You never stop learning strange things, do you? For instance, this morning, I was (still am) listening to CD Review, and the presenter Andrew McGregor suddenly starts talking about how, in the year 1612, the heir to the throne, James I’s son Prince Henry, rather foolishly went for a swim in the Thames, caught typhoid, and died. Cue an “outpouring of grief”, which included songs about the death of the young Prince (aged 18), hence the CD angle.
And who became king of England instead? Why, only Charles I, who got himself executed in 1649, in the midst of a ferocious civil war between himself and his severely angered Parliament. That I had heard about. Prince Henry was apparently, and in fascinating contrast to his younger brother, a Protestant:
Henry was quite the Protestant – when his father proposed a French marriage, he answered that he was ‘resolved that two religions should not lie in his bed’.
You can’t help wondering: What If? What if Prince Henry had not gone for that swim, and had become the King instead of Charles I? How might English history have turned out then?
There’d probably have been some violent insurrection anyway. The Puritans were determined to set up a Puritan state and nothing short of it would have ultimately satisfied them. It helps to strip away our cosy feelings about our own history- Oliver Cromwell is nice Richard Harris, isn’t he?- and remember we’re talking about a mob not dissimilar to the role the Muslim Brotherhood play in the Islamic world. I think it’s fundamentally erroneous for instance to characterise the parliament as “angered”, as if they were simply reacting to the Demon King; when we talk of the Parliamenterians we’re really talking about the Puritans, and they were most definitely the active rather than passive party, and driven by a most un-English religious mania of the same character as that driving Al Quaida today.
They engineered a casus beli by cornering Charles I with the Parliament, and got their war, and their theocracy, for a little season. The dreadful pity is that they weren’t viciously purged after the Restoration, and that the Mayflower didn’t sink in the middle of the Atlantic. It drives me crazy that we still maintain this Whiggish nonsense about a struggle between “parliament and absolute monarchy” as if these maniacs were a bunch of egalitarian democrats defending the Little Guy. What rubbish.
If I fell through time in some strange science fiction scenario with an armoured division at my disposal, I’ve no doubt I would deploy it on the Royalist side, and derive considerable pleasure in watching Roundheads dance the machine gun jig.
Quite so, but there is also the question of whether better lead Royalists might have prevailed, with or without your help.
The al Qaeda comparison is very interesting. When you consider what insanely self-righteous maniacs the Puritans were in the seventeenth century, and then what fascinatingly creative and peaceful people their descendants mutated into, you are liable to get quite optimistic about the longer term impact of Islamic fundamentalism. Around 1700 – and contemporaries noticed this at the time – the Puritans rather suddenly became civilised, and there was a mysterious outbreak of English political civility – i.e. lots of rudeness but no more serious fighting – that has persisted ever since. Might Islamic Idiocy do another such switch?
Probably too much to hope for. Certainly too much to assume.
Well, my view is that the Puritans, via Quakerism, Methodism and sundry non-conformism, as well as Evangelical Anglicanism, mutated into the statist fools who plague us today, and that England’s relatively liberal 18th century character was a reaction against the excesses of the Cromwell regime.
I do very much think that what we’re seeing in the Islamic world is their Reformation; such a homology can never match perfectly, but they are similar processes. I don’t accept the common view that Islam has a fundamental character that prevents enlightenment and reasonable calm compared to Christianity; if you fell through time into the middle of the Thirty Years War you’d see much the same apparently insoluble horror that currently engulfs the Islamic world. Indeed, the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism was a reaction to the liberalising forces acting upon and within the Islamic world in the early 20th century. I’ve no doubt that Islam can become moderate and enlightened. The problem is the mayhem that will occur in the shorter term. A particular difference is that our Reformation only engulfed Christendom, whereas the globalised nature of the modern world means that their convulsions affect everyone.
There’s also a fundamental metallic question of whether lead Royalists could have prevailed against Puritan ironsides 😉
It’s also worth mentioning that while Henry was a very keen Protestant, James and Charles were Protestants too; but can be characterised as religious moderates seeking to build bridges between Catholics and Protestants at a time of intense conflct. Charles was sympathetic to Arminianism and suspicious of Calvinism and that was what upset the Puritans- he wasn’t a Catholic but they feared he would let Catholicism slip back in again and, as fanatical Protestants that was intolerable to them.
So going back to the counterfactual history question, considering that the article you linked to says for instance,
-we might speculate that Henry would have introduced a Cromwell-style Puritan regime without any war occurring, and that would have probably not done our country well, since there would have been no short-lived Republic to subsequently collapse. We might have become, and remained, a theocracy. Or, interestingly, there might have been an armed insurrection by non-Puritans against it, and then we might have become a secular Republic, which would be an interesting scenario to explore in fiction.
Strongly agreed about how the Islamic Reformation is what is happening now. You still hear people saying that “we need” an Islamic Reformation, like this isn’t it, and like the earlier Reformation was wholly wonderful, when actually, as you say, it was bloody awful. No, what was reasonably wonderful was the religious toleration – seasoned with a great deal of religious indifference and anti-religion – that emerged from the resulting religious stand-off.
As for Puritans mutating into statists, I still think their detour via liberalism was pretty impressive. I mean, these guys (especially the Quakers) basically made the British Industrial Revolution, and through it the modern industrial world. Okay, then they went silly. But so did lots of others.
And don’t you think that libertarianism is (among many other things) another kind of puritanism, wanting to purge compulsion from all relationships. Good puritanism, you might say. Libertarianism simplifies and then wants to universalise its simple principle, as do all puritanisms. I’m all for this particular variant, and if it ever catches on widely, I expect the descendants of the original Puritans to be heavily involved.
I’m not sure that I’d characterise libertarianism as a puritanism, though I see your point. Ultimately we have a particular moral code, and want everybody to agree to that. The characteristic of our moral code though is that it is minimal and makes tolerance of the other the highest moral virtue; that is, you may live as you wish and I may live as I wish and we just agree not to impose that on each other. Puritanisms tend to be characterised by the desire to impose a list of very specific rules on everyone; we’re kind of anti-puritan in the sense of trying to “impose” an absence of rules on everyone.
One way I just thought of to consider it is that the Westphalian approach that resolved Europe’s religious struggles was to say, at the group level, “you guys live there and us guys live here, and we will accept the existence of each other”. We can see Libertarianism as an attempt to introduce such an agreement at the individual, rather than group, level.
Swings and roundabouts dear people; swings and roundabouts.
On Henries, consider that without the untimely death of Prince Arthur, we would not have had Henry VIII (and hence not Elizabeth I).
Though all that does stand on who one judges to have been good and bad monarchs, as IanB has been ‘protesting’.
Best regards
‘Tend’ seems to me to be the key word here. My question is, does it just happen to be part of the universally-normal human practice, or is it “encoded”, i.e. spelled out in writing in Puritanism itself?
I don’t think it is helpful to discuss the future of Islam. What we should be discussing is the future of various (and widely varied) cultures that are currently subject to its influence (to widely varied degrees). As you can maybe expect, my conclusion is that that future is (surprise) widely varied, according to a particular culture in question. In the long run, Islam in SA is not the same Islam as in Indonesia, and is still not the same as in England. Of course there are great similarities, especially at the moment. But in the longer run, the differences will become much more apparent. The same goes for the Western Anglo-Saxon influence (both religious and secular) throughout the world. Throw in the fact that thanks to technology the world has become much, much smaller than even England may have been in 17th century, and most analogies simply go out the window. It’s a whole new ball game now.
But once you had seen the advantages of applying modern methods to production (and indeed, benefited from them) wouldn’t it seem like a natural progression to seek to apply those same methods to people? So that the puritans might see the industrial revolution as actually vindicating their world view, an ordered world is a better world.
Roue le Jour
Your “But” makes it sound like you are contradicting me. But you’re not. I said their detour into liberalism was impressive, and it was. You merely added some detail to their subsequent switch. Do you think the detour wasn’t impressive?
Brian, the problem I have with the idea of liberal Quakers is that I don’t see them as espousing liberalism (not our kind anyway). Take some archetypal Quakers- the Cadburys. They certainly were businessmen and very successful in commerce. But were they liberal businessmen? They seem to me instead to be Liberal businessmen.
They built Bournville, a little nanny-state socially authoritarian state to promote their moral utopianism, on puritan lines. No pub! This is the model for the socialist-liberalism of Anglosphere nations which now oppresses us. As Libertarians, we would say they were certainly free to spend their money as they wished. But I would say that Bournville was based on a distinctly illiberal ideology.
This is my general argument that I keep coming back to in my mitherings. That is, that the statism of the anglosphere is not descended particularly from marxist style socialism, but from Quaker style socialism; the former desires to save the proleteriat from the bourgeoisie; under the latter, the bourgeoisie save the proleteriat from themselves. I think there’s a very good argument that there is a direct line from Cromwell-era Puritanism through Non-Conformism to our current state (or State) and I’m not at all sure that that train stopped off at the Liberalism station along the way.
I do not believe that Islam is going through a reformation, or ever likely to. I used to think this until I understood the difference between the Koran and The Bible.
The Bible is open to interpretation and questioning. The Koran is not. It is literally an instruction manual and states quite clearly that where an earlier section disagrees with a later section, the later section shall be followed exactly. The later sections are the ones that advocate violence and lying (to non believers) to achieve a world domination of Islam.
When a Muslim says Islam is a religion of peace he is referring to the stated aim of Islam which is that world peace will be achieved once the whole world is ruled by Islam and Sharia law.
There is no room in this creed for a reformation. Muslims either accept the rules or become apostate (which carries the death penalty under Sharia)
Westerlyman
You are of course entirely correct about the written content of Islam. It is vile.
I believe that your error is in assuming that “reformation” means goodness. No. It means going back to the written texts and taking them seriously. This is how the current state of Islam resembles the Christian Reformation. The Protestant Christians then also got their hands on their own Bibles for the first time, and made up their own minds what it meant, and got all belligerent about it with those who disagreed or who didn’t care.
This is also what makes the current state of Islam so particularly toxic. They are going back to their holy books and taking them seriously. That, for the reasons you explained, is very nasty. Osama bin Laden is not betraying Islam. He is doing Islam. He denounces Muslims who say they are Muslims but who are also backsliders who want a quiet life rather than Holy War. They must be “reformed”, rather as Luther said corrupt Christians of his time had to be reformed.
You can surely see the parallels.
Had you said that the current Islamic Reformation (which is not just possible but already happening) is, because of what Islam says so unequivocally, much less likely to lead to a later period of civility, I would have said that you could very well be right. Either way, I won’t live to see it.
The basic point is that Reformation is one thing, being nice quite another.
Thank you Brian. I stand corrected. I had misunderstood the meaning of ‘reformation’.
IanB
Maybe “liberalism” is the wrong word for it. Maybe all I mean is just industrialising. Nonconformist money was very big in this.
But I do get the impression that they were genuinely more liberal, in our sense, than they later became. Were I more knowledgeable, I am sure I could furnish the quotes to prove it. And they certainly switched, circa 1700, from terrorism to what I believe is called “quietism”. I.e. not terrorism.
Maybe they then believed in liberalism partly for the selfish reason that they believed in people being liberal towards them. But that’s surely something. And then, to talk some more about why they changed their tune, when they got more rich and more powerful, their own freedom (good) was no longer their problem. They could assume that. Other people’s freedom (not so good) became their problem, and they became nanny statists.
I shared Westerlyman’s confusion on the definition of “Reformation”*, and also apprecitate Brian’s explanation. But the follow-up question is by what means did the Protestant Reformation lead to civility, or what we would call liberality, and is it reasonable to expect a similar process to occur within Islam? If I read your post correctly, Brian, you were essentially arguing that the Protestant Reformation was a reaction to the excesses of Luther, and that a (postulated) Islamic Reformation will be a similar reaction against the excesses of bin Laden and his ilk. Is that correct? And if so, is that a reasonable expectation? I can’t see how, given the non-debatable and all-encompassing tenets of Islam. Extreme violence against “infidels” is fundamental to Islamic texts; how could that be “civilized” without the wholesale abandonment of large portions of the faith? In other words, without the complete reconstruction (I would have used the word “reformation”, in the general definition) of Islam into a wholly different religion. And I just can’t see that happening.
* I’m using a capital “R” here, even though Brian did not, because it seems to me that the discussion here concerns the Protestant Reformation specifically. I don’t think this is a proper (or at least complete) definition of the word in general use.
Westerlyman
Actually, I think I overdid my instruction to you about what the word “reformation” means. Basically IanB and I are both talking about The Reformation, as in the historic process of that name, as opposed to “reformation”, the meaning of which is much less definite. It’s a bit like the word “reform” now, which is a similarly loaded word.
However, most of the people who talk about Islam needing a reformation, or even a Reformation, seem deliberately to be alluding to the Christian Reformation, and saying Islam needs something analagous. They volunteer the word. You merely reacted to IanB and me already using the word, not grasping quite what we were meaning by it. I could have phrased my response more politely.
I quite agree with you that Islam is going to be very hard to “reform”, and impossible if it continues to matter to anyone what it actually says.
Laird, the Reformation is the rise and establishment of Protestantism, not a reaction to it. Might help to bone up a bit on the historical basics before leaping in 😉
I think the way I’d characterise the history of the Reformation is this:
Protestantism arose as a devout reform movement which charged the Catholic church with having strayed from the path of piety and demanded it reform itself to return to a more pious state. Protestantism then split off from Catholicism as a seperate movement and people chose sides. Each side tried to suppress the other, resulting in a great deal of violence. They were fighting for the soul of Christianity. The Catholic Church, as a response, did reform itself to an extent; this is known as the “Counter Reformation”.
The spiral of violence increased culiminatiing in the Thirty Years War (really a series of wars) which devastated large tracts of Europe. The resolution of this was the Peace Of Westphalia, in which the various parties agreed to recognise and tolerate the existence of each other. This led to the adoption of the principle of religous tolerance, that is, the idea that various groups, and ultimately individuals, may choose for themselves how to worship God and leave others to do the same. That, in turn, led to the acceptance of diversity of thought, which allowed Europe to become more “liberal” and prepared the ground for modern Western liberal democracy.
In the Islamic analogy, the Islamists are playing the role of the Protestants. Their complaint is the same; that Islam is impious and corrupted. The major difference is that the Protestants blamed the Catholic Church itself; the Islamists blame corruption by external, western liberal influences; which themselves exist because we had our Reformation first (several hundred years ago). It is important to remember that Islamism is a modern movement whose intense pietistic values do not represent historical Islam but have been created out of whole cloth over the past decades. For instance there is no obligation in historical Islam to wear the burka, although some Islamic societies have done so. The adoption of this as a requirement is a recent idea. In fact, the creation of a new form of a religion, and pretending that it represents a “true”, traditional form, is the classic falsehood of fundamentalism. Modern Islamic Fundamentalism began with the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1920s (founded by Hassan Al Banana in 1928) which was a direct reaction to the liberalising of the muslim world that was underway after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. It is interesting that the particular interpretation of Islam promoted by the (thoroughly modern) Muslim Brotherhood etc is the one unquestioningly accepted by many western critics. It is the equivalent of saying that Calvinism is the only true type of Christianity; that Calvinism has always been the true Christianity, and that Christendom is immune to reform because it is inherently Calvinist.
So anyway, the parallel is that the struggle for the soul of Islam happening now is equivalent to the struggle for the soul of Christianity that happened in Europe culminating in 1648.
Laird
You’re quite right about how I should have used a capital R. As I made clear in my above response to Westerlyman.
However, I think that Ian B, and definitely me, are saying that The Reformation, far from being a reaction to the excesses of Luther, was the excesses of Luther. And the excesses of British Puritanism, which is what started this.
The rise of religious toleration, live and let live, civility, decency, etc., is what we would all like to see happening in the Islamic world. I merely pointed out that, rather mysteriously (both to contemporaries and to subsequent historians), niceness did actually follow The Reformation in Christian Europe. I was and am a lot less sure about why this happened.
Maybe, as I said when I first raised this, such a mysterious change is too much to ask (later: i.e. of Islam), and just as you say, and because of what you say.
In other words, I pretty much agree with you. Certainly my procedure now is to argue that all Islam is wrong, and if you are claiming to be a nice, live and let live Muslim, I say you are deluding yourself and helping to delude others. Your books are clear, and clearly vile. Stop saying in any way that you agree with them, even as you protest that you don’t believe what the books say. Stop being a Muslim. Stop calling yourself a Muslim.
This is a straightforward battle of ideas, and I want Islam to lose, big time.
By the way, I wholly agree that whereas Protestant versus Catholic versus Nice arguments played themselves out mostly within nation states, the Islam versus Nice thing is now global.
But, and maybe this is an answer to your question, what might happen if and when Islam starts seriously to retreat? What if millions upon millions convert away from it, publicly, daring the remaining Muslims to do their worst and getting clean away with it? This is the scenario I want, but I think it could result not in a world without any Muslims, but in a world with quite a lot of self-proclaimed Muslims still in it, but all, almost without exception, in a state of what I would regard as false consciousness. Thoroughly decent, and nice and tolerant of the different beliefs of others, yet still thinking of themselves as Muslims.
You could even argue that “nice Muslims” would be doing the right Muslim thing to be nice, and to swear blind that Islam itself is also nice. That way, Islam gets not to be wiped off the face of the earth (other than as a hideous memory) for the evil trash that it is.
In other words, some Muslims would still understand their own beliefs without self-delusion but in secret, and seek to recreate the circumstances of now, where it is both tactically effective (arguably – certainly they can now do this), as well as honest, to say that Islam means that everyone must grovel to Islam, and that if you don’t grovel to Islam then all means, fair and foul, especially foul, are to be used to make you grovel.
I really must turn all this into a posting of its own. There is so much more to be said.
Brian, this is a fascinating conversation. To me anyway. If it’s boring the tits off everybody else well, that’s their fault for not following the One True Faith.
I disagree that Islam is inherently vile. Or at least, is any more inherently vile than any other religion. The Book is certainly full of nasty stuff, but I could give you a good ol’ Dawkinsian list of Biblical vileness too. The reason Christendom turned “nice” or nicer, anyway, was that Christians just chose to ignore those bits. Stone your children to death for disobedience? Sorry, not interested in that, kthxbi!
Islam can do this too; in fact Islam has done this in the past and was doing a lot more of it before the puritan reaction set in. Currently they’re drowning in a wave of fundamentalist violence, but solving the problem doesn’t mean muslims abandoning Islam, it simply requires them to go back to adopt more moderate forms of it, just like our Christian forebears did.
Ian B
I wrote my last comment before reading your last comment, and maybe it will happen again. It seems to be that kind of comment thread.
I think you get some things wrong about what is and is not true Islam. I agree about the Burka thing. But surely Westerlyman’s characterisation of the Koran is right. The Koran is a massively clearer book than the Bible (which is about the unclearest book ever to be widely circulated, I would say). There have indeed been several versions of Islam, some nice. But to say that these nice Islams are equally based on what Islam says is just plain wrong. This is like reading Hamlet and saying, well, it’s anyone’s bet what this means. And we say Hamlet doesn’t get killed at the end. We say that Ophelia doesn’t go mad. Yes he does. Yes she does. As Westerlyman says:
Self-declared Muslims can say as often as they like that the Koran doesn’t mean such gruesomeness, or doesn’t mean this “to me” (one of my favourite pieces of nice Muslim bullshit). Yes it does. If words mean anything at all, then the Koran means what it means, and not what it doesn’t mean, and you either honestly accept what it says and means, or you delude yourself and others.
Christianity, on the other hand, is a doctrinal shambles, and was ever since it got seriously started, several decades after its titular originator was dead and gone and unable to say what he really meant. It really is anyone’s bet what “Christianity” says and means. Which is why so many Christians have claimed, with exactly equal plausibility and implausibility, that it means whatever crazy thing they want it to mean. With Christianity, all there is is “interpretation”. It’s like we had all (correction: not nearly all, more like what just happens to be left after a major war) the things that critics and scholars have written about Hamlet, but no Hamlet itself.
For these reasons, the Christian Reformation, where everyone read their Bibles and drew different conclusions, and the Islamic Reformation where millions now read their Korans and mostly draw the exact same conclusion as each other, namely that it says what it says, means what it means and means what it says, are bound to play out very differently.
The effect of the Christian Reformation was to split Christianity, into ever more varied interpretations of whatever anyone said it might mean, which could be anything. The effect of the Islamic Reformation is to draw Muslims together, towards the same interpretation of the Koran, i.e. what it plainly says.
It happened again. Again responding to the last comment but two, when another has intervened.
To the “vile” thing.
Central to Islam is that the Koran is the definite word of God. You must believe this.
What the Koran says is vile.
Ergo, Islam is vile.
In a world where knowledge of the actual contents of the Koran is scarce and controlled, like knowledge of the Bible in pre-Reformation Europe, Islam can get nicer. And has got nicer. In this sense you are quite right.
But once the knowledge of what the Koran says is public for all to read, because all can read, its vileness trumps nice Islam. What on earth can those nice Muslims say? They simply have no arguments to work with. This is the word of God. They may not challenge it. It says what it says. Checkmate.
Truly nice Muslims have a choice. Either get real and get nastier. Or get real and get out. If they can. There really can be no future for any middle way.
Ian, point taken. I’ll just lurk here on the sidelines for a while as you and Brian duke it out!
Brian, you’d be hard pressed to find any “nice” Christianity historically either. I think this whole “the Koran is the word of God and it says this and it’s very clear and that’s that” argument doesn’t hold up.
The Bible is a very clear book. The Old Testament; the Jewish Bible (I am going to get smited aren’t I, I know it!) is a blueprint, a very clear blueprint, for a theocratic tyranny. The sharia is modelled on it. There are rules for what to eat, for sex, for the constitution of society and the state, for what clothes to wear, etc etc. It gives lots of nasty precedents to follow.
It is a ghastly mistake to presume that a religion, any religion, cannot arbitrarily redefine itself. Islam is doing that right now. The average Islamist isn’t reading his Koran and deciding for himself what it means; he is reading it and seeing in it what he is told to see by dominant idealogues.
It is easy to redefine the Koran. You do what Christian thinkers did. You say, “oh that part is just a metaphor” and “oh that part doesn’t apply any more” and “that part was interpolated” and “that part was misunderstood” and so on and you keep doing that until it says what you want it to say.
Perry said something here yonks ago that I agree with; western civilisation is corrosive. People will just choose to adopt it because it is more pleasant than mediaevalism. The Islamists are fighting a(n ultimately futile battle) against the adoption of western values in the Islamic world. To quote (God forgive me) Pat Buchanan(!) the most pro-western youngsters in the Islamic world are in Iran; because nobody wants to live in a society where you can’t hold hands with your girlfriend. They still consider themselves muslim. They go to the Mosque. But they don’t want this Islam. They want to do to it what Christendom did to Christianity, which is to make a religion compatible with modernity. Right now there are girls in the muslim world showing their tits on webcams. They’re using western products and watching western TV and they don’t want to kill any infidels at all, just get married and have a job and do normal shit like that.
If you can have nice Judaism, if you can have nice Christianity, you can have nice Islam. There are some Jews who live by the word of the Torah and don’t mix with anyone and wear those daft fur hats, there are some Christians who go on TV to declare that wanking is evil and believe in witchcraft. But there are loads who don’t because they just don’t personally want those bits of their faith.
Islam really isn’t any different. It’s a religion. Like all religions, it is whatever the believers want it to be.
Ian I think you are mistaken. It was a mistake I made too. We assume that the Koran is similar to other holy books and contains loads of obscure or contradictory pieces. It does not.
The Koran is absolutely clear about everything. If a person is serious about being a Muslim they have to accept the teachings as they are, without question. There is no other interpretation.
Sure there are many people growing up calling themselves Muslims who are not really serious about their religion but they cannot pick and choose parts of the Koran to justify their behavior as a Christian can.
You are right that most people, wherever they live, simply do not care enough to want to get all fundamental about anything. Unfortunately these are not the people to provide the impetus for a reformation or counter reformation in Islam. The book itself would have to be re-written and it would not then be Islam.
Is this true? This is my understanding: Charles didn’t like Parliament. So, he governed without it (starting in about 1629). Eventually, he ran out of money (not least because of the Irish Rebellion). But to raise money he needed Parliament’s approval. So, he called another one. Parliament said: “OK, you can have your money but there are strings.” Charles said: “Get lost!”
I don’t see how any of this ranks as foul play on the part of Parliament or the Puritans.
So, what have I got wrong?
Westerlyman-
even if the Koran were so crystal clear- and it isn’t, it’s a confused mess of things Mohammed might have said, compiled into a collection, which cannot even be read without a training course (how many other books are so opaque that they need an instruction manual?)- that wouldn’t affect my argument.
Language isn’t mathematics. Language is infinitely plastic. It can be twisted into any shape you want it to be. You only have to look at what the US Supreme Court has done to the US Constitution- a very clearly written, short and concise document- to see that. Consider the shape they’ve contorted the interstates commerce clause into, for instance.
Think about this law from the Holy Book Of Ian B-
“no man may wear a hat in church”
What’s a hat? Is it any head covering, or only hats? Is a balaclava a hat? A motorcycle helmet? Ah, it’s all head coverings is it? What about wigs? Bandages? Sticking plasters? Spectacles? They cover part of your head don’t they? What’s a man? Somebody over eighteen, or did Ian B mean all males? Can a baby boy wear a bonnet? What’s a church? Anywhere somebody worships? Is it just during worship services or any time? What about a community room occasionally used for services?
And so on. And that’s being trivial.
I think anti-islamists; and please understand, I despise Islam as much as the next guy; are buying the Islamist line. It’s buying into what the extremist reformists- the Islamists- believe their religion is. It buys into the idea that the Koran is a magic book; the only book in the world that has no ambiguity, no alternative interpretations, anywhere. There isn’t a sentence ever written that has that property, let alone an entire book.
An Islamic Reformation is happening, but it has been happening for two hundred and fifty years, ever since Wahhabism/Salafism started spreading in the Arabian Peninsula. bin Laden is simply an example of what happens when the reformation gets its hands on a bit of cash with leadership skills.
Don’t forget, there is no equivalent of Catholicism or The Church in Islam, so claims of a reformation are, at best, only in the roughest way equivalent to Christian history.
As for becoming peaceful in future? Well, Christianity is a religion of peace, but its followers find plenty of reason to get violent even with one another – despite this being contrary to its teachings. Islam, on the other hand, has a theology which explicitly espouses violence, oath breaking, theft and deceit, not just to unbelievers, but even to other Muslims who aren’t pure enough. What constitutes pure? Ahh, that depends on which branch of Islam one belongs to.
Given that, unlike Christians, Muslims have not just divine sanction for violence against kufr, but a commandment to exercise it, as they have been doing for 1600 years, what chance they will go soft and cuddly in the future.
Pacifist Christianity is in accord with the bible. Pacifist Islam is contrary to the Koran.
Sure there is a lot of horrible stuff in the bible,
But,
In the great debate about the Koran says this, but the bible says that, so they must equally be criticised, this really is not relevant.
Firstly, the gory stuff is all in the Old Testament and it is a fundamental of Christianity that the Old Testament doesn’t count. Or to be precise, Jewish law does not apply to Christians. These guys look to the Old only when it is not contradicted by the New, but the only teachings that really matter are the New.
And the gory bits are no part of Christs teachings.
Further, even in the Old, the violence is enjoined against specific peoples, at a specific time, for a specific reason. There is no generic command to fight all unbelievers, at any time, just because they are unbelievers.
The Bible and the Koran simply are not comparable.
As has been said, the Koran is an instruction manual, not a set of guidance notes.
And don’t overlook one very important issue, according to that instruction manual, ISLAM WANTS ME DEAD……
And you too I suspect.
Brian, it was the “silly” I was querying, detour absolutely impressive. I quite probably misunderstood you.
Bugger timezones, this whole thread happened while I was asleep!
At Ian B.
“The reason Christendom turned “nice” or nicer, anyway, was that Christians just chose to ignore those bits.”
What a moron you are. I mean that in the most informative and nicest way, which isn’t much of the latter, but it bears repeating. What a moron you are. You must be deliberately unlearned on the topic, it’s the only explanation which doesn’t show you to be an idiot-savant, and mostly the first.
At the best, that statement of yours is a perfectly jejune throwaway with zero legitimacy. There is no ignoring the “nasty” bits, it’s that they are fulfilled into obviation by the events leading to Golgotha. Or in some lines of Christian theology, Christ showed those “nasty” bits were never what God intended, just that they were what was understood to be true at the previous time, and Christ showed the true path.
Seriously, the few times Christ spoke in metaphors of violence…it was a metaphor. When Mohammed spoke of doing grotesquely bloody and permanent things to unbelievers and their families, it was in the course of urging his followers to do the same, and after he had himself just done it.
To compare the two is fatuous, and to claim Luther parallels bin Laden beyond reason. Where is the violence of Luther? It doesn’t exist, I doubt if you can find one instance of violence conducted by Luther–although there certainly was a good deal directed at him. And of Islam specifically Luther wrote: “Let the Turk believe and live as he will, just as one lets the papacy and other false Christians live.”
Bottom line, history has many what if’s, and we should remember how many if only to keep firmly in mind there is no fate but what we make…
…Apologies to Sarah Connor, of course.
But the idea that Islam is undergoing it’s reformation and that the Wahhabists are the counterpart to the Protestants, or that the Puritans were worse than the Catholics in their day, this isn’t a argument that’s a bridge too far, it’s a castle built on air. There was no lack of violence on either side (though there is a notable lack of violence in Luther, which you certainly can’t say about bin Laden), but the protestants were placing entirely new and unprecedented emphasis on chunks of the bible the RCC would have rather not have had known to the masses or noticed. Bin Laden calls the attention of the Moslem masses to parts of the Koran which no Moslem denies.
“I think anti-islamists; and please understand, I despise Islam as much as the next guy; are buying the Islamist line. It’s buying into what the extremist reformists- the Islamists- believe their religion is. It buys into the idea that the Koran is a magic book; the only book in the world that has no ambiguity, no alternative interpretations, anywhere. There isn’t a sentence ever written that has that property, let alone an entire book.”
You may despise the Islamists all you will, but you do not understand that for ANY Moslem your claim the Koran has ambiguities or contradictions in it does not compute. You are claiming the unpossible, in their eyes. Not just the eyes of the Wahhabists, the eyes of all Moslems, no meaningful exceptions to be found (except a few just past the Fiji mermaid and after past the egress).
Ian B
With your claim that the Bible, and hence Christianity itself, is as clear about what it says as Islam is, we arrive at the we-must-agree-to-differ moment, the moment when it is clear to all – to us and to third parties – how we disagree. Which is when I like to duck out of arguments.
By all means have the last word. My second last would go something like: You just might be able to line up half a dozen people who all agree with you that Christianity has a clear and unambiguous message. But this group would be most unlikely to agree amongst itself about what that message is, unless all were members of the same Christian sect. In other words if they really were a group, already.
For me the meaning of words, or of holy books, is as much an empirical matter as for me to announce, based on my superior knowledge or education (hence my apology for trying to lay down the law about what “reformation” means – concerning “Reformation” there is much greater agreement). And it is an empirical fact that Christianity has meant and does mean very different things to different people. This is a lot less true of Islam, for all the reasons already stated by me and by Westerlyman, and disagreed with by you.
So: goodbye and thanks for all the metaphorical fish.
Oh, how glorious. There is an irony here, a great irony. Can you see what it is, wise Tom Perkins? Can you guess, Tom?
(And Cats; you are my friend, so I apologise for any offence I may cause you since this post must of course also be a reply to you).
I have written a set of words above. I wrote as clearly as I could, to express a particular meaning and yet you, Tom Perkins and, yes you, Counting Cats, have read those words and interpreted them to mean something different. And then you have the gall to sit there in a smug glow of certainty declaring that there is in the world a certain set of words which have a singular, objective meaning, and that you know what this meaning is, and that it is a literal logical impossibility to interpret them in any other way. Do you see the irony, Tom?
And here is the greater irony, Tom and Cats; you do the Islamist’s work for him. You are on his side. You declare, with all certainty, that the Islamist’s interpretation of Islam is the one, true interpretation of it (and this despite the fact that we know full well the pedigree of this interpretation; that it was authored primarily by Saeed Qutb less than a century ago, the man who as ideological father would best fit the role of Luther, not Bin Laden (although any attempt to map individual persons onto one another is deeply flawed anyway, and we might argue that Qutb is more Calvin than Luther)) and that any Muslim who dares raise another interpretation- who perhaps says that he personally does not accept a religious requirement to murder the infidel- is not a muslim; that he is, as the Islamists say, a backslider, a heretic, an infidel. You support the Islamist cause. There is only one true Islam, and that is the Islam of the suicide bomber.
Why do you choose this interpretation? Because it suits what you want to believe, just as, with my example of the US Constitution, a clearly expressed document if ever there was one, that has been reinterpreted again and again to make it say what various persons want it to say; and every time it is reinterpreted its reinterpreters declare that they have, in fact, extracted its true meaning.
By believing in this singular, immutable Islam, in which words are elevated to the position of computer code or mathematical equations, you overlook what process is occurring in the Muslim world. You see, you want every muslim on the planet to be the implacable enemy of every non-muslim. But the greatest enemy; and most consistent victims; of Islamists are not us in the West. Some of us have died, but not many in the grand scheme of things. Their primary opponent is other muslims who they use every power they have; persuasion, coercion and, most of all extreme violence to force into adopting their interpretation. It is a campaign; at the moment a very successful campaign, it must be said, to create a monolithic Islam with a single interpretation. It is a campaign to expunge modern, liberal, trends from the Muslim world. They attack us because we are the source of those trends, but they attack their fellows even more because it is their fellows who wish to adopt them. And you declare them to be correct!
You condemn the moderate muslim. You condemn the secularist muslim. You declare that he is an infidel and to be a real muslim he must cast off his un-muslim moderation, don a dishdasha and join the holy war. You condemn the young muslim woman who wants to wear makeup and nice clothes and live an ordinary life, and tell her to don the burka, because that is the only true Islam. And you know that is true, because you have access to the objective truth. Congratulations. You’re a jihadist.
****
I also wonder, and this is a different point, how you intend to proceed. Brian has said he hopes that Muslims will abandon their faith. I presume that that is your desire too. But that is not going to happen. You only have to look at America- the world’s most scientifically advanced nation, but which has millions upon millions of religious fundamentalists and which has never had an atheist president (and who can forget Bill Clinton saying that his sexual activities were between “me and my God”?) to know that that is a hopeless dream. Are they all going to convert to Christianity then? The whole Muslim world? That doesn’t seem likely either.
So, since you objectively know that every Muslim on the planet can never believe anything other than that we must be annihilated (as Cats says, they want to kill us; every Muslim wants to annihilate every infidel, because it says so in the Magic Objective Book) then what is the way forward? Do we kill them all? What’s the plan, here?
Brian, there’s another post by me held up in Smite Control, which somewhat addresses your point.
[editor: no there isn’t… at the time you posted this no unapproved comments by you are pending within the dread maw of the capricious smitebot]
Oh well, that last one-liner post was a bit unnecessary. Brian, if you’re still reading- or as a general reply for anyone else still reading- about diversity in Christianity.
I think you’re overlooking the fact that that diversity only arose in and after the Reformation. Prior to that, Christianity was monolithic. The Church decided internally what the One True interpretation is, and questioning that, let alone declaring a divergent belief, was a very dangerous thing. Luther himself put himself in grave danger and was nearly executed for expressing his opinion. It’s certainly the case that post-Reformation there have arisen many interpretations of Christianity; an immense range. But 500 years ago, in Europe there was Catholicism and in the East there was the Orthodox and that was it. Nobody held the Bible to be ambiguous then.
Ian, you may abuse my opinions as much as you like, just so long as you abuse them with facts and logic.
So long as you are prepared to buy me a beer when next I make it to blighty I really don’t give a toss. And who knows, I may learn something, and that would be a result.
It sounds quite ironic coming from you, if one does that cross-thread thing. Which is to say, on this thread I am fairly close to being convinced by your arguments. Not quite there yet, but close.
Um, my last comment was quoting and was addressed to Ian.
Patrick,
You’re broadly speaking right. Charles I ruled without Parliament from 1629 to 1640 and only recalled it when war broke out with Scotland and he needed to raise money in order to raise an army.
When Parliament then assembled a majority refused to vote for any subsidies without constitutional reform – in particular that Parliament would be summoned every three years and that it could not be dissolved without its own consent.
The King agreed, and these measures were passed in 1641. (In 1648 Parliament was ‘purged’ of Royalist sympathisers, and in 1653 Oliver Cromwell forcibly dissolved it. In 1660, just before the Restoration, it was recalled, on the grounds that it had never agreed to its own dissolution, and was consequently the only legitimate assembly in the land. It assembled, and voted to dissolve itself.)
But this wasn’t enough for the Puritans – they demanded parliamentary control over the army, the appointment of ministers and even over the education of Charles I’s children. The King couldn’t agree to this – although he did have his chief minister, the Earl of Strafford, executed at their behest – because it challenged his prerogatives.
Their demands might seem reasonable now, but in the seventeenth century it’s probably fair to say that they weren’t. They may not have been spoiling for a fight – many were aghast at the prospect of fighting their monarch – but their demands were just unmeetable, and they weren’t so aghast that they didn’t issue the Militia Ordinance and call out the troops against their sovereign.
The irony sir, is in your choice to defend so flawed a rhetorical tool. Words in fact have a meaning which is so fixed in their vastly probable import that the proper use of them is the responsibility of the writer. Language would have little value without that being true, and nevertheless it has great value indeed.
I suspect retconning on your part, and with your plaints about how terrible the Puritans were and how you would intervene on the royalist absolutist side in the Roundhead war (I believe that was you), you tell me with these you are now covering for an error on your part, not ours.
“You are on his side.”
Again, abjectly, what a moron you are. I am not on his side, and you who claim I am, you praise him with faint damns, claiming equivalencies with events quite positive in human history where none meaningfully exist.
“And then you have the gall to sit there in a smug glow of certainty declaring that there is in the world a certain set of words which have a singular, objective meaning, and that you know what this meaning is, and that it is a literal logical impossibility to interpret them in any other way.”
Again, if you are not merely covering for an error on your part, then you have merely not yet realized it.
The Islamist invents nothing, but returns to the path Islam undertook indigenously from it’s founding and it’s founder. Islamism was not invented either 100 years ago or 250 years ago, it was invented by Mohammed, who practiced just the same murder–and other psychopathologies–as does bin Laden.
You seem to mistake the protestant reformation with a return to earlier principles, but this is not born out by an examination of early church practices–so there is no good analogy therein to the Islamists attempting to return the Islamic world to treading the path it merely dallied on for a time since the rise of the Ottomans.
Your analogy is simply a very poor one. Islam is not undergoing it’s reformation, it is undergoing at most an attempted “papist*” purge of the Islamists of faint heart, it is being urged by bin Laden to return past practice. The protestant reformation was a change in practice, and in fact was a reinterpretation founded on contradictions and ambiguities which pre-existed Luther.
Again, your analogy is a drastically poor one. It is your error for not communicating whatever you really intended to, if in fact you aren’t now merely covering for having said too much.
*Of course Islam has no central pope. It has in most of it’s history had a prominent war leader. Bin Laden now holds that role.
If this is what you really mean:
“You condemn the moderate muslim. You condemn the secularist muslim. You declare that he is an infidel and to be a real muslim he must cast off his un-muslim moderation, don a dishdasha and join the holy war.”
Then you are correct only in the trivially true way that I recognize that Islam is what it is, an immoderate religion. There are no secular moslems, there are no moderate moslems. There are people who claim to be moslems who are apostates from that religion.
I think the root of your error, the flaw in your argument, is seen in your claim the constitution is a simple clear document, and it is, but you concede some measure–in fact a full measure–of legitimacy to it’s “interpretations”.
Those weren’t interpretations, those whose promulgated them simply made shit up. Until someone has success in making shit up about Islam which attracts a strategically significant numbers of Moslems away from the original faith represented by the reactionary bin Laden, there is no meaningful “reformation” of Islam taking place.
“you overlook what process is occurring in the Muslim world”
There is no process of such “making shit up” in Islam which is taking place in numbers of people which have any strategic importance.
“You condemn the young muslim woman who wants to wear makeup and nice clothes and live an ordinary life, and tell her to don the burka, because that is the only true Islam.”
No I don’t condemn them, I applaud them. I don’t pretend they are Moslems in good theological standing, but I do applaud them. I wish for them every success.
“And you know that is true, because you have access to the objective truth.”
Denying words have a significance which is for all prudent purposes fixed is the hallmark of the left, of Foucalt, of Derrida, of Big Brother. You do yourself no good service carrying their water.
Objective reality exists, and can be meaningfully described with words objectively, and this meaning can be communicated effectively among the honest and those capable of writing clearly for all prudent purposes.
I’ll leave further answers to the question of whether your words are dishonest or merely imprudent to your conscience and to observers.
Tom, you haven’t understood my argument. Really, you haven’t understood it. That would suggest that, in words you seem addicted to using, you are a bit of a “moron”. I particularly like your attempt to write in a highbrow, condescending style, although you fail rather badly at it. “Plaints” is good. The deliberately archaic “moslem” gets a bit tiresome after a few repetitions; and what a pity you blew it all by fucking up your own name right there at the end.
It really would have helped if you had spent some time trying to understand what I was saying, rather than imposing upon it what you want me to be saying, in a spectacular confirmation of what I was, indeed, saying. For instance-
That is the perfect opposite of what I actually said. Read the thread back and you’ll see.
Cheerio.
“Tom, you haven’t understood my argument. Really, you haven’t understood it.”
Then say what you mean, instead of something else.
There is no reform going on in Islam. Bin Laden is not reform, he is a return to the original with gusto. Women not wearing burqas and wearing makeup (and parenthetically declaring they have minds of their own), these are not the reform of Islam, these are its abnegation. Neither is reform. Notive I am not saying the second is not an improvement.
The protestant reformation was indeed reform, a change which was well within the realm of the plausible, epistemologically buttressed by honestly portrayed ambiguities and inconsistencies in otherwise agreed on canonical texts. Nothing which has anything to do with what is going on politically in Islam, the body politic of the Moslem.
“I particularly like your attempt to write in a highbrow, condescending style, although you fail rather badly at it.”
IOW, you have no point for point refutation, and focus on the trivial. You distract when you can not persuade by facts.
“and what a pity you blew it all by fucking up your own name right there at the end”
And you double down on the trivial and offer no refutation. Keep it up, you’ll lose your reputation too.
“Read the thread back and you’ll see.”
I have read the thread, and at best you have communicated poorly, with many missteps and detours along the way.
You wrote:
“It helps to strip away our cosy feelings about our own history- Oliver Cromwell is nice Richard Harris, isn’t he?- and remember we’re talking about a mob not dissimilar to the role the Muslim Brotherhood play in the Islamic world.”
Your own words are thrown back in your teeth, you’re comparing the Roundheads to the Moslem Brotherhood. They are drastically dissimilar. The Puritans were philosophically a change from earlier practice, not a return to it as the Moslem Brotherhood called for, your comparison is inept and inapt. What’s more, while to the extent they were violent and totalitarian, the Roundheads violated the best principles of their own philosophy, when the royalists were violent and totalitarian, they embodied their philosophy, they implemented it. A far better comparison would be to say the royalists are like AlQaeda–but that’s nothing you said, is it?
Cheerio.
Your words again:
“I do very much think that what we’re seeing in the Islamic world is their Reformation”
No, nothing we are seeing in the Moslem world is reformation in any sense.
Unless I suppose you would count the Crusade against the Albigensians as part of a reformation of some sort. AlQaeda does kill a lot of Moslems.
Of course, to go by your previous arguments, you would count it as such. If that is not what you meant, write what you mean.
Tom, everything you say just confirms my point that language is imprecise and plastic. You take the one point I raised- that I had not said that the Reformation was a return to earlier principles, in fact quite the opposite, and switch to an entirely different part of what I’d said about the Puritans playing a similar role to the Muslim Brotherhood. This is (presumably deliberate) dishonest debating, and I cannot be bothered with being led around the mulberry bush for your entertainment.
Your particular style of aggressive dismissal- “moron” etc- simply doesn’t give me any desire to debate you. This is a fascinating subject, but you come across as a loudmouth in a bar, so I’ve no further wish to discuss it with you in particular. I doubt we will achieve much of pleasure to either of us, although if you are persisting just for the pleasure of yanking my chain, I can at least frustrate that bizarre intention.
Cheerio.
“Tom, everything you say just confirms my point that language is imprecise and plastic.”
I think it confirms my point that at best you aren’t writing what you mean.
“You take the one point I raised- that I had not said that the Reformation was a return to earlier principles, in fact quite the opposite, and switch to an entirely different part of what I’d said about the Puritans playing a similar role to the Muslim Brotherhood.”
Everything you’ve said is all part of a whole, don’t blame me if you are self-contradictory either by writing poorly or by first thinking unclearly and then writing what you are in fact thinking.
Additionally, my point is they did not play a similar role. You can’t say Q.E.D., you haven’t managed the D. A much better argument can be made that AlQaeda and the Moslem Brotherhood are like the Royalists. The M.B. and A.Q are a return to earlier principles, and nothing of a reformation. If the Roundheads had been a return to earlier principles, then your comparison would not be so inept.
Why don’t you try again. Explicitly please, how do you think the Roundheads are like the Moslem Brotherhood?
The Koran is NOT a clear book, nor is it easy to read. I am reading a fascinating book on the Koran, called, “Virgins? What Virgins?”. The Koran is written in what is called Classical Arabic, which very few people actually understand. Those few have trouble understanding up to 20% of the book, because of the obscureness of some of the verb-forms, for instance. And some nouns are subject to two or more interpretations- the words for virgins and raisins is similar enough to cause confusion, hence the title of the book.
As for being logical, the koran claims that the Koran is immutable- AND that God cannot be bound by even his own given word (so the Koran could be scrapped tomorrow, by a random act of God).
“As for being logical, the koran claims that the Koran is immutable- AND that God cannot be bound by even his own given word (so the Koran could be scrapped tomorrow, by a random act of God).”
That might be a way out for them, a reformation in name only. They scrap it and start over.
Two points…
First.
It is arguable that certain parts of the Qu’ran can be understood or can even read by anyone. “Classical Arabic” is a very dead language. This is partly due to the incredible rapidity of the expansion of Islam back in the days of Muhammed and following Caliphs and Islam’s magpie tendencies.
Anyway, the translation of such old texts is a hell of a task. My wife is a translator (not of such languages) and in the West at least Biblical translation is to her craft what the solar system is to physics. Basically the exemplar in which the general principles got hammered out.
Second.
” in which words are elevated to the position of computer code or mathematical equations…”
Mathematics has semantics you know. It’s called physics. I could show you solutions to the Einstein Field Equations that are 100% pukka but demonstrably do not apply to the real universe. That’s just one example.
Since this fire seems to be dying out I thought I’d throw on some more fuel and offer this link to an interview with the president of the Minaret of Freedom Institute, a free market (dare I say libertarian?) Muslim think tank. He even calls himself a libertarian. Who knew?
I’m just scared of posting anything else for fear that Tom Perkinst will rush in again brandishing the shining sword of TRUTH and the trusty shield of REASON, you know.
Interesting Laird, thanks. Unfortunately however, as long as he does not address the issues of apostasy and dhimmitude, his opinions cannot carry much weight.
To be fair, Alisa, the interviewer didn’t ask him about apostasy or dhimmitude. Perhaps there something on the organization’s website (which I haven’t really explored yet). But here is something I quickly found there on the subject of apostasy, which seems very reasonable to me.
In any event, I thought it interesting that there exists what purports to be a free-market Muslim think tank. An Islamic Cato. Fascinating.
Indeed, I am impressed. I’ll keep an eye on him on the web.
NickM. One is not supposed to translate the Koran. Only classical Arabic is acceptable. Indeed Classical Arabic is the language they will speak in heaven, and it will be the only language, according to the koran. Immutable also means untranslatable.
“I’m just scared of posting anything else for fear that Tom Perkinst will rush in again brandishing the shining sword of TRUTH and the trusty shield of REASON, you know.”
Do keep running away from your indefensible claims, Ian, and hiding behind a typo.
Dr. Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad is an almost singular individual. If he is willing do declare the Koran null and void–meaningless–in it’s objectionable bits without benefit of any Islamic scripture to support him, then I wish heartily there were a few hundred thousand more like him, and then millions.
I see in one section he does take an interpretation of interest which is contrary to common Islamic practice, but he feels the need to go back to Mohammed for justification. Then within a few more paragraphs he denies that individual human right exists, imagining they are atomistic, and imagines something compatible with what shadow of them he says exists are coeval with the rights of the “community”. The myth of the general will arises, and it is to be devoutly wondered if he feels any historically Islamic area should enjoy secular government and that non-Moslem person should be permitted to attempt missionary work in such places.
He does seem obsessed with prostitution. I wonder if he feels the 30 minute marriages to be had at many Islamic pilgram sites is much different from it?
See, now you’ve got a problem Tom or, well, maybe Dr Ahmad has. You see, here he is saying he’s a Muslim, but he’s disagreeing with the one true objective Tom Perkins definition of Islam and, as you’ve said (very loudly, interspersed with Tourette’s shouts of “moron!”), anyone who disagrees with Tom Perkins’s Objective Definition Of Islam is an apostate. Are you going to tell him, or shall I?
The even stranger thing is, the whole thing that got you so angry with me, was me suggesting that people like Dr Ahmad might exist in Islam. Yet here he is. My, what a paradox.
Of course, the other option of course is that he is a Tom Perkins Muslim, and he’s just lying. That would work. But how would we test that hypothesis? There’s a problem.
Go bother yourself Ian. Or actually reply substantively to my objections, if you’re able.
Also, I’ve already seen he’s as totalitarian as the next Imam–he can’t voice a thought without checking to see if Mohammed had it first. There’s not one trace in all that interview, now that I’ve read it, that there is any “libertarian” interpretation to the Koran to be had.
To quote the man:
“This is what the Shari`a envisions, since only those who are Muslims by choice are bound to the Islamic law in full, and those who subscribe to other religious codes (Jewish, Christian, Zoroastrian, whatever) shall follow their own laws insofar as it does not adversely affect the Muslims or other protected minorities.”
In short, he feels that people who are not Moslem are bound by Sharia in part, and all are bound by it whenever the Moslem community finds it commodius.
The “moderate” Moslem you so desperately want to have exist in some meaningful numbers is not found in that interview.
You have read the whole thing, right?
Oh this is a gem of his:
“At the risk of glibness, the short answer is that Shari`a law (like the law of gravity) is something to be obeyed, not to be imposed.”
I know why you like him Ian, he makes laughable comparisons too. Sharia only exists because it is imposed by violent human beings, but yet it’s “like gravity”.
Did you actually try to understand the article, or did you just skim it for quotes you could use out of context to support your argument?
He says quite clearly, and you’re big on that I know Tom, that there is a distinction between God’s Law and human understanding (interpretation) of God’s Law.
You see, I don’t “like him”. I didn’t even know he existed until I read that link. He simply stands as an example of somebody doing what I suggested, and which you insist is impossible, which is using/developing an interpretation of Islam which isn’t Tom Perkins Islam. Because re-interpreting things to suit themself is what humans do. You can call it “making shit up” if you like. It doesn’t matter. I simply said that that is possible, because language is as ambiguous as its reader wants it to be.
Look, I get it Tom. Muslims are evil, and irredeemable, and nothing is going to divert you from that certainty of yours. Fair enough, you’re entitled to believe what you want. But at the end of the day you’re still going to have to explain why Dr Ahmed doesn’t want to kill you, like he’s supposed to in Tom Perkins Islam.
An interesting debate, with which I’m not going to get involved other than to say that any argument which depends on the immutability of language is not an argument.
Alisa: Yes, there are many regional differences in Islamic practice. However – in the last thirty years, the enormous oild bonanza in Saudi Arabia has poured tens of billion$ into Wahhabi Islam.
Saudi money finances Wahhabist missionarying in many parts of the Islamic world. Islam in these areas has been “Arabized”. The Saudis also pay for a lot of Islamic activities in non-Moslem countries, such as Moslem missionizing among non-Moslems, which is dominated by Wahhabism.
The idea of an Islamic “Reformation” is I think wrong-headed. The Christian Reformation was a rebellion against corrupt clergy and religious practice encrusted with un-Scriptural stuff. The Lutheran and Anglican “Reformers” were content mainly to break with Rome; then the Calvinists came along with a much more radical agenda.
Wahhabism is in many ways similar to Calvinist Christianity; and like some hard-ass Presbyterians is militantly intolerant. And it is, well, puritanical. The rise of Wahhabism (fueled by petrodollars) is in many respects an “Islamic Reformation” – but what it engenders is fanaticism, not moderation.
What is needed is an “Islamic Enlightenment”.
King Charles was indeed a Protestant – indeed his right hand man in military matters (at least till he lost Bristol) was Prince Rupert – the Protestant hero of the fight against Spain in the Low Countries.
However, he was not an anti Catholic bigot.
Ariminism – now I get to jump up and down and say “YOU ARE OUT OF DATE IAN B.”
Well actually that would be unfair – as Ian simply typed what I believed myself till a few years ago – i.e. that Charles and Archbishop Laud were anti presdestination (at least anti Calvinist predestination).
However, recent scholarship has shown that this is not true – Charles and Laud did not have that problem with the Puritans (who were Calvinists – not Lutherians of course).
They had all sorts of other theolgical problems with the Calvinists – but not over predestination.
Oddly enough (and this I have long known) one of the leading ANTI predestination thinkers in England was on the other side. Ralph Cudworth – the chaplin of Parliament.
How many speeches must he have heard claiming that the Parliamentary Army were “God’s Elect” (Calvinism) hard for a man who did not believe in any such concept – i.e. did not believe in predestination (in “the Elect” as Calvinists understood the term).
Christianity versus Islam.
According to Islamic scholars the Koran is the word of God delivered to “the Prophet” by an angel and then spoken by him (word for word) – but only written down (from memory) after his death.
According to Christian scholars (even the most “fundementalist”) the Bible is quite different.
Some of it IS the word of God – for example the Ten Commandments.
Which is why it is important to get the words right – it is NOT “thou shall not kill” (King James Bible translation) it is “thous shall not MURDER” (the language is quite important – so messing up the translation on such an important point is not wonderful).
However, most of the Bible is NOT the direct word of God (again even conservative theologians have always known this).
It is the words of MEN, inspired by the Holy Spirit – not the same thing as the direct word of God at all. Because men (human beings) can get things horribly wrong (even if they are inspired – they can totally misinterpret how to put the feelings in their hearts into practice).
For example, the contrast between the Book of Joshua (invade, kill the men, kill the women, kill the children, kill, kill, kill,) and the message of Jesus Christs (even an nonpacifist interpretation of it) is HUGE.
It is just plain daft to say that is the same message is the same.
Joshua was more like Mohammed than he was like Jesus. “But Jesus was God” – Moses was not, indeed he was Joshua’s forerunner as the leader of the Jewish people, yet his message was totally different also.
It was “let my people go” not “let us murder or enslave all these people over here”.
Joshua was a bad man – and it is pointless to whitewash him.
It is also pointless to claim that his message was the same as that of Jesus – the “New Covenant” totally replaces the “Old Covenant”, especially if Joshua’s methods are considered part of the old covenant.
Rich: yes, I am aware of the ways SA money is spent etc. All true, but think longer perspective: you mentioned 30 years – give it another 30, and we may be looking at alternative energy sources (nuclear?), rendering SA not nearly as capable of financing anything as they have recently been. As to reformation of Islam, my larger point was that its not Islam on its own that we should be discussing, so much as various cultures around the world as they are being influenced by this or that religion, Islam (and its possible reformation) very much included.
If Prince Henry had lived:
I doubt he would have insisted on Bishops in Scotland.
No effort to keep Bishops in the Church of Scotland = no Scottish revolt.
No Scottish revolt = no English Civil War.
Only the revolt of the Scots – and the defeat of the King by them, could give English rebels any opportunity for successful revolt.
Even if Charles had imposed Bishops in Scotland – and then led an army to force the issue AT ONCE (rather than messing about for ages – giving the Scots Calvinists time to organize) there would most likely have been no great Civil War in England.
However, it is doubtful that, under Henry, the issue would have come up at all – as he most likely would not have imposed the bishops in Scotland.
“Church organization rather than predestination?”
Yes – it was an organization conflict.
And a conflict about CEREMONY (the stuff that was worn – whether their should be stained glass in the windows, whether their should be organ music…….).
Actually (by the standards the Lutherian Church was evolving into) it was Charles and Laud who looked more Lutherian than the rebels.
Go into a Lutherian church to this day – priest in special clothing, stained glass in window, organ music………
Of course religion is NOT the only factor.
Many people in England believed in a limited monarchy – or even a semi Republic (such as that of Venice).
These limited monarchy people included such powerful people as the Dukes of Northumberland (the Percy family) and many others.
I have some sympathy with their political opinions (in spite of the Royal standard that is a few inches away from me as I type this).
However, a war based on the limited monarchy (constitutional) views of people like the Percy family was not going to happen.
Religious differences gave the conflict teeth.
Especially as the rituals of Charles and Laud looked CATHOLIC (even though they were NOT Roman Catholic) with the Irish Catholics killings thousands of Protesants (including women and children) anyone (even the King) who LOOKED Catholic (in their ways) was a target.
After all did not the Irish murderers claim to have a written commission from King Charles ordering them to attack Protestants?
They did so claim – they were LYING (the King was horrified at the things happening in Ireland), but the King had a Catholic wife, he was on good terms with other Catholics, it was easy to believe anything bad about him.
And once the war had started – the constitutional ideas of people like the Percies became more important.
Of course in Cromwell the constitutionalists got a ruler who was FURTHER from their ideas than Charles had been (Cromwell was a military dictator – who did not accept any limits to his rule).
However, in the long run the “mixed monarchy” or “limited monarchy” people won out. They got what they wanted after 1688.
Reform of Islam.
How?
To reform Islam (in a fundemental way) would depend on Muslims rejecting both the life of Mohammed and their sacred writings.
It would be like expecting Christians to accept that Jesus (not Joshua) was a bad man – and to reject the Gospels.
Sorry – but, such “great minds” as Bush and Blair to the contrary, it is a fight to the finish with Islam.
On conversion:
All but one of the Islamic schools of law agree that rejecting Islam (having been a Muslim) and accepting another religion is punishable by death.
And the school that does not agree with an automatic punishment by death – still holds that it is a crime.
Islamic doctrine like the laws of sicence – oh my ears and whiskers…..
Islam holds that the “hand of God is not fettered” – in short there are no laws of universe as a Western person would understand the term (only the will of God – which he can change at any moment).
“But Muslims invented much of science” – only according to BBC television shows (and other such). There were great scientists (who happened to be Muslims – although some of them were actually Christians, Jews or Persians with Islamic names tagged on) but Islamic doctrine came down against them.
Lastly in talking to Muslims remember that Islam holds that it acceptable (indeed noble) to lie to an infidel (a nonMuslim) if by doing so one serves the cause of Islam.
Therefore nonMuslim writers on Islamic writers (such as Robert Spencer) are more reliable than Muslim writers – as they are not under a moral obligation to lie to infidels in order to serve the cause of Islam.
The versus in the Koran that seem peaceful and tolerant are EARLY verses – the saying of Mohammed before he had a great army to enforce his will (when he was still worried that infidels might kill him if he made his intentions plain).
Muslims still repeat these tolerant verses when they are in the same position Mohammed was when he was surrounded by powerful infidels.
But remember what Mohammed (Mahemet, Muhammed – it matters not) did as soon as he had many armed warriors to follow his will.
He launched suprise attacks on people he had sworn peace to (his words swearing peace were but sounds on the wind).
Killing his “friends” (often unarmed) and selling the survivers (the women and the children) into slavery – often using the bodies of the women and children himself.
Muslims honour the wise conduct of the “Prophet” – when your enemies are much stronger than you, peach peace and tolerance – and swear undying friendship. But when you are ready….
Paul, you’re falling into the same trap as Objective Tom Perkins, which is to elevate your own perceptions to a declaration of objective correctness, and thus stating that nobody else can possibly honestly reach a different conclusion. The point I made is that however honestly you have reached your opinion, you can’t stop people believing other things- and I gave the example of the reinterpretation of the US Constitution- a far clearer document than any Holy Book- as an example. If people want to change the meaning of words, they will. You can declare that they are objectively wrong if you like, but that won’t stop them doing it. They will just reply that you are wrong, and at that point you are stumped.
For instance, you said,
If you had said that in 1600, you would have been committing heresy and in all likelihood they’d have been toasting chestnuts round your feet before you could say “difference of opinion”. The Bible, doctrinally, is the word of God. God inspired every word that it is in it. It was written by many men, but under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Your questioning of God’s word is heresy, Paul Marks. Or, it was a few centuries ago.
IanB, you may be already doing this, so apologies, but there has to be one hell of a book in your general thesis on this topic.
The more I think about it, the more credible it is. So much of history in the past few centuries can be understood by the puritanism agenda.
Thanks Johnathan, I think so too. I’m just not entirely convinced that a smutty cartoonist with no A Levels, let alone a degree, is the ideal person to write it.
Actually, being a smutty cartoonist could be a publicity feature, rather than a bug:-)
A couple of points that don’t seem to have been mentioned: first, the Reformation became a recognition of Christianity’s Jewish roots. This isn’t directly relevant to the discussion, but important to remember anyway; I’m sure much of Protestantism’s emphasis on industry and thrift comes from that aspect.
Second, and more importantly, the later Reformers rejected ritual; that is, the idea that performing a certain action in a prescribed manner ensures favour with the deity, and failing to do so earns his wrath. This is absolutely vital to understanding the difference between the Protestant Reformation and the one that may, or may not, be going on in Islam, and nobody’s even mentioned it yet. (Perhaps because it wasn’t so important to the English Reformation, which was somewhat semi-detached?)
They may have been “fundamentalist” in some senses, but in rejecting the idea that God makes you jump through hoops like a performing dog, they took the first step towards reason, even if they still maintained an irrational faith in other ways. So while it’s a bit of a leap to say that without the Reformation there would have been no Enlightenment and no modern agnosticism or atheism, in the course of events that actually occured, it was arguably the first move towards them.
And this was only possible because much of that ritual and mysticism could be shown to be “Roman innovation”. That aspect just doesn’t exist in Islamism. It – like Rome, ironically – actively embraces the mystical.
Interesting point Sam. Not sure I entirely agree though. Seems to me that the protestants were rejecting fancy-schmancy Romish fripperies like gaudy vestements, incense, icons and idols, churches that looked like a tart’s boudoir administered by a lavishly appointed professional priesthood and so on. They wanted simple services and austere buildings and lay preachers and the like- all of which are features of Islam which has never had that kind of “Romishness”.
Sort of, Protestantism wanted to get away from the distractions of colour and sound and back to a good old ZX81.
“any argument which depends on the immutability of language is not an argument. ”
Interesting attempt at a hit and run, but any philosophy that depends on language having no meaning which is fixed for any practical purpose is no such thing, it’s a pretense.
Rejoinding in reverse order:
“They wanted simple services and austere
buildings and lay preachers and the like”
Correct to this point, then you go right off the rails.
“all of which are features of Islam which has never had that kind of “Romishness”.”
It never had a centralized church hierarchy, you are utterly wrong in every other respect. You think the ivory tower snobbery between Qum and Mecca isn’t huge, you’re nuts. Lay preachers my butt.
Ritual not so much, outside of the fact every faithful Moslem has a prayer schedule like a 13th century monk, elaborate buildings–check, every time they had the money for it.
“in rejecting the idea that God makes you jump through hoops like a performing dog, they took the first step towards reason, even if they still maintained an irrational faith in other ways”
Yep, that pilgrimage is no hoop at all, and nevermind the whole halal thing. No magical hoops, keerist you’re piling it up.
And…Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner, who mentions a very substantial way in which the Puritans were in no way like the Moslems, and a way in which actually the Roundhead’s opponents were relatively more like them.
“I’m just not entirely convinced that a smutty cartoonist with no A Levels, let alone a degree, is the ideal person to write it.”
Must be hellish internalizing a very classist, minimal upward mobility society’s opinion of yourself. You’ve got at least as much hackery in you as any academic–and your halfway there now! You already think Popper and Heisenberg are very meaningful in everyday life and that they had profound epistemological insights which have policy implications!
“Or, it was a few centuries ago.”
Except it would be admitted even then that the Bible was not literally the work of God, and that men being flawed can only imperfectly receive God’s inspiration.
“The point I made is that however honestly you have reached your opinion, you can’t stop people believing other things- and I gave the example of the reinterpretation of the US Constitution- a far clearer document than any Holy Book- as an example.”
And your insistence that those other “interpretations” are in fact honestly arrived at as opposed to being merely what is convenient for one faction is a prime sign you are not able to perceive reality. Language is not so mutable it has no practical meaning.
And yes I read the interview. Funny fiqh and sharia are hand in glove, if they’re so different.
“He says quite clearly, and you’re big on that I know Tom, that there is a distinction between God’s Law and human understanding (interpretation) of God’s Law.”
I see no practical difference between him and what is now life in Saudi Arabia;as long as it is Islamic, he is fine with the tyranny of the general will. When he wants members of any religion and atheists to hold forth on the superiority of their faith, 1st Amendment style, in the “parking lot” of the Great Mosque in Mecca, while cart vendors sling pork kielbasa on buns and frosty beers to the tourists–when he propounds individual human negative rights are all that exist, and is unambiguous that statements to the contrary in the Koran are bunk–then he’ll be evidence of an Islamic Reformation.
“You see, I don’t “like him”. ”
Sure you do, you need him to be enough like what you need him to be–and he’s enough like that you’re going with it–that you can put on the rosy glasses and say Islam is on it’s way to reform.
“He simply stands as an example of somebody doing what I suggested,”
Not yet he isn’t.
“and which you insist is impossible, which is using/developing an interpretation of Islam which isn’t Tom Perkins Islam.”
And it isn’t my Islam, it’s Mohammed’s invention, and he said it is the perfectly recorded message of God. Your argument is with him and his followers, not me.
“Because re-interpreting things to suit themself is what humans do.”
Uh huh. Tool making yes, also rationalizing. What you’re saying is as sensible as saying 2+3=4, and that’s just another interpretation. Oh yeah, you can be an academic, even a Phd, in Philosophy.
“You can call it “making shit up” if you like. It doesn’t matter.”
A case in point, the collective right “interpretation” of the 2nd amendment. It was invented from whole cloth in the early 19xx years, and never had a trace of legitimacy, but you’d say it just another interpretation as valid WRT the source material as any other. In fact, by language you may feel now is overbroad, you did say that.
“I simply said that that is possible, because language is as ambiguous as its reader wants it to be.”
But not honestly so. There is a point where an “interpretation” becomes a lie, and chucking the majority of the Koran will be required for Islam to Reform.
“Look, I get it Tom. Muslims are evil, and irredeemable, and nothing is going to divert you from that certainty of yours.”
Islam as it is, yes. An apostate Moslem could very well be a right guy.
“Fair enough, you’re entitled to believe what you want. But at the end of the day you’re still going to have to explain why Dr Ahmed doesn’t want to kill you, like he’s supposed to in Tom Perkins Islam.”
Again, that isn’t my Islam, it’s Mohammed’s. If in fact he is unwilling to tolerate the use of violence to cause me or you to submit, or to prevent backsliding in for example Mecca, he needs to explain to Mohammed why he is blowing off the holy writ, not me.
I absolutely agree, Tom. Philosophy should ideally be based on truth (with the differences between various philosophies being in the actions that should be taken based on the truth). But there’s ‘should’ and there’s ‘is’. The simple fact of life is that not only that people differ on what the actual truth is (especially when the philosophies in question are religions), but they also manipulate language to suit their purposes. Jews did it, Christians did it and Muslims did it, and we all will continue doing it for as long as we exist as a species. Which means that Islam, like any other religion, can be subject to a reformation – whether good or bad one, no one can tell at this point.
but any philosophy that depends on language having no meaning which is fixed for any practical purpose is no such thing, it’s a pretense.
So when Brian talks about ‘nice’ Islam, he means exactly the same as say Pepys would have, were he to use the same phrase? Of course not -even such a simple word as ‘nice’ has changed over time. You are again missing the point – or what I take to be Ian B’s point.
As Alisa says, people will use (and abuse) language to make their case. You are pretending that Ian B is arguing that this is a good thing. I don’t think he is. He’s just saying it happens and that YOUR insistence on the WORD being immutable is doing the fundamentalist’s job for them. I don’t care if it is bent out of all relationship with Mohammed’s original teachings, because in my view the Koran is no different to every other so-called Holy Book – a pack of fantasies designed to control. As such it means what those in control want it to mean. As Paul points out above, there are internal contradictions in the Koran that will assist in any potential Islamic reformation. We should encourage that, not deny its possibility.
Thanks ian, that is indeed what I was trying to say.
Btw, is there any chance you could use a more distinctive moniker? Things get confusing with several Ians, when there’s one with no “surname”. (That’s why we started having surnames after all; Ian the miller, Ian the cooper, Ian son of John…) ;o)
…the trouble is I’m also Ian B!
Oh my…
I am unclear what protocol dictates in this awkward situation.
You could always use ‘Ian the smutty cartoonist’!
How about “Ian the Greater” and “Ian the Lesser”? (You two can sort out which is which.)
I claim precedence by number of comments posted and my greater ability to annoy Alisa.
You almost read my mind Laird – I was thinking ‘Ian Big’ and ‘Ian Bigger’…
Is ability to annoy Alisa a badge of honor here now?
Yes, but there is only one position, and it is taken.
Ah yes, but I can annoy everyone – and usually do! (and I think I was here first…)
Define “first”.
Samizdata has made what I feel to be an intellectually cowardly decision to block a post of mine so I suspect no one will see this. If they do let this through, it may well be the last I post here in any case, I lurked here happily until Ian B’s indefensible statements went without objection, and I can be content to lurk again.
I have a rejoinder to posts made since this one(Link), it can be found at tomdperkins.blogspot.com.