Recently on Real Time with Bill Maher, self-impressed television host and disco movie extra Maher got himself into quite an argument with Ben Affleck. Maher, along with torture apologist and New Atheist icon Sam Harris, insisted as he so often does that Islam is a religion of unique violence, and that despite what those PC liberals will tell you, Muslims writ large deserve condemnation for the behavior of extremists and terrorists. Affleck, with admirable honesty, called that attitude racist. Maher and Harris took a long soak in their own self-aggrandizing Hyper Rational Heroic Honesty.
There are ample criticisms to be made here. That all of a group’s members share blame for the behavior of some is the fundamental logic of bigotry. Beyond that moral fact, these two are very fond of their own self-conception as creatures of sublime rationality, but associating the bad behavior of, say, members of ISIS in Syria with Thai Muslims who have never been within 4,000 miles of Syria seems not particularly rational to me. Nor is there much rationality in talking about Islamic terrorism as an all-conquering boogieman. There is no chance — none — that ISIS will succeed in establishing a world-threatening caliphate. As Americans, Harris and I are more likely to drown in a bathtub than to be killed by Islamic terrorism, and yet Harris is fond of talking about Islamic terrorism as something worth laying awake at night over. Strange how these perfectly rational creatures are so unmoved by the objective lack of threat that terrorism represents in their own lives. Really, though, what I’m interested in is this conception of the moderate Muslim, that hypothetical Muslim that is always used as a rhetorical cudgel against the world’s actual existing Muslims.
I can think of a Muslim who would perfectly fit the typical portrayal of moderate Islam: Mohammad Mosaddegh, the former prime minister of Iran. Mosaddegh was, in many ways, the picture of a cultured, progressive leader. He was a lawyer and an author. He studied in Paris, which always signals cosmopolitanism to Americans, and earned a PhD from a Swiss university. He was a political dissident for long periods, as he opposed the recapturing of power by the Shahs as a violation of the Iranian constitution. He was democratically elected to Iran’s parliament in the tumultuous post-war period. In a time of considerable political unrest, he grew to great popularity as a figure of principle and moderation and became Iran’s prime minister in 1951. Though broadly popular, his primary support base came from Iran’s educated urban classes. He instituted meaningful progressive reforms, establishing social programs to ameliorate poverty and setting many landless peasants free from literal slavery. During a fierce power struggle with a monarchy attempting to regain control, Mossadegh’s record on issues of process and democracy was imperfect. It remains the case, however, that he was far more popular among the Iranian people than the House of Pahlavi. Given that long-declassified documentation from the American and British intelligence services leaves no doubt that foreign infiltrators were indeed working against his government, Mossadegh’s actions during that power struggle can be seen as demonstrating considerable restraint. He was also a deft politician, forging key alliances with the communist Tudeh party while carefully expressing anti-communist sentiment and with Islamists while working to preserve the secular Iranian state.
In many ways, then, Mossadegh was exactly what people like Maher say they want from the Muslim world. There was just one problem: like most Iranians at the time, he was convinced that the British were ripping off the Iranian people by taking Iran’s oil at a price far below market value. He likely believed this because the British were ripping off the Iranian people by taking Iran’s oil at a price far below market value. Mossadegh nationalized Iran’s major oil company, breaking a deal with the British that had more than 40 years left before expiration, and his fate was sealed. Within two years the CIA, at the behest of the British, had set into motion the coup that ended Mossadegh’s political career.
That the United States had directly and unambiguously initiated the coup that deposed Mossadegh– and led to the consolidation of power by the Shah, a brutal and corrupt dictator who tortured and murdered political dissidents– was for decades one of the worst kept secrets in American history. Politicians and leaders discussed it more or less openly. Documents that spoke plainly about the CIA’s role have floated around for years and years. But despite this, the CIA didn’t formally admit its culpability until last year, 60 years after it had strangled the baby of Iranian democracy in its crib. When I started to talk politics in earnest as a high school student around 1999, it was still common for me to argue with those who denied the centrality of the CIA’s role or even that the United States was involved at all. Even today, I sometimes encounter those who think that the coup was largely an internal matter, despite the fact that (for example) it’s believed that the CIA literally dictated the Shah’s declaration that the prime minister be removed from office. And the term “conspiracy theory” still floats around this history despite the overwhelming evidence that we’ve had on hand for years and years.
The brutality, corruption, and illiberalism of the Shah’s regime created the political conditions that made the Iranian revolution possible. Dictatorship leads to radicalism. Western-supported dictatorship leads to hatred of the West. Whatever your take on the theological convictions of Iran’s revolutionaries, their complaints that the Shah was an illegitimate despot propped up by a conspiracy of Western nations intent on exploiting Iran’s resources are understandable, given that those complaints were indisputably true. Mossadegh was not around to see the revolution, which would likely have horrified him; he died under house arrest a few years after being deposed. That’s what America does to Muslim moderates who have the gall to pursue what is best for their own people, rather than what’s best for British Petroleum.
Perhaps you are inclined to say that, hey, that was 60 years ago. It’s time to move on. But of course we could then point out that, decades later, the United States armed, supported, and funded Saddam Hussein, another brutal dictator, for a decade. Our support prolonged his horrifically bloody war against Iran and enabled his cruel oppression of his own people, including those Muslims who might have had the opportunity to be moderate, had they not been hanging by their thumbs in Saddam’s cells. Or we could go in the other direction and recognize that imperial powers are responsible for the very existence of the state of Iraq, an unhealthy collection of disparate peoples and conflicting groups, a condition that lends itself to extremism rather than moderation. We could note the similar condition in Syria, where the imperial powers established Alawite control over the Sunni majority, helping to ensure precisely the kind of political violence that has engulfed that country now, which is not entirely conducive to political moderation. Or we might mention the war we started in 2003 that led to, by conservative estimate, a half million dead Iraqi civilians, with many millions more fleeing as refugees, leading to the collapse of Iraqi civil society and the possibility of moderation. Or we perhaps could note that the United States is the single greatest supporter of an Israeli apartheid state that has kept the people of Palestine under a state of illegal and brutal occupation for almost 50 years, subjecting them to constant harassment and violence in a way that renders moderation a kind of complicity in the eyes of many Palestinians. We might think long enough to recognize that the United States is acting, right this second, as the great patron of the corrupt monarchy that rules Saudi Arabia, which brooks no dissent from its political opposition, moderate or otherwise. We might think about the Iranian resistance that hates the theocrats but also righteously condemns the American government that, in its constant saber-rattling against Iran, merely strengthens the Islamic government’s hold on power. Or about how difficult it must be to embrace moderation as a Yemeni citizen whose children live under threat of death from American drones. Or if your Pakistani cousin has wasted away in Guantanamo for over a decade without due process.
In each of these, I merely concede the Maher and Harris definition of moderation as a rhetorical act. That definition is of course loaded with assumptions and petty prejudice, and bends always in the direction of American interests. But I accept their definition here merely to demonstrate: even according to their own definition, American actions have undermined “moderation” at every turn.
None of these various crimes are controversial as matters of historical fact; they all happened, and no serious person disputes them. I could name a dozen more American crimes that have substantial evidentiary basis, but I will restrict myself to these widely-acknowledged events. These are not conspiracy theories; this is history. But neither Maher nor Harris will spend much time considering this history at all. They have plenty of time for history when it comes to their narrative of a bloodthirsty and expansionist Islam, but none for America’s century-long history of exploitation and violence against the broad Muslim world. You get no credit for iconoclasm for pointing out that the United States and other Western powers have destabilized Muslim countries as a matter of habit for longer than any individual Muslim has been alive. Pointing out that American Muslims have faced constant hate crimes since 9/11 does not get you shout outs from the conservative cesspool media for “telling it like it is.” No one will call you a free-thinker for mentioning that a prominent rabbi can call for war on Islam in an Atlanta synagogue without drawing critical attention from the media. Asking Americans to grapple with the indisputable history of their government’s conduct in the Muslim world does not give you the opportunity to celebrate your tough guy, anti-“political correctness” bona fides. But it is what actual rationality requires.
I don’t mistake Mohammad Mossadegh for some sort of perfect politician., nor can I say what would have happened had he retained power. What I do recognize, in this history, is that the United States has no principle that it adheres to as blindly as it does its jealous control of the Muslim world’s resources, and that no matter how “moderate” you are, if you stand in the way of the United States getting what it wants, we will invade your country, kill your children, destroy your government, and steal your resources. Were Bill Maher and Sam Harris actually dedicated to building a less violent world, rather than their own cult of personality, they might ask themselves how, in those conditions, moderation could ever survive.
“the imperial powers established Alawite control over the Semitic majority”
I’m guessing you meant “Sunni majority.” Syrian Alawis are Arabs, so they are “Semites” in that they speak a Semitic language, just like everyone else in Syria except the Kurds and a few other groups.
This post is really, really good, as usual.
Indeed. I was inartfully trying to address the enduring controversy of whether Syria’s largest ethnic group should be referred to as Arab. I’ve edited the sentence.
yes, a thousand times yes. I dream that someday the general population will come to realize the horrific blithe cruelty and bigotry of American 20th century adventurism, from the war against the Philippine independence movement (where waterboarding was invented!) to this current anti-Muslim bigotry. I just completed a copyedit of a soon-to-published book entitled “Rocks in the Water, Rocks in the Sun” that covers American (and Canadian and Brazilian and etc) actions in Haiti and it made me dizzy with the weight of culpability for us who manage to just LET THIS ALL HAPPEN. Thanks, Freddy. I’m hoping “A Most Wanted Man” will be popular enough to kind of open a few eyes.
Excellent post.
A very strange post, though I guess there’s a lot of lefty tribal signalling I’m misinterpreting.
It is interesting to me that criticizing Islam is immediately linked to criticizing Muslims, which is immediately linked to racial hatred of Arabs and Persians (and all the other racial groups that nobody ever mentions, because nobody bothers to actually use racism as anything other than a “snarl now, please” signal).
It is interesting that “perfectly rational creatures” (which I am assuming is a code word for fedora atheists, or something similar) collectively share blame for the idiocies of Sam Harris, whom they are assumed to believe literally and completely.
“Moderate Muslim” is a terrible term used by people who have no appreciation for the many radical directions Islam took in the 20th century. Learning about that would require learning history from the perspective of Islam. Since your narrative has Mohammad Mosaddegh as a moderate Muslim, I’m assuming your understanding of the subject is based on the historical materialist/post-colonial narrative, which is to say, “you are a Westerner who enjoys using third world nations to score political points, using narratives of Westernized natives”.
And then there’s the grand narrative where the white man is the only being with agency in the universe.
There’s no real attempt to engage at all. Just two narratives talking past each other, each so convinced of their own holiness. Is this really what you want to do?
Your post is very puzzling. You’ve accused deBoer of a lot of stuff, but you’ve never explained what he is wrong about.
So: what facts or interpretation does he get wrong?
It’s because I find it very difficult to understand. Leftist purity signalling is hard for me to interpret.
As has been said, critiquing an ideology or government system is not racist. I can critique Israel without being an anti-Semite, to use a traditional leftist argument.
If there is something in particular I disagree with, it’s the characterization of Mosaddegh as a “moderate Muslim”, but in general I disagree with the idea of a “moderate Muslim” since it usually just means “America-aligned”.
And I disagree that Western colonialism is the direct cause of all this, since Western colonialism also touched the rest of Asia, South America, and Africa; yet these regions had different outcomes.
Is that more helpful?
But Freddie said the same thing about the term “moderate Muslim”:
“In each of these, I merely concede the Maher and Harris definition of moderation as a rhetorical act. That definition is of course loaded with assumptions and petty prejudice, and bends always in the direction of American interests. But I accept their definition here merely to demonstrate: even according to their own definition, American actions have undermined “moderation” at every turn.”
It’s right there in the post
Yeah, but he then goes on to use it, just for a different “rhetorical act”. Unless that’s all supposed to be ironic?
Jane, you combine very sloppy reading with condescension and bad faith.
I am accepting their definition of moderation for the purpose of demonstrating that the United States’s actions have undermined moderation according to their own terms. That does not entail a) accepting their definition in general or b) irony. It is a very common argumentative tactic, for obvious logical reasons.
“Leftist purity signalling is hard for me to interpret.”
Freddie’s posts sometimes contain a bunch of that, and it can be confusing to the uninitiated. I see none of it here. This post is refreshingly direct and straightforward, and has a clearly stated, not terribly complicated, and entirely accurate point. The signalling and code words are in your comment, not Freddie’s post (For instance: I suspect if I were more familiar with tiresome intra-atheist internet flame wars, I’d know what the the hell you meant by “fedora atheists.” But, like most people I suspect, I have no idea what that is meant to imply.)
” critiquing an ideology or government system is not racist.”
These are two rather different things. Is “Islam” an ideology? If you think so, that’s almost certainly racist, and most definitely bigoted, just as treating Judaism as an ideology would be.
What he gets wrong is the notion that Maher and Harris’ point is the condemnation of all Muslims.
This is a comprehensive misreading, I think. It makes criticisms of this post that seem disconnected from its content.
You killin’ ’em, son!!
Fantastic post, although it gives me cognitive dissonance to be so excited about a description of something so terrible.
I am a great fan of both Maher and Harris, but they are both terribly biased when it comes to Islam and I wish they would examine that bias instead of trying to rationalize it all the time.
“Muslims writ large deserve condemnation for the behavior of extremists and terrorists”
For the love of God, Harris did not say this. They specifically pointed out they WEREN’T saying this. From the transcript:
” HARRIS: Let me just give you what you want. There are hundreds of millions of Muslims who are nominal Muslims who don’t take the faith siresly, who don’t want to kill apostates, who are horrified by ISIS and we need to defend these people, prop them up and let them reform their faith. ”
” HARRIS: It’s not condemning people, it’s ideas.”
” HARRIS: …we have to empower the true reformers in the Muslim world to change it. And lying about doctrine and this behavior is not going to do that…”
What they WERE doing was discussing the reality of how much of the population of the Islamic world function as the equivalent of Islamic conservatives – some extreme, some merely regular conservatives – and how this fosters illiberal beliefs that are A Bad Thing. This seems obvious, but the response from Affleck and subsequent response from the media makes me think they’re making an excellent point. Harris has solid statistical backing for his characterization of what percentage of the Muslim world fits into these groups, available here: http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-overview/
Can criticism of the tenets of Islam, and the recognition regarding realities of the attitudes of Muslim populations worldwide, not be performed without the implication that you’re criticizing all Muslims? Is criticizing a religion inherently criticizing a race? Even when you specifically point out – and indeed, the entirety of Harris’s point (which he would’ve finished if Batman would’ve STFU) – is predicated on the existence of a large, moderate faction?
The rest of your post is accurate. Hell, I’ll even add that Maher and Harris are huge hypocrites when it comes to Israel and radical Judaism, which deserves at minimum a similar critique but is one in which they completely look the other way. Harris also has some really dumb beliefs about US foreign policy in general, though Maher has been harshly critical of it (and was a consistent opponent of Iraq and criticizes our most recent misadventure) for all his flaws.
But this specific exchange? You’re responding to Affleck’s (incorrect) interpretation of what they were talking about in this specific instance and the (incorrect) clickbait headlines that said bad interpretation fostered. Watch the video again.
If we can’t discuss these things, the left is in serious trouble. The reporting on this issue has been deeply depressing to me.
Your claim that I’m misrepresenting him simply does not follow from the quoted you’ve written here. At all. Look again: Harris claims that those Muslims that don’t participate in violence are not real Muslims. Yes, he has said over and over again that Islamic doctrine is what he criticizes – which is precisely what all Muslims share. Saying that he’s not really condemning all Muslims because he considers many Muslims fake Muslims does not impress me as an argument.
Here is Harris: “it is growing increasingly disconcerting to see moderate Muslims reflexively lie about the tenets of their faith. Of course, it’s hard to know whether Ellison was actually lying or is merely unaware of the contents of the Qur’an. But I have witnessed too many of these exchanges with Muslim apologists, both in public and private, to ignore the general trend. Who will reform Islam if moderate Muslims refuse to speak honestly about the very doctrines in need of reform?”
This is Harris insisting that Islamic doctrine must be condemned by all Muslims. This is collective responsibility in its purest form. And that’s not even mentioning the supreme arrogance of some western white dude dictating to 1.3 billion people the content of their doctrine.
Harris: “While intelligent people can disagree about how ‘innocent’ the theology of Islam is, a willingness to admit the obvious is a basic requirement of religious moderation. Any Muslim who will not concede that there is a death-cult forming in the Muslim world, is either part of that cult, or an obscurantist—not a religious moderate.”
So: do you think telling 1.3 billion people that the only way they can be reasonable people is to denounce their own religion as home to a death cult is not a matter of judging them collectively? I’m genuinely curious here.
Maher and Harris are clear about their goals. They are attempting to take atheist and liberal criticism, developed to argue against Christian doctrines and practices, and expand the target of that criticism to include other major religions, including Islam. They are also clear at the beginning of the discussion that they are concerned with more than violence: gender equality, freedom of speech, freedom to practice a minority religion, freedom to leave one’s religion. So I think it’s fair to consider your question by substituting Christianity for Islam.
Is it a matter of judging people collectively to:
-tell Mormons that the only way they can be reasonable people is to denounce their religion as home to racist cult?
-tell Catholics that the only way they can be reasonable people is to denounce their religion as home to a cult of pedophiles, enablers and cover-up artists? or denounce their millennia-old doctrine on the ontology of marriage?
-tell Christians that the only way they can be reasonable people is to denounce their religious doctrine on abortion as the foundation for widespread oppression of women?
If so, I know a lot of bigots.
A lot of people ignoring the actual tenets and word of the holy books is exactly what happened with Christianity (to the benefit of humanity as a whole), as Peter details above. This is the precise same rhetoric the atheists used with Christianity. I didn’t hear a peep coming from anyone on the left about it, except for maybe a few left-leaning reverends and the like.
Apostasy = death is from the Quran. It’s quite, quite clear about this, only a minority of Muslim scholars disagree, and in Muslim-dominated and/or theocratic countries it’s really not the realm of fringe belief. This is a (minor) tenet of faith that any decent individual SHOULD be required to find ludicrous, religion or no religion, smug white guy or no smug white guy. If that involves making some nonsense up about how the book doesn’t say what it actually clearly says (this is where “fake Muslim” comes in), fine, worked for Christianity. This is of course just one example, but it’s an admittedly easy one.
Is “fake Muslim” then a bit incendiary? Sure, new atheists aren’t exactly known for diplomacy. But the actual point he’s making is way different than the “I hate all Muslims” nonsense that’s getting reported and that Matt Damon’s friend is grandstanding against.
“Apostasy = death is from the Quran”
No. It’s not. The Quran doesn’t say a word about the earthly punishments that apostates should receive. Those Muslims who advocate punishment for apostates look to the hadiths (sayings traditionally ascribed to Muhammad) to justify their view. From the Encyclopedia of Islam (2009):
“The Quran declares that apostasy will result in punishment in the afterlife but takes a relatively lenient view toward apostasy in this life” (“Apostasy,”p. 48
It would be a good thing for secular critics of religion to take some time to learn about the religions they criticize.
Is this meant as a substantive rebuttal? The Hadiths are widely accepted as a source of jurisprudence.
My reply is here: http://mctracey.com/2014/10/05/breaking-vapid-left-liberal-posturing-about-islam-still-vapid/
No it isn’t; there’s no reply to me there. The vast majority of that essay has nothing to do with me, my beliefs, or the content of my disagreement with Sam Harris and Bill Maher.
I have been increasingly alarmed at the lack of coherent pushback against Bill Maher’s “rational” bigotry against Islam. He likes to quote “facts” that the majority of Muslims want to kill anyone who disagrees with their philosophy, but never tries to understand the root causes for these beliefs (or if this supposition is even factual). It reminds me of when the out-of-wedlock rate for blacks, or the high incarceration rate for black men, are quoted as “proof” that blacks are inherently irresponsible or criminal. I would suggest that over 400 years of persistent discrimination by the U.S. government might have something to do with the those statistics, but that’s just me.
Thanks Freddie for this. And you are not alone; here’s Reza Aslan getting frustrated trying to inject some facts into this debate on CNN:
http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/reza_aslan_responds_to_cnn_and_bill_maher_on_islam_20141003
You make some good points, but ultimately kind of fall into the characterization that Harris and Maher make. First off, their main point was not even about ISIS, but that widespread beliefs are held in communities where ISIS and others emerge. The same Muslims who condemn ISIS overwhelmingly support execution for depicting the prophet or for leaving the religion.
Your point about historical grievances should not be ignored. But at the same time, Latin America has a a bunch of dirty laundry of grievances with the US as well, which could arguably stack as high as the Middle East’s. Yet where are the Nicaraguan suicide bombers?
It’s very odd to me that people like Maher and Harris harp on this statistic that large majorities in many Muslim countries believe in the death penalty for apostasy. Many Muslim countries are poor and have low levels of education. Is it any secret that national income and education are correlated with religious, social, and cultural liberalism? Look at on global attitudes toward homosexuality. The Muslim Middle East is similar to largely Christian sub-Saharan Africa. A large majority in Uganda (88% Christian) supports the Anti-Homosexuality Act, which in an earlier version prescribed the death penalty for “aggravated” homosexuality. This version of the bill didn’t pass (and indeed the law as a whole was struck down by the judiciary), but due mainly to international pressure, not because of a lack of domestic popularity. Do Ugandan Christians hold these beliefs because they follow inexorably from Christian Scripture? No fair-minded person with even a passing familiarity with Christian theology and morality would think so.
And before we in the secular, civilized West start thinking that poor, religious Third Worlders are the only people who hold stupid and wicked beliefs, remember that huge majorities of Western countries have supported aggressive wars waged by their governments. 72% of Americans supported the Iraq War in March 2003, and only 3-4% of Israeli Jews managed to deem the most recent butchery in Gaza even as “excessive”, while 45% thought there wasn’t enough bloodshed.
Religion is utilized by opportunists and maniacs to gain the support of the poor and downtrodden for their own ends, doubt anyone disputes that. I agree the question of “how do we fix this” is not as easy as intellectual critiques of the religion.
But, this doesn’t remove the religion itself from (harsh) criticism. Christianity as an institution deserves criticism for that Uganda bill – if Jerry Falwell went around America for decades claiming the Bible says you have to hate the gays, he was corrects. If his modern day equivalents in Uganda (both the politicians there and the Americans who gave them proper support) are saying the same thing, they’re still accurate. Shame on them, and shame on those Christian conservatives who don’t go as far as the bill but still give them intellectual theological cover, and it is entirely on the Christian moderates to get people to ignore that the Bible actually says that.
Exactly!
Joe:
“if Jerry Falwell went around America for decades claiming the Bible says you have to hate the gays, he was corrects. If his modern day equivalents in Uganda (both the politicians there and the Americans who gave them proper support) are saying the same thing, they’re still accurate.”
How do you know? I’m a Christian, and I don’t think the Bible tells me I have to hate gays. Neither does the Presbyterian Church, which recently voted to allow same-sex marriages. Certainly a lot of Christians and non-Christians disagree, including yourself, the late Jerry Falwell, and many Ugandans. Maybe you’re right, but what’s the argument? How do you establish that the only reasonable way to interpret the canonical sources of Christian doctrine is so that they mandate even the view that homosexual behavior is sinful, let alone hatred of gays?
It’s the same with Islam. Many Muslims, perhaps even the global majority, believe that apostates deserve death. Is that what Islam says? Many Muslims don’t think so, and they point to the fact that the Quran mentions no temporal punishments for apostasy, and that in the hadiths “apostasy” means, in the context of war between the early Muslim community and pagan Arabian tribes, not just renunciation of Islam, but treason and military desertion (Mehdi Hasan makes the case succinctly here). Are they wrong? Perhaps, but in order to argue that you’d actually have to know something about the religion, and most critics of Islam, including the most prominent ones like Maher and Harris, don’t.
Finally, suppose you’re right about Christianity or Islam. Why the disproportionate focus by the New Atheists on religion, to the exclusion of far more destructive irrational secular belief systems like nationalism, state-worship and market-worship? (That isn’t to say that certain distorted versions of religious belief aren’t often tied up with these, to disastrous effect, but it’s not the driving force behind them in 2014).
“Why the disproportionate focus by the New Atheists on religion, to the exclusion of far more destructive irrational secular belief systems like nationalism, state-worship and market-worship?”
Because atheists focus on religion. Just as libertarians focus on state-worship and anticapitalists focus on market-worship.
“I’m a Christian, and I don’t think the Bible tells me I have to hate gays. Neither does the Presbyterian Church, which recently voted to allow same-sex marriages. ”
Good for you. But that doesn’t change the fact that many Christians and Christian institutions are anti-gay . Are you opposed to criticising those Christian organisations and sects that are anti-gay? If you want to tackle religiously justified homophobia, you have to tackle the religious justifications.
“Because atheists focus on religion.”
Really? Some atheists don’t “focus” on religion at all. They ignore it. If, as an atheist or as anything else, you take yourself to be involved in the business of criticizing irrational, destructive belief systems, then you ought to be attacking the most irrational and destructive belief systems there are. Right now, those happen to be the ones I mentioned.
“But that doesn’t change the fact that many Christians and Christian institutions are anti-gay .”
Yes.
“Are you opposed to criticising those Christian organisations and sects that are anti-gay?”
No.
“If you want to tackle religiously justified homophobia, you have to tackle the religious justifications.”
What have I said that would imply otherwise?
Atheists attack one form of irrational belief systems, religion. That’s all they need to do. As I pointed out, there are many others out there criticising other forms of irrational belief systems.
“What have I said that would imply otherwise?”
Perhaps I read you wrong.
“they point to the fact that the Quran mentions no temporal punishments for apostasy, and that in the hadiths “apostasy” means, in the context of war between the early Muslim community and pagan Arabian tribes, not just renunciation of Islam, but treason and military desertion”
What’s the point of arguing this to Westerners and non-Muslims? It’s the Muslims who need to be convinced of that. Mehdi Hassan should be publishing articles like that in Pakistan so that the Pakistanis stops killing people for blasphemy. He should be publishing it in Saudi Arabia so that they stop calling atheists terrorists. He should be publishing it in Egypt and Iran and Brunei.
(1) How do you know that Hasan isn’t addressing Muslims? Do you think no Muslims read Hasan’s column?
(2) I suspect the reason Hasan published his article in the UK rather than in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, or Brunei is because he is a citizen of the UK rather than of any of the latter countries.
(3) Because Westerners have been involved in fighting and killing Muslims for well over two decades now, we are in urgent need of having our misconceptions and false beliefs about Islam and Muslims corrected. Nonsense about what the Quran says contributes to a climate that makes it easier to kill Muslims.
Sam Harris, who takes himself to be the paragon of rationality, is a perfect example of someone who holds patently false, completely irrational beliefs about Muslims that can refuted with a five-minute Google search, and uses them to justify hawkish foreign policies. Just recently he said this in an exchange with Andrew Sullivan:
The people with whom the Israelis must negotiate, even the best of them—even Yasser Arafat after he won his Nobel Peace Prize—often talk a double game and maintain their anti-Semitism and religious triumphalism behind closed doors. They’ll say one thing in English, and then they’ll say another in Arabic to their constituencies. And the things they say in Arabic are often terrifying. In fact, there is a doctrine of deception within Islam called taqiyya, wherein lying to infidels has been decreed a perfectly ethical way of achieving one’s goals. This poses real problems for any negotiation. How can Israel trust anyone’s stated intentions?
Anyone with a basic knowledge of Islam would be able to tell you that the doctrine of taqiyya applies only to Shia Muslims, which allows them to dissimulate about their religious convictions if they are in danger of persecution for the fact that they are Shia Muslims (it’s not a license to lie to “infidels” whenever you feel like it). The concept doesn’t appear in Sunni jurisprudence. Since the overwhelming majority of Palestinians are Sunnis, Sam Harris is talking out of his ass (and people keep telling me that Harris is “deeply knowledgeable” about the religions he makes a career out of trashing). And he uses this “fact” to cast doubt on the efficacy of any negotiations with any Palestinians whatsoever. It’s very easy for people in this country who know nothing about Islam (i.e., most of us) to look at that and say, “Wow, he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about.” Given that we’re Israel’s largest military supplier, that’s a huge problem.
(4) Nothing I’ve said should be taken to imply that it isn’t also important for Muslims to be corrected about their misconceptions of Islam, just as Christians should be corrected about their misconceptions of Christianity.
1) I’m sure Muslims do read the Guardian. But attempting to change Muslims’ views on apostasy would work better if they were addressed to Muslims in Islamic majority countries published in languages commonly used by Muslims. If I wanted combat American racism, publishing an article in a Mongolian language newspaper would be a terrible way to go about it.
2) Muslims aren’t being executed for apostasy in the UK so who is he trying to convince? In contrast publishing an Urdu article against the blasphemy laws in Pakistan would be useful. Mind you, a lot of the people who have done that, have been killed by fanatics.
3) American wars in the Middle East have very little to do with Islam and a lot more to do with geopolitics. Sam Harris can become an expert on Islam and the US will still be supporting Israel, Obama will still refuse to recognise the coup in Egypt, Hillary will still not give a fig about women’s rights in Saudi Arabia and the Republicans will still be calling for the bombing of Iran.
4) You call them misconceptions but I don’t think they are. I don’t think Catholic homophobia is a “misconception” nor do I think the Wahabbi death sentence for apostasy is a “misconception”. They’re competing interpretations and it’s not as if Catholics and Wahabbis just one decided to hate gays and apostates. Just because you found a Christianity that isn’t homophobic doesn’t make other Christianities “misconceptions”. And you’re doing the exact same thing Harris is doing: deciding for Muslims what is or isn’t a “valid” Islam.
Since religion is ALL basically just made up (unless you really believe that Mohammed really did receive a visit from Allah or that Joseph Smith really did find, then lose, some mystical golden tablets that only he could translate), there is no easy way to respond to this. There is no objective truth, only arguments over the number of angels dancing on pins.
Which should be the main focus of “atheists”. Rather than arguing that moderate muslims should do this, the arguments should focus on “Why are you killing people on the basis of a doctrine which has no proven basis”?
” I’m a Christian, and I don’t think the Bible tells me I have to hate gays.”
Joe (and Harris) are good examples of how religion’s fiercest atheist critics remain, ironically, fundamentally religious in their approach to the world. Joe’s exhibiting one of organized religion’s very worst features: the tendency toward a Manichean worldview; with good and evil sides clearly marked; black and white. That many religious people have moved beyond that, while retaining a religious identity, ought to be celebrated by sensible people everywhere, not denied as logically impossible.
“of far more destructive irrational secular belief systems like nationalism, state-worship and market-worship?”
lol. MAMMONISM, the worship of money and its (secular) priesthood, the corporate CEO class, IS the STATE RELIGION of the United States. Excellent riposte.
What I love about Freddie’s essays and his commentariate is the true give and take. In many cases, ALL sides seem to make at least some good points!
Operation Ajax should be required reading for history classes and presents a ready answer to anybody who ever wonders aloud why Those People Over There hate democracy so much, and why they refuse to enter the modern era.
However, if a history of colonialism and oppression is all it takes to declare a whole set of beliefs off limits to any critical inquiry, then I submit to you that Tezcatlipoca is real and demands human sacrifice. Every minute his due sacrifice is forestalled brings greater misfortunes to the Earth.
I never said what your second paragraph suggests. What’s more, by the most basic theories of morality and democracy, my responsibility is my own country, just as it is for Maher and Harris. The question is, what should Americans do? And what Americans should do is to stop assaulting and destabilizing these countries.
Isn’t it possible to advocate for a more humane foreign policy stance while still remaining skeptical of appeals for a form of cultural tolerance that, broadly applied, mean that only those who can’t attribute their beliefs to an established religious tradition are required to answer for those beliefs?
During the last election a friend of mine said that she didn’t think it was right that Romney’s Mormon beliefs were an issue in the election. A person’s religious beliefs were a private matter, she said, and it was pure bigotry that people were bringing up the planet Kolob or temple garments or what have you. And yet Romney was claiming that his religious beliefs were absolutely central to who he was as a person and that they would directly influence his governance of the country. And obviously a great number of truly unsavory beliefs can be smuggled within that opaque package of Deeply Held Religious Convictions Which I Don’t Care to Discuss (But I Freely Reference When It’s Time To Display Piety and Strong Moral Fiber.) So how is this workable? How can there be any debate of ideas where certain ideas, due to their origins in antiquity, are beyond questioning and to even dare to do so is rank bigotry?
I agree that Maher and Harris may be barking up the wrong tree as regards the origins of modern terrorist groups. But the conflict between religious traditions and a secular state is hardly a non-issue, and for that reason I am extremely wary of the implication that asking religious people to answer for the tenets of their faiths is somehow de facto bigotry.
These constant attempts to abstract away from real-world conditions serve to ignore the reality that Muslims currently face a form of permissible persecution unheard of for other groups, and turns attention away from the continued, relentless violence against them. I don’t know why all of you arch-rationalists are so afraid of owning up to the fact that anti-Muslim animus is permitted in our culture in a way that is wholly unique, or reckon with the fact that there has never been a time within my own life that we have not been in the business of killing Muslims.
How do you think a Sunni Muslim somewhere out there would feel about western liberal ideals given that the Syrian regime kills and tortures in the name of secularism and diversity, while the Egyptian regime kills in the name of religious moderation and a civil state.
As an Arab who ended being a Marxist, I’m fucking surprised.
True enough, and all my angry letters and blog posts and marching with signs saying “don’t do this!” didn’t stop the bombs from falling again and again. I’m still not even a little bit convinced that skeptics or atheists were the origin of said animus, or for that matter that it was animus and not just thinly-veiled economic self-interest that led to Operation Ajax, Operation Desert Storm, or any number of other Operations that took place in parts of the world that just happen to hold a disproportionate amount of the resources we need to keep the lights on. But I do know that unexamined religious dogma provided an awful lot of the political cover.
Yeah, I mean, what the hell, right? Maybe the ugliness and invective of these atheists is contributing to this environment of judgment and suspicion, but as long as we can’t prove it for sure, we’re golden!
Come on, Freddie. Who in the realms of power in this country needs the likes of Harris to justify American policy? Do you really think it is SAM HARRIS that has contributed to the war fever? Harris and his like are mere background noise.
Besides, Islam itself, like all fundamentalist religions (including Christianity, cherry picking liberals aside), provides planety of impetus for this “atmosphere of judgment and suspicion”.
https://twitter.com/MaajidNawaz/status/518745912290865152
This guy has struck me one of the best and most reliable voices out there for moderate Islam and he doesn’t share this take. Food for thought.
I think you misunderstand Maher. He doesn’t claim that some global caliphate is nigh, and frequently mocks such apocalyptic claims when they come from the right.
Maher is an earnest liberal voice reminding people on his side of the fence that just because the right hates and fears the Muslim world, that doesn’t make it innocent or progressive, and certainly doesn’t deserve apology.
Regarding moderate Muslims, the complaint is not strictly that there are few great moderate Islamic figures, but that Muslim communities themselves demonstrate little moderation, appeared strongly insular and anti-Enlightenment even before 9/11, and reek of terrorist sympathy.
Islamists are essentially the same as evangelical Christians, but unrestrained by any surrounding secular culture, so it’s absurd that the left has come to regard them as allies and victims.
Also, being Australian, I well remember the Bali bombings of 2002, so the notion that Muslim extremism is confined the Middle East seems hollow.
God, do none of you read the posts before you comment? None of you?
Read first, then comment!
Meet the internet.
While we cannot overlook the bloodsoaked history of Christianity, I do believe that contemporary Islam has some really violent tendencies.
64 percent of Muslims in Egypt and Pakistan support the death penalty for leaving Islam
Also
from here
“Muslims writ large deserve condemnation for the behavior of extremists and terrorists.”
The two of them also speak broadly about the lack of human rights, equality and other liberal values that is widespread in muslim countries. Couldn’t you argue that almost every muslim country is an apartheid regime when it comes to women, gays and/or religious minorities?
How could it be considered fringe or extreme if almost every muslim country is like this?
“Couldn’t you argue that almost every muslim country is an apartheid regime when it comes to women, gays and/or religious minorities?”
You could, if you utterly ignore the West’s historical role in shaping modern Muslim states.
Bill Maher is afflicted by too much airtime. From week to week, his arguments become photocopies of photocopies.
What started as something tethered to reality – Bill’s case that the Quran makes explicit calls for violence – decomposes into “Muslims love clitorectomies! And beheadings! And child brides!” I’m not sure whether it’s bigotry, laziness or a temptation to ‘outdo’ himself, but it happens whenever a topic survives for years on his program.
“self-impressed television host and disco movie extra”
Awww, c’mon, man! He’s a funny stand-up.
Freddie: “Americans say they want ‘moderate Muslims,’ but American foreign policy has a long history of undermining moderation.”
A disturbing number of posters here: “You’re wrong because here are some examples of immoderate Muslims!”
It would be cool if people could respond to the argument instead of just enumerating the (often erroneous) facts that scare them most about Islam.
What are these “facts” about Islam that are “wrong”? As there is no such thing as an objective, singular “Islam”, how can you make a definitive argument that those opposed to and suspicious of Islam are “wrong”. It becomes a battle of opinion polls and tendencies and observed history.
I should of course say “Islams” or “political Islam as promoted by our best buddies in the world, the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia”
Wow, usually agree with your writing, but I have to disagree with you on this one. Quite vehemently in fact.
I viewed the same episode, and was very much in agreement with what Maher and Harris had to say. In particular, I not only disagreed with Ben Affleck, but came out with even less respect for him, as his position was simply vapid – basically, the idea that Islam inherently deserved respect as a major world religion (and as an ardent secularist, I don’t buy the idea of deference to any religion), a point of view that did not seem to be amenable to contrary fact.
What Harris and Maher were getting at, and I wish they had specifically cited, is that public opinion surveys have shown time and again that believers in countries like Jordan and Egypt (and in most Islamic countries with the exception of highly secularized ones like Turkey and Lebanon) support, by large majorities, things like the death penalty for apostasy, stoning as a penalty for adultery, brutal physical punishments like amputation for petty crimes, etc. (I’m assuming you’re aware of these statistics, but if you’re not, I’ll happily provide links to sources.) This argues against the idea that the majority of muslims hold “moderate” beliefs, unless you’re going to really stretch the definition of moderate. And while that doesn’t necessarily mean that the majority of muslims are pining for an ISIS-like state, it’s pretty easy to see that mainstream muslim beliefs are a fertile ground out of which that kind of extremism grows.
This also argues against any kind of too-easy equivalency between Christian fundamentalism in the West (especially in the US) and Islamic fundamentalism. There are indeed Christian fundies who have the equivalent beliefs to conservative Islam – we call them Dominionists or Reconstructionists. And they’re a minority, even in the realm of Christian fundamentalism. On the other hand, over most of the Islamic world, the equivalent of Dominionism *is the religious-political mainstream*. (BTW, I’m not denying just what a backwards, reactionary force the religious right (or much of the religious left, for that matter) are in the context of US politics. But it does need to be put in perspective.)
As a strong secularist, a position I share with Maher and Harris, it seems to me that the more extreme and brutal the expression of religion is, the more it should be opposed, and that strongly puts the mainstream of Islam as opposed to everything I believe as a secularist. Islamic governance represents a tyranny that I think amounts to everything people should not have to live under. I’m not sure where you’re coming from in with this, Frederik (and I respect your wish not to have people argue with ideas they project on you), but as I understand it, you defend a fairly traditional form of the progressive Left, and if that stands for anything at all, it would be for secularism and against religious tyranny. So I find what seems to be a blanket defense of “respect for Islam” rather puzzling.
As for your other arguments, they seem to be largely non-sequiturs. Muslim groups in the West are largely stigmatized minority groups who suffer from social discrimination. So that means defending or turning a blind eye to the most reactionary beliefs in that group? The phrase “soft tyranny of low expectations” comes to mind with regard to that point.
More to the point, I think this is another case where one should be careful to stigmatize reactionary *ideas* rather than stigmatize *people*. I think one can be critical of the reactionary ideas that are mainstream in Islam without supporting anti-Muslim bigotry, and show solidarity to those dissidents in Islamic countries and communities who truly bear the brunt of this vile ideology. (And what is any religion, really, but an ideology with claims of divine support?)
Your point about Mossadegh and Western imperialism doesn’t really follow either. Yes, the overthrow of Mossadegh as the “original sin” in Iran, Iraq, and neighboring countries is a clear point of fact. All the subsequent interventions the US has made in that region have been dealing with a series of blowbacks that go back to that original action. That’s an established fact acknowledged by everybody from Barack Obama to Christopher Hitchens. But more largely, to try and lay everything reactionary in the Islamic world at the feet of Western imperialism just seems facile. It denies the Islamic world it’s own history, agency, and share of responsibility for their own fuckups. And reflects the tendency of Americans on all sides of the political spectrum to view the rest of the world in terms of it’s relative position for or against US policy.
A change of course from an imperial foreign policy is a worthwhile good in and of itself, but don’t pretend that in itself is going to fix what’s broken about Islam or the Islamic world.
Finally, I take issue with this statement:
“There is no chance — none — that ISIS will succeed in establishing a world-threatening caliphate. As Americans, Harris and I are more likely to drown in a bathtub than to be killed by Islamic terrorism, and yet Harris is fond of talking about Islamic terrorism as something worth laying awake at night over.”
I remember when a lot of people were saying more or less the same thing about Al Qaeda, pre-911. (Which given our age difference, still seems very recent to me.) Your dismissal of ISIS as a possible international threat strikes me as more assertion than successful argument – *why* do you think they’re not capable of eventually becoming an Al Qaeda-level terror force? Mind, you, I’m not saying that should be reason for another wave of Bush-era interventionism, which was clearly a wrong approach. But trying to avoid such an outcome by simple denial of ISIS potential isn’t a good way of arguing that point.
It’s incredible — it’s truly incredible — how many commenters have utterly ignored the actual argument of this post, in order to say “yeah but Islam is really bad for real!”
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