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Friday, July 22, 2005
Look For The Implicit Assumptions
...whenever trying to decide between arguments that appear equally logical but reach opposed conclusions.
James Lileks, a man who commands a neat turn of phrase, thinks Representative Tom Tancredo is an idiot:
Bombing Mecca to revenge the acts of maniacs is like nuking the Vatican to protest the pedophilia scandal in Boston. The idea appeals to those whose nuanced study of Islam makes them conclude it's better to alienate 1 billion people than defeat a fraction of the same group. It appeals to those who believe that Islam is a metal shard that cannot be absorbed and must be removed, preferably by blowing up the body. And burying the remains in pig skins! That'll learn 'em!
Now, as Eternity Road readers are aware, your Curmudgeon agrees with Tancredo. But this other writer, whose way with words is almost equal to your Curmudgeon's, thinks otherwise, and is willing to pour a gill of sarcasm on anyone who dares to disagree. The other writer has been found on the right side of an argument from time to time. So who has the right of it now?
| Lileks's Assumptions | Your Curmudgeon's Assumptions |
| There is no connection between the core doctrines of Islam and the behavior of Muslim terrorists. | Islam is the singular driving force behind the deeds of Muslim terrorists. Indeed, its embrace is the one thing they value. |
| A proper analogy exists between the misdeeds of Christians and the deeds of Muslim terrorists, with regard to the religions to which they belong. | Islam is unique among major religions in that it commands violence and oppression toward "the infidel." It explicitly exhorts the Muslim to strive for the power to impose himself on those of other faiths, and sanctions any and all routes toward that goal. In contrast, Christianity explicitly condemns both the sort of behavior indulged by Muslim terrorists and the sort of which Christian deviants have been guilty. |
| There is no connection between the attitudes, behavior, and sustenance of "ordinary" Muslims and those of terrorists and their willing supporters. | "Ordinary" Muslims passively conceal the terrorists and their willing supporters, albeit in some cases due to intimidation or coercion. | "Ordinary" Muslims are at worst indifferent toward the beliefs and conduct of "infidels." | "Ordinary" Muslims are well aware that their creed condemns "infidels," and that Muslims are religiously obligated to convert or subjugate us by any means necessary. |
| "Ordinary" Muslims would tolerate "infidels" regardless of any change in conditions. That is, they would remain innocent of violence or oppression toward us even if it became feasible. | If Islam were to achieve a sufficient preponderance in the United States, its adherents would impose theo-fascist shari'a rule upon us quite as readily as they have in other lands. |
| An assault on Islamic holy sites in retaliation for an act of mass destruction perpetrated by Muslim terrorists would alienate "ordinary" Muslims and drive them into the arms of their terrorist co-religionists. | "Ordinary" Muslims are already alienated, de facto, from "infidels" and our societies. Worse, they're the one and only hope for restraining the "extraordinary" sort without genocide. Their silence as their terrorist kindred have gone murdering among us makes nonsense of the idea that they're tacitly "on our side." They can only be marshaled to the anti-terrorist effort by being confronted with an eventuality even more distasteful than aligning with us "infidels." |
Eternity Road readers are free to choose which assumptions are more plausible.
UPDATE: The Anchoress has expressed similar thoughts. It's always nice to know one is not alone.
Comments
Lileks is one the establishment annoited. He gets a weekly spot on radio jock Hugh Hewitt’s show and then some extra time. He’s definitely a Hewitt fav.
Hewitt has been merciless in vilifying Tancredo from day one.
That Lileks’ stance mimics Hewitt’s does not surprise me in the least.
There’s so much more about Hewitt that is unsavory, you don’t have enough band width. We’ll talk.
Posted by Pascal Fervor on 07/22/2005 at 06:00 PMAlthough it is hard to counter Fran’s characterization of things among “ordinary” Muslims, I’ll wager a slightly different observation - one that may help understand their attitude as depicted by Fran.
The Western notion of ethical behavior is built around a fundamental norm: liberty. Since it is of necessity that, for an agent to be held responsible for his behavior, he be at liberty to choose to act that way, it is not possible to think of it as an extra luxury, to be granted only when most other exigencies of human existence are satisfied. Without liberty, it is not possible to determine who acts responsibly; short of that, it is not possible to develop a culture of mutual trust; and without a culture of trust, a culture cannot develop a healthy social organism spontaneously glued together.
This is almost *the* defining difference between the Christian West and the Islamic East.
Individual liberty is a norm that is almost entirely alien to the typical Islamic community. The social results of this:
- Individuals are typically not very developed in character: like a baby kept in swaddling clothes until his 10th age, their faculties atrophy early on and fail to develop fully. He is way too timorous and insecure.
- A concomittant of this is the necessity to always use external force to exert ethical behavior. For the typical Muslim, a society in which guards strolling about with whips in their hands, as infantile as that may seem to the typical Westerner, is an ethical society.
- As such cultures are made of timorous individuals, their natural preference is group-think and group-act. They only feel safe when they are in their community when they live among Westerners. You can take my word for it that the average Muslim is almost crushed by the self-confidence and security of an average Westerner.
Therefore…
The average “moderate” Muslim, more often than not, is almost entirely “passive-aggressive”: he won’t stand against terrorists because i) the only notion of warfare or struggle in his mind is group-act, i.e. a whole bunch of them attacking aliens; ii) the idea of “individuals” standing against the aggression of community members is almost alien to them both as a social and an ethical norm; iii) the idea of being left out of their community, on their own, having to decide for themselves without following a herd, is worse than being jailed.
As you may have noticed in their almost childish emotionalism, they are like grown ups who have failed to grow up.
The expectation that with enough many “Shock & Awe” campaigns they’ll rise to their feet to overthrow tyrants (and note, in the case of Saddam, that was a very murky analysis since Saddam’s was a secular regime) is… I don’t know how to put this delicately without insulting you, but let me say… *incredibly naive*.
Now, this is where I believe Fran is making a mistake. Being a Westerner - and a Catholic -, he assumes that the “Moderatos” are making these choices either deliberately - as Westerners do with their free will - or out of grave sloth. Wrong: the perspective you expect of them is entirely alien to them.
The only realistic solution to this - which most of you, including Fran, seem to disfavor - is a radical “disengagement”: expell their communities from your lands, and bring back your troops from theirs; then, isolate them. The two cultures cannot possibly co-exist, and if you believe you can renovate the whole Muslim world of 1.25 billion by military or other such external campaigns, you might as well apply yourselves to designing boats that’ll navigate by whistling into their sails.
This is a cultural DNA mismatch.
Posted by on 07/23/2005 at 03:40 AMFran,
I think you have to back up from blaming all Muslims for the acts of a few, regardless of their being harbored by the Muslim populous. Tancredo’s suggestion of bombing Mecca as retribution is in line with this message. Many religious documents, moreover, many religious documents (or parts thereof, as in the bible) are filled with hatred but it is the individual who has to eventually decide that the hatred must me tampered to live in coexistance with the rest of humanity. There is much hatred in Islam, and more so in recognizing that the rest of the world is encroaching on their oppressive way of life, whether they like it or not. An envy of sorts, that their way of life can not be reconciled in a future where humanity exists in harmony. It is not Islam that drives these idiots it is “envy”, the same foundation for the Marxist ideology that killed hundreds of millions. To me bombing Mecca will just focus the problem where it ain’t, and open up a front where there was none. i.e., the Vatican will have to find an army somewhere (an international draft?)..
Take care and good insightful writings.
JuanPosted by on 07/23/2005 at 06:29 AMFran;
You continue to rise in my estimation, in general.
Posted by Bithead on 07/23/2005 at 11:33 AMSee Desperate Situations and The Suicide Strategy.
Posted by pbswatcher on 07/27/2005 at 05:01 PM
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