ISIS and LRA are also both at war, and live it poverty-stricken, uneducated parts of the world. Even so, taken by itself, this is weak evidence, however, taken in conjunction with other pieces of evidence; It can support a theory. Good theories explain multiple facts.
I understand you’re saying religion cannot be separated. I would extend that to material causes as well. It’s just as crude to say group x killed because of oil as it is to say they killed for religion. It’s not unreasonable to assume that a society’s resources affects, and is inseparable from, it’s culture, politics, morals, and religious interpretations. Also, wouldn’t material causes fall short of the scrutiny you give towards identifying general causes below?
All of your questions are valid concerns, but that’s just moving back the goalpost. I see it as more productive (scientifically) to either demonstrate a theory false or provide a better one. Maybe you’re looking at it from a more analytical perspective?
I think that the economic/education situations in Syria/Iraq versus Uganda are quite different for many reasons; there is also the fact that many ISIS fighters are foreign. I agree with the judgment you make way back that “religion as the primary cause” theories are rarely useful, but my perspective is that this kind of theory is wrong because of the definitions it uses for religion and the often shallow way proponents analyze situations. Consequently I try to make a holistic approach in order to do just what you suggest, which is to explain multiple facts.
For example, one question asked is how Islam is contributing to the rise of extremism in Syria. Well, it is a fact that the mandatory Syrian Islamic education classes, taught to all students in Syria except Christians and theoretically Jews (who have their own), actively preached the virtues of jihad against infidels as a religious duty. But it is also a fact that these classes were not included in GPA calculations and consequently almost no one pays attention. But the existence of these classes themselves point to the political compromises that the Alawite Assads made with the Sunni religious establishment to maintain power. But the Assad’s odd relationship with secularism left the slightly open space of religion for those who dissented, and so they became the ones who paid more attention. But even if students became convinced of the general goodness of war against the infidels, the curriculum did not teach jihad in the way that ISIS is doing it…
A theory to fit just these facts about one small point in the Syrian cultural milieu into the current situation would require incorporating an understanding of views on religious violence in Syrian Islam, the political circumstances surrounding Assad’s legitimacy, the grievances, histories and strategies of regional dissenting movements, including Islamist ones, and so on. Stopping at “they teach jihad, it is Islam that is the problem” or “most students who took these classes aren’t jihadists, Islam can’t be the problem” is stopping too soon.
I might be giving material causes somewhat short shrift, but that is because I see these material causes as mostly important because the people involved make them important, through tools such as religion and culture etc. On the other hand, I can see how making a big analysis of the religious and cultural reasons behind people rioting after the price of bread went up 400% in one day can be taken as self-indulgent.
Well, productive is something of a value judgment. What we want to happen in Syria or Uganda (and closer to home) will influence our descriptions and actions, and our theories will never be fully demonstrated because our ‘experiments’ aren’t fully replicable or controlled. Looking at recent history, the “heathens gonna heath” theory is clearly false, but treating religion and culture as black boxes in the traditional Westphalian international relations mode is also obsolete.
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A theory to fit just these facts about one small point in the Syrian cultural milieu into the current situation would require incorporating an understanding of views on religious violence in Syrian Islam, the political circumstances surrounding Assad’s legitimacy, the grievances, histories and strategies of regional dissenting movements, including Islamist ones, and so on. Stopping at “they teach jihad, it is Islam that is the problem” or “most students who took these classes aren’t jihadists, Islam can’t be the problem” is stopping too soon.
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I tried to change it to this:
A theory to fit just these facts about one small point in the Syrian cultural milieu into the current situation would require incorporating an understanding of views on religious violence in Syrian Islam, the political circumstances surrounding Assad’s legitimacy, the grievances, histories and strategies of regional dissenting movements, including Islamist ones, and so on. When it comes to explaining Islam’s role(s) in Syria, stopping at “they teach jihad, it is Islam that is the real problem” or “most students who took these classes aren’t jihadists, Islam can’t be the real problem” is stopping too soon. To take a Christian term, it needs a “both … and” approach.
First, the conditions that have created so much unrest in the Middle East and made it such a fertile breeding ground for terrorism are more political than they are religious. The area has been colonized, marginalized, and misruled. One doesn’t need to be if a particular religion to feel angry.
Second, say what you will about some of Reza Aslan’s other points, but to my mind there is no denying that terms like “Muslim countries” and “the Muslim world” are, in fact, stupid. There is no monolithic Muslim world. All of these countries do not agree with each other. Whether you agree that this amounts to bigotry or not, at best it is a distraction from forming a more nuanced view.
Third, I think that blaming terrorism too heavily on religion misidentifies the root of problems in the Middle East and misdirects our attention. Put another way, Maher seems to suggest that there would be no terrorism if there were no Islam, or at least that Islam is the greatest cause of terrorism and all other factors (occupation by Western powers, economic disparity) are secondary. There is also something unsettlingly fatalistic about this view, because it lets us off the hook from examining how our own flawed policies have worsened unrest. It’s unfortunate that Affleck was not more eloquent in the heat of the moment, but I’m sure that this is the point he was attempting to make when he compared criticisms of “the Islamic world” to criticisms of “the black community,” as though conflict in the Middle East is entirely the fault of the people who live there and the West had no hand in it.
Violent strains of Islam are part of the problem, but not the religion itself. The problem cannot be fixed simply by doing away with Islam.
You are missing much of what Maher’s position is. Terrorism is just one factor (and Maher never said or suggested that there would no terrorism if there were no Islam). His larger point is how people are treated who live in (many) Islamic countries. Intolerance of other religions, marginalization of women in society, treatment of gays, etc. are valid criticism of many islamic societies.
Latin America was colonized, marginalized and misruled as well. Unrest there has been savage at times but quite different, even if pundits like Reza Aslan try to draw clumsy equivalencies between Liberation Theology priests and Jihadis.
I agree that there are certainly many legitimate grievances to be had against modern authority structures in the Middle East and against the West, for actions past and present. This fact is often ignored by people like Maher.
The fact that there is no monolithic Islam does not mean that terms like “the Muslim world” or “Muslim countries” are stupid. Aside from **Ibn Warraq’s **point about such senses of identity long existing among Muslims, there are trans-local scholarly traditions, beliefs, and practices that create something more than just a collection of countries. The borders are fuzzy, and nuance is needed, but that does not mean there isn’t something.
This is a fairly typical example of how Reza Aslan is wrong about everything; starting from a basic point (Islam is not a monolith) and deriving superficial conclusions that betray that he does not really know what he’s talking about.
I agree that the problem cannot be fixed by doing away with Islam. This is why it is so frustrating to see governments and NGOs and civil society groups trying to offer solutions without making any real consideration of relevant Islamic traditions.
Gonna have to take the flat-out opposite side. It’s very important to understanding what’s going on in the world, and how to maybe deal with it.
Islam has been particularly violent as a religion, and in particular, it’s requirement of Jihad, in plain, explicit, non-metaphorical terms in its holy book, which is proven by its history of violent conversion makes it unique. Anybody who’s a violent, conversion-forcing jihadist is just being a good muslim. All the other religions, where they may have been violent, have largely been ancillary to the text and practice of the religion; most religious tomes say enough random ass shit that one solid message doesn’t peek through and must be deliberately constructed, and when the authorities do that, it’s for contemporary political reasons. Think the times Christianity has been violent. The Bible and Torah has stuff that seemingly condone violence that liberals like to throw out there, but in fact these are in stories describing what happened historically, they are rarely consistently repeated admonitions to the reader. They can easily be written off as “Well that’s what they did back then, in less advanced times. The moral of the story is that such an issue is that important overall. In the era of political freedom the church/temple can handle it in its own way” And the other religions were all violent at one time or another, but as a by-product of the rise-and-fall-of-practically-everybody pattern, for example the Sikh/Mughal empire. Sikhism itself isn’t particularly war like, though there are pro-war tracts of their holy books and history. Again, such excerpts get muddied by pro-peace-ish tracts.
The conclusion that I draw from all this is that Islam is and always will be a wild card that can easily drive people to violence, once a muslim takes it seriously. As an article I read recently said, the young muslims in Western Countries who seemingly without reason join up jihadist causes, even after living a life of plenty and peace in the West, are just being good muslims, historically and by the text of the Koran. The only way it ever will or can be peaceful consistently is where the people don’t take the religion seriously, like in certain Balkan/Eastern European regions (so I’m told. The existence of the child-massacring Chechnyans makes me skeptical).
But that’s the problem, an Abrahamic religion like Islam is MEANT to be taken seriously, and drives the… “believer” (it could just be someone born into the religion, even in a place where they don’t take the religion seriously, like aforementioned Eastern Europe) to take it seriously, since it’s kind of a roadmap to life, requiring many many specific activities, and having very specific lifestyle behavioral requirements. How do you ignore something like that?
No it hasn’t. Christian countries were certainly as violent, or more violent, at various times in history, compared to Muslim countries as a whole today.
This applies to certain sects/systems within Islam, but not Islam as a whole.
According to who? Many Imams disagree.
I’m going to skip the rest, which is just repeated insistence that Islam is special. Parts of Islam are special – as special as the Christian Crusaders were, for example. But not Islam as a whole. Islam as a whole is not special. The specific circumstances of many regions and nations that happen to be majority Muslim (and some places that are majority Christian or other) are special.
The number of wars waged for the purpose of conversion are few in number and can be found in the first few centuries. After that, even when conversions followed wars, the conversions were not really a motive for the wars, which tended to be intended to expand political empires in the same way that humanity has always conducted wars of conquest.
Beyond that, outside the Middle East, most conversions to Islam were the results of missionary efforts. The lands that we now know as Southeastern India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, and much of sub-Saharan Africa were converted to Islam without any warfare. For that matter, even India (and portions of Bangladesh), that did see Muslim invasions, had already seen a significant missionary conversion prior to the later invasions (carried out for political rather than religious purposes).
The conclusion you draw is based on a poor understanding of actual history filtered through the tracts of people who are more interested in whipping up hatred against Islam, (and Muslims), than actually understanding the differences among different Muslim peoples and beliefs. I notice you carefully ignore the massacres carried out by the Serbian Christians against Muslims or different Christians. You also carefully avoid the violent propagation of Christianity in the Americas.
ISIS has been condemned by pretty much every major group within Islam, so your “They’re just being good Muslims” spiel is rooted in nothing more than anti-Muslim diatribes such as those spouted by Daniel Pipes and Andrew Sullivan and similar types. I realize that you are spouting a common theme among anti-Muslim polemicists, (2003, again), but when the majority of believers in all countries in the world condemn the actions of a group that you are holding up as the “real” Muslims, it pretty well shreds your argument.
Christian countries were violent a long time ago. But A) that was a long time ago and B) the violence wasn’t largely about forced conversion (at least the foreign wars weren’t). Just the crusades. I think there may have been one or two conversion-aimed wars here or there, but nothing compared to Islam’s spread over a 1,000 mile plus area in the middle east.
And how can you discount the actual text? It says “jihad”, it EXPLAINS that it’s holy war. It says it’s a muslim duty. The dude who started all this from supposed revelations from Angel Gabriel actually went out and did holy war.
If you’re gonna ignore this stuff, you’re just ignoring reality
They fight with each other all the time. These are the same people who believe in the death penalty for apostasy, and whose countries have written in law the allowance of murdering one’s wife for being raped (or some such horrible thing like that, it’s hard to keep track of all that awful shit)
Just because there’s a group so crazy that less crazy people condemn them doesn’t mean the latter mentioned crazies aren’t crazy.
Their holy book makes repeated, clear, admonitions to the reader to engage in jihad. The book itself makes it clear it’s not a metaphor. All such passages are NOT negated anywhere else in the book, they’re at best sort of mitigated by passages that admonish muslims to be “nice” to the people they conquered
Additionally, there is a lot of propaganda regarding the term “jihad” on both sides, but insisting that it means “holy war” is at best, incredibly simplistic.
Not really that long ago. WWII was just before I was born. The depradations of Serbia happened within the lifetime of everyone posting on this board.
You are truly ignorant of history. I think you will find that the Mayans, Aztecs, Incas, and others were not particularly pleased to become Christians and the Americas are significantly larger than the Middle East. Most Muslim wars were the same sort of political/imperial conquest wars in which all peoples have engaged. Those fought explicitly to spread Islam died out within about two hundred years of the death of Mohammed.
The struggle is a Muslim duty. However, from the beginning the struggle was seen differently by different Muslims, frequently identifying a war to defend Islam rather than spreading it.
It really is hard to keep track of stuff that some idiot makes up to promote hatred. Perhaps you should stop trying to keep track of the lies and actually try to learn about the genuine beliefs.
I agree that when the Bush administration was criticized by what would later become the Tea Party, it did not indicate that either group was sane, but that is not pertinent to this thread.
Saying that Jihad is a “requirement” neglects the fact that it has generally not been seen as something any Muslim can choose to engage in as he pleases. There are conditions, including with who has the authority to start a conflict. This is where the dispute with ISIS and al-Qaeda etc. is primarily located, from an Islamic standpoint. Do they have the authority to do what they do? Most Muslim clerics are invested in their own regimes and so they say no. A liberal part-time Imam in Boston and Saudi clerics both reject ISIS. We should not assume that they are using the same reasoning.
Many Christians acknowledge the possibility of ‘Just War’ but do not necessarily take that to mean they themselves can start an armed struggle against who ever.
Islam does historically have authority structures for maintaining order and their version of orthodoxy (which typically involved focusing on describing things that were forbidden, rather than outlining specific truths for all to adhere to, as in creeds). The problem is that these structures were largely destroyed during the colonial era, and what remains is spectacularly unsuited to the task of promoting unity and modern rights within the Islamic world today. Islam is currently in chaos. Where it goes is something that affects most people to some degree, and non-Muslims should consider how to approach it if they want to encourage their preferred trends.
I somewhat disagree with this point because regions and nations don’t happen to be majority Muslim (or Christian) in the sense that you seem to be implying; religion has deep and ongoing effects on the whole range of societal issues. The issue is that Islam (or other trans-local religions) does not affect every society in exactly the same way, and it is not the only influence. But it does affect things.
Yes, in one sense you can say that the wars waged specifically for conversion were the wars against non-People of the Book in the Middle East and North Africa in particular. These died out pretty fast, except for occasional flare ups in small places here and there - efforts against the Kalash being a relatively recent example. Future wars were not specifically for conversion but often for extending Islamic rule, which is an important distinction.
Historically speaking, the attitude toward forced conversion in Islam is very mixed. And as in some Christian areas, conversion of a tribal leader or king or community leader often meant conversion of everyone under him, regardless of what they wanted.
Jihad is endorsed but under specific circumstances and left up to later rulers. This isn’t to excuse it, but to explain it. It therefore requires a different response than what you seem to be envisioning.
My opinions of Muhammad and the Qur’an are quite critical, but I see that they aren’t all of Islam either, and this is by design.
ISIS obviously thinks they are being good Muslims, but other Muslims disagree. For the perspective of someone outside of Islam, I’m not sure what the point is in trying to decide who is the real representative of a religion that they think isn’t true anyway. It’s one thing to analyze trends, it’s another to act as if there is a true monolithic Islam protected from alteration by some power and affecting all “true” Muslims to some degree.
Texts don’t hold the same position in different religions. Not every religion has a distinct clergy.
I mention these to talk about how violence found in texts does not necessarily translate to violence in even mainstream interpretations.
“Slay the infidel” is not the only form of violence a religion can promote.
I too get frustrated by the often inane equivalencies drawn between religions to prove that they are all the same, but the argument here is off. In Catholicism, for example, the Church through the Bishops has the authority to teach on faith and morals and interpret scripture. And they exercise that right, often. They convene councils and come into communion with the Pope in part to provide clarity.
Religions lose clarity the more people claim authorial agency. This affects Islam too.
What is the aim of this violence that Islam drives people toward?
There’s an elephant in the room that is rather ignored:
Islam gets somewhat of a free pass because it’s a minority in the United States, and therefore many people feel that diversity is needed and that we have to turn a blind eye to violent teachings of that “religion that brings diversity to America.”
Christianity, on the other hand, is the main religion of the USA, and so people don’t give it that same free pass, because Christianity doesn’t bring “diversity” to America, so, why should we extend it any benefit of the doubt?