Muslims and the 5 Questions
Somebody named Dennis Prager wrote a frankly bigotted op-ed for the LA Times asking "Muslims" 5 questions. The questions are fairly easy to answer in themselves, but the stupidity of the whole framework is what is objectionable. Why is it that our media personalities cannot think their way out of a paper bag? Why don't high school civics courses alert them that there might be a problem with stereotyping everyone that you categorize as belonging to a particular group?
Prager begins his "questions" directed, apparently at all 1.3 billion Muslims in the world, by referring to the recent riots in France. He is thus framing his questions with the implication that those Muslims are all trouble-makers and have something to answer for. But the alienated in-between young African- and North African-French are mostly not very involved in religion and a lot of them couldn't tell you how to pray to save their lives.
Prager's first question is why "Muslims" are so "quiet" (implied is: "about terrorism emanating from other Muslims"). Of course, Muslims have been anything but quiet about terrorism and all sorts of Muslim leaders and groups have repeatedly condemned it. Muslims haven't been "quiet." Prager hasn't been listening.
Moreover, the mere assertion that an act was done in the "name of Islam" would not necessarily connect it to Islam in the eyes of other Muslims. All kinds of crazy things are done in the name of Judaism and Christianity and Buddhism. Why didn't the American Buddhists demonstrate when Aum Shinrikyo let Sarin gas loose in the Tokyo subway? Did American Catholics demonstrate against Franco's policies in Spain? Why should American Catholics even feel responsible for those things? Why should Indonesian or Bangladeshi Muslims demonstrate about something that happened in distant Jordan, which had some local context they don't even understand? People who are actually Muslims don't take seriously small groups of cranks who do bizarre things in the name of Islam.
And let's turn the tables on Prager. Let's ask why he is so quiet.
Let's take the following item:
' Jewish settlers began attacking Palestinians as they returned home yesterday from the funeral of an Israeli soldier, shooting dead a 14-year-old girl and wounding several others in the West Bank city of Hebron, Palestinians said.
They said the settlers began attacking shortly after the funeral in Hebron's Old City, throwing stones at houses and cars, and breaking windows.
Nizin Jamjoum, 14, was standing on the balcony of her home when she was shot in the head and died, said her brother Marwan, 26, who was injured.
At least six Palestinians were hurt, including one who was stabbed, Palestinians said.'
Has Prager ever joined a demonstration against the fascist actions of the far rightwing Israeli settlers who are stealing Palestinian land every day and from time to time killing them? Does he care about Nizin Jamjoum or her family? Nizin was a little girl. Her parents doted on her. They fed her and raised her. She played with brothers and sisters. She said cute things that made everyone's dimples come out. And then an armed colonist shot her dead, in the head. Her cranium was crushed, her brain oozed out the back of her little head. Does Prager care?
Then he asks, Why are none of the Palestinian terrorists Christian?
Prager is not only stereotyping an ethnic group, he is profoundly ignorant. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a much more violent group than Arafat's Fateh, was led by Christian George Habash. In fact, the PFLP had to hire Eastern Orthodox priests to minister to its fighers. Christians in the Middle East, whether Palestinian Christians, or Maronite Christians in Lebanon, have been just as much parties to the violence in the region as Muslims. And, of course, Israeli Jews haven't exactly been pacifists.
Then he asks, Why is only one of the 47 Muslim-majority countries a free country?
Well, gee, Dennis. Let's see.
There is the legacy of European colonialism, which ruled most of the Muslim world with an iron fist and established modern bureaucratic practices that were authoritarian, which the post-colonial states inherited. (If you want to understand the Pakistani military, you have to understand the colonial British Army of India).
And, the Russians invaded Muslim Central Asia in the 19th century. They first subjected those peoples to Tsarist absolute monarchy, and then to Stalinism. Vladimir Putin and Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan both have authoritarian tendencies, and it is because they both come out of the old Soviet system. You want to blame Islam for this?
It wasn't just colonialism. Neo-colonialism has played a key part. Iran was a parliamentary democracy in the early 1950s. Then its prime minister asserted Iranian ownership of Iran's own oil. And the UK and the US objected to this step, and sent in the CIA to overthrow the elected government of Iran, and install an absolute monarchy for all the world like Louis XIV! Courtesy of Dwight Eisenhower and Winston Churchill.
The political scientists now think that democracy is best sustained where the per capita income is at least $8000 a year. It isn't an absolute requirement, but it seems to help. There are a lot of poor Muslim countries because they are in resource-poor regions (arid parts of Africa and the Middle East).
Why bring ethnicity into it? Is that really the likely explanation? Prager could ask the same question about the Chinese. Why is only one Chinese-majority society (Taiwan) moving toward democracy? Does he think it really has something to do with being Chinese? Authoritarianism in East Asia used to be attributed to Confucianism, but then Japan and South Korea (and lately Taiwan) challenged that thesis. Things change. If we were in the 1930s Prager could ask what was with those Fascist Catholics.
Whatever the answer is to Prager's question, it has little or nothing to do with the religion of Islam per se.
Prager's number 4 is Why are so many atrocities committed and threatened by Muslims in the name of Islam?
Prager's list is skewed to begin with. He lumps together localistic national liberation movements (Chechnya) and individual crimes of passion with the guerrilla movement in Iraq, and attributes them all to "Islam." In Prager's weird world, everything Muslims do is in the name of Islam.
I append below a list of the number of murders per year in a fair number of the world's countries, and have put the Muslim-majority countries in bold. They cluster at the bottom, not the top. If we wanted to think in Prager's warped way, we'd have to ask what is with those Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians, that they are so murderous.
Prager's number 5 is Why do countries governed by religious Muslims persecute other religions?
Countries governed by religious anythings have persecuted other religions. This is true not only for religious ideologies but also for secular ideologies like Communism and Fascism. Make an idea into an "-ism" and boom, you get gulags. Religion or no religion. You think Muslims were tolerated in Franco's Spain? And, by the way, why can't a Muslim guy marry a Jewish girl in Israel if the two love each other? Hmmm. Could it be that the rabbis are unsympathetic to young love? Prager doesn't seem to know that Terry Nichols of the Oklahoma City bombing was in fact part of the Christian Identity Movement, or that fanatical Christians have killed abortion doctors in the name of Christianity.
There is something seriously wrong with the questions themselves. They come out of a weird mindset that lumps Malaysians with Moroccans, Kyrgyz with Sudanese, and Uigurs with Moro Filipinos, all just because they have a common heritage in one of the great world religions; it isn't as if their actual local practices and beliefs are all exactly the same.
The questions are symptomatic of prejudice and sloppy thinking. They demean Americans by the posing of them. Muslims as individuals haven't done anything wrong, and don't have to answer Prager's silly questions.
Postcript:
Now let us turn international murder rates. Obviously if we look at absolute numbers, the big countries will have the most murders. But even so, there are some surprises. Despite being relatively small countries, Colombia, South Africa, Mexico, Venezuela and Thailand seem particularly murderous societies. You will note that none is Muslim. Only Indonesia gets into the top ten, among Muslim countries, and at some 200 million, its rate of murder is far less than any of the countries above it. The good people of genteel Washington, DC kill more people every year than do the Yemenis!
In fact, the US is approximately 5 times larger in population than Britain. The British rubbed out 850 people last year, so you'd expect the US to have whacked a little over 4,000. In fact, we polished off three times that many. Why are we three times as violent as the people in the UK? Shouldn't the gentle Yemenis be asking Americans what is wrong with them?
We don't appear to have good UNO statistics on crime for very many Muslim countries. The ones we do have cluster toward the bottom, both with regard to absolute numbers and with regard to rates per 1000 population. Prager's lurid imagination of Muslims as unusually violent isn't borne out by these statistics.
Of course, murder rates are only one index of violence. But if you totalled up how many people the US has killed in war in the past 100 years and compared it to those killed by Muslims, the result would not reflect well on the US, I promise you. It is widely thought that we killed some 2 million Vietnamese, and a similar number of Koreans, in those two wars alone. The biggest toll taken by Muslims was the Iran-Iraq War, which probably involved nearly a million deaths. It is not that the Muslims are better than Americans. It is that the Americans have been deeply involved in industrialized warfare as a sovereign state for much longer than Muslim states.
Murders per Year by Country
1. India 37,170
2. Russia 28,904
3. Colombia 26,539
4. South Africa 21,995
5. Mexico 13,829
6. United States 12,658
7. Venezuela 8,022
8. Thailand 5,140
9. Ukraine 4,418
10. Indonesia 2,204
11. Poland 2,170
12. France 1,051
13. Belarus 1,013
14. Germany 960
15. Korea, South 955
16. Zimbabwe 912
17. Jamaica 887
18. United Kingdom 850
19. Zambia 797
20. Italy 746
21. Yemen 697
22. Japan 637
23. Romania 560
24. Malaysia 551
25. Spain 494
26. Canada 489
27. Papua New Guinea 465
28. Kyrgyzstan 413
29. Lithuania 370
30. Moldova 348
31. Bulgaria 332
32. Australia 302
33. Portugal 247
34. Costa Rica 245
35. Georgia 239
36. Latvia 238
37. Chile 235
38. Azerbaijan 226
39. Hungary 205
40. Netherlands 183
41. Czech Republic 174
42. Uruguay 154
43. Finland 148
44. Slovakia 143
45. Estonia 143
46. Armenia 127
47. Tunisia 113
48. Saudi Arabia 105
49. Greece 81
50. Switzerland 69
51. Denmark 58
52. Norway 49
53. Macedonia, The Former Yugoslav Republic of 47
54. New Zealand 45
55. Hong Kong 38
56. Ireland 38
57. Slovenia 36
58. Mauritius 26
59. Seychelles 6
60. Iceland 5
61. Dominica 2
62. Qatar 1
posted by Juan Cole @ 11/16/2005 06:18:00 AM
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28 Comments:
Basic assumption behind these 5 questions is that Muslim countries are like E.Block during the cold war. By asking them, neocons send a message to their stooges that they are supposed to act like E.European dissidents.
Not that neocons really believe that it is the case, but this way they buy time to find GWOT justification #1001.
Always happy to see a takedown of Dennis Prager. Discussing anything with Prager is like talking to a stone. He's the Jewish Cal Thomas.
Seventeen years ago, when I was the editor of his regular Op-Ed column at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, he wrote a screed saying that having the death penalty meant that it was inevitable that some innocent people would be executed. However, he continued, this was the price that had to be paid to have a deterrent against murder.
What can one say to someone with that kind of morality?
I want to express my enormous gratitude for this post.
I also appreciate reading inplainviewmonitor's comment.
The murder rate per 1000 persons gives a better picture.
And this study reveals that the degree of absence of religion correlates strongly with low murder rate, suicide rate and abortion rate. Worth a look.
And lastly, why do some religions get to be called great? If you want to be tolerant of other religions then why do some of the get this special treatment. Aren't they simply popular, pervasive or widespread?
What exacly is going on at The Los Angeles Times anyway? They dismissed Robert Scheer out of hand after many years, run an editorial in favor of torture, and now, under the banner of "FAITH FRONT", allow this moron to spew his ingnorant ranting. Sad...
Just want to thank Thorkummer for his link to the Kripke study - it is ABSOLUTELY AMAZING and shocking for what it shows about US society (must reading for all Americans). Very, very worrying. Sorry, this is a bit off-subject, but thanks are due.
Mark Tritsch
Thank you, Professor Cole, for responding to the Prager article I submitted and providing the proper context needed to understand these issues.
Anton
dear professor cole,
you know very well that #1 - the absolute number of murders in a country doesn't say anything, but the PER CAPITA number does, which would put Yemen (697 on 20 Mio inhabitants) far ABOVE Italy (746 on 58.5 Mio inhabitants).
#2 - speaking of places like Yemen & Italy, you know very well that a significant number of murders in Yemen never reach the pages of the official statistics, whereas in Italy almost all do.
Ciao,
--raf*
Not to disagree with your basic points, but the murder statistics in many countries are politicized and/or reported in error. Just on this list, from countries i know intimately, the numbers for Indonesia and PNG are laughably low. For instance, the PNG number I know is "murders reported to police." Most murders there -- tribal killings, blood fueds and the like, aren't "reported." (Indeed, in most places there's no one to report to). There's a couple of others that stick out (Zambia and Zimbabwe very low. And where's the Sudan?). At any odds, here's the rate and rankings for a number of the countries, working off the total deaths you provided. I didn't bother with the countries that have very low rates, except for one or two that seemed relevant.
Country Murders Per Pop.
1. Colombia 26,539 1 for every 1582
2. South Africa 21,995 1 for every 2014
3. Venezuela 8,022 1 for every 3,163
4. Jamaica 887 1 for every 3,382
5. Russia 28,904 1 for every 4,961
6. India 37,170 1 for every 5000
7. Mexico 13,829 1 for every 7665
8. Estonia 143 1 for every 10,000
9. Belarus 1,013 1 for every 10,000
10. Ukraine 4,418 1 for every 10,000
11. Thailand 5,140 1 for every 12,600
12. Kyrgyzstan 413 1 for every 12,000
13. Papua NG 465 1 for every 13,000
14. Zimbabwe 912 1 for every 14,000
15. Zambia 797 1 for every 15,000
16. Costa Rica 245 1 for every 16,000
17. Poland 2,170 1 for every 17,500
18. US 12,658 1 for every 23,300
19. Saudi Arabia 105 1 for every 24,000
20. Yemen 697 1 for every 30,000
21. Azerbaijan 226 1 for every 35,000
22. Malaysia 551 1 for every 43,000
23. Korea, South 955 1 for every 50,700
24. France 1,051 1 for ever 57,500
25. UK 850 1 for every 70,588
26. Italy 746 1 for every 80,000
27. Germany 960 1 for every 86,000
28. Tunisia 113 1 for every 88,000
29. Indonesia 2,204 1 for every 109,000
Muslims as individuals haven't done anything wrong
Absolutely. And I agree with the substance of all your points. But there does remain a problem, and it would help those of us who feel it, if Muslims and the friends of Islam could address it without feeling the need to defend Islam.
The situation seems analogous to the one generated by Christian fundamentalists and abortion clinic bombings. The fundamentalists don't have a "pope," so there is no central authority to repudiate their actions. Many other Christians don't come out strongly against them either. At the rational level, I know that fundamentalists as individuals haven't done anything wrong. But when their leaders spout nonsense--like Pat Robertson recently saying that Dover had turned away from God for wanting to teach science in science classes--and those leaders retain their positions and respect of their followers, then I can't help feeling that fundamentalists really do have a few screws loose.
When the subject of Islamism comes up, the defense is sometimes analogous to "You can't blame the Unitarians for the actions of the Lambs of Christ" (or whatever the loonies called themselves). That is obviously true. But you can blame the Lambs of Christ. And some blame attaches to anyone who doesn't condemn their actions.
There are plenty of Muslims who are horrified by human rights abuses, the treatment of women, and terrorism. But the horror is too far from universal. It is like the crimes of torture currently being perpetrated by Americans. Yes, most Americans try not to hear that news, but that's not enough. Some blame attaches to all of us, because we aren't outraged enough to force a stop to the depravity and jail every perpetrator, no matter what their standing.
It seems to me that the response to Prager is not so much "You're full of horsefeathers," as "Yes, fundamentalism of any flavor is causing global problems right now. Yes, Islam has its share of problems." Your question about why Prager isn't out demonstrating against the awful consequences of Jewish fundamentalism were right on target.
The sad part is that a rejoinder to Prager's balderdash, exactly like yours, but penned by a Muslim would be dismissed, out of hand, as being without merit or parochial.
Those of us who live in the wide world outside the mental and geographical boundaries of the U.S. get daily reinforcement that it is Prager and his relatives ( in thinking - to give them the benefit of the doubt) who hold the reins of power there.
RE: LA TIMES -- In an interview on
Democracy Now two days ago, Robert Sheer remarked that the (new?) publisher of the Times has determined to make their editorial policy much more conservative.
Perhaps this is a start.
At the risk of sounding like an English professor, Prager seems clearly to view Muslims as "the other," a separate class of people known mostly from TV and other media rather than fully integrated neighbors in the American community.
I'm trying to guess which is the one free Muslims-majority country. Indonesia? Albania? Turkey? Bangladesh? Are we assuming that Bosnia's Eastern Orthodox population is the reason for democracy there? And is Kyrgyzstan "free" yet after the Tulip Revolution?
Fantastic piece!
It's a sad commentary on our 30 second sound-byte and 500 word commentary obsessed media, however, that even a sympathetic Op. Ed. page would never run a comprehensive and detailed refutation such as this one.
Thanks form this excellent rebuttal of a piece of tripe.
Just for historical interest, not because it matters:
Did American Catholics demonstrate against Franco's policies in Spain? Why should American Catholics even feel responsible for those things? As a matter of fact there were American Catholics who protested Franco who came out of the Catholic Worker movement associated with Dorothy Day. Since Dorothy has since been made, by many, into a kindly, benevolent figure, it is worth recalling that her militant universalist pacifism in the 1930s made the CW very much an outsider movement in American Catholicism.
Professor-
Thank you for the informative piece. I must say however, that I don't find your response to question 5 completely convincing. You seem to be conceding that Muslim countries on the whole do repress other religions and offering a "So what? Everyone else does it" defense. Prager gives the obviously extreme examples of Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan under the Taliban, etc. I ask you to what degree are other religions repressed in Muslim countries on the whole, outliers aside? If the answer is yes, is there what are there reasons along the lines of your explanation of the authoritarian politcal systems in these countries?
Prager is certainly a real piece of work. Here is my smackdown of his ludicrous anti-gay marriage bit 2 years ago.
I neither know Mr Prager personally nor am I familiar with his writing, but I suggest that placing him on a spectrum of stupidity - intelligence will not prove particularly helpful to us in understanding why he writes as he does. Rather, I think the question we have to ask instead is cui bonum ? - whose good (and whose misfortune) is Mr Prager attempting to promote when he writes as he does; i e, whose interests are served by promoting anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic attitudes among the general population in the United States and in the so-called «Western» world in general ? Stupidity enters the equation at a later stage - when the writer has to calculate what proportion of the LA Times editorial-reading population is likely to allow itself to be bamboozled by his screed....
Thanks, by the way, to thorkummer for the link to article from the Journal of Religion and Society - an excellent antidote to a great deal of religious propaganda !...
Prof. Juan,
This is very eloquent, thank you very much. As a Muslim, I find your rebuttal to be on the spot. I cannot say more. Once in a while, I am really grateful for a ray of hope that comes, such as yourself, who is willing to cross that difficult bridge of understanding.
Wisnu
"Prager's number 4 is Why are so many atrocities committed and threatened
by Muslims in the name of Islam?"
Going only by what you've written, the question that really remains to be
asked is "Why have so many conflicts against people been largely initiated
by the "Christians" who -- to this very day -- violate their principles by
involving themselves in aggression of any sort?"
I seem to recall that most of the Angaloid incursions into the
underdeveloped World (SouthEast Asia, SouthWest Asia, Asia overall, the
Middle East, Africa, North America, the Pacific, and everywhere else) were
all done in the name of the King or Queen of the time, the very person who
embodied the religious (Catholic or Anglican) faith for their realm.
Beyond them, there are the Portuguese and the Spanish who managed to do
some pretty nasty things to those of whom they encountered, to the point
of the latter depopulating places like Guam of all indigenous males in
order to repopulate the islands/lands using the native women and the
Spaniel curs. And this has gone on in the Philippines, South and Central
America, Africa and everywhere else they took their symbol of the
perpetually tortured "saviour." Now, Prager writing for the LA Times
might want to contact his local chapter of the Nation of Atzlan and get
them to lay down the facts about who actually owned California and,
specifically, Los Angeles up until about a hunnerd yars ago. And who
wants it back. I have a book written by an old girl friend's grandfather
who describes LA in the years before wHollyweird and the Oakies (ca. 1900
or so) as being a smallish Latino burb.
Needless to say, the heedless of history tend to think in terms of their
own lifestyles and lifetimes as being the standard for all times. The
make-up of the Middle East has always had Israel and the Arabs. The lands
were always sliced up into the little fiefdoms like those that exist today
and the Europeans -- as national (Angaloid, French, whathaveyou) or
religious (Zionist, Fall-Wellian, e.g.) entities -- have always been
present and have had the better interests of the locals at heart. It
matters not that the Europeans have been driven by mythology and
imagination more than facts on the ground. As a fact, it matters not that
some Middle Eastern theo-pseudism has always been pertinent to a bunch of
reformed Vikings and Gauls and Anglos and Saxons. I mean, like, one
fantastic fanatic supernaturalism is good enough to justify other
delusions of grandeur and grandiose deluges of blood, sweat, and tears on
the battlefields across the centuries and the continents.
One or more questions for "Christians" (who be in reality
"Constantinians"): "Why can't you stay at home and leave the rest of the
World alone? It's not as if your faith-based politics have ever worked,
simply because they are founded on false premises. The Jesus fellow never
got into politics or martial activities; why do you? Is it because your
whole system is founded on hypocrisy and bigotry, claiming to believe in
"peace" and "love" but enter those human qualities when projecting them
onto those who are soon to be interred, they who are the only ones who
really know "peace?" And, of course, those who oppose the Euro-Centrists
aren't lacking in awareness of the meaning of the "deer-in-headlights"
looks in response to these. They merely fight off unwanted influences as
we would fight off unwanted influenzas. But then Prager might be one of
those whose generation has always had AIDS and herpes, microwaves and
cable TV, electronic cars and McDonalds.
Thorkummer mentions a study which supposedly shows "the degree of absence of religion correlates strongly with low murder rate, suicide rate and abortion rate". I've seen this study described in a similar way on many blogs, as if it demonstrates something about religious societies in general.
In fact, the study only looked at what it calls "prosperous democracies" (some Western European countries, the U.S. and Canada, and Australia and New Zealand). The predominant religion in all of them is Christianity, although most of these countries aren't considered particularly religious anyway.
This data cannot be applied to the rest of the world, including Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. You can't use it to argue that religious Islamic societies would have higher rates of sexual promiscuity, suicide and abortion than secular Western societies.
If there's any valuable data in this study, it's confined to discussion of those "prosperous democracies".
I hope you will go on Prager's show and debate him. He's a very respectul host and will never abuse you, as you and your readers have abused him here.
He claims you agreed to go on. If so, I urge you to keep your promise.
*************************************
[--Yaa ustaadh, hang back, we got this one.--]
At 7:25 PM, Eric asked:
You seem to be conceding that Muslim countries on the whole do repress other religions and offering a "So what? Everyone else does it" defense.
This is something Zionists do, more often claiming that other countries are a lot worse. However, it should be noticed that we are concerned with the question of a unique cause of inhumanity in Islam. While "everyone else does it" is next to blaming God/the Devil, the question here is answered. There is also explanation of why the brutality is there in the bit on colonialism and neocolonialism.
I ask you to what degree are other religions repressed in Muslim countries on the whole, outliers aside?
Well, it varies. Not only is there variation of official policy, there are variations of how official policies are enforced. There are places that have stupid policies without necessarily being the Taliban. The more important thing is that this variation would be impossible if we were talking about some kind of ukaze from the lips of the Prophet: the fact of the variation mandates a wider range of causes than the Koran.
If the answer is yes [TO A QUESTION OF DEGREE?!], what are the reasons, along the lines of your explanation of the authoritarian political systems in these countries? [incoherent bit edited]
The reasons are exactly the same as they would be in non-Muslim states. For example, there is nothing in Marx or in the early Lenin about Gulags or secret police torture chambers (lately re-opened with gusto by the largely Christian CIA). There is nothing in any genuine socialist theoretical work about mass murder, other than assailing capitalist war profiteering. These things appear to be unfortunate necessities to certain kinds of people, lurking in every race and culture, who unfortunately often claw their way to the tops of rigid hierarchical structures. There are definitely Muslims guiilty of this, but Islam is not the reason.
And it must be said that once again we have come across an example of something that would be unspeakable if applied to Jews (eg, Aaron Brown asking the CNN audience what it is about Jews that makes them shamelessly lie, steal land and torture innocent people. Can we expect Madonna to start killing people now that she's into Kabballah? Etc). It's bigoted trash no matter who the target is.
Murder rates, like any government provided statistic, depends on the government reporting. Remember Sadam had free elections and the Saudis' treat women the same as men, according to their government. We allow other reliqions to practice freely here, what religions are allowed to freely practice in the middle-east? You are just as hypocritical as Mr. Prager.
Indeed, the 5 questions are polemical and lack a solid basis. However, when I hear non-Muslims refer to Muslims as one monolithic community, I wonder if this is because they've bought into the very widespread Islamist propoganda that we are all one unified people (which we are not). Did we shoot ourselves in the foot??
I wonder if this is because they've bought into the very widespread Islamist propoganda that we are all one unified people
Very relevant point. There is nothing OBL and co want more than the rest of the world "bigging them up" and conflating them into one conveniently large entity with the rest of the Muslim world - handy for a "clash of civilizations". Their idea of Islam appears to be based on using highly selective jurisprudence to sanctify their tribalistic inclinations toward revenge. This of course only works with the religiously uneducated - usually on the rebound from a particularly unsuccessful and usually decadent dalliance with some aspect of the Western world. Some Sufis are fond of pointing out that most of them are engineers. Correction. Failed engineers. Engineers are useful and help build societies. Stop being smug.
They claim to be the saviours of oppressed Muslims worldwide, but left alone with other Muslims they tend to be the first to pick fights.
I have been recently getting bombarded with html emails from the French "Islam sans compromise" in which virulent defender-of-the-faith-and-of-the-oppressed-Muslim assaults on, say, Sarkosy, are interspersed with excoriating "proofs" of the "errors" (read heresy) of just about all other Muslim groups and thinkers. Yet they dream of restoring the Khalifa - and pine for the flowering of culture and tolerance that was Andaulsia! Maybe they are aware that it was achievement of some kind. Just a bit hazy about the details. As if they could recreate anything a German nun would describe as "The ornament of the world".
Quite a surprising number of people would like to paint a picture of "Al Qaeda" that suits their particular ends. If Muslims ever achieve any unity - and what shouldn't they - does anyone really think it would be achieved by those whose mode of engagement is bloody revenge, who in reality neither articulate nor practice the message they claim to adhere to, and who if left to their own devices immediately become involved in self-righteous infighting?
i appreciate the thought put into this response. 15 minutes after i had read prager's piece i had already sent off a letter to the times, though it was much shorter and much less well-thought out.
unfortunately there is a positive side-effect to all of this and that is that it seems it has gotten many people thinking about it. although i believe the majority of people will buy into the approach prager takes, lets hope enough people read responses like this one to realize that their views may potentially be skewed.
also, i do have one criticism here and that is that i dont think murder rate is a valid mechanism for refuting the violence claims. first off, the per capita is likely more approrpriate, but regardless, i believe the implication is that the violence is perpetrated against other religions and potentially in other countries. trying to argue that muslim countries have lower rates of murder does not address that claim in any way.
nonetheless, thanks.
I have had an actual "discussion" with Prager and I documented the whole bizarre thing. A piece of work, indeed. For a further example of his brand of argument, check out
Conversations with Town Hall
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