"Real" Islam and "Islamism"

I reprint below the fold some comments I made in response to a post by Randy McDonald in the course of which again and again commenters try to erect an artificial distinction between violent, intolerant "Islamism" and "real" Islam, which is supposedly a thing of pure love, tolerance and compassion for the dissident, the "deviant" and the unbeliever.

"I would argue that a political philosophy is different from a religion, Abiola. You choose your philosophy."

And you're equally free to choose your religion, whichever one you happen to be born into. I was born into Anglicanism and early on chose of my own free will to cease believing in it or anything else, so I don't buy the notion that one has no choice in such matters. In any case, this is irrelevant: political philosophies and religions are both belief systems, and there's absolutely no justification for assuming that differences in either kind of belief system don't translate into differences in the propensity of their adherents to engage in violence. Lots of people were born into Nazism too, and the Hitler Youth were hardly less fanatical for it, were they?

And when you CHOOSE the religion the way the rest of us choose our political philosophies, you are likely to be nuttier than the average person who was born into that faith.

Evidence, please? Millions of people change their religions all the time, not just in America but in Africa, East Asia and Latin America, and they don't become homicidal lunatics upon doing so: Mormonism and Pentecostalism are growing rapidly, but they aren't sending wave after wave of terrorists into the world.

Looking back at the Inquisition, for example, we know that the issue was not Catholicism per se. It was the political and financial ambitions of Spanish Catholics. Neither Catholicism nor Spanish-ness (Spaniosity?) is intrinsically about sticking-hot-pokers-up-yer-bum.

You're wrong: the Catholicism of the era of the Inquisition was about torture, holy wars and expelling Jews and Muslims from "Christian" soil; the big difference is that today's Catholicism has been so neutered by the Enlightenment and the accompanying general decline in religiosity. If Catholics today still believed as fervently as they did in those days, it's a sure thing that you, I and Randy would soon be twitching from the flames lapping at our feet. The definition of "Spanishness" at the time was also about intolerance and violence, which is why Spain exported all those conquistadors to wreak havoc in Native America.

To say that some ideological notion is part and parcel of a belief system is not to say that said belief system can't change. For example, there once was a time when the concept of the "American voter" didn't extend to blacks or women, but obviously that's no longer true.

The problem is not the religion of Islam. The problem is the political philosophy of Islamism.

This is a meaningless evasion of the facts: "Islam" is whatever Muslims believe, and we have many international polls which clearly tell us that very large percentages of Muslims across the globe believe in what you'd like to call "Islamism", i.e. stoning women and rape victims, amputating the limbs of petty thieves, killing apostates and "blasphemers", carrying out suicide attacks on the "sons of pigs and dogs" and their infidel supporters, etc, etc. These are part and parcel of the belief systems of very substantial percentages of Muslims everywhere in the world today, and you have as much basis for passing the buck to "Islamism" as a non-believer like I would for saying, for instance, that observance of the commendment against working on Shabbat isn't part of "real" Judaism but rather some separate entity called "Orthodoxism."

You can keep trying to avoid facing the facts, but I refuse to go along with meaningless pieties about "real" Islam being all about peace, love and happiness when more than a full third of British Muslims can openly admit in polling that they'd love to tear down the "weak, corrupt" society around them, other of their brethren in Iran choose a hardline hater as President, and yet other of their co-religionists in Nigeria freely elect fanatics who promise to impose Sharia in its full rigor. Judging by the policies and rhetoric they choose to back, if the majority of the Muslims of this world had their way, nearly all of us commenting on this board would not be long for this world, while every last Jewish Israeli would be frogmarched to the nearest open pit to have his or her throat slit.

If I'm wrong, and all these people who insist that Islam has simply been "hijacked" by a "fringe" of fanatics know what they're talking about, why is it that all these Muslim scholars who came out to condemn the London bombings can't bring themselves to say that suicide bombings are terrible wherever they occur? Why is it that one in four* British Muslims can openly admit in a poll to sympathizing with the fanatics who maimed and murdered hundreds of their fellow citizens, while 56* percent are willing to go on the record as "understanding" [sic] why people would act in such a fashion? How can it be that fully a third of respondents in said poll can say they'd like to bring a "decadent" Western society "to an end?"

It's well past time we cast aside the nonsensical distinctions between "genuine" vs. "perverted" Islam and faced up to the realities that confront us: Muslims are not delicate little snowflakes unable to withstand scrutiny, and there'll be little incentive for them to cast a critical eye on the present state of their faith we until we stop treating them as such.

*These are almost surely substantial understatements of the true extent of these feelings: with questions like these or those involving other touchy issues like gay rights, interracial marriage and so forth, a lot of people tend to put their best foot forward, giving what they think the larger society considers the "right" answers.

Comments

[angua]

Can I go one record as not being a proponent of the "Islam is all about sunshine and fuzzy bunnies" theory. I emphatically do NOT think that Islamism is a hijacking of Islam or a tiny invisible fringe of Islam. Many Muslims are Islamist, as you note. I do think that the two things are different, and we need to define them correctly in order to fight the correct enemy.

I guess I see it kind of like Judaism vs. Zionism. There is nothing intrinsically Zionist about Judaism -- in fact, traditional Judaism is all about NOT gathering together in Jerusalem until the messiah comes. Just because, these days, most Jews are Zionist, does not mean that Zionism is necessarily a Jewish thing.

I guess I am trying to be fair, because of the ignorant bigots *I* have to put up with. Israeli != Jew != Zionist != Christ-killer != "some guy with a hooked nose controlling Bush through evil mind-waves while shooting Palestinian infants for target practice". If you want to hate me, then hate me for *my* sins, not the perceived sins of "my kind". People who rant about Jews or Judaism when they disagree with Zionism or with Israeli policies are wasting their rant power.

So, similarly, Muslim != "a guy who wants to create a 12th century califate via a program of suicide bombing, homosexual-beheading, and FGM".

Or, at least, I sure hope not, otherwise we are all in serious trouble.

[Chuckles]

The problem with views such as those above is that we have neither the time, nor the resources to be nice.
There is a malignant, prolific tumor in place and trying to avoid "getting the good cells" in surgery might as well lead to the death of the entire system.

[...If you want to hate me, then hate me for *my* sins, not the perceived sins of "my kind"...]

Perceived sins? Are we being facetious? And if *your* kind are actively supporting, aiding, abbetting, comforting and working with you; what then?

[...do think that the two things are different, and we need to define them correctly in order to fight the correct enemy...]

The correct enemy is always an idea and those who subscribe to it. Islam encourages terrorism. Islam promotes it. How do you know that the suicide bombers arent the "true" Moslems and that everybody else is on their way to hell?

[Ol Cranky]

The problem is religious fundamentalism, not Islam itself. The fundamentalist Christians that subscribe to the notion that legislation must be in line with their religious beliefs have more in common with fundamentalist Islam than they'd ever admit. While in practice, American fundamentalist Christians have not engaged in the degree of terrorism that the raging Islamacists have the world itself has an awful lot of experience with Christian extremism/terrorism.

[Abiola Lapite]

"Many Muslims are Islamist, as you note. I do think that the two things are different, and we need to define them correctly in order to fight the correct enemy."

It appears that all you're doing here is using "Islamist" as a synonym for "violent." I repeat: Islam is whatever Muslims practice, not what you'd like to say it is.

"I guess I am trying to be fair, because of the ignorant bigots *I* have to put up with. Israeli != Jew != Zionist != Christ-killer != "some guy with a hooked nose controlling Bush through evil mind-waves while shooting Palestinian infants for target practice"."

"Israeli" is a nationality, not a religion or a belief system (though a shared cultural conception of "genuine Israeliness" would certainly be the latter).

"If you want to hate me, then hate me for *my* sins, not the perceived sins of "my kind"."

Acknowledging the blazingly obvious fact that mainstream Islamic practice encourages many pernicious practices is *not* the same thing as refusing to treat each Muslim one deals with as an individual.

You write as if one were accusing Muslims of suffering a hereditary blood guilt or something, when the point at issue is that there are certain beliefs which naturally go with being an observant Muslim, at least as that term is defined in most Muslim communities in the world today, e.g. that Israel must be wiped off the map, that homosexuals should be killed, that apostates from Islam must die, that thieves ought to have their hands amputated, that men are "entitled" to up to four wives each, etc. Individual Muslims may or may not believe these things, but that doesn't mean they aren't part and parcel of what Muslim clerics are preaching all around the globe. Nothing similar can be said for most rabbis outside of the miniscule group of Kahanist types.

[Chuckles]

[...when the point at issue is that there are certain beliefs which naturally go with being an observant Muslim, at least as that term is defined in most Muslim communities in the world today, e.g. that Israel must be wiped off the map...]

This fits nicely in here. I grabbed a copy of a constitution of the "New Democratic Iraq" over the weekend.

http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/BillofRights.pdf

It is telling that the June 30 al-Mada draft contained the following causes which were expunged from latter drafts:

[...3. Any individual with another nationality (except for Israel) may obtain Iraqi nationality after a period of residency inside the borders of Iraq of not less than ten years for an Arab or twenty years for any other nationality, as long as he has good character and behavior, and has no criminal judgment against him from the Iraqi authorities during the time of his residency on the territory of the Iraqi republic.

4. An Iraqi may have more than one nationality as long as the nationality is not Israeli...]

And there it is!

[Abiola Lapite]

"The problem is religious fundamentalism, not Islam itself."

Pure, unadulterated p.c. bollocks.

"The fundamentalist Christians that subscribe to the notion that legislation must be in line with their religious beliefs have more in common with fundamentalist Islam than they'd ever admit."

This is a distraction from the issue under discussion. Spare me the red herring: we aren't talking about the sins of the American Religious Right, but about the nature of the relationship between Islam and violence, misogyny, homophobia and religious intolerance.

As for the "fundamentalist Islam" bit: going by the textbook definition of that term, i.e, one who insists on the inerrancy of some holy scripture, *every* believing Muslim is a "fundamentalist", as it is a key tenet of Islam that the Koran is the pure and inerrant word of Allah himself.

"While in practice, American fundamentalist Christians have not engaged in the degree of terrorism that the raging Islamacists have the world itself has an awful lot of experience with Christian extremism/terrorism."

Again, nobody is discussing or even making the claim that fervent Christians are and have always been pure sweetness and light, though you'd be hard pressed to point out large numbers of Christians today who are engaging in religiously-motivated violence of the sort presently all too typical of Muslims. Even if every Christian were a devil in disguise, that would in no way minimize the culpability of most supposedly "non-fundamentalist" Muslims who acquiesce in or silently give moral support to the actions of their more violent brethren.

[Andrew]

The claim that genuine Islam is peaceful (or whatever) seems to me at least partly a rhetorical ploy aimed to reclaim (or claim) Islam away from the Islamists. There is a conflict within Islam between liberal and reactionary strains and it seems like a sensible move for each side to say they are the "real" Islam. For Western politicians to say that the liberal strains are the real Islam is to signal support for that side within the intra-religious conflict, as opposed to blanket opposition to all forms of Islam. As for those liberals who silently acquiesce in Islamism, the schema that Islamists have "betrayed" Islam can be a useful tool to spur them to opose Islamism more openly.

I sense a similar move in the contested nature of American "patriotism" - many conservatives will claim that any opposition to American policies is "anti-American," while many liberals will retort that "genuine Americanness" is a commitment dissent, openness, freedom, and so on. Or indeed within Christianity - many liberal Christians will say that fundamentalists have perverted Jesus's message of love (or whatever), e.g. the book "Stealing Jesus." The appeal to essentialism may or may not be a helpful tool analytically, but it can be quite powerful rhetorically and politically.

[hercules]

"that men are "entitled" to up to four wives each"

Abiola, I gather you're a self-proclaimed libertarian. Am wondering how a libertarian can have issues with "consensual" polygyny.

[Abiola Lapite]

You put the scare quotes around "consensual" yourself, so why do you need me to lecture you?

[dsquared]

There's an obvious libertarian argument to be made here; a consistent libertarian would be opposed to all kinds of marriage since it's an example of the state privilegeing one particular kind of contract above other kinds (and thus giving, for example, rights to heterosexuals which are denied to heterosexuals). However, given that the state does in fact give a legal basis to marriage contracts, it's obviously far better if the particular form of marriage contract they endorse isn't one that's systematically biased against women (by allowing polygamy but not polyandry).

[J.Cassian]

The problem with the "Islam is a peaceful religion" mantra is that there's no avoiding the fact that Islam started life as an aggressive, imperialistic religion. Other faiths may have become aggressive and imperialistic during certain phases of their history, but Islam was actually founded by a warlord. So when violent Muslim fundamentalists claim they are returning their religion to its original purity, it's a lot more difficult to argue they've got their facts wrong. Of course, Islam later developed in some relatively peaceful, civilised directions, but arguing that violence against non-believers is utterly alien to the true spirit of the religion is probably just self-delusion.

[Mrs Tilton]

One technical point. The Spanish Inquisition was not specifically Roman Catholic, but rather specifically Spanish. The SI was staffed by churchmen, but they held their inquisitorial office of the Spanish Crown, not the Holy See. The SI was an office established by the Spanish state, against no little initial resistance from Rome. (Such resistance stemmed not from concern the Spaniards would be insuffiently nice to heretics, but at the idea of a churchly office not ultimately answerable to the Pope.)

The SI should not be confused with the Roman Inquisition, which *was* an office of the Holy See and which survives to this day (under a more cosmetically appealing name; it was run by Cardinal Ratzinger prior to his recent promotion). Sadly for Ratzinger and his successor as Chief Inquisitor, the remedies available to a modern inquisitor are rather less dramatic than those their forebears could employ.

Ironically, the Spanish Inquistion may have a better record in some respects than other Church persecutorial offices. Sure, they had any number of autos-da-fé to their name, but they did insist on certain procedural and evidentiary standards not then generally respected. They quickly put a stop to witchcraft enquiries during the European witch craze, for example (the inquisitors had determined the accusations were paranoid fantasies at best). As a result, far fewer people were killed as witches in Spain than elsewhere in (RC or protestant) Europe. The SI was also quick to clear up malicious allegations made against a number of Spaniards, including Teresa de Avila and Juan de la Cruz (both of Converso descent, by the way, and hence natural targets of the SI). Teresa and Juan are revered by the Church as saints today but were highly unpopular with authorities at the time; not a few people in Spain would have been glad to see them by firelight, as it were.

Anyway, say what you will of the Spanish Inquisition, it remains the case that no one expects it.

As to the whole Islamic thing: J. Cassian is correct that, after Muhammed's initial vision, Islam very quickly became a "crusading" faith (if you will). However, one could say the same thing with some justice of Christianity. Jesus and his disciples were far from warlords, of course, and the prime earthly concern of the earliest Christian generations was usually avoiding martyrdom when possible. If you define Christianity as "the Church" rather than as "the community of Jesus's followers", however, Christianity can be said to have been founded by the Roman Emperors Constantine (who, ironically, became a Christian only on his deathbed, and then of an unorthodox variant) and especially Theodosius, who established the Church as the religion of the Empire. To the extent Christianity spread under the aegis of the kingly sword (wielded in the Empire itself or by such flea-bitten Western savages as Chlodwig), it spread in a manner very like that of early Islam, and without even lip-service paid to the rights of other "peoples of the Book".

I am perfectly happy to acknowledge that a distressingly high percentage of Muslims are prepared to assent, at least in some degree, to the use of violence. What is inconvenient for those who argue that violence is inherent in Islam is that there are apparently also large numbers of Muslims who do not so assent. If violence aginst the nonbeliever (or believers of the wrong variant) is an intergal part of their religion, they had better get with the programme. Islam clearly does have a lot of violent antimodernists (as well as a lot of sneaking regarders of same). But I don't think it can be fairly be said that Islam today is worse in this regard than was Christianity in the past -- or would be today if fundamentalist and dominionist Christians had their way.

[Abiola Lapite]

"What is inconvenient for those who argue that violence is inherent in Islam is that there are apparently also large numbers of Muslims who do not so assent."

There are large numbers of Christians who do not assent to the total condemnation of homosexuality, but that doesn't mean Western hatred of homosexual activity doesn't have its roots in Christianity - it clearly does, as homosexual couplings were nothing remarkable in the pagan world (witness the love of Hadrian for Antinous).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinous

It's going to take real ingenuity to argue that the Koran and the Hadiths don't call for, say, the death sentence for apostates.

"If violence aginst the nonbeliever (or believers of the wrong variant) is an intergal part of their religion, they had better get with the programme."

Or maybe they should just try reading the relevant passages in the Quran and Sahih al-Bukhari.

http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/bukhari/052.sbt.html

Just because some people are laxer in their zeal for practicing their nominal religion doesn't mean the religion doesn't imply certain things, and if you want your argument otherwise to be taken seriously, you're going to have to explain why Palestinian, Iraqi, Egyptian and Nigerian Christians who live under the same conditions as their Muslim neighbors haven't played anywhere near as major a role in propagating terror and intolerance in the name of Jesus Christ.

"But I don't think it can be fairly be said that Islam today is worse in this regard than was Christianity in the past -- or would be today if fundamentalist and dominionist Christians had their way."

1 - We aren't talking about the Christianity of the past, but of the Islam of the present, so this is an irrelevancy.

2 - The fact is that the " fundamentalist and dominionist Christians" *don't* have their way, and no polling data suggests anything like as wide support for Dominionist extremism amongst devout Christians as there is for amputations, stonings and "martyrdom operations" amongst Muslims. "Fundamentalist" pentecostalism is thriving in Latin America and Africa without giving rise to medieval punishments and violent expansionism.

[Andrew]

" "Islam" is whatever Muslims believe"

"Just because some people are laxer in their zeal for practicing their nominal religion doesn't mean the religion doesn't imply certain things"

So if eventually all (or most) Muslims repudiated the offending verses of the Koran, or interpreted "jihad" as something more like spiritual struggle to improve oneself rather than physical warfare against nonbelievers, and adopted nonviolence, would we say that Islam no longer implied violence? Or that Islam is still a violent religion, and Muslims were no longer following the "real Islam"?

[Mrs Tilton]

"We aren't talking about the Christianity of the past, but of the Islam of the present, so this is an irrelevancy."

Some people (I do not say you are among them) like to claim that violence and support for violence as inherent to (not merely widespread among adherents of) Islam. The example of historical Christianity is precisely relevant here.

Historically, Christian violence against the 'infidel' and the 'heretic' is at least as prominent a feature of the religion as the analogous Islamic violence is today. (Indeed rather more prominent, I'd say, though Christian terrorists of ages past lacked the technology available to Muslim terrorists today.) Bar the occasional Eric Rudolph, this is no longer so. How, then, does Christianity then differ from Islam now? If Christianity can evolve into a religion that largely eschews the violence it once used with such enthusiasm, why is it inconceivable that Islam do the same?

[Abiola Lapite]

Andrew,

If all those wonderful things you suggest happened, yes, Islam could no longer be legitimately described as a violent religion, as the "real" Islam is whatever Muslims consider to be normative.

Unfortunately, what is considered normative today is all that bloodcurdling stuff which one requires no great effort to find solid textual support for, and in what are currently considered the most authoritative sources even by the most highly respected Muslim scholars: no collection of hadiths is more highly regarded today amongst Sunnis than those of al-Bukhari, for example, but that is precisely the collection in which so much barbarism is to be found.

Mrs Tilton,

I explicitly mention the possibility of the evolution of Islam in my post, in the passage in which I said the following:

["To say that some ideological notion is part and parcel of a belief system is not to say that said belief system can't change. For example, there once was a time when the concept of the "American voter" didn't extend to blacks or women, but obviously that's no longer true."]

There'd be little point in arguing for giving Islam more critical scrutiny if I didn't believe that Islam was capable of change - if that were true, the LGF position really *would* be the only option left - but such change will only come under intense pressure, not through going on and on about "the peaceful religion" being "hijacked" by "a small group" and other such manifest nonsense.

[Frank McGahon]

"If Christianity can evolve into a religion that largely eschews the violence it once used with such enthusiasm, why is it inconceivable that Islam do the same?"

It isn't inconceivable, far from it. The problem is that clutching at that remote prospect as some sort of consolation is a good way of ensuring it remains a remote prospect. How is this "evolution" supposed to take place in the absence of (selection) pressure against the violence, bigotry, intolerance and suprematism within mainstream Islam.

[radek]

"Ironically, the Spanish Inquistion may have a better record in some respects than other Church persecutorial offices"

...and many civil offices as well. In fact, if I remember correctly the legal way of sending someone to be burned at the stake was not to sentence them 'to be burned' but rather 'to be turned over to lay authority', which said authority had many less qualms about torture, the accused's rights (whereas some, however few, did exist in the Church courts) and taking of life itself, which the Church was forbidden to do - hence the need for the legal loophole.

(Also I think this is the major reason behind historians' disputes as to the number of deaths due to the inquisition. Was someone burned by the order of the local duke or because of the Inquisition? Hard to tell)

And yes, the Spanish Inquisition was independent of Rome and various Pope's even made efforts to supress it in the same way that the See turned on the Jesuits (who are often for some reason associated with the Inquisition even though it was the Dominicans who ran it) later. So if anything it reflects a particularly Spanish form of Catholicism rather than a Catholic Catholicism - though this might be splitting hairs. On the other hand, some of the previous Inquisitions weren't very nice either - particularly during the Albigenesian Crusade.

Anyway, from what I've read there's been a good deal of 'revisionist' historical research recently (past 30 years or so) - some of it pushed by the Catholic Church - which basically argues that the methods and verdicts of the Inquisitions were bad as judged by modern standards but actually fairly progressive if judged against the judicial standards of the lay and civil courts prevelant at the time. For what it's worth.

[Chuckles]

1. Xtians today arent slaughtering heretics like they did in the past.

2. Islam may well finds its own reformation.

These are the two cardinal points raised by those who refuse to believe that violence isnt inhered in Islam.

The point about "most muslims not killing others" is really neither here nor there. Most Germans didnt kill Jews.

As to those two points, the simple fact remains: Violent Xtianity was tamed because people recognized that Xtianity (and NOT some "violent strain" of it) - was a fundamental problem. The attacks upon religion by the enlightenment thinkers was not against a "variant" of Xtianity - It was against the entire system; critiquing its belief system for all it was worth.

Today, pretending that Islam has a violent strain which is the result of "hijacking" obscures from the needed task - To turn the spotlight on Islam and attack the entire system.

This was how Xtianity was tamed - Because people recognized the Church (then) and its religion to be the problem. Taming Islam demands the same - The Problem is the Ummah and its Religion. Speaking of those who have "hijacked" a religion of peace just postpones the evil day of scrutiny, self judgment and introspection.

[Mrs Tilton]

Abiola,

as I noted, I do not accuse you of staking out an 'essentialist' position here (let alone of being an LGF-symp). That such positions are common in discussions such as this one is, however, the case; this needs to be resisted as firmly as any other sort of idiocy, not least because this particular brand of idiocy easily leads to an eliminationist agenda.

[Mrs Tilton]

Radek,

the various inquisitions 'turned people over to the secular arm' for execution because the inquisitors' remit was just that -- as inquisitors, not executioners. It had nothing to do with the Church itself not wishing to 'bloody its hands'. In the Papal States, of course, the Church was the 'secular arm' as well, and as such ignited heretics with gay abandon.

It's fair to note that the Spanish Inquistion often observed procedural formalities that other courts of the day more frequently observed in the breach. If the present-day RC church wishes to find some comfort in that thought, for whatever it may be worth, they are welcome to it.

[J.Cassian]

"Muslims, like Christians, governed and made war; like them too, they managed to involve their religion in both activities. But in the manner and the nature of the two involvements there were great differences. The Founder of Christianity bade his followers 'render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things which are God's' - and for three centuries Christianity grew as a religion of the oppressed, until Caesar himself became a Christian and imitated the processes by which the Church became involved in the State, and the State in the Church. The Founder of Islam was his own Constantine. During his lifetime, the Muslims became a political as well as a religious community, with the Prophet as sovereign - governing a place and a people, dispensing justice, collecting taxes, commanding armies, conducting diplomacy, and waging war. For the early generations of Muslim, there was no long testing by persecution, no apprenticeship to an alien and hostile state power. On the contrary, the state was their own, and the divine favour manifested itself to them in this world in the form of success, victory and empire." (Bernard Lewis)

Which suggests that it's going to be a little more difficult to tame the Islamic fundamentalists. You can deal with Christians and Buddhists by pointing out to them that violence is not what their founders would have wanted; Mohammed's a tougher nut to crack.

Frank was right to mention suprematism. I think the key element linking all Islamists is the sense that the natural state of things is for Muslims to be the top dogs. Hence they feel there's something very wrong with the contemporary world order. Islam started off as a tremendously successful faith in worldly terms, rapidly gaining a huge empire; over the past centuries it has declined and been superseded by non-Muslims. The fundamentalists attribute this decline not to a failure to adapt to modernity but to a lack of faith and the "evil actions" of non-Muslims. This is a lot more attractive than undergoing painful self-examination and it explains the fact that even the more moderate Muslims seem to be in a permanent state of denial (especially when they resort to "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" type conspiracism). So I think part of the solution is they need a lot more critical analysis, preferably from the inside, but forced on them from the outside if necessary without any cop-outs like calling even the mildest bit of less than sympathetic scrutiny "Islamophobia".

(As for persecution of heretics, Islam's had plenty of that. Just read about the Ottoman Sultan Selim the Grim's campaigns against the Shi'ites. In fact, Sunnis are still burning "heretics" today as many a recent worshipper in a Shi'ite mosque in Pakistan has discovered to their cost.)

[Abiola Lapite]

"I think the key element linking all Islamists is the sense that the natural state of things is for Muslims to be the top dogs. Hence they feel there's something very wrong with the contemporary world order. Islam started off as a tremendously successful faith in worldly terms, rapidly gaining a huge empire; over the past centuries it has declined and been superseded by non-Muslims. The fundamentalists attribute this decline not to a failure to adapt to modernity but to a lack of faith and the "evil actions" of non-Muslims. This is a lot more attractive than undergoing painful self-examination and it explains the fact that even the more moderate Muslims seem to be in a permanent state of denial (especially when they resort to "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" type conspiracism)."

Exactly! This is precisely the problem, reconciling the current poverty and impotence of Islam with a history of rapid conquest and cultural superiority. If the fault cannot lie within the religion, then it obviously must lie with those who practice it, for deviating from the "pure" faith of the 7th century; ergo, all one has to do is restore that "purified" faith and the earthly ascendancy will be restored also ...

[Jim]

"Hence they feel there's something very wrong with the contemporary world order. Islam started off as a tremendously successful faith in worldly terms, rapidly gaining a huge empire; over the past centuries it has declined and been superseded by non-Muslims. "

This also describes the trajectory of Marxist experiments. That may help explain both the similar bitter and angry tone of these people and also their strange affinity for each other (at east until one side or the other starts to win out.)

[Gareth]

Maybe we need some speech act theory here.

When someone says, "Islam is a religion of peace and equality," she is not making a descriptive statement about the beliefs of the set of persons claiming to be Muslims, she is making a programmatic statement about what Muslims ought to be. You cannot refute the statement by showing any number of violent or intolerant Muslims.