Islam: Peaceful or Non-Peaceful
You've probably noticed that I'm often complaining about the fact that--even in the age of the information super-duper-highway--it's sometimes ridiculously hard to find a straight answer to fairly important and fairly straight-forward questions. This is often because so many of the experts in question have a dog in the fight and so can't be trusted to be sufficiently objective. So it's not a lack of information really, it's rather that filtering the information that's out there itself seems to require an expert.
So here's a question I'm really interested in: is Islam a peaceful or a violent religion?
That is, is the doctrine per se a doctrine that is intrinsically more peaceful than, say, the other Abrahamic faiths, intrinsically more violent than them, or about the same? As I've said here before, I mouthed the religion-of-peace mantra for several years before I realized that I didn't know what I was talking about. So now I'm going--in my copious spare time--to try to figure this out.
Reading suggestions will be very much appreciated.
You've probably noticed that I'm often complaining about the fact that--even in the age of the information super-duper-highway--it's sometimes ridiculously hard to find a straight answer to fairly important and fairly straight-forward questions. This is often because so many of the experts in question have a dog in the fight and so can't be trusted to be sufficiently objective. So it's not a lack of information really, it's rather that filtering the information that's out there itself seems to require an expert.
So here's a question I'm really interested in: is Islam a peaceful or a violent religion?
That is, is the doctrine per se a doctrine that is intrinsically more peaceful than, say, the other Abrahamic faiths, intrinsically more violent than them, or about the same? As I've said here before, I mouthed the religion-of-peace mantra for several years before I realized that I didn't know what I was talking about. So now I'm going--in my copious spare time--to try to figure this out.
Reading suggestions will be very much appreciated.
posted by Winston Smith at
2:33 PM
25 Comments:
Is the doctrine per se a doctrine that is intrinsically more peaceful than, say, the other Abrahamic faiths, intrinsically more violent than them, or about the same?
The question's too broad. There are all sorts of varieties of all of these religions. Christianity is divided not only into Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox, but Protestants are divided into all sorts of groups, and Catholics differ in actual practice if not theoretical dogma. The violence in Christianity ranges from the pacifistic Shakers to gun-toting types who want to bring back stoning as a standard form of punishment.
If you compare a Shaker to a Wahabist, Islam'll come off pretty bad, but if you compare the TenCommandments.org types to the Muslims who work in my office, it's Christianity that ends up looking vicious.
I'm a big fan of Karen Armstrong. She's written books on all three faiths, and attempts to look at them dispassionately. Something that is quite difficult to do.
The difficulty with your question is that you cannot simply say is religion X such-and-such a thing. It's never going to work that way, and the reason is because it is all going to depend upon how the tenents of that religion are translated by the followers of that faith.
I mean, you could ask the same question of Christianity. Is it a peaceful religion at heart. But such a question means that you must equate Quakers with the Crusaders.
Even if you narrow your question down to a specific sect of Islam, you're still going to run into problems.
I think your best solution is the one you proposed several days ago, which is to look at followers of Islam, and judge based on their actions.
Unfortunately, just as only the wacko Christians get the press time, primarily wacko Islamists get the press time.
If you really want a serious answer to your question, I'd see if there was a student Muslim group on your campus. There's one here, and they frequently have events open to the public. This allows you to actually talk to individuals, and see how they interpret their faith.
Sorry that isn't the easy answer you wanted.
I'd like to second what James said above about "the Muslims who work in my office" - I've met more than a few Muslims in academic and professional settings over the years, and nothing they've ever said or done has suggested to me that their brand of Islam is any less compatible with a sane, peaceful modern existence than any other mainstream religion.
That being the case, you have to ask why the picture of Islam we see in the Middle East doesn't present a similar spectacle. Part of that probably is media bias towards the violent extremists rather than the peaceful moderates, but I'm also forced to agree in part with the neocons that part of the problem is the archaic, non-Enlightenment culture and despotism that dominates the region.
(Where I part company with the neocons is in thinking that the Iraq war, or something similar, is a particularly great way to change that culture - I'd think low-key, but long-term sustained contact with Western cultures and Western economic development would be a better way to go about it - but given the government in office and the increasingly isolationist trends in the US because of the Iraq debacle, that approach doesn't look too likely either, making this something of a moot point.)
So, yeah, Islam isn't inherently more violent than any other mainstream religion, but Islam no more defines the entirety of the behavior of Middle Easterners than Christianity defines the entirety of the behavior of Americans.
Being a Mulim is just like being a member of the Democratic party, except there's more holidays. Just ask Karen Armstrong. She'll tell you just what you want to hear, in that NPR sort of way.
If you want to learn about Islam, search the web for Muslims talking to Muslims about their faith. Consult the source texts. Listen to it instead of talking. Good that you're asking the questions, WS, but the answers will not be furnished by Westerners and non-Muslims.
I'm certainly not an "expert," but I do know that Islam can appear to be either a religion of peace or a religion of the sword, depending on what Sura one happens to be reading. I've been told that it's the earlier Suras that emphasize peace, and the later ones that emphasize the sword. But I don't know much about when different parts of the Koran were composed (um... revealed).
Coupla things:
1. I've already done the kinds of half-hearted preliminaries most of us have done, but that's what reveals the initial problem: widely divergent analyses of even rather straight-forward issues (e.g. what does 'jihad' mean?)
2. I do realize that there are different sects with different characters and so forth. Gah, give me a little credit, huh? So, yes, I DO understand that this is a complicated question.
3. But that doesn't mean it's impossible. In fact, neither the left (which tends in general to adhere to the Islam-is-a-religion-of-peace line) nor the right (which tends in the opposite direction) can constently believe that the question is impossible to answer. Else they'd have to admit that their own position is unwarranted and no more reasonable than the opposite position.
The blogosphere probably doesn't have the answer (or, apparently, a definitive enough one to satisfy). Why not ask religious studies professionals at your University? Then post the (summarized) answers for all to see.
That's why we have experts after all.
I can see why the question is interesting academically, but especially considering that you realize the difficulty of reaching a coherent answer, I wonder what useful knowledge you think we can gain from it. If you come up with a "yes", what do you do with it?
Given that we know:
(a) Most other religions have shown similar behavior at some point.
(b) Muslims integrated into a secular society generally don't show that behavior.
and (c) Even in non-secular societies, Mulsims without other grievances generally don't show that behavior.
It seems that for policy questions, we may as well treat Islam as a black box(pun really not intended), and deal with Mulsims as rational actors no different from others.
Do you think that's too naive for some reason?
I realize that by "left" here, you're referring more to campus hippies than to actual thinking liberals, but everyone I read or talk to seems to be of the opinion that Islam, like other fundamentalist religions, is dangerous. I think that's neither unwarranted nor unreasonable. The precise degree to which it is dangerous compared to Christianity just doesn't seem important.
What sort of evidence would count as decisive on this issue? The Koran? Popular opinion? Popular opinion among Muslims? Historical trends?
Is this a question that can be empirically investigated? I doubt such an answer would be satisfying. If it were simply a historical matter then it would have been settled already. Likewise for public opinion, present manifestations, etc.
It seems just as futile to answer with an appeal to principles. Would we appeal to 'the' principles of Islam? If so, what are they? Who should we ask? Clerics? Academics? Residents of Bagdhad or Tehran? Isn't there likely to be widespread disagreement on this issue itself? It seems as though we must resort to empirical means to settle any principles from which we could make the relevant inferences.
Isn't the most plausible solution this one:
(1) Islam in itself is neither violent nor peaceful.
(2) Islam as presented in the actions of Muslims is both violent and peaceful, according to how Muslims apply the faith to their present singular situation.
Lots of ideas here, and thanks for those.
Just some quick replies for now:
J,
No, I don't see any reason to think that Islam itself is neither violent nor peaceful. That's something that can only be determined by examining the doctrine. It may be mostly one, mostly the other, or some more-or-less balanced mixture of the two.
BB,
Well, I've asked on Islamic scholar--the only one at my university--but he himself is Islamic and a good guy and I'm not so sure that I'm not getting an unrepresentative view of the matter from him.
Overall: I'm willing to re-think this but folks here seem to think that this is a more daunting task--in theory--than I do. I think it's complicated but do-able...several folks here seem to be bordering on saying that it can't be done or, perhaps, that the question doesn't even make any sense.
I just don't see that.
Just out of curiosity: do you think that any of these reactions spring from some fear of knowing the truth in this case?
Is islam a peaceful religion or not?
The answer is "yes." In Afghanistan today, it is not. In Morocco today, it apparently is. Why does this question need an either-or answer?
Just out of curiosity: do you think that any of these reactions spring from some fear of knowing the truth in this case?
I wouldn't be surprised if this were true for many, but I see it as parallel to studies of racial differences in average intelligence. Academically, the answers may be interesting, but they are guaranteed to be misinterpreted and misused in predictable ways, and they won't tell us anything useful about policy questions.
So imagine you come up with a "yes" answer to the question of whether Islam is inherently violent. What do you do with that information? I can guess what Powerline and LGF will do.
The answer to your question, WS, is apparently yes. Inquiry provokes cognitive dissonance.
I continue to seek alternatives, any alternative. I'm an optimistic kinda guy. Not much luck so far, tho. The problem and threat lies not so much in the proponents as in the neutrals. What constitutes a critical mass?
TVD, could you rephrase that so it's a little more comprehensible?
Alternatives to what? Proponents of what? Critical mass of what?
BB,
Well, it seems obvious to me that its important for us to know about Islam. If it's NOT an unusually violent religion, it's important for us to know that--in part because it would be important to explain that to our friends on the right. If it IS an unusually violent religion, then it seems *obvious* why it would be important for us to know that... For example, some say that the Koran says that the only proper way to treat non-Muslims is to kill or enslave them. I think it goes without saying that we should figure out whether or not that's true.
Ideas matter. Truths can almost always be misused by those who are determined to misuse them. But that doesn't mean we should strive to remain in ignorance.
Is the idea of a serious investigation into this question really that alarming? My *a priori* guess is that Islam won't turn out to be appreciably different from, say, the other Abrahamic faiths.
I mean, given what I know it's unlikely that it'll be as peaceful as, say, Buddhism, but that seems like an unreasonably high standard.
I know I'm being annoyingly persistent here, and I thank you for bearing with me.
The Koran may indeed have some passage that says that infidels must be killed or enslaved, but we've all read the list of silly things Leviticus commands and prohibits, for example, and modern Christians ignore pretty much all of them. When was the last time you went to a stoning? Texts get reinterpreted and passages get conveniently ignored when they don't match believers' lifestyles.
My Mormon friends don't try to convert or baptise me, my Christian friends have never tried to stop me from eating shellfish, my Jewish friends don't marry the wives of their dead brothers, and my Muslim friends have never tried to kill or enslave me. Give people secularism and a healthy society, and the content of their religious texts becomes largely irrelevant. (It's also instructive to note that even Buddhism, a religion of peace if there ever was one, has had its holy wars.) There are a billion people who take the Koran as the inspired word of God, and only a few of them are fighting holy war. Doesn't that imply that the important question is what makes them different from the peaceful ones who believe in the same text?
It seems to me that the time and energy spent on trying to find out whether the Koran is essentially more violent than other holy books could be better spent on studying the economic, cultural, and political history of the region, or on studying which modern Muslim religious leaders and groups are preaching less harmful doctrines and how to encourage them, or on any number of issues that might give us insight into effective policies that might lead to peaceful coexistence.
I've been saying that your question is largely pointless because, if it turns out Islam isn't particularly violent, then the other issues I mentioned are clearly more important, and if it turns out Islam is actually more violent than other religions, the only way to counteract that is, again, to focus on the other issues, because we're not going to be able to kill or convert a bilion people. The only thing that changes when we get that information is that warmongers get more effective propaganda.
I'm not against inquiry or truth, and I'm not alarmed by the question or afraid of the answer. In fact, I admit that I would personally be interested in knowing the answer to the question as a bit of theological trivia. But since I'm assuming your "copious amounts of spare time" remark is sarcastic, I think it's better to focus on issues that have real-world relevance.
Tom,
I'm curious as to whether you've actually read *any* of Karen Armstrong books, and if you have, where you believe that she digresses from other religious historical scholarship?
I recommend her for several reasons. 1) Her books are written for a lay audience, and don't presuppose any knowledge about religion. 2) They don't contradict anything that I've come across in any of my other readings, in any class I've taken, or in any discussions I had with Muslims. 3) They were written before 9-11. It seems to me that books written after 9-11 are far more likely to have an agenda than ones written before.
Winston,
The problem is that there *IS* no easy answer to your question. Which is why I recommended seeing if you had a Muslim Student Association at your school. I learned far more talking with Muslims I had class with, than in all the books. You can read all you want, but that doesn't really show you how the faith is applied.
Additionally, you cannot separate religion from politics. Islam in countries that were colonized by the west is different from Islam in countries that were not colonized. The reaction to colonization changed the faith.
So to understand Islam as a faith, you also have to understand the politics of the particular region you're considering.
Which is why I brought up Christianity. If those of us who were raised as Christians in a Christian society cannot tell you whether Christianity is a religion of peace, then why would the task be any easier for Islam?
I can tell you that the majority of Muslims with whom I have spoken are peaceful individuals who believe that the faith they practice is a faith of peace. But I don't think that can be generalzied any further than their beliefs and actions.
So I'm trying to say that I think your question can't be answered.
Big B,
You're being as un-annoyingly persistent as anyone could be. I in no way think your points are bad...I'm not convinced yet, but they give me enough pause to make me...well, pause.
MK,
You make a good point that even we who were raised in Christendom can't get a fix on Christianity... Again, worthy of reflection... I have talked to my muslim friend (singular), my muslim colleague (singular), and some students... The thing is that I got the same feeling from all these folks that I get when I talk to my fundamentalist christian acquantances...that they're not willing (able?) to admit there are problems. I like 'em all, I'm just not sure they're the best source of info.
Still, all these things are worth considering. Thanks.
Michelle, I read A History of God, which I liked well enough. Since 9-11 Ms. Armstrong has been up to some interesting things. I have seen her scriptural scholarship challenged on her recent writings on Jerusalem, and the version of Islam she's selling in interviews these days is more like Sufism, Islam stripped of its political dimension.
Sufism is the Islam we'd like it to be. But it's not.
But until Mark Kleiman or Kevin Drum writes anything along those lines, I expect the left to keep their heads in the sand about the issue (black box, indeed), as it does not fit into the storyline that Bush and Falwell are the greatest threats to peace and polity.
I wish Islam were Sufism, and I understand why Armstrong does, too. It's quite beautiful. It is no coincidence that the Wahhabists have made it their business to stamp it out. And that is a fact that Armstrong ignores, which makes her work helpful in an academic sense, but useless and indeed misleading in trying to understand our 21st century world.
Tom,
That's very interesting. I've read several of her books, all published before 9-11. In "The Battle for God" (assuming I'm even remembering correctly) she talks about the extremists in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. So I'm not sure that she's blind to the problems, as she did address them in that book (again, assuming I am remembering correctly, since it has been several years since I read it)
And I don't know anything about her post 9/11 writings on Jerusalem, but I very much liked her book "Jerusalem", and used it as one of the source materials for a paper I wrote on the place of Jerusalem in the three faiths that revere the city. I don't remember coming across any contradictions in my research. I'd be curious as to see what those were.
To me, the problem is that when says "Islam is a violent faith," such a blanket--and patently false--statement should be contradicted (Just as it should be if someone were to say "Christianity is a violent faith").
It's very difficult to have a nuanced debate about how different sects and individuals vary in such a discussion. One ends up arguing the opposite extreme, simply because the debate itself is polarizing.
Winston,
That was the point I was trying to make originally. Sorry if it came across wrong initially.
The internet tells me that Armstrong converted to Sufism. Am I good or what?
You seem to accept Armstrong uncritically, even using her as source material. What can I say? Discussion over. Me, I always read the critics first, even if the author's view is congenial to my own.
Here is a Sufi sheikh on the current state of Islam, for those interested.
Here is the always-interesting and stunningly erudite "Spengler" from the Asia Times. The links are worth following, too.
I'm afraid I have no patience for stirring everything into some happy incomprehensible soup, and neither does "Spengler":
For the Islamic world, religion is not a consumer good, but a matter of survival. Muslims who wish to represent Sufism as "true Islam" against Saudi Wahhabism, Iranian Shia orthodoxy, and so forth should address themselves to their co-religionists first. Non-Muslims must deal with the Islamic mainstream, such as it is...
One learns little from apologetics, but much from the daily experience of believers.
The tragic aspect of America's encounter with Islam, as I argued in "Why Islam baffles America", is that America's existence as such threatens Islam as it is practiced in most parts of the world. One's impulse should not be to simplify, but to investigate.
If Islam is a violent religion, are we then to go to war with it until it has no adherents?
If Islam is a peaceful religion, are we then to ignore the connection its most violent adherents draw between their butchery and their religions?
I say 'no' to both.
Most of those who call Islam violent with no qualifiers seek to justify both our war on Iraq and a monolithic view of Muslims. They'll admit that there are good Moslems, much in the way of past prejudice that shades into bigotry.
Similarly, most of those who call Islam peaceful with no qualifiers seek to whitewash the real violence that does flow from Islam. I've never found them convincing, even as bullshit artists, probably because I grew up in the Bible Belt surrounded by self-described pious Christians whose behavior often seemed wildly at odds with the just and peaceful parts of Christianity.
The reality is that Islam is a big, complicated doctrinal, social, and political world, and more knowledge of its shadings of gray is much more useful than trying to put it into one extreme category or another. I'm not claiming to have enough of that knowledge, but I have enough to know that our samples and backgrounds may give us an unjustifiably monolithic picture of a foreign culture that we do not have of our own.
Does being religious make you more violent?
I think it does.
Just don't put it in a cartoon, if you know what's good for you.
No, it's not religion that makes people so violent; it's secular humanism.
On a more serious note, violence is written in the genes we inherited from forebear species. Do religious organizations differentially attract a higher proportion of adherants who have less control over their violent impulses or less attenuation of those genes. I don't think so.
Religion is just one possible justification for regarding everyone else as less human and thus dispensable. Ideology (see the 20th century), nationalism (started earlier), colonialism, racism, etc. are others.
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