The Roots of The West's Problem Understanding Islam[W:197]

When it comes to Western history, we dive into it with a certain cultural background. Joan of Arc on her pyre, the ascension of the Virgin Queen, Martin Luther nailing his note to a church door, the persecution of Galileo, the execution of Saint Thomas More, the rising of conspiratorial daggers on the Senate floor, the Crusaders scaling the walls of Jerusalem, and Marco Polo setting off from Venice are more than history to us. We are invested in them, they are iconic, and are tied with essential human themes in our minds. They have an element of the mythic to them, and make our history come alive.

One of the greatest challenges in diving into another culture's history is that this element is lacking. Growing up in the West, revisiting our history is like fleshing out a great story which we are attuned to. For a Westerner diving into Middle Eastern history, there is no sense of this mythic element. The players are strange. The names seem at first to be interchangeable. There is no great passion or drama associated with the dry facts. It is only, for example, after we read enough of the history leading up to the rise and fall of the Umayyad dynasty that we gain a sense of personal familiarity with Muawiyah I and Abd al-Rahman. Their stories are fascinating, in ways they parallel those of Little Finger and Daenerys (respectively) in the popular ASOIAF series. Muawiyah was an incredibly cautious, astute man who manipulated his way into absolute power and establishes a great empire. Abd al-Rahman was his last living descendent, who survived the slaughter of his entire family in Syria to flee across all of North America while pursued by assassins. After avoiding many attempts to manipulate him for personal gain, he arrived in Iberia and united the frontier province under his rule. His line would serve as Emirs patiently until they could one day fully rebel against the men who murdered his family. These men were interesting, intelligent, inspiring. They also killed, lied, and cut corners. They were, when all was said and done, profoundly human.

Once you 'know' historical figures at his level, the feuds and historical details which seem bled of color without that insight show their all-too-human vitality. To quote Herbert Butterfield:

'Real historical understanding is not achieved by the subordination of the past to the present, but rather by our making the past our present and attempting to see life with the eyes of another century than our own. It is not reached by assuming that our own age is the absolute to which Luther and Calvin and their generation are only relative; it is only reached by fully accepting the fact that their generation was as valid as our generation, their issues as momentous as our issues and their day as full and vital to them as our day is to us. The twentieth century which has its own hairs to split may have little patience with Arius and Athanasius who burdened the world with a quarrel about a diphthong, but the historian has not achieved historical understanding, has not reached that kind of understanding in which the mind can find rest, until he has seen that that diphthong was bound to be the most urgent matter in the universe to those people... instead of being moved to indignation by something in the past which at first seems alien and perhaps even wicked to our own day, instead of leaving it in the outer darkness, he makes the effort to bring this thing into the context where it is natural, and he elucidates the matter by showing its relation to other things which we do understand.'
Eliohs - Butterfield - The Whig Interpretation of History - 2

[cont]

Re: The Roots of The West's Problem Understanding Islam

When we understand history at this level, we have a full, nuanced picture, and a closer understanding. So what happens when we dive into history without this background? The result is that we dehumanize the players, and this is what is happening regarding Islam right now. Well-meaning people (usually liberals), who would find the reality of the historical Islamic world 'wicked' by our standards, whitewash it instead of trying to understand it as a complex human endeavor. As a result, an entire cottage industry has sprung up dedicated to 'debunking' liberal lies about Islam. This cottage industry, to put it lightly, employs dubious scholarship. When you compare the great Orientalists of the last two centuries to many modern commentators on Islamic history, the difference is appalling. But young people today don't read the great Orientalists, who focus on the human elements of Middle Eastern history in a nuanced, scholarly manner. They're either reading simplistic material which casts Muslims as devils, or simplistic material which casts them as angels. Whichever one they disagree with makes them intensely angry, and whichever one they agree with offers the false security of consensus. And the reason that this spell isn't broken is because only the inhuman can be fully good or fully evil, and the vast majority of Westerner have a more human understanding of fictional characters than they do any real people from Middle Eastern history. If I tried to tell someone that Christianity was a bloodthirsty religion, most people in the West could bring up St. Thomas of Aquinas, St. Francis of Assisi, George Fox, and many other examples which contravene that simplistic narrative. If they were told that Christianity was a perfectly peaceful religion, they could come up with the Spanish Inquisition, many of the Crusades, the persecution of astronomers, the murder of Hypatia, and the Salem witch trials. But if they are told that Islam is violent, will they know to mention Attar of Nishapur, Rumi, and Rabia Basri? If they are told that it is peaceful, will they know to mention Tamerlane, as-Saffah, or Aurangzeb?

So long as this status quo continues, we won't have any useful dialogue about Islam. More than anything, this conversation needs a heavy dose of intellectual humility, and a chastening realization of the intricacy of the subject matter.

Re: The Roots of The West's Problem Understanding Islam

History is good and all, but when we currently have modern people in today's world butchering people in the name of Islam, then we need to take a more realistic look at how we can solve these modern problems.

Re: The Roots of The West's Problem Understanding Islam

ajn678 said:

History is good and all, but when we currently have modern people in today's world butchering people in the name of Islam, then we need to take a more realistic look at how we can solve these modern problems.

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So how long have you been a Islamophobe, ajn678?

Re: The Roots of The West's Problem Understanding Islam

TheGoverness said:

How long have you been a Islamophobe, ajn678?

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Since before I could crawl obviously. My skin color damned me to a life of racism and bigotry.

Re: The Roots of The West's Problem Understanding Islam

ajn678 said:

History is good and all, but when we currently have modern people in today's world butchering people in the name of Islam, then we need to take a more realistic look at how we can solve these modern problems.

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We can't understand the present if we have an utterly distorted view of the past. Both main camps in the West have an utterly distorted view, and so repeatedly come to absurd conclusions.

Re: The Roots of The West's Problem Understanding Islam

Coldwine said:

We can't understand the present if we have an utterly distorted view of the past. Both main camps in the West have an utterly distorted view, and so repeatedly come to absurd conclusions.

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The truth of history is that at some point or another, every group in the world were assholes to other groups. I don't need to know history to know that I would prefer if my head stayed on my body, or if a truck didn't plow through me as I am walking down the road at night.

Re: The Roots of The West's Problem Understanding Islam

ajn678 said:

The truth of history is that at some point or another, every group in the world were assholes to other groups. I don't need to know history to know that I would prefer if my head stayed on my body, or if a truck didn't plow through me as I am walking down the road at night.

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I don't think that either of those are relative considerations. Terrorism isn't dangerous because of the people that it kills, as the death toll is statistically negligible. It is dangerous because the reaction to it is often self-injurious. Focusing on the deaths misses the entire point of the tactic.

Re: The Roots of The West's Problem Understanding Islam

Coldwine said:

I don't think that either of those are relative considerations. Terrorism isn't dangerous because of the people that it kills, as the death toll is statistically negligible. It is dangerous because the reaction to it is often self-injurious. Focusing on the deaths misses the entire point of the tactic.

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Just because its rare doesn't mean we shouldn't address it. Car accidents might happen more often, but you know that when you drive a car you might get in an accident. Going to a club or walking down the road should not be something people are afraid of.

Re: The Roots of The West's Problem Understanding Islam

There is no need for me to "UNDERSTAND" them, It is also an almost complete waste of my time to try. What I need is for them to stop insisting that I need to join them, and I need them to stop trying to kill or injure me and mine.

Civility is the opening bid if someone wants me to give a **** about them.

Those trying to kill me have failed the test.

****em till they learn to behave.

Like Humans.

Re: The Roots of The West's Problem Understanding Islam

ajn678 said:

Since before I could crawl obviously. My skin color damned me to a life of racism and bigotry.

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That sounds honest and upright to me.

Re: The Roots of The West's Problem Understanding Islam

Coldwine said:

When we understand history at this level, we have a full, nuanced picture, and a closer understanding. So what happens when we dive into history without this background? The result is that we dehumanize the players, and this is what is happening regarding Islam right now. Well-meaning people (usually liberals), who would find the reality of the historical Islamic world 'wicked' by our standards, whitewash it instead of trying to understand it as a complex human endeavor. As a result, an entire cottage industry has sprung up dedicated to 'debunking' liberal lies about Islam. This cottage industry, to put it lightly, employs dubious scholarship. When you compare the great Orientalists of the last two centuries to many modern commentators on Islamic history, the difference is appalling. But young people today don't read the great Orientalists, who focus on the human elements of Middle Eastern history in a nuanced, scholarly manner. They're either reading simplistic material which casts Muslims as devils, or simplistic material which casts them as angels. Whichever one they disagree with makes them intensely angry, and whichever one they agree with offers the false security of consensus. And the reason that this spell isn't broken is because only the inhuman can be fully good or fully evil, and the vast majority of Westerner have a more human understanding of fictional characters than they do any real people from Middle Eastern history. If I tried to tell someone that Christianity was a bloodthirsty religion, most people in the West could bring up St. Thomas of Aquinas, St. Francis of Assisi, George Fox, and many other examples which contravene that simplistic narrative. If they were told that Christianity was a perfectly peaceful religion, they could come up with the Spanish Inquisition, many of the Crusades, the persecution of astronomers, the murder of Hypatia, and the Salem witch trials. But if they are told that Islam is violent, will they know to mention Attar of Nishapur, Rumi, and Rabia Basri? If they are told that it is peaceful, will they know to mention Tamerlane, as-Saffah, or Aurangzeb?

So long as this status quo continues, we won't have any useful dialogue about Islam. More than anything, this conversation needs a heavy dose of intellectual humility, and a chastening realization of the intricacy of the subject matter.

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Nice link.

Re: The Roots of The West's Problem Understanding Islam

TheGoverness said:

So how long have you been a Islamophobe, ajn678?

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So, just mentioning the fact that radical Muslims are killing people makes one an Islamophobe? In that case "Islamophobe" has no real meaning. As is the case with "racist", "sexist", "homophobic", and "fascist" it has been over used to the point that it has lost all significance.

Re: The Roots of The West's Problem Understanding Islam

Coldwine said:

When we understand history at this level, we have a full, nuanced picture, and a closer understanding. So what happens when we dive into history without this background? The result is that we dehumanize the players, and this is what is happening regarding Islam right now. Well-meaning people (usually liberals), who would find the reality of the historical Islamic world 'wicked' by our standards, whitewash it instead of trying to understand it as a complex human endeavor. As a result, an entire cottage industry has sprung up dedicated to 'debunking' liberal lies about Islam. This cottage industry, to put it lightly, employs dubious scholarship. When you compare the great Orientalists of the last two centuries to many modern commentators on Islamic history, the difference is appalling. But young people today don't read the great Orientalists, who focus on the human elements of Middle Eastern history in a nuanced, scholarly manner. They're either reading simplistic material which casts Muslims as devils, or simplistic material which casts them as angels. Whichever one they disagree with makes them intensely angry, and whichever one they agree with offers the false security of consensus. And the reason that this spell isn't broken is because only the inhuman can be fully good or fully evil, and the vast majority of Westerner have a more human understanding of fictional characters than they do any real people from Middle Eastern history. If I tried to tell someone that Christianity was a bloodthirsty religion, most people in the West could bring up St. Thomas of Aquinas, St. Francis of Assisi, George Fox, and many other examples which contravene that simplistic narrative. If they were told that Christianity was a perfectly peaceful religion, they could come up with the Spanish Inquisition, many of the Crusades, the persecution of astronomers, the murder of Hypatia, and the Salem witch trials. But if they are told that Islam is violent, will they know to mention Attar of Nishapur, Rumi, and Rabia Basri? If they are told that it is peaceful, will they know to mention Tamerlane, as-Saffah, or Aurangzeb?

So long as this status quo continues, we won't have any useful dialogue about Islam. More than anything, this conversation needs a heavy dose of intellectual humility, and a chastening realization of the intricacy of the subject matter.

Click to expand...

Oh please. Are you advocating that attitudes in Islam are complex? Are you attempting to justify bad behavior with other bad behavior?

Or are you just advocating for revenge? Are you advocating for Muslims to be their own vigilante advocacy group with these acts of violence we see on an almost daily basis?
For example, what has the LGBTQ community done to Islam? What have women done to Islam? What have most cultures of Europe done to Islam?

Quite possibly, some edicts from the Qur'an were necessary to survive back in the times of its writing but now some edicts are just, IMO, oppression.

Re: The Roots of The West's Problem Understanding Islam

Coldwine said:

I don't think that either of those are relative considerations. Terrorism isn't dangerous because of the people that it kills, as the death toll is statistically negligible. It is dangerous because the reaction to it is often self-injurious. Focusing on the deaths misses the entire point of the tactic.

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"Statistically negligible" unless it's you or someone you care about.

Re: The Roots of The West's Problem Understanding Islam

LowDown said:

So, just mentioning the fact that radical Muslims are killing people makes one an Islamophobe? In that case "Islamophobe" has no real meaning. As is the case with "racist", "sexist", "homophobic", and "fascist" it has been over used to the point that it has lost all significance.

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She was being sarcastic just so you know. Its a long going back and forth we have.

Re: The Roots of The West's Problem Understanding Islam

LowDown said:

"Statistically negligible" unless it's you or someone you care about.

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That's what the 'statistically' implies. I would care if a loved one were killed in a terrorist attack. I would also care if they were killed by a drunk driver. My caring has no effect whatsoever on the probability of either event occurring.

Re: The Roots of The West's Problem Understanding Islam

cabse5 said:

Oh please. Are you advocating that attitudes in Islam are complex? Are you attempting to justify bad behavior with other bad behavior?

Or are you just advocating for revenge? Are you advocating for Muslims to be their own vigilante advocacy group with these acts of violence we see on an almost daily basis?
For example, what has the LGBTQ community done to Islam? What have women done to Islam? What have most cultures of Europe done to Islam?

Quite possibly, some edicts from the Qur'an were necessary to survive back in the times of its writing but now some edicts are just, IMO, oppression.

Click to expand...

I'm saying that history is complex, and that people have a difficulty in grasping complex history which is culturally foreign to them. This results in widespread simplistic attitudes about complex problems. 'Islam is a religion of peace, let's go hug the gays with the mullah' is just as ridiculous as 'Islam is the borg, and bent on wiping out all resistance and turning humanity into a faceless grey mass'.

Re: The Roots of The West's Problem Understanding Islam

joG said:

Nice link.

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The Whig Interpretation of History? Yeah, it's one of my favorite works on historiography; Butterfield is so underrated.

Re: The Roots of The West's Problem Understanding Islam

Coldwine said:

I'm saying that history is complex, and that people have a difficulty in grasping complex history which is culturally foreign to them. This results in widespread simplistic attitudes about complex problems. 'Islam is a religion of peace, let's go hug the gays with the mullah' is just as ridiculous as 'Islam is the borg, and bent on wiping out all resistance and turning humanity into a faceless grey mass'.

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There doesn't seem to be any complexity to Islam if you consider your two instances. It's the latter (Islam is the borg, er, 'religious imperialism') rather than the former (gays should hug it out with mullahs).

Might you explain some of the nuances of Islam that many seem to have missed?

Re: The Roots of The West's Problem Understanding Islam

cabse5 said:

There doesn't seem to be any complexity to Islam if you consider your two instances. It's the latter (Islam is the borg, er, 'religious imperialism') rather than the former (gays should hug it out with mullahs).

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It's neither. Both are the sort of historical analysis that I'd expect from a partially literate child, not a fully grown adult. The idea of summing up over 1,000 years of human history which spanned three continents in either manner is prima facie absurd.

cabse5 said:

Might you explain some of the nuances of Islam that many seem to have missed?

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That would take a collection of encyclopedias, and better men than me have already done so. I suggest that you read some of them. Regardless, I don't have to, anyone who isn't utterly ignorant about human nature in general understands that there is nothing in history without nuance, least of all a world religion. You're talking about billions and billions of people who lived and interacted with each other over 1,500 years, in an empire that ran from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Strait of Malacca, who have written enough conflicting works about their religion to fill libraries. Anyone who thinks that a system like that can be summed up in a sentence, and that it lacks nuance, is beyond helping.

Re: The Roots of The West's Problem Understanding Islam

Coldwine said:

But if they are told that Islam is violent, will they know to mention Attar of Nishapur, Rumi, and Rabia Basri? If they are told that it is peaceful, will they know to mention Tamerlane, as-Saffah, or Aurangzeb?

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Your entire premise seems to be that Islam is defined by those who have practiced it over the centuries. Not once did you go to the beginning and mention Mohamed, the Qur'an, and the hadiths. Not once. If you want to understand Islam you have to start there, not centuries into it. I believe the best indication of how adherents of a new religion are expected to act is to look at the deeds and words of the founder and his immediate disciples. At the only time in history when all the world's Muslims lived together, spoke the same language (the language of the Qur'an), and were being taught the true meaning of Islam was from 610 to 632. There was no chance of them "misinterpreting" the desires of God as they were living with the man who was God's last and greatest messenger. So, what did they do? Did they make war or peace? You know the answer, so why don't you try again and start there?

The sole reason for the existence of the Qur'an is to define Islam. I have read it, and obviously so have those who fight "fi sabil allah". ISIS is Mohamed.2.

Re: The Roots of The West's Problem Understanding Islam

stevecanuck said:

Your entire premise seems to be that Islam is defined by those who have practiced it over the centuries. Not once did you go to the beginning and mention Mohamed, the Qur'an, and the hadiths. Not once. If you want to understand Islam you have to start there, not centuries into it. I believe the best indication of how adherents of a new religion are expected to act is to look at the deeds and words of the founder and his immediate disciples. At the only time in history when all the world's Muslims lived together, spoke the same language (the language of the Qur'an), and were being taught the true meaning of Islam was from 610 to 632. There was no chance of them "misinterpreting" the desires of God as they were living with the man who was God's last and greatest messenger. So, what did they do? Did they make war or peace? You know the answer, so why don't you try again and start there?

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How does this reasoning make sense? Do we judge all of Buddhism throughout its history by treating them like a school of Buddhist thought which no longer fully exists? How do we judge Christianity? By the Church fathers? By the Disciples? Or by the dogma of the major Churches which exist to this day? Was Origen the final word, and if so is the church remiss to not believe in pre-existence of the soul or apocatastasis? Do we just pretend that the Nestorians never existed, that there were not dozens of schisms in the early church which lead to dozens of sects, each claiming legitimacy while practicing the religion in a different manner? There is absolutely no sane reason to do any of that, it's madness, in that you are treating something that is of one nature as if it were actually something else. It's the historical equivalent of walking into a wall over and over and over until you loose consciousness because a door used to be there, or trying to grind an oak tree into paste because it was once an acorn. And it's made even more ridiculous by the fact that the finalized Quran wasn't even assembled until Uthman, the third Rashidun caliph, compiled his codex over a decade after Muhammad died, and that the hadith (a huge source of Islamic law) were still being collected and compiled centuries after he passed on, with different sects still giving different collections of hadith various differing degrees of legitimacy. The idea that Islamic doctrine (or any doctrine) can be pared down to 'true' Islam is revivalist nonsense.

Religions are like trees. They all start from one small point, and from there almost instantly branch into different sects and interpretations and continue until the tree dies and becomes a historical curiosity. No point on that tree is the 'true' religion, just like no cell in a human body is the 'true' body.

stevecanuck said:

The sole reason for the existence of the Qur'an is to define Islam. I have read it, and obviously so have those who fight "fi sabil allah". ISIS is Mohamed.2.

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I highly doubt it, if that's the conclusion which you came to. Do you really think that, for over a millennium, thousands of Islamic theologians who can each trace their line of instruction back to the Muhammad himself have written 20-volume dissertations and debated one another over what it means, and all they had to do is wait for the miraculous appearance of a man who can't even read Arabic, yet has a bolt of insight deeper than the combined bulk of Muslim scholarship? That's beyond hubris. I wouldn't sit down and read Dryden's Aeneid translation, then go up to a group of classical scholars who are debating the text in Latin and presume to lecture them on what it really means.

Re: The Roots of The West's Problem Understanding Islam

Coldwine said:

I don't think that either of those are relative considerations. Terrorism isn't dangerous because of the people that it kills, as the death toll is statistically negligible. It is dangerous because the reaction to it is often self-injurious. Focusing on the deaths misses the entire point of the tactic.

Click to expand...

You do not live in New York City do you?

Re: The Roots of The West's Problem Understanding Islam

LowDown said:

So, just mentioning the fact that radical Muslims are killing people makes one an Islamophobe? In that case "Islamophobe" has no real meaning. As is the case with "racist", "sexist", "homophobic", and "fascist" it has been over used to the point that it has lost all significance.

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You are right all those words are to silence any discussion by intimidation and or manufactured guilt.