizenship, period. The fact that nobody wants to emigrate to Muslim countries obscures their xenophobia and non-acceptance of immigrants. Anyway, this is their business. Every country is entitled to its immigration policy.
Muslim terror is a global problem. So ordinary Westerners don’t want fundamentalist Muslim immigrants. Even if you are right that Western societies have rampant invisible non-Muslim terror, this is hardly an argument to ask for more Muslim terror.
Fundamentalist Muslims have Christophobia. They harass their Christian minorities and don’t allow them to follow their religion freely. However, they haven’t such a word. Why? Because the Islamophilic Western elite wants to shame us into embracing Islam, while the ruling elite of Muslim countries is Islamist and considers hate of Christians a nice thing.
“If you had any actual data that Muslims were responsible for a disproportionate share of violence and oppression in Europe, you would have surely shared it by now. Irrational fear and hate may be sufficient grounds for you to make bigoted generalizations.”
I and other commenters (who in other respects disagree with me) keep bringing “actual data”. I brought the Danish cartoon crisis, but you, Chris, apparently are thinking that it either didn’t exist or was all fault of those bigoted Danes. On the other side, you of course couldn’t bring any “actual data”, just numbers and bars invented by some Islamophile.
Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, Muslims have been responsible for a disproportionate share of violence and oppression against free speech in Europe. It is Muslim extremists who stabbed Theo van Gogh and attacked Charlie Hebdo, and it is ordinary Muslims who make rallies of thousands to support the cause of the extremists. Will you deny this again? Or will you say that free expression is a teensy-weensy collateral damage, compared to the beauty of diversity and the God-given right of Muslim fundamentalists to settle in non-Muslim countries?
I am glad that some people embrace the label of “Islamophobe”. I think I’ll embrace the labels of “racist” and “bigot”. Please spread the word that Europe is full of people like me. This may help.
In the Bosnian war, rape was considered war crime and even weapon of war. What if we count not only the murders but also the rapes?
It is difficult to collect data by perpetrators’ religion, because authorities are much more concerned with hiding these data than with protecting women and girls from rape. So I’d cite only the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal. What is striking is that, while such atrocities have been done many times in history, until now they have been the prerogative of successful armed invaders. Now, for some reason, it is considered OK for Muslim immigrants to enslave native European girls.
Jerry Coyne and Ed Suominen, I hope you are reading. This is who you are in bed with when you defend the validity of being fearful of ordinary Muslims: Paranoics who think that the police are actively concealing the religious identity of rapists and sex traffickers out of political correctness. Racists who believe that it is somehow more significant when “native” girls are victimized by “immigrants” than it would be if the situation were reversed.
This is very poorly veiled Xenophobia, and though I know I’ll elicit the complaint that “Islam isn’t a race!” I must add it’s a racist view as well. Muslims throughout the US and Europe are being harassed, shunned, and otherwise harmed because they look and dress differently than the “natives.” And you folks are actively participating in this discrimination by giving intellectual support to the irrational fear that undergirds it.
Citations, please! I’ve never seen anyone work harder than Jerry to make the distinction between Islam and Muslims, and yet you insist on not only conflating the two but falsely accusing others of doing the same.
Poppycock. I realize that this is a difficult thing for some people to wrap their minds around, but there is a difference between people and ideas. Islam is a set of ideas. Ideas are subject to scrutiny, criticism, ridicule, and all manner of argument. People are to be defended. Criticism of Islam is no more a form of bigotry than criticism of Republican political ideas are.
GBJames, please explain how advocating that one should *fear* ordinary, law-abiding Muslims based soley on a tenuous sense of their religious identity, generally signaled only by dress (e.g. hijab), speech (e.g. Arabic), or physiognomy (e.g. olive skin, untrimmed beards) constitutes “criticism of Islam.” Especially given the fact that there is absolutely zero evidence that identifying as Muslim makes a person more of a danger to her neighbor than any number of demographic markers that we somehow fail to raise a great alarum over.
Criticize the religion all you want! But when you start to promote fear and suspicion despite the lack of any empirical justification whatsoever for it, I think it’s fair to argue you are engaging in something other than ordinary, innocent speech.
Please point out where Jerry or Ed are doing any such thing.
There is a pattern, as soon as I get deeper in such a discussion, my opponent to accuse me in things. I plead guilty as charged of racism and xenophobia, and of any other sin that may come by. However, my racism and xenophobia cannot make the Rotherham girls un-raped, neither can it change their racial and national affiliation or that of the predators, and, most importantly, the fact that authorities let this continue for as long as they can.
Maya, I quote Wikipedia on the Bosnian war, deleting the links to sources to keep it short:
“By early 2008, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia had convicted 45 Serbs, 12 Croats and 4 Bosniaks [DPF add: Bosnian Muslims] of war crimes in connection with the war in Bosnia. The most recent estimates suggest that around 100,000 people were killed during the war. In addition, an estimated 20,000 to 50,000 women, the majority of whom were Bosniak [DPF italics], were raped, and over 2.2 million people were displaced, making it the most devastating conflict in Europe since the end of World War II.”
Rotherham was awful, but the same sort of thing has happened with other religions (I think here of the FLDS in the United States); to suggest that “it is considered OK for Muslim immigrants to enslave native European girls” is just irresponsible.
“I plead guilty as charged of racism and xenophobia, and of any other sin that may come by. However, my racism and xenophobia cannot make the Rotherham girls un-raped, neither can it change their racial and national affiliation or that of the predators, and, most importantly, the fact that authorities let this continue for as long as they can.”
Um, I rest my case?!
I mean xenophobia and bigotry really don’t get anymore textbook than that: Five Pakistanis abducted, raped and trafficked girls in England; therefore my beliefs about Muslims being inherently perilous is entirely reasonable. QED!
The main motivation for people to criticize a religion is that it makes its adherents do bad things who affect not only them but also other people. Therefore, while one must always disclaim that there are many people nominally but not factually belonging to the X religion, and many others who share it but somehow manage to avoid its most toxic messages… it is difficult to deny that religion makes people do bad things.
Chris, if you really believe that the Rotherham affair was restricted to “five Pakistanis”, then I am raising the white banner and leaving the discussion.
I’m no expert on Rotherham. I’m sure you could tell me all about it in salacious detail. I got the figure of “five Pakistanis” from a new article, perhaps now out of date.
But so what if it were 5, 50, or 500? What does this have to do with the way we treat other Muslims? Are we to be suspicious of ordinary Italians because of the mafia, Japanese because of the Yakuza, Russians because of Bratva? (spoiler alert: all cultures have gangsters and criminals).
You’ll perhaps respond “but the Mafia et al aren’t motivated by their nationality the way Muslims are by their religion.” To which I reply: (1) prove it, and (2) so what? The vast, vast majority of Muslim immigrants just want to leave in peaceful, law-abiding harmony. They pose no danger. Why should they be collectively punished because of a small group of psychopaths?
“Why should they be collectively punished because of a small group of psychopaths?”
Here’s a problem I see with your side of the argument, and I’m not defending some of what I’ve heard from the other side here. Do you really think Muslims are disproportionately psychopaths? Because they certainly disproportionately committing terrorist acts compared with Christians given they are 1% of the US population to the Christians 75%+.
I’m not suggesting we punish anyone, but if we discovered people from a certain city were disproportionality psychopaths compared with every other city wouldn’t we do something?
To Derek: I am glad that you gave the Bosnian war as an example. What does it show?
– It is difficult to make different cultures coexist.
– Coexistence is particularly difficult when a backward, chauvinistic community (in this case, the Serbs) is given rule over other, often more advanced communities.
– Sometimes, the West makes such a community its darling because of short-term interests and wholly irrational reasons. This was the case of the Serbs throughout most of the 20th century.
– When this happens, the darling community becomes less and less civilized with time.
– When, on the contrary, the West comes to solve by bombs the problem it had helped to create, the problem is solved.
– I find it important that the military effort was not crippled by wide public support in the West for the enemy, as is typically the case with non-European enemies.
So, what lessons can we draw? Don’t appease barbarian behavior, use force against it.
About Rotherham, Alexis Jay’s report quoted by Wikipedia claims that the number of victims was 4-digit. I am complaining that the perpetrators were covered up, and you are using the covering-up to deny that the problem exists.
Ask the Danes whether the majority of Muslims want just a nice peaceful life. The events of 2006 proved that, if not the majority, then a substantial part of Danish Muslims want to impose Sharia in their host country.
As for the other examples you are citing, they should be considered case by case using empirical observations rather than the cheerful claims of the politically correct regressive liberals. By these observations, Russian immigrants are OK in small numbers but Russia itself is a giant problem. Maybe I am wrong to accuse Western elites specifically in Islamophilia – their appeasement of Russian aggression proves that they gladly encourage evil of any kind. But this post was about Islam and Islamophobia.
I am not talking about ordinary crime, even organized crime. I am talking about official ideology. So I’d make a comparison not with the Japanese Yakudza but with the Japanese imperialism of the first half of the 20th century.
Immigration is a privilege and not a right, so differences in immigration quotas cannot be regarded as “punishment”.
I am not saying that the West should not help Muslims. I approved when NATO protected the Muslims of Bosnia, Kosovo and Libya. I think that the same must be done in Syria. Teema Kurdi, the Syrian-Canadian aunt of little Alan Kurdi, also said that stopping the war is what must be done. I’ll also approve every health or educational program that will benefit a Muslim nation. Most Muslims, like most of us, want to have a decent life in their home countries.
BTW, my opponents, do you really think that immigration permits really benefit Muslims? To me, the degree of radicalization particularly in 2nd-generation immigrants and in those immigrating as children betrays widespread and deep unhappiness. As for the recent welcoming of refugees by Merkel and some other EU politicians, this is the definition of hypocrisy to me. If they really care about Syrian refugees, they should select from the camps some to be accepted and organize their transport in a civilized way.
“About Rotherham, Alexis Jay’s report quoted by Wikipedia claims that the number of victims was 4-digit. I am complaining that the perpetrators were covered up, and you are using the covering-up to deny that the problem exists.”
No, I am simply denying that it is valid to generalize on a person’s danger to society based on a superficial association with other people within the same demographic.
“Ask the Danes whether the majority of Muslims want just a nice peaceful life. The events of 2006 proved that, if not the majority, then a substantial part of Danish Muslims want to impose Sharia in their host country.”
Ah, Maya, your love of concrete statistical data really does shine through, doesn’t it?
If you had any actual data that Muslims were responsible for a disproportionate share of violence and oppression in Europe, you would have surely shared it by now. Irrational fear and hate may be sufficient grounds for you to make bigoted generalizations; I only hope they fall short for anyone else reading this dialogue.
Chris, I challenge you to demonstrate where our host has done this. You acuse him of doing so, show us where.
Again, I suggest you come to terms with the difference between people and ideas. Are you be equally incensed with criticism of Christiaity-influenced terrorism at Planned Parenthood clinics? Do you think that is racist, too? Do you respond with equal vigor when Catholicism is called out for decades of child-rape horror?
Exactly what kind of attacks on Islam are allowed in your frame?
Chris, before you continue, you need to first prove that our host and Ed have said the things you claim they have said. You have made a lot of assertions without links to where these supposed bigoted remarks have taken place.
Next, you need to ask yourself who you are supporting. If you are so offended by criticizing beliefs that result in FGM, the veiling of women and the killing of apostates then you have to admit that you are against the plethora of moderate Muslims these beliefs affect. Do you really want to continue to support fundamentalist radicals or do you want to support those oppressed by them? Because, right now, you’re seem to be supporting the oppressors more than the oppressed.
“Chris, before you continue, you need to first prove that our host and Ed have said the things you claim they have said.”
First of all I would have to reread all the comments in order to see what claims he made have made about Ed or PCC, but all I recall seeing was the claim that they have created a climate where things he’s perceived as racist, and xenophobic are acceptable to verbalize.
I have to admit I’ve seen some comments about Muslims, and rape on here that make me cringe given the history of my country where black men were perceived, and often convicted unjustly, or lynched without trial, as rapists.
Yes I know Islam/Muslim isn’t a race, but followers are generally thought of as brown skinned people, and that is what is meant when someone calls hatred of Muslims racism. We often ignore this fact so we can come back with the “Islam is not a race” zinger.
All that said when I’m able to control my cringe, and look at the situation rationally, it’s not unreasonable to suspect that people indoctrinated in a religion where women are less than men to begin with, and where women who are unveiled, dress provocatively, drink, dance, engage in casual sex, are seen as undeserving of respect, you would find that men would treat them disrespectfully. Including rape. I don’t know enough about statistics, or other factors to say that is the case I’m just saying that believing that to be true doesn’t require someone to be a racist, or xenophobe, or Islamophobe.
To GB James:
“Are you be equally incensed with criticism of Christiaity-influenced terrorism at Planned Parenthood clinics? Do you think that is racist, too?”
I make no quarrel with any criticism of any XYZ-influenced acts of terrorism. My quarrel is strictly with the illegitimate generalization that sometimes follows. I’m not aware of anyone making the case that we should be wary of, suspicious of, or afraid of Christians as a group because of the actions of some fundamentalists. I have not seen a single New Atheist or anti-theist defend “Christianophobia” or “Judeaphobia” the way that Ed and Jerry and many of the commenters here are defending the right to be “Islamophobic,” to the point of saying they oppose Islam;s spread into “Western” society (that right there was some balls-out racism, Ed. Islam is no less “Western” than the other Abrahamic religions.”
I’ll simply note your complete failure to provide evidence of this sort of thing. You’ve been repeatedly asked to support your assertion by providing specific examples. Once you do so, then we’ll be able to have a discussion. Until then, you’re just afflecking and demonstrating why actual bigots are dominating the discussion of Islamist terrorism.
“Please substantiate.”
Are you looking for substantiation for the claim that there are vast numbers of Islamists?
If so, from my understanding an Islamist is one who wants their country run under Islamic law, whether through the use of extremism, or exploiting the political process.
All one need do is look at the pew polls in order to see the vast numbers who wish to enshrine sharia law as the law of the land, and require everyone (non-muslims alike) to follow said laws.
No, the assertion I wanted substantiation for was the (false) one that the “vast majority of world wide terror attacks are Islamist and huge numbers.”
You guys are giving vaccine denialists a run for their money when it comes to aversion to data, not to mention attachment to fantasies of mayhem and disaster that have no empirical justification.
“No, the assertion I wanted substantiation for was the (false) one that the “vast majority of world wide terror attacks are Islamist and huge numbers.””
I didn’t make that claim so I’m not going to substantiate it except perhaps to as who do you think is responsible for the vast majority of terror attack. I’m curious who’s doing it, because almost every time I hear about a terrorist attack somewhere Islam seems to be involved. Is there some large number of incidents that aren’t being reported?
“I’m curious who’s doing it, because almost every time I hear about a terrorist attack somewhere Islam seems to be involved. Is there some large number of incidents that aren’t being reported?”
Now might be a good time to brush up on confirmation bias.
“Now might be a good time to brush up on confirmation bias”
I understand confirmation bias perfectly, and I’m asking you to disabuse me of it if I’m suffering from it by presenting evidence that my perception is wrong.
I wanted to add this list of Islamic terror attacks in 2015. Please reference a list that makes that not the vast majority.
Mike, I’ve posted stats on attacks in the EU and could do so in similar fashion for the US. Those seem germane to me in light of the topic of whether or not Western non Muslims should be afraid of Muslims. A list of predominantly Muslim-on-Muslim attacks seems far less germane for what I would think would be obvious reasons. If we want to understand whether or not Muslims pose a danger to Western non-Muslims, that is the data we should be analyzing.
“Do you really think Muslims are disproportionately psychopaths? Because they certainly disproportionately committing terrorist acts compared with Christians given they are 1% of the US population to the Christians 75%+.”
It seems to me that when you’re talking about risk assessment, it’s better to discard the word terrorist entirely. It’s a word that clouds one’s thinking. There are myriad hazards far more likely to be befall you or your loved ones than a terrorist attack, and we hardly mitigate against these at all. The question to me reduces to a simple one: is there any data that Muslims present a greater danger risk than other demographic groups? I nothing suggesting this in any of the statistics I can get my hands on.
“I’m not suggesting we punish anyone, but if we discovered people from a certain city were disproportionality psychopaths compared with every other city wouldn’t we do something?”
If we *did* discover that certain groups were disproportionately threatening, then of course we would want to “do something,” though what that something would be would probably be up for debate. There is far too much violence in predominantly African American neighborhoods in the US, for example, but I think most non-racists would attribute this problem to some other cause than the inherently violent nature of African Americans.
In any case, whatever that hypothetical disproportion may be, we would still find that the vast majority of people in question were not violent and dangerous. Casting suspicion on them by mere association would be extremely unjust. We have much more precise ways of assessing and curtailing threats than that.
“It seems to me that when you’re talking about risk assessment, it’s better to discard the word terrorist entirely.”
I agree with that, you’re more likely to be struck by lightening in the US than killed by a terrorist. The money spent on the “war on terror” could have cured cancer, which will affect almost everyone.
i believe this comment section has been stricken with an outbreak of Affleckism. I’ll not be responding further to Chris. He may invent reasons for that, of course, just as he has invented my supposed fear of Muslims, but that can’t be helped.
It’s just not worth the aggravation.
“…an outbreak of Affleckism.”
😀 Nicely done!
“I’ll not be responding further to Chris.”
Further than nothing? Aside from name calling (“Affeckism”), you haven’t addressed my objection regarding actual demographic study of violence and threat assessment at all. But feel free to continue imply I’ve exhausted your patience.
That’s enough; you’ve ignored my stricture to not dominate this thread.
“That’s enough; you’ve ignored my stricture to not dominate this thread.”
Point of inquiry. How is he supposed to respond to critics? If anything it’s the numerous people criticizing, or asking for evidence/clarifications from him that are dominating the thread.
@ Chris at 4.08, on substantiating world-wide Islamist terror attack numbers. Here they are, since 2001.
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/index.html#PriorYears
Briefly, 27,415 terror attacks
169 in November
In 30 countries
1455 dead
1706 critically injured
If you doubt the source, they once compared their work with a BBC attempt to do the same thing over a shorter period of time. They found that they underestimated numbers compared to the BBC.
I think that’s pretty comprehensive, so please stop Chris, with your barely-suppressed desire to call people ‘Islamophobes’ and address the issue: it’s a plain and simple fact that we have a problem with the amount of Muslims who take their founding texts seriously. And who murder or suicide/murder for them. Because they genuinely believe in jihad, martyrdom and the real existence of heaven.
It ain’t that complicated: yes, most of the people on this site, being American liberals or European non-regressive Socialists, abhor anti-Muslim bigotry. That’s ABC.
Now would you like to discuss the link between Islamic ideas and their consequences in the real world? And remember we are merely discussing murdering for God: we haven’t even touched on the parts of Sharia which contradict the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
Apologies for the late reply: problems with wordpress at my end.
@ Chris at 4.08, on substantiating world-wide Islamist terror attack numbers. Here they are, since 2001.
Try the religionofpeace website for full stats.
Briefly, 27,415 terror attacks
169 in November
In 30 countries
1455 dead
1706 critically injured
If you doubt the source, they once compared their work with a BBC attempt to do the same thing over a shorter period of time. They found that they underestimated numbers compared to the BBC.
I think that’s pretty comprehensive, so please stop Chris, with your barely-suppressed desire to call people ‘Islamophobes’ and address the issue: it’s a plain and simple fact that we have a problem with the amount of Muslims who take their founding texts seriously. And who murder or suicide/murder for them. Because they genuinely believe in jihad, martyrdom and the real existence of heaven.
It ain’t that complicated: yes, most of the people on this site, being American liberals or European non-regressive Socialists, abhor anti-Muslim bigotry. That’s ABC.
Now would you like to discuss the link between Islamic ideas and their consequences in the real world? And remember we are merely discussing murdering for God: we haven’t even touched on the parts of Sharia which contradict the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
Apologies for the late reply: problems with wordpress at my end.
In reply to Chris Schoen:
But their is evidence of “an actual causal component whereby Islamic scripture compels Muslims to take up arms against civilians.”
And that is:
terrorists shooting or beheading or etc infidels, apostates, gays, women etc. and STATING that they do it in the name of Allah because the Koran told them to.
Just because there are statistically different or equivalent amounts of OTHER types of civilian attacks with OTHER CAUSAL components does not at all imply that the Koran and Islam is not “A” causal component of “Muslims taking up arms against civilians”.
Said another way:
Some people want to kill feminists because of X; some want to kill people of colour because of Y; some want to kill whites or abortion providers because of Z and ZZ, and some want to kill non-Muslims or “bad” Muslims or the wrong kind of Muslims BECAUSE of the Koran and Islam. The observation that there are different percentages or statistics for those who actually make plain their reasons (CAUSES) does not affect the argument.
Ed, thank you for your thoughtful reply.
But Roy, I think, does not see the European jihadists as analogous to the hard-liners/core group of a church (not that I’m suggesting that you do). Here’s the conclusion of his short pdf – the reasoning leading to it is well worth reading:
“Consequence:
To promote a ‘moderate Islam’ to bring radicals back to the mainstream is nonsense. They just reject moderation as such.
To ask the ‘Muslim community’ to bring them back to normal life is also nonsense. They just don’t care about people they consider as ‘traitors’, ‘apostates’ or ‘collaborators’ as long as they don’t chose the same path.
The priority, beyond a more sophisticated intelligence system, is to debunk the narrative of heroism, to break the ‘success story’ of ISIS as being invincible (including on the ground) and to let Islam in Europe appear as a normal religion. In a word the management of Islam should not be identified as a security issue first: in this case it will reinforce the fascination of ‘rebels looking for a cause’ towards what is constructed by the West as the arch-enemy. Instead of ‘exceptionalising’, we should ‘normalise’. Radicals hate normal people. If imams are appointed as Muslim chaplains in jail, it should be to deal with the spiritual needs of inmates, not to fight radicalism. On the long-term it will have an impact on radicalisation, but to be taken seriously, imams have to be imams, not police auxiliaries.”
I don’t expect that it is easy or possible to find any liberal ideas promoted in the holy books of the Big Three and even the Jesus quotes are overshadowed by the nastier ones like bringing a sword instead of peace.
So, let the good believers be good because of secular, enlightened values but the next step after they’ve tamed their religion, is to agree that they did so by harnessing the influence of external, liberal forces.
any Muslim who calls him/her self moderate, not radicalized,benign should be willing to answer how they feel about blasphemy, atheism….and should it be punished and how.
These are killing offenses in the koran, I think. Do we not deserve to know the opinions of Islam believers on the subject? I realize that there death-dealing offenses in the christian bible but they are not practiced as widely as Islam koran barbarities.
Why is nobody talking about RELIGION as a cause of so many ills, and also overpopulation???!!!
Crazy world…..
It is not politically correct to talk about overpopulation, because all Western societies already have below-replacement birth rates, and criticizing non-Westerners is haram.
I wonder, is there any relation between the current aggressive expansionism of Islam, the strange submission of the West to it, and the birth rates of respective population groups? Western nations were also extremely aggressive and expansionist when they had high birth rates. It makes sense. If you have many children and the habitat is already densely populated, you are easily convinced that your children need Lebensraum at someone else’s expense.
When I was very small I assumed the God of the bible had to be a wonderful loving being. My mother was a Christian, and you’d never meet a sweeter person. Obviously she wouldn’t follow a sadistic monster.
Then I read the bible, and discovered the truth. When I asked my mother about the horrific stories in the bible I discovered she’d never read them.
I imagine it’s no different with Muslims. Some like me will read the Koran, and become atheists (if they can), and others will assume Allah works in mysterious ways, and despite the bad parts overall the religion must be peaceful, and good because they, and their friends, and family are peaceful and good.
A millenium ago, not all Muslims could afford a Koran and, I guess, even fewer could read it. Imams presumably had the position and responsibility of leaders. They were careful how to present to their naive audience the explosive potential of the “holy” book. Muslim societies were the most learned and civilized on Earth.
Now, every moron can buy a Koran and read it whole.
Unfortunately, I think being able to buy and read one is really one first step and being able to appreciate how bad one’s holy book really is. I was a fundamentalist Christian for 40 years before, cast into the throes of doubt by learning about evolution, I finally sat down and methodically read the entire Bible starting with Genesis 1:1. I was shocked at what I saw. None of the preachers ever talked about the awful and contradictory stuff in there, nor did most of them probably even know about it.
Now that I have spoken out quite vocally in the narrow circle of my old church (of course I’m now a “tool of the devil” for having done so) about the Bible, a few people have given it some thought and some have even left, too. But the vast, vast majority continue to go to church every Sunday and bring their children to Sunday schools where their Bibles only open to the familiar old stories about David’s slingshot skills and Jesus meek and mild.
It’s pretty discouraging, really. The toxic religion meme will be with us until we finally fry ourselves off the planet or the other, in all its culturally evolved and competing varieties.
“I was a fundamentalist Christian for 40 years before, cast into the throes of doubt by learning about evolution”
It was a quote from the bible in Twains “Letters From The Earth” about killing everyone except virgin girls, and splitting them up among the men that started my reading of the bible. It was still a number of years before I became an atheist, but once I was done reading the God of the bible was no longer my God.
This reminds me of how I used to think about the Bible. I thought of it as “a book with brilliant insights well ahead of its time.” Of course, I never bothered to read any of it outside of the readings covered in the 3 year cycle of the Catholic gospel. I still don’t think I’ve read the thing cover to cover, but I’ve probably covered 90% of it, and there is nothing brilliant about it. It’s exactly what you’d expect from iron age tribal people.
It make you wonder what learning to be a priest entails. There must be quite a bit in the curriculum involving selectivity and creativity in interpretation. Also training in mental compartmentalization, rationalization, dodging questions with elan, and how to mix stiff drinks when you are struggling to hold all this together.
“others will assume Allah works in mysterious ways, and despite the bad parts overall the religion must be peaceful, and good because they, and their friends, and family are peaceful and good.”
I have no problem with that. If it makes them behave in peaceful ways and they assume that dreadful killers like ISIS are ‘not true Muslims’. (And bear in mind that ISIS are mostly oppressing other Muslims).
If they’re content to regard the Koran as their holy good book without ever having read the bad parts, so much the better (just as with the bible). If that makes them wishy-washy Muslims, in it mostly for the social aspect (like, say, Church of England adherents or secular Jews) then so much the better, and we’ll let society have its gradual corrosive effect on religion.
I think that’s much more likely to have success than making them read their holy book and pointing out what dreadful things it orders them to do (as good Muslims) in the hope they’ll reject it. The potential for that to backfire is obvious.
cr
My main take-away is that the U.S. policy in the Middle East should honestly reflect all of this terrible Muslim history. Saudi Arabia should be confronted with the strongest diplomatic and economic pressure to reform. The world will, hopefully soon, not need it’s oil reserves as we move into a post carbon future.
I think that, even now, we can live without both Saudi oil and Russian gas. But this view seems extremist :-(.
Well, that would be nice, but I think the transition will take longer. But, not too much longer.
Actually, the low hanging fruit in the U.S. is to convert coal fired power plants to natural gas. Coal is the biggest problem.
“A radicalised, American-born Pakistani went to Saudi Arabia and married another Pakistani brainwashed with an extremist version of Wahhabism that is the Saudi state religion. The couple came to the US and shot up a Christmas office party killing 14 people.
…
Even if we grant that prudence in the cause of security justifies collective punishment, HR 158 does not punish either Pakistani or Saudis dual nationals. Instead Iranian Americans are to be punished – along with dual nationals from Iraq, Sudan and Syria, as well as anyone who has been to any of these four countries in the past five years.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/iran-blog/2015/dec/10/iranian-americans-scapegoats-for-terrorist-acts-by-us-congress-hr158
The U.S. congress is a mysterious thing to behold. Sometimes it reacts like a 3 year old tantrum. Another group “mildly inconvenienced” were the Japanese Americans after Perl Harbor. Germans and Italians had to be very careful as well.
A recent Italian immigrant opened a new restaurant in our town during WW II and was cautioned not to give it a name that sounded too Italian. He called it ‘Aurora’ for it’s neutrality.
We are now, certainly, at war in some sense. Don’t be surprised by the U.S. Congress for the duration.
To presume to mouth off a bit on what (no doubt everyone here already knows) I heard on NPR several days ago: for some several months the Saudis have been and currently are purposefully not cutting back on production as a strategy for dealing with N. American shale oil competition, Saudi (and other Mid-East oil producers’) cash reserves taking a hit as a result. N.A. shale production has taken a hit, but not as much as perhaps the Saudis had hoped for by this point. So at-the-pump prices are (continuing so far to go) down, and U.S. consumers, particularly those of modest means, are happier.
I contemplate how many US consumers know or think about this in the context of brutal Saudi/Sharia law (chopping off hands, beheadings, whippings/canings, etc.)? More than there ought to be, eh? Apparently this has been quite OK enough for USers, clueless or not, since the end of WW II. We regretfully (“What can I do about it?”), briefly shrug and continue on our business, preferring gas to electric (acknowledging the current greater cost of the latter, though to my mind that doesn’t justify an $80K Cadillac Escalante).
I wonder if those (surely including Ben Affleckesque liberals?) who rail against the greater toxicity of shale production, and also against what they claim is Islamophobia, would rather maintain the (surely Islamofascist?) Saudi status quo.
In the 70’s US consumers (but not U.S. refiners, eh?) griped at OPEC/Saudi Arabia instigating rising prices for whatever reasons. Even if there were no (Arab-Israeli conflict-related) political problems prompting rising prices, seems the Saudis were then and are now, no less than USers, excellent “whatever-the-market-will-bear” capitalists and strategists. I bet U.S. (shale) oil producers/investors – and the major refiners – are silently complaining about the Saudis lowering their prices. But they can’t admit to that and still be good capitalists, eh?
Agreed.
The current dip in prices is due to the newest supply of oil from fracking. But that supply has peaked and will very rapidly decline putting us back to the same price framework we saw a before fracking was a thing. Watch for rising prices (next year?)
What this all means is oil price and level of usage is a typical supply and demand sort of affair. That is why the only effective means of CO2 mitigation is a carbon fee pricing scheme that gradually increases to put the squeeze on petrol and especially coal. The just complete agreement in Paris does not include a requirement for a carbon fee mechanism, but, I understand, the idea was floated and received very strong endorsements from a large array of parties. Look for it in a country near you.
Thanks to Ed Suominen for that well written article.
Harrison Ford was shown in a clip addressed to Donald Trump saying,”It was a movie. It’s not like this in real life” Maybe something like that is what needs to be said to followers of Abrahamic religions: “The stories are mostly fictional, it’s not like that in real life. There is no evidence for interaction between any god and humans”
Maybe most people just try to make the best of their life and stay out of trouble, keep in employment and keep a happy family so that although they might know what their religion says they also know what the laws of their country say so they steer a course between the two banks of the river trying to avoid running aground.
Remember the guideline: at most you should be making 10-15% of the comments on this thread. I don’t want it to turn into a on-on-one discussion, or with single people hijacking it.
There is something Ed’s insightful article highlights (which our host does not emphasise, btw), which deserves attention.
The way the ‘West’ feeds Islamism via the petrodollars funding the Saudis, in turn funding fundamentalist Islam the world over.
I think it is one more reason to go solar, a way paved by visionaries like Elon Musk (although the latter is more concerned about climate change than Islamism}.
Swatting two flies at once, as it were…
As Ive said before, what if only a part of the trillions spent in the Iraq war would have been spent on solar energy research?
Would we still have this discussion about Islam and Islamic fundamentalism?
I think this just reaffirms the point that “Islamophobia” is a term we need to do away with. Islam is neither an object, a class of objects, or a situation. It is a set of ideas. It is a set of ideas antithetical to Enlightenment ideals and it is a set of ideas that threaten the survival of the human species. No, not everyone who calls themselves a Muslim adheres to Islam in its most literal form, and for those Muslims who don’t, there is no reason to have a phobia from them. I think anti-Islam is more fitting for the term we’re looking for. I am not anti-Muslim. I am terrified of Muslims who adhere to Islam in its fundamental form. This in no way constitutes an “illogical fear.” Illogical fear is what people like Donald Trump stoke in a class of people who has historically held power, yet arm themselves to prevent tyranny while they attempt to oppress every person they deem sufficiently non-WASPy enough.
It’s a loathsome religion that calls for death to apostates, and then pursues that with a vengeance in the 21st century. So how about Islamoloathia?
Nice internal alliteration! Not to mention iambic rhythm.
Thx, I thought it was sort of a mouthful, so glad it has positive elements from that aspect.
“Islamoloathia”
+
Are “Islamofascism,” or “Islamofascismphobia useful and appropriate words? For sure, the latter is quite awkward, but seems on point, assuming one agrees that Islamofascism exists. No doubt there are some who deny it. I’d like to pin down Ben Affleck and Nicholas Kristof and their ilk on whether it exists.
(I’ll put on my long “To Do” list exploring the etymology of “muslim.” There is also “moslem,” eh? We don’t hear that anymore. Why isn’t there “Islim”? Is a muslim an “islimist”? I remember seeing “muslim,” “moslem,”
“Islam,” and “Mohammedanism” in my musty 8th grade history book, and of course no analysis distinguishing the words. IIRC, Thomas Jefferson referred to “Musselman.”
“Christ,” “Christian,” and “Christianity” seem comparatively straight-forward. I’ve seen “Christianist” in print, which I gather is connected with the apparently unsavory “Christian Dominionist.”)
I think I’d accept Islamofascism as a good word for describing the ideology that drives fundamentalist Muslims. Tacking phobia onto the end is awkward; I agree. It’s still not something we’d do to any other ideology. Communistophobe? Socialistophobe Capitlistophobe? None of these make sense and I don’t think having a phobia towards any set of ideas makes sense either. I also like Hempenstein’s Islamoloathia. Loathe the ideas as opposed to western ideas. Fear the people who carry out the ideas to their logical ends. Now we’re right back to Jerry’s original point about phobias. Fearing people promoting fascism to make you comply with their religion is far from irrational; thus, it isn’t a phobia by the standard definition of the word.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s Strategic Plan For America – Court Document
http://www.clarionproject.org/Muslim_Brotherhood_Explanatory_Memorandum
They are telling us they want to destroy our way of life and replace it with an Islamic one. What could go wrong?
Shocking that the only commenter who persistently asked the self-appointed defenders of science and reason to produce *empirical data* to support their contentions was banned. Not at all a sign of a healthy discourse. Let me be blunt: if there is actual scientific evidence that followers of islam tend to be disproportionately more violent or dangerous to ordinary civilians, then that justifies fear. If there is no such evidence, then there is no justification, period. From a scientific perspective, that is the end of story, the only question that needs answering, period, full stop.
Yet when his opponents continue to respond *without* providing any relevant empirical evidence, *Chris* gets banned? Who ARE you people? How can you possibly think that you are upholding the values of science and reason?
He’s not banned, you *****!#$$; I asked him/her to stop dominating the thread, as per the Roolz. But, my friend, YOU are banned, because you didn’t even take the trouble to find out before you started hurling accusations.
When you post on other websites, I’d urge you to a. find out the facts before you start hurling accusations, and b. try being polite.
“He’s not banned, you *****!#$$; I asked him/her to stop dominating the thread, as per the Roolz.”
OK I love this site, and I’ve always tried to obey the roolz, and for the most part agree with them (not that I’m saying it matters if I do), BUT what is the practical difference between being told to shut up or potentially be banned, and being banned. He’s silenced either way. And as I think is clear I’m not a supporter of Chris’ opinions.
Apologies in advance if this is considered an inappropriate, or disrespectful comment.
I’ll second that, Mike. (And thanks for saying it).
It seemed to me Chris was just responding to a number of critics demanding information to support his position. In that respect I don’t think he was dominating the discussion, it was just that he was pretty well alone on one side vs several disputants on the other.
He wasn’t trolling or looking to widen the argument, so far as I could see.
If the discussion had gone on too long, it wasn’t just Chris’s doing.
It’s Prof CC’s site and his judgement call of course.
cr
To tell you the truth I thought there was some trolling going on there. I’m kind of on the fence.
Ditto. Chris was terribly unresponsive to responses.
Was and is unresponsive. Jerry pointed out Chris isn’t banned.
“Was and is unresponsive. Jerry pointed out Chris isn’t banned.”
He was responding to me, and I was looking forward to, and anticipating continued responses until he was told he could no longer respond.
If you want, you can email Jerry and ask if Chris would be okay sharing his/her email address with you and you can continue the discussion offline.
I don’t like to bug Jerry with requests but when he has time, he can be very accommodating this way.
@ Mike Paps
Chris stated, “Jerry Coyne and Ed Suominen, I hope you are reading. This is who you are in bed with when you defend the validity of being fearful of ordinary Muslims…” (Emphasis mine.)
A number of us asked him to provide any examples of Jerry or Ed ever “defending the validity of being fearful of ordinary Muslims,” and he never responded to that. Despite having the difference between Islam (doctrine) and Muslim pointed out to him many times, and despite both Jerry & Ed noting that “phobia”–fear–was not really a correct term for rational distaste for a doctrine, Chris insisted on accusing them of precisely what they’ve stated numerous times that they are not doing.
This is only responsive if sticking your fingers in your ears and going “la la la I can’t hear you” is responsive.
Diana, for those who have a taste for calling people names, well that’s just the type of people they are. I never got the impression that Chris was ever going to be receptive to stats and I suspect neither you nor Mike did.
Positions can become entrenched without regard to the facts: witness the LA politician Sanchez today and her getting dumped on for quoting from Sam Harris and Maajid Nawaz on Muslim attitudes surveys.
There’s a certain febrile atmosphere generated by Affleckism and it can’t be allowed to win. The whole tone reminded me of our responses on WEIT to the odd Christian whom Jerry used to let through to comment and we used to rip them apart, like joyful cats with a new ball of string. (In a nice way, of course). But those poor Xtians were never going to be dissuaded by, or even hold the conversation on the basis of, the evidence.
So with the virtue-signalling Chris. His purpose was to show how much morally superior he was. And the immutable conviction of one’s own virtue leads one to terrible cruelty. x
“Jerry Coyne and Ed Suominen, I hope you are reading. This is who you are in bed with when you defend the validity of being fearful of ordinary Muslims”
In my defense I either misread, or misunderstood that comment. The impression I got was that he was saying Jerry, and Ed’s criticism of Islam was creating a climate where actual anti-Muslim bigots would feel at home.
I think that’s true to an extent. Any criticism of Islam at all would be applauded by the Donald Trumps of the world, and in that sense Trump would have gotten into bed with Jerry.
That being said what he actually said, that Ed, and Jerry were defending the validity of being fearful of ordinary Muslims is just flat untrue.
Let me apologize again to Diana and Diane: my previous post confused the 2: I was responding to Diane. This is becoming utterlutely rickidouglas.
Mike, I think you’re being far too generous to Chris’ motives, Mike: which of course, we can’t know but there is plenty of evidence of the disingenuousness of the regressives. Greenwald knows that Harris is a liberal: Chris, if he spent 5 minutes looking at Jerry’s posts, would know that he is too.
The problem is that for the daft left wing it is always taboo to discuss the ideas of Islam and their effects on actions. You just have to bite the bullet and ignore the smears of ‘racist’ or ‘Islamophobe’ or whatever nonsense they next hit upon.
In discussions online with such types, I have never actually been called that: I suspect it is because they daren’t (at least, to your face) if you actually argue with facts and knowledge of the theology and how it works. And I have never had to resort to the (frankly irrelevant, but true) fact that my daughters attend a secondary school 70% of which pupils have Muslim parents: I’ve only ever mentioned it online here, where I don’t have to disprove my anti-Muslim bigotry.
In the end, who cares if they call you an Islamophobe? (And I think that the meme ‘Islamophobia: a word created by fascists and used by cowards to manipulate morons’ was coined by my fellow-Brummie, Andrew Cummins: hey! Cummins and Malala from one city, not bad!) You just have to keep pushing through with reasoned arguments, duck-like as the water drips off your back. x
My impression is the same as Mike’s.
Chris was making the quoted comment in response to a fairly extreme comment by Mayamarkov.
Jerry is usually careful to make a distinction between Islam and Muslims (and in that respect Chris was incorrect). Some of Jerry’s commenters aren’t, or use the distinction as a convenient cover for xenophobia, and I suspect the distinction is lost on the Trump-supporters of the world.
cr
Infinite, I think you’re being far too generous to Chris. The key moment in the debate, which demonstrates Chris’ disingenuousness occurs at 5.55 p.m. under thread 9 when Mike linked to the religionofpeace website with worldwide Islamist terror attacks stats.
If Chris had been honest, he would then have discussed the overwhelming evidence that modern terrorist attacks are linked to Islamism and the precise weighting of the reasons for why – religious belief, failure of states, western imperialism etc. But he didn’t. That’s how you can tell that he is a bad actor in this dispute. x
“Chris was making the quoted comment in response to a fairly extreme comment by Mayamarkov.”
I didn’t want to name any names, but yeah that’s how I saw it.
I also don’t find Diane G, or Dermot C’s opinions unreasonable.
That being said to my knowledge Chris wasn’t asked to stop talking because he was a troll, or a bad actor.
Dermot, Mike, & Infinite, I think you’ve all described pretty accurately what was going on and there’s not much left to say. Just wanted to let you all know I read and appreciated your comments. You each added some nuances I wasn’t paying much attention to at the time.
To respond to the substantive point:
“evidence that followers of islam tend to be disproportionately more violent or dangerous to ordinary civilians”
Well, Chris seems to think that the only relevant statistic is the historic risk to a civilian in a Western country from Islamic terrorism. Indeed, the statistical risk from any kind of terrorism has historically been extremely small. But surely that’s not the whole story.
ISIS is the obvious recent evidence for horrific violence motivated by Islam. We don’t need a global survey to figure out whether this is statistically significant. The only problem is that the regressive left refuse to acknowledge that Islamism is the motivation for this violence, even when the perpetrators themselves say so.
If these were just a few crazy extremists, I wouldn’t be too worried. But the reason for great concern for the future comes from opinion polls among Muslims, both in Muslim majority states and in the West. It’s not the statistical risk from the violent acts that have actually been carried out, but the attitudes of ordinary Muslims.
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/pages/opinion-polls.htm
(The descriptions of the poll questions on that site are biased and inaccurate; but the links take you to original data from reputable polls.)
Suppose a nuclear weapon is detonated in a city in Europe or the U.S. in the near future, killing half a million random civilians. The attack is not an act of war carried out by a nation state. With no other information, what is the probable religion of the perpetrators, and how certain are you?
Since I probably need to spell it out: none of the above justified shunning or persecuting ordinary Muslims. It does justify asking serious questions about Islamic ideology.