I normally just post a link to a post on Hullabaloo. But this post by David Atkins is so good and spot on that I had to paste the entire thing.
But I always put in a link as well. That's only fair.
Greenwald and Maher are both wrong
by David Atkins
It has been interesting to me to watch the various reactions to the
dispute between Bill Maher and Glenn Greenwald.
People tend to see the winner of the debate as the one who confirmed
their own prior views. Maher's argument is that Islam is a uniquely
violent religion; Greenwald's is that there's no difference between
Islam and any other religion, but that U.S. imperialism is to blame for
any differential blowback.
But the evidence would dictate that they're
both wrong. Both of
their arguments are too simplistic to be taken seriously, and both are
easily assailable. We'll start with Greenwald's.
Falsehood #1: "Imperialism is to blame for everything." Yes, we all know: imperialism is
bad. Imperialism begets
blowback.
One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. All of this is
true. But on the question Maher puts, those answers are sleight of hand.
The debater in Greenwald's position would have to argue that
predominantly Muslim nations have suffered imperialistic horrors so
disproportionate to the experiences of other nations and cultures that
their reactions must be equivalently disproportionate. On that front,
Greenwald's argument totally falls apart.
It would be hard to argue that the average citizen of Iran or Saudi
Arabia has suffered more greatly from racism and violence than have the
victims of U.S. backed military juntas and death squads in
Guatemala,
Honduras, Argentina or El Salvador. Yes, the U.S. coup against
Mossadegh in Iran and interposition of the corrupt Shah surely led to
the rise of the Ayatollahs. But it's also true that the U.S. did
far worse
in Chile when we deposed Allende in favor of the brutally awful war
criminal and genocidal maniac Augusto Pinochet. Few honest people would
argue that Iran suffered more mightily under the Shah than Chile did
under Pinochet. It's not as if the U.S. didn't covet Chile's copper just
as surely it did Iran's oil. And yet, Chileans didn't take hostages at a
U.S. embassy, nor are they threatening to use nuclear weapons against
the rest of the world. Did the U.S. arm the Afghan mujahideen against
the Soviets, and then abandon them to their fate? Yes, and it led
directly to the rise of Bin Laden. But we also did the same thing in
Vietnam with far worse carnage. Somehow our far less atrocious
involvement in Afghanistan led to the current predicament, while not
even the horrors of My Lai set in motion a Vietnamese assault on the
World Trade Center.
It would be difficult to argue that Estonians or Latvians somehow
suffered less imperial oppression at the hands of the Soviet Union than
did the Chechens. And yet the result is dramatically different. It would
be difficult to say that the Muslim Uighur people in Western China have
suffered more greatly under Chinese rule than have the Tibetans. And
yet,
the reaction has been markedly different.
Palestine is not the only place in the world to be occupied at length
by an unfriendly power, but it does seem to be uniquely intractable in
ways that, say, the oppression of African-Americans in the South or of
black Africans under Apartheid was not. Despite having experienced
arguably more horrific slaughter and oppression than any other group,
Native peoples in the new world aren't constructing secret terror cells
in retaliation. It would be difficult to argue that Indians were somehow
less oppressed by the British in 1920 than Pakistanis are by Americans
today. The Holocausted Jews and Armenians might also have something to
say about reacting malevolent oppression in ways that don't involve the
intentional, indiscriminate murder of innocent civilians (and no,
Greenwald's argument that targeted bombings that accidentally kill
civilians are in the same moral space as terroristic acts that
target
civilians isn't even worth addressing). One could go on and on here
without even bringing up death threats against cartoonists or bombing
schools that dare to educate girls, both of which are also unique to
certain cultures. The evidence that something unique is going on in the
Muslim world beyond simple reaction to imperial oppression is so plainly
obvious that to deny it is to be embarrassingly and willfully defiant
of logic, reason and perspective. Maher's mockery of Greenwald for
failing to see the self-evident was wholly justified.
Not that Maher wasn't deserving of ridicule himself. Which leads us to:
Falsehood #2: "Islam is uniquely violent." Maher and every other person who believes this is true should probably take a history class and write a series of
mea culpae
on the blackboard. There is nothing more problematic about Islam as a
religion more than any other when viewed in historical context. Even
ignoring ancient times, the history of the Christian era alone should be
enough to disabuse anyone of the notion that Islam is somehow more
inherently violent than other religions.
Islam has a long and proud history going back well over a millennium.
Islamic scholars have been responsible for countless advances in the
sciences and in philosophy, including at a time when most of Christian
Europe was busy burning as much of its intellectual heritage as it
could. That the same Christian world that perpetrated the Crusades and
the Wars of Reformation would dare imply that Islam is somehow
intrinsically belligerent is ludicrous. It was Christians who fought the
American Civil War, Christians who perpetrated many of the awful evils
of World Wars I and II. It was a born-again Christian President who lied
an entire country into an illegal and immoral war against a majority
Muslim country that had done nothing to us.
Nor do non-Christians get off easy. The worst crimes against humanity in
history were perpetrated by Stalin and Mao Tse-Tung, neither of them
Christian or Muslim. Pol Pot deserves an honorable mention, as does
Ataturk.
If there is anything uniquely problematic about Islam versus other
cultures and religions, it somehow didn't seem to manifest until the
last century when the Middle East suddenly became hot property for
imperialistic, oil-centered conquests. Which in turn means that the
problem isn't Islam. It's something else. Imperialism is, of course, the
easy target. But we've already covered why that explanation is wholly
inadequate.
So what is going on?
Well, it turns out that it's not that complicated. Maher and Greenwald
are both right, and they're both wrong. Yes, the problem has much to do
with oil, imperialism and oppression. But it's not quite as simple moral
relativist academics might like it to be. And yes, the problem is
religion--but not in the way that Maher thinks it is.
The problem, as it is everywhere, is fundamentalism. The
problem that causes anti-choice terrorists to bomb abortion clinics,
Timothy McVeigh to blow up a federal building or Eric Rudolph to bomb
innocents at the Olympics, is the
same problem that causes so
many Muslims to become entrapped in terrorism and anti-progressive
movements. It's a struggle against modernity and against progressivism
that occurs :
1) whenever religion of any kind is allowed to be the sole driving force
of organizational activity in resistance to oppression, and
2) when people are free enough to congregate and resist without being
enslaved or mass murdered, but not free enough to hope for true social
advancement.
This is true in many parts of conservative America, just as it is true
in Sri Lanka where the Tamil Tigers emerged. It is also true in much of
the oil-producing world, where vast oil wealth mingles with massive
inequality and exploitation. The ease of financing a government with oil
money tempts elites into creating an economy without a substantial
middle-class tax base, and without a voice of the people in government.
The people are free enough to be angry and act on that anger, but not
free enough to succeed or create real change. This is when
fundamentalist religion is most dangerous.
This is true everywhere, regardless of whether the people in question are Christian or Muslim.
And indeed, one of the more depressing dynamics in American politics is
the immediate hope on both sides after any terrorist act that a member
of the other tribe be implicated. Conservatives hope to see a Muslim
terrorist implicated, while liberals hope it's a right-wing terrorist
extremist. This is pointless and foolish. In fact, progressives should
simply note that
there's barely a breath of difference between the two. As I said back in 2010:
there isn't much separation between the fundamentalist
extremists on the far right in America, and the fundamentalist
extremists in the Islamist movement worldwide. Both want to subjugate
women under patriarchal authority, keep gays in the closet, elevate
scriptural authority over secular law, and resolve problems foreign and
domestic with harsh violence including the torture and killing of
civilians. They are peas in a pod.
Fundamentalism of any nature causes extraordinary harm. Fundamentalists
believe that the ends justify the means, and that their ideology cannot
fail--only people can fail their ideology. Christian and Islamist
fundamentalists alike attribute any ills befalling the world as a sign
of inadequate obeisance to their God, and do whatever it takes to remake
the world more in keeping with their scriptural dogma. Market
fundamentalists elevate the "free market" as a divinely infallible
authority, attributing even the most obvious market and corporate
failures to intrusions of "big government", and offer up only more
deregulation, tax cuts and the occasional military coup as a solution.
Even Marxist fundamentalists exist, looking at the failures of Stalin,
Mao and Pol Pot not as refutations of their dogma, but as inadequate
implementations of their ideology. The end result of all of these
fundamentalist beliefs is mindless tragedy, violence and death.
The implication of a fundamentalist extremist in an act of violence
should never be a cause for cheering by our political opponents.
Rather, any such event should be a teaching moment for us to implicate
extremists of all kinds, and to reinforce the universality of violence
based on religious dogma.
Any attempt to provide context or justification for these acts of terror
is also misguided. Certainly, the U.S. and the West in general have a
spotty record in the Middle East. Anyone familiar with the names
Mohammed Mossadegh or Charlie Wilson would admit to that upfront. But
no act of American foreign policy in that region or any other begins to
provide even significant context, much less justification, for
premeditated acts of violence designed expressly to kill and terrorize a
civilian population. As well might we cite Thomas Frank and the slow
implosion of the American middle class as context or justification for
the terrorist acts of killers like Scott Roeder or Timothy McVeigh. No
one should make any excuse for these abominable creatures; similarly, no
excuses should be made for the likes of Richard Reid or (allegedly)
Faisal Shahzad.
Simply put, there is evil in this world that harbors no excuses for its
actions: its name is fundamentalism. It's time for progressives to end
the cycle of left-right tribalism over which fundamentalists are more
dangerous or need more context. It's time to simply paint them with a
single brush, and offer our alternative for a better, safer, more
rational, more peaceful and more humane world.
Both
Greenwald and Maher are wrong. This isn't about imperialism or about
Islam. This is about fundamentalism, and the need to uproot it in favor
of a more ecumenical, open-minded progressivism wherever it exists.
.
thereisnospoon 5/12/2013 07:30:00 AM
