Taseer had been abandoned by his own party
Back in Pakistan…Salman Taseer is buried.
Taseer’s three sons, men with black shirts and red eyes, flung rose petals into the grave. A bugle sounded; graveyard workers shovelled sticky winter clay on to the fearless politician’s coffin. And across Pakistan, people wondered what was disappearing into the grave with him.
Liberals have long been a minority force in Pakistan, reviled for importing “western” ideas and culture; now they are virtually an endangered species.
As Taseer was laid to rest in Lahore, his assassin, 26-year-old policeman Mumtaz Qadri, was also being showered with rose petals, in Islamabad. Cheering supporters clapped Qadri as he was bundled into court.
Oh dear god…it’s such a nightmare. That people like that exist and are happy with the way they think and feel and act. That Pakistan is full of them. That savage mindless cruelty and bullying are the norm there. That neighbors can first refuse to drink water from a glass offered them by a woman of the “wrong” religion and hence caste, and can then accuse her of the capital crime of “insulting” a guy who’s been dead for 14 centuries. And then rejoice at the murder of a man who tried to protect and support her.
It’s a nightmare.
Taseer had been abandoned by his own party.After Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman, was sentenced to death under the blasphemy laws on 8 November, Taseer visited her in jail with his wife and daughter to show his support. Shortly after, an Islamic mob rioted outside the governor’s house in Lahore, burning his effigy and calling for his death. On television, prominent media commentators joined the chorus of criticism.
Senior figures in his own party turned tail. Awan, the law minister, said there was no question of reforming the blasphemy law.
A nightmare.
Yes, it is a nightmare, and positively depressing. Just remember that this is a country with nuclear weapons!
The kind of thing we’re watching in Pakistan, the eruption of violence in Egypt against Christians, the continued unrest in Palestine — all of this is normal for the Muslim world throughout history. There are regular convulsions of violence, and whenever they occur, the task of the authorities is to pacify the extremists. Islam is, by its very nature, a violent religion. It’s written right into the founding documents. There are periods when Islam goes through times of relative peacefulness, but then, suddenly, there are paroxsyms of violence, massacres, people claiming their rights, as Muslims, to respect, land, booty, etc. Taseer’s party members know that the only way to deal with this kind of violence is to appease. If they don’t, the likelihood of it turning into a massacre of minorities is very high.
So dispiriting and sickening.
Here’s a slant on it by an mozzie (muslim aussie, the word, mozzie, is also aussie slang for mosquito, they like the title, it’s not a perjorative AFAIK).
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/shot-down-for-opposing-the-religious-right-20110105-19g9f.html
He seems to avoid the obvious, that islam is part of the problem. There’s an interesting diversion into the history of the Punjab, very tolerant of religion apparently, not sure why that matters. It’s the religious (what religion?) right using law that’s the problem. But not islam. He seems to think the the west can’t see because they are blinded, but perhaps he ought remove the mote from his eye?
Especially given what the mullas are doing and saying. Rose petals for the murderer. All is well.
http://www.theage.com.au/world/scholars-applaud-murder-20110106-19hiq.html
This just adds to the event surrounding the partition of British India into India & Pakistan, to convince me that Pakistan is one of the worst ideas ever.
Over at 3QD, they’ve posted a moving diatribe from Khurram Husain.
Thanks, Ken. A moving and disturbing piece.
How far are we from seeing this kind of behavior in the US?
I think you’d need a blasphemy law for someone to protest against first…
Yes, it’s a nightmare — for people with a Western enlightenment world-view. The hard truth of the matter is that traditional Islam is less compatible with that view than science is with theology… which is to say “not at all.” Think of something that “makes sense” to you, and why, and you can bet that the Qu’ran contradicts it for reasons that are incomprehensible to us (or for no apparent reason whatever).
Islam isn’t part of the problem, it is the problem. As Sam Harris has pointed out,we have little to fear from fundamentalist Jains,Quackers or Buddhists,fundamentalist Moslems on the other hand can be very dangerous.
Although most Western nations don’t have anti-blasphemy laws, the facile equation of religion and race could lead to de facto anti-blasphemy legislation.
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So can fundamentalist Christians and Hindus. Indeed, contrary to the statement above, even Buddhists are not immune (look at Buddhist violence in Sri Lanka). In other words, it is simply not the case that “Islam is the problem” — violent fundamentalism is the problem
Tulse, give it a rest. It is of course possible to be a liberal Muslim. Salman Taseer was one; Tarek Fatah and Irshad Manji are two more; there are many others. But that doesn’t mean that all religions necessarily have identical amounts of illiberal rule-making in their “holy” books.
Ophelia, I certainly don’t like disagreeing with you, but given that you are someone who rightly objects when others misconstrue her words, I hope you would grant me that same privilege. With all due respect, I didn’t say that all religions are equally ill-liberal. And I didn’t say anything about liberal Muslims.
I was simply objecting to the very specific notion Russell put forward that it is only Islam which has a problem with violent fundamentalism. I completely agree that, at this point in time, it is fundamentalist Islam which is the most dangerous in general. I by no means would argue against that, nor do I intend to downplay the death of Taseer. But I don’t think it is helpful or accurate to say, as Russell suggested, that this kind of violence is unique to Islam. If you were an abortion doctor in the US threatened by Christian fundamentalists, or a Tamil in Sri Lanka shot at by militant Buddhists, or a Muslim in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps being massacred by Christian Phalangists, I think you’d agree that it most definitely isn’t only Islam that has a problem with fundamentalist violence.
That’s not relativism, not some sort of po-mo liberal Western moral squishiness — that’s simply a fact: many religions have significant violent elements. If you want to argue that some religions are more intrinsically violent than others, fine, I’d agree. But it is simply false to say such quality is restricted to Islam, rather than being a quality of certain kinds of fundamentalism and theologies in general, as Russell seemed to be doing.
Ok, Tulse, but you didn’t make that clear. You said “it is simply not the case that “Islam is the problem” — violent fundamentalism is the problem.” That’s too sweeping. You would need an “only” between “the” and “problem” to make it less so. That’s all I meant.
This isn’t a nightmare, it’s a teaching opportunity.
Apparently you can control the direction of a democratic government merely by assassinating politicians you don’t like. Who knew? Anyway, no use crying over lost opportunities. What we need to do is seize the moment and put this brilliant new technique into practice.
I suggest we start with the new House of Representatives, but no point in limiting our scope! Toss George F. Will and pretty much everybody at Fox in the mix too. Think about it – if we just shoot every single person who disagrees with us for any reason, soon there will be no more disagreement! And then we’ll have bipartisanship every day!
Damn, this is so clever, why didn’t anybody think of it before? Anyway, we should probably get started before the other side figures it out, and implements their own attack. But does it matter? By definition, the last man standing is the best. The free market will sort it all out.
It is not “fundamentalist Islam” it is Islam that is the problem. There is no fundamentalist Islam, we have just invented the term, like Islamophobia was invented to protect examination, critique of Islam.
Read the Quran in the order that it was delivered and you will be horrified.
The same thing is true of the Old Testament, though. I’d suggest that the cultural tendency of Muslims to actually follow what their book says, as opposed to the percent of Jews and Christians who either don’t read or don’t bother with the Bible, is the main factor.
Tulse,
I never claimed that religious violence is ‘unique to Islam’,simply that’s that it’s more characteristic of Islam than most other religions. “Holy war”was a Moslem innovation and quite alien to early Christianity.
You’ve missed the point, I meant ‘fundamentalism’ as a literal intepretration of the sacred texts,you seem to be defining ‘fundamentalism’ as violent, religiously motivated behavior which, although a popular interpretation, is not correct. Violent Buddhists are definitely not fundamentalists. Harris’s comment that that we have nothing to fear from fundamentalist Jains or Quakers was intended to demonstrate that violence is an essential part of Islamic ideology and practice.
I’ve never understood the meaning of ‘moderate’ Moslems,you can’t pick and choose.
Ophelia:
Sorry, I was simply quoting Russell — sorry if I didn’t make my meaning more obvious.
Russell W:
I’m certainly not an expert in Middle East history, but surely it isn’t true that Islam was the first religion to engage in holy wars, at least in the plain meaning of the term. For example, weren’t the wars by the Jewish tribes against the Canaanites and others as they conquered the Promised Land “holy wars”? I’m not sure if you mean the term in a narrower sense than its literal meaning.
That’s a fair point — you are right that I wasn’t using the term in the way you mean. (Of course, by that definition, Jews and Christians stoning obstreperous children and killing gays would be “fundamentalist” as well, since those activities are demanded by the Old Testament — but fortunately, there are few truly “fundamentalist” Jews or Christians.)
But Christians and Jews do, so why can’t Muslims?
Tulse,
The problem with mainstream Islam, as Irshad Manji pointed it, is that unlike mainstream Judaism and mainstream Christianity, it has never undergone any sort of reformation or modernization. The mainstream flavors of Judaism and Christianity are post Enlightenment and have long since abandoned literalism. No so mainstream Islam (not to mention its fundamentalist varieties). If anything, it has become more dogmatic and more militant in recent years. Taseer’s killer is a mainstream Muslim. Certainly in the Pakistani context, he isn’t the exception; he’s the rule. And what is happening in Pakistan, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq etc. is a glimpse of the clouds that were spreading over Europe in the 1930s. The new theocratic hordes have great numbers, but, thankfully — in comparison to the 1930s fascists — they are still relatively weak militarily. That might change should nuclear Pakistan become an aggressively Islamist state and Ahmedinedjad manage to build a few A-bombs.
Tulse,
I’m rather skeptical in regard to Bibical ‘history’ as there is some doubt as to whether the ‘conquest’ of Canaan ever actually occurred, so I’d discount the Bible(or any sacred text) as a reliable source.
“But Christians and Jews do so why can’t Moslems?”
Yes,I should have been more explicit, my comment applies equally to Jews and Christians.My point was ‘moderation’ means that a ‘believer’ is not, in fact, following the teachings of his or her religion.
‘Moderate’ believers usually interprete their religion’s teachings in the light of modern mores,ethics and morality. Fundamentalists,even though some appear to be barking mad, possess an intellectual honesty that moderate believers don’t have. That’s why I used the phrase “pick and choose”. Every word in the Bible and Quran is supposed to be the word of some sky deity or other-it’s all or nothing.
To avoid any misunderstandings–I’m an atheist and I’m baffled why intelligent people believe this drivel, I definitely don’t have any religious agenda.
I think we need to distinguish between wars and blowing up school children so you can live in a paradise with 72 virgins, or flying planes into buildings, or shooting a man in the back because you disagreed with him eveb though you were supposed to protect him. These incidents aren’t simply freak occurrences or problems with border disputes and resources, these problems are inherent in the religion itself. It holds back the process of civilisation, it twists the normal human capacity for sympathy into absurdity. It is a political religion and an immoral religion.
Most of us argue that religion is the problem, but Islam is unique in providing the environment for evil to flourish on a massive scale.
While it is important to note that the ‘conquest of Canaan’ (in the Hebrew Bible) was probably mainly fiction, one still has to ask why people thought it was necessary to found their religious community on the inhumanity expressed in those accounts of murder and mayhem. Clearly, the importance of separation, marking of the boundaries of the holy people, was central to this. The difference between the way that the Israelites did it, and the way Muslims did it, bears examination. For Muslims marked of the boundaries in real blood, not just fictional blood, and the big problem is that they are still doing it. They do it, not only because Islam has not gone through a period of reform and enlightenment, but because, in my view, they can’t. Islam is fundamentalist by definition, and those who stand outside of the community by reading the Qu’ran in figurative ways, simply do not, in any sense that matters, belong to the Ummah. So Islam will be characterised by periods of relative peace punctuated by convulsions of violence, just as it has always been. Anyone who has read the Qu’ran must know that the programme of the book cannot be prosecuted without violence, and in fact continued violence, until those and the boundaries between the holy people and infidels is clearly defined. Salman Taseer showed himself, by standing up for the rights of a lowly Christian woman, to be on the wrong side of that boundary, and so he had to go.
This is characteristic of Muslim history. Islam has always had bloody borders. Hundreds of thousands of Europeans were captured by raiding parties and sold in the slave markets of Arabia and North Africa. The attempt of the Christians of the Balkans to free themselves from an oppressive Muslim empire was answered with massacre, and this is still deeply entrenched in the memory of the people of that troubled region. We may wonder how it could be that it should have dissolved into such chaos and civil war, but the religious struggle in the Balkans is still, I am afraid, not over. And it is not over precisely because, for hundreds of years, this area was held under the arbitrary rule of Muslim overlords.
I suppose my concern is that, by encouraging Muslim immigration, without at the same time trying to help them go through some kind of reformation, we are creating, within free societies, a core of people who, in time, will create serious problems for us. It’s not that there are no liberal Muslims. There are. But I suspect that they are few, and they will be easily intimidated, or are already being intimidated. One thing that is not happening, unfortunately, is as widespread a criticism of Islam as there is of Christianity in our societies. They are now in the minority, and liberal voices tend to be much more reserved in criticising minorities. But if we do not want the kind of madness that is now characteristic of places like Pakistan, Iraq, etc., where Muslims are like a powder keg with the fuse already lit, we need to make it clear how deeply threatening Islam, as now understood and practiced really is.
Alain and Russell W, I don’t disagree with your comments about moderation (or lack thereof) in Islam, but that’s precisely my point — contrary to the original claim, it is the fundamentalism in this religion that is the real problem. And true fundamentalism, as defined by Russell, would be a problem for Christians (as it was when they were stoning and burning witches) and Jews as well. We simply don’t have fundamentalists of those religions by the definition Russell is using (they aren’t routinely killing adulterers and gays, or stoning disobedient children).
Is Islam more prone to fundamentalism because of its founding text, as Eric suggests? I wouldn’t disagree with that claim, but I’d argue that this is a matter of degree, not kind, and that scripture-justified violence can be found in the Jewish and Christian holy books as well. Islam may be more of a problem, but it is not the only problem, and it is only a problem because of fundamentalism.
Russell, you may argue that moderates are not truly religious, and as a fellow atheist (and ex-Catholic) I have a lot of sympathy for that view, but it is also clearly not true in practice. As I noted above, almost all Christians and Jews today are “moderates” (even those who call themselves fundamentalist or orthodox), because they don’t obey all the strictures of the Bible. On a purely descriptive level, these people are still religious, and reasonably called Christians and Jews.
As for the minor issue of who invented “holy wars”, I don’t necessarily disagree that the conquest of Canaan and other such Old Testament wars are likely fictional, but their acceptance as part of the history of the Jewish people came long before the Qu’ran, and so the notion of going to war for one’s god predates “jihad” by a millennium or two. (And that’s just the Jewish faith — I’m sure other religions of this period also had actual religiously-motivated wars.)
And Eric, when you write
I don’t see how you can possibly justify that. Do you really think there is more criticism of the fundamentals of Christianity than Islam in, say, the US? When there is discussion of whether people should be allowed to simply build a mosque where they choose, and when state legislatures are outlawing sharia? On the contrary, I think the criticism we see (at least in North American media — the situation seems somewhat different in Europe) are very widespread, but unnuanced, and tend to conflate moderate and fundamentalist Islam, and thus works against those who are trying to bring a less literal, less violent Islam to the West.
Jim @#4: well Pakistan probably was one of the worst ideas ever. But if not for the creation of pakistan there would likely have been a significant delay in independence and possibly a war. The massacres at the time were bad enough. And if not for pakistan these barbarians would be India’s problem and India has enough already with its extremists of whatever religion – including, but not limited to, islam.
Where is the Pope and Christian leaders on this? I’ve not seen much strong reaction (maybe I’m not fully informed). Why are they apparently hanging this poor woman out to dry? Or are they, too, sympathetic to anti blasphemy laws?
Tulse, when you say that the criticism of Islam is unnuanced, I think this is what I have in mind when I say that there is a paucity of critique of Islam in the West. There is a certain reticence about criticising Islam in thoroughgoing academic ways, and most of those who do this tend to be marginalised. There is a lot of fear of Islam, which is expressed in things like the brouhaha over the mosque at Ground Zero, and regarding the idea of Sharia law, but this is not yet criticism of Islam in any substantive way. And yet there is a very detailed deconstruction of Christianity going on, while the vitals, if you like, of Islam are still sheltered behind threats of violence. This, I think, is a serious problem and we need to get beyond it. As for moderate versions of Islam, there are a few moderate Muslim thinkers, but I take Hirsi Ali at her word when she says that Islam is simply not adaptable to moderate types of expression, and I see no reason yet to change my opinion of that. The heart of Islam is fundamentalist, and will remain so for the foreseeable future, I am afraid, and there are enough jihadis around to make sure it stays that way. Notice that there are very few moderate voices amongst the Muslim leadership in the US, Canada, Australia, the UK, etc. Tariq Ramadan is often referred to as moderate, but he is not, and if his is a moderate Islam, then we really are in trouble.
Regarding the idea of Pakistan, I agree with Jim and Sailor. The partition of India was a tragedy, and the tragedy is ongoing. Where a multi-religious India, including what is now Pakistan, might have been a force for good in the world, the partition of India has produced one of the most serious powder kegs in the world, and its being a nuclear powder keg makes the situation even more perilous. But now it is impossible to put the genie back into the bottle. What is distressing is that the war in Afghanistan, which has been supported by official Pakistan, is radicalising the situation in Pakistan, and since the war in Afghanistan is not really going all that well, as wars against insurgents seldom do, the outcome of the situation down the road is very uncertain to say the least.
Tulse,Like you, I used to think that the current militancy of Muslims (compared to even fundamentalist Christians or Jews) was a matter of degree. That mainstream Jews and Christians had “outgrown” fundamentalism (by your definition of the term) and Muslims would eventually follow in their path. My vague conception of the problem revolved around the fact that Islam was ensconced largely in underdeveloped countries. With modernity and economic progress would come moderation. But what we have seen since 9/11 belies that. The theory that deprivation, ignorance and “oppression” breeds terrorism has long since been debunked (in fact most terrorists are wealthier and more “educated” than the unwashed masses of their religious and cultural groups, and their ranks have included teachers, engineers and doctors) and the notion that Islam would “reform” itself along the Jewish and Christian models, is, I fear, similarly baseless. So what is it that makes Islam today so menacing? It would seem that the only explanation left is Eric MacDonald’s: there is something about Islam itself that is imprevious to reform or moderation and particularly susceptible to outrage and violence. I’ll leave that exegesis to people more informed about Islam and the Koran that I am.
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One major factor is simply widespread reliance on madrasas instead of actual schools. Madrasas teach nothing at all except memorization of the Koran in Arabic, but there are huge quantities of them in Pakistan. This fact all by itself makes me go pale with fear.
@Eric: Scientific American had an article a while back about the consequences of a regional nuclear war in the subcontinent. According to the authors’ model, such a conflict could cause a nuclear winter, leading to world-wide starvation:
You can read the start of the article here for free:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=local-nuclear-war
Hic… “impervious” (above) please!
I’d like to think that closing the madrassas would solve the problem, Ophelia, and it certainly would help in Pakistan, but the fact that the Muslim terrorists in the west are relatively “educated”, makes me skeptical, even downright pessimistic. I think it’s more than ordinary religion that’s driving them, it’s Islam as an ideology. And Hitchens was onto something when he called it Islamofascism. In the long run, the barefoot peasant in Waziristan reciting the Koran in a language he doesn’t understand is less of a threat than some oily representative of the Organization of the Islamic Conference pushing for sharia amendments to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
But I can turn that question on its head — what is it about Islam in certain countries that makes it far less threatening than in other locales? There are perhaps as many as 7 million Muslims in the US, people who have far more access to critical infrastructure than do those from the Middle East, and yet the terror plots the government focusses on are not internal, but external. Why aren’t those 7 million US Muslims regularly committing acts of jihad in America? There are over 200 million Muslims in Indonesia, the most populous Islamic country on the planet, and yet it too is not a significant source of extremist terror, and is clearly by no means as radicalized as, say, Pakistan. So I think it is misleading to say that “Islam” without qualification is menacing — Islam in certain contexts is, absolutely, but it is a grave oversimplification to say that Islam uniformly is a threat.
I’m not saying this out of some sort of fuzzyheaded liberalism, but instead because I think it is vital that we understand under what conditions all religions, and especially Islam, become dangerous in this fashion, and how we can potentially ameliorate that danger. If one says that it is simply Islam that is the problem, then there are literally no solutions but wiping out the entire faith. Whatever one might think of the morality of that, it simply isn’t possible practically. So instead of reductively saying that “Islam is the problem”, and foreclosing any possible reasonable approach to the problem, I think we need to take a more thoughtful and empirically-informed view.
Tulse,
A few points…
You say that “the terror plots the [US] government focusses on are not internal, but external.” But that is wrong, or at least misleading. There have been numerous FBI anti-terrorist arrests in the US and some plots, unfortunately (e.g. Fort Hood), that they were too late in discovering. Was 9/11 an “internal” or an “external” terror plot? It would seem that the distinction is meaningless. There are terrorists who have come (or attempted to come) to the US to commit terror (e.g. Richard Reid) and there are homegrown terrorists. I would think the US is simply trying to protect its citizens both at home and abroad. The plots may originate on either side of the border.
Indonesia. Perhaps in absolute terms, terrorism is less of an Indonesian export than it is a product of say Saudi Arabia, but I have an Australian friend whose sister died in the Bali bombings so I doubt that he would regard Indonesia as an oasis of moderation. Not to mention that Indonesia’s blasphemy law has frequently been used to oppress non-Muslims, though it does not, to my knowledge, entail capital punishement, as in Pakistan.
Yes, Indonesia is different from Pakistan, which, in turn, is different from Afghanistan or Yemen. Context is important. But the similarities are noticeable, too, even in the varieties of Islam that that I have witnessed in Canada (honour killings, attempts to institute sharia, a substantial number of terror plots etc.) I realize things are more complex than that, but I can’t see how avoiding the possibility that Islam itself may be the problem, or at least a large part of the problem, makes things any easier to fix.
Alain, I should have been clearer regarding the issue of context. It’s true that there have been homegrown terrorist plots in the US (and Canada) but almost all those have been amateurish attempts by very small groups of people or lone individuals, just like, say, the Oklahoma bombing or Columbine. There is no evidence of a coordinated homegrown Islamic conspiracy, or that such terrorists have received substantial support from the US Muslim community.
As for Indonesia, yes, they have problems with terrorism, but as you point out, less so in absolute terms (and, because they are the largest Muslim nation, far less so in relative terms) than many other countries. I think it is vital that we understand why that is, what are the conditions that make Indonesia far more immune to the radicalism that plagues Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, etc. As you say, “context is important”, and I’d argue that understanding such context is in fact the only way that such violence can be effectively combatted in the long term.
OK, so if it is Islam itself that is the problem, what possible class of solutions are there, apart from totally wiping out the religion from the planet? Seriously, what are potential ways of dealing with the issue? I’m not asking for what the specific solution is, just what the general solution-space is — is there anything on the table other than total war against over a billion people? I’m not being glib — I’m genuinely puzzled as to what approach one can have if it is the religion itself alone that must be eliminated.
Tulse,
To play a bit of the devil’s (?) advocate… I recently read an interesting comment (I wish I could remember where) that – not entirely facetiously – compared religions in general and Islam in particular to infectious diseases. Perhaps the sort of measures taken in developed countries to contain virulent diseases might be applied to would-be immigrants from fundamentalist societies. The need to quarantine people carrying dangerous infections is not considered an unwarranted abrogation of their human rights, merely a protection of society as a whole. In general, we cannot do much more than apply external (political) pressure (and assistance) in countries like Pakistan, but surely we can do more to insure that sharia and other Salafist “infections” don’t spread beyond their sources of incubation. Or is it already too late for some places in Europe?
I’m not sure that it is necessarily productive to answer that question. Indonesia may be only quantitatively different, progressing along a different time scale. What (little) I read hints that, just like most areas of the world, fundamentalism is rising there while Islamic liberalism is on the wane. The place is now much closer to an outright theocracy than it was twenty years ago. If I had a theory about why Indonesian Islamism is not as militant as in as some nations, it would be because they are isolated, and not suffering a large wahhabi population.
What might be more productive would be to find a Muslim nation where fundamentalist/militant Islam is actually on the wane, if such a place actually exists. Islam IS fundamentally (!) different that the other Abrahamic religions, in that it does have a higher ratio of fundamentalism/liberalism (Pew data) and appears to resist assimilation quite well.
Short of another Crusade (gallows humor), all I can think of are laws that would encourage assimilation, such as banning the burka in public, enforcing a national language in schools and signage, denying the legality of Sharia law, keeping accommodation to a minimum, strict monitoring of teaching content of Islamic private schools, and eliminating tax deductions for children.
And I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with this notion. I think it is reasonable to ensure that those who wish to immigrate are committed to basic liberal democratic values, including secularism of government. But are you going to literally prevent any Muslim from immigrating, or just those who are fundamentalist?
Again, that strongly suggests the truth of my original contention that fundamentalism is not an inherent part of Islam, since the level of fundamentalism has changed over time.
I agree, but that again suggests that moderation is indeed possible, which was my original point.
That may be one of the reasons, but I doubt it’s the only one. The current form of political Islam is afaik rather recent. One factor is that any competing ideologies that might have pushed majority Muslim countries towards at least some modernisation in the past (socialism, nationalism…) are currently weak in the Middle East (because of internal failitude, outside intervention, or both). An analogy might be the resurgence of Christianity in former Communist countries (maybe not nearly as big a menace as political Islam, but it has had some nasty reactionary overtones)
Tulse,
I’m not arguing that moderates are not ‘truly religious’,simply that they’re not following the tenets of their purported religious beliefs. We certainly need more moderates.
I wouldn’t be complacent in regard to the ‘tolerance’ shown by Moslems as a minority in the West, majority Moslem societies usually oppress, in various degrees of brutality, religious minorities. I don’t agree that Indonesia is an exemplar of moderate Islam, the province of Aceh is degenerating into an Islamic theocracy.In other words,if Indonesia is the best model we have of Islamic tolerance, we have a serious problem.
I agree with Eric on the dangers of Moslem theocrats reproducing, in the West, the primitive tribal societies from which they originated.
Islam in the modern context is not ‘just another religion’,it’s a totalitarian political ideology and demonstrably anti-democratic. Earlier generations would not have regarded Communism as just another political ideology.
We don’t need laws that encourage assimilation,we need to stop accommodating Moslem demands for special treatment because of a miguided ‘multiculturalism’.
One of the major sources of islamic fundamentalism is Saudi-Arabia, which devotes huge sums to the export of wahabi imams and foundation of mosques and islamic centres in the west. Although it’s probably an attractive proposition to some to stop immigration of muslims completely, it’s not very practical. However it is practical to prevent the immigration of saudi-arabian and other fundamentalist imams; these guys benefit, as do pedophile catholic priests, from exemption from the normal immigration laws. This should be stopped at once and those already in the UK, France, Germany, Canada, The USA etc should be shipped poste haste back to SA. It is no secret that many young jihadis have been radicalized by Wahabi clerics bungeed in by SA in a deliberate attempt to islamise these countries.
Of course this won’t do anything about the slow but sure radicalization of nations that are already islamic, which is just as deadly a problem in the long term.
For anyone who hasn’t yet read the koran, I recommend you do so soon, especially suras 2 through 9 – then tremble along with Ophelia and me!!
PS: In the UK you guys might want to cease paying benefits to illegal immigrants, rabble-rousers and polygamists to make the UK a somewhat less attractive destination………
Another answer to Tulse’s question about what can we do is that I’m not sure we can do much. I think it’s all very bad and likely to get worse not better.
And I don’t even live in Pakistan.
One thing I recommend we do in the UK is abandon the concept of dual citizenship and make people choose whether they want to be a citizen of the (roughly) secular, democratic UK or of Pakistan etc. I presume this would have some impact on the rate of immigration by marriage or family connection, and maybe reduce the number of teenage girls being taken out of the country to get married.
A little anecdote… I was in a ‘Curry House’ here in my small town in Wiltshire, England a month ago. The young chap dealing with take away orders was chatting in a friendly way with a middle-aged couple as they payed their bill.
He was clearly British born, say 17 years old. He said that he was at college, and when asked what he was studying he replied “It’s a school where we study the Koran.” He went on to say that he was there for 1 year.
I was worrying today about the reaction of British Muslims to the murder of Taseer. (Has there been any reporting on this? Has it been strongly criticised from all points of the Muslim community in Britain? I don’t know, but I sincerely hope so).
I understand that Friday prayers are where you would have the equivalent of the Sunday sermon, and therefore today would have been the best opportunity to judge, on the street, what the actual reaction was.
However, how can the assessment be made? If the only people who attend the Friday prayers are adherents of the religion and also subject to certain pressures against plain speaking then the wider public can not get a good feeling for the sentiment within the community.
If I (as a stranger) turned up at a church, synagogue or temple at ‘service’ time would I be able to go in and listen? What about at a mosque for Friday prayers?
I would suggest that it should be mandated that anyone can attend these types of ‘services’. Otherwise the only outsiders to know what is actually being said will be the intelligence services.
We need a cadre of journalists with suitable linguistic skills to travel the country and report back.
My solution is to simply stop giving the advantages of liberalism and science to those who wish to live in the stone age. Take away their guns, their PCs, printing press, ipods, industrialism, nuclear weapons, insecticides, human rights and modern western medicine, then give them bow and arrows and parchment and leave them to it.
Oh, and if they wish to rejoin the twenty-first century, then do so under a secular constitution with basic human rights.
Westerners often quote Malaysia and Indonesia as ‘moderate’ muslim countries and that description is so ignorant of ground realities in the region (that I happen to live in) that I often despair.
Islam arrived late on the shores of the Malay archipelago, barely 500 years ago and was added onto a solid substrate of local animist beliefs, as well as hinduism and buddhism which have a millenia old presence in the region. In indonesia in particular there are too many reminders of the past traditions , including whole tribes of non-muslim peoples still extant, that the pretence of living in a ‘pure muslim’ state was never possible. The arts and craftforms had non muslim origins as had ceremonies and rites which were a part of daily life. Women’s traditional dress barely gave a nod to islamic sensibilities.
There is a form of relaxed, syncretic islam in Java called abangan islam that used to be the dominant form of Islam and was tolerant of non-muslims.
Geographical distance from the middle-east was something that aided the survival of abangan islam. There were periods if islamic unrest and political activism (often in reaction to colonialism) but nothing like what exists nowadays.
What exists nowadays is a nightmare compared to the recent past.
The last few decades have effectively changed the form of tolerant islam practised here. Hundreds of years of traditions are now as seen as jahiliyya, a non-islamic pagan stain that has to be erased, particularly in Malaysia and benighted places like Aceh.
Malaysia and Indonesia are being Arabised at a rapid pace. Minority rights are being eroded, sharia is being extended to the extent that women are being whipped for sharia offences in Malaysia, let alone Aceh. The last is so alien to this part of the world that my mind still cant quite comprehend it. Terror attacks on churches and pubs are one thing – a few nutters, you say- but state sanctioned religious punishments are far more frightening.
If you have lived in this region for the last 3 decades, you would know how much has been lost, irrevocably. I am barely 40. The Islam i encountered at 10 doesnt exist.
Tulse is right that it is possible to have a tolerant islam – I have met such an islam. But where he is wrong and Eric is right is in this point: whereever a tolerant islam existed or exists, it is in a state where it is cut adrift from its middle eastern origins, where it is in blissful ignorance of its core history and beliefs, where it is leavened by co-existence with other non-islamic peoples, traditions, ideas.
In as far as it is not possible to put the genie back in the bottle, we are going to have to live with radical political islam, for a long time. how to ameliorate its pernicious effects?
laws that would encourage assimilation, such as banning the burka in public, enforcing a national language in schools and signage, denying the legality of Sharia law, keeping accommodation to a minimum, strict monitoring of teaching content of Islamic private schools, and eliminating tax deductions for children.
I would tend to agree with a lot of that except for the last. In my country, the public schools do not allow even the hijab and that is one policy I completely agree with. Mock me as a secular fundamentalist if you like.
I read a lot of UK blogs and papers and it is shocking to see the leeway given to islamists in that country. The guardian has since 2001, given an awful lot of space to Muslim Brotherhood activists and their equivalent. There seems to be a clear editorial line on that. Well, let the Uk live with the consequences of that kind of accomodation. The blowback in the form of the EDL has started. The UK is not that far from a new kind of sectarian strife. Of a subcontinental shade. Couldnt happen to a more deserving country. A country that enabled religious privilege (of the sharia) from Africa to Asia.
Ok enough of the shadenfreude about Britain. In case it was not clear, my proposal to the fight against political islam is to demand or bring into being local versions of islam again. To demand clear and unequivocal adherence to local laws. To break up the ummah again if one must. If muslims have a primary allegiance to their neighbours and fellow citizens, infidels and all, rather than to the mullahs in saudi arabia, we’d all feel safer. But if muslims have to give up the ummah, they’d have to have something in return – they cannot be disenfranchised or second class citizens anywhere in the civilised world.
You’re not derailing anything, Sonia! Any more than mirax is.
I know damn well that Malaysia and Indonesia are not shining examples of liberal Islam, and that’s largely because mirax has been informing me and telling me where to look for more, for ages.
Alain:
I think the key to it is the kind of subjects they study. So long as the liberal arts are discouraged if not disallowed as haram, there will be a problem. Art, literature and drama, music, history and philosophy foster understanding of and empathy with people (real and fictional alike) from diverse cultures, with different values, & c. through imaginative engagement. Strict Islamic families can discourage children from studying subjects of this kind at school, lest they are exposed to ideas or (in art) images that go against their narrow religious understanding.
Sonia wrote at #52:
I could not agree more. As I have said on B&W before, the original handbook of fascism is not Hitler’s Mein Kampf. It is The Koran.
As a philosophy of life advocated within any open society, Islam cannot get very far. Muslims here in the liberal West are only here because life here is better than where they came from, and Islamists like the killer/s of Taneer routinely blow apart any notions of Islamic peacefulness and tolerance.
There are indeed tensions within Islamic communities in the West, (see “Muslims call for ‘radical’ radio station to be closed” at http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/muslims-call-for-radical-radio-station-to-be-closed-20110108-19j9r.html ) but the key target is education. Closing the student mind is the name of the game for Muslims, for which they need control of mental input. That in turn means private Islamic schools and colleges.
I do not think it unreasonable to deny this to them. Let 100 flowers bloom. Everywhere.
Closing the student mind is the name of the game for Muslims, for which they need control of mental input. That in turn means private Islamic schools and colleges.
Yeah, just so long as the bulk of their budget ends up coming from public funds!
There is a pattern to all of this, and it almost always begins with a beguiling and smiling Saudi wahabbi rep. arriving with bags of cash to set up an islamic school…and always in the interests of ‘interfaith’ dialogue, you understand.
And in the space of only a few years the schools they establish are at the centre of various islamist controversies surrounding intolerance, hate, anti-semitism etc.
And our supine politicians just look the other way, in the hope of obtaining the ‘community’ vote, as though Muslims were an undifferentiated block, all of whom vote like sheep.
Will you also close Liberty University and Oral Roberts University? Will you shut down the schools run by various fundamentalist Christian organizations, some of which advocate for a Christian theocracy in the US? (I’m not saying we shouldn’t consider this, just that we should be consistent.)
Jack Straw is sparking ‘controversy’ with his latest comments, about Pakistani men seeing white girls as ‘easy meat’ for sex abuse. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-12141603
Tulse, consistency is a trap.
I am generally against the death penalty for example, but did not oppose it in the case of Saddam Hussein, for I think legitimate reasons. ( http://noahsarc.wordpress.com/justice-punishment-and-revenge/ )
To my knowledge, Oral Roberts never advocated violence. Islam, on the other hand, consistently advocates and begets it, and has effective internal mechanisms for stifling Muslims who oppose it or who are not so sure.
Yes; consistency is a red herring of sorts. There is no good option here. Closing down madrassas is obviously illiberal in some sense, but leaving them alone is probably death for liberalism. I think they should all be shut down, but I recognize that that’s a horribly intrusive thing to do. I can’t defend it as “consistent” – but I think it’s necessary.
Most liberal democracies didn’t ban the Communist Party,even during the height of the Cold War because of the potential for the erosion of civil liberties if their governments had adopted such a policy. I couldn’t think of any more counterproductive measures than clumsy and overt actions against Islamic schools. Most other believers in other denominations would fear that they would be next and find a common cause with the Islamists.
One of the diseases of my side of politics(the Left) is an obsession with social engineering,our main problem is not Islamists but the doctrine of multiculturalism and the ‘useful idiots’ who promote this ideology. Multiculturalism has two pillars of faith, the equation of race and religion and the belief that any social divisions are entirely due to the prejudices of the majority society,the idea that immigrants might bring poisonous cultural baggage with them is rejected so the onus is always on the host society to accommodate the often outrageous demands of Moslems in the name of ‘inclusion’. Multicultural societies are a natural development of liberal democracy, we don’t need to institutionalize the idea.
The idea that liberal democratic states allow religious freedom is patent nonsense, all religious practices are constrained by humanist secular values.
In other words, we have to destroy liberalism in order to save it. Perhaps that’s true, but if that’s the position, let’s be explicit.
I just was explicit. That was my whole point.
I mean – [tearing hair] – how is that not obvious?! I said it’s illiberal and horribly intrusive – so you suggest that I should be explicit??
My point wasn’t just that that particular act is illiberal, but that it undermines the entire project of liberal democracy. (I presume you recognize the quote from the Bến Tre incident in the Vietnam War.)
During the Bush years, the justification of torture and extraordinary rendition and black sites and imprisonment without trial was done for similar reasons — in order to save the Constitution, we had to repeatedly violate it. I don’t think that was ethically defensible then, and I’m concerned that such reasoning here is similarly contradictory.
Perhaps let’s put this in more general terms: what do you see as the conditions under which it is acceptable to violate principles of liberal democracy? Certainly times of war would be one example, but what are the criteria in general?
I don’t have general criteria. In a perfect world religious schools wouldn’t be like madrasas. I don’t have a General Theory that allows for closing down madrasas. But in the real world, madrasas are like factories for murderous mindless lunatics.
No, it is neither illiberal nor intrusive.
Were you more aware of the disgusting hatred being disseminated in some of these “schools” (they aren’t schools as we understand the term), you’d be doing far less hand-wringin and feeling far less guilt.
Were I to throw off the gloves and refer to some of these madrassas as out and out ‘nazi’, I’d be understating the nature of the problem.
No self-described liberal society has any business protecting, defending and promoting institutes that churn out psychopaths and sociopaths under the guise of multiculturalism and religious freedom.
Radical, hate-filled islamists have learned how to deftly brandish liberal buzz words in the promotion of clerical fascism; they’ve appropriated the vocabulary of progressivism and harnassed it to push an ideology, a fascisising agenda that utterly negates everything progressivism represents.
And there’s no shortage of confused, liberal dupes ready to lapp it all up.
There’s also the question of the parents. There are mutliple cases where the children of fundamentalist Chrisitans were placed in foster care because of the mental and moral abuses meted out by their parents, abuses that don’t even begin to compare with what goes on in some islamic schools.
I thought I’d just mention that, seeings Tulse keeps bringing up the question of “consistency”, and all.
It’s not that I feel guilt, Sonia, it’s just that I know the rules, so to speak. The rules in an open society are that people are allowed to arrange their lives as they like, within reason. Ordinarily that includes deciding what schools their children attend, and it includes the state not interfering with religion. Ordinarily. I have doubts about those rules, because I think they rely on an exaggerated idea of the innocence of religious schools even short of madrassas…But I also think the rules are broadly speaking better than the alternatives.
I do think that Tulse is correct to bring up the question of consistency. I see huge problems within Islam, and recognise the need to resist strongly its influence in the public sphere with a strict adherence to secularism. But islam can’t be the only target, all religions have to be pushed back from undue influence.
It’s like when they gave up on the idea of allowing sharia to be used in civil mediation in Canada. The Jewish Bethdins had to go too with that decision. That’s not such a big loss to the liberal society is it?
Islamic puritanism is a problem which cannot be overemphasised but I’d also stop short of ascribing unique evil to the religion and its adherents as a whole. There are elements of Islam that I would fight tooth and nail – the sharia, its political aims- but there’s a lot in islam that is as ‘benign’ as anything that you’d find in other religions and of absolutely no concern to me. Just to be clear.
I apologize for my (now untimely) parody at #16.
Stephen Colbert tried to warn me that parody is dead in an age where the unthinkable is commonplace, but I didn’t listen.
As a former resident of Tucson (as of last year), I find I have nothing left to say.
Tulse – “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen, philosophers and devines” Ralph Waldo Emerson.
On what basis can one take any emphatic action about anything then – as opposed to hopping from foot to foot hand-wringing? Can you not see that it is this very refusal to engage that has delivered the anti-Islamist critique into the hands of the far right – the likes of Robert Spencer and assorted nativist parties whose legitimate appeal masks other very nasty agendas. No point in blaming these groups, they only occupy the vacuum created by do-nothing progressives who have betrayed every ‘liberal’ principle going in their appeasement of the unspeakable. Who suffers most from such appeasement, “multiculturalism” being the chief vector? Why, the women of “communities” deemed to fall outside the rays of the Enlightenment – hmm… sounds racist to me.
This comes from one who in her youth was often told to “go to Russia!”. I’m in general agreement with Sonia, Ian, Sailor and Eric on the nature of Islam itself, certainly in it’s current manifestation. Mirax – very interesting post as always, frightening too.
Russell (@ # 62):
Perhaps. But here in Australia there is considerable grassroots oppositon to and suspicion of them already, thanks to media reports of Islamism, bomb outrages, repression of women, etc, etc, etc.
Muslim students sent to Madrassas will see the issue as a choice between support for the Islamic ‘community’ which in turn supports them, or support for the dhimmitudinal host society which their religion says is inherently evil and has to go anyway as Islam steadily takes over the world.
The issue as usual is between the rights of the ‘community’ to indoctrinate and blniker its youth as it sees fit, and the right of those same students to learn as widely and as liberally as possible; even if (as is the case with many students, including myself when young) they cannot see the value of what they are being taught.
With western apologists and appeasers bending over backwards to accomodate them, the Islamic hardliners will be laughing themselves onto the floor. That is, at how doomed and how easy a pushover this corrupt and heretical western society is.
@Ian Macdougall #74,
I’m an Australian and I don’t disagree with your observations in regard to the situation in Oz and religious education in general and I’d agree that there is a justifiable suspicion about Islam, however there’s still the mistaken perception that serves the Islamists well– that Islam is ‘just another religion’ and that violence is not an integral part of Islamic theology and practice.
Believers will never surrender the right to ‘indoctrinate and blinker’ children and they will vigorously resist any efforts by the secular state to remove that right, so my comment still stands. Aso here in Ausrtralia we are burdened with the monumentally stupid system of state aid to religious schools, what political party is likely to advocate removing any faith schools from the public teat.
Progressive Constitutional amendments have been voted down in referendums here in Australia because the religious lobby was convinced that the preposed amendments threatened Church freedoms.Religion makes very strange bedfellows indeed.
So,my only area of disagreement is in the methods used to fight the Islamic threat to our liberties. I agree that we have a serious problem with the multiculturalist zealots who are forcing the pace of Islamization,Lenin would have called them ‘useful idiots’.
Emerson, though, was not a US Supreme Court Justice. At issue is when, if ever, do we violate the established foundational laws of a liberal democracy, such as the US, in order to preserve those laws. That’s not a matter of hobgoblins — it cuts to the very definition of government and citizenship. My concern is that if we secularists outlaw madrassas, in clear violation of the long-established principles of liberal government, what argument do we then use when the Christian Dominionists come to power and outlaw secular schools? How can we appeal to principles of liberal government that we so readily dispose of?
To be clear, I’m not claiming that I have an answer, or that the problem of Islamic extremism isn’t a profoundly threatening issue. But I think we really need to ponder long and hard before carving holes in the dike of constitutional law, because the structure may not hold.
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