Islamism – Page 20 – Maverick Philosopher

Michael Valle on Marxism-Leninism and Islamism

There are four new philosophical-political posts at Mike Valle's infrequently updated weblog that I recommend. Start with Marxism-Leninism and Islamism and scroll up. Excerpts with some comments of mine:

One thing that people got wrong with the communists, and they get wrong with the Islamists, is that they think that people can’t really believe this stuff. They think these people think that they are acting from these ideas, but they are really reacting to oppressive conditions, and these crazy ideological ideas are only an indirect way of expressing their frustration with their conditions.

[Scott Atran, anthropologist, seems to maintain this absurd view as I report in Does Anyone Really Believe in the Muslim Paradise?]

What Bochenski argues for communism, I also argue for Islamism: Yes, they really do believe this stuff, and we insult not only reality but those very people themselves by suggesting that we know more than they do about their own motivations. Yes, an Islamist does, in fact, believe that Allah will reward him for his violent martyrdom. He believes it in the marrow of his bones. Not only that—he will believe it even if he is no longer oppressed, lives in a big house, has a great job, has a university education, and the rest of it. Throwing money at Islamists does not kill ideology. Ideology is more powerful than wealth. Just as with communist terrorists, the Islamist terrorists are quite frequently well-educated and, by the standards of history, not particularly oppressed. They are ideologues.

Mike is on the money. What's the best test for belief? Action! By their fruits shall ye know them. What people believe is manifested by their actions in the context of their verbal avowals. People who think that Communists and Islamists don't really believe what they say they believe are probably just engaging in psychological projection: "I can't believe this stuff, so you can't either."

But the fact that I can't bring myself to believe in, or even entertain with hospitality, any such nonsense as a classless society or the dictatorship of the proletariat or post-mortem dalliance with 72 black-eyed virgins as recompense for piloting jumbo jets into trade towers, or that the USA is permeated with 'institutionalized racism' – cuts no ice. People believe the damndest things and they prove it by their behavior, and the fact that other people can't 'process' this at face value means nothing. People really do believe this crap.

We all seek a transcendental meaning to our lives, except for those few of us who live as animals. National Socialism, Communism, and Islamism give people that meaning, and having such a meaning is, for many people, far more important than material comforts and wealth. I think this is fine, as long as one’s transcendental purpose isn’t murderously evil, of course.

Mike here touches upon the problem of misplaced idealism.

It is not enough to have ideals, one must have the right ideals. This is why being idealistic, contrary to common opinion, is not always good. Idealism ran high among the members of the Sturmabteilung (SA) and the Schuetzstaffel (SS). The same is true of countless millions who became Communists in the 20th century: they sacrificed their 'bourgeois' careers and selfish interests to serve the Party. (See Whittaker Chambers, Witness, required reading for anyone who would understand Communism.) But it would have been better had the members of these organizations been cynics and slackers. It is arguably better to have no ideals than to have the wrong ones. Nazism and Communism brought unprecedented amounts of evil into the world on the backs of idealistic motives and good intentions. Connected with this is the point that wanting to do good is not good enough: one must know what the good is and what one morally may and may not do to attain it.

It is therefore a grotesque error, one that libs and lefties have a soft spot for, to suppose that being idealistic is good in and of itself. The question must follow: idealistic in respect of which ideals? No doubt John Lennon in his silly ditty "Imagine" expressed lofty ideals; but his ideals are the utopian ideals of the Left, and we know where they lead. It is not good to be idealistic sans phrase; one must be idealistic in respect of the right ideals. Only then can we say that being idealistic is better than being a common schlep who serves only his own interests.

Bochenski was right about communism. Too many are still in denial or ignorance of the destructive and evil nature of communism (as were so many of my professors), just as too many are hopelessly naïve about the power of Islamist ideology (as are so many “intellectuals”).

I would add the following. Communism is not dead. it lives on in those leftist seminaries called colleges and universities. To understand the Left and its political correctness, you must study the history of Communism. As I have said more than once: PC comes from the CP!

A related point is that Islamism is shaping up to be the Communism of the 21st century. Which is another reason to study Communism.

Richard Dawkins on Muslims

The Guardian reports:

The outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins was involved in an online Twitter row on Thursday after tweeting: "All the world's Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge. They did great things in the Middle Ages, though."

If it is true, it is true. And if it is true, then it is legitimate to ask why it is true, and to inquire whether the influence of Islamic beliefs makes for a cultural climate in which science is less likely to flourish.

There is no bigotry here, and certainly no racism: Islam is not a race, but a religion.

Are all religions equally conducive to human flourishing? No critical thinker would just assume that. It is an appropriate topic of investigation. And if you investigate it honestly, then I think you will come to the conclusion that Islam is an inferior religion when it comes to its contribution to human flourishing, inferior to the other two Abrahamic faiths, and to the great Asian faiths.

Besides the inanition of scientific progress in Muslim lands, there is the following consideration.

Terrorism is inimical to human flourishing. (Can we all agree on that?) Now consider terrorism whose source is religion (as opposed to terrorism whose source is a non-religious ideology such as communism) and ask yourself this question: which of the great religions at the present time is chiefly responsible for the terrorism whose source is religious belief? The answer, obviously, is Islam. Therefore, Islam is an inferior religion when it comes to its contribution to human flourishing.

So, on this point, Richards Dawkins 1; his critics 0.

Hodges on Vallicella on Harris versus Atran on Islamist Beliefs and Practices

Here. Scott Atran enters the ComBox.

Does Anyone Really Believe in the Muslim Paradise?

I dedicate this post to Peter L. and Mike V. with whom some of the following ideas were hashed out over Sunday breakfast at a Mesa hash house.

Sam Harris reports on the curious views of one Scott Atran, anthropologist:

According to Atran, people who decapitate journalists, filmmakers, and aid workers to cries of “Alahu akbar!” or blow themselves up in crowds of innocents are led to misbehave this way not because of their deeply held beliefs about jihad and martyrdom but because of their experience of male bonding in soccer clubs and barbershops. (Really.) So I asked Atran directly:

“Are you saying that no Muslim suicide bomber has ever blown himself up with the expectation of getting into Paradise?”

“Yes,” he said, “that’s what I’m saying. No one believes in Paradise.”

This post assumes that Harris has fairly and accurately reported Atran's view. If you think he hasn't then substitute 'Atran*' for 'Atran' below. Atran* holds by definition the view I will be criticizing.

If we are to be as charitable to Atran as possible, we would have to say that he holds his strange view because he himself does not believe in the Muslim paradise and he cannot imagine anyone else really believing in it either. So Muslims who profess to believe in Paradise with its black-eyed virgins, etc. are merely mouthing phrases. What makes this preposterous is that Atran ignores the best evidence one could have as to what a person believes, namely, the person's overt behavior taken in the context of his verbal avowals. Belief is linked to action. If I believe I have a flat tire, I will pull over and investigate. If I say 'We have a flat tire" but keep on driving, then you know that I don't really believe that we have a flat tire.

Same with the Muslim terrorist. If he invokes the greatness of his god while decapitating someone, then that is the best possible evidence that he believes in the existence of his god and what that god guarantees to the faithful, namely, an endless supply of post-mortem carnal delights. This is particularly clear in the case of jihadis such as suicide bombers. The verbal avowals indicate the content of the belief while the action indicates that the content is believed.

Now compare this very strong evidence with the evidence Atran has for the proposition that "No one believes in Paradise." His only evidence is astonishingly flimsy: that he and his ilk cannot imagine anyone believing what Muslims believe. But that involves both a failure of imagination and a projection into the Other of one's own attitudes.

The problem here is a general one.

"I don't believe that, and you don't either!"

"But I do!"

"No you don't, you merely think you believe it or are feigning belief."

"Look at what I do, and how I live. The evidence of my actions, which costs me something, in the context of what I say, is solid evidence that I do believe what I claim to believe."

Example. Years ago I heard Mario Cuomo say at a Democratic National Convention that the life of the politician was the noblest and best life. I was incredulous and thought to myself: Cuomo cannot possibly believe what he just said! But then I realized that he most likely does believe it and that I was making the mistake of assuming that others share my values and assumptions and attitudes.

It is a bad mistake to project one's own values, beliefs, attitudes , assumptions and whatnot into others.

Most of the definitions of psychological projection I have read imply that it is only undesirable attitudes, beliefs and the like that are the contents of acts of projection. But it seems to me that the notion of projection should be widened to include desirable ones as well. The desire for peace and social harmony, for example, is obviously good. But it too can be the content of an act of psychological projection. A pacifist, for example, may assume that others deep down are really like he is: peace-loving to such an extent as to avoid war at all costs. A pacifist might reason as follows: since everyone deep down wants peace, and abhors war, if I throw down my weapon, my adversary will do likewise. By unilaterally disarming, I show my good will, and he will reciprocate. But if you throw down your weapon before Hitler, he will take that precisely as justification for killing you: since might makes right on his neo-Thrasymachian scheme, you have shown by your pacific deed that you are unfit for the struggle for existence and therefore deserve to die, and indeed must die to keep from polluting the gene pool.

Projection in cases like these can be dangerous. One oftens hears the sentiment expressed that we human beings are at bottom all the same and all want the same things. Not so! You and I may want "harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding" but others have belligerence and bellicosity as it were hard-wired into them. They like fighting and dominating and they only come alive when they are bashing your skull in either literally or figuratively. People are not the same and it is a big mistake to think otherwise and project your decency into them.

I said that the psychologists classify projection as a defense mechanism. But how could the projection of good traits count as a defense mechanism? Well, I suppose that by engaging in such projections one defends oneself against the painful realization that the people in the world are much worse than one would have liked to believe. Many of us have a strong psychological need to see good in other people, and that can give rise to illusions. There is good and evil in each person, and one must train oneself to accurately discern how much of each is present in each person one encounters.

Sam Harris on Islam

I have been critical of Sam Harris, but here he talks sense. (HT: Malcolm Pollack)

On Religious Pluralism and Religious Tolerance

London Beheading

I heard there was a beheading in London. At first I thought the perpetrator had to have been a Catholic nun or maybe a Buddhist monk. Imagine my shock when I learned that a practitioner of the Religion of Peace did the dastardly deed!

Details here and here.

But of course only an Islamophobe would conclude that the U.K. needs to examine its immigration policy. Concern over incidents like these is surely irrational and motivated only by nativism, bigotry, racism, and xenophobia, not to mention the superciliousness and arrogance the English are known for.

What is to be Done?

What is to be done about the threat of radical Islam? After explaining the problem, Pat Buchanan gives his answer:

How do we deal with this irreconcilable conflict between a secular West and a resurgent Islam?

First, as it is our presence in their world that enrages so many, we should end our interventions, shut down the empire and let Muslim rulers deal with Muslim radicals.

Second, we need a moratorium on immigration from the Islamic world. Inevitably, some of the young we bring in, like the Tsarnaevs, will yield to radicalization and seek to strike a blow for Islam against us.

What benefit do we derive as a people to justify the risks we take by opening up America to mass migration from a world aflame with hatred and hostility over race, ethnicity, culture, history and faith?

Why are we bringing all of the world's quarrelsome minorities, and all the world's quarrels with them, into our home?

What we saw in Boston was the dark side of diversity.

Buchanan is right. We will never be able to teach the backward denizens of these God-forsaken regions how to live. And certainly not by invasion and bombing. Besides, what moral authority do we have at this point? We are a country in dangerous fiscal, political, and moral decline. The owl of Minerva is about to spread her wings. We will have our hands full keeping ourselves afloat for a few more years. Until we wise up and shape up, a moratorium on immigration from Muslim lands is only common sense.

Common sense, however, is precisely what liberals lack. So I fear things will have to get much worse before they get better.

Not All Muslims are Terrorists. . .

. . . but most terrorists are Muslims. Everyone on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorist list is a Muslim male except for two, a woman and an animal rights extremist.

Is the FBI run by 'Islamophobes'? Is the NRA run by 'hoplophobes'?

This is why subjecting a Mormon matron from Salt Lake City to the same scrutiny at an airport as a twenty-something Muslim male from Cairo makes no sense. Profiling, on the other hand, makes perfect sense. Is that why liberals oppose it?

Anecdote: I have been shown special attention at airports because of my intense and somewhat Middle Eastern mien. This happened most recently at Heathrow in London. I have no objection to being 'profiled' as long as they stay away from my 'junk.'

Radical Islam

Obama's politically correct complacency about the threat is well-argued by Victor Davis Hanson.

Bob Beckel, liberal, shows for once that even a liberal can on occasion display common sense.

On the question of terminology I am pleased to see that Horace Jeffery Hodges and I are in agreement. It is a pleasure to be so well understood by someone.

Islam, Radical Islam, and the Left’s Denial of the Threat

In the nine years I have been blogging I have been careful to distinguish between Islam and radical Islam (militant Islam, Islamism, Islamofascism, etc.) I can't say I have had any really good reason for this charitableness on my part. Perhaps it is that I just didn't want to believe that 'moderate Muslim' is as much an oxymoron as 'moderate Nazi.'

In "Calling Islam 'Islam'," Bosch Fawstin argues against distinguishing between Islam and radical Islam (militant Islam, fundamentalist Islam, etc.) But if one doesn't make this distinction, and radical Islam is the enemy, then Islam is the enemy. This seems to have the unpalatable consequence that 1.5 billion Muslims are the enemy. Surely that is false. As I understand Fawstin, he avoids this inference by distinguishing between Muslims who take Islam seriously and those who don't. Actually, he makes a tripartite distinction among Muslims who take Islam seriously, and are a grave existential threat to us; Muslims who do not take Islam seriously and are a threat to us only insofar as they refuse to condemn the radicals; and Muslims who, unlike the second group, practice Islam, but an 'enlightened' Islam. This third group, however, is empty. According to Fawstin, "There’s no separate ideology apart from Islam that’s being practiced by these Muslims in name only, there’s no such thing as 'Western Islam'."

If Fawstin is right, then to speak of Islam having being 'hijacked' by radicals makes as little sense as to speak of National Socialism as having been hijacked by radicals. Islam and Nazism are radical and militant and murderous by their very nature: there are no moderate forms. If you are Muslim or a Nazi then you are a radical since these ideologies admit of no moderate forms; if you are not a radical Muslim or Nazi, then you are not a Muslim or a Nazi at all.

Whether or not you agree with Fawstin's parsing of the terminology, the radicals do pose a real threat both 'explosive' (as in the Boston Marathon bombing) and 'subversive' (as in the building of the ground zero mosque). Curiously, in the case of GZM, the site of the subversion is the same as the site of one of the main 'explosions.'

Why is it that Jay Sekulow perceives the threat clearly while Juan Cole does not?

In Terrorism and Other Religions, Cole argues that "Contrary to what is alleged by bigots like Bill Maher, Muslims are not more violent than people of other religions." Although we conservatives don't think all that highly of Bill Maher, we cheered when he pointed out the obvious, namely, that Islam, and Islam alone at the present time, is the faith whose doctrines drive most of the world's terrorism, and that the Left's moral equivalency 'argument' is "bullshit" to employ Maher's terminus technicus. Why should pointing out what is plainly true get Maher labeled a bigot by Cole?

So I thought I must be missing something and that I needed to be set straight by Professor Cole. So I read his piece carefully numerous times. Cole's main argument is that, while people of "European Christian heritage" killed over 100 million people in the 20th century, Muslims have killed only about two million during that same period. But what does this show? Does it show that Islamic doctrine does not drive most of the world's terrorism at the present time? Of course not.

That is precisely the issue given that Cole is contesting what "the bigot" Maher claimed. What Cole has given us is a text-book example of ignoratio elenchi. This is an informal fallacy of reasoning committed by a person who launches into the refutation of some thesis that is other than the one being forwarded by the dialectical opponent. If the thesis is that Muslims who take Islam seriously are the cause of most of the world's terrorism at the present time, this thesis cannot be refuted by pointing out that people of "European Christian heritage" have killed more people than Muslims. For this is simply irrelevant to the issue in dispute. (I note en passant that this is why ignoratio elenchi is classifed as a fallacy of relevance.)

Someone born and raised in a Christian land can be called a Christian. But it doesn't follow that such a person is a Christian in anything more than a sociological sense. In this loose and external sense the author of The Anti-Christ was a Christian. Nietzsche was raised in a Christian home in a Christian land by a father, Karl Ludwig Nietzsche, who was a Lutheran pastor. Similarly, Hitler was a Christian. And Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Republic of Turkey, was a Muslim. But were Ataturk's actions guided and inspired by Islamic doctrine? As little as Hitler's actions were guided and inspired by the Sermon on the Mount. Here is a list of some of Ataturk's anti-Islamic actions.

Having exposed the fundamental fallacy in Cole's article, there is no need to go through the rest of his distortions such as the one about the Zionist terrorists during the time of the British Mandate.

Why do leftists deny reality? A good part of the answer is that they deny it because reality does not fit their scheme. Leftists confuse the world with their view of the world. In their view of the world, people are all equal and religions are all equal – equally good or equally bad depending on the stripe of the leftist. They want it to be that way and so they fool themselves into thinking that it is that way. Moral equivalency reigns. If you point out that Muhammad Atta was an Islamic terrorist, they shoot back that Timothy McVeigh was a Christian terrorist — willfully ignoring the crucial difference that the murderous actions of the former derive from Islamic/Islamist doctrine whereas the actions of the latter do not derive from Christian doctrine.

And then these leftists like Cole compound their willful ignorance of reality by denouncing those who speak the truth as 'Islamophobes.'

That would have been like hurling the epithet 'Nazi-phobe' at a person who, in 1938, warned of the National Socialist threat to civilized values.

Jeannine Pirro Tells the Truth to ‘Jihad Mom’

This had to be said and Judge Pirro does a wonderful job of it. What I love about the Fox ladies: beauty, brains, and balls — or the female equivalent thereof.

"We should not be required to breathe the same air as you, we should not be required to share the indignity of your presence" says Judge Jeanine Pirro in her opening statement to the Jihadi mother of the Boston bomber, as she exposes the facts that are being brought to light behind the terrorist attack in the Boston Marathon.

Schopenhauer on Islam, “The Saddest and Poorest Form of Theism”

Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, tr. E. F. J. Payne, vol. II (Dover, 1966), p. 162. This is from Chapter XVII, "On Man's Need for Metaphysics" (emphases added and a paragraph break):

Temples and churches, pagodas and mosques, in all countries and ages, in their splendour and spaciousness, testify to man's need for metaphysics, a need strong and ineradicable, which follows close on the physical. The man of a satirical frame of mind could of course add that this need for metaphysics is a modest fellow content with meagre fare. Sometimes it lets itself be satisfied with clumsy fables and absurd fairy-tales. If only they are imprinted early enough, they are for man adequate explanations of his existence and supports for his morality.

Consider the Koran, for example; this wretched book was sufficient to start a world-religion, to satisfy the metaphysical need for countless millions for twelve hundred years, to become the basis of their morality and of a remarkable contempt for death, and also to inspire them to bloody wars and the most extensive conquests. In this book we find the saddest and poorest form of theism. Much may be lost in translation, but I have not been able to discover in it one single idea of value. Such things show that the capacity for metaphysics does not go hand in hand with the need for it . . . .

The Lessons of Boston

Learn Ralph Peters' lessons of Boston, or there may be a pressure cooker in your future.

As for the moral equivalency of Christianity and Islam, Bill Maher, certainly no friend of religion, achieves the right tone, "That's liberal bullshit." When some academic leftist says something that is plainly false, his pronouncement should not be treated with respect as if worthy of calm consideration. Call it what it is.

Are all Muslims terrorists? Of course not, and no one said so. Most are not. But most terrorists are Muslims. That is the point.

There an important distinction that ought to be observed. Someone who is a 'Christian' in a merely sociological sense of the term might commit a terrorist act such as blowing up a federal building, it being quite clear that no support for such a deed is forthcoming from Christian doctrine. But your typical Muslim terrorist is not just a punk from a Muslim land; he is someone whose actions flow from Islamist doctrine.

I have been told that there are a few 'Buddhists' who are also terrorists. But if you know anything about Buddhism, you know that there is no support for terrorism in the Buddhist sutras and shastras. So a 'Buddhist' who is also a terrorist is only a Buddhist in some loose and accidental sense of the term — he happens to be a native of a Buddhist land or has acquired some Buddhist acculturation — but there is no connection between his terrorist activities and Buddhist teaching.

Islam is unique among the great faiths in that it is as much a political ideology as it is a religion. In respect of the former, it is like communism, and, like communism, bent on world domination. Islam is the communism of the 21st century.

Be Afraid

In this fine piece, Marilyn Penn takes Thomas Friedman to task. Her article begins thusly (emphasis added):

In Thomas Friedman’s op ed on the Boston marathon massacre (Bring On the Next Marathon, NYT 4/17), the boldface caption insists “We’re just not afraid anymore.” Perhaps this is true for a traveling journalist who doesn’t use the subway daily or who isn’t forced to spend all his days in the 9/11 city of New York, but for most thinking people who work and live here, there is a great deal to fear. We live in a porous society where criminals roam free yet politicians complain about the “discriminatory” stop and frisk policies of the police, even though they have successfully reduced crime precisely in the neighborhoods that most affect the complaining minorities and their liberal champions. If you ride the subways, you know how many passengers wear enormous back-packs, large enough to conceal an arsenal of weapons. These are allowed to be carried into movie theaters, playgrounds, parks, sports arenas, shopping centers, department stores and restaurants with no security checks whatsoever. On the national front, immigration policies are more concerned with politically correct equality than with the reality of which groups are fomenting most of the terror around the world today. Our northern and southern borders are infiltrated daily by undocumented people slipping in beyond the government’s surveillance or control.

I agree with her entire piece. Read it.

It has been a week since the Boston Marathon bombing. There was a moment of silence today in remembrance of the victims. But let's keep things in perspective. Only three people were killed. I know you are supposed to gush over these relatively minor events and the undoubtedly horrendous suffering of the victims, but most of the gushing is the false and foolish response of feel-good liberals who have no intention of doing what is necessary to protect against the threat of radical Islam. The Patriot's Day event was nothing compared to what could happen. How about half of Manhattan being rendered uninhabitable by dirty bombs?

When that or something similar happens, will you liberals start yammering about how 'unimaginable' it was? Look, I'm imagining it right now. Liberals can imagine the utopian nonsense imagined by John Lennon in his asinine "Imagine." Is their imagination 'selective'? They can imagine the impossible but not the likely. It is worth recalling that Teddy Kennedy's favorite song was Impossible Dream.

Deal with the real. And the likely. There are no impossible ideals. (See Can What is Impossible to Achieve be an Ideal for us?)

Achmed the Terrorist

In the off-chance that you haven't had an occasion to bust your gut over Jeff Dunham's ventriloquy, check this out.

Mockery and derision are important weapons in the culture war. It is not enough to argue rigorously and patiently against the liberal-left enablers and apologists of radical Islam. Also needed is to make them and their clients look stupid. The young are more impressed by the cool than the cogent.