February 26, 2015

"People who insist on linking terrorism to Islam often say that only by doing this—only by seeing the problem 'for what it is'—can we figure out what to do about it."

"Really? Long before last week, we knew that ISIS does a good job of convincing some young Muslims that its cause is authentically Islamic. What value has been added if we grant [Graeme] Wood’s point that ISIS, in doing this job, can quote selectively from Islamic texts and point selectively to ancient Islamic traditions? I guess this helps us understand one rhetorical advantage that ISIS has in its recruiting. But since that particular advantage—what ancient texts say, what ancient people did—is something we can’t change, where do we go from there?"

Says Robert Wright, making the question what works for our purposes as opposed to what is actually true about ISIS and Islam. What is true and what works can coincide. Sometimes you get more power out of basing your arguments on the truth, and I think that I'm speaking the truth when I say that it's more true that we want to defeat the enemy than that we want to characterize their religious beliefs accurately.

If the question here is what works, then it's important to see that Wright pictures a causal chain in which Wood's presentation scares Americans, scared Americans cause the government to "react with the undiscerning ferocity that created ISIS," some scared Americans "deface mosques, or worse," and Western Muslims become ripe for recruitment by ISIS.

ADDED: In my mind — I realize 4 minutes after putting up this post — Wright's argument collapses on itself. He's saying Wood's presentation of the facts is too scary, and it's more productive not to freak out. ("Freak out" is his expression, used 4 times in a short essay.) But how can you make Wood's version go away by calling it scary? You've made it scarier by saying it's too scary to look at, and you have no way to calmly suppress it, so you've only contributed to the freakout that you think is so destructive. We might as well simplify everything and just try to figure out what's true.

45 comments:

ddh said...

So the really scary barbarians are the Americans, eh? What piffle.

Tank said...

First, know that A equals A.

One must see reality to deal with reality.

sane_voter said...

To me the bigger problem is continuing to allow Muslims to immigrate to the US. Why are we importing a fifth column into our country? And does Robert Wright support this invasion?

mesquito said...

Yup. We Merkins are perpetually one scary essay away from a freak-out.

Mrs Whatsit said...

Both this argument and the question whether Republican candidates should ronounce on whether Obama's a Christian are based on a profound misunderstanding of what it means to have religious faith. And both are ultimately irrelevant, except as a way to obscure and distract and avoid grappling with hard truths. As long as the people of ISIS believe that they are following absolute religious truths -- and self-evidently, they do -- that's the circumstance we have to grapple with. It makes no difference whether we or not anyone else on earth agrees with the truth as they see it.

This argument and the one about whether Walker should pass judgment on Obama's Christianity are both just 21st-century angels dancing on the head of a pin.

Mrs Whatsit said...

*pronounce

George M. Spencer said...

Point "selectively" to Islamic traditions?

Oh, perhaps, beheadings?

Muhammad's ordered/gave approval to the beheadings of hundreds of Jews, the members of the Qurayza tribe, after defeating them in battle.

I leave it to readers to Google this for themselves.

Funny that God would send this 'seal of the prophets' after sending Jesus. Whatever criticisms one has of Christ or Christianity there's no evidence he did any sort of violence to anyone, much less line people up in trenches and oversee their slaughter.

My prediction is that in the months and years to come, thanks to the internet, more and more people will start to learn facts like this about Islam and its founder and be truly horrified.

MayBee said...

Obama tried to call them the "JV" team, and that didn't seem to work It just seems their efforts to not scare Americans and their efforts to not really address the problem are one and the same.

MayBee said...

And what do we think of Obama's "High Horse"/Crusaders speech and the Isis guys capturing Christians and calling them "crusaders"?

ilvuszq said...

People who say that the "Islamic State In Iraq and Syria" is not Islamic are either stupid or devious.

Anonymous said...

Some guys just need killin...I would feel the same way about Cannibals or Child rapists.

I don't see how we can go after the hearts and minds of the others without recognizing that at the root of this struggle is an virulent interpretation of Islam.

These guys aren't Buddhist monks doing themselves with gasoline on Saigon streets.

Bobby said...

". . . what works for our purposes as opposed to what is actually true about ISIS and Islam. What is true and what works can coincide. Sometimes you get more power out of basing your arguments on the truth . . ."

Not that I think the Koran is the "truth," but during my previous life in Afghanistan, whenever Coalition or Afghan forces had captured and detained (or killed) an invariably young Pashto man for insurgent activities, the local elders would always turn up in force at the Provincial Government center and protest our actions. While the Governor, Afghan Police Chief and Afghan Army Commander (for that area it was a brigade) used to avoid these crowds as much as possible, the NDS Director for my Province (perhaps tellingly, he had come up through the ranks with the KHAD) used to revel in meeting with the elders, quoting Koranic verses and lecturing them about how the young man's actions were inconsistent with Islam and, by the way, three Afghan soldiers were injured or killed by Taliban terrorists just the same morning, so where was their outrage against the Taliban for killing three of their sons who were protecting their villages? He was magnificent at using the Koran to not just quell the crowd but go after sympathies and support for the Taliban in our Province. He was so effective that he got promoted to a regional directorship... where he was promptly assassinated by a roadside bomb.

Effectively employing this strategy on the global stage- especially in the Arab world- is going to require co-opting a sufficient number of the imams. This is why
Abdel Fattah el-Sisi lectured the Egyptian imams on precisely this point
.

Why this was practically ignored by American and Western media is puzzling to me.

Swifty Quick said...

In the parallel universe Wright occupies, American rightwingers are far scarier than any Muslim.

Rumpletweezer said...

Is Sharia Law Islamic or is it just another misunderstanding of Islam?

James Pawlak said...

-IN RE JIHADII CAETITE EOS NEVIT ENIM DOMINUS QUI SUNT ELLIS.

Lewis Wetzel said...

It is chauvinistic to say that the people of the Muslim world are unable to do other than react to US actions, while we have the choice of whether or not to act with "undiscerning ferocity."
This should be as plain as the nose on your face.

Vet66 said...

Know your enemy and know his/her weakness. They know ours to good effect which has been killing us since the Munich olympics, Klinghoffer, etc. Amazing how some can become all Christian turning the other cheek in the face of radical Islam's murderous jihad against western culture. Won't be long before they coopt the occupy crowd and others to pursue their mutual, destructive goals.

CWJ said...

I clicked through to Wright's article, and didn't get past its title.

"The Clash of Civilizations That Isn't"

No mention of Islam in that title so what's being negated. Civilization as used in this sense is culture writ large, capital "C" culture if you will.

By all evidence we have a clash of Cultures to say the least. So even the title is faint of heart. We shouldn't say "Islam" or "islamic." And apparently civilization is a bridge too far. What's next? Do we downgrade "clash" to "misunderstanding?"

The title merely underscores that all these several defences of the administration's rhetorical tactic are no more than sophistry in the service of denial.

jr565 said...

the lefts critique is never of them, but of US. They have endless whips to flagellate up us, even for things we MAY do. Does anyone remember any major targeting of Muslims after 9/11? It didn't happen.
Yet, we can't say what things are, beciase somehow we might be riled to anger if we do. Sho,don't we be riled to anger over people like ISIS? and if it galvanizes us to act, well about time.

jr565 said...

Further by understating the reaction Writht is essentially making the argument that the reaction to ISIS and response to ISIS is worse than ISIS carrying out atrocities.
It's not as if us putting our hands over our mouths and genuflecting in their direction is leading to less brutality on their part. Yet, Writht doesn't seem to have a problem with thst. His problem would be waking the Americans up enough to where they say something needs to be done about it.

traditionalguy said...

Obama's Religion revealed by Obama's Prophet is an organized raiding band seeking an easier way to loot others under an approval by a satanic god.

TRICK #1 is to scare a target into submission like a roaring lion does to its prey. Then you tie the men's hands behind their, backs and chant to Satan's greatness as you slowly saw off each prisoner's heads one by one to feed blood sacrifices humans out to appease Satan.

The surprising advice we are flooded with from Obama's gang is that our error has been not to submit to them first before they attack us. Supposedly that will teach them a lesson.

Kyzer SoSay said...

The only real violence after 9/11 was actually directed at a Sikh who was mistaken for a Muslim. Probably perpetrated by an uneducated SEIU troll.

Laslo Spatula said...

("Freak out" is his expression, used 4 times in a short essay.)

"Aaahh Freak out!
Le Freak, c'est Chic
Freak out!
Aaahh Freak out!
Le Freak, c'est Chic"

I am Laslo.



CWJ said...

"...making the question what works for our purposes as opposed to what is actually true about ISIS and Islam."

If this is truly "what works," rather than some convenient rationalization for denial and avoiding discomfort, where are the past examples of its effectiveness?

damikesc said...

Walker says he doesn't know if Obama is a Christian and it's the end of the world.

But it's intelligent, really, to say that a group that is explicitly Islamic and quite versed in the Koran is not "really" Islamic.

Bob Boyd said...

"This book is too dangerous for the general public"

Chris N said...

Soft Marxism, post-nihilism, critical-thinking, faculty-lounge furniture, a sense of 'community.'

Bloggingheads: For the classy Lefty in your life.

1. Are you experiencing trans-national urges?

2. Is your Unitarian church leaving you hollow inside?

'Yes, American gung-ho militarism is to blame, Janet, but you haven't convinced me global rafts of mutually interdependent post-nation state Volvos can actually float, let alone withstand evolutionary drive functions of pre-Enlightened tribal entities seeking land, water and resources.'

Janet: 'So it's just more Parliamentary Democracy and social safety nets, huh, Jim?

Peter said...

"Funny that God would send this 'seal of the prophets' after sending Jesus."

It's not as if people can't see that the behaviors of the Islamic State don't look all that different than the behaviors of Islam during the life of Mohammad, or that the life of Mohammad was very different from the life of Jesus. If anything, what's surprising is that there are some Islamic-majority states which are not interested in expanding Islam by the sword?

Western nations ended wars of religion by replacing ideological and theological certainties with balance-of-power co-existence, and then replaced balance-of-power with religious tolerance and freedom of conscience. As a result we are unable to treat Islamism as we treated Naziism: the latter could frankly be labelled an abomination, yet with Islamism we're somehow supposed to separate the religious component (which must be tolerated) from the violent, supremacist component (which we must oppose if we are to retain our constitutional freedoms).

And so our responses to Islamism remain muddled and ineffective. How does one explain an American president who, in response to threats of Islamic violence, babbles on about the Crusades (as though he were actually knowledgeable on the subject, and could explain their relevance to our present situation. Does he think the USA was founded by Crusaders, or that Western attitudes toward religion have not changed radically since 1291?).

kcom said...

I found this sentence the most laughable (actually two sentences):

" My own view is that the questions of whether Islam is a religion of peace and whether ISIS is “very” Islamic—coming, as they do, amid no small amount of anti-Muslim bigotry—are perfect examples. (This defacing of an Islamic school in Rhode Island was reported the day before the Atlantic article was posted.)"

I think he typoed it. He should have written "amid a small amount of anti-Muslim bigotry".

They've been fluttering their hands for 20 years over this mythical anti-Muslim backlash and after 20 years we have a defaced school. Woo! Hoo! To balance that out, how many decapitated bodies do we have this week?

It's really breathtaking that someone could write that sentence seriously. ISIS and their like have destroyed thousands of lives over the last two decades, including fellow Muslims of all sects, Christians of all types, Jews, Westerners in myriad countries, Asian guest workers, Nigerian villagers, Australian night club goers, Japanese journalists, etc. and he is obsessed with the possible backlash that never comes (or comes in minor form like a school getting damaged). As if those two are even remotely equivalent. What is this obsession with impugning your own side (for non-existent sins) and giving the other side a free pass for blatant violations of all human conscience?

kcom said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
pacwest said...

@Bobby,
I'm really glad to see you posting at Althouse. I first ran into you in '03 on now defunct blogs. Enjoyed your insightful posts then, and hope to see more of them here. Do you still have a blog? To your point - is the military doing anything towards "co-opting the Imams"? Seems like a hopeful strategy in the long war. As always I can't thank you enough for the job you are doing for us all.

@ Althouse readers,
Bobby is one of America's "best and brightest". Pay attention folks.

Oso Negro said...

The lack of clarifying violence has prolonged this nasty business. Just once, I would like to see an American President come out scare the living shit out of Islamist loons. For example, if Jimmy Carter on Day 1 of the hostage crisis had said something like this:
"if our embassy personnel are not released tomorrow, I will destroy all the Iranian oil production production capability in the Persian Gulf. If they are not released unharmed by the second day, I will utterly destroy the holy city of Qom. On the third day, the hostages will perish with the firestorm that destroys all of Teheran itself."

Of course he would have actually had to have been prepared to do it. I should think it would have prevented a lot of the subsequent misery.

CWJ said...

Robert Wright wrote -

"...ISIS, in doing this job, can quote selectively from Islamic texts and point selectively to ancient Islamic traditions?"

As Bobby pointed out at 7:21 above, selective application of the Koran can work the other way as well. See definition of "what works."

Now if only the Administration and its apologists applied as much imagination to this as they do justifying their own characterizations of the opposition (both foreign and domestic), we might get somewhere.

mccullough said...

The practical answer is pretty much what Obama is doing. This is not a battle between Islam and non-Islam. This is a battle within Islam. The Egyptians, Saudis, Jordanians, Iranians, etc. need to wipe these guys off the board. The U.S. can sell them weapons and provide some training, but ISIS operates in their shithole.

Muslim countries suck to live in, for Muslims and non-Muslims. Who gives a fuck which version of Islam is the "true" one. Americans see Muslim countries are shitholes, even when they are not killing each other over interpretations of the Koran.

Israel is the only non shithole in the Middle East. Japan is a nice country. It's not Muslim, Jewish, or Christian.

You can't look at these Muslim countries and conclude anything but that Islam is a dead end religion from a practical point of view.

holdfast said...

One of the virtues of telling the truth is that intelligent observers who know the truth won't think that you're a lying a-hole and/or a frickin idjit.

Obama doesn't seem to realise that media is global, and while his untruthful pablum may go down well with the average MSNBC viewed, it makes him, and America, a laughingstock overseas.

n.n said...

Islam is a universal religion spread through the sword. Its adherents are directed to be perpetually at war with apostates and infidels. It is similar in character, method, and purpose as the Marxist religious variants. The notable difference is that its followers presumably defer to a divine God, while Marxist acolytes defer to mortal gods. Both are realized as left-wing or minority-oriented ideologies that denigrate individual dignity.

Tom said...

I watched Bob Reitch give a beautiful speech outlining why easing the middle wage actually hurts workers who make just above minimum wage. It was wonderfully argued. Less than a year later, there was Bob standing proudly next to President Bill Clinton as his Secretary of Labor, supporting the president in raising the minimum wage. At that moment, I knew the guy was a political hack. Nothing I've seen since then has changed that opinion.

Richard Dolan said...

"If the question here is what works, then it's important to see that Wright pictures a causal chain in which Wood's presentation scares Americans, ..."

If the question is 'what works?', its meaning is what works in stopping ISIS. Phrased that way, it's obvious why Wood's piece (accepting its premise) is important especially for lefties. Wood contends that ISIS draws on a long and well established tradition in Islam that, while far from a view embraced by the majority of Muslims, is one about which most Muslims will recognize its roots in their tradition and its reasons for appeal. To stop ISIS (and related phenoms) requires (among other things) a concerted attack by today's upholders of the Islamic tradition.

As it happens Egyptian president al-Sisi gave just such an attack a month or two ago, in a speech to the assembled Sunni clerics at the leading university in Cairo.

Does anyone recall hearing Team Obama say something in support, or doing anything to get the key players (Saudis, Kuwaitis, etc.) to join al-Sisi? Mostly they have been busy undercutting him, by claiming (foolishly) that ISIS is not Islamic at all, blah, blah, blah. Arguments that the intended audience will quickly dismiss as foolish and uninformed aren't likely to do any good. It's a fancy version of 'stuck on stupid.'

Perhaps Team O has been active behind the scenes in pressing the point with the Saudis, Kuwaitis, and others. Perhaps they think doing anything actively to support al-Sisi would be counterproductive. Accepting those possibilities, it still makes no sense to peddle nonsense about ISIS as not being Islamic. Recall that one of al-Sisi's main points was that the Islamic world was hurting itself by allowing its tenets to be used to convince the rest of humanity that Islam presents a mortal threat to all non-Muslims. That's a truth that needs to be repeated often, not hidden under silly PC blather denying that terrorism in the name of Islam is not Islamic.

ddh said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
ddh said...

Let us remember that the Obama Administration argued that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was a secular organization even though it calls itself "Muslim" and its political goals include adopting sharia as the basis of Egyptian law.

The Godfather said...

One of the things that's bothered me since 9/11 is the lack of public protest against Islamist terrorism by American Muslims. I know some American Muslims, and I'm confident that they are as horrified as I am by the barbarity of al Qaeda, ISIS, etc. But all we hear (or all I've heard) from American Muslim organizations is gripes about alleged prejudice by Americans against Muslims. Even given the recent murder of three Muslims in North Carolina by an alleged atheist, the extent of anti-Muslim violence in this country since 9/11 has been minuscule. (Would you like to know what my German-American ancestors had to deal with from their neighbors during WW I?.)

One benefit of the publication of pieces like Wood's would be to encourage decent American Muslims to come out of the closet and refute the claims of ISIS, al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, etc., to represent Islam. Many Christians make clear that the actions of the Westboro "Baptists" are not Christian; American Muslims should do the same.

That's the way that the war against the Islamists can be perceived as not being a war against Islam, not by having Obama pass judgment on what is or is not Islamic.

chillblaine said...

"How could it be a war against 'the Muslim world' if most of the Muslims even in these five countries are not the enemy?"

Unfounded. Majorities in these countries support sharia, stoning for adultery, death for apostates, and religious adjudication for family and property disputes.

I read recently that since the Arab world was largely spared the horrific scale of atrocity of World War II, they have not massed revulsion to violence. It may take use of that concept so distasteful for liberals: the disproportionate use of force.

Robert Cook said...

"It may take use of that concept so distasteful for liberals: the disproportionate use of force."

We've been doing that in various countries these last 13.5 years and it's succeeded...in making things worse.

Bobby said...

chillblaine,

"How could it be a war against 'the Muslim world' if most of the Muslims even in these five countries are not the enemy?"

Unfounded. Majorities in these countries support sharia, stoning for adultery, death for apostates, and religious adjudication for family and property disputes.


Unfounded. We're not at war with any of these concepts, and have not been at any point in time in our country's history-- certainly, we don't translate distaste for any or all of these concepts into enmity and war. Exhibit A: Saudi Arabia. Exhibit B: UAE. Exhibit C: Kuwait. Exhibit D: Bahrain. Exhibit E: Pakistan. Etc. etc.

We may not like any of these, and perhaps whether we should go to war with these concepts the way the 19th century British Empire did against the concept of slavery is a totally different question, but you're trading one hypothetical for another.

Bad Lieutenant said...

Cook, you know how I know you are not an honest man? 13.5 years. I could see you wanting what happened to Clinton? For that matter what happened to push the elder? And of course it goes back farther and farther and farther. 1979 1973 1956 1953 WWII WWI...Guess there was a break at least going back to 1805...But we, and all the other powers of the world, have been in that mix for a very long time.

Laying it on Bush just means you hate Bush.