(April 20, 2015 at 12:35 pm)Hatshepsut Wrote:(April 20, 2015 at 12:01 pm)francismjenkins Wrote: But there's another often ignored dynamic at play here. Most atheists are left of center on the political spectrum (and they tend to be more intelligent than the general population). So they realize that US and British intervention into the Middle East (and Islamic world more generally) has been an important factor in creating the needed space for Islamic extremism to thrive...
While not doubting that western governments' policies in the Middle East have made the West a target for Islamic ire, I wonder why causal explanation for the rise of Islamic militancy depends on political leanings. It's become a litmus test: Either they envy all our freedoms (right), or they just don't like the West's meddling (left), and more importantly, accepting the right's or left's thesis on the matter automatically means rejecting the other thesis. To me, both theses seem to make sense. Extremism has always been a major current within Islam even if only a minority of Muslims espouse it. Islam itself began in violent military response to the prevailing 7th century world situation, having never made a formal ideological retreat from this root. Meaning there is a genuine incompatibility of values between western thought systems and Islam that goes beyond religion: Islam simply doesn't countenance the Enlightenment or separation of religion from the state, among other things, with the possible exception of a few recent Muslim scholars who are reassessing these issues. Yet U.S. conservatives on their part refuse to acknowledge that nearly every thing we do over there makes the problem worse.
I totally agree, and the facts support exactly that.
One example, the Muslim Brotherhood. Founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, one of the primary reasons he cited was loose western morality (and the freedoms western women enjoy). And this was before any significant western intervention (and before the US achieved its current hegemonic status). Much of the ideology that informs these extremists originates from Wahhabism, a movement within Sunni Islam. This toxic ideology was crafted by Muhammad al-Wahhab, who lived in the 18th century (so we certainly can't blame American for that one). Incidentally, the founder of the Saud family dynasty (that today rules Saudi Arabia), Muhammad bin-Saud, was a contemporary and ally of Wahhab.
However, US and to a lesser extent British intervention, played a role. For example, in 1953 US and British intelligence orchestrated a coup d'état in Iran against the democratically elected and progressive/social reformer, Prime Minister Muhammad Mosadegh (because he expressed an intent to nationalize the Iranian oil business). Also, 1979-89, Operation Cyclone in Afghanistan, where the CIA provided material support to what would become the Taliban, to try and kick the Soviets out of Afghanistan. This latter case isn't as bad from a culpability perspective as the Iran case (after all, the Soviets were pretty bad, and so from our perspective we did what we had to do, even if there was some unforeseen blowback, and I suppose few are more devoted than religious fundies, so I can understand the reasoning, whereas the Iran case was something we did out of pure greed, power lust, and a desire to control resources).
So it's a mixed bag, not as simple as someone like Sam Harris would have us believe, nor is it as simple as a leftist like Chris Hedges would have us believe. But I will say, there's a lot of flaws in Harris' methodology. In his writings on this subject he does things like cite surveys of Muslims that indicate widespread support for extremist ideology. The problem is, he ignores qualitative factors. For instance, how truthful should we expect people who are living in a dictatorship to be? Will we only look at regions where more fundamentalist forms of Islam dominate, or is it more fair to also look at moderate regions (like say Indonesia, Malaysia, etc.)?
And then of course there's this terrible slippery slope that can happen in cases like this. Assume most European Muslims are moderate, many went to Europe in the first place to escape fundamentalism. But then a few attacks, guys like Harris beating the drum, suddenly you get a backlash against Islam, and western Muslims turn to fundamentalism (particularly their young males). It's this tendency that we should want to avoid, and I'm a little bothered by the fact that some prominent atheists are fueling the fire so to speak. We can say they don't speak for all atheists, but unfortunately, that's not how public perception works. So I do think the atheist community should put pressure on these guys and try to convince them to be a little more responsible in their rhetoric.
