Fantastic piece. I worry that those who need to read it most are legitimately incapable of doing so, due to the risk of shattering the simple heuristic of "oppressor bad, oppressed good" on which their entire worldview is based.
Thanks mate, I'm always a little baffled at how obviously absurd that heuristic is when it leads people to justify acts and ideas that are opposed to what they say they stand for. Oh well...welcome to the desert of the real.
Brilliant piece, Alan, thanks a lot for this! Really needs to be stated as clear and explicitly as you do here - this moral incoherence is harmful, but ‚progressives‘ don’t want to see, it’s obviously ever so convenient to be ‚on the good side‘ without giving it any further thought. Such a paradox :(
PS: ‚Paradox‘ also because these Western Leftists in all their moral incoherence (and, yes, ignorance!) don’t even see how easy they are ‚exploited‘ by ‚the other side of the coin‘, namely, the (extreme) right. Terrifying.
Yes, I think this radicalisation in response is always worrying. Sam Harris made a similar point in a recent episode, i.e., that if liberals don't put checks and balances on their own ideas and beliefs, at some point a disproportionate reaction comes in to do so. We're just over-correcting in different directions.
Black and white thinking and being right is so comforting. Because it’s easier to believe you are good if you know the other guy is bad. Much harder all around when you see the grey.
Well said. I think much of our contemporary angst can be distilled down to do people seeking certainty in an uncertain world, and finding it in whoever sells them the false certainty that jives with their own beliefs.
Thank you once again for such a thoughtful, eloquent piece. Feels like we are living in an alternate reality where critical thought and logic is no longer the norm. And woe betide anyone that dares even whisper a word that challenges these ideas …. you stand to be ostracised or ‘cancelled’. It’s such a joke. I would laugh if it wasn’t so sad and ridiculous. We are playing a dangerous game where we stand to loose more than we can ever imagine. I just hope that somehow the tide will turn before it’s too late.
Thanks, Bridgitte, I appreciate your comment. I agree that our reality now is one of demands for certainty and ideological conformity, and I think how we got here is an essay in its own right.
I think academic institutions have a lot to answer for, but I wonder even if they had maintained their sanity would the power of social media and algorithms have just hijacked everyone's brains anyway. I am inclined to think the latter.
I share your sentiments about this dangerous game...my worry is a genuinely don't think people view it as such, they only view "the other side" as dangerous which is a path history tells us leaves society in a lot of pain.
If I could raise one question though, it would be in getting your opinion on the unique difficulty in seperating Islam as a religion from Islamism as a "socio-cultural-political ideology"?
The founder was, after all, not only a prophet but a military conqueror who after moving from Mecca to Medina spread the religion by force and who is held up as the ideal example for all Muslims to follow. (Within 100 years of Muhammad's death in 632, for example, most of what was once Christendom across the Middle East and Africa had been conquered and Islamic armies were fighting the French at the battle of Tours in 732). The other major world religions do not face this kind of challenge.
And to query your example, Russian identity is not inextricably tied to the totalitarianism downstream of Bolshevik success in 1917. But Islamic identity is inextricably tied to the specific sociopolitical teachings and biographical details of Muhammad which bear fruit with 1400 years of things like "dhimmitude", murdered apostates, "taqiyya", polygamy, and a slave trade which far surpassed the transatlantic trade in scale, etc. This presents quite a challenge to those even within Islam who seek to reconcile their religion with Western concepts like the rule of law or democratic error correction or universal human rights.
Am I missing something here? This may well be a blindspot of mine. How do you view this kind of concern?
I think the first point is that other major religions may not face this challenge now, but once did. Christianity and Islam are both inherently messianic religions, and the Bible may, and has, been interpreted in ways that have justified much bloodshed.
That this is no longer the case, and arguably has not been since the Peace of Westphalia, is more attributable to the evolution of certain other pillars of the Western order that found expression in the separation of Church and State.
The other crucial distinction is that the Reformed Christian religions eventually (see said Peace) agreed to live alongside the Roman tradition, although as we both know that truce took ~400yrs more to find its way to our island. This is relevant to Islam because the various factions have yet to reach this point of live-and-let-live.
As highlighted, there are several Muslim-majority countries with secular legal systems, etc., so the idea that there is some inherent incompatibility is readily falsifiable. That said, there is also a clear and strong correlation between Muslim-majority countries and low levels of freedom, which speaks to your point about the challenges of separating the religion per se from its ideological manifestations.
You might find the work of Ahmet Kuru interesting in this regard. His central thesis is that in Muslim-majority countries an alliance between the ulema (i.e., the religious class) and the political class had the effect of sidelining the influence of the intelligentsia, who were more liberal and reform-minded. Brain drains to the West followed, academic institutions broke down, and the allowed for the legitimisation of religious imposition into public life.
I think it also must be said that this is ultimately the issue; an ideological interpretation. Almost all Jihadi ideological movements are based on an ultra-orthodox Sunni interpretation, Salafism in particular. Iran is the real exception to the rule but is also pragmatic in cultivating both Shia fundamentalism and courting Sunni militias.
To return to Kuru's analysis, he sees the violence, repression, underdevelopment, and authoritarianism inherent to so many Muslim-majority countries as reflecting the absence of a functioning intellectual class. This would obviously be difficult to course-correct now, but in principle, it is not impossible.
Very fascinating and timely. We need to chat about this as I need some biases checked.
Here are a few thoughts before we do:
Probably the major difference with Christianity -- and I am knowingly biased -- is that the founder/role model figure was not a military leader who explicitly advocated spreading his religion through violent conquest. Neither did Christ encourage other rather unsavoury practices like marrying 9 year olds or taking sex slaves (called "slaves of the right hand"). When Christians did any of these things they were doing the opposite of their ideal role model, not so with Muslims.
Further, historians such as Tom Holland (of Dominion) argue strongly that even the separation of Church and state was downstream of Christianity: "Render onto Caesar what is Caesar's and onto God what is God's" etc. On top of this, something like secular democracy and rule of law only works if there is an underlying metaphysic of universally shared human dignity which is also a Christian concept: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, nor male and female." Such universal human dignity was something glaringly missing in the pre-Christian ancient world, in Hinduism with its caste system which is bottomed out by Dalit "untouchables", and in Islam since its foundations. Here is one of the better known Quran verses that advocate such persecution on non-believers:
"Fight those among the People of the Book [Christians and Jews] who do not believe in Allah nor the Last Day, who do not forbid what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden, and who do not embrace the religion of truth [Islam], until they pay the jizya with willing submissiveness and feel themselves utterly subdued” (9:29) On this "jizya" and subjugation of non-believers, Open Doors found that of the top 50 countries who persecute Christians the most today, about 80% of them are Islamic: https://www.opendoors.org/en-US/persecution/countries/
I must check out the work of Kuru when I go back down this rabbit hole before we sort a proper chat and catch up.
Much love man. Thanks for the very thought provoking piece and detailed reply.
Fantastic piece. I worry that those who need to read it most are legitimately incapable of doing so, due to the risk of shattering the simple heuristic of "oppressor bad, oppressed good" on which their entire worldview is based.
Thanks mate, I'm always a little baffled at how obviously absurd that heuristic is when it leads people to justify acts and ideas that are opposed to what they say they stand for. Oh well...welcome to the desert of the real.
Brilliant piece, Alan, thanks a lot for this! Really needs to be stated as clear and explicitly as you do here - this moral incoherence is harmful, but ‚progressives‘ don’t want to see, it’s obviously ever so convenient to be ‚on the good side‘ without giving it any further thought. Such a paradox :(
PS: ‚Paradox‘ also because these Western Leftists in all their moral incoherence (and, yes, ignorance!) don’t even see how easy they are ‚exploited‘ by ‚the other side of the coin‘, namely, the (extreme) right. Terrifying.
Yes, I think this radicalisation in response is always worrying. Sam Harris made a similar point in a recent episode, i.e., that if liberals don't put checks and balances on their own ideas and beliefs, at some point a disproportionate reaction comes in to do so. We're just over-correcting in different directions.
Black and white thinking and being right is so comforting. Because it’s easier to believe you are good if you know the other guy is bad. Much harder all around when you see the grey.
Well said. I think much of our contemporary angst can be distilled down to do people seeking certainty in an uncertain world, and finding it in whoever sells them the false certainty that jives with their own beliefs.
Bravo 👏
Thank you!
Thank you once again for such a thoughtful, eloquent piece. Feels like we are living in an alternate reality where critical thought and logic is no longer the norm. And woe betide anyone that dares even whisper a word that challenges these ideas …. you stand to be ostracised or ‘cancelled’. It’s such a joke. I would laugh if it wasn’t so sad and ridiculous. We are playing a dangerous game where we stand to loose more than we can ever imagine. I just hope that somehow the tide will turn before it’s too late.
Thanks, Bridgitte, I appreciate your comment. I agree that our reality now is one of demands for certainty and ideological conformity, and I think how we got here is an essay in its own right.
I think academic institutions have a lot to answer for, but I wonder even if they had maintained their sanity would the power of social media and algorithms have just hijacked everyone's brains anyway. I am inclined to think the latter.
I share your sentiments about this dangerous game...my worry is a genuinely don't think people view it as such, they only view "the other side" as dangerous which is a path history tells us leaves society in a lot of pain.
Very good Alan.
If I could raise one question though, it would be in getting your opinion on the unique difficulty in seperating Islam as a religion from Islamism as a "socio-cultural-political ideology"?
The founder was, after all, not only a prophet but a military conqueror who after moving from Mecca to Medina spread the religion by force and who is held up as the ideal example for all Muslims to follow. (Within 100 years of Muhammad's death in 632, for example, most of what was once Christendom across the Middle East and Africa had been conquered and Islamic armies were fighting the French at the battle of Tours in 732). The other major world religions do not face this kind of challenge.
And to query your example, Russian identity is not inextricably tied to the totalitarianism downstream of Bolshevik success in 1917. But Islamic identity is inextricably tied to the specific sociopolitical teachings and biographical details of Muhammad which bear fruit with 1400 years of things like "dhimmitude", murdered apostates, "taqiyya", polygamy, and a slave trade which far surpassed the transatlantic trade in scale, etc. This presents quite a challenge to those even within Islam who seek to reconcile their religion with Western concepts like the rule of law or democratic error correction or universal human rights.
Am I missing something here? This may well be a blindspot of mine. How do you view this kind of concern?
Thanks mate, I always appreciate your comments.
I think the first point is that other major religions may not face this challenge now, but once did. Christianity and Islam are both inherently messianic religions, and the Bible may, and has, been interpreted in ways that have justified much bloodshed.
That this is no longer the case, and arguably has not been since the Peace of Westphalia, is more attributable to the evolution of certain other pillars of the Western order that found expression in the separation of Church and State.
The other crucial distinction is that the Reformed Christian religions eventually (see said Peace) agreed to live alongside the Roman tradition, although as we both know that truce took ~400yrs more to find its way to our island. This is relevant to Islam because the various factions have yet to reach this point of live-and-let-live.
As highlighted, there are several Muslim-majority countries with secular legal systems, etc., so the idea that there is some inherent incompatibility is readily falsifiable. That said, there is also a clear and strong correlation between Muslim-majority countries and low levels of freedom, which speaks to your point about the challenges of separating the religion per se from its ideological manifestations.
You might find the work of Ahmet Kuru interesting in this regard. His central thesis is that in Muslim-majority countries an alliance between the ulema (i.e., the religious class) and the political class had the effect of sidelining the influence of the intelligentsia, who were more liberal and reform-minded. Brain drains to the West followed, academic institutions broke down, and the allowed for the legitimisation of religious imposition into public life.
I think it also must be said that this is ultimately the issue; an ideological interpretation. Almost all Jihadi ideological movements are based on an ultra-orthodox Sunni interpretation, Salafism in particular. Iran is the real exception to the rule but is also pragmatic in cultivating both Shia fundamentalism and courting Sunni militias.
To return to Kuru's analysis, he sees the violence, repression, underdevelopment, and authoritarianism inherent to so many Muslim-majority countries as reflecting the absence of a functioning intellectual class. This would obviously be difficult to course-correct now, but in principle, it is not impossible.
Very fascinating and timely. We need to chat about this as I need some biases checked.
Here are a few thoughts before we do:
Probably the major difference with Christianity -- and I am knowingly biased -- is that the founder/role model figure was not a military leader who explicitly advocated spreading his religion through violent conquest. Neither did Christ encourage other rather unsavoury practices like marrying 9 year olds or taking sex slaves (called "slaves of the right hand"). When Christians did any of these things they were doing the opposite of their ideal role model, not so with Muslims.
Further, historians such as Tom Holland (of Dominion) argue strongly that even the separation of Church and state was downstream of Christianity: "Render onto Caesar what is Caesar's and onto God what is God's" etc. On top of this, something like secular democracy and rule of law only works if there is an underlying metaphysic of universally shared human dignity which is also a Christian concept: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, nor male and female." Such universal human dignity was something glaringly missing in the pre-Christian ancient world, in Hinduism with its caste system which is bottomed out by Dalit "untouchables", and in Islam since its foundations. Here is one of the better known Quran verses that advocate such persecution on non-believers:
"Fight those among the People of the Book [Christians and Jews] who do not believe in Allah nor the Last Day, who do not forbid what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden, and who do not embrace the religion of truth [Islam], until they pay the jizya with willing submissiveness and feel themselves utterly subdued” (9:29) On this "jizya" and subjugation of non-believers, Open Doors found that of the top 50 countries who persecute Christians the most today, about 80% of them are Islamic: https://www.opendoors.org/en-US/persecution/countries/
I must check out the work of Kuru when I go back down this rabbit hole before we sort a proper chat and catch up.
Much love man. Thanks for the very thought provoking piece and detailed reply.
A breath of fresh air, and the perfect tonic to the nonsense I have just listened to from Rory Stewart on the most recent Rest is Politics!
I haven't listened to that, and based on your comment I may jog on!
I screamed at the last line.