The above video is really worth watching.
It's a meeting of around 4,000 Muslims in Norway earlier this year ("the largest Islamic Scandinavian International event"). There's a question along the lines of: "why are Muslims attacked in the media for advocating punishments like stoning and death to homosexuals, etc... when Christians and Jews, who have the same punishments in the Bible and Torah" are not similarly attacked in the media".
The answer from Fahad Qureshi is to ask the audience if they are "normal Muslims", ie, not "extremists". They all raise their hands. Then he asks them if they agree with Islamic punishments such as the death penalty to homosexuals; again they all raise their hands. Then comes the zinger: well if you're all "normal Muslims" and you all agree with such punishments then it can't be "extremist" to do so. It's just Islam. Qureshi sits down to applause all around including from the Sheikh who says that it's the "best answer" on the issue he's heard.
Now think about that: mainstream Islam calls for these barbaric punishments (stonings, beheadings, killing apostates and homosexuals) and all these normal Muslims agree with it, so it's not "extremist"! It's crazy, but scary and true.
You should read the comment on the video below it on YouTube. Its crazy conclusion is that because all Muslims hold these views, and yet Islam is a "peaceful religion" (really!) it is "Islamophobic" and "racist" to call them "extremist" or "radical". They don't conclude -- as they ought -- that some self-examination is in order as to whether said views (eg killing gays and apostates) might be wrong in today's world -- as of course has been done by Christians and Jews. For the proper answer to the question asked -- why aren't Christians and Jews criticised when these punishments are in the Bible and Torah -- is that Christians and Jews have long ago maintained that these parts of their holy books are wrong and they should not be followed. Instead, these Muslim clerics claim that they "can't be radical", because all Muslims hold these views! Again, crazy.
That such punishments are part of normative Islam is, of course, the message that sites like Robert Spencer's Jihad Watch have been saying for a long time. But when Spencer says it, it's "Islamophobic". So, are all these normal, everyday Muslims "Islamophobic"?
The irony is that Spencer gets banned from entering the UK for saying similar things -- but from a critical stance. But Muslim clerics who say these things, as being positive and supporting them, are allowed in.
The story was posted in a blog I've just started reading, the left-ish Harry's Place. It led to a huge amount of comments and was then posted at Jihad Watch, with again much discussion. I'm on Spencer's side on this one, as were most of the commenters on HP.
HP's comments are deleted after 10 days, something to do with UK's libel laws, so I'm pasting some of the more interesting HP posts below the fold. Longish, so for hard-core counter-Jihad readers...
Johan Wehtje:
22nd October 2013
"As Andy points out, this is a particularly surreal
example of the oft-noted mirroring between Islamophobes and their main targets.
"
That mirroring
might be better taken as evidence of the general spuriousness of the term
"Islamophobia". What is in fact surreal is the astonishing
persistence of the willful delusions about Islam and the problems it poses.
This is hardly merely a phenomena of the far left - from liberals through to
centrist conservatives - the range of people prepared to intone comforting mantra's
about tiny minorities, great and peaceful religions, and use the word moderate
in the most bizarre circumstances each and every time they are confronted with
clear evidence to contrary borders on the suicidally masochistic.
I suspect that more than a few of
the seemingly deluded are aware that they are propagating a lie - but have
managed to persuade themselves that the lie is noble enough that it's
repetition will somehow lead to it being self fulfilling. I can sympathise to
an extent - for some time wishing to believe that Muslims, being human, could
humanise their religion, that Islam could be separated from Islamism, that
heterodox or syncretic forms of Islam, more naturally amenable to rub alongside
nationalist particularism or a secular state were destined to be in the ascendant.
The swift freezing fate of the Arab spring was the final nail in the coffin of
such wishful thinking, alongside the dispiriting results of the Afghan and Iraq
interventions and the March 14th movement in Lebanon. Certainly this or that
charismatic or wealthy benevolent despotism can hold back for a while the
theocracy of the dead eyed bearded chanting brigades wishing to subsume
everything in absolute slavery to a deity as capricious, cruel, needy,
vengeful, dominating and utterly inhuman as Allah. But pragmatic or somewhat
benign despotisms must still pay lip service - even the most secure in their
rule, or simply the most despotic dare not outright confront the ideology of
the ulema , even when they are busy imprisoning troublesome clerics. And as for
outright liberals - even the mildest expressions of disaffection - let alone
outright rejection - is to risk life, and at the least liberty. After more than
two decades in which Muslim's have had an uncomfortable front row seat, and by
far have been the most frequent victims of Islamist/Islamic atrocity and
oppression the number who are prepared to ask hard questions of Islam is
dispiritingly small - and do in fact merit the term "tiny minority"
who are in fact trying to , with the best intentions, to hijack their religion
before it, and it's adherents plunge into the looming mountain. What is sadder
is the that in the west the vociferousness with which one claims to be a
liberal is in inverse proportion to the degree to which one is prepared to
actually offer succor and solidarity to actual Muslim and ex-muslim liberals,
and in direct proportion to the vociferousness with which one condemns anyone
prepared to ask classically liberal questions of Islam.
Sarka:
22nd October 2013
It all links up
with this "applicability of Quranic and Sunnah rules in an IDEAL
world," question that we were talking about the other day.
There are some
Quran-only Muslims (a very modern position), who dismiss most non-directly
quranic rules completely or almost completely. These tend also to the kind of
quran "contextualisation" that sees what prescriptions there are in
the quran as guidance only, and not to be interpreted as part of any actual
code of law. Someone like Irshad Manji is a high-profile example, but there are
(I've even met) Muslims far less obviously provocative and outré than Irshad
who have the same basic view.
There are some
(I'd say a lot more), who by no means reject the sunnah, legal traditions, but
think they can be overhauled or just applied - whether in actual shariah legal
practice or just as guidance for behaviour - in a more modern (aka more
liberal) way. These people use standard legal/scriptural exegetical methods to
come to more "progressive" conclusions. This is made easier by the
fact that Islamic legal opinion has always been variegated and there is no
single orthodoxy.(not even e.g. within Sunni Al-Azhar.
But both these
general sorts of position are quite intellectual. The majority of practicing
Muslims (so leaving aside merely nominal Muslims, persons of Muslim background
who are atheists or agnostic, or just lukewarm to indifferent), accept the
authority of Quran plus traditions, including legal traditions, on trust. Their
belief - as far as I can see from all kinds of evidence - is quite
literalistic, but differs somewhat from e.g. Christian literalistic
fundamentalism in its recognition of, and indeed almost obsessive demand for -
authoritative "expert" interpretation, whether theological or
ethical-legal.
I am absolutely
fascinated by this difference: of course clerics and lay preachers can have
huge influence in protestant Christianity, but ordinary Christians of this type
are also feverish individual deployers of Scripture - its availability and
familiarity in the vernacular being key to the whole phenomenon).
Meanwhile the
zealous (ordinary) Muslim is by Christian standards both a literalist and -
paradoxically - a complete sucker for mediated interpretation. Especially in
pluralist modern conditions, though, literate Muslims have considerable choice
of rival interpretations... An example illustrating all this was a radio
documentary several years ago about the views of young Muslims at London
University - so obviously a highly educated and articulate sample. They were
all the generation in which Muslim Identity Revival was and is fashionable.
They described what they valued about their Islam was its capacity to solve all
problems (detailed authoritative guidance on everything).
They were then
asked what they thought of Tariq Ramadan - as a supposedly modernising Muslim
thinker going for a European sort of Islam and supposedly of great appeal to
the young. Their responses were quite negative, and all revolving ostensibly
around the claim that he did not have real authority (not a proper qualified
scholar). I say "ostensibly" because one detected quite a strong
sense that Ramadan's views struck them as soggy and throwing them too much on
their own interpretations, which was an unIslamic thing to do in itself.
This
"authority" obsession is slightly disingenuous in the sense that with
plenty of rival authorities around finding the "right" one could be
seen just as a way of justifying personal choice while appearing to
"submit" authentically. But it shouldn't be underestimated...It's
what makes "moderate" Muslim pundits go on and on about the need to
replace the wrong sort of authorities with the right ones (e.g. British trained
imams, or charismatic activist Muslims who "guarantee" to be able to
lead the young away from any dalliance with radicalism). It also, and I always
find this grimly comic - means that you almost always find "authoritative
interpreters" , whether virtual or in the flesh - involved in actual
supposed "self-radicalising", mini groups outside the mosques.
If we now go back
to look at the mainstream - with reference to Sarah's piece - I think that an
understanding of Islam as for most believers a highly literalistic faith - i.e.
guaranteed to be textually the literal truth, or legally, literally the best
way of doing things - yet also requiring authorities for its interpretation,
including on a simple personal level, helps us grasp the predicament of even
non-radical Muslims. When faced with non-Muslim, Western liberal criticism that
various, especially but not exclusively the Quranically based prescriptions,
are "barbaric", they cannot find any comfort position from which to
respond. - any position that, while remaining coherent - does not threaten both
their literalism and their dependence on the idea of authority. After al, while
authority seems capable of shifting interpretations, it requires a good dose of
inherent literalism to retain its own claims to offer correct interpretation.
And especially in
a time of Islamic revivalism, in which as Tarek Hargey the Oxford imam
complains, popular religosity is now based very much on an "identity"
theme that stresses an us-and-them mentality and is hostile to private
interpretation (especially in a liberal direction), there is little immediate
room for reform. Though notorious, Ramadan's refusal to condemn
stoning-for-adultery outright and his preference for a "moratorium"
may be a pragmatic assessment (not necessarily a sign of his forked tongue!)
In these circs, it's no surprise
that so many Muslims will act like Qureshi's "normal Muslims". And
insofar as they are genuinely not radical Islamists, they will (I am sure) take
refuge in the "in an ideal world", defence from liberal challenge.
Sarka:
…. I'm usually
quite a soft secularist - anywhere where religion(s) are now a relatively
unaggressive part of the social and cultural fabric. But in relation to Islam
I've come round to the view - expressed by most of the ex-Muslims and Muslim
"dissidents" that I respect - that the confinement of Islam in a
strictly secular framework, i.e. its political and civil complete
marginalisation, in principle and practice, is the only solution.
The idea of
somehow "taming", "domesticating" and "reform-engineering"
it, while proposed by many sincere and humane people, is not coherent or
practical, and attempts in this line cause obvious damage to our own liberal
values and framework. (Sure, we can hope that Islam will become tamer, and
applaud signs of that, but we can't try to manipulate that into happening).
However, to have
come to that conclusion is a little grim, because it's going to mean, sooner or
later, a lot of painful, even if not necessarily violent, confrontations. - a
lot of hurt Muslim feelings and dashed hopes of Muslim entitlements.
Sarah is getting
a lot of stick on this thread (I can see why). But oddly enough, my feeling is
that Sarah has been gradually moving towards sort of conclusion - though
terribly reluctantly and trying to maintain a judicious fence-sitting air while
doing so - which is what accounts for the awkwardnesses....E.g. the more
angry she gets at
"barbarity", the more desperately she reaches - as a salve - for some
sort of pairing and equivalence....Spencer "mirrors" Qureyshi...or -
despite its apparent reference only to problems of definition, here the most
unwise pairing of "Islamism"and "Zionism".
But then look at the
conclusion...she's all but using the language of the hated Geller (barbarity!)
Aloevera:
Dear Sarka--and
others
(I mean to reply
here to a number of posters--although it is points raised by Sarka that touched
off my thinking…)
The whole issue
of *equivalences* (and false equivalences) is a story in itself. I think many
people see equivalences where they don't exist--especially with regard to
"deep" history--or to the more generative features of current ideas
and practices. I've said it here before--and to repeat--there were features in
Western culture--going back to the doings of the medieval Church and to
feudalism--which *already* carried the seeds of the future flower of liberal
democracy (such as multiple legal jurisdictions, representative politics,
nascent notions of rights, individual, not collective, culpability). These
ideas and practices were not created for the sake of furthering liberal
democracy (the medieval West was quite illiberal by our current standards) but
for dealing with immediate problems at the time (medieval life)--however, they
created what Tocqueville called "habits of the heart"
(internatlizations) which could be tapped into and translated readily into
liberalism and democracy when these came along--and undergird them.
This
"genealogy" of ideas and practices did not exist (certainly not as a
set) outside the West. Any other culture aspiring to liberal democracy of any
sort has to borrow from the West in some degree--and that includes most of
world Jewry who largely, until modern times, were living in East Europe or the
Middle East.
Also--the Bible
was never considered the absolute word of God by Christians or Jews--so those
two lots are able to make amendments to The Text in a way that Muslims have
difficulty doing. Muslims have to square a circle if they want to do comparable
amendments.
Thus--while there may be
equivalences in certain social behavior of contemporary Muslims and
Westerners--there is not much in the way of equivalence in the generative features
that got us to where we are now--not socio-culturally, and not religiously. And
sometimes, this deeper "genealogy" has significance for what happens
socially today--so any analyst (academic or not) has to be aware of this.
Sarka:
This is a key
point. Weirdly, the "othering" theme in western leftist vocabulary -
which has found its way into the centre, has a lot to answer for here.
On the one hand
it involves the morally relativistic idea that we cannot judge or even characterise
the nature of the "other" because that way we are imprisoning the
other in our own web of assumptions and interests and purposes. Boiled down to
nostrums of a less philosophical kind, this has resulted in such hack
assumptions as
1. Who are you to judge another culture?
so 2. Only a
person who is in the öther" group is qualified to characterise or judge
own group, criticise or act. [see Only a Muslim can define what Islam is. or
even - more brutally - only Afghan women can change the lot of Afghan women].
And
so as it were "comparisons are odious".
But at the same
time, by suggesting that we have no right to judge others, in the sense of
identifying differences as the basis for unflattering
comparison/characterisation, it smuggles in the notion that actually the
"others" are all exactly the same as us.
E.g. if it is
wrong of us to "other others " suggesting they have a less democratic
or liberal culture, or treat women badly, let alone to use such value laden
terms as "backward "barbarous", then it sort of follows that in
all salient attitudes we have no virtues that they do not somehow also possess.
Their ideas and practices are not "really" any less liberal than
ours, and if it looks that way it is either because we don't understand them from
inside, or because we have distorted their societies with our greed, arrogance
and interference. "Really" they are all just like us (if not better),
in all positive respects.
I have often
observed irritably (especially on CIF), that these nostrums do not just - as
intended - represent some criticism of Eurocentricity, discrimination and e.g.
Islamophobia, but would logically mean the destruction and banning of all
social and cultural history, anthropology, sociology etc. For even if we keep
crude stereotyping out of these fields, and are self-reflexive about how our
values afect our analyses, the fields are predicated on the idea that
"other" societies/religions/cultures/periods can be meaningfully
compared with our own, and that they are not filled with people who are all in
every basic respect/attitude the same as we are.
Oddly enough, use
of the polite nostrums can turn out very rude indeed. I remember an Egyptian
Coptic girl who sometimes posted interesting comments on CIF getting most irate
at being reprimanded by English progressives, others, when she spoke of
problems of Islamism/Muslim attitudes, for not realising that "there were
good and bad and tolerant and intolerant people in any society...".
She rightly flew off the handle,
saying "That is incredibly insulting to Egyptians....because it means that
you are actually forcing me to accept that the proportion of naturally just bad
and intolerant people in my society is a very great deal higher than in yours,
by some freak of nature!"
Aloevera
Oct 23rd
Dear Sarka--
I think you have
written a very important post--too bad it is not an "above-the-line"
piece. You have put exceptionally well the (now) growing perception about the
Fatal Flaw--the Great Inconsistency--inherent in identity politics--namely, the
requirement that "The Other" be viewed paradoxically as the same and
different at once (with strange and even impossible moral implications).
"The Other" is an absolute equal (to the "White
Man"/"Jew") while at the same time, the "White
Man"/"Jew" must indulge the "Other's" untoward
differences. The "Other" is *just like* us--yet--too *different* to
be subject to the sorts of criticisms we habitually make of ourselves.
There are now all
sorts of labels for this--"Racism of Lesser Expectations", "Racism
through the back door" (because those--usually of the Further Left in the
West, who hold with this notion--are *unaware* of their racism).
Although this
"othering" crept onto the identity scene during my (academic)
lifetime, I can't pinpoint the exact moment it came, or the exact party
responsible. I think Edward Said, if not the inventor, was a big purveyor of
this notion. And, the concept of "The Other" remains largely an
elite-ish, intellectual formulation within the sphere of indentity politics--the
general public, I think, has not quite heard of it (and those of the public who
pass through academia on their way to other things and do hear about it, tend
not to retain it). The more popular notions are "pluralism" or
"multiculturalism"--concepts in which it is "understood" by
the public that "People of Color" are hyper-equal--and have to be
treated, at once, as "just-like-us" but also untouchibly
different--in order to maintain political correctness.
All these devices
of identity politics--"multiculturalism", "political
correctness", and (for those in the know) "the Other"--are now
increasingly lampooned. Moreover--many from among the "People of
Color" are increasingly contesting the Great Inconsistency"--as it is
both insulting to them, as well as supportive of the harm caused to them by
many of their own fellows--all to the increasing confoundment of the Further
Left here in the West. (Even years ago this contesting began, in embryonic
form, to rear its head. I recall reading somewhere that a woman of African
descent once stood up in a lecture given by Edward Said and accused him of
leaving the status of women out of his model--much to his immediate, great
confusion).
Good. The whole
business does not fit the complexities of the globalizing world (or even the
complexities of the pre-globalizing world)--and we should move beyond it and
deal with reality. Now--the next Battle in the War for the Complexities of
Reality is the false equivalency/false analogy battle.
But I must say--identity politics
has done a great deal of harm--and, in spite of the increasing lampooning, it
does continue to chug along and helps tighten the screws of identity for many
contesting parties--and it is difficult to argue with a tight screw.
