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    Why People Say Islam is Violent & Other Realizations

    Filed Under from the heart, heteropatriarchy, islam, politics, questions, race, religion 

    Yesterday morning, as we set off for our hike in the woods, Michael read aloud a paragraph or two from one of his Pat Buchanan books: the gist was that (non white) Muslims are out-breeding European Christians in Europe, and that if the increasingly non-church going Europeans didn’t get it together and start thinking collectively, the Muslims would be in a position to move in and take everything.

    Initially I expressed disgust at this. “Why don’t people get it?” I said. “Muslims don’t have any kind of centralized authority.” There’s no Pope-like figure - and in the US at least, there is no equivalent to a UUA, where all masaajid (mosques) or religious leaders are accountable to a larger body. I complained that people keep expecting Muslims to “stop” these terrorists, but it’s not like the average Muslim knows any terrorists or condones terrorism. What are Muslims supposed to do to “prove” they aren’t down with terrorism? I also went on a rant about how the Powers-That-Be limit the conversation about terrorism: either you are apologizing for terrorism, or you are down with US interference and/or control in Muslim countries. It puts Muslims in a bad spot, and it’s frustrating.

    We talked about this for pretty much all 95 minutes of the hike. I can’t recount every point made or even every phase of the discussion, but Michael’s argument was that individual Muslims don’t have to condone terrorism or violence - and that theologically there may be NO agreement with the violent actions of terrorism - but on the whole, Muslims have allowed violence to exist in and arise out of their communities.

    One of the good things about living with a lifelong atheist is that when I talk with him about religion, he can respond without trying to protect his own.

    “Would you say that the Crusades was an act of Christians?” he asked.

    I said yes, of course it was.

    He said, “I think it was likely that there were Christians all over Europe who thought it was a bad idea, who didn’t agree with it, who didn’t want it. Don’t you?”

    I said sure, probably.

    “But you still say the Crusades were Christian, don’t you?”

    I said yes.

    “When our government chooses to fight a war in another country, does it matter if only 20% of the people turned out to votet? Isn’t it still America that is at war - regardless of whether each individual American wants to be there?”

    I said yes, that was true.

    “Does each individual American have a responsibility for that war? Can they sit back and say, ‘Oh no, I’m a nice person. That’s not my war. I don’t have anything to do with that. I don’t believe in war?’”

    He referred to the notion of emergent phenomenon. “In relation to this topic, the basic idea is that each individual in a group may not be violent, but because of the way the group is structured and works, the group itself can commit very violent acts. So even though each individual piece has no violence in them, the group itself can be violent.”

    He also compared this to racism in the US - how can a town full of nice white people also be a town where a lynching occurs?

    I’m beginning to understand why people honestly believe that Islam is a violent religion. It’s the same reason I think the USA is a racist country, and get frustrated when a white person protests this because, “I’m not racist!” I see racism as systemic, not about a single individual’s character. If I’m truly honest with my own experiences of Islam as a highly patriarchal, hierarchical (despite the illusion of decentralization), and uniform religious culture, I can see how violence emerges and is able to thrive.

    “It comes from a way that the pieces interact, not the pieces themselves,” Michael said.

    Time to go for another hike in the woods before it gets too hot, but I will write more later on what I mean by “highly patriarchal, hierarchical (despite the illusion of decentralization), and uniform religious culture.”

    One more thing - it’s taken almost a year, but I think I’m closer to understanding Paul’s perspective.

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    2 Responses to “Why People Say Islam is Violent & Other Realizations”

    1. Chalicechick on July 12th, 2007 2:11 pm

      What’s hard for me to swallow is that a state is a construct of the people who live in that state.

      The state I live in executes people.

      So in a sense, every execution Virginia carries out is blood on my hands.

      I really do feel bad about this, though I don’t know what to do about it, except wait for the more liberal DC suburbs to get bigger and bigger.

      CC

    2. hafidha sofia on July 12th, 2007 6:43 pm

      Yep, I agree with you. The state of Virginia executes people. You, however, do not.

      (Fortunately) it doesn’t sound like you’re saying, “Oh no, Virginia isn’t executing people (because) I disagree with capital punishment.”

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