So John Kerry says the Islamic State has “nothing to do with Islam“. And presumably the USSR had nothing to do with Communism and Nazi Germany had nothing to do with National Socialism and the Vatican has nothing to do with Catholicism.
I have linked before to an article from a Middle Eastern writer laughing at such claims before, but seriously: how can Salafist Islam not be described as Islam? Feel free to presage comments about Salafists by noting there are non-toxic forms of Islam such as Sufi or whatever, but please stop these preposterous claims that the Islamic State is not Islamic.
It is as if John Kerry thinks that by repeating this manifest nonsense that somehow it will become true. Could this be some sort of warped world view in which people must be ‘goodies’ or ‘badies’? Therefore if (say) the Kurdish Peshmerga, who are pretty much accepted as being ‘goodies’ happen to be made up mostly of Muslims, OMG we must therefore pretend the Islamic State is not Islamic as our tiny minds cannot accept a nuanced world view that maybe, just maybe, the Peshmerga might see themselves as Kurds first and who have very little interest in political Salafist Islam?
Or could it be that Salafist Islam is actually the same as Saudi Wahhabi Islam, minus a dynastic Royal government and plus a Caliph? An embarrassing and politically inconvenient little factoid that one.
As of late I have taken to exchanging e-mails with a Kurdish couple who live near Kirkuk and they have no problem describing the Islamic State as, er, Islamic. But they way they see it, describing someone as ‘Islamic’ does not actually tell you very much about a person’s views… whereas saying someone is ‘Salafist’, for example, tells you a great deal.
But unlike the jackasses in the White House with their notions of imaginary Disney-Islam, people in the Middle East understand perfectly that Salafist ideology has a great deal to do with ‘Islam’. And so what? You think that will stop a Kurd who might or might not be a Sunni Muslim, from shooting a Salafist Islamic State soldier deader than dead? Clearly that is not the case.
By all means hyphenate the version if you want, but enough of “the Salafist Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam” crap.
Perry once again demonstrates his complete failure to grasp the fundamental tenets of lefty-sism. WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AT WAR WITH EASTASIA !
“Islam” is not a religion devised by Mohammed, it is (for present purposes) a minority culture to be valued as a counterpoint to, and weapon against, the traditional cultures of the Western world, which exhibit such undesirable features as capitalism and vestigial Christianity. Moreover adherents of Islam are on average poor and brown (four legs) and not rich and white (two legs.)
Kerry’s comment makes perfect sense. The Islamic religion – for the reasons explained above – is (currently) a good thing. People doing bad things cannot therefore be adherents of that religion.
I’m thinking you nailed it here. Start teaching people the differences and suddenly they might start thinking: but, then why are we so buddy buddy with the Wahhabis?
#isisisislam
They are and they do.
They’re not deluded, they’re simply arse-licking Muslims out of pure cowardice. It’s the same condition which has Merkel and Obama falling over themselves to pretend Russia hasn’t invaded Ukraine. Pure, arse-licking cowardice.
The Saudis and Qatar are, at least in name, still allies of the US and UK, and we have forces based in Qatar and other Gulf states. Obama and Kerry don’t want their rulers to believe that the West is fighting Crusades once again.
Of course, anyone who really thinks the Arabs will buy this is as naive as a tobacco executive who denies knowing that his product causes cancer. Even if it’s true that “we” aren’t fighting a Crusade, the Arabs will assume we are, so we’d better get serious and fight one (and finish it!) if we’re going to go back in there at all.
>The Saudis and Qatar are, at least in name, still allies of the US and UK<
yea right
Is it like how the Democratic Party is not really democratic?
The solution is simple; destroy our real enemies, Saudi Arabia, and its duplicitous, poisonous monarchy.
Ah, but I forgot, they own all our politicians (Saudis are rich, and thus above the law). The Saudis are the scum of the Earth and pretty much the source of funding for Islamic extremism.
It’s all very well saying “destroy the Saudis” but they happen to sit on the lifeblood of the world. You can knock out Iraq’s production and the world will manage, you simply cannot do that with Saudis. So the only way you can get rid of the Saudi Royal Family is by recolonizing the place and making damned sure the oil still flows, if you don’t then terrorism isn’t going to be much of a concern whilst we’re working out how to get those food supply networks back up and running. So if it’s a recolonization that we’re advocating, then we should at least come out and say it.
Also, the situation is a bit more complicated that simply saying the Saudis fund terrorism. In Steve Coll’s excellent Ghost Wars he points out that in Islamic law a small percentage of every Muslim’s wage must go to charity. Inevitably this money goes to Islamic charities, many of which are not transparent and fund extremely dodgy people and activities. And the one which set up in the oil booms of the 1970s suddenly found themselves awash with cash which they had no idea what to do with, and inevitably extremists latched onto this surplus money and started funding extremist schools in Pakistan, etc. This is the route by which extremism gets funded – wealthy Muslims giving, by law, money to charity which they don’t do any due diligence on, although there’s no denying a lot of them would be quite happy with where it ends up. But it is more complicated than a situation whereby Saudis are knowingly and happily funding terrorists as a matter of policy. It was they who expelled the extremely well-connected Osama bin Laden, after all.
Like most things, it is complicated and there is no quick and simple answer.
Funny how some of my donations to mountain rescue teams don’t end up in the hands of, say, white supremacist, survivalist nutjob murderers isn’t it?
I have never seen such a long-winded, craven apology for funding murder.
I’m not apologizing for anything, I am simply describing the mechanism. The reasons mountain rescue donations go towards mountain rescue is because they are voluntary contributions. The Islamic “donations” are compulsory, a tax. And as you’ll notice when we get taxed here in the west under compulsion, the money ends up being used for all kinds of shit it wasn’t intended and for which those who are taxed might disagree. I’m not saying this is right, or a desirable state of affairs, but that is the mechanism by which Islamic charities are funded. If you want to tackle the problem, you first must understand it.
That phrase, and others like it, are indicators that you are a ‘goodthinker’, one of them. It has as much accuracy as a similar one describing the events in Rotherham as unrelated to Islam or Pakistani culture. 98% of the country thinks such statements are ridiculous; the remaining 2% uses them as indicators of identity and tribehood and to police their members.
Tim,
I was referring to the argument as an apology in the sense of a justification, not your view.
The Zakat is not compulsory in every muslim country, afaik it is in Saudi Arabia and therefore it comes back to the Saudi state funding terrorism or not as the State can control the distribution of funds. I would agree that As with my tax, I cannot stop the UK government funding nutjobs at home or abroad.
Where the zakat is optional, to say that the donations are compulsory and a tax when they arise by virtue of a moral obligation ultimately chosen by a follower of a religious faith as part of the doctrine of that faith, and where even then the donor has a choice as to the recipient of the payments, would be unsustainable to make analogy to taxation imposed by a State under secular law.
Exactly so. Having Arabian oil go off-line, for more than a blink of an eye, would be a global catastrophe for industrial-technological civilisation everywhere. Oil is fungible and so the economic effects would be truly global.
The Zakat is compulsory for everyone who believes they are Muslim, even if they are moderates. Every Muslim I know pays it, it is not the case of the state forcing them to. But it is still compulsory, just as their praying and fasting is. And the money is not collected by the state, it is paid privately, so it is notoriously difficult to track. It is simply not the case that the Saudis collect it and distribute it.
So the situation in Saudi is a bit like that in England. You think you’re giving money to a charity to save the whales and the pandas and the poley bears when in fact you’re giving money to a bunch of highly paid lobbyists who are lobbying to get your energy costs raised, your energy rationed and you car turned into an electric toy that can’t even get you to granny’s at christmas, as well as banning you from flying to Majorca once a year.
Oh, and your government is giving money to this lobbying firm on your behalf so when they reach their eventual goal of preventing you having children and giving you a hand in shuffling of this mortal coil so as to make the place ‘sustainable’ you won’t even be able to get your money back.
(Sorry, totally OT rant, but I’ve ranted it now so…)
Tim,
By ‘compulsory’ do you mean a legal obligation imposed by a State? Not in the UK, and in many Muslim countries it is not. No one who follows a religion is under any ‘compulsion’ by virtue of that, they choose to do what they do. If they are paying privately, then pay someone else or ask for accountability. Not hard is it?
As for Saudi Arabia, this link from what appears to be KPMG suggests that it is covered by the Kingdom’s law, so the Saudi state is responsible for raising it, and therefore has every responsibility for what happens with it, they should fund terror at their own peril. Here’s the key extract from that article.
Kevin B,
I feel the same, our own government ripping us off to pay lobbyists who work against our best interests is a disgrace.
Right, so you need them to stop being Muslims. Good luck with that.
Saudi nationals. And what about the hundreds of thousands of Pakistani and Bangladeshi workers? Where do think that money ends up? And as far as I know (at least this was the case in Kuwait, where I lived for a year, and I believe it was common across the Gulf) the state decrees the levy but does not collect and distribute it: that is left to the individuals.
John Kerry and Hanoi Jane, has a ring to it.
However the muslim is out of the White house in a couple of months.
If they get another Democrat or the wrong sort of Republican the US is finished.
Obama cynically infected the US with the European disease, progressivism.
It kills nations you know, exactly what it was meant to do, a disease formulated in KGB labs over half a century ago.
A disease ironically that then also infected the former Soviet Union.
However the penny dropped during Putin’s years.
Russia will undergo a purge soon, expect to hear about some arrests, “globalists” mostly……
So when do we round up ours?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oRcrAasjGY
I fail to see how mis-stating someone’s position and then extrapolating from it aids discussion. All I say may be summarised thus:
1. If the State imposes or requires payments to be made, then those who control the State are responsible for what is done with that money. If, in an absolute monarchy like Saudi Arabia, the State dictates that money be paid to third parties who make mischief, then the State is still responsible for its wilful or reckless conduct in so doing.
2. If private individuals make payments freely to third parties who cause mischief, then those individuals are responsible for assisting any mischief.
I fail to see how mis-stating someone’s position and then extrapolating from it aids discussion.
Then stop misstating Tim Newman’s position.
Camoron on again about how Isis couldn’t possibly Islamic after the latest beheading: the best explanation of the gargantuan cognitive dissonance demonstrated by him and the rest of the Western political classes is here:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/moderate-islam-is-multiculturalism-misspelled/
“Moderate Islam isn’t what most Muslims believe. It’s what most liberals believe that Muslims believe.”
Then stop misstating Tim Newman’s position.
Good luck with that.
Keep things civil and on-topic please folks
I don’t know much about global oil markets, but I just googled it and Saudi Arabia produces just shy of 13% of the world’s oil, just behind #1 Russia, and just ahead of #3 USA. Others are far behind. So, how is Saudi production “the lifeblood of the world”? I agree that disrupting 13% of the supply of something so critical would be extremely costly. And no matter how we take out the Saudi monarchy and its associated garbage, there would be a significant disruption. OK, that’s the cost, now what’s the benefit: us not getting nuked or beheaded. I think the “not getting nuked” part is worth the cost (acknowledging that the cost of acting against the Saudis is certain while getting nuked if we don’t take em out is not certain). But maybe I have that view because I live in one of the top target countries (US).
2. If private individuals make payments freely to third parties who cause mischief, then those individuals are responsible for assisting any mischief.
Firstly they don’t make the payments freely. As Muslims, they are compelled to. If you don’t understand this (by believing the only laws that people are compelled to follow are those on the statute books) you are going to struggle in understanding how to deal with the problem.
Secondly, great, we can agree that *some* Muslims will donate to *some* charities who *may* cause mischief. Now what do you propose to do about it? Even identifying the charities would be an impossible task. Whatever the answer, kicking out the Saudi Royal family isn’t it.
@Greg
I’d suggest you look at the list of the world’s oil producing nations here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_production#mediaviewer/File:Chart-of-Oil-Trading-Nation.gif and note how many of them are muslim or majority muslim states.
Saudi is, unfortunately, also the location of the most of the Islamic holy sites. Outside intervention in the country & its rulers who are notionally the custodians of these sites, would blow the lid off the entire Islamic world. It mightn’t be just Saudi oil that was disrupted but a much larger proportion of world production.
I don’t know much about global oil markets, but I just googled it and Saudi Arabia produces just shy of 13% of the world’s oil, just behind #1 Russia, and just ahead of #3 USA. Others are far behind. So, how is Saudi production “the lifeblood of the world”? I agree that disrupting 13% of the supply of something so critical would be extremely costly.
The oil markets are so sensitive that unrest in Nigeria causes the price to rise. If a producing country contributing 2-3% of global daily production went offline, the price would rise considerably. If 13% disappeared, it would be catastrophic. Compounding this is the fact that Saudi has swing capacity, enabling it to increase production to maintain shortfalls; plus it has the largest reserves, so can be relied upon to produce this 13% probably until the end of the oil age. Its importance as the cornerstone of global production cannot be overestated.
Looking on the bright side, the Obama administration has never claimed that ‘bitter clinging’ isn’t Christian.
Who are the ‘they’ who don’t make payments freely?
Who does the compelling? You don’t seem to address the distinction that I am making, or even hint at one yourself:
Is it (a) the State compelling them (via its functionaries or authorised collectors) in which the Muslim person so compelled resides?
If so, which State or States operate this way? It seems clear that Saudi Arabia does. You are describing Muslims as a monolithic bloc, as if they all behave in the same manner. We are concerned with Saudi and Qatari support for ISIS and the like.
or (b) persons who demand the payments, in which case, how do they do this?
or (c) a combination of (a) and (b),
or (d) any of the above and/or some other mechanism(s) at work?
I am concerned to read sweeping generalisations about Muslims giving (or being taxed to provide, or being extorted) money to charity and that money being used to fund terrorism.
As for those funding terror, they would be legitimate targets for parties in warfare. If acting as individuals, there is unlikely to be any practicable action that could be taken, unless one could persuade the host State to prosecute a crime of aiding and abetting terrorist acts, or itself face the consequences of harbouring such people. cf Were not the Taliban asked to hand over Bin Laden etc post 11th September 2001, they refused. I have read that they asked the US for evidence against Bin Laden (his first avowed intent did not seem to satisfy them) and were offered none, but that may or may not be correct.
You might as well ask “who does the compelling?” when talking about Muslims’ requirement to pray and fast. If this is your starting point for dealing with the problem of terrorist financing, we might be here a while.
In terms of the charitable donations, they do behave in the same manner, by and large. As I’ve already said, cultural and individual behaviour is often driven by things which do not appear on the statute books. Viewing such behaviour through a prism of western society and western standards of statutory laws is not going to aid your understanding of it.
Salafi Islam and Wahabi Islam are the same according to Wiki. FWIW. And Sufi Islam? Less toxic.
Would it be any greater an error to suggest that German behavior in WW2 ‘had nothing to do with National Socialism’?
M. Simon, the original article did point that out 😀
Tim,
Clearly you are evading my questions, so you have no answer except to try to divert. Terrorist financing is something that either happens or it does not, money changes hands, and ends up in the wrong ones. It cannot be feigned, unlike prayer and fasting.
Since there are around 1,000,000 Muslims in the World, your belief that they behave in the same manner strikes me as unscientific. You cannot possibly know what they all do, yet you resort to a sweeping generalisation about one sixth of humanity. Clearly some are keen to turn themselves into flying mince in pursuit of their cause, but many may well be happy to lead their dull, pious lives.
Greg
September 14, 2014 at 2:59 pm
Wars are uncertainty zones. Can you be so sure of what happens in the aftermath?
Ockham’s Spoon
September 14, 2014 at 6:42 pm
I did my “original” research a few days ago. Does that count?
but many may well be happy to lead their dull, pious lives and just cheer silently from the sidelines.
FIFY
M. Simon
And are you in a position to contradict me about the Muslim Consultant physician I know who struggled valiantly to save his English Christian neighbour after that neighbour fatal heart attack, who takes time out to check up on the neighbour’s widow and make sure that she is fine, that her house is safe and that everything is OK?
I take it you can name this gentleman and tell me the town or city that he lives in? You know so much, come now, please tell.
I’m evading them because in the context they make no sense. Seriously, you are asking me who compels Muslims to abide by the laws of their faith. What answer do you expect? Allah? Nobody? The question is ridiculous.
Eh? Nobody is denying that terrorist financing does not happen, or can be feigned. My point is that Muslims are required – by their religious laws – to pray, fast, avoid pork, and – amongst other things – to donate a portion of their earnings to charity. Like praying, this appears to be universal amongst Muslims – certainly every Muslim I have come across (and I lived 3 years in the Middle East, plus lived in 5 other countries) do so, as to do otherwise would pretty much not make them Muslims. To them this is compulsory – and if you could only understand the point that compulsion is not driven purely by the statute books, we might achieve something today.
So, lots of money is flowing towards charities, most of which are Islamic charities. Some of these engage in good works, some of these engage in teaching extremist ideas, some of these do both, some of these aid and assist terrorists, but also do genuine works as well. These charities are usually informal (i.e. not registered with the UK Charity Commission), interconnected, spread out globally, opaque, and not subject to any oversight whatsoever. As a result, it is difficult to tell exactly where the money will go and what it will get used for. And it is especially difficult for a Pakistani labourer to do due diligence on his charity of choice back in Pakistan when he is sweating his arse off in a Saudi desert. So inevitably, a lot of money handed over in all innocence by Muslims ends up being used for terrorist causes without the original donor having the faintest idea. That’s not to say some Muslims don’t donate to terrorist causes, but the situation I describe above is the norm.
So if you want to go after the Saudis and Qataris and start spouting western legal edicts at them, you first need to unpick the thousands of interconnected, opaque, and diverse Muslim charities and establish clear links between the donors and terrorism. Good luck with that.
WTF? You appear to be taking issue that, by saying Muslims follow Muslim religious practices, I am making a sweeping generalisation. Sorry, is there some large and significant cohort of Muslims who *don’t* observe Muslim practices of which I am unaware?
From you, neither a coherent nor an intelligent one. I have asked you to clarify ‘compulsion’ and you almost managed it. But adherence to a religion and its practices is ultimately a choice. Adherence to a government’s requirement is only a choice to the extent that it is possible to resist without unbearable sanctions or overwhelming force.
Ed, why is hangup about compulsion? It is totally beside Tim’s point. People feel compelled to do all kinds of things because of their loyalty to their religion, or family, or anything else. No one is claiming that they are being forced to donate money to these charities (except for countries like SA where in fact they are) – they do so because they were brought up to think that it’s a pious thing to do. I find this entirely plausible.
…sorry, should have been ‘why is this hangup’.
Alisa,
It is that there is a distinction between people doing things because of a third party requiring them to do so, like a State, and a personal choice motivated by a religion or a philosophical belief, which is simply an internal debate externalised.
If Mr A in country X is donating funds to, say, ISIS, it is because Mr A is paying tax or paying a levy as required by the government of country X, or because Mr A chooses to give money to a group of people in country X collecting for ISIS? Mr A is personally blameworthy to a far greater extent in the case of a voluntary donation than in the event that his oppressive government demands payment.
Tim’s original point contained
But giving by law, which law? State law or religious law. Tim lumps all Muslims in together as paying the contribution.
He also says
But if it is a tax imposed or required by a State, such as SA, then the State (and its staff) are the ones to blame for imposing the tax.
If the state simply says ‘you must give 2.5% of your wealth in zakat’, then provided that you have a choice in the recipient, the blame is shared between the fundraising state and the donors to terrorism.
Good post Perry.
The reason that Mr Kerry (and Mr Cameron) insist that these Muslims are “not Muslims” and that Islam is “not Islam” is if they admit the truth (as Gladstone and Winston Churchill did) then they would have to engage in a battle of ideas (of belief systems).
A battle of ideas as relevant to London or the Twin Cities area of Minn (or other areas in America – as well as Europe) as it is to Iraq and Syria.
By pretending (instead) that the problem is few nasty people (not Islam) they (the Western leaders) can just carry on bombing – and not ask themselves any difficult questions about (for example) Birmingham England.
On the question of the “misinterpretation” of Islam.
Surely the obvious authority on the interpretation of Islam is Mohammed himself.
And his life makes it rather clear that Mohammed would have no great problem with what ISIS (and so on) are doing.
But this is also a politically difficult conclusion – so it will be avoided.
Instead we will just carry-on-bombing (whilst the West continues to be undermined internally – basically by its lack of belief in its own foundational principles).
Those who do not believe in the foundational principles of their own civilisation (or do not even know what these principles are) are unable to convert other people to them.
Indeed such empty Westerners may well end up getting converted themselves.
Such a civilizational problem can not be solved by bombing.
Bombing may indeed be necessary – but violence is not enough on is own.
Re: Paul Marks
“Those who do not believe in the foundational principles of their own civilisation (or do not even know what these principles are) are unable to convert other people to them.”
It’s just Cultural Marxism in full flow – to make their new utopia they must destroy what was here before. They’re just stupid enough to think they can use Islam as one of the tools to achieve this…
Exactly right, Paul Marks. George Orwell, in a review of Mein Kampf in 1940 remarked that what Hitler understood, and progressives never get is that people need something more than simply food, and healthcare, and houses. There has to be some kind of higher cause, or self belief. Maybe the fear is of nationalism. But of course, our liberals are not afraid of Scottish Nationalism. Only the English variety.
Btw, Mr Ed tells us there are 1m muslims in the world, a slight underestimate. More like 1.5 billion, I think. A depressing thought.
We should be glad that they are not monolithic. Indeed, we should encourage their differences! Peaceful Muslims should be praised. Assimilation can work, just look to the US, where most muslims happily adapt to the local norms.
Therefore, we should keep up the pressure to assimilate Muslims into their host countries. In fact, if Scotland breaks away, then Britain might decide to have a non-religious flag as its’ symbol! (Having a flag composed of crosses must be a cross for non-Christians who want to assimilate into British society!) Anyone in favour of a Lion eating a Unicorn?
Ed, all of that is true to an extent, especially in the West, but is beside the point – the point being that as much as formal states are to blame for many evils, there are many informal social structures that are equally blameworthy for the same. That is especially true in the ME and the rest of the “Third World”, where nation-states are mostly an unnatural phenomenon (an artificial construct, really, which is rapidly collapsing as we speak), where the culture is especially tribal, etc. Islam is very much part of this culture, the two cannot be separated, and in fact the ME at large is a clear example of a region where religion grew out of the local culture, in turn stifling further development of that culture for the most part, and essentially freezing it in time and leaving it stuck in the 7th Century.
What all of this essentially means in practice, is that even when there is no state law mandating for an individual to do something, there is also no state law preventing the family or the tribe from compelling the individual (often forcefully and even brutally) to do the same. Or even when there is such a law on the books, it is rarely if ever enforced.
What all of that means in turn is that individuals in fact are born into a society where the concept of free choice is essentially unknown, or at least not understood in the way a Westerner may understand it. One may almost think of it as of being born into a herd: you do what everyone else does, you don’t question things. If you do, you are punished – either beaten into submission or cast out or worse, and not by the police or the military or any other state agency. Very little, if anything of that has anything to do with states as we understand them in the West.
I’ll just amend that by stressing the ‘if’ part, because my larger point is that most people in such societies very rarely question things as they are. They are guided by their tribe, and the tribe is guided by tradition which for the most part is steeped in Islam and its tenets. So in effect they are just as compelled by the Islamic law, as you and I may be compelled by our respective state laws.
Exactly. Spasibo, Alisa.
Не за что 😀
Yes, precisely. In Islam, God commands and the faithful do as they are told. Secular law and the state are meaningless in this concept. The faithful are compelled by a higher power. Also, unless they are converts, they have no choice about faith. They are born into it and conditioned from childhood and apostasy is a death sentence. The state is not the only entity that exercises compulsion by any means.
Quoth Tim Newman, September 14, 2014 at 8:10 pm:
So what do we mean by “compulsion”?
As I see it:
There are two fundamental sources of compulsion of the individual: The one external, the other internal.
External compulsion is of two kinds:
…. It may be coercion applied by other human beings;
…. Or it may be the result of “Acts of God” — natural happenings which may or may not flow in part from the doings of humans, but which in any case aren’t aimed at coercing this particular individual — in other words, by Reality acting up. Natural disasters, a hideously effed economy, war (but proper discussion of coercion here requires volumes), a case of smallpox.
There are also two forms of coercion: “hard” coercion, the application of force, fraud, or extortion; and “soft,” such as social pressure, the expression of approval or disapproval by others important to one, etc.
Internal compulsion is the final internal state that determines all that we do; and we may or may not be conscious of it. We are not conscious of, do not sense and become aware of, the heart’s compulsion to beat; we may not be conscious of the actual inner compulsion that results in our writing lengthy Internet comments. (Note that this is true regardless of whether our internal motivations and decision-making processes are purely physical or not. This compulsion has nothing to do with doctrines of determinism or Free Will. Even if God Himself is strictly ordering us to do whatever we’re doing, that ordering either actually is, or else results in, internal compulsion.)
—> In the last analysis, I do what I do because my self compels me to do it. And that is true even when my self is itself compelled by external circumstances, whether coercive or not.
Yet it is reasonable to hold somewhat different conceptions of “compulsion” according to whether it is internal, external-coerced, or external-natural.
.
For purposes of political philosophy and legal theory, and the practical matter of setting statutes, libertarians focus on compulsion of the individual resulting from “hard” coercion (force, fraud, extortion) by other human beings.
For purposes of understanding human behavior, we have to consider all three forms of “compulsion.”
.
In particular, it is a fact of reality or of nature that there IS such a thing as “human nature,” that is, capacities and proclivities that all* humans share in some degree simply because they are human.
It is a fact of reality that we all* exist from birth in some sort of society. It is a fact of human nature that the beliefs and behaviors of society interact with our selves as our selves are at any given time, and so constitute one of the factors influencing our internal compulsions.
— *[“All humans” = 99.99999…9% of persons not so physically malformed as to rob them of practically all capacity for human function at ANY developmental stage, for instance anencephaly, or who are born with virtually no potential in some vital aspect of human nature, such as the capacities for sympathy and empathy, or the capacity to reason logically.]
—
So it is perfectly legitimate to try to distinguish external, hard-coercive compulsion; external, soft-coercive compulsion (which results from non-physical pressures of various sorts: approval when one acts in certain ways, disapproval expressed by non-co-operation, or disapproval, or shunning, or withholding of privileges of various sorts by other people whose oppinions or behaviors matter to one); external compulsion by non-human conditions of reality (i.e. “natural forces”); and internal compulsion, which is always the final determiner of what we do, and which is the product of our own internal mentation and, yes, “will,” which can be seen as a sort of Black-Box for purposes of this discussion.
The attempt to distinguish among these is legitimate, but the attempt to place any particular instance of compulsion entirely within one of the four categories of the source, or perhaps the nature, of compulsion is futile. All of them exist and interact to produce that final, internal, compulsion, out of which we do whatever we do.
So in order to put together some sort of theory of the political ordering of society in order to maximize the liberty of each person, we have to try to agree on what sorts of compulsion matter in forming moral and legal judgments of others. (Moral, because any person’s political libertarianism must rest on some sort of moral code, even if it’s purely intuitive and not particularly closely examined.)
. . .
Simon Gibbs and his Libertarian Home last month hosted an interesting presentation by Christian Michel on the topic of Consent. Persons might be interest to watch the video (25 min.) and read Simon’s writeup and the comments.
The issues surrounding the concept of “consent” are similar to those of “compulsion,” and in fact the point is to distinguish what sorts of compulsion result in the fact of real consent, which should be distinguished from mere acquiescence.
http://libertarianhome.co.uk/2014/09/video-consent-with-christian-michel/
They are just a cynical, cunning, contemptuous bunch thinking power and conjonctural interests can mold lies into truth. But they are no more intelligent than the Queen Marie-Antoinette on the eve of the French Revolution saying “If they don’t have bread, let them eat cake” …
Or they think than by refusing to see things as they are they will eventually succeed in reforming Islam …
which is very doubtful. As the French Laurent Fabius said “ISIL are just a bunch of paranoid murderers”, as were Mohamad and his first companions
A minor correction- Mohammed never showed signs of paranoia. When he feared enemies, he had good reason, since he alienated quite a few people, especially Meccans (before he conquered the city and destroyed all the idols, that is.).
Nick – “peaceful Muslims should be praised”.
People either follow the teachings and life of Mohammed or they do not.
Pretending that Islam is something different from what it is, gets us into the same mental trap that David Cameron (and other Western leaders) are in.
If people do NOT follow the example and teachings of Mohammed – then they are NOT Muslims. But sex-drugs-and-pop-music is not a belief system – it is a teenage fad.
It is actually those Muslims who appear the most “Westernised” (in this degenerate sense) who often become the most dedicated terrorists.
People have to be offered an alternative belief system – Stephen Fox and Jonnydub have something there (although the Devil is in the details).
Bomb-bomb-bomb (bomb Iraq, bomb Syria, bomb London, bomb Birmingham, bomb ……….) is not a policy.
It may be necessary – but it is not a policy on its own.
If a society is so corrupt (so decayed) that it has no principles (no belief system) to offer, it will be destroyed (no matter how many aircraft it has – bombing people around the clock).
And, perhaps, such a society (a society that has been cut off from its own foundational principles) deserves to be destroyed.
The conversion process (to a culture – not always to a religion as such) used to be automatic – because Western cultures were so strong.
These societies are now much weaker – and, yes, the control of the education systems and the entertainment media by the left, is a big part of that (long before the Cultural Marxists, the Fabians and the Progressives were at work – like acid, destroying the cultural principles of the West).
Indeed, they are effectively “Muslim Anglicans” in which their religion is mere “cultural artifice” (to use the term also used by my Kurdish pen-pals near Kirkuk, when their internet actually works). Or as we less humorously call them: “secular”.
And as we can not get rid of Islam by wishing it away, I suspect turning people in secular “Muslim Anglicans” is probably the best we can hope for. Hey, if Christians can essentially ignore the first half their main religious text, the bit that contains all those embarrassing “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” and “Sacrifice your child to me! Haha, sucker! Just joking!” and “OMG! I am in a whale!” and “The snake made me do it!” stuff, well the same can be done by Muslims and their deeply embarrassing shit. It took us centuries of religious wars to finally stop taking that crap quite so seriously.
But they are not the problem, multiculturalism in the west is. We are sort of in agreement on that (but only sort of).
The reverse is also true. Poland, for example, was not crushed by Nazi Germany because it lacked a belief system.