Monday, November 16, 2009

Re: Muslims for Choice   [Jonah Goldberg]

Mark — Interesting point. It reminded me of an e-mail I got last week that I thought was particularly interesting and provocative. FWIW:

Dear Jonah

I am 34 years old, born in the U.S., raised as a (nominal) Muslim in Iran, and returned back to the U.S. in 1990 (thank Goodness). I converted to Catholicism in 2002, and became a reservist in the Navy (through the Direct Commission Officer program) in 2004. Growing up in Iran, religious instructions in schools started in 1st grade. Sixth grade is when our religious instructions began in earnest by the Basij goons (the true believers) and their fellow-travelers. My family and I left Iran after I finished 9th grade, but by that time I had had a steady ideological diet on Supremacy of Islam, the place for dhimmis, the primacy of Jihad and martyrdom for years. With this background, may I offer a few observations:

1) Islam is indeed the problem. Although I can, I will spare you recitation of chapter and verse in the Qur'an were Muslims are called to Jihad and establishing the global caliphate.

2) I agree with you that we should not "out loud" call Islam the problem. There are many muslims which are peaceful, because they actually are NOT either very devout or do not pay particularly close attention to pertinent violent passages. To the extent practical, we should refrain from poking them in the eye over the barbarity of the true form of their religion.

3) Having displayed my "sensitivity and inclusivity" bona fides in point #2, I don't think we should shrink from calling attention to the fact that our enemy is Violent Islam. This is for our own population's benefit. People in the West (and Americans particularly) in large majorities have fully internalize the fact that Violent Islam poses an existential threat to the long term survivability of Western Civilization, and therefore the future of their progeny. It is entirely irrelevant if Violent Islam is the true Islam, a fake one, or a fringe element. What is important is that it's followers be killed or disabled, one way or the other. There is no converting these people, trust me.

4) The long term solution to Violent Islam, I sincerely believe, is some form of mellow nationalism. In Iran, the teachings of the Basij people had relatively little impact on any of us. One of the chief reasons is because Iranians have a very strong sense of nationhood. They consider themselves Iranian first, Muslim second. Doctrine of Jihad has relatively shallow influence on someone with mooring in something other than Islam. Notice that you see very few Iranian suicide bombers. You don't see many Turks pulling the chord on their suicide belts either. The Iranian regime financing and support of terrorism is another matter entirely.

5) Having said that, inculcating and nurturing a sense of nationhood in Arab lands, Pakistan and Afghanistan is an exceedingly difficult task. There is a very nebulous sense of nationhood in these places as I am sure you know. What binds people is tribalism and Islam, which is as noxious of a combination as you can get. Whatever the mechanism, the West has to encourage the formation of as secular a notion of nationalism as it possibly can in these places. I instinctively cringe at the concept of secular nationalism (which is poisonous to the West), because you often end up with effete bunch of pantywaists like the French, or brutal aggressors like the Germans or Russians. But if somehow we could inculcate the French-pantywaistism in Muslim lands, maybe they would be too busy complaining about the cloudiness of the wine or runiness of the hummus to consider murderous Jihad. I am of course being flippant, but honestly, short of turning the whole place into glowing radioactive glass, I don't see any other cure which preserve the life of our own citizenry in the short- to medium-term.

11/16 01:22 PMShare