Where did fundamentalist Islam's polio vaccine paranoia come from?

Factual Questions
41

Can you not understand that whether saying it would cause problems is completely irrelevant to whether or not the statement is true? (Not saying it is, but that your statement is no rebutal.) I don’t read Chessic Sense as trying to say that we should tell them that they are evil, just that we shouldn’t completely avoid thinking about morality because you’ve explained their actions. Just because something is understandable doesn’t make it not evil. As you admit, these local religious authorities are keeping people from using Western medicine less because they think it’s really evil, and more because it resonates heavily with the population. They are putting their own political motives above their people’s wellbeing, which is a type of evil.

Not that your entire claim that people wanted you to say “Islam is evil” is not a complete strawman. The one person who voiced doubt in what you said did so because you didn’t clarify that you agreed these people were wrong in their beliefs about Western medicine. It had nothing to do with morality and everything to do with the fact that you explained everything so completely that it sounded like you might agree with them. Combined with your reputation (deserved or not) of thinking that the ways of other cultures are superior to our own, it led to someone misinterpreting you.

All you needed to do as a response was to say something like the following: “I thought it was obvious that I think Western medicine, being evidence-based, is superior to the magical thinking of other practices, but these people aren’t in a position to know that.”

42

Yes! This is the core of what I was trying to say, only better put. You’re going to have the small minority of whackos anywhere, in any country and religion. But in any country, cultural and societal conditions mean that your average non-whacko person is much more open to falling for certain forms of whacko than to others. (In the US, for example, for whatever swirl of cultural reasons, there seem to be otherwise sane people who genuinely believe the whackos’ story that Obama is a Kenyan Muslim Nazi socialist. I seriously doubt you’ll find that belief in any significant number of sane people outside the US.)

If you’ve got a small minority of fundamentalists screaming that the polio vaccine is a conspiracy against Islam, combined with country-specific cultural and societal factors making the average person wary of Western medicine in general…that’s a recipe for rejection of the polio vaccine. If you don’t have those cultural and social factors in place (like in the Scottish study I linked, for example), then the whackos can scream as loud as they want: they won’t get a significant number of non-whackos to believe them.

43

It just hasn’t happened to pick up political currency in Christian areas. Plenty of other, similar things have, such as HIV skepticism. But wedge issues are often fairly random. Why is the US convinced that single payer healthcare is a pinko plot? Why is China so obsessed with Taiwan? Why did Switzerland ban minerets when they only had two in the entire country? It’s just an easy way to get people riled up.

Why vaccination? Vaccination campaigns have strong historical associations with missionaries, which I’d guess is one reason why Muslim communities might be more likely to be suspicious. And these programs are perceived as Western efforts, and there is some strong anti Western sentiment in some areas.

44

Does anyone know whether the same communities that have the ‘polio vaccine = sterility conspiracy’ paranoia also have the ‘MMR = autism’ paranoia?

Because I think that one is a good example of what I’m talking about, the whacko getting traction due to cultural conditions. We in the West are very used to things having explanations; when something doesn’t, the way autism currently doesn’t, we have a tendency to get panicky and seize on any remotely logical-sounding explanation that floats past. So, just off the top of my head, I’d expect that particular paranoia to have a lot less traction in societies that are less used to having scientific explanations for every problem. I’d love to know whether that’s true.

45

So…no, then? Unless you can back up your assertion that polio’s oral vaccine was associated with missionaries in India/Nigeria/Pakistan, or that strong anti western sentiment in India and Nigeria was what led to the anti polio vaccine rumours among Muslims?

46

I am on the road, but i can get some cites when i get home. To begin with, World Vision and Catholic Relief Services are two of the largest implementing organizations for international public health programs.

47

Moderator Note

Chessic Sense, attributing the Taliban’s policies to all of Islam isn’t appropriate for General Questions. Let’s avoid painting with too broad a brush. No warning issued.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

48

Which is being exploited by the killers of immunization workers. One suspects the Taliban is motivated less by suspicions of the West than by “practical” considerations:

“The Taliban have repeatedly said the campaign is a western conspiracy to sterilise or spy on Muslims. They have also said the vaccinations could continue only if attacks by US drone aircraft stopped.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/19/more-polio-vaccination-workers-killed

So this particular bunch of radical Islamist sleazebags is A-OK with letting the Evil West sterilize or spy on Muslims, as long as they get an advantage out of it. They’re holding the lives of children and aid workers hostage in order to keep themselves in power.

49

Today’s Daily Mail:

Seven Pakistan aid workers - including six women - executed by Taliban for ‘distributing polio vaccine’
Six women aid workers and a male doctor shot dean by gunmen
Gunmen removed child from vehicle, shot adults and put child back
160 aid staff have suspended work following the killings
By SEAN O’HARE
PUBLISHED: 04:33 EST, 2 January 2013 | UPDATED: 06:47 EST, 2 January 2013
Yes, it’s definitely “we” who are uncivilized savages and are responsible.

50

What? Again? Didn’t they just kill seven health workers last week? I thought they’d suspended vaccinations after that?

51

Eh. I’m not at all supporting the targeting of health workers, and I believe in vaccines. That said, I feel the urge to play devil’s advocate to some of these too-easy assertions.

Well, here’s some murderers of “public health workers offering free life-saving medical interventions” who aren’t Islamic.

That’s terrible. However, they would point to drone strike casualties in Pakistan:

[QUOTE=Wikipedia]
Reports of the number of militants versus civilian casualties differ.[12] According to the Pakistani authorities, 60 cross-border predator strikes in the period from January 2006 to April 2009 killed 14 wanted al-Qaeda leaders and 687 Pakistani civilians.[13][14] In a 2009 opinion article, Daniel L. Byman of the Brookings Institution wrote that drone strikes may have killed “10 or so civilians” for every “mid- and high-ranking [al Qaeda and Taliban] leader.”[15] In contrast, the New America Foundation has estimated that 80 percent of those killed in the attacks were militants.[16] The Pakistani military has stated that most of those killed were hardcore Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants.[17] The CIA believes that the strikes conducted since May 2010 have killed over 600 militants and have not caused any civilian fatalities, a claim that some experts disputed.[12] The Bureau of Investigative Journalism found that between 391 – 780 civilians were killed out of a total of between 1,658 and 2,597 and that 160 children are reported among the deaths.
[/QUOTE]

Well, there’s these folks.

52

As the Devil’s Advocate™ I must point out that anti-abortion crazies who commit murder do not do so under the guidance of a religious sect, nor do their imam equivalents encourage such behavior. And since we’re talking about self-identified Christians: while arguably their religious leaders do not speak out forcefully enough against these actions, it is far more common to hear denunciations of anti-abortion violence from Christian leaders than denunciations of antivax violence from Muslim leaders.

53

That’s not being a Devil’s Advocate. A Devil’s Advocate, by definition and in common and correct usage, is putting forth the arguments of the person (“Devil”) or thought under under attack or criticism.

We’re talking about people who attack/criticize/disagree with/murder for their own reasons vaccination. You have changed the subject.

Merely calling oneself a “Devil’s Advocate” does not immediately confer the mantle of being the calm and rational person who really can see both sides of an issue. It’s not a get-out-of-having to-concentrate pass.

Your comment was nice for a discussion of morality of war, etc., but had jack-all to do with OP.

54

Allow me to dial down. You said “they” would. My comments “would” primarily go to “them”–and, here, I doubt Jenny McCarthyites would point to drone killings, so “them” are millions of people, in America and abroad, who act in the same nitwit manner regarding Jihadist actions.

55

I wish you would have bothered to actually provide anything contextual. That would have been most helpful.

56

Did anyone say that?

I have friends who are, right now, working on public health programs in Afghanistan. Like it or not, they need to understand where these fears are coming from, because working around those fears is the best chance they have to stay safe. They do not have the luxury of writing this off as “crazy Jihadis”. They need to know how and why the people they work with are hostile, and it’s not a simple answer.

Yes, not everything is being done for the benefit of Western audiences, but these places are not cut off from current events. The town I lived in in Northern Cameroon (14 kilometers from the Nigerian border) had two gas stations (which were actually wooden stands holding up gallon bottles of fuel, and a funnel to get it into the tank). These were named Baghdad City and US-Pakistan Gas. Osama Bin Laden tee shirts were sold on the street, and the vendors didn’t full understand why I wasn’t interested in buying one. Out there, Osama Bin Laden is often seen as somewhat like Che Guavera- an iconic figure who stuck it to the man, though people are a bit hazy as to exactly how or why. The understanding of events was filtered and came out in strange ways, but “the US attacks Muslims for specious reasons” has pretty much become an idea that many Muslim areas have picked up on, and it’s not particular pleasing to them.

And when you are a local power player trying to get a following, these are easy cards to play. Being against the US is pretty easy when you live in Kano. What is the US going to do? Send a drone to take you out for giving a few polarizing speeches? And imagine the awe and respect it gives when you take one of these people- who were previously somewhat god-like, appearing and disappearing from a world completely foreign to you and full of nearly unlimited resources- and make them just another dead piece of human flesh? A wanna-be leader who can do that has a sure way to attract the unemployed youth who are looking for something to focus their anger at, and that’s the first step to consolidating power.

All of the “Islamicist” thugs in Mali were well known ordinary criminals for decades before any of this happened. “Radical Islam” is just a branding opportunity. And the angry young men this brand attracts, unfortunately, are the same young men that have fueled pretty much every violent quasi-political movement in history. Unemployed, unmarried men with few prospects will follow just about anything.

I DON’T THINK THIS IS WHAT IS RIGHT. But it is what is happening. Nigeria has been stuck in a low grade civil war for decades, which, while it could be thought of in terms of religions, is actually very much about regional power and resources. Through various reasons, vaccines have gotten mixed up in all of this. But ultimately, I don’t think it’s about vaccines or religion as much as very regional struggles of a place dealing with modernity, a new branding of local power players, and an easy way to tap into the ordinary population’s deep seated fears.

57

Matter of opinion, I guess. I’ve heard things from US religious leaders that seemed like covert exhortation/endorsement of such acts.

58

And, regarding Africa, I wonder how many cases of AIDS were trnsmistted by clinics that reused non-sterilr needles when drawing blood, giving vaccinations? If you live in a remote area, and your choice in healthcare is between a witch doctor and a filthy, under equipped clinic, what would you pick? Both choices are not too good.

59

Nope, I don’t recall anyone here saying that. It’s called a “strawman” argument.

Have you considered that your Peace Corps experience there may not fully explain what happens in Nigeria and Pakistan? Or are all those funny Third World places the same in your view?

I suggest this is a far more blatantly dismissive stereotypical “Western” attitude than anything previously expressed during this discussion.

60

I know nothing at all about what goes on in Pakistan.

But yeah, living, working, doing public health campaigns, and listening to people for two years in a small Muslim Hausa-Fulbe village with an economic and cultural orientation towards Maiduguri does give you some insight into what is going on in the minds of everyday people in that area. We aren’t talking the US-Mexico border here. I was well within that cultural band. Spending another two years doing graduate work on security and development has given me a better understanding of Nigerian conflicts on the political scale. While I don’t have a perfect understanding, I do have a lot more insight into what is going on in people’s heads than the average guy who reads the NYT now and then.

Let’s check out the first line of a Foreign Policy article on Iyad Ag Ghali, the leader of Ansar Dine, the “Islamicist” group currently causing so much trouble in Northern Mali:

It begins: “He was once known for his drinking habits, his stylish mustache, and his serial womanizing,” and then it traces his rise to stardom from small time mercenary to international menace. This man is aligned to “Islamism” as a political force.

Here is another good article showing why the violence in Mali is different than Afghanistan:

It’s complex, and above all it is very local, very political, and very saavy of how to play the US and France to achieve goals.