The last few days I have written about the tendency of alliances, and of societies, to regress when under great stress. (See also here and here.) This is linked with the tendency toward demanding perfect adherence to a set of assumptions among one's potential allies (a tendency that enhances splitting, I would add.) Examples are legion. The stressors facing the West today are also legion and encompass far more than the threat of radical Islam. Our personal insecurity often focuses on terrorism but is also provoked by concerns about our jobs being lost due to the rapidly changing nature of the world economy (with a constantly increasing rate of change), fears of impoverishment due to an unforeseen but near certain future medical emergency, and loss of certainty in our role and gender definitions. Under such stress, regressions are the rule rather than the exception.
Baron Bodissey describes the landscape which seems almost designed to elicit a regressed response when such stressors are not be openly addressed:
Conservative Swede has demonstrated at length how thoroughly Western culture is shackled by PC thinking. It’s not just a leftist or liberal phenomenon; it cuts across the political spectrum. Most conservatives are just as hobbled by it as is the most ardent enthusiast of Multiculturalism. It has become a kind of unconscious group-think, shared by almost everyone in the culture.
It’s as if we’re all possessed by the PC demon and we don’t realize it. What we need is a good exorcist.
When it comes to Islam, the blinders are fully in place. Because of the PC constraints against hate speech, profiling, racism, etc., it’s simply not permitted to consider the possibility that our deadly enemies are dispersed among us, planning violence and destruction while remaining concealed under the camouflage of “religion”.
Because of our inability to directly address radical Islam in the West, the tensions that are roiling under the surface are more likely to eventually surface in unpalatable ways.
Europe is ahead of the United States in this; surprisingly, despite their experience with radical Islam, the Israelis are at least as crippled by PC-derived ambivalence as the Europeans: [HT: Jihad Watch]
Majadle Justifies Destruction of Temple Remains
The Jewish State's first Arab minister, Raleb Majadle, declared Wednesday that as far as Jerusalem's Temple Mount is concerned, Israeli sovereignty is nonexistent and Islam rules. The minister spoke in his official capacity as Minister of Science, Culture and Sport, from the Knesset podium, in response to a parliamentary question by MK Aryeh Eldad (NU/NRP).
...
MK Eldad asked Majadle pointedly from the plenum floor: "Does Israeli law apply on the Temple Mount or does it not?"Majadle answered: "In my opinion, certainly not." Eldad reminded him that in answering parliamentary questions he speaks for the entire government, but Majadle was unfazed: "I will say my opinion. Before I am a government minister I am first and foremost a person and a citizen and a Muslim. With all due respect for the law, the law was meant to respect the religion, the person and the citizen and protect him, and not the other way around, enslave him," he explained. "Therefore I say clearly: Al-Aksa, Al-Haram al-Sharif [as the Temple Mount is called by Muslims – ed.], cannot be under the authority of Israeli law."
Eldad interrupted him repeatedly, reminding him that he had sworn allegiance to the State of Israel and its laws, but Majadle insisted: "I hereby inform you, esteemed MK Eldad, that I may be a minister for one, two or ten years but I was born a Muslim, and a Muslim I shall die. I respect Israeli law... but if there is a contradiction between the law and my deep faith as a Muslim, I announce that I will know what to choose."
Christianity has made an accommodation with the secular world of politics; it required hundreds of years and a great deal of bloodshed. Islam has quite noticeably not made such an accommodation and no such accomodation has yet been demanded by the West. There are some very important implications of this. Richard Fernandez captures the conundrum facing the West and Israel:
Majadle seemed to be asserting that he was Israel's good servant, but Islam's first. But before any comparisons are made to St. Thomas More it would be well to remember that More resigned his positions, including that of Chancellor, rather than stand in opposition to the King, while Majadle firmly intended to hang on to his. The incident encapsulates the problem of resolving dual loyalties within a secular state.
More's solution to his conflict was to withdraw from public life and remain silent on the matter of the King's authority over matters ecclesiastical. Majadle's solution is apparently to assert the supremacy of ecclesiastical (Muslim) law over Israeli law not in matters spiritual but over the supervision of engineering works. It is therefore a conflict over power and jurisdiction rather than a question of faith.
We are already seeing the conditions ripening for a regression to primitive splitting.
[First, as an aside, a brief description of splitting. Splitting is an unconscious process whereby an ambivalently held object is protected from rage by taking the objectionable aspects and placing them in hiding in the unconscious. The object is then seen as all good and all loving. For example, abused children typically do this to protect themselves and maintain an image of the parent they depend upon. Since the parent cannot be seen as unloving or hateful, the child internalizes the hatefulness; when abused, their response is to imagine they deserve it for something "bad" that they did. In this way they preserve the image of a loving parent, which is a requisite for survival emotionally. Eventually the child may learn to provoke the abuse; in that way they can feel they control at least some aspect of the abusive situation. This explanation is all highly schematic but the important point is that as long as the hated and devalued aspects of the object are held in the unconscious, the child can never fully resolve their splits in the object world. In time, they will either become abusers themselves (oscillating back and forth between an enraged batterer and a contrite, loving spouse for instance) or become involved in abusive relationships in which their hatred is projected and then returns to batter them, confirming they are good and loving. It can take many years to unravel such complex and powerful ambivalent attachments.]
Over the last few days Robert Spencer and Michael van der Galiën have been engaged in a discussion of the existence of Moderate Islam. Robert Spencer is quite clear; there is nothing in the Koran that supports the concept of a Moderate Islam:
... suffice it to say here that van der Galiën's statement, that the Qur'an doesn’t teach violence any more than the "Bible or Torah" is flatly false. For while the Bible contains descriptions of violent acts committed in the name of God, nowhere does it teach believers to imitate that violence. Where people are commanded to commit acts of violence, these are commands directed to specific individuals or groups in particular situations; they are not universal commands.
The Qur'an, on the other hand, quite clearly does teach believers to commit acts of violence against unbelievers -- see 2:190-193, 9:5, 9:29, 47:4, etc. There are no equivalents to such open-ended and universal commands, addressed to all believers to fight unbelievers, in the Bible.
Michael van der Galiën does not dispute that a literal reading of the Koran supports violent against the non-believers, but believes (hopes?) that the spirit of Islam can be mobilized if approached carefully:
Namely, I never argued that extremists can’t argue that ‘their Islam’ is ‘pure Islam,’ that they can’t base their beliefs and political views on the Koran, on Islamic laws, teachings, etc. I, simply, argued that they focus on the letter, and ignore the spirit of Islam. I tried to explain this point by pointing out that where Islam is now considered to be highly oppressive of women, Mohammed’s teachings actually meant an improvement for the women then living in Arabia.
Anyone who has read my posts on Moderate Muslims knows that my wishes are with Michael van der Galiën. Unfortunately, events seem to me to be conspiring to produce the kind of regression to a split in the ambivalence toward and from Islam that can only reward the extremes.
Michael makes the case for using a reasonable approach to mobilizing moderate Muslims:
That next step means that we have to encourage ‘reformers’ and have to spread the idea that the interpretation of the extremists isn’t the only possible one. Furthermore, it’s my conviction that if the West and moderate Muslims want to win this battle we’ve got to convince the far majority of Muslims that extremists are actually acting in breach with the spirit of Islam (which I also believe they do). You don’t do that convincingly by pointing out time and again that the extremists have a strong case...
Sadly, no infidel's opinion about Islam can have any impact on its adherents. It is noteworthy that once people like Ayaan Ali Hirsi begin to criticize Islam, they are considered apostate and of no further of interest save as future object lessons a la Theo van Gogh.
By our elite's intolerance of criticism of Islam, we force people to keep their anger hidden and make it easier for those who might well be moderate Muslims to keep their beliefs well hidden lest they become an "object lesson." This is the paradox of Michael's approach. As we insist that Islam can be moderate, the "moderates" continue to support death for apostates. If we do not confront them and demand they adhere to our values of freedom, any nascent concept of a moderate Islam will die in its crib.
Our current situation, where criticism of Islam is always met with charges of Islamophobia (and potential legal liability in Europe for "hate speech"), means that such criticism and its attendant anger, thus remains hidden. At the same time, the existence of a deep and growing pool of anti-Muslim anger means that European Muslims will correctly feel threatened. All of this will be taking place sub rosa, waiting for a spark. The EU elites have successfully managed to intimidate their citizenry and emboldened their unassimilated Muslim population but this is a highly unstable construct. The more Euro-Muslims flaunt their powers, the more the anger grows. For Europe, with its long and storied history of fascism and genocide, this is an unhappy concatenation of events.
The best hope of avoiding the fire remains to allow the anger to find expression in more acceptable, ie verbal, productions. When words are inhibited and silence is enforced, actions (acting out)become more likely. The fantasy that by censoring anti-Muslim views, as in the Modoggy cartoons, peace will be secured is just that, a fantasy. In reality, by suppressing anger and keeping it hidden while the pressure continues to mount, a violent outcome is almost guaranteed.
It is time for the West to confront Islam at every turn where their intolerance and lack of fidelity to Western concepts of freedom are apparent. We have tried appeasement and it has not worked. Stand up to the radicals, confront them in every sphere, and we have a chance of finding the Moderate Muslim and empowering him to (re)gain control of his faith.
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