Dean has drawn a line in the sand. With characteristic good sense James Joyner zooms in on the critical word that less careful readers might ignore:
The one that seems to be giving people the most problem is #3: “Islam as a religion is no more inherently incompatible with modernity, minority rights, women’s rights, or democratic pluralism than most religions.â€
Ultimately, I think, the issue is with a single word: “inherently.â€
All the major monotheistic religions of which I am aware can be and have been interpreted dogmatically. They can be and have been interpreted to command lesser roles for those who are not adult male adherents to the One True Faith, against modernity, and for a unity of religious and societal law.
James goes on to note that a good proportion of the adherents of Islam, particularly in their native countries, continue to hold onto what he refers to as “the Dark Agesâ€.
I suppose it reflects the period in which I attended school but I think that a lot of people are poor, ignorant, and radical because they’re isolated rather than thinking that they’re poor, ignorant, and isolated because they’re Muslims.
Dean is a classic dhimmi.
How about these howlers?
“2) There is no 1,400 year old “war with the West/Christianity” being waged by Muslims or anyone else.
4) Medieval, anachronistic, obscure terms like “dhimmitude” or “taqiyya” are suitable for polite intellectual discussion. They are not and never will be appropriate to slap in the face of everyday Muslims or their friends.
5) Muslims have no more need to prove that they can be good Americans, loyal citizens, decent people, or enemies of terrorism than anyone else does.”
Aside from the usual disclaimer (`not all Muslims’ etc.) the fact remains that there are a whole lot of Muslims that acknowledge that point 2 is true; and dhimitude and Taqiya are not `medieval’ but realities in today’s world.
Taqiya (lying to non-believers to promote Islamic domination) is still sanctioned by the Qu’ran and the hadiths..and widely practiced, I might add.
As for #5, based on the ongoing incidents and logistical of terrorism committed by Muslims in and out of the US and the relative silence of many Muslims, I’d say that it’s not at all out of line for the rest of us to demand that Muslims make a commitment in this war as to which side they’re on.
There are many who have, and many more who need to do so.
The problem is not `Islamophobia’. In fact, thanks to politically correct morons like Dean, (and the pernicious Saudi influence) Muslims have been given a pass on behavior that would have brought widespread condemnation and opprobrium on any other group of people responsible for death and misery on this level.
Sorry to lay this on your site, Dave, but you DID run this article…and Dean doesn’t really respond well or allow comments on his site to people that don’t drink his particular brand of Kool-Aid, so hopefully he’ll see this.
Not that it matters in the end, but I find my patience running out at this point with ostriches and appeasers.
ff
Nothing whatever to be sorry about, FF. I welcome any and all comments here. I greatly prefer civil comments and you’ve always been very civil to me.
One more thing.
Culture, in many respects is in fact destiny IMO.
The Muslims conquered and despoiled the civilizations of the Egyptians, the Chaldeans, the Byzantines, the Persians and the Hindus…and it is a matter of historical fact that once they appropriated the advances of these civilizations, they created very little else that was new.
To turn your last point around a bit (since Islam is not a race,but a religion) people are not poor, ignorant and isolated because they’re Arabs, Turks, Persians, Pakistanis etc…..but because Islam tends to create a society that is rigidly stratified and controlled, radical and ultimately impoverished.
Just imagine the Arab World and Iran without the oil…would it be anything more than an ignored backwater?
Sorry, but Dean is wrong about point #3. Islam — as currently taught and practiced in many places — is inimical to freedom.
All three monotheisms are inherently inimical to freedom. Judaism and Christianity however have been restrained, divided and reformed, largely by virtue of a separation of church and state that precedes our American codification of that principle by many centuries. All three monotheisms divide the world into us and them, saved and damned, true believers and heretics. They’re all equally mad, but they’re not all equally dangerous right here and right now.
Not everyone who sees a problem with Islam is a “phobe” or a bigot. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, for exmple, would not sign Dean’s pledge. Refusing to discuss legitimate concerns relating to what is, in addition to being a religion, a legal system and a political ideology, is not helpful. But this is hardly new ground for Dean. If he can’t win an argument fairly he stamps his feet, spits, curses, bans and denounces.
Although, presumably, the fighting that took place centuries ago about which set of successors to Muhammad could be the most dogmatic has something to do with that isolation. They managed to go from the obviously-more-advanced society at the time of the Crusades to one that is centuries behind the times, largely by cultivating that isolation.
Of course, I have no idea where religion ends and culture starts in that equation. In many ways, they’re inextricably linked.
I disagree with Dean. I think the problem is not “inherently,” since there are features of any system of belief that are inherent, whether for good or for bad.
The problem I have is with the word “incompatible.” That’s a high standard and since I know too many American Muslims who have no problem with modernity, minority rights,* women’s rights,* or democratic pluralism, its unsupportable. I might argue that the Muslim belief system has certain inherent problems with modernity, but also point to a certain confluence of history, geography and economy that are both separate and part of Islam.
* I should say no more problem than average Americans.
Freedom Figher, I think you are saying that “history is destiny,” that what once was true will always be true. Culture changes and one of the greatest forces of cultural change is capitalism. Islam has somewhat codified a pre-modern culture based upon the economy of the Arabian penensula. It initially avoided the first (British) round of economic globalization because it had few valuable resources and the Cold War and oil retarded other developments.
OTOH, I agree that Dean is pretty intolerant of any discussion of Islamic warts and I’ve never felt comfortable at his blog, less so now. Idealogical purity is overrated. I agree with (1), (5) and part of (4)(taqiyya) and disagree at least in part with (2), (3) AND PART OF (4) (dhimmitude)
One of the differences between Islam today and the other monotheisms is this: the Muslim religion still endorses a death penalty for apostasy. Variously interpreted, of course.
But this prohibition has kept Islam outside of the marketplace of ideas. Early (19th century) Christian missionaries to the middle east were left to convert Copts and Jews because to preach thier gospel to Muslims was an excellent way to end up impaled.
To this day Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries forbid any proselytizing — on pain of imprisonment or death. That’s a core difference between the Muslim world and, say, France.
Hi PD!
No, I meant culture is destiny, since it helps determine history.
`Capitalism’, IMO always existed since the first farmer or herder had a surplus to trade. What I think you are talking about as a force for change in western society is actually the standardization of banking and finance.
Again, those items had existed for some time, but as the feudal economy changed and nations began to arise, the was a great deal more standardization. The CULTURAL basis was always there.
In Islam, the economic basis for their society is one of stasis – an unchanging, static state brought on by their cultural rejection of banking and finance, as well as th erejection of innovation and new ideas, as I pointed out. This was always a model for economic disaster, but Islam managed to stave that off through brigandage, plunder and the slave trade during the first few centuries of its existence.
Once that stopped, Islam was able to survive economically, up to a point because they were the middlemen for the European/American slave trade and because their geographic location allowed them to control transport of goods from Asia.
Once the slave trade to Europe and America ended and improvements in shipbuilding and navigation caused Islam’s geographic monopoly to decline, they quickly began to fall into economic chaos. That, in part, was the reason behind the Ottoman Empire’s attempt to conquer new slaves and gain new plunder in the 16th century, and when that effort failed, the decline continued unabated until the oil kicked in.
Islam has, in its history, despoiled and subjugated every culture it has come into contact with that it was militarily able to. That is the way Ol’ Mo designed it from the jump ( the first `operation’ of Islam was the plunder and enslavement of the predominantly Jewish city of Medina) and the way t continues today.
Historically and culturally, Islam does not `play nice’ with others. Hopefully that may change, but it will be a change imposed from without,IMO.