Letters to the Editor
-
Flavors of fanaticism
Evening, all:
I'm not sure why some of my posts have come up anonymous. Wasn't my intention. Anyway, kdwmson is the guilty party. So ...
Dear Arne:
But there are fanatical Quakers. There are not, however, Quaker terrorists. That's because Quakerism and Islam represent very different habits of mind and very different ways of looking at the world. If you really want to understand the problem, you have to deal with it as it exists in reality, not as it exists in the world of Margaret Atwood fiction, where Christian fascists run amok. Sometimes religious fanatics set themselves on fire; sometimes they set somebody else on fire. Understanding the difference seems to me important.
("Irregardless" drives me nuts. And yes, all those swastikas in India do take some getting used to.)
No doubt that anti-abortion violence has instilled some fear into practitioners. No doubt, either, that the scope and extent of that violence has been exaggerated by abortion-rights types for political purposes, to garner sympathy for themselves and to discredit the broader pro-life movement. Certainly the impression of danger is out of proportion to the actual level of violence. If you think that abortionists are the only professionals in America who feel that their lives are threatened because of their work, you're living in a very small world.
But whoever is tasked with investigating anti-abortion bombings and shootings ought to be paying very close attention to Christian fundamentalists, as opposed to Buddhists, Rotarians, or aging Molly Maguires.
Which brings me to the keen insights of ....
Iokannan,
who writes: "Probably explains why all anti-abortion bombers and OB-GYN assassins are Christian." No doubt it does. If your top security threat is anti-abortion violence, then it would make lots of sense to concentrate your investigative and enforcement efforts on fundamentalist Christian groups. If your concerns are trans-national terrorist spectaculars, then you really ought to be paying more attention to Muslims. That doesn't seem to me especially difficult to understand.
When McVeigh (who doesn't seem to have been a Christian or motivated by any sort of Christian political philosophy) pulled his bombing, we put a tremendous amount of effort into disrupting and investigating fringe militia type movements. If we had thousands of people being killed by anti-abortion violence or OKC-type bombers, it would make sense to make investigating fringe Christian groups or militia nuts a priority.
But, and this takes me back to ...
TIMBERMAN!
The Klan and right-wing survivalist nutcases and skinheads and such aren't really on our radar to the extent that Islamist terrorists are because the scale and the urgency of the threat don't warrant it. You can't name a Hindu terrorist group because there really aren't any, and it's damned difficult to imagine a world in which Hindutva presented us with the sorts of problems that Islamism does. (Incidentally, it's not Wikipedia. I've lived and worked in Delhi and spent time in Kashmir and Pakistan. And writing about terrorism was, at one point, a significant part of my work.)
I don't get the reflexive leftist habit of having to insist that no matter who America's enemies may be, America is, by rhetorical necessity, morally inferior to them. "Harrumph, harrumph, we have religious fanatics, too! Look at that Falwell character." But of course Falwell's followers (did he still have followers?) aren't very commonly committing gross acts of mass murder. It's intellectual sloppiness not to take the differences into account.
It seems to me that the equivocating is a way to avoid dealing seriously with a real problem. Different sorts of fanaticism express themselves in different ways, and the contemporary expression of Islamist fanaticism is a phenomenon unto itself.
-
No shit
What you said is obvious except to the three morons you addressed. Hundreds of posts and these arrogant assholes keep thinking their right. Whatever.
-
The most droll anonymous
What you said is obvious except to the three morons you addressed. Hundreds of posts and these arrogant assholes keep thinking their right. Whatever.
How amusing. Proven wrong at every turn on the original question, yet undeterred in their own arrogance.
The original point: Islam is not the only religion that breeds fanaticism and terrorism. Every religion on the planet has bred its share of fanatics and lunatics, some proving more prone to violence than others.
I'd challenge you or kd to show in any of the comments made on this point that states the threat of terrorism prompted by Islamic funaticism should be ignored in favor of say Christian fanatics murdering OB-GYNs.
Islamic terrorism is a danger, yes, and a damned serious one. But it isn't the only danger we face in the world, and to behave otherwise is precisely the sort of narrow-minded hubris that has trapped this country in the downward spiral it is currently stuck in.
But then again, the title of Glenn's post rather says it all, doesn't it?
-
Selective amnesia, imbecile propaganda and professor kdwmson
...it's damned difficult to imagine a world in which Hindutva presented us with the sorts of problems that Islamism does.
Different sorts of fanaticism express themselves in different ways, and the contemporary expression of Islamist fanaticism is a phenomenon unto itself. -- kdwmsn
First off, the Babri Mosque and its aftermath go unmentioned. Curious.
As for quote number one, suppose we'd invaded Goa to perpetuate Portuguese rule? (Portugal being an important ally in the Cold War, and the protection of the Christian heritage of Goa our sacred duty.) What do you suppose might have been the legacy of such a tasty bit of meddling? Over two or three decades of increasingly harsh Portuguese rule, never mind six decades? (Yes, I'm making an analogy to the I word.)
As for quote number two, refer to the response to quote number one. From the end of the Ottoman Empire until about 1970, not a transnational Islamist terror incident in sight. (Hint: Muslims didn't blow up the King David Hotel, or fire mortar shells at no. 10 Downing Street.) Why now, eh, KD?
-
Golden Boyet et al
I'm not sure if you're still checking in, but I'll go ahead anyway.
I'll assume you're serious about your position, in which case I'll just try to show you why your approach is so misguided.
Religions are attempts to realize mankinds spiritual inclinations, and as such they tend to reflect the varied, and even contradictory, characteristics of the people who create them. Because of this they are all so easily manipulable by people who want to find justification for a particular reading that it is impossible to claim that any religion Truly Is any way in particular. As an atheist this should be easy for you to grasp.
It's true that some religions make it easier than others to find justifications for violence, but that won't stop those who want to find permission from their god to kill their neighbor. Just as those who want to find evidence that their god wants them to get along with their neighbor will find ample reason to think so.
The difference has less to do with the religion people practice than it does with their situation in the world. People who feel safe and prosperous will tend to interpret their religion in ways that encourage peaceful coexistence. People who find themselves under the bootheel of an oppressor (or at least think they are) will decide their god wants them to fight back. This is true no matter what religion somebody professes.
Given the circumstances in the world today, it's not strange to wonder if Muslims might be more violent than the rest of us. After 9/11 I wondered myself if Islam might have some inherent propensity toward violence. I worried we might be up against an enemy that was bent on our destruction for reasons that preclude diplomacy. That lasted about 30 seconds. Then i remembered how easily I've seen every religion I've ever heard of bent and shaped around particular politcal and social agendas, and realized the violence we see from young male Muslims has more to do with economic and social realities than it does with the tenets of Islam.
Currently most of the Muslim world is on the outside looking in on the modern Western World Success Story. If the situations were reversed, you can be sure young male Christains would comb their scriptures for evidence that Jesus wanted them to reclaim their proper place in the world through any means necessary. While it might be easier for Musims to find what they want to hear in this way from Islamic texts, (being that Xianity is a religion based on the principle that you turn the other cheek when an enemy strikes,) people will find whatever their situations encourage them to want to hear from their own religion. Angry Young Xians would find all the justification they needed to fight back against a world that they felt had shut them out of prosperity so unfairly.
But what I'm concerend with these days are practical matters, like keeping Americans from getting blown up by pissed of Jihadis. So what's the best way for Americans to approach Muslims about their religion? When the vast majority of Mulsims in the world openly reject violence, and claim their religion has been hijacked by people improperly interpreting the texts, are you going to tell them they are misreading their own religion? Are you going to tell them its pointless to try to fight against those who read Islam the way Bin Laden does (and you and Malkin do), because their religion truly does require them to violently overthrow infidels and if they don't understand that they are wrong? That's what your stated position seems to be.
It behooves those of us concerned that we might get blown up by jihadis to encourage those Muslims who reject violence to stand up to those who don't. The only way to do that is to assume they are the ones properly interpreting their religion. Otherwise you're taking Bin Laden's side in the dispute.
What possible reason could you have for joining the Islamist extremists in saying Islam requires its adherents to take over the planet? You claim this is just your objective reading of its texts, but as I've said, there is no such thing. Religions are just what their practitioners say they are, and how they express them through the way they choose to live. If the majority of Muslims say their religion is peaceful, and they live it that way, what would be the point of telling them they're wrong?
Either you don't undertsand you're helping the bad guys, or you want to help precipitate war. That's why you get such a strong response here. You interpret Islam in a way that makes it inevitable that we slug it out for control with them. Either you're a bigot on par with Hitler, or you're just ignorant of the practical efect of what you're claiming. The same goes for Malkin and all the other wingnuts who want to watch their God throw down with Allah. Talk about comic book realities.
I'm willing to give you the benfit of the doubt and assume you really don't understand that religions are whatever their practitoners make out of them, and that you can't claim a religion Truly Is some way or another, especially if it means inevitable war. But you seeem like a person who would know this, so it's hard not to think you're just another warmongering bigot.