One tries to be understanding, patient, tries to embrace the tolerance so thoroughly rejected by those who condemn out of hand, with no chance for counterargument, the possibility of dialogue. Comes a point where one has to simply acknowledge that some people, in some places, just don’t share anything in common with us.
We have tried to explain the Jihadists by looking at history, pointing out where they have just cause to be angry with the West, outraged at what has been done to their people, and that the response can be understood from some exterior position that refrains from taking sides. Suicide bombing as a cultural aberration can nonetheless be comprehended from the perspective of the political outsider who sees that the only weapon available to those with no voice is sometimes the loudest, most irrational shout imaginable. We see the situation in the Middle East and shake our heads at the repeated injustices committed over and over again in the name of oil or power or faith, which may in the end all be one and the same.
But the simple truth now seems to be that any political or moral validity these movements may at one time have possessed has been squandered in a mindless lemming-like inability to allow for anything other than the preprocessed, spoonfed insanity of their religious convictions. The act of destroying those who are not One Of Them has become a self-perpetuating series of negations, a denial that anyone can have any authority to negotiate, to make policy, to attempt reconciliation, to render the situation rational. Only Allah may be “in charge” and anyone else who attempts to command a plebiscite to accomplish anything that in the least way deviates from the perceived path of the righteous must simply die.
Which in the end will be everyone. Under such a program, no one may be in charge.
And since Allah chooses to be silent in the present day, the natural condition of such a polity will be subsistence and terror. All progress must cease by this program. Everything must be rendered down into a basic mortal pabulum that has no definable shape, no direction, no possibility of Becoming.
These people are insane. Perhaps not clinically–there may be no organic component to their madness–which makes it all the more terrifying. They value nothing by which common ground can be found or common cause be made. Even their leaders probably cannot control them, once the zeal and the arrogance that has no Self at its center takes hold and they believe they are acting according to divine will.
There is no political future in that path and it is abhorrent to all we hold dear. One may deride the West for many failures to live up to its own promises, criticize us for our lapses in conscience, but in the face of such utter nihilistic perversity one has to admire the things we cling to as noble and true and precious, at the base of which is the assumed freedom to simply have a different opinion.
The genius of the United States and modern Europe lies in the fact that when we have an election, regardless the outcome, we Go Home. We do not riot. We do not overturn the Constitution. We do not have coups. (One can argue these points, but in the end they are largely true.) How does one teach that to a nation that seems incapable of accepting differences of opinion? We see it time and again, when elections here or there or some other place are declared, by someone, to be not the will of the people, the cities burn, the leaders are shot, the military is called out, and democracy is kicked in the balls again.
Bhutto may not have been able to save Pakistan from itself. But now we’ll never know. A plebiscite of one decided for the whole country.
And people wonder why religion in politics is such a Big Deal.
If you do not get at least as much flak as I did for my post http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=1951 (and my post was harmless without the kind of conclusions that you are drawing here) then I will file a complaint with Erich about the blatantly injust and oppressive treatment of female authors here. 😀
This is a tragedy, by any definition. Bhutto may not have been an ideal leader, but no one but the worst elements will benefit from more chaos and instability in Pakistan. Events like these really make me feel the loss of credibility the US has suffered over the past 8 years. Perhaps if more Americans had been less willing to "go home" and sink back into apathetic consumption of the media spectacle after a certain stolen election, we would be in a better position today to actually promote democracy and human rights abroad.
Sorry Mark, but "those people are just insane" doesn't seem a good substitute for actual analysis that will help discern a path forward. I recommend re-reading Erich's posts about the banality of heroism and the banality of evil, also consider how much you might be affected by the fundamental attribution error.
I'm with Gandhi on western civilization "it would be a good idea."
"unjust" not "injust"
I remembered her as one of the few female political leaders who were as corrupt as any of their male counterparts. I'm still not sure what to think, I looked for some information on the internet today and found this interesting albeit somewhat lengthy article about her in the New Yorker. She was in single confinement for 5 years and still had the energy to continue fighting when she was released. I guess, even if you don't like her, you must admire her strength. She was of the same kind as Margaret Thatcher with whom she was friends and whose politics you also might have liked or not.
Vicki,
People like the Taliban and other groups who consider martyrdom "reasonable" as long as they take as many "infidels" with them as they can have never and could never care a fig for American "credibility." They have embraced an alternative posture toward reality. At some point along the way, it was a choice they made.
The alternative to "going home" is usually revolution. We general act here under the assumption that we'll get another chance to correct an error in 4 or 8 years. Once Al Gore accepted the outcome, it was a statement that we should abide by that outcome rather than risk damage to what remained of a usually functional system. (Vote stealing is nothing new in American politics, even at the presidential level, and people "went home" then and the country not only survived but in many ways improved afterward.)
As for as the claim that "these people are just insane" being no substitute for analysis, I didn't suggest it was. But after sufficient analysis, it may well be the only coherent conclusion. After a point, understanding why the madman is going to kill you doesn't really change the fact that he's going to kill you and may be useless in preventing him from doing so.
But I'll say this—understanding why may help prevent the creation of more madmen. We still have to deal with ones we have.
One more thing:
—I’m with Gandhi on western civilization “it would be a good idea.”—
I know that Gandhi did not approve of it, but nevertheless when he made that statement he was being an activist on behalf of a country and a culture that maintained (and to a great extent still does, even though it is illegal) one of the most horrendous caste systems in history. Every so-called civilization has its shameful aspects, ours perhaps being somewhat worse because of what we claimed we stood for. At the time he said that, though, there would have been no question which of the two would be preferable to actually live in.
As long as you were a white European living in it.
And globalization is great too –as long as you're not an indigenous farmer in Chiapas.
I don't want to play a blame game. I just think we can mourn with the people of Pakistan without making it into an opportunity to proclaim the greatness of western civilization.
Once you play the virtuous victim/villainous oppressor game you find yourself in a situation like Alice on the other side of the looking glass, trying to decide if the Walrus was "worse" than the Carpenter:
Was he being an activist on behalf of a country and a culture, or on behalf of a vision of what humanity could be, within the context of a particular culture? Why the "your team/my team" mentality? There's only one team – the human race.
I hope that one day the idea that certain values are "western" will become archaic, while the ideals themselves flourish. Certainly we can no longer afford to sell "western civilization" as a package deal.
Hmm, I think there might be a few alternatives in between going back to the LazyBoy, and violent revolution. This dude named Thoreau wrote a book about it a while back:
After incidents like this I usually imagine one of two scenarios for the Suicide Bomber in the afterlife…
Scenario 1
(Suicide Bomber arrives in heaven. His clothes are torn and still smoking. He is very excited.)
Bomber (to God): I'm here!
God: Wh-what are YOU doing here? (Seeing his clothes and the smoke) What did you DO??!
B: I did what you told me to do! I murdered the infidels!!
G: I didn't tell you to do that! When did I tell you to do that?!?!
B: Well, uhhh…there was that part in the book, right after the part about love that, uhhh…I…uhhh…(Bomber hangs his head) I don't remember.
(God hits Bomber over the head with his halo. It makes an audible clang.)
B: Ow!! Why'd you do that?
G: You idiot! I gave you ONE life and THIS is what you decided to do with it??!!
Scenario 2
(Bullets flying, glass breaking, screaming, smoke, blood, pain, weeping. Bomber flips a switch. There is a terrifying, flesh rending flash. An explosion, then…nothing…forever.)
—There’s only one team – the human race.—
Absolutely. And the people I'm talking about aren't part of it. This isn't Us and Them thinking in terms of West vs East or anything so mundane. The people I'm talking about stand outside of everything–the human race. They don't just kill westerners—they kill far more of their own supposed people.
So when I say they're insane, that's what I mean.
It is devastating to have a political candidate gunned down. After it happens, what good-hearted person would dare to step forward to be a candidate? The risk of death is an extra bar to exclude the kinds of candidates that are most needed. Candidates already need to qualify in numerous ways that have very little to do with whether they would be good leaders (they need to make the right connections with the right people and they need to have access to certain resourses to run their campaigns; they also need to be polished speakers and have a certain "look"). See, also, these items http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=1597. Add "willing to risk the deaths of themselves, their friends and their family members" to the list, and the number of volunteers dwindles to almost zero.
In the US, we've had our fair share of candidates getting gunned down. Frankly, it amazes me that it doesn't happen more often than it does. Really, what is it that keeps 300 million people, many of them violent, from trying to kill any of the hundreds of powerful politicians in the U.S. How far is our own society from having to explain (as we did with JFK and RFK) that we're basically a good People and that only a deranged individual, or a small group, was to blame?
Mark,
You said: After a point, understanding why the madman is going to kill you doesn’t really change the fact that he’s going to kill you and may be useless in preventing him from doing so. But I’ll say this — understanding why may help prevent the creation of more madmen.
Sorry to disappoint you, but understanding why won't help you at all. This weekend I read The End of Faith by Sam Harris, in which he explains why there are no Buddhist suicide bombers. To quote Harris:
To see that our problem is with Islam itself, and not merely with "terrorism," we need only ask ourselves why Muslim terrorists do what they do. Why would someone as conspicuously devoid of personal grievances or psychological dysfunction as Osama bin Laden – who is neither poor, uneducated, or a prior victim of Western aggression – devote himself to cave-dwelling machinations with the intention of killing innumerable men, women, and children he has never met? The answer to this question is obvious – if only because it has been patiently articulated ad nauseam by bin Laden himself. The answer is that men like bin Laden actually believe what they say they believe.
When they say that they believe, explicitly, the word of the Koran, that is exactly what they mean. They are going straight to paradise where seventy-two virgins await them, and they can in due course be joined by up to seventy of their family and friends. This is not a story to them, it is the absolute truth, and that is why they do it. Understanding is not going to help you stop them.
Mark, still a bit disturbed by the "they're insane, they're outside the human race" attitude. I know you well enough by now to know that you don't really mean that mentally ill people are not human, or deserving of anything but humane treatment and restraint only when necessary to prevent harm.
I think it would be safer to say that they are criminals, and those who aid and abet them must be held accountable.
But to say that they are outside of the human race – I see no evidence of that. Willingness to use violence, willingness to sacrifice for a cause – these are all quite human traits that sometimes actually create positive outcomes. As comforting as it might be to draw a line between myself and people who do these sorts of things, I don't think it is consistent with what science tells us about human nature. I always get nervous when an enemy is defined as sub-human or non-human, because that can be used to justify all sorts of things that end up making Us just as bad as Them.
As for Harris' contention that Islam itself is the primary motivation of suicide bombers, that is BS and a quite dangerous idea to let loose in the US, where so many people are extremely ignorant of the rest of the world and of history. Scott Atran is someone who has actually researched how suicide terrorists are created, and he points out that knowledge of the Koran correlates negatively with propensity to terrorism. They more likely to be fascinated by pop culture figures like the Terminator than by Islamic scholars. Here is an excerpt from an interview Atran gave to Discover mag:
Vicky,
I am more than happy to accept that there might be more than one route by which persons become suicide bombers, and also that maybe Harris has not quite pinned it down on all four corners. But your version of Atran's explanation does not come remotely close to explaining why there are no Buddhist suicide bombers, or Jesuit suicide bombers, or Hindu suicide bombers or for that matter Christian suicide bombers.
Whilst not a great fan of Wikipedia, I did find the following quote: Scott Atran found that non-Islamic groups have carried out very few bombings since 2003, while bombing by Muslim or Islamist groups associated with a "global ideology" of "martyrdom" has skyrocketed. In one year, in one Muslim country alone – 2004 in Iraq – there were 400 suicide attacks and 2000 casualties. Still others argue that perceived religious rewards in the hereafter are instrumental in encouraging Muslims to commit suicide attacks.
So it is not even obvious that Atran disagrees with Harris.
In an article in Science Magazine from March 2003, Atran says: From 1996 to 1999 Nasra Hassan, a Pakistani relief worker, interviewed nearly 250 recruiters and trainers, failed suicide bombers, and relatives of deceased bombers. They all seemed to be entirely normal… all were deeply religious, believing their actions sanctioned by the divinely revealed religion of Islam.
From the same article: A Singapore Parliamentary report on 31 captured operatives from Al-Qaida allies in Southeast Asia found that: As a group, most of the detainees regarded religion as their most important personal value… secrecy over the true nature of Jihad, helped create a sense of sharing and empowerment vis-a-vis others.
I'm sure I do not have to point out that Jihad is an Islamic thing.
But these guys are not acting in isolation, against the wishes of their people; still from the same article, psychologist Brian Barber found in 2002 that 70 – 80% of Palestinians endorsed martyr operations. That means that a sizeable majority of the population supported the actions of the martyrs.
After a Jerusalem supermarket bombing by an 18-year old Palestinian female, a Saudi telethon raised more than $100 million for "the Al-Quds Intifada."
In a poll of 1179 West Bank and Gaza Palestinians in the spring of 2002, 66% said army operations increased their backing for suicide bombings and by year's end 73% of Lebanese moslems considered suicide bombings justifiable.
In a briefing to the National Security Council given at the White House on 28 April 2006, Atran said: When,
1) Egyptian Bedouin are dying to kll European tourists and Egyptians who cater to them
2) British citizens blow themselves up along with other Brits because of Iraq and Afghanistan
3) Malaysian bombers kill Australians and Balinese Hindus in Indonesia as "self-defense" in a "clash of civilizations" between Islam and America
4) Arabs from over a dozen countries rush to embrace death
5) Iraqi Sunnis kill mostly Jordanian Sunnis to avenge the "Crusader-Shi'ite" conspiracy that extends to the shores of the Mediterranean and beyond
then it is quite a stretch to see the common denominator being secular struggle over foreign occupation of a homeland.
Here he is refuting the view that the common denominator for suicide bombing might be anything other than religious fundamentalism. And, he is obviously not in any doubt which religion is leading the way. In neither of his articles does he even mention any other religion than Islam. These folks may well, as you claim, be more interested in folk figures like Terminator than in Islamic scholars, but they strap bombs to their bodies and blow up innocent non-combatants because of their religious beliefs. Anyone who seriously believes that these people are motivated by anything other than religious fundamentalism is burying their head in the sand.
References:
Suicide attack, Wikipedia article – read the paragraph headed Idealism as Motivation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_bomber
Genesis of Suicide Terrorism, Science Magazine, March 2003
http://sitemaker.umich.edu/satran/files/science-g…
Global Network Terrorism, NSC briefing 28 April 2006
http://sitemaker.umich.edu/satran/files/atrannsc-…
Martin, I have sometimes wondered if men like Osama bin Laden do not use the demonization of the Western world as a means to unify and manipulate the poor masses in order to keep them entertained so that they will not start a revolution against a system where a few are in the possession of riches and the majority of the population is condemned to a life in povery. Countries like Saudi-Arabi are facing a generation of disillusioned bored young men who have to deal with high unemployment rates. I remember <a>this article (it's in German), where the author mentioned Germany and Russia at the beginning of the 19th century. According to him both were countries with the youngest population at that time in the world overboarding with aggressive and nervous tensions and leading to World War I and the Russian Octoberrevolution.
I have also wondered if keeping the American population entertained with consumerism and the need to acquire more material possession is not a similar mean of control. People seem to be so busy with their jobs, often not only one job, but two, to satisfy their cravings that they don't seem to have time to read the newspaper or to keep themselves informed with anything beyond their close surrounding. And it seems that with the growing gap between the rich and the poor that having two jobs is not only a personal choice, but kind of obligatory if you want to make a living.
And yeah, usually I find conspiracy theories to be silly, but I like these two, because they are mine. 😀
Vicky,
I have only just noticed that in the Discover magazine article you referred to, Atran answered the question about the root cause of suicide terrorism by saying: …it emerges when an ideologically devoted people find that they cannot possibly obtain their ends in a sort of fair fight, …
Your own guy, who is as you acknowledge, someone who has actually researched how suicide terrorists are created, says it is ideologically motivated. I guess you must have missed that when you read the article.
Vicky, the real problem here is that we, not just you and I but we in society are indoctrinated with an excessive amount of respect for other peoples religious beliefs. If our mum told us there was a pink blancmange at the bottom of her garden that made the world and everything in it, our response would be to seriously consider getting her some medical help. But when she tells us that this is a religious belief we say, "Oh, I respect that."
According to Gallup, 35% of Americans believe that the Bible is the literal and inerrant word of the creator of the universe. Which means that 120 million Americans place the big bang at a point in time 2,500 years after the Sumerians and Babylonians learned to brew beer.
Well, I'm sorry, but I am not able to pretend to respect the views of a person who believes, not just in the absence of any evidence but in the face of considerable evidence to the contrary, that a sky fairy made the universe in six days.
Before we, as a society, can point the finger of blame for suicide terrorists fairly and squarely at Islamic religious ideology we first have to abuse ourselves of the ridiculous notion that we have to respect a person for believing the absolute truth of propositions that wouldn't get past the third-grade debating club.
Sometimes candidates are shot to keep them quiet. Sometimes, candidates are gagged — strangle by corporate power, as is the case of Ron Paul, who has been excluded from an upcoming primary by FOX, for no good reason:
http://www.observer.com/2007/paul-fox-news-runnin…
Martin: I sympathize with your view (two comments above) that we shouldn't pretend that we respect factually contradicted or oxymoronic beliefs. Never should we do that, because it is not showing true respect for true knowledge or for those believers.
But what do you do when otherwise good-hearted and intelligent people cling to strange beliefs for one hour per week? I know more of these people than I could possibly count.
I've been rethinking that issue. The question that is focusing me is this: Is there an approach that mostly serves the needs of most people most of the time, where we all agree on 97% of what needs to be done in a world desperate for good-hearted and intelligent people?
Therefore, I will never pretend to believe what I don't believe. No one walked on water, there is no invisible sentient Being, and (since I was raised Catholic) the host is not really a man's muscle tissue. On the other hand, maybe I don't need to jump in a correct good-hearted and intelligent people EVERY time they say something that seems patently false. Maybe I should overlook those things, consider them to be compartmentalized mental illness (just like they probably think about my "strange" beliefs) and work with them to get some important things accomplished. Hence, two of my recent posts, http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=1977 and http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=1962.
Martyn:
Sorry if I gave the impression that I thought Islamic jihadis are not motivated by ideology, because that's not what I think. I just don't think this ideology is coterminous with Islam, It's completely wrong and dangerous to claim, as Harris does, that we are "at war with Islam."
Also, one has to be very ignorant of history to think that only Islam has this sort of problem with extremism and violence. Suicidal attacks have a long history, from the assassination of Czar Alexander, European anarchist bomb throwers, kamikaze pilots, Viet Minh death volunteers, etc. Even the cause of vottes for women had its suicidal volunteers. The secular Hindu Tamil Tigers invented the suicide vest.
I agree with Erich that the nonsensical content of some religious beliefs is really not the problem. The majority of religious believers are quite capable of rational thought outside of specific venues, and their values evolve with the rest of their culture for the most part. The idea that our nation could or should be at war with a religion is a giant step backward, reversing the Enlightenment ideal that religious belief or non-belief is a matter of personal conviction, not something that can be coerced by military power.
This is where Atran disagrees strongly with Harris (from the NSA briefing you cited above):
PS – if you still think Atran agrees with Harris, read this exchange on the Edge:
http://www.edge.org/discourse/bb.html#atran2
Erich,
Your approach to dealing with the problem of how to interact socially with someone who has a factually contradicted or oxymoronic belief is founded on an incorrect assumption.
I suspect that at heart, you cling to the belief that religious folk fall on a continuum: some draw solace and inspiration from a specific spiritual tradition, and yet remain committed to tolerance and diversity, while others would burn the Earth to cinders if it would put an end to heresy. In short, you believe that there are religious moderates and there are religious extremists. Your policy of being nice and polite and tolerant to certain believers is predicated on the assumption that religious moderates are essentially harmless folk who get some solace out of their beliefs, so if it doesn't actually impact on your life then why not let them believe? You see the path to peace as being paved by good intentions once we have all learned to respect the unjustified beliefs of others.
My contention is that this approach is both an insult to your intelligence and is intellectually dishonest. To understand why we have to first understand what makes a religious moderate. An extremist is one who takes his religious text literally. So if the bible says, as it does in Mark:16-16 He that believeth in me shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned, the religious extremist truly believes that I will be damned (whatever that might mean). The moderate, however, is someone who takes his religion with what you would prefer to think of as a dose of reality. He moderates his beliefs and observances in light of what we have learned over the past two thousand years. He loosely interprets some bits of his holy book and completely ignores others as it seems appropriate or prudent. This approach moderates his behaviour to the point where non-believers might not even notice the difference between him and a regular guy. Your typical religious moderate does nothing more harmful than put festive lights up round a nativity scene in his front room window to celebrate the birth of the baby Jesus. What's so wrong with that?
Did you notice that in order to achieve this innocuous nirvana he had to cast aside at least some of his so-called beliefs, to metaphorically tear some pages out of his holy book until he is left with a diluted version of his religion adapted to suit his own personal circumstances.
In what sense is he then still able to call himself a believer? Are we now able to pick and choose which bits of the holy book we can believe in?
So it is my contention that a religious moderate is being basically dishonest, not just to himself and to his supposed faith, but also to me and to you. The Golden Rule tells us to do unto others as we would have them do unto us, so as long as your religious moderate doesn't mind me lying to him on a daily basis I won't call him a hypocrite.
Now let's talk about respect.
I don't know how you feel about respect but to me it is a very precious commodity; if you want my respect you have to earn it. I do not respect groups of people, no matter how deserving others might think they are. I don't respect the boy scouts or the St John Ambulance Brigade or the lifeboatmen. I respect specific individuals who have earned it. Similarly, I consider earning and keeping the respect of people I admire to be a worthwhile ambition. I value and treasure the respect of others and neither give nor receive it lightly.
So when religious moderates talk about "respecting" the rights of others to have contrary beliefs I gag on their hypocrisy.
If you are a believer then whichever god you believe in promises that you will go to a better place when you die, conditional only on your believing in him and observing his rules in the here and now. Anyone who believes otherwise is going somewhere else. That means that for a believer to "respect" your right to follow another path he is claiming not only that he is going to heaven while you are certainly going to hell, but that he actually "respects" you for choosing to commit your soul to purgatory for eternity. This does not conform to any reasonable interpretation of the word "respect".
We also need to remember that if I am convinced that my religion is the only way to ensure that my soul passes into heaven, then I obviously want all my family and friends to be there too. Not just for my sake of course, but for their sakes, to ensure their everlasting happiness. So my belief is not just a personal thing that only affects me. It also affects all those whom I know and love. How, in light of this, can I possibly "respect" you for persuading my brother to choose another path?
Certainty about the everafter is not compatible with respect in the here and now.
So you see, Erich, you have to choose between the honest extremist and the hypocritically dishonest moderate. There is of course a continuum between the two so your next step is to look for the halfway point where you might hope to find an honest hypocritcal moderate extremist?
Jump off the fence Erich and admit that it is not extremism per se that is poisoning the minds of our future, but it is religion itself that is dragging us ever closer to the edge of the abyss.
Vicky,
In your last post you have quoted Atan as saying: But those who seem to best succeed in convincing their brethren to forsake wanton killing of civilians do so by promoting alternative interpretations of Islamic principles that needn’t directly oppose Salafi teachings.
Please explain how those who best succeed can do so by "promoting alternative interpretations of Islamic principles" to persons who are not motivated by Islamic principles.
I absolutely agree with Martin's opinion about the religious moderates, but I think you can live with them quite well. Their belief in God does not touch that many areas of their life, like work, family, friends, political conviction. They usually don't talk about it and impose their belief on me, so while their belief may be watered-down and hypocritical it does not affect me. They have comparmentalized their belief.
If I'm honest I probably would have to say, I tolerate their quirk, but I'm not sure if it could be called respect. I can be friends with them, appreciate them as colleagues, but I don't think I would be able to marry one.
Martin,
You sound like a displaced Objectivist. Tell me, do you think four-year-olds who still believe in Santa are even after they "understand" that really mom and dad buy all those presents are hypocrites?
People learn at different rates and all of us find an accommodation with the truth that fits our comfort level. So-called religious moderates don't have to be hypocritical in order to understand that their "path" is only one among many ways to their goal. All you need do is realize that the Holy Books are at base interpretations and the peculiarities of specificity become pointless. So a Methodist can believe truly that a Catholic is no more right or wrong than a Southern Baptist, and a christian can view non christian faiths as revolving around a central core of essential truths, regardless of the window dressing.
The problem with extremists is they have mistaken ritual for truth, protocol for essentials, and custom for morality. By steps, we can see this process in any group that incrementally removes itself from the ability to understand that truth is more an essential idea than a prescription for behavior. This becomes a pathology, whereby an individual loses the ability to recognize commonality that doesn't strictly conform to a given shape, i.e. ritual, custom, etc. That's why these groups remove themselves, spiritually but often physically, from the larger society and concentrate on their own interpretations of what they think the True Path is, which invariably reduces to form. Getting the words right, the daily actions, the food, the dress, the very thoughts proper to contemplate get concretized and anything that doesn't conform to Outside, Evil, Other.
Make no mistake, this is as I say a pathology. In time those in its grip speak another language (not necessarily different words or grammars, but the meanings shift radically) and learn to see the world around them in drastically different ways. Over the centuries we've seen this take many forms–radical hermits, flagelents, outlaw communities (like the splinter Mormon groups still insistently practicing polygamy), and militants. Comes a point where difference in degree becomes difference in kind and anything that smacks of compromise is automatically registered as heresy.
The common factor all these various groups have is a core insistence that on the apparent contradiction that (a) this life means nothing and (b) how one comports oneself in this life means everything. In other words, they see lifestyle as a kind of mnemonic, a key, the proper conduct of which will unlock paradise for them, and all those who do not live as they do are both lost and a threat. At some point, connection with any kind of human commonality is severed.
This is what I meant by insanity. Non-sanity might be a better way to say it.
Anyway, going in the opposite directrion is just as erroneous, insisting that people who claim a belief conform utterly to an outsider's interpretation of that belief lest they be considered hypocritical. That, too, misses the essential point.
Martin,
Again, you're not understanding my point, and not taking into account that complex behaviors can have multiple motivations. When I say the ideology of suicide bombers is not "coterminous" with Islam I mean not identical. Suicide bombers might have a number of underlying motivations, depending on their circumstances. They definitely use Islam and the Koran as justificationfor their actions, which they might be motivated to do anyway. In the '60's and '70's, for example, the Palestinian liberation movement was more like other "liberation" movements, relying on revolutionary and nationalistic rhetoric rather than the Koran. Atran points out that the more an individual has actually studied the Koran itself, rather than the writings of radical Islamists, the less likely they are to become a militant. He also makes a distinction between the first wave of Al Quaeda who did the 9/11 attack and a new wave that is more about youth culture. (See this presentation, page 13: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/Atran07/index.htm… Because militants do value having the sanction of the Koran, they are amenable to new (to them) interpretations that characterize terrorism as murder and therefore haram, forbidden.
Also, in your second post directed at Erich, you fall into the common error of accepting at face value fundamentalists' claim that they are the only "true" believers . Have you read the Bible? If so, you know that it would be impossible to take literally and apply every single concept, commandment, and prohibition therein. Fundamentalists are "cherry-picking" just as much as the "moderate" (whatever that is) believer – they're just picking out the parts that emphasize punishment and judgment and which uphold their clinging to Victorian values about sexuality and family life. Furthermore, believers are always making up new beliefs or "doctrines" – like immaculate conception, eternal punishment in Hell, etc. Is a doctine that somebody made up yesterday and which so far hasn't attracted a lot of followers any "truer" than a doctrine somebody made up 200 years ago?
Take the modern evangelical idea that to be saved you have to accept Jesus into your heart and be born again. That's based on a couple verses and Jesus's conversation with Nicodemus, which evangelical Protestants turned into a doctrine about there being only way to salvation. Jesus told a couple of other guys that selling all or half of their possessions would "save" them, and he told another guy that his sins were forgiven because of his friends' faith. So are the evangelicals the "true believers" or moderates who think that there are many paths to salvation and that even an atheist will be saved if she practices Jesus' path of forgiveness and compassion?
I think part of the reason why people are so willing to accept that fundamentalists are the "true" believers is because our predisposition to view anger and violence as more salient than gentleness and compassion. We're hard-wired to pay more attention to things which threaten harm and thus they may seem more "real."
Mark,
For the reasons I gave in my previous post, if someone calls themself religious, and softens up or waters down or in any way disregards or ignores any part of their holy book, then in my eyes they are a hypocrit.
Can we agree that the truth value of a creed is not determined by the passion of its adherents?
Then when you say that: a Methodist can believe truly that a Catholic is no more right or wrong than a Southern Baptist…
that has no bearing on the truth value of any of their beliefs.
But… and this is a very big but…
the methodist cannot perceive either of the other two as being even potentially right, and vice versa.
Most of the people in the world believe that the creator of the universe has written a book. Unfortunately, we have many such books. Each of these books urges its readers to adopt a variety of customs, beliefs and practices, some of which are benign and some of which are not. All are in perverse agreement on one fundamental point of dogma; "respect" for other faiths, or for the views of unbelievers is not an attitude endorsed by god.
The central tenet of every religious tradition is that all others are merely repositories of error, or omission.
Intolerance is therefore intrinsic to every creed.
Certainty about the afterlife is incompatible with "respect" in the here and now.
If a person simultaneously claims to be both religious and to "respect" adherents to any other belief system, he is by definition a hypocrit.
I will now skip nimbly over your comments regarding the pathology of extremism, with which I am mostly in complete agreement, (although there is a special case for Islam not covered in your notes that we might come back to later) and stop when you say: …insisting that people who claim a belief conform utterly to an outsider’s interpretation of that belief lest they be considered hypocritical. That, too, misses the essential point.
Where I am going to suppose that "the essential point" you refer to is your earlier statement that: All you need do is realize that the Holy Books are at base interpretations and the peculiarities of specificity become pointless.
Which reads to me as meaning that, "my Holy Book means what I want it to mean and you can't say I'm wrong".
When all I can do is ask, rhetorically, is there anything more pointless than a holy book that permits each and every user to translate and interpret it in their own particular way?
How can any two users of such a book be said to form a religion?
Where is the faith in the statement, "I believe in a book I have essentially written myself"?
In what sense can a book being used in that way be considered "holy", or the "inerrant word of god"?
p.s. I think you might be right. I had never heard the term before but I think I might be an Objectivist. I'm not convinced that my personal happiness is the purpose of my life and I have not read much on it, yet, but thanks for the hint.
"The problem with extremists is they have mistaken ritual for truth, protocol for essentials, and custom for morality." Can I get an Amen, brothers and sisters?