Jason Rosenhouse links to this essay by Christopher Hitchens about the current brouhaha over the Pope's comments on Islam. Hitchens points out several ironies in the situation. The most obvious one, and I pointed it out myself earlier, is that anyone with the title Pope should be complaining of religion being spread by the sword. On this issue, he is dead on:
Now, you do not have to be a Muslim to think that for the bishop of Rome to cite this is the most perfect hypocrisy. There would have been no established Byzantine or Roman Christianity if the faith had not been spread and maintained and enforced by every kind of violence and cruelty and coercion. To take Islam's own favorite self-pitying example: It was the Catholic crusaders who sacked and burned Christian Byzantium on their way to Palestine--and that was only after they had methodically set about the Jews, so the Muslim world was actually only the third victim of this barbarity. (Sir Steven Runciman's A History of the Crusades is the best source here.) Yet of all the words he could have chosen, to suggest that religion might wish to break its old connection with conquest, intolerance, and subjugation, Ratzinger had to select an example that was designed to remind his hearers of the crudest excesses of the medieval period. His mention of Manuel II was evidently not accidental or anecdotal. He refers to him repeatedly and returns to him again in the closing paragraph, as if to rub it in.
But there is another irony to the situation that had escaped my notice and Hitchens zeroes right in on it:
The Muslim protesters are actually being highly ungrateful. When the embassies of Denmark were being torched earlier this year, Rome managed a few words of protest about ... the inadvisability of profane cartoons. In almost every confrontation between Islam and the West, or Islam and Israel, the Vatican has either split the difference or helped to ventriloquize Muslim grievances.
He is correct. During the incredible aftermath of the Danish cartoons fiasco earlier this year, the Vatican's only response was to claim that "The right to freedom of thought and expression...cannot entail the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers," a position that is simply too ridiculous for words. Of course freedom of expression includes the right to offend one's religious sentiments, and if you do not believe that then you simply don't believe in freedom of expression.
So we are struck now by a second hypocrisy in the Pope's statement. Surely if you are going to claim that no one has any right to offend the religious sensibilities of believers, you cannot then feign outrage when you say something that offends a billion believers and are greeted with fury. I, on the other hand, am entirely justified in being appalled by the hypocrisy on both sides and the delusional barbarism of the side that is reacting with firebombings and murder.
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It's almost as if they all wanted to prove Sam Harris' thesis in one week.
That is a great comment Stuart.
You could look at it that way, or you could say the Pope is simply being consistent. Presumably the Pope doesn't think that Christianity should be spread by the sword, so he doesn't feel that there is a need to bring up the past to admonish Christians for something which they have already (mostly) ceased doing and advocating. Many Muslims, on the other hand, have not. And if the Pope's stance is that freedom of speech does not include the right to criticize someone's religion, at least he extends that protectionist attitude to Muslims as well.
Do I agree with him? Of course not. But I can see how these viewpoints can be at least internally coherent.
Wait a minute.....strike that. I wish there were a "delete post" function on this thing.
Maybe there should be a "stale date" on quotations. If Pope Ratzinger is going to dip back into the dark ages, he should go to Roman Catholic sources. It was 1209 when a Roman Catholic Abbott first said, "Kill them all: God will sort them out!"
I just don't see the phrases 'Christianity' and 'internally consistent' as able to exist within a hundred meters of each other without blowing up the world.
During the incredible aftermath of the Danish cartoons fiasco earlier this year, the Vatican's only response was to claim that "The right to freedom of thought and expression...cannot entail the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers," a position that is simply too ridiculous for words.
The Vatican also said, "This principle applies obviously for any religion." So hey, their viewpoint really is internally coherent.
They also said,
So hey, let's jump back to the Dark Ages, except the blasphemy laws will be more internally coherent so that they will apply to all religions. What fun!
I wonder if, when the Vatican released that statement about freedom of expression, they realised that one doesn't even have to open his mouth to offend someone. I'm sure that merely being a Christian is offensive to some Muslims, and vice-versa.
Gadzooks! How do you get around that one?
There are other ironies involved in the Pope's quotation. Manuel II Paleologus might have been a good guy, but he was a rather simplistic theologian.
The traditional method is lots and lots of bloodshed, pain, suffering and oppression...
So many levels of irony. The Pope's main thesis in that talk was that reason needs faith. Do you think he convinced anyone that religious faith is essential to modern reason? How many secularist riots have been reported around the globe since his talk?
Hitchens is right about Vatican inconsistencies, but dwelling on them shouldn't overshadow the issue of global bullying and free speech. The violent responses to the Pope, the Danish cartoons, and Salman Rushdie tends to make moot any questions of veracity and offensiveness.
Miguel II Palaeologus was not a nice guy. He was both the emperor of the Byzantine empire and the head of the Eastern church.
I cannot understand why the Pope Ratzinger quoted the citation from Miguel II. It appears to have had nothing whatsoever to do with what was supposed to be the theme of his speech--which was supposed to have been the interplay between faith and reason. It appears to have been nothing more than a gratuitous swipe at Islam. And, given the uproar over the Danish cartoons a year or so ago, it was highly predictable that reciting the quotation would result in the same kind of uproar.
The official English language text of the speech is here and the quotation in issue is in the third paragraph.
Surely I'm not the only one here who thinks it is cool to call the current Pope Bennie the Ratz?
For the record, I agree with the thesis of the speech, but the jab at Islam was purely gratuitous. Perhaps he is looking for a way to re-evangelize Europe and thinks a culture war would be a good foundation?
This is the real focus of the Pope's talk. He was saying that science cannot address everything; we also need ethics and religion. To me, this is like saying that a screwdriver is not the appropriate tool for pounding in a nail, we also need a hammer and an octopus. Sure, ethics is important. However, I do not see that religion is required. He is trying to sneak it in without justifying it.
This is the real focus of the Pope's talk. He was saying that science cannot address everything; we also need ethics and religion.
It looks to me like he wants to make faith a part of science just like the good old days. Sorry, but his speech reminds me too much of the ID "Wedge" document. Cf. the "And so I come to my conclusion" part of his speech. This pope is one big step backwards. (But hey what else is new.)
"...we also need a hammer and an octopus."
That is more priceless than anything you can buy with Mastercard!!!!
Re Raj
Dr. Ratzinger had every right to criticise Islam. All Muslims are not terrorist, but virtually all terrorists are Muslims. If Muslims don't like criticism, I say tough bananas.
As if Ratzinger can be held responsible for crimes committed before he was born (and I know he had ties to the Nazis, but any modern Pope would make the claims that he's making). People and institutions can change, and when they do so for the better, we should be willing to grant them some reprieve from neverending criticism over past transgressions. The point is that Catholicism is a much better religion today than it was historically, and it's a much better religion today than Islam. Islam is a primitive and violent religion in practice, no matter what its apologists claim it stands for, and its followers never see the irony in torching churches and threatening beheadings to protest being called violent.
Oh, and just to give you a clue, Ed, it's neither hypocrisy to change your belief nor to differ from someone who came before you.
"but virtually all terrorists are Muslims"
...except for the IRA (Catholic), the abortion bombers/doctor murderers/white supremacists in the US (mostly Protestant), the Tamil Tigers (Hindu), the Shining Path (Marxist), and so on...
"As if Ratzinger can be held responsible for crimes committed before he was born (and I know he had ties to the Nazis, but any modern Pope would make the claims that he's making). People and institutions can change, and when they do so for the better, we should be willing to grant them some reprieve from neverending criticism over past transgressions."
I guess I missed the people discussing the words of Palaeologus before Ratzinger brought them out of the memory hole. Maybe, if the pope was wanting to show that the church had changed for the better, he should avoid dredging up quotes from the time of the Crusades?
New Pope Shows Spine
Islamonazi CAIR Is Not Impressed
http://www.terrorfreeoil.org/videos/MS091506.php - video
Please Call The Vatican Embassy In Washington, DC at (202) 333-7121 to Express Your Support!
Islamonazi, eh? Oh, the irony.
Again, somebody's going to have to remind me who's invaded who's country in the past two and half years, and who's been casually launching air strikes in the same country for the past fifteen years. I had thought it was the Muslim nation that was being bombed, but apparently it's Islam that's the violent religion.
The ability for Christians to turn a blind eye to violence perpetrated by their own nation against civilians continues to impress me.
RickD:
A while ago, the Iranian government sponsored an exhibition of cartoons making fun of the Holocaust. The ensuing silence, as mobs of enraged Jews, Christians and secular humanists didn't burn down mosques, failed to attack the embassies of Muslim countries, and didn't call for the murder of the cartoonists, was deafening.
The UK magazine Private Eye recently had a cartoon in which two imams were protesting outside Westminster with a banner saying "Equality For Muslims Now!", while one was saying to the other "But not for women or gays, obviously!"
Hits the nail right on the head.
Oh, that's wonderful. Can't seem to find it on the web though, dammit!
"The UK magazine Private Eye recently had a cartoon in which two imams were protesting outside Westminster with a banner saying "Equality For Muslims Now!", while one was saying to the other "But not for women or gays, obviously!""
Of course, this works just as well with several major Christian sects substituted for "Muslim"- particularly the one led by Ratzinger. Or did they start allowing female priests, stop trying to dictate anti-choice politics, and stop blaming the pedophilia scandal on gays while I wasn't looking?
I'm not aware of any major Catholic bodies today who advocate honor killings for female relatives who dishonor the family, or that gay people should simply be killed. That's just a bit of a different ballgame. And however puritanical the Catholic church has been, I don't think it has ever made women cover themselves from head to toe, including the face.
Re Raj, MJ Memphis, and Rick D, apologists for Islamic Fundamentalism.
The attached opinion piece by Charles Krauthammer is right on the money.
Tolerance: A Two-Way Street
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, September 22, 2006; A17
Religious fanatics, regardless of what name they give their jealous god, invariably have one thing in common: no sense of humor. Particularly about themselves. It's hard to imagine Torquemada taking a joke well.
Today's Islamists seem to have not even a sense of irony. They fail to see the richness of the following sequence. The pope makes a reference to a 14th-century Byzantine emperor's remark about Islam imposing itself by the sword, and to protest this linking of Islam and violence:
· In the West Bank and Gaza, Muslims attack seven churches.
· In London, the ever-dependable radical Anjem Choudary tells demonstrators at Westminster Cathedral that the pope is now condemned to death.
· In Mogadishu, Somali religious leader Abubukar Hassan Malin calls on Muslims to "hunt down" the pope. The pope not being quite at hand, they do the next best thing: shoot dead, execution-style, an Italian nun who worked in a children's hospital.
"How dare you say Islam is a violent religion? I'll kill you for it" is not exactly the best way to go about refuting the charge. But of course, refuting is not the point here. The point is intimidation.
First Salman Rushdie. Then the false Newsweek report about Koran-flushing at Guantanamo Bay. Then the Danish cartoons. And now a line from a scholarly disquisition on rationalism and faith given in German at a German university by the pope.
And the intimidation succeeds: politicians bowing and scraping to the mob over the cartoons; Saturday's craven New York Times editorial telling the pope to apologize; the plague of self-censorship about anything remotely controversial about Islam -- this in a culture in which a half-naked pop star blithely stages a mock crucifixion as the highlight of her latest concert tour.
In today's world, religious sensitivity is a one-way street. The rules of the road are enforced by Islamic mobs and abjectly followed by Western media, politicians and religious leaders.
The fact is that all three monotheistic religions have in their long histories wielded the sword. The Book of Joshua is knee-deep in blood. The real Hanukkah story, so absurdly twinned (by calendric accident) with the Christian festival of peace, is about a savage insurgency and civil war.
Christianity more than matched that lurid history with the Crusades, an ecumenical blood bath that began with the slaughter of Jews in the Rhineland, a kind of preseason warm-up to the featured massacres to come against the Muslims, with the sacking of the capital of Byzantium (the Fourth Crusade) thrown in for good measure.
And Islam, of course, spread with great speed from Arabia across the Mediterranean and into Europe. It was not all benign persuasion. After all, what were Islamic armies doing at Poitiers in 732 and the gates of Vienna in 1683? Tourism?
However, the inconvenient truth is that after centuries of religious wars, Christendom long ago gave it up. It is a simple and undeniable fact that the violent purveyors of monotheistic religion today are self-proclaimed warriors for Islam who shout "God is great" as they slit the throats of infidels -- such as those of the flight crews on Sept. 11, 2001 -- and are then celebrated as heroes and martyrs.
Just one month ago, two journalists were kidnapped in Gaza and were released only after their forced conversion to Islam. Where were the protests in the Islamic world at that act -- rather than the charge -- of forced conversion?
Where is the protest over the constant stream of vilification of Christianity and Judaism issuing from the official newspapers, mosques and religious authorities of Arab nations? When Sheik 'Atiyyah Saqr issues a fatwa declaring Jews "apes and pigs"? When Sheik Abd al-Aziz Fawzan al-Fawzan, professor of Islamic law, says on Saudi TV that "someone who denies Allah, worships Christ, son of Mary, and claims that God is one-third of a trinity. . . . Don't you hate the faith of such a polytheist?"
Where are the demonstrations, where are the parliamentary resolutions, where are the demands for retraction when the Mufti Sheik Ali Gum'a incites readers of al-Ahram, the Egyptian government daily, against "the true and hideous face of the blood-suckers . . . who prepare [Passover] matzos from human blood"?
The pope gives offense and the Mujaheddin al-Shura Council in Iraq declares that it "will break up the cross, spill the liquor and impose the 'jizya' [head] tax; then the only thing acceptable is conversion or the sword." This to protest the accusation that Islam might be spread by the sword.
As I said. No sense of irony.
MJMemphis:
True, but it doesn't change the point of the cartoon.
Even in very Catholic countries, the Pope cannot order that only boys can go to school or that women dress in a certain way. The Catholic Church may still have a long way to go on equality issues, but it's not Roman Catholics who have been protesting in London dressed as suicide bombers and waving placards saying "Death to Westerners".
For the record, I would equally condemn any Roman Catholic who *did* call for the murder of Muslims or abortion doctors, or suppliers of artificial contraceptives.
I think the world will be a great deal better off when human beings learn to take their religions a lot less seriously.
I think RickD has been sufficently answered, though I think it's ridiculous to call him or anyone else in this thread an apologist for Islamic radicalism. I would only note two additional things. First, the US is hardly a Catholic country, so Rick is comparing apples to oranges. America is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious nation where Christianity has little influence on the law or on policy (despite some obvious specifics that we agree should be fought against, though they are still not even in the ballpark of the kind of Islam-expired barbarism that goes on in much of the Muslim world). Our foreign policy decisions may be good or bad, but it's not reasonable to say that "Christianity" is bombing people in Iraq.
Second, the vast majority of the deaths in Iraq since in the last couple years has come from Muslims blowing each other up in vast numbers every day as we try and put a stop to it. That doesn't make the war a good idea (I think it wasn't, at least not the way it was done), but it does lend some perspective.
SLC and Nebogipfel- So are you both arguing that Christianity has moderated its actions largely because it no longer has the kind of secular power that it once held? If that is the case, then I will happily agree, and I will also agree that the Muslim world could use a nice big dose of secularisation itself.
However, I would note that the pope decries the increasing secularisation of the West, which is exactly what prevents present-day Christianity from behaving like it did back when it had the power of the state to enforce its doctrines. The Church didn't change- it just lost most of its power.
Oh, and SLC: Fuck you. I'm an atheist and my wife is a Buddhist from a country with a long-running Islamic insurgency. I am not an "apologist for Islamic fundamentalists." Unlike you, however, I am also not an apologist for any other retrograde religions.
Re MJ Memphis
I will not dignify your "f*** you" comment with a reply in kind. However, I must take issue with your claim that I am an apologist for "other retrograde religions." Relative to the Krauthammer opinion piece, I would point out that the writer has freely admitted the past transgressions of Christians and ancient Hebrews, in addition to his criticisms of current day Islam. His point is that present day Christians and Jews do not, in the main, behave like present day Islamic extremists do. Every day in the Moslem world, newspapers, magazines and television issue comments about Christianity and Judaism far more scurrilous then anything said by Dr. Ratzinger, without even a yawn from the Western press.
SLC, if you call people who disagree with you "apologists for Islamic fundamentalism", then you can expect to hear a lot of things that offend your tender ears.
Now, with that out of the way: you are doing an interesting frame with your comparison of "present day Christians and Jews" versus "present day Islamic extremists". An apples to apples comparison would be "present day Christian and Jewish extremists" vs "present day Islamic extremists" or "present day Christians and Jews" vs "present day Muslims". The extremists on both sides behave quite badly; the ordinary joes on both sides mostly behave in a relatively civilized way.
Re MJ Memphis
1. I am afraid that I think it is inappropriate to use foul language on blogs such as this one. Your use of same only reflects on your upbringing.
2. Comparing the nutcases on the religious right with Islamic fundamentalists is a little like comparing somebody who steals a little silverware at a restaurant with an armed bank robber. I have yet to hear of anybody from the former group hijacking 4 aircraft and crashing them into a high rise skyscraper, killing 2900 people.
Well, SLC, you're welcome to your opinion on my upbringing. Given your level of information on same, I'm sure your opinion on that will be as useful as any of your other opinions. I would note that it is a little rich to call someone an "apologist for Islamic fundamentalism"- which, based on your own words, you seem to hold as the world's greatest evil- and then get upset when you receive some harsh language in return. Get over it.
And no, I haven't heard of any religious rightie nutcases hijacking four aircraft and hit a skyscraper- mainly because, to my knowledge, it's only happened once so far. However, I *have* heard of Tim McVeigh (Catholic) blowing up a federal building in Oklahoma. I *have* heard of Eric Rudolph (Christian) bombing the Olympics, clinics, and nightclubs. I *have* heard of James Kopp and Paul Hill and others murdering doctors. And several of the individuals were aided and abetted by sympathetic Christian individuals. The main difference between them and the Muslim terrorists you mention seems to be that they aren't quite as competent, which isn't exactly a qualitative difference.
Oh, and by the way, if you look up-thread, you will notice that I never said the pope (or anyone else, for that matter) doesn't have the right to criticize Muslims. I just called you out for your claim that "virtually all" terrorists are Muslims, which is patently false. But hey, I guess in your rather odd view that makes me an apologist for Muslim fundamentalists.
Without the ad hominems, MJ Memphis makes an important point, which I think was brought up and mostly ignored before: Christianity has only become benign because of its secularization.
Why do we fight "The Wedge" and ideas like it? Because most of us, even Christians, prefer to have a secular state where everyone has the right their own stupidity rather than being yoked to the specific stupidity of someone else. The consequence is that, sometimes, people are able to rise out of stupidity and do things that help the rest of us get by a little easier.
I think the link between secularism and material prosperity is so great they're almost like two sides of the same coin. But it's also a "chicken and egg" thing: A rise in secularism can lead to increased material prosperity, which gives rise to more secularism.
People in Europe, America and most of Asia and Africa are not really ready to blow themselves up for some zealotry, when they know it will end their chances to make a buck. But if someone has no chance to earn a living, then losing their life doesn't cost them much.
Most of the places where we see Muslim sectarian violence have been/are being stripped of their natural resources by invaders from Europe and America. In their minds, the "Christian-Capitalist" world treats them as a throw-aways or even a hindrance to accessing the raw material under their feet.
Honestly, would anyone in our government really care about Shiites and Sunnis blowing each other up if it weren't for the oil? Would the Shiites and the Sunnis be at each other's throats so much if all they were fighting for was sand? I doubt it.
Give people a chance to make an honest living, and most will take it. And once they start building a life for themselves, they'll want to keep it.
MJ's argument that Christianity is defanged because our society is secularized is pretty much identical to the argument I make in my post. Christianity has been mixed with humanist philosophy, and that includes the Enlightenment notion of the separation of church and state. Thus removed from the power of the state, it is no longer imposed at the butt of a gun and that is a very good thing for all involved. However, his comparison of Timothy McVeigh and Eric Robert Rudolph to Islamic terrorists today is quite wide of the mark. Of courset here are isolated individuals claiming to be Christian (Rudolph was not one of them, by the way, but McVeigh was) who commit acts of terrorism, but they have no institutional support at all in Christianity. Were there mass marches in support of what they did from Christians? Nope. But we see mass marches in support of Hezbollah and Al Qaeda all the time in the Muslim world. While I do believe that most Muslims are decent people who aren't the least bit interested, no sane person could argue with the undeniable fact that those inclined to terrorism have serious and significant support in the Muslim world, including from numerous governments, while the Paul Hills of the world have only a vanishingly small base of support within Christianity. And no government in the world influenced by Christianity has anything even close to the barbaric policies of those Muslim nations around the world who impose Sharia. The US is the most Christian-influenced government in the world (an influence that I fight against constantly), but let's not lose sight of the obvious difference: while we're fighting over whether to allow gays to marry, they're killing gays by the thousands in Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. While we're debating whether there should be a 24 hour waiting period for an abortion, they're stoning women to death for not being virgins. Comparing the two in the modern world is quite ludicrous.
Not if you do not claim to be receiving your orders from an eternal god(s), e.g. if you are a Quaker or an atheist. However, if you claim that an unchanging and omnibenevolent is giving the orders to you and to your predecessors with whom you disagree, it's another matter. For example, if you claim that morality derives from the Christian God and is laid out in the Bible, but you disown slavery and genocide, then yeah; you've got a problem there.
But if someone has no chance to earn a living, then losing their life doesn't cost them much.
So how come we're not seeing more suicide-bombers from places like India, Bangladesh, China, North Korea, Latin America, Cambodia, Haiti...?
Most of the places where we see Muslim sectarian violence have been/are being stripped of their natural resources by invaders from Europe and America.
And are those the only places on Earth that have ever been "stripped of their natural resources by invaders from Europe and America?" Appalacia and West Virginia got pretty stripped too, but I don't remember seeing sectarian violence there. And what about the Brasilian rain-forest area?
Bee,
A implies B does not mean B implies A, so saying "B does not imply A, therefore A does not imply B," is false.
What I'm trying to point out is that it's not just Islam per se that leads to violence, but the context in which it operates. If Islam required violence, then American Muslims would have to act just like the ones in the Middle East. The ones I work with and live around do not, in any way shape or form.
So, for the sake of discussion, let's look at the countries you name:
India - The British were thrown out of India, were they not? And its colonial history is quite violence free. I guess "Gunga Din" is about a cricket match.
Bangladesh - Yeah, I wonder why the poor Muslims of Bangladesh aren't firebombing everyone else. You'd think, if violence were a necessary part of Islam, they'd -have- to, wouldn't they?
China - Other than the Chinese Government, what colonial power is extracting resources from China? BTW, what was the Boxer Rebellion about again?
North Korea - Other than the North Korean government, what colonial power is extracting resources from North Korea?
Latin America - Yes. The most peaceful place on earth. No one in Central America ever tried to throw off their colonial overlords using violence. And at no time did groups in Central America ever fight against each other. Nope. Not ever.
Cambodia, Haiti (you should throw in Viet Nam, Panama, the Philippines in the 1890s, Columbia) - Same again.
"Appalachia and West Virginia got pretty stripped too, but I don't remember seeing sectarian violence there." Really? Didn't the KKK come into being as a counterforce to the carpetbaggers of the North? I'd say they're pretty sectarian, and pretty violent when they can get away with it.
Brazilian rain-forest area - You got me on that one. I don't know of any time that the invaded people's of the Brazilian rainforest tried to violently resist colonialism.
Spike wrote:
This is a fallacious argument. It's basically arguing that if every single Muslim isn't violent, then Islam is not a religion which preaches violence. But anyone who has read the Quran knows otherwise. That some Muslims choose to ignore those things and focus instead on the nicer bits - thank goodness - does not in any way diminish the fact that the Quran does in fact teach a whole range of absolutely barbaric behaviors, concepts and doctrines.
I think your argument that economic prosperity is the difference between moderate and radical Islam does not square with the evidence. Historically, Islam (like Christianity for hundreds of years) was often at its most expansive and brutal when it was at its most powerful; the Ottoma Empire and various other caliphates are a good example. And while Afghanistan may be a dirt poor country, Saudi Arabia is a fabulously wealthy one. That does not stop Saudi Arabia from being a hotbed of the most barbaric of Islamic ideologies. Much of the Muslim world has a very high standard of living, but that does not stop them from instituting the most medieval of moral and legal codes on their people. No, this is a battle of ideologies, it is not a story of the poor, oppressed victims rising up against their imperial overlords, despite the fact that some of those nations have indeed been oppressed (what nation hasn't, at one point or another?). This is the story of a group of people whose chauvanistic ideology drives them to want to not only rule the world, but turn it into something we should all fear and fight against, the most brutal kind of theocratic totalitarianism.
Having read a translation of the Quran/Koran from cover to cover (remember, unless you've read it in the original Arabic, you haven't read IT), I didn't see that it was any -more- barbaric than the Christians' holy book. And Christian ideologies, if left unrestrained by secularism, lead to just as much barbarism, oppression and totalitarianism - we've already agreed on that (at least I thought so).
And I don't think I said it was just a case of rising up against colonial invaders. The point I was trying to make is that it's the combination of the invaders and the religion, without any moderating secularism, that makes certain Islamic populations behave the way they do. But, perhaps, the colonialism is not a factor, maybe it's the way the governments or certain leaders interpret the ideas of Islam.
When we see the news about sectarian violence in reaction to Christian and/or Western slights, doesn't it always seem to come from the same areas? What it is about -those-places that makes them different than say, Kuwait (which I have lived in), Bahrain, or Brunei Darussalam, three thoroughly Muslim countries but from which we never hear of Islamic sectarian violence?
[In the case of the Pope's idiocy, Kuwait would be a very ripe target for sectarian violence since there are a large number of Catholic Filipinos living there. Any word yet on nuns in Kuwait being massacred?]
Getting back to the poverty issue: In Kuwait the average citizen receives about $7,000 USD a month in stipend. Do Saudis get a stipend from their government? From my limited understanding of the way the Saudi royals treat their countryfolk, it seems like a form of "internal colonialism."
So I still don't think it's Islam, per se, that leads to violence. It may be a catalyst, when used by unscrupulous imams, but the fact that there are so many more non-violent Muslims than there are wingnut Islamists makes it hard for me to believe that the teachings of Islam are -necessarily- more violent than those of Christianity. And, (again as I think we've agreed) if Islam has the chance to be secularized, then the Muslims will be no more prone to violence than the rest of the world.
Spike wrote:
I do agree with this. But the point is that Christianity has been secularized pretty much all over the world and in all but the most fringe groups. That has yet to happen with Islam, and that's why at this point Islam is a far greater threat to life and liberty than Christianity is. 500 years ago, that would not have been true. But it's true now, and now is when we live.
As I suggested in a previous comment, I think that this is quite mistaken. Note that one of
the points made by the Pope was to object to the "secularization" of the west. And this
view is harly unique to the Pope among Christians; indeed, there are many Christians who would be
only too happy to impose a Christian theocracy every bit as oppressive as that of the Taliban.
So far as I can see, it is simply not the case that "Christianity has been secularized";
rather, in western societies, religion in general (including Christianity) has been pushed out of
power, such that it is no longer able to impose itself on society. But the issue is very
much not one of "Christianity" as opposed to "Islam"; rather, it is "secular" as opposed
to "religious" -- in general, including Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, et al.
SLC | September 21, 2006 08:31 PM
Dr. Ratzinger had every right to criticise Islam
Yes, he does. And I have every right to criticize der Ratzinger, the Nazi Feigling, and former head of the Office of Holy Inquisition.
When he was touring through Bavaria a few weeks ago (I was there at the time), he wailed about the lack of the Glaeubiger (the believers) in the churches in Bavaria (a nominally Catholic area) and the lack of people signing up for the priesthood. I shed crocodile tears for him.
SLC | September 22, 2006 08:46 AM
The attached opinion piece by Charles Krauthammer is right on the money
I stopped reading Krauthammer long ago, after I concluded that he was a nut.
Try again.
BTW, regarding Re Raj, MJ Memphis, and Rick D, apologists for Islamic Fundamentalism
I guess that it has escaped your notice that Ratzinger is calling for a return to RCCi (Roman Catholic Church, Inc.) fundamentalism. Did you know that Ratzi is looking into "Intelligent Design" as an alternative to evolution?
And, your conclusion that criticizing Ratzi is a defense of Islamic Fundamentalism is idiotic. You seem to be arguing the same way that the right wingnuts in the US argue. As far as I'm concerned, a pox on all their houses. Capiche? Verstehest du? Understand?
Pretty much agree with Greg Byshenk | September 24, 2006 04:16 AM
I'll merely add that Ed's
is largely the case in the West--although, Ed would have to admit that it is not the case in large parts of Fundamentalist and conservative US--but it is not particularly true of the third world, which is where Roman Catholicism and Protestant Christianity are battling it out with Islam for adherents. Indeed, in the third world, Roman Catholicism, in particular, has been more than willing to adapt its local dogma to local religions, which are oftentimes animist, not humanist.
MJ Memphis:
Yes. And I hope it doesn't get it back.
I think you mistook me for a practicing Catholic (I did practice it once, but never got the hang of it) :-)
Spike:
I would have agreed with you once, but now I'm not sure it's so simple. The 7/7 bombers in London, didn't seem to come from particluarly poor backgrounds. Some of the bombers that have struck in Israel have been educated professionals. Certainly it's easy to see how people who have very little left to loose and a readily identifiable enemy to hate can be motivated to do terrible things. But not all of the religious fanatics seem to be poor and desperate.
Yes, I think they would. There's not much oil in Northern Ireland, but that conflict has been rumbling on for centuries (although I think religion there is just a convenient label for distinguishing "our" tribe from "theirs" - possibly it's the same for sunni's and shi'ites).
A lot of people have made the point that Islam start 600 years after Christianity, and that time-lag seems to be preserved today. The difference is that Christian Europe fought its religous wars with swords and archers. Todays religious wars can be fought with machine guns, high explosives and (god forbid) Weapons of Mass Destruction...
Greg Byshenk wrote:
Yes, there are Christians who, if they had power, would be just as bad as the Taliban. But those groups, like the reconstructionists, are far more margnizalized in Christianity than the Bin Ladens are in Islam. They control no governments or militias, and their political program does not include violence but winning people to their cause and using the democratic process. Dangerous? Certainly, and I spend a good deal of time and energy fighting against them in our political system and trying to keep them from ever gaining that kind of control. But they don't blow up subways or hijack airplanes. They don't wage wars or commit acts of terrorism. They are, relative to radical Islam today, a virtually insignificant threat to our lives and our liberty. As for the pope's anti-secularization rhetoric, it's both expected and irrelevant. Of course he's going to complain about secularization. If he had his way, he would of course be happy to impose Catholic doctrine through the law. But the mere fact that he has to complain about not being able to do so demonstrates the clear difference between the relationship between Christianity and government in the West and the relationship between Islam and government in the Muslim world. The difference: we are secular societies and they are theocratic ones.
I don't think we disagree as much as it may seem. To me, the fact that we are secular societies first is a sign of the secularization of Christianity as well. The percentage of Christians who would impose Biblical law if they had the power is far smaller than the percentage of Muslims who would impose Islamic law if they had the power. That's primarily because the secular traditions of the West, stemming from humanism and the Enlightenment, have forced most Christians to reinterpret those Biblical texts that were viewed as a warrant for theocracy prior to the last couple hundred years. I certainly agree that society must be secular rather than theocratic in order to preserve anything approaching liberty, and I obviously am every bit as opposed to the imposition of Christianity as I am the imposition of Islam. But it's also quite clear to me that it is radical Islam that is the primary force for theocracy in the world today, the primary threat to freedom and stability around the world today, and I really do view this not as a battle of civilizations but as a battle for civilization itself. Modern, secular, civilized society based upon basic notions of human rights cannot be theocratic in nature, and theocracy in any form is the enemy of us all. So I would modify your statement a bit and say that it is secularism vs theocracy, not necessarily secularism vs religion, because I don't think most religious people, probably even most Muslims, favor theocracy. But clearly the most powerful movement in favor of theocracy today, and thus opposed to secular civilized society, is found in Islamic radicalism.
So I would modify your statement a bit and say that it is secularism vs theocracy, not necessarily secularism vs religion, because I don't think most religious people, probably even most Muslims, favor theocracy.
I would like to believe this to be true, but there is a problem: In every single case where a muslim population has had anything like a free and fair election, the theocratic party has won. This includes "moderate" Indonesia and "secular" Turkey. Also Pakistan, Iran, Lebanon, Egypt, the Palestinian enclave, and now Afghanistan and Iraq. This is not comforting.
Even before the Age of Enlightenment, Christian Europe was moving in the direction of religious pluralism and individual freedom. Things changed fast once the floodgates opened: The Declaration of Independence came a mere 130 years after the Peace of Westphalia. In that sense, I am hopeful that the muslim world will come around as well. But I'm still waiting for the first evidence.
Ed, that's just not true. There are indeed Christian militias -- even in the USA --
whose "program" does "include violence". To be sure, they don't actually do much
other than talk and write pamphlets, but that is because they get smacked down hard if they try to
do more. Remove all civil authority and see what happens.
Which is precisely my point. The issue is the relationship between religion and government,
not between Christianity and Islam.
I don't see how this follows, at all. By this argument, Islam was secularized in Iraq under
Saddam Hussein.
What I'm trying to point out is that it's not just Islam per se that leads to violence, but the context in which it operates.
True -- and the "context" includes far more than what other colonial powers have done. Focusing solely on the actions of foreigners -- however evil those actions may have been -- is simpleminded, racist ("those poor dumb savages can't think for themselves"), and ignores the fact that the peoples of the regions in question had choices as to their response to those actions. Iran has been independent of our old "puppet," the Shah, for over twenty-five years (and was never actually conquered by any empire); other Arab states have been independent of British rule for MUCH longer. Blaming foreign powers for the present actions of their governments, clerics and militant groups is not only stupid, it's robotic.
Greg Byshenk: I agree, the AKP is not openly theocratic. However, this is largely because it is not allowed to be theocratic and also function as a political party. All of my Turkish friends belong to secular movements (ANAP or DSP), and therefore are biased, but they uniformly believe that the AKP is positioned to ease the transition into politics of more radical clarical groups.
My point therefore would be that even with the education system, the army, and the government all pushing a strong pro-western, pro-secular line, the people vote for the most radical islamic party available. That the AKP is less radical than REFAH or FAZILET reflects what the military will tolerate without another coup.
Kehrsam, what you say could be true, but it would need some evidence to back it up in
order to be accepted as so. Note that it is not merely that "the AKP is not openly theocratic",
but that they are openly and explicitly non-theocratic, in both word and action.