Karen Armstrong is a dangerous woman.
I say that because while she projects the image of amiability and compassion, her modus operandi is to repeatedly deny that any violence in the world comes from “true” religion, which she tautologically defines as “that form of religion which does not inspire violence.” Any brand of terrorism or seemingly faith-based malevolence, she argues, is really based on something other than true faith—perhaps politics, disaffected and angry youth, or (her favorite cause of terrorism) the colonialism of the West and the oppression of Palestinians.
This is dangerous because Armstrong, who has spent her life osculating the rump of faith and whitewashing the evils of faith, would have us ignore the fact that religion—”true” religion, for, after all, are there any “false religions”?—is a real contributor to harm in this world. Yes, there are other causes for terrorism, but really, if there were no religion in the world, and no Islam in the Middle East, would there really be a nucleus around which terrorism could coalesce? As Steve Weinberg said:
Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
He’s not quite right here, for there are other things that make “good people do evil things,” including extreme ideology, a form of faith-based political belief instantiated in Maoist China. But in general he’s right: without faith, would Sunnis and Shiites be at each other’s throats, and would ISIL and Al Qaeda and Saudi Arabia be oppressing women, swathing them in sacks, mutilating their genitals, and killing and torturing people for homosexuality, adultery, apostasy, blasphemy and even blogging? Absent religion, what would cause people to do such things? And don’t forget that most Muslim violence is against other Muslims.
Even the New York Times‘s Thomas Friedman, hardly known for his strident criticism of religion, has had enough dancing around the real problem. In his latest column, “Say it like it is,” Friedman excoriates the Obama administration for tiptoeing around Islam as the cause of terrorism:
When you don’t call things by their real name, you always get in trouble. And this administration, so fearful of being accused of Islamophobia, is refusing to make any link to radical Islam from the recent explosions of violence against civilians (most of them Muslims) by Boko Haram in Nigeria, by the Taliban in Pakistan, by Al Qaeda in Paris and by jihadists in Yemen and Iraq. We’ve entered the theater of the absurd.
And this is why Armstrong is dangerous: she importunes us to ignore an important cause—perhaps the most important cause—of terrorism. How can we address that problem without a full appreciation of the factors that induce it?
The theme of all her books can be summarized in six words: Religion’s been given a bad rap. And people lap up that trope like Hili with a bowl of cream. With the release of Armstrong’s new book, Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence, the media’s been all over her like white on rice, fawning over her, feeding her softball questions, and generally trumpeting how wonderful and scholarly she is (for three examples, see here, here, and here).
Except she’s not. Her “scholarship” is tendentious and one-sided, and I see her as profoundly intellectually dishonest. The fact is that Armstrong is dining out—for a lifetime—by telling people what they want to hear, not what is true. It’s infuriating to see not only her gross distortions, but the way the media accept them uncritically. (There’s one recent exception—a book review that nails the problem with her “scholarship,” but I’ll write about that later today.) Such is the privilege that religion enjoys in the West.
For one really blatant example of Armstrong’s dishonesty, have a look at the interview she gave to a Dutch website, “There is nothing in the Islam that is more violent than Christianity.” It’s long, so I’ll show you just two bits (the misspellings are probably due to the interviewer’s having English as a second language; bolding—except for the question—is mine):
Are terrorists primarily traumatized?
“Some of them are, and some of them are plain wicked. Osama bin Laden was a plain criminal. But there is also great fear and despair among them. There have been surveys done by forensic psychiaters who interviewed people convicted of terrorism since 9/11. They interviewed hundreds of people in Guantanamo and other prisons. And one forensic psychiater who is also an officer of the CIA – so he is no softie like me! – concluded that Islam had nothing to do with it. The problem was rather ignorance of the Islam. Had they had a proper Muslim education they wouldn’t be doing this. Only 20% of them has had a regular Muslim upbringing. The rest are either new converts – like the gunmen who recently attacked the Canadian Parliament; or non-observant, which means they don’t go to the mosque – like the bombers in the Boston marathon; or self-taught. Two young men who left Britain to join the Jihad in Syria ordered from Amazon a book called Islam for Dummies. That says it, you see. . . “
Note her claim that a “proper Muslim education” does not produce terrorism. That’s Armstrong’s schtick, of course, for she claims to be the arbiter of what “proper” Islam is, as well as of all “proper” religions. That’s a dumb and tautological argument. Why is extremist Islam “improper”? After all, it’s taught in the madrasas and promulgated by many imams.
Further, she mentions only a single “forensic psychiatrist” who says that Islam has nothing to do with terrorism. Well, there are others who conclude the opposite. I’ll cite just one: Nicolai Sennels, who just published a piece called “Why Islam creates monsters.” Sennels is no tyro: he’s a Danish psychologist who works with Muslim youth who have committed crimes, and has written a book called Among Criminal Muslims. A Psychologist’s Experience from the Copenhagen Municipality. What kind of scholarship is it to cite only a single source to buttress your claim when other sources say the opposite? At the very least, a good scholar would acknowledge and cite multiple points of view.
But this is even worse:
So you are saying that religion is a scapegoat?
“We’re piling all the violence of the 21st Century on the back of religion, sending it away, saying we have nothing to do with religion. While we still have to deal with the political situation. The supermarket attack in Paris was about Palestine, about Isis. It had nothing to do with antisemitism; many of them are Semites themselves. But they attempt to conquer Palestine and we’re not talking about that. We’re too implicated and we don’t know what to do with it. . .
How much intellectual dishonesty can you pack into four lines? First of all, where on earth does she get the idea that the supermarket attack in Paris was about Palestine? As far as I know, the attackers didn’t even mention Palestine, although I may be wrong. And her explicit attempt to explain the attacks as the results of Israel’s “oppression” of Palestinians is invidious. Is any attack on a Jew, anywhere in the world, a result of Israel’s policy toward Palestine? Does anybody think that such attacks would stop if there were a two-state solution? Given that Hamas and many Middle Eastern Muslims simply want Israel destroyed, that anti-Semitism is rife in the Arab media, and that many Islamic extremists want to abolish Western values and replace them with a caliphate, I doubt it. Armstrong simply cannot credibly play the Israel card to explain attacks on Jews throughout the world.
And look how she says this has “nothing to do with antisemitism.” Her reason: because both Jews and Arabs are Semites! Does she think that anybody will buy this argument? Armstrong knows full well that anti-Semitism is not hatred of anyone of Semitic extraction, but hatred of Jews. Given the cartoons and propaganda emanating from Arab state media, it’s a safe bet to conclude that there is tons of genuine anti-Semitism involved in terrorism. Does she really want people to believe that Arab hatred of Jews has nothing to do with attacks on Jews because, after all, “they’re both Semites.” This statement alone should be highlighted by all the media that suck up to Armstrong and her books.
I won’t give any other excerpts, but you might want to read the interview for its other tidbits, like Armstrong’s approbation for sharia law at the end of her interview.
Finally, and I won’t dwell on this one, the New York Times also published an interview with Armstrong on the day after Christmas. It’s called “The Blame Game: Karen Armstrong talks about ‘Fields of Blood'”, so you know where it’s going. A few of her statements (indented):
Ever since 9/11, I have been asked to comment on the religiously motivated atrocities that regularly punctuate our news. Time and again, I have been informed categorically that religion is chronically prone to violence and has even been the cause of all the major wars in history — an odd remark, since the two World Wars were clearly fought for secular nationalism rather than religion.
Who are all these people who tell her that religion has been the cause of every major war in history? Could this scholar kindly name one person who makes such a claim?
If we speak in order to wound, we will make matters worse: in my research I have found that when a fundamentalist group is attacked, it invariably becomes more extreme. My problem with some current critics of Islam is that their criticism is neither accurate, fair, nor well-informed. I am sure they do not intend this, but in the 1930s and ’40s in Europe, we learned how dangerous and ultimately destructive this kind of discourse could be.
Yes, because criticizing Islam is not only likely to cause more terrorism, but is totally equivalent to how the Nazis “criticized” the Jews. What kind of scholarship is that?
And here’s her spiel on “authentic” religion:
Q: You also write that the Crusades were influenced by “a distorted Christian mythology.” What would you say to critics who might argue that it’s stacking the deck in an argument like this to decide when a religion’s beliefs are being “distorted” and when they’re not?
A.True, there are multiple forms of any tradition, be it secular or religious: it is never possible to speak of an “essential” Christianity or Islam. Yet some interpretations are more authentic than others: the Crusaders conveniently forgot that Jesus told his followers to love their enemies, not to exterminate them. Such failures do not invalidate an entire tradition, however. The theory of natural human rights was a triumphant achievement, despite the fact that its early advocates — Thomas More, Alberico Gentili and John Locke — refused to extend these rights to the indigenous peoples of the New World.
Yes, Jesus said some stuff about loving your enemies, but has she forgotten what God himself supposedly said and did in the Old Testament? (Remember, too, that Jesus didn’t repudiate that, but came to uphold it.) And has Armstrong read the Qur’an? Being a scholar, she must have, but how does she deal with all the calls for war and extinction of unbelievers in that scripture? Finally, note that while she excuses religious ideas as a cause of terrorism, she directly implicates secular ideas (“the theory of natural human rights”) as responsible for oppression of native people. In other words, she’s promulgating a double standard.
Either all religions are “true” (in the sense of being authentic forms of belief) or all are false (in the sense of being delusions). Armstrong’s obdurate refusal to admit this has made her popular and wealthy.
h/t: Barry
