this, by now, is mechanical, not only for muslims but for non-muslims, and if truth was pragmatic or merely strategic, the idea that acts of violence or terrorism have nothing to do with islam would be...true. now let me say, there are many varieties of islam. you're not going to find sufi saints in suicide vests. not only that, but of course there are christian fanatics, and there are people who go on shooting rampages for non-religious reasons or for no comprehensible reason whatsoever, which is really the position on something like this: any explanation - including religious fanaticism - is inadequate because the effect is both infinitely in excess to and virtually completely conceptually detached, arbitrary, in relation to the cause.

but if like eboo patel you find yourself explaining away act after act day after day as a misunderstanding or having nothing to do with what the people doing these acts say they are doing, i think you are being disingenuous, or perhaps believing what you need to believe in the teeth of what's true. if you keep quoting the peace-loving passages of the koran and ignoring the justifications or celebrations of violence in the text or the extremely violent early history of islam - its teaching that the infidel deserves death and its history of giving people what it says they deserve, i don't think you're being honest.

at any rate, i don't feel the necessity to pretend to believe what, if it were true, would make the world a little better. and indeed, if you know that you're doing that, you don't actually believe what you say you believe: believing p is taking p to be true, not taking it to help us all live as brothers.

i might admire you for being good, but if i think that the reasons you're urging me to believe that p have nothing to do with whether p is true, by definition it's not possible to find what you're saying convincing. you (the politician, pundit, or just schmoe) say that p because it would help to believe p or it would be admirable to believe that p or we would all feel better if we believed that p or if we all beieved that p the world would be cured or something. you say it and i nod along for reasons that have nothing to do whether what we're saying is true. you talk, i nod, and neither us believe at all. (the graduation address: "anything you can dream, you can accomplish." no one denies it, and no one believes it.) now i think we pay a huge price for that ultimately; i don't believe it really is a long-term solution to anything or that it really usually has good effects. it's just living in a cooperative fantasy or a tissue of lies. but of course by my own lights whether it does or does not have good effects cannot be the question.

Comments

[mr.fun]

show me someone behaving admirably and I'll wave a finger through the hologram.

[el serracho]

Right again Mr. Fun, I don't think anyone here is arguing that the wapo piece is not politically correct crap or that Islam is not, at least a little, nutty. It's the easy other 'truth' that lies in response to deciding that eboo is full of shit tat I'm equally afraid of - that is the mooslims are nutty and dangerous simply by virtue of their religion and should be..umm...taken care of poste haste. Its not happening in a vacuum.

[mr.fun]

most of it is, Robert.

now how you gonna keep em down on the farm once they seen Karl Hungus?

I am more than willing to walk all this back to the truth, like crispin has, but that is so not the point of anything going on in any news outlet about the actual problem. I would like to know how the bombing and displacement of several million people is supposed to change their hearts and minds? as opposed to the targeted bombings of civilian markets and schools?

[Robert Kelly]

Most of that is bupkis, Mr. Fun. The piece is politically correct speech, which is pretty much useless, but the antiwar activists are caught in a similar trap. It's true that in many Arab countries, anti-Semitic propaganda is common in schools, in the press and on the street, that Hitler is remembered fondly and problems afflicting people are treated as the sole fault of the United States and Israel. This isn't a nice thing to say, but it's obviously true if you try and detach from the slogans of the opposition. It is also the case that during the Vietnam War, support for the communists was convincingly given as support for a progressive alternative to imperialism (of both the American and Soviet versions--the Vietnamese communists were resisting domination of either bloc, as was Allende, for instance), but that's not presently the case among antiwar activists caught between an imperialist country and Saddam Hussein, or a military alliance between the United States and Europe at war with the Taliban (though some activists actually argue that the form of Islam represented by the Taliban is an emancipatory force!). Antiwar slogans more or less sided with these deeply terrible and cruel foes, because no one bothered to establish a sufficiently universal critique.

One area of promise is the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. If there's one big thing where I've changed my opinion, it's from "siding" with the Israelis to recognizing that it's really a mad war between two competing ethnic nationalisms, and that the only response is a no-state solution, which is highly improbable. From a practical point-of-view, that renders my actions useless (not that it would make any difference either way), but I think it's correct. I don't see a similar response to the war in Afghanistan.

[el serracho]

its a chicken/egg thing right? i mean.. if we was after oil a couple thousand miles east of where the mooslims are we'd be talking about buddhist extremists. no?

which came first? the terrorists or the military "advisers?"

[mr.fun]

is that defeatist enough for ya? LOL

[mr.fun]

now crispin, the talking heads in this country, for the most part, would like to Freedomize^tm the rest of the Middle East, such as we have done in Afghanistan and Iraq. Iran is next, and who knows who will also wind up on the list. now while this piece is dishonest, it is also combatting an American narrative that concludes with American interference in the Middle East, since (we all know) that is where Muslim terrorists come from. now the piece is dishonest, but the case you make for the truth here is and has been used as the kernel of American entire foreign policy for the past 8+ years. you've seen where that has got us; note the body count, and how much better that makes you feel about the world.

of course a more direct confrontation with the foreign policy of the past 8 years (and looking forward) would be welcomed, honest and admirable. and, unfortunately, you are not likely to find Eboo critical of any and all American military involvement in the Middle East.

at any rate, I do not look to find honest assessments in the Washington Post.