'Brave' questions about Islam.

Reading Michelle Malkin's website is a mild thrill at the worst of times - rarely do you see such high-profile demagoguery in the U.S. play so nakedly on run-of-the-mill racism and ignorance. At the best of times, when she veers close to the edge of bug-eyed craziness, it's a hoot and a half. Her big bugbear: dangerous foreigners of all colours. Others have made efforts to psychologize her paranoia, but for me (today anyhow) it's enough just to sit back and watch this poisonous fool making a living off bile and fear.

For the last couple of years, Malkin and countless other like-minded bloggers have been obsessed with a particularly thorny meme: the notion of Islam as a 'religion of peace.' The 'argumentative' strategy of late is personified nicely by this Investor's Business Daily editorial, to which Malkin links enthusiastically:

What better time for CAIR and other Muslim leaders to step up, cut through the politically correct fog and provide factual answers to the questions that give so many non-Muslims pause?

Generally speaking, those questions focus on whether the Quran does indeed promote violence against non-Muslims, and how many of the terrorists' ideas — about the violent jihad, the self-immolation, the kidnappings, even the beheadings — come right out of the text? But even more specifically:

Is Islam the only religion with a doctrine, theology and legal system that mandates warfare against unbelievers?

Is it true that 26 chapters of the Quran deal with jihad, a fight able-bodied believers are obligated to join (Surah 2:216), and that the text orders Muslims to "instill terror into the hearts of the unbeliever" and to "smite above their necks" (8:12)?

The easiest objection to this is probably the most damning, I'm afraid: cherry-picking from the Bible will yield up ludicrous injunctions against all manner of things and bizarre tales of militant Godliness (cf. the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah), which only crazy people take seriously. These 'arguments' about Islam as 'religion of peace' are predicated on the same assumptions as video-game-violence scaremongering:

1) We are smart enough to notice things about this text, and bring them up in discussion, that they (readers, gamers) react to only viscerally, ignorantly, reflexively.

2) Everyone should be held accountable for the bad things that already-off-balance people do with a 'dangerous' text or item (Grand Theft Auto, American Psycho, the Koran, the Bible, Led Zeppelin albums, &c.).

And of course there's the standard defense of the morally upstanding persecutors (like Malkin, or 'pro-life' movement types):

3) We might advocate structurally identical behaviour or principles (violent TV news and vile popular films, crusades against Islam, ludicrous 'sanitation' rituals, capital punishment, &c.) but when we do so it's just, considered, and morally right. After all, we have God on our side.

There's nothing more dangerous than a fool who thinks he's right with God.

But then this race-baiting works on two levels, because it's CAIR that Malkin and the IBD editorial board want to call to the carpet. Attacking lobbying groups often works as a way of attacking one's stereotypical vision of a race by proxy. It's worth drawing a distinction here between the Walt/Mearsheimer article (from a couple of weeks ago) and this demagoguery: that article, on the 'Israel Lobby', was a critique of a particular foreign policy stance and its small, powerful group of advocates, and carefully made a distinction between (say) American Jewry in general and the pro-Israel hardline stance of AIPAC et al. Malkin is interested in no such distinction; there's no evidence that she's capable of it.

Want a laugh? Here's Malkin's online introduction to her book, In Defense of Internment, in which she explains that she's not interested in 'racism' as a factor in the WWII-era gov't decision-making process:

If you want to read a book decrying the loss of personal freedom in wartime America, this is the wrong book. If you want to read a book about the history of institutional discrimination against minorities in America, you’re out of luck again. Bookstores, library shelves, and classrooms are already filled with pedantic tomes, legal analyses, and educational propaganda along these conventional lines.

This is amateurish bullshit, a rhetorical dodge (and several ham-fisted, petty swipes at an enormous and established scholarly and anecdotal literature) that mischaracterizes several fields of study (as 'pedantic', as 'propaganda') in order to pursue her own bizarre racist fantasies. She wears scholarly drag, sort of, but Malkin - of 'good immigrant' stock, remember - has no interest in scholarly inquiry. She's the internment/reparations debater's equivalent of the Discovery Institute.

Why does this matter? As Malkin's About page points out,

My column, now syndicated by Creators Syndicate, appears in nearly 200 papers nationwide. My first book, Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores (Regnery 2002), was a New York Times bestseller.

(What 'other foreign menaces' does she mean?)

She's popular. She's popular because her message is easy to digest and appeals to people's worst instincts (it doesn't appeal to any higher faculties than animal instinct). Like so many of her political fellow-travelers, she works in a tone of aggrieved 'common sense' that cloaks dangerous, stupid racism and a crazed vision of 'the real America' - which would all be boring if adherents of these same 'principles' weren't in power all over the U.S.

'Immoderate' religious texts are to be expected; else they'd be nothing more than The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People with Jesus in a starring role. But don't tell Malkin and her cohort of nativist tools: they have important things to shout about. After all, you gotta pay the bills.

Comments

[Robbie]

This is a pretty good read, well thought out, and well written, and I understand where you're coming from --- I just happen to disagree with this one central argument to your theme:

The easiest objection to this is probably the most damning, I'm afraid: cherry-picking from the Bible will yield up ludicrous injunctions against all manner of things and bizarre tales of militant Godliness

This is true. Except that there aren't daily stories of Christians out acting on these "ludicrous injunctions". I don't remember the last time I read about a group of Christians getting together to "cast the first stone". I just don't read many stories about people going out and killing non-Christians in the name of Christianity.

On the other hand, I read DAILY accounts of Muslims doing exaclty that --- killing off non-believers in horrific way.

I think the questions posed by the Investor's Business Daily are valid, relevant, and worth an honest answer from a group like CAIR.

If they'd like to pose a similiar group of questions about Christianity, I'm sure we could get thousands upon thousand to answer them.

[The Good Doctor]

RE
(cf. the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah), which only crazy people take seriously.

Shall I reprimand you for using the "which" in place of the preferred "that" of just make my observation. The observation: the History Channel recently has had (several times, in fact) a program that investigates or reports on (I haven't made up my mind) recent archeological discoveries (and in turn investigations), one of which has apparently found the site of tremendous and unexplained disaster by fire that looks especially unlike mere home fires and is located at one of the places where they think either Sodom or Gomorrah were sited. I do not know any more about it than that, not having been there or in any of the fields of science where this work is being pursued, but I think you need to apply a bit more circumspection (as usually is the case) than apparent certainty -- oh well, there's that word again!

[Wax]

After a comma 'which' is appropriate! At least that's the rule of thumb.

As for Sodom and Gomorrah - I'm not saying they never existed, I'm saying God didn't smite them because fags lived there.

[The Good Doctor]

ONE
Where oh where did the "," suddenly come from --- it surely was not there when I first wrote: there are many many things I muff as we move along, but blindness is not my lead: ten thumbs while typing is.

Anyhow, the rule of thumb you refer to (source: English law - a man might not legally strike and/or beat his wife with a stick larger in diameeter than his thumb, which was considered a great advance in English law and mercy for wives at home/justice for husbands before the court) is rooted in the rules for restrictive and non-restrictive clauses: which follows a comma, that does not unless in a sentence (phrase) like this example I am writing. That much is true. Anyhow, presuming I went momentarily blind (¿I shall suppose I did?), I owe you an apology for my half-avoided -- let us call it passive-aggressive -- bite, which (example) is only right.

TWO
I hope you see the program: it seems the intensity of the "fires" that struck could only be imagined to be akin to fission-like in nature, and seemingly from above...but that speculation is danced around in a way that might amuse you. Not God? Well, let's presume God is not a actor in human affairs -- my personal experience suggests otherwise -- and reconcile that with the nature of God being everywhere, which all but the most ardent atheists seem to allow MAY be the case (I do hope you'vve kept up with the survey results re American beoliefs rendered during the past week in particular but going back some3what before that). What then shall we do with the likelihood of being smitten by God? Evangelically speaking, kone who accepts the forgiveness and redemption by God eiether in response to or as a motivating factor toward repentance is unlikely to be able to either logically or convincingly argue that God does not act in human affairs.

I've probably told you over a beer elsewhere that it is my sense that it goes something like this: God always puts us, each of us, exactly where we need to be when we need to be there, and then, dusting off his clayful hands says to himself something like, "Now...let's see what s/he does with that," as S/He releases each to their free will.

I doubt you find that either moving or motivating toward anything reasonable in such a discussion: logic is then a god that outranks heart, which it seems you have an abundance of, I am glad to report to the world.

Let's not farther down this dusty road here: you and I have other fish to fry and I will get back to it soon (I'd like not t o be further distracted by this witch's knot you are scoffing at until later on: feel free to entice my return to this then, eh.