Another Dark Day and Night
On November 13 of the present year, Islamic terrorists attacked citizens, who engaged in the usual course of life in civil society, in Paris. Notably, they picked a particularly cosmopolitan venue in which to do it, and this milieu is significant of their contempt for Western values. At the time of this writing at least 132 souls have departed as a result of the savagery of Islamists. All Muslims are not the problem, or even necessarily a problem. But some Muslims are a problem; in fact they are the biggest problem. And Islam itself is significant of why they have entered into the course of conduct they are on today. This must be stated and repeated unequivocally and unabashedly.
I’ll do a bit of online literature review to create a sort of intuitive impressionistic view of the reaction so far (it’s even smaller than the universe of periodicals I typically read). The Guardian points out that a café bearing the namesake of Voltaire was one of the targets of opportunity of the attackers; and still hopes for tolerance and liberty and coexistence in an increasingly pessimistic tone: www.theguardian.com/.... The Guardian points out the Frenchman Voltaire even wrote a scathing satire using Islam, but it was really a technique for lambasting the Catholic Church. In “On Universal Toleration”, Voltaire once wrote,
I fancy that I could stagger the headstrong pride of an imam… were I to address them in the following manner: “This little globe, nothing more than a point, rolls in space like so many other globes; we are lost in that immensity of space in which we are all alike confounded. Man, some five feet tall, is certainly a very inconsiderable part of the creation; but one of those hardly visible beings says to others of the same kind inhabiting another spot of the globe: ‘Hearken to me, for the God of all these worlds has enlightened me. There are nine hundred million of us little insects, who inhabit the earth, but my anthill alone is cherished by God, He who holds all the rest in horror and detestation; those who live with me upon my spot will alone be happy, the rest will be eternally wretched." At that, they would cut me short and ask, ‘What madman made so ridiculous a speech?’ I would be obliged to reply,’It is yourselves...’
FP notes that France has already started responding to an "act of war" on the part of ISIL, which claimed credit for the attacks, with bombardments in the Middle East, and further indicates there may be a closer working relationship between American and France in combating Islamic terrorism: foreignpolicy.com/.... I'm going to follow the official convention and refer to it as ISIL, though many call it "ISIS", which denotes the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Some are tersely calling it IS or "the Islamic State". I think this is a mistake. It is not "the" Islamic state. It's just another Islamic state in a region with others that may or may not support terrorism as official policy. More specificity is needed.
CFR suggests using an all-in approach of combining soft power with hard power, a typical (and reasonable) line of the establishment left and its internationalist coterie: www.cfr.org/.... It is hard to imagine a way forward without engaging hearts and minds with alternatives to extremism, thereby denying the enemy some of its arguments and justifications that are used as recruitment tools. I have not seen any suggestions of using the fusion cell approach that JSOC (Joint Special Operation Command) used to combat AQI (Al Qaeda in Iraq). CFR points out the diversity with which European governments and societies treat minority groups and migrants. This point cannot be overemphasized enough who want to paint the European colonialist/imperialist reality with a broad brush and as a gestalt. I caution leftists about committing the capitonnage fallacy with respect to European civilization. There is as much nuance in the ways different European societies, governments, and national and transnational NGOs have treated historically-disadvantaged minorities at home, in the colonies, and abroad as there is in how these minority groups have responded to European settlements and, as refugees or migrants, settlement within Europe.
Some progressives are causally connecting American foreign policy, European colonization, and ISIL: reverbpress.com/.... This is clear instance of fuzzy thinking, how ironic. Europeans have brought increased violence and militarism to a world already saturated with violence and militarism. Violence is human nature. The peoples of North Africa and West Asia were not noble savages before European soles deigned to leave imprints on their sands. It's true Europe and America and its leaders have much to atone for in causing the proliferation of Islamic terrorism. Including the decidedly non-European president Barack Hussein Obama, who's also complicit in maintaining detainees at Guantanamo and expanding surveillance and drone attacks in the region, as well as deploying special operations forces on multiple combat missions in Yemen, Pakistan, now Syria, among other places. No matter the color of the men and women heading up the institutions, the behavior is the same. So, it's hard to just blame Europeans for the institutional behavior of multiracial institutions. We were unable to spread democracy there, and likely would be unable to spread democracy and civility there if we were seriously engaged in such work and not using it as a pretense. Think about how depressing a thought that is. The Islamic terrorists are acting in ways that are precipitated by their beliefs—beliefs which stem from the archaic and vicious doctrines of a Middle Ages text written by a violent, pedophilic psychopath known as Muhammad. The Anglo-American empire is partly responsible for creating the environment where the Taliban could thrive, but did not do so with even the tacit support or acceptance of all European and American people. Many Westerners have been protesting these actions for decades. Ultimately, these Muslims are personally responsible and morally complicit for their actions, just as anyone would be. We’ve certainly made the problem worse by training and equipping the forerunners of Al Qaeda and ISIL. No one should deny this complicity. But to find a fuzzy systemic cause resting in critical theoretic notions of Western supremacy and imperialism, while failing to blame the Muslims themselves, is to deny a causal link between belief and action. That is what is at stake. They confess to acting on the basis of their stated beliefs. And they oppose many things, not just the United States and its way of life.
As a cautionary tale, take the case of Sudan. My Sudanese friends told me this story many times. At first, the Arabic Muslims took control of the Khartoum government. They began killing the black African animists and the west and Christians in the south under the Islamization policy. Once these black Africans started converting to Islam, the Muslim Arabs began exterminating them under their Arabization policies, even though many of these Arabs were also part black African. Men who seek to do ill in this world, dictators, tyrants, zealots, fanatics, and those who long for a darker and more dangerous world will always find a pretext for their horrible actions, as white imperialists have done. If they were to succeed in their stated goals of eradicating white imperialists and crusaders first, they would probably come for someone else next. They are not an ally of the left and progressives do the cause of justice no service by trucking in their canards or making common cause with the Other.
Enlightenment
The Enlightenment tradition of Western civilization is the jewel in the crown of humanity, and must be preserved against right-wing traditionalists and regressive leftist critics alike. So, what is enlightenment? In Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant attempts to answer this question. This section in which he does so does contain condescending and even overtly sexist statements, so feel free to condemn it for not being perfectly aligned with one’s own convictions. I still find value in it. Kant says, “Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage”. What he means by this is casting off the yoke of rote instruction by rules and formulas and received wisdom and casting out into independent territory, however risky this may be (Kant does not find it overwhelmingly risky, obviously). One must be careful here. Kant is not saying that enlightenment means thinking for oneself full stop. It means thinking for oneself using reason and intellectual courage. This means that enlightenment, even in a minimalist and abstract construal, is antithetical to the religious process of the Abrahamic faiths—that of accepting tutelage in the form of inherited rules of conduct and self-governance and the received wisdom of ancient texts. Modern Western civilization, far from perfect or perfectly just, is founded on a system of thinking that is oppositional to and defiant of theocracy and theocrats. Theocrats in our midst take note!
There are plenty of things that need to be done to get our own house in order. And the homeland security community has been warning about homegrown, right-wing domestic terrorism for many years. Right-wing extremism is dangerous in all its forms, whether it's white supremacy (which is silly and based on long debunked race myths) or Islamic jihadism (which is based on a quite plausible interpretation of the Quran and Hadith). Right-wing and Islamic extremist thinking has a populated intersection: www.filmsforaction.org/.... The difference is that the regressive left provides aid and comfort to the belief system that fuels Islamic extremism. They preach tolerance for the most intolerant people in the world. And this failure to respond to Islamic terrorism in ways proportionate and appropriate to the needs of the moment only fuels severe right-wing political movements, especially in Europe. Who's more intolerant than people who routinely behead gays, hope to convert or exterminate infidels, perform clitorectomies on young girls, and force women to live in cloth bags? For any ethical relativist who thinks that we should tolerate these things in our societies, I submit to you that Locke had the answer to the problem of tolerating objectionable religious practices in a principle he developed to deal with deviant Christianities:
You will say, by this rule (of separation of church and state along the lines of private rules under consent and public laws under magisterial authority), if some congregations should have a mind to sacrifice infants, or (as the primitive Christians were falsely accused) lustfully pollute themselves in promiscuous uncleanness, or practice any other such heinous enormities, is the magistrate obliged to tolerate them because they are committed in a religious assembly? I answer, No (sic). These things are not tolerated in the ordinary course of life, nor (sic) in any private house, and therefore neither are they so in the worship of God, or in any religious meeting.
Civil institutions with the force of law, whose agents act under the color of law, should have power to make laws only insofar as they concern political, social, and economic matters. They should not make special laws for religious matters permitted conduct otherwise prohibited in public or private life or prohibiting conduct otherwise permitted in public or private life. It’s that simple and straightforward. Religion should not be treated as a special case of a social institution, with special rules made for it or special powers to exempt itself from rules that would otherwise apply. Thus, political Islam should not be tolerated in the West. It is a contradiction in terms to allow political Islam to exist in post-Enlightenment Western societies, most especially America and France—the bastions of libertine society and written Constitutional republicanism. That does not mean we should use our policy tools to persecute minority religious groups. To the contrary, Locke says, “Only the magistrate ought always to be very careful that he do (sic) not misuse his authority to the oppression of any church, under pretense, of public good…” I’m proud to be American. And if I were from France then I would be proud to be French. And that is precisely because our civilization is founded upon such principles.
In “A Letter Concerning Toleration”, John Locke, a man who laid a not insignificant part of the intellectual underpinnings of America’s Constitutional republican system, argues that the civil authority and religion must be kept separate. He notes that the magistrate of the land has the civil power to bring punishments on the heads of those whose misconduct violates the essential rights of other men; the essential rights will sound familiar: life, liberty, health, labor/leisure, and property (elsewhere known as the “pursuit of happiness”). These punishments, Locke continues, are in no way appropriate in the context of saving the souls of men. In the Christian tradition, what matters for salvation is the willful belief that lies in the minds of a person. Forcing belief through coercion is unfit and improper. Only the light of reason and evidence can change the opinions of a person, Locke says. For Locke, a church is “a free and voluntary society”. The mixing of church and state is based on an incoherent understanding of the role and context of each institution in society, one free and open and based on “inward persuasion”, the other civic and based on—when necessary for securing liberty—force and coercion. Winning hearts and minds in a spiritual practice and securing rights by threat of punitive deprivation are simply wholly separate enterprises and never the twain shall meet. This is a tenet of the enlightened tradition of Western civilization and fundamental to our system of government. Had our civilization been founded on a different tradition than those of the Gospel of Jesus Christ (however wrong and groundless), we might have different principles. But this is a tenet that 17th century Christianity admits of having been borne of it, and is so precisely because these Christians believed that what is acceptable to God is the free and un-coerced consent to the beliefs of one Christian sect (one apparently had to guess correctly which sect best represented God’s desires, which makes it probabilistically difficult to guarantee fully pleasing God) or another without hesitation, mental reservation, or self-evasion of mind. Furthermore, in the Judeo-Christian tradition what one person believes or disbelieves is of no offense to any other person who believes differently, at least in the range of civil rights.
Islam
The practice Islam is fundamentally inconsistent with these tenets. Islamic dogma states, in no uncertain terms, that Muslims are enjoined to,
Fight in the way of Allah those who fight you but do not transgress. Indeed. Allah does not like transgressors. And kill them wherever you overtake them and expel them from wherever they have expelled you, and fitnah is worse than killing. And do not fight them at al-Masjid al- Haram until they fight you there. But if they fight you, then kill them. Such is the recompense of the disbelievers. And if they cease, then indeed, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful. Fight them until there is no [more] fitnah and [until] worship is [acknowledged to be] for Allah. But if they cease, then there is to be no aggression except against the oppressors.
It is not hard to imagine someone reading these words under the presupposition that they are the inerrant and divinely-inspired words of Allah and his truth (provided they are in the original Arabic), and finding satisfactory motivation to attack nations that dare to engage in commerce and military operations in the lands of the Muslims.
On the subject of kinship with Jews, Christians, and others, the “Noble” Qur’an says, “You will find that the most implacable of men in their enmity to the faithful are the Jews and pagans, and that the nearest in affection to them are those who say: ‘We are Christians’”.
So much for teaching the world to sing in perfect harmony… How could a religion that believes this become part of a stable multilateral international community of equals?
You see many of them becoming allies of those who disbelieved. How wretched is that which they have put forth for themselves in that Allah has become angry with them, and in the punishment they will abide eternally.
On the matter of gender equality, the Qur’an has this to say:
Men are superior to women on account of the qualities which God hath gifted the one above the other, and on account of the outlay they make from their substance for them. Virtuous women are obedient, careful, during the husband’s absence, because God hath of them been careful. But chide those whose refractoriness ye have cause (sic) to fear; remove them into beds apart, and scourge them. But if they are obedient to you, then seek not occasion against them.
In what could be a perfect rebuttal to this, in “Vindication of the Rights of Woman” Mary Wollstonecraft said, “It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree, independent of men; nay, it is vain to expect that strength of natural affection which would make them good wives and mothers”.
Islam is an illiberal, imperialist religion. Even brown, black, and olive-skinned people are capable of imperialism. It is not endemic to the white race in general and white males in particular. And they are further inclined toward imperialism if they accept the doctrines of Islam. A devout and rightly practicing Muslim may seek to imperiously impose beliefs in Allah on another.
Expecting free and open societies to compete for mind share with those who would spread their dogma through dungeon, fire, and sword is expecting competition on an un-level playing field. We cannot simply apologize for past wrongdoings, take a peaceful posture against the world’s Islamic community, and expect the better angels of their nature to emerge. Their angels are telling them to take up the sword against unbelievers.
Muslims are our enemies. Not all Muslims; but many Muslims. Too many…
