"Of all the cures commonly proposed for the many ailments afflicting the Middle East, there is one tonic nearly everyone seems to agree on: boosting moderate Islam." -- from this Foreign Policy article by Steven Cook
"Everyone seems to agree" that the "tonic" is "boosting moderate Islam"?
Again and again it has been suggested here, by me, that the most effective strategy consists of several steps.
The first is pedagogic. A large number of Infidels -- that "critical mass" -- needs to learn a sufficient amount about the texts and tenets of Islam, and the attitudes and atmospherics to which those texts and tenets naturally give rise. They must do this so that they can no longer be fooled, and can help unfool other Infidels -- or immunize them against potential foolishness.
These, the well-informed and the well-prepared, should make sure that that knowledge does not remain hidden, but conveyed. It should be conveyed not only to other Infidels but also to Muslims who will then no longer be able, without arousing suspicion, to spread the kind of taqiyya-and-tu-quoque that they get away with spreading almost everywhere today.
The next step is for Infidels to understand why it is that the many failures of Muslim states and societies stem from Islam itself. This includes political failures: that tendency to despotism, that inability, save in kemalist-exceptional Turkey and one or two other places, to accept democracy, and even then what is in place is not democracy in the advanced Western sense of that word. It also includes economic failures: despite ten trillion dollars in unmerited oil revenues since 1973 alone, the Muslim states have failed to create modern economies, and are still helplessly dependent on Western and other foreign workers. And save in kemalist-exceptional Turkey and bourguiba-exceptionalist Tunisia, they either have that oil money, or where the manna of oil wealth is unavailable, they rely in large part on the disguised Jizyah of foreign aid from Infidels. Or the local Muslims rely on exactions of wealth from their more industrious non-Muslim fellows, as in Malaysia with its Bumiputra system. The social failures -- the grotesque mistreatment of women and of non-Muslim minorities -- are again less evident in that handful of Muslim countries, such as Kemalist Turkey, where Islam has been systematically constrained, or in one or two of the stans where the anti-religious campaigns of the Soviets, and the very large non-Muslim populations, have helped to reduce the power of Islam. An example of that is Kazakhatan.
The intellectual failures of Islam are a result of two things: the severe discouragement of free and skeptical inquiry, which is in the first place prompted by the desire to prevent Islam itself from being questioned, and which in turn leads to a climate in which no questioning can take place. In a world where those who dare to openly question the faith can be attacked and killed -- by mobs if not by the forces of the government -- it is unsurprising that intellectual development, including but hardly limited to the kind of thing measured in very rough fashion by Nobel Prizes, is limited. There has been hardly any development of science under Islam in the past thousand years. Arab literature, according to the poet Adonis, is in a permanent state of crisis; it "does not exist." Indeed, the greatest achievements in literature have been those by Persian poets, such as Firdowsi, Sa'adi, Hafiz, and Omar Khayyam, who stand much higher in the Western consciousness, standing virtually alone, than in the Iranian mental pantheon. And all of them sang of matters -- wine, women, song, and so on, and in Firdowsi's important case of the Shahnameh, of pre-Islamic Iranian history -- that can be said to violate both the spirit and the letter of Islam.
As for art, when all sculpture, and almost all painting, and almost all music, is banned, and the only outlets left are Arabic calligraphy and mosque architecture, that does not leave much room for the creativity that, over 1350 years, must have been stifled in so many. Many of those, had they not had the misfortune to be born into Islam, or to be conquered by the forces of Islam, might have enriched the world's museums, and the common heritage, in the way that, for example, the artists of the West and the Far East have done.
Then there are the moral failures. There is the failure that comes of being raised up in a system that divides the world between Believers and Infidels, and posits a state of permanent war (though not always open warfare) between the two -- and that, furthermore, manages to justify many sorts of aggression and cruelty. It also elevates deception ("war is deception"), as long as that aggression and cruelty, that deception, that violence, furthers the cause of Islam.
The best way to deal with Islam is for Infidels to make that connection, and then to make public their understanding of that connection, and to be sure to convey that understanding to Muslims themselves. That is, force the issue rather than avoid it: force Muslims themselves to begin to see how, in what ways, the failures of their societies are the result of Islam itself, and not of what any Infidels have done. And they should not stop there. They should appeal to the 80% of the world's Muslims who are not Arab to see how, in what ways, Islam has always been a vehicle for Arab supremacism -- that is, for cultural and linguistic imperialism (as with the Berbers still), and for economic and political imperialism. Indeed, Arab imperialism, using Islam as that vehicle, has been the most successful imperialism in human history, causing many peoples to ignore their own pre-Islamic pasts or to encourage contempt for any non-Islamic elements in their own societies that may continue, despite the pressure of Islam, to exist (for example, the celebration of Nahruz in Iran).
This is the way to proceed.
"Nearly everyone" agrees?
What am I? A potted plant?
I agree.
Hugh, once again, full marks.
Hugh, due to your efforts,and those of people such as Robert, Ibn Warraq, Andrew Bostom, Wafa Sultan, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and so many others, the number of people being educated about Islam is growing exponentially and politicians are beginning to notice. Islam's real problem is that today people around the world can read its misogynistic, totalitarian texts. They can view and hear, translated into English or their local language, the virulent hatred that comes from the mouths of Islamic clerics around the world. And due to mass communication and the speed with which it is spread, they can read, within hours of occurence, of the daily human rights abuses within Islamic societies. They can see the impact of Islam on people. When the western world recoils in horror at its newfound, or not so newfound for those who have read and understood their history, knowledge, Muslims are left to complain that it is all a big misunderstanding or Islamophobia.
"Nearly everyone agrees..."
Let me submit, that unanimity or near-unanimity is representative of an aberration. To wit, the near-unanimity against The Devil Israel worldwide and The Devil USA among the OIC countries.
Unanimity can be a contrivance.
Further, the overwhelming percentage of the population is dumber than the top 5%. This can make unanimity the domain of the least qualified.
In some countries, there is reported near unanimous illiteracy and the government controls the flow of info. This makes unanimity more akin to imprinting of the only voice heard.
Unanimity is not a safe harbor. Nor is it reason for policy.
Leadership is possibly defined as acting contrary to the posture of the unanimous.
Hugh, I further submit, that the approach of cloying to the "moderate" elements is no solution.
They are the silent majority, if truly the majority, who are the real beneficiaries of the extremists', if they are extremists, work.
Perhaps it will backfire on the so-called moderates, but, if so, arguably not until it is too late for the rest of us.
It does not take all that many extremists with individually deliverable WMDs (radioactive, chemical or biologic) or components for assembly to cause some serious, immoderate damage.
Convincing the "moderates" that the "extremists" are not nice is a clear no solution approach.
There is no incentive to them.
If there were, protests worldwide would have been unavoidably publicized and we would be witness to active efforts against the "extremists."
A Muslim vs. Muslim counterinsurgency, if you will.
But we are not.
Moderates require accountability as well.
They should be held in part responsible for the actions of their co-religionists, as Western civilians are expressly so held by the "extremists," through means I will not suggest.
This is not collective punishment.
It is letting billiard players everywhere know that watching a rape and doing nothing about it is unacceptable behavior, no matter how enticingly she may have dressed.
"A large number of Infidels -- that 'critical mass' -- needs to learn a sufficient amount about the texts and tenets of Islam, and the attitudes and atmospherics to which those texts and tenets naturally give rise."
This, of course, would violate one of those very tenets -- to wit, the provision in the Pact of Umar and other dhimma diktats that infidels shall remain ignorant of Islam's scripture and traditions:
"We shall not teach the Qur'an to our children."
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/pact-umar.html
How long will Turkey survive? It seems more and more to be regressing to its Ottoman past, courtesy of Islamism.
Showing people how Islam has destroyed civilizations and threatens the world's advancement can lead to only one thing: the demise of Islam. What parts of Islam are considered moderate and worthy of salvation? Even the "peaceful" verses of the Quran can be discarded and replaced with eleven words: do unto others as you would have others do unto you.
Mr. Cook danced around the issue and came up with what seems to be a non-solution:
"Given that moderation is in the eye of the beholder, Washington should not have an ideological litmus test for whom it wishes to engage. Rather, policymakers should focus on identifying those who can contribute pragmatic solutions to the many problems we confront in the region, “moderate” or not."
If pragmatism is defined as practicality, that is what our policy has been since at least 1948. We sided with regimes that, even if they seemed odious, were better than the alternative. We didn't seek nirvana. We sought working relationships. The result was the Iranian Revolution, the Lebanese civil war, the Gulf War, etc. Then came 9/11, and we were told it was our fault for "working with dictators". What's new?
Hamas and Hezbollah have demonstrated an ability to be pragmatic (truces) when the situation warranted. Are they the partners we want? There are no pragmatic solutions to be had. Our pragmatism will be seen as interference. The pragmatism of those we work with will be seen as "selling out Islam". As with most addicts, the Islamic world will have to hit rock bottom before it decides to change. The West has to let it fall.
You're right, Hugh, as far as I know from the historical evidence. I would make three points:
1- The Arab conquests wrecked the civilizations of the ancient Middle East. The decline was not entirely immediate but cumulative. Looking over the centuries, we see that the lands subjected to Arab conquest have never recovered the glories of their ancient civilizations, neither in the arts and sciences nor in economic life, with minor exceptions like Israel, Lebanon for a while, and the rich Persian Gulf oil states, where almost everything is imported but the oil. Later, the Turkish conquests did the same wrecking job for Anatolia.
2-- the backward state of Muslim lands on the whole disproves two theories about social and economic development, in other words, the progress of civilization.
a) the racial theory. The Arabic-speaking inhabitants of Middle Eastern lands are not entirely descended from ancient Arabs, and in any case share some of the ancestry of the ancient Egyptians, Jews, Phoenicians, Syrians, Babylonians-Assyrians, etc. But whoever their ancestors, their level of civilization was for centuries on a very low level.
b) the economic and materialist theories, liberal, social-democratic, Marxist-Leninist [inc. Maoist, Trotskyist], anarchist, etc. The palestinian authority, for example, has been like a black hole for the immense foreign contributions made to it in euros, dollars, etc. on the claim that Arabs are terrorists, jihadists, etc. because of poverty, lack of literacy, lack of economic opportunity, etc. Actually, they make and ensure their own poverty, or their leaders do.
The link below shows that the Louvre Museum in Paris implicitly agrees that the Arab conquests represented an upheaval for the Orient [Middle East] from which it never returned.
http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/2007/05/arab-conquests-finished-off-ancient.html
Arab literature, according to the poet Adonis, is in a permanent state of crisis; it "does not exist." Indeed, the greatest achievements in literature have been those by Persian poets, such as Firdowsi, Sa'adi, Hafiz, and Omar Khayyam, who stand much higher in the Western consciousness, standing virtually alone, than in the Iranian mental pantheon.
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Yes. Probably the best known writer in the "Muslim world" is the Turkish author Orhan Pamuk. Pamuk is about as secular as it is possible to be in a Muslim country--he was born at the height of Kemalism and Turkish modernization, in the wealthy westernized district of Nisantasi in Istanbul.
He attended the secular American Robert College in Istanbul, then studied architecture at Istanbul Technical University. He dreamed of becomming an artist before later turning to writing.
He has won Turkish, French, Italian, American and International literary prizes, and was a visiting scholar at Columbia University in the 1980s.
I recently read his novel, "Snow". It is beautifully written, and some of the sense of irony and world-weariness that one finds in Russian novels.
It is also deeply disturbing. The protagonist, Ka, is a poet and journalist (and supposed friend of Orhan himself, at least in the context of the story), and a secularist who has spent years living in Germany. Nonetheless, he in no way considers himself German, has not learned the language, and does not know many Westerners. Despite his considerable talents, he is also on the dole.
In the story, he returns to Turkey, to the eastern city of Kars, where there seems to be a spate of suicides by girls who are denied a University education because they wear headscarves. The plot is extremely complex and too deliberately convoluted for me to go into detail here. Much of the novel deals with the rise of Islamism in Turkey.
The protagonist himself is deeply ambivalent about Islam--on the one hand, he feels it is a retrogressive force, and he feels rather superior to those who are deeply religious. On the other hand, he feels that Islam is somehow his birthright, that it represents the "true" Turkey, and that it represents a savage purity that is otherwise missing in his life. Ka himself had suffered from a complete writer's block before returning to Turkey, where he writes copious poetry. He seems to indicate that secularism and the West represent no real values of their own. The portrayal of violent Islamists is mostly quite sympathetic.
The one true act of terrorism in the book is perpetrated not by Islamists, but, absurdly, by a theatre troupe presenting a Kemalist-era anti-headscarf melodrama.
More violence, betrayal, and insanity ensues. Ka may or may not have betrayed the Islamists--the implication is, that if he did betray them, it was out of jealousy for their singularity of purpose.
Ka eventually escapes and returns to his rather purposeless life in Germany. The set-up of the story is that Orhan is investigating the murder of his friend. Although his killer is never found, it is clear in the context of the story that Ka was murdered by Islamists.
Pamuk himself was a brave and staunch supported of Salman Rushdie during the fatwa against his life. And yet even he seems to feel a great ambivalence toward the increasing Islamization of his country.
'American' - when Geert Wilders' "Fitna" came out, one of the regular posters here remarked that it had captured the imagination of the teenagers at her child's high school; they were all watching it, and busily texting active links back and forth.
You don't know how many high-school age kids have seen "Fitna" by now. I would estimate, quite a lot. Those who are running up against unpleasantness of all kinds from Muslim schoolmates may have found it...illuminating, a kind of Rosetta Stone.
My son (18 years old) watched 'Fitna' over my shoulder on our computer, the day it was released, and was thoroughly shaken by it. We (my husband and I) assured him that everything in it was true - the Quran citations are exactly as quoted (plenty more, too, where those came from), the Muslim preachers were real, the historical events were real.
Possibly what is needed is more short films like 'Fitna' and 'Submission', aimed at the 13-18 yr age group, with accompanying BRIEF and snappy information sheet.
Anyone reading here who runs a church youth group, and is 'on the page' about Islam, could certainly consider a 'video evening' with Fitna, Submission, and one or more of Spencer's books + the Quran for reference purposes during a Q & A session after the movie.
The 'PIG to Islam and the Crusades' would make a great teaching text for any high school chaplain, Sunday School/ youth group leader, or - say - private Jewish or Catholic school history teacher who wanted to give high school kids a non-PC basic briefing on Islam.
Bosch Fawstin's 'Pigman' comics may need more exposure.
Those older people - 20s-40s - who grew up on J R R Tolkien's books, with the younger ones who have seen the films, and the current generation of young teenagers who have grown up on the 'Harry Potter' books and movies, have already absorbed the following paradigm: a minority within a civilised community struggles to rally that community to defend itself against...not a new enemy but an ancient foe that was diminished in the past, and almost forgotten about, but not destroyed, and is now once more swiftly becoming a mortal threat, even while the bulk of the threatened population, and their leaders, are in deep denial.
All we have to do is help the Tolkien and Potter fans to recognise the analogy between the fictional epics that have so kindled their imaginations, and the real-life danger faced by our civilisation.
Tell them: Geert Wilders is like the hobbits in Tolkien, sounding the Horn Call of Buckland - 'Awake, Fear, Fire, Foes, Awake!' Tell them that he, and Mr Spencer, and Oriana Fallaci before her death, and Bat Yeor, are exactly like Harry saying 'Voldemort is back!'
I once told a Jewish Israeli blogger that she should tell her Potter-mad nephew that he saw a member of a real-life equivalent of the Order of the Phoenix every time he looked in the mirror, and that headquarters were down at the local synagogue. She understood what I meant.
We have to use whatever is at hand, to help people 'get' what we are on about.