WARNING: Free speech and political incorrectness up ahead!
Our man on the ground in Afghanistan, Spencer Case, writes:
Here at Forward Operating Base Thunder, the captain has recently returned from leave, bringing with him his propensity for political debate. One hot subject in the office, the Ground Zero mosque, has led to a genuine philosophical question which I’d like to see you take up. The question is this: at what point is it appropriate to credit/blame an “-ism” for the deeds/misdeeds of professed adherents?
To me it seems perfectly correct to say that Islam causes terrorism, that 9/11 was an Islamic attack, and that Islam as an overarching worldview is responsible for certain evils. The captain thinks 9/11 was simply a crazy or evil attack. The fact that the attackers happened to be Muslim, rather than Christian, Buddhist, Communist or what-have-you is purely accidental (Allahu Akbar! notwithstanding).
First of all, the 9/11 hijackers were not 'crazy' or insane or irrational. They displayed a high degree of instrumental rationality in planning and carrying out their mission. It is a big mistake to think that evil actions are eo ipso crazy actions. People who say or suggest this (typically liberals) simply do not take evil seriously or the free will that makes it possible. They think that people who commit mass murder must be out of their minds. No! Mass murder can be an entirely rational means for the furtherance of one's (evil) goals. The 9/11 terrorists knew exactly what they were doing, did it deliberately and freely and consciously and rationally (in terms of instrumental rationality), and they dealt us a severe blow from which we are still reeling. It is also a mistake to call Muhammad Atta and the boys 'cowards' as Bill O'Reilly and others have done. On the contrary! They displayed great courage in carrying out their evil deeds. The fact that courage is a virtue is consistent with an exercise of courage having an evil upshot.
And your captain is certainly wrong if he thinks that it is an accidental fact about the 9/11 hijackers that they are Muslims. Intentional actions derive from and reflect beliefs. People do not act in a doxastic vacuum. And what they believe cannot help but influence their actions. A convinced pacifist is highly unlikely to be a suicide bomber. Compare the number of Buddhist terrorists to the number of Muslim terrorists. There are many more of the latter than of the former, to put it in the form of an understatement. Obviously, the content of Buddhist/Muslim beliefs plays an important role in the etiology of pacifist/terrorist acts.
My point is this: clearly ‘Islam’ isn’t causally inert. Each year millions of people from all over the world visit a small city in Saudi Arabia called Mecca. This would not happen except for the influence of Islam. If Islam is causally active here, there is no reason to rule out a priori that Islam can cause things that are morally bad. Inasmuch as a worldview encourages people to do good, it makes sense to give it credit; inasmuch as a worldview encourages people to do bad it makes sense to blame it. Many well-intentioned people, no doubt trying to be charitable, seem hell-bent on denying this to purge Islam of the wicked deeds done “in the name” of that faith.
I agree. I think you will concede, though, that it is not Muslim doctrines as abstract propositions that are causally efficacious, but these doctrines insofar as they are believed and taken to heart by people who invoke them as justifications for their actions. Islam taken in abstracto as a set of beliefs (belief-contents) and practices (types not tokens) is causally inert; but when Islam is concretized in its flesh-and-blood practitioners then it becomes causally active.
We in the West are extremely tolerant. Being tolerant we tend to give Islam the benefit of the doubt by assuming that it is religion like Buddhism or Christianity. And so when terrorist attacks occur to the refrain of Allahu Akbar! we have the tendency to interpret these events as 'hijackings' of true Islam when it is the jihadis who are expressing true Islam, and the so-called 'moderate Muslims' are Muslims who don't take their religion seriously enough to put it into full practice.
A comparison can be made with Communism. True Communism was not the Communism of the fellow-traveller, or even that of the card-carrying rank-and-filer, but the Communism of the cadre-communist. Similarly, true Islam is not the Islam of the 'moderate Muslim' but the Islam of the jihadi.
Apologists for Islam love to tout the fact that the majority of Muslims are not terrorists. However, I say this does not tell us that 9/11 was not an Islamic attack nor does it prove that Islam isn’t a terror-sanctioning religion. The majority of Nazis did not operate gas chambers, but it is nonetheless true that Naziism itself is responsible for the gas chambers. The important consideration is that those who did operate the gas chambers were doing so in accordance with the central ideas of Naziism and following the examples of Naziism’s central founders. So, you can’t rule out the possibility that Islam is a terror-sanctioning religion just by looking at what the majority do—you must look at its doctrines and the deeds of its founders to determine that.
I agree! It would be absurd to claim that National Socialism was 'hijacked' by certain extremists.
Other non-sequiturs are routinely employed to exonerate Islam, but this should be enough for now. I look forward to your thoughts on the subject.
And now you have them, or some of them. Unlike before, now I am in complete agreement with you.
Recent Comments