I want to commend all the Dopers who have restrained the impulse to a sniggering and juvenile response.
Question for Miller and tomndebb: If you heard that a White Pride march was to take place in your town tomorrow and anti-fascists were turning up to counter-protest, would you join the counter-protest? If so, why? If not, why not? Cheers.
In my town? I would ignore it. Joining 15 protesters to jeer at seven kook racists would seem to give the racists more attention than they deserve.
I have gone to “town meetings” to make sure that various discriminatory proposals were not taken to the township board, but the few efforts to promote racist agendas in my little exurb over the last thirty years have been met with nearly universal scorn. (We have had one Tea Party politician try to make hay over the lie about the “World Trade Center mosque”, but he was soundly defeated in his run for office. He then talked the GOP leadership into appointing him to finish out the legislative term of a guy who resigned, but he was trounced when he had to run for office on his own.)
If campaigning against violence or extremism is their thing, then yes, I’d expect that, but if their focus is the campaign against, say, human trafficking, I’d imagine them to be energetic about that.
People are outspoken about things about which they are passionate. I just don’t think there’s any reason to expect Grandma Anglican to be specifically any more or less energetic (or interested) in denouncing the Phelpses than the average Joe Public is energetic or interested in doing that.
If the degree to which Grandma feels herself affiliated with the Phelpses is zero, same as Joe Public, then why should we expect her to take any responsibility for them?
I think we’re talking past each other. Who said anything about Grandma? She isn’t a spokesman for the church. Is she a member of the SDMB? I’m more thinking of prominent people, the sort who are likely to speak out anyway. This isn’t some weird universal service obligation; I’m only talking about the usual modes of public speech.
If a prominent Catholic priest committed a serious crime, I think the Vatican should say something to denounce it, just to give them distance in the public mind. If a prominent Protestant minister committed a serious crime, the Vatican should still say something, but very carefully, so as not to appear to be capitalizing.
The book I read the agent talked about it. It grossed him out to the extreme and had to shower afterwards to get the creepy feeling off him. It was also hard for him to not just lash out. But in the long run they did arrest several members when they got them for arranging a trip overseas to have sex with boys.
But what if it was more than seven kooks? What if it was a few hundred, or more? They don’t all need to be from your town. Committed racists will happily travel long distances to attend White Pride marches. Wouldn’t you be worried about the potentially chilling effect on minority relations your (and others’) silence would have? Why would you just sit back and let the extremists write the script?
The reason I ask is that I can’t for the life of me fathom why there is so much animosity to the idea of moderate Muslims protesting the actions of Islamic terrorists. It seems to me that it’s in their best interests to protest. They should want to.
Like it or not, right now the terrorists and their fundamentalist supporters are writing the script. They’re in charge of the message purely by virtue of the fact that they’re speaking the loudest. That’s just the way things are. Sure, you can complain that things should be different, but they just aren’t. So that’s that. Surely it’s in the interests of moderate Muslims to shout back and try to drown out the fundamentalists with a tolerant message of their own?
I’ll give you an example from my own life. A while back the English Defence League decided to hold a protest march through my area. A counter protest was organised by a local student group, and on the day the counter-protestors ended up outnumbering the EDL scumbags by about 5 to 1, easy. As a result, the EDL’s bigoted message, a message calculated to frighten and alienate minorities, was (at least partially) neutralised by the sheer volume of the counter-protestors’ message of tolerance and inclusivity. Score 1 for anti-fascism.
I was under no obligation to attend that counter-protest, but I did anyway. I attended for two reasons. Firstly, I wanted to do my part to make sure that the minority groups in my town knew that not all white people were bigots. Secondly, the EDL’s message is so objectionable that I wouldn’t have been able to look myself in the mirror if I hadn’t gone out there and done my small part to try and drown it out. In short, I counter-protested because I thought it would be socially beneficial and because it was just the right thing to do.
On March 22nd this year, a group of anti-semites have organised a march through the London district of Stamford Hill, home to a large orthodox Jewish community. I’ve got Jewish friends in Stamford Hill so I’m going to be out there counter-protesting again, even though it’ll mean taking a day off (I usually work Sundays), and even though it’ll mean travelling quite a bit out of my way. Again, it’s just the right thing to do.
Why is this same sentiment so rare among moderate Muslims? It’s not like they lack things to protest against. Indeed, a moderate Muslim has far more reasons to protest the actions of Muslim extremists than I do to protest against the EDL. After all, the only thing I have in common with the EDL is skin colour. Moderate Muslims and fundamentalist Muslims share the same holy book. That’s a far more tangible link, especially considering the crucial fact that if you actually sit down and read the thing you’ll find that the fundamentalist version of Islam is actually quite a defensible one. Put it this way, if I was to role-play in GD as a terror-supporting Wahhabist, and again as a white British racist, I’d have a much easier time defending the intellectual integrity of the former than the latter.
So again, why is the sentiment that one has a moral responsibility to protest those who misrepresent your group so vanishingly rare among moderate Muslims? And why do so many Muslims just flat out refuse to accept the fact that their silence in the face of fundamentalist insanity and violence has resulted in a very real PR problem for them that only they can fix?
I can think of two answers. The first is that moderate Muslims believe it to be self-evident that they are on opposite end of the religious spectrum to the fundamentalists. Therefore, anyone who believes that the fundamentalists represent “true” Islam is a bigot. I find this view naive and misinformed for several reasons:
[ul]
[li] The Qur’an is, in fact, a very bigoted book, stuffed to the brim with life-destroying gibberish and relentless condemnation of anyone who isn’t, or no longer wants to be, a Muslim. People who try to debunk the fundamentalists by reading the Qur’an are going to come away confused at best and horrified at worst. Scripturally, at least, it’s not self evident at all that the fundamentalists have got it wrong.[/li]
[li] British Muslims have been polled on their religious and social opinions and the results are…well, let’s just say they’re not encouraging. In comparison, British Muslims tend to be more homophobic, more anti-choice, and more misogynist than their French and German counterparts. 40% of British Muslims support the introduction of Sharia Law, and a staggering 1 in 4 British Muslims has some sympathy with the Charlie Hebdo murderers. Furthermore, while it seems no atrocity committed in the name of Islam is too terrible to stir British moderates from their dogmatic slumbers, their fundamentalist counterparts have absolutely no problem whatsoever walking the walk: British Muslims Gather in London to Protest Against Muhammed Cartoons. Again, given these poll results it is in no way self-evident that moderate Muslims represent the true face of Islam. Indeed, it’s not even entirely self-evident that moderate Muslims are all that moderate.[/li]
[li] For better or worse, this simply isn’t how a lot of people actually think in the real world. In the real world, people listen to those with the loudest voices. If the loudest voices are saying ugly and divisive things like Behead Those Who Insult Islam!, and if those voices go largely unopposed (which they did) then they will dictate the conversation. Is this right? Fair? Of course not. Too bad. That’s just the way it is. Moderate muslims can decry that to their heart’s content but it’s not going to make a blind bit of difference. Simply from a public relations perspective, counter-protesting is the obvious choice.[/ul][/li]
In my opinion (and, at this stage, in the opinions of a lot of people) the idea that the onus is on non-muslims to ignore fundamentalists rather than on moderate Muslims to provide a counterpoint simply doesn’t hold water. For one thing, it’s not just enough to ignore fundamentalists. One must ignore the scripture they cite (which is voluminous), the violence of their actions (which is frequently appalling), and the seeming never-ending stream of poll results which, when taken together, seem to indicate that moderate Muslims aren’t actually all that moderate in the first place. Why should people do that when moderate Muslims can’t even be bothered to stir themselves to spread a moderate message?
If I were to go on TV tomorrow and burn a Qur’an, there would be riots all over the world. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of people would die, and I would spend the rest of my life fending off credible death threats (sidebar: did you know the Danish cartoonists are all still in hiding?). Yet ISIS can crucify, immolate, and decapitate with abandon, sell women and children into sexual slavery, and impose a psychotically draconian interpretation of Sharia on millions all in the name of Islam, and the response is…what? A couple of muted protests in Europe, and a hashtag. Can you really blame people for being underwhelmed?
The EDL aren’t doing anything like that and I still feel a moral imperative to protest them when I can, and I’ve got arguably less in common with an EDL member than a moderate Muslim has in common with a fundamentalist.
Personally, I think a more persuasive reason why moderate Muslims may not wish to protest the deranged actions and pronouncements of the fundamentalists is simply that doing so is just flat out dangerous. To be honest, I find this explanation both more believable and much easier to sympathise with. It is dangerous standing up to Islamic extremists, especially if you live among them. It’s all very well me boasting about attending EDL counter-protests but to be perfectly honest, I have to admit that if I were a genuine Muslim moderate living in an endemically fundamentalist area, I’m not sure I’d have the guts to speak out.
While I think that to say Muslims have no obligation to speak out is technically true, it’s only true in the sense that no-one is really obligated to do anything. Condemning the extremists would still be a very morally right and morally courageous thing to do. The best thing that non-muslims can do is try and create safe spaces for such condemnations to occur.
Again, there is little that moderate Muslims could do to change it. Terrorists will be terrorists. Those who’ve made up their mind to blow up people won’t be dissuaded by scolding or condemnation. Sure, moderate Muslims could condemn terrorism, but let’s not pretend that would make a big practical difference.
Well, not to the terrorists, obviously. For the butchers of ISIS, the moderate is just a failed fundamentalist, barely better than an atheist. Do you remember the attack on the Westgate shopping centre in Kenya? When the terrorists realised that there were muslims among their prisoners, they decided to test their bona fides by asking them who Mohammed’s father was. Those who didn’t know were executed. So yeah, terrorists couldn’t give a shit what Muslim moderates say. The point of condemning terrorist violence isn’t to impress the terrorists, it’s to impress everyone else in society; Christians, Hindus, Jews, atheists, and everyone else.
We hear all the time that people are driven to take up arms for terror groups because they feel ‘alienated’ from society. Well, let’s assume that’s true. It behooves everyone, especially moderate Muslims, to do whatever they can to reduce the extent to which members of their communities feel alienated. By doing simple things like condemning violence, speaking out against bigotry, and standing up for free speech they will help build trust between themselves and the groups that the fundamentalists threaten (that is to say, everyone else) just like counter-protestors I mentioned in my previous post helped undo some of the harm that the EDL were trying to cause when they held a White Pride march through my town. The more trust is built, the less alienation the fundamentalists can exploit.
If the moderate Muslims don’t speak up then fundamentalist hate speech and violence will go unanswered. Distrust will grow and that will lead to alienation, which in turn will lead to radicalisation, which will lead to more hate speech and more violence, at which point the cycle begins all over again. It’s in the self-interest of moderate Muslims to break that cycle and I think one of the easiest ways they can do that is condemn the fundamentalists, loudly and often. Also, condemning religious lunacy is good for it’s own sake. And it’s not like they would be doing it alone. Everyone else condemns Islamic fundamentalists constantly.
By way of comparison, consider the English Defence League counter-protest I joined that I mentioned in my last post. I don’t know how many of us there were but it seemed like at least a good couple of hundred, probably more. None of us were under any obligation to be there, and the EDL certainly didn’t care what we had to say, but neither of those things mattered. We weren’t talking to the EDL, we were talking to the people they threatened. And whether we had an obligation to be there hardly matters. It was good that we were.
Well, Doc, you could always fly over there, don a burka, try to blend in, and when they are at Mosque and about to attend to their prayers, hold up a sign that says, “UNION…!” 
There are two reasons for the reaction you perceive.
The first is the obvious, (to those who actually pay attention to the world with news sources that are not limited to U.S. mainstream media):
Moderate Muslim are constantly condemning the behavior of the extremists. (If nothing else, they do so because they are the primary targets of the extremists.) Imams who criticize the Salafists or who condemn ISIS simply do not get reported in the U.S. news.
The second point is not that it is not a good idea for the moderates to battle the extremists, but that it is a horrible idea for some uninformed outsider to order moderate Muslims to act in a particular way. Any given human is connected to some group that is behaving badly. Every human has a limited amount of time, money, energy, and knowledge to actively oppose those who are evil. In the U.S., while it is immensely better, today, than fifty years ago, there is still a certain amount of racism that is harming black society. If you are white, may I criticize you for not doing “enough” to eliminate that racism? On the other hand, the black community, particularly in the inner cities, has very large problems with absent fathers, unwed mothers, lack of education, etc. If you are black, may I criticize or condemn you for failing to do enough to remedy those situations? I can look at any group–male, female, people of any age cohort, various religious groups, various educational levels, various occupations, etc., and find something that some subset is doing wrong. Where is my right to demand any specific group or individual address all of those wrongs among overlapping groups? I am a male, white, straight, Christian in the middle class. I would contend that I am exerting efforts to oppose racism, sexism, and discrimination against people who are not straight. Those efforts require a certain amount of time, money, and energy. What gives anyone the right to tell me that I must expend more resources (that I may not possess) to fight other evils in groups in which I would appear in a Venn diagram? What gives anyone the right to tell me that, if I have finite resources, I must reduce my efforts in the areas where I now invest them in order to go fight a different problem? Why should I be subjected to condemnation for not fighting “harder” (whatever that means) against pedophilia when I might have a lot of resources tied up in fighting human trafficking, (a related, but not identical, problem)?
No one is suggesting that it would not be a good idea for moderate Muslims to oppose extremist Islam, (aside from the fact that they already are doing so). The problem with the OP of this thread is that it presumes that one group has the right to dictate to another group, (or to individuals within another group), just where their priorities must lie.
Since the alienation in Europe or the U.S. generally is from the larger, non-Muslim community, this is exactly backwards. A Muslim community, isolated by its neighbors, is in no position to create the situation where younger Muslims can find better jobs or better housing.
Similarly, poorer nations are not able to magically provide more opportunities for their citizens. It requires the support of richer nations to help the poorer nations develop. In the spirit of the OP, we might ask (but I won’t) what have you done to ensure that Somalia, Nigeria, Libya, or Jordan has a better economy? Most of these nations have social and cultural realities that are not easily remedied and until the world finds ways to raise the standard of living for all people, there will always be some sort of threat from an ideology that appears to offer a way out. That was true of Marxism. It is now true of Fundamentalist Islam. When the current issue is put to rest, a new issue will rise to capture the imagination of the disaffected.
Why would it be up to gays and lesbians? What NAMBLA stands for is repulsive to all decent human beings. They have a right to voice their opinions, but it is up to all of us, not just gays and lesbians, to ensure they don’t get what they want.
Gays are not pedophiles, they do not have an obligation to pretend they are because your are so fucking stupid as to not know the difference.
If you are a non-practicing pedophile, as I suppose you may be by your prurient and trolling protest too much interest in this subject, perhaps you have an obligation to stop the organizing of pedophiles. Turn state’s evidence now Valteron, and leave law abiding people alone.
Gays are not pedophiles, they do not have an obligation to pretend they are because your are so fucking stupid as to not know the difference.
If you are a non-practicing pedophile, as I suppose you may be by your prurient and trolling protest too much interest in this subject, perhaps you have an obligation to stop the organizing of pedophiles. Turn state’s evidence now Valteron, and leave law abiding people alone.
You’re turning your scorn to the wrong person.
It was a moderator who made the initial reference to homosexuality-NAMBLA and continues to defend it as a valid analogy.
Valteron is gay, and I’m sure he knows that does not put him in the class of child predators.
And that may not even be the intention! But, it comes across that way to someone who is already on the defensive. Like there is some sort of demand that you do something to prove to an outside observer’s satisfaction that you are one of the good ones, against the bad ones. Muslims vs. Islamoterrorists, non-criminal people of various sexualities vs. sex crime (including FWIW decent men vs. rape), members of the dominant classes/races/gender vs. various bigotries, etc.
Also, as was said, it’s easy to say moderates should have the guts to stand up to the extremists when the worst that can happen to *us *is to get rude words hurled our way.
Oh, and gays cracking down on NAMBLA? Piece of cake. Done *years *ago.
And as for NAMBLA itself, it’s a self-proclaimed “North American Association”. In reality from all I read it’s now just a handful of losers who use an aggrandizing name.
Is this revised version of SageRat’s post any better?
An extremist Christian terrorist is mostly going to know other Christian extremists , he’s going to mostly confide with other Christian extremists , etc. There’s very little that anyone else except Christians can do to help staunch the extreme branches of Christian thought.
**Is it up to gays and lesbians to put shut down NAMBLA? **
Of course it is! The organization needs to be dealt with straight away by the Gay Police and the LGBT FBI. It’s just a shame that Gay Edgar Hoover isn’t still in charge. He’d sort things out!
And you keep joining Valteron in missing the point. * ::: shrug. ::: *