Hi Hubski,
with the recent surge of events related to extremism related to Islam and somebody's Jihad, a local politician (with whom I usually disagree) raised an interesting point that I'd like to forward for comment to you guys.
Many think - including me - that indeed the vast majority of Islam and of the "muslim community" in general is made of moderate, anti-violence, and civil human beings that just want to live their life as anybody else.
This obviously implies that only a tiny proportion of muslims are also Islamists. Given the latter's propensity toward a staggering combination of social media communication and extreme physical violence, it is clear that their "voice" is the one we all hear the most.
Yet, and here I get back to the initial proposition that one politician made, it appears that the "vast majority of muslims" are extremely timid in condemning, opposing, isolate the extremist part of their community. I think most would agree that we did not see popular protests in the Islamic community, strong voices coming from muslims worldwide against these acts of terrors. Please note I am not saying there are no such positions (the very governments that most suffers from these acts are openly fighting terrorism - e.g. Iran and even the all-but-moderated fundamentalist government of Saudi Arabia).
However, these positions are somewhat underwhelming in terms of strength, at least communicatively speaking. They are certain much less hearable, by several orders of magnitude, than the extremists'.
This, I think, may be due to a few, non mutually-exclusive factors:
- The relative measure of moderated muslims over Islamists stated above is incorrect, and the moderated part of Islam is -in absolute terms- much less prominent than many would think.
- Because the muslim society operates over different "social rules" than western societies, the idea itself of "social protesting" or "community position" does not exist. Therefore, measuring moderateness in the muslim community by the strength of its voice is misleading.
- The western media is actively ignoring those voices, not putting them upfront, in favour of the latest beheading or explosion.
The question of interest here is therefore: "What forces or conditions make the moderated Islam only so timidly opposing the more extremist and violent Islam?"
How many days has Fox News spent condemning the violence against black church-goers by Christian extremists? Has the Pope come out to condemn this Christian terrorist, and terrorists like him? Why is the Christian world silent on these issues, and what can be done to make Christians take responsibility for the violence caused by their religion? Are there any actual Christian moderates? I'm not sure what you were going for, but it's hard to compute. Generally speaking I don't expect an American born Islamic accountant to answer for the crimes committed by "fellow Muslims" in war torn countries, mid-civil war. I also don't expect a lapsing Catholic in New York to answer for mass shootings in the South. Taking this position is effectively saying, "ISLAM (or Christianity) is guilty of something, and all of it's followers need to express their guilt for me otherwise I will condemn them wholesale." To the best of my knowledge neither Cliven Bundy nor Ted Nugent have gone out publicly to condemn the burning of black churches in the south. It's a shame that the allegedly moderate Christians of this country aren't standing up against the violent, extremist minority, I suppose. Or that whole line of reasoning is inherently broken.
| "ISLAM (or Christianity) is guilty of something, and all of it's followers need to express their guilt for me otherwise I will condemn them wholesale." Where did I say that muslims must express their "guilt" (?!) "otherwise I will condemn them wholesale." ? This is not at all what I am "effectively saying"; maybe that's what you're more accustomed to interpret. I am not condemning anybody, nor expecting anybody to feel guilty for anybody else's actions. What I'd however image is reasonable to expect is people taking distances from acts that happen within their society and that twist a shared condition (Islam) most of them identify with, to some degree. No, I would not expect muslim americans to protest against ISIS. I would expect muslim leaders worldwide to take a clear distance from extremist acts of terrorism. I would also expect the Pope to make a clear statement on Charleston's events. But why did you twist my question to a "christianity behaves better on average than islam" argumentation is totally unclear to me. Also I am not american so I have no idea what Fox News does or say but I guarantee you that's not the only media available.
Muslim clerics denounce violence and terrorism all the time. Have another Google search Look, the point is, there isn't one Muslim community. There's tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands. I wouldn't know, I'm not a Muslim community counter. It's not my job. The world is massively huge and massively divided up in so many ways, economically, geographically, culturally, politically. To expect everyone with a single identifier, in this case "muslim" to all respond to everything that goes about is not only unfair, but completely illogical.
I think rd95 already said just about everything that I would have said. Anecdotally, I'm a huge Christopher Hitchens fan, and by necessity of that fact I've thought about this subject a lot. What is it that makes Islam so conducive to horrendous violence? Why is it that in this one particular group we see this particular brand of violence? Those questions assume a certain type of answer and you've already given away some explanatory agility. I think what we see behind every society that spawns jihadists is a history of American/Soviet proxy wars, or some other external meddling. If you broaden the scope of your considerations you'll see the same sort of moral/civil decay anywhere that this scenario has played out. The Korean peninsula? Vietnam? To a lesser extent Cuba. Israel/Palestine has all the right ingredients for precisely what you would expect. So, to join it all up, when you put the screws to small countries extremism is the only chip they have left on the table. The solution to extremism, in my eyes (despite my love of Christopher Hitchens) doesn't rest in Islam. It rests in what I think is the logical place, the place we should have been looking all along; helping people of whatever religion or background develop and maintain functional social/governmental institutions that provide the necessities of life. Get that going in any society and I think you'll see extremism dry right up. In a generation? Perhaps not. But a century of blood isn't always easy to wash away. The moves we've made with respect to Iran and Cuba look very refreshing if you ascribe to the conclusions I've set out in my thesis; if there is a cure for extremism it will be in the form of a secular justice that eventually redeemed France, Germany, Japan, or any other country you'd like. I think the best answer to your question is that the problem with Islam is that it got stuck in the middle of an international conflict between foreign super powers.
To be fair, Friends (especially the liberal Friends) are generally staunch pacifists. This article is a demonstration of that. The only downside is that Friends are a minority in the world of Christianity, however there does seem to be a stronger tradition of pacifism in Christianity than there is in Islam. It is important to note however that this might simply be because I am less aware of the tradition of nonviolence in Islam.
2nd generation British guy here from a (liberal) Muslim immigrant family, although I'm not religious at all FYI. My family talk about these kinds of events a lot at home, and we all find them horrific. I think there are a few reasons why it might appear that we condemn them so timidly: 1. My family often feel that these kinds of stories ostacrise them further from the community that they're trying to integrate into. Therefore, they don't exactly go out of their way to bring these issues up with non-Muslims. In fact, I remember my mum not wanting me to get public transport the day after a terror attack from the fear of someone taking their anger out on me. This was probably a bit of an overreaction on her end, but it's not unheard of 2. I feel like there's a bit of a divide between the non-Muslim perception of what the Muslim community is, and what our own perception is. We don't view these extremists as part of "our community". 3. At least in the UK, the Muslim community is very isolated. When was the last time that you heard a Muslim leader's opinion on anything? 4. It's a bit hypocritical to expect Muslims to apologise for the small number of extremists, but not expect — say US citizens to apologise for their government's own killing of civilians in Muslim countries. The majority of sane Muslims don't hold ordinary US citizens responsible for these killings (even if you support the government that is behind them) so we don't feel like we have responsibility either. 5. As you said, the media may simply not be reporting on Muslim condemnations of attacks. Here's a massive list of Muslim authorities/scholars condemning terror attacks. I've got no love for Islam, and believe that your point does hold some truth. All a Mosque what would have to do is put up a banner outside condemning terrorism in the week following a terrorist attack. What do you think would an appropriate response from the Muslim community following the recent terrorist attacks?
I think people underestimate the amount of Islamists in the world, a study conducted by Pew's Research Center (http://www.pewforum.org/files/2013/04/worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-full-report.pdf) shows staggering amounts of muslims around Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South/South East Asia support Sharia Law being the law of the land (page 46). Of course the muslim populations in each country differs and can be small, but the numbers are there. I don't really care whether the authorities of the accused religion condemn actions taken by radicals of that religion. I simply care for a solution to radicalism altogether.