We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
I hope that Al Qaeda is right Thomas Friedman has written a piece for the the New York Times called “How ISIS drives Muslims from Islam”.
I do not know whether what he claims is true, though it would accord with the experience of Europe after the Wars of Religion. I hope it is true, and I hope even more that a lot of Muslims come to believe it to be true. That applies equally to peaceable Muslims and to bloodthirsty Muslims. I hope the peaceable Muslims are pushed into differentiating themselves from the savages both in public and in their own minds. Even Al-Qaeda appears to believe that ISIS barbarity loses more for Islam than it gains; it has been pushed by Muslim public opinion into reining in its own penchant for headchopping. Repentance on the part of Al-Qaeda is too much to hope for even for a hopeful person like me, but self-interest can sometimes penetrate where morality cannot.
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
At the start of the 20th century most people thought Islam was on the way out – a barbarous relic of the past.
Winston Churchill was one of the few people to notice that Islam was actually EXPANDING (see an original edition of “The River War” – but uncensored versions are hard to find).
The growth of Islam has been one of the big stories of the last 100 years or so.
Just as the growth of state education was the big (but almost unnoticed) story of the 19th century.
As for cruelty and so – that is good for Islam and always has been (when Islam is tolerant, it has been tolerant at times, it goes into DECLINE).
Mohammed did not win converts by being a nice person – he won converts by freeing men from guilt, by telling them they could fulfil their deepest darkest desires (their most sadistic fantasies) and still feel good about themselves (as long as they served Islam).
So, as usual, the only correct thing in the New York Times is the date – the content of its article is exactly wrong.
Meanwhile in Denmark, Hizb ut-Tahrir’s ‘Proud of Sharia’: http://www.thelocal.dk/20141208/islamic-groups-sharia-meeting-met-with-protests
The muslims being ‘put off’ are presumably the ones in favour of everything ISIS stands for except the head-chopping.
Do the fabled ‘moderate muslims’ now include Al-Qaeda supporters?
Imagine a religion founded by Charles Manson with a billion followers. What could possibly go wrong?
This is likely to take the form of “evaporative cooling”, which can apply to subcultures as well as physical liquids.
In nature, evaporative cooling occurs when the most energetic molecules in a body of liquid escape; the remaining molecules are less energetic, thus the liquid cools.
In psychology, evaporative cooling occurs when a group experiences a severe challenge to its premises: a leader is exposed as corrupt, a predicted event does not happen, a scripture is shown to be forged, a conflict ends in crushing defeat. Surprisingly, the group often becomes more fanatical. That’s because skeptics and moderates leave the group; only the hard-core True Believers remain. Many groups welcome this process – it clears away the “weak sisters”.
The psychology of groups differs from the physics of a blob in another way: the group’s image can also attract new members. ISIS may repel many potential members with such actions, but it will attract some, and those are likely to be extremely loyal. Also, as the group’s internal culture becomes more uniform and intense, its ability to “condition” new members increases.
Jake Haye,
“Do the fabled ‘moderate muslims’ now include Al-Qaeda supporters?”
I entirely see the point that the subset of Muslims who can be moved from being the weakest supporters of ISIS to being non-supporters of ISIS are still (barring the occasional case of transformational repentance) very bad people. Who ever claimed otherwise? Nonetheless it is very much in the interests of potential victims of ISIS that this group make that move.
Rich Rostrom, an excellent analogy.
Jake Haye, “Imagine a religion founded by Charles Manson”. I can do that, but given that I see one of the virtues that Western Civilisation has from its Judeo-Christian and Greek roots is a concern for objective truth, I prefer not to equate my imaginings with Islam. It is perfectly possible to criticise the moral deficiencies of Islamic teaching, and to see them as in part a result of the moral deficiencies of its founder, without resorting to hyperbole. Mohammed appears to have been a cut above the ethical norm for his era in the early part of his life, and no more cruel and arbitrary than the average warlord once he gained power.
If you want a religion founded by a personally screwed-up multiple killer in the modern mode, try Anglicanism.
It is possible that Mohammed was not more bloodthirsty than the average warlord, though that is rather to damn with faint praise. It is still not a good template on which to base a world religion.
As to Charles Manson, I chose his name purely as an illustration. His followers killed far fewer than Mohammed’s, and I do not believe he had any sexual interest in children, so for that I ought to apologise to him.
“that is rather to damn with faint praise. It is still not a good template on which to base a world religion.” Agreed.
On the subject of his marriage to Ayesha, I have no particular desire to defend him but make two points in the interests of making a proportionate assessment of him. Firstly, marriage of older men to children has been common over many cultures. I do not like to contemplate the human cost of that but it is surely relevant. Secondly, some (not all) Muslims believe either that he did not consummate the marriage until she hit puberty (also quite common procedure over many periods and places) or that the “nine” quoted as her age actually means “nineteen”. I was once informed by an Arabic speaker from a Christian background who was no admirer of Islam that the latter theory is not as unlikely as it sounds. Against that, I’ve read contradictory reports about the age of consent in Iran. Some say it was dropped to nine for females in explicit imitation of Mohammed’s example. Others say this is misinformation put about by opponents of the regime and the age of consent (which is also the minimum age for marriage given that sex outside marriage is illegal) is sixteen for females and eighteen for males.
Natalie:
Given Mohammed’s penchant for rape and concubinage, I find the idea of him patiently waiting for his child bride to hit puberty fairly unlikely. As I said, basing a religion around a man whose personal life would not even pass muster in comparison to Charles Manson’s was never going to end well, for any of us.
I found by chance a Wikipedia article on the expeditions of Mohammed. It all looks rather brutal, and was never touched on at school in Divinity.
Natalie, it strikes me as beside the point who founded which religion, the point being who its adherents are expected to emulate. I doubt pious Anglicans are expected to emulate the behavior of Henry VIII, rather they are expected to emulate that of Christ – and Christ wasn’t even the founder of Christianity. his early followers were. Conversely, Jews are not even expected to emulate the behavior of any particular figure, they are only expected to follow certain rules. In any case, the problem with Muhammad is not so much that he founded Islam, but that he is supposed to serve as a role model for Muslims the world over.
Alisa, I know that really. I am a regular worshipper at our local Anglican church and am pretty sure that the proportion of the congregation who emulate the home life of Henry VIII is small. (Blimey, though, when you think that Elizabeth I grew up knowing that her father had her mother and her mother’s brother executed, not to mention one of her stepmothers, it’s a wonder she was as relatively normal as she was – though still capable of emulating her father’s ruthlessness as exhibited in her offing Mary Queen of Scots.) Just making the point that there can be great divergence in either a good or bad direction between the behaviour of a religion’s “founder” and its adherents centuries later.
Islam right now is strikingly more violent than any other major religion. I think that does reflect its intrinsic nature to some extent, but the difference was not always so stark. It’s strange to think that during the chaotic partition of India in 1947 most Indian Christians thought that they would be safer in Muslim Pakistan than Hindu India. Nor were the massacres of Partition just a case of Muslims killing Hindus; it was much more nearly symmetrical.
Phew 😀
On a more serious note:
I think (and it is connected to my earlier point) that a distinction is worth making between the behavior required by a religion, and the actual behavior exhibited by its adherents in the name of said religion. I know next to nothing about Hinduism, so I won’t comment on that, but let’s consider the requirements by Islam and by Christianity of their respective faithful. My impression is that whenever Christians behave violently – even in great numbers and even in an institutionalized manner (e.g. the Inquisition or the Crusades), they do so in clear opposition to the tenets of Christianity. However, when Muslims behave violently, they are actually being good Muslims.
Well, I was just going to go and join ISIS, and they invade my favourite chocolate shop! There’s a seige in Sydney right now, in a Lindt shop. No idea why, yet. Nobody hurt, at the moment.
Advance Australia Fair.
Alisa @ December 14, 2014 at 10:37 pm:
Christianity is apolitical. It does mandate submission to secular authority (“Render unto Caesar”), but is silent about what Christians should do when they are the authorities. (The question does not appear to have occurred to the apostles.) Thus I don’t think Christianity mandates pacifism. The use of force by authorities to suppress crime is implied in the Old Testament, which is not wholly superseded by the New.
Islam however is explicitly political. Moslems are mandated to achieve secular authority, as Mohammed did, and to use force to do so, and when in authority to use force as necessary. So “good” Moslems are expected to use violence.
I never meant to imply that Christianity is supposed to be pacifist, Rich – there is a huge distance and many possibilities between an ideology that is inherently violent (such as Islam) and one that is inherently pacifist.
An update- the seige is over. It was the usual suspect, a lone wolf gunman, who called himself a muslim, but who had nothing to do with ‘real’ mohamedanism. Three people dead, 30 or so hostages traumatised, a city brought to a standstill for a day- nothing more to be said.
Except, I do find myself wondering ‘What if just one of those hostages had been carrying a concealed gun?’
Has that ever happened in America, where a hostage took on a terrorist or robber? If so, it never made the news here.
Nick, there is a sharp divide in the USA between ‘concealed carry’ States where people may be armed (not sure if some allow open carriage of firearms) and those with gun prohibition, the latter get this sort of thing a lot, in the former the environment selects against lone wolf nutters.
As for your assessment of the gunman, We are not told if he was a Shia or Sunni minority, coming from Iran, and being on bail for accessory to murder of his wife and 40 or so indecency offences, he sounds like a ‘Jihad Savile’.
He was apparently a Shi’ite who had converted to Sunnism. Quite the fruit loop.
Nick
Not always a good idea to take on a lone terrorist/gunman even if you have the means to do so – unless you can be absolutely certain he is acting alone. I was taught this in airline security training. Not all hi-jackers will necessarily make themselves known at the same time. Same goes for searching for a bomb on board. You carry on searching even if you find one.
This man really was a loner. Makes you wonder if having a friend would have made him a sane person.
If Anglicanism has a founder it is Richard Hooker – the three legged stool of reason, tradition and scripture.
Henry VIII was a strict Roman Catholic. He just did not want a Pope.
As for Charles Manson – well had been around in a time of collapsed empires (say after a nuclear war) and had been a military and political thinker of GENIUS (which Mohammed was) then he might have achieved his ambition of creating a mass movement that would rule continents – “The Family”.
It is often forgotten that it was not just the situation Mohammed and his successors found themselves in (the Byzantine and Persian Empires utterly punch drunk and falling apart)- they had to take advantage of it, and that took genius.
Mr Manson was no genius.
As for a Christian theologian who denounced free will, and the ability of human beings to know what was good and evil independent of scripture (let alone choose it) and supported political tyranny……
Well Martin Luther springs to mind – and modern Lutherans are nothing like him.
They do not go about supporting serfdom, or calling for the extermination of the Jews, or saying that people should obey any political master – even the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire (and on and on).
So perhaps there is hope.