A Contradiction

A Turkish friend of mine argues, sometimes, that Americans just can't understand that the same Islam we encounter as a persecuted minority in our country is a very different animal in her homeland where it is the majority. For her, and she is far more anti-Islam than any American conservative I know, Ataturk's mistake lay in not finishing the job. The Turkey she grew up in, as a member of the educated and secular elite, has been washed away by the current regime.

This failure of imagination creates a kind of contradiction in the contemporary progressive movement. They have come to see themselves as the heroes of a story about America in which the forces of oppression of minorities have been resisted by a few brave people of good will. As heirs to these few brave people of good will, they inherit a project of moving America away from irrational prejudice against those who are different, and toward a future in which all are treated as genuine equals. This is what they mean when they speak of 'the arc of history,' citing Dr. King, and for many of them it is not a poetic metaphor. It's an article of faith that history really is moving this way, and they are really its heroes.

So, the contradiction my friend is trying to draw: On the one hand, Muslims (here) are a minority exposed to at least sometimes irrational prejudices. On the other hand, Muslims in places like Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and so forth are the major violators of minority rights. To support Islam is, my friend believes, to lay the groundwork for future violations here too as Muslims become stronger and more numerous. Thus, in defending minorities they strengthen the chief enemy of minorities, because it is -- here, for now -- also a minority.

I would like to believe that this is an overstatement, although she has drawn out the contradiction nicely. Certainly I am ready to support any Muslims who are interested in reforming their faith so that this future conflict might be avoided. There are a few different ways in which this might happen, and none of them are at all easy. I'm not under any illusions about how difficult that will be. The theology and history are all against them, as well as what have so far been the best minds of the whole history of their faith. Their task must appear as impossible to us as the task of winning freedom of conscience must have appeared in Christian nations before the 30 Years War. Yet that happened, of course.

In any case, here's another author who makes a very similar argument. She is an atheist, pro-choice, and apparently feminist. She's trying to frame roughly the same point.

It's a good point.

3 comments:

jaed said...

We tend to want to see and side with the underdog. This sometimes leads people to identify the people they want to side with as underdogs, even when they are no such thing.

I think we see this in the failure of imagination that seems to prevent a lot of people from realizing that Christians are being persecuted in Syria. Does not compute—Christians are persecutors, not persecuted, and shouldn't we be siding with the Muslims? (It is sometimes possible to make some inroads on this mindset by pointing out what's being done to the Yazidis. But I have found people sometimes want to identify Yazidis as a sect of Islam, I think for the same reason: binary thinking about oppressor and oppressed.)

I think it's also why so many people have so much trouble with the facts that 1) the Crusades started as a defensive war, coming to the aid of co-religionists whose lands were being invaded, and 2) Islam at the time was technologically superior to Christendom. People really want to put the Crusades into the technologically-superior-colonial-aggression box, and simultaneously to put the Christians into that role. Doesn't work if you know anything about the history.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Excellent comment, and there was a lot to the linked article, though she could keep from letting her anti-conservative criticisms leak through her argument that actually has little to do with conservatives.

@ jaed. Yes about the Crusades. You might also notice how little territory the Crusaders were interested in and actually took, the enmity between the Seljuks and the Sassanids, and the occasional alliances of other Muslim groups with the Crusaders.

The Jews can lay a lot of blame at Christian feet about the Crusades. The Muslims. not so much.

Ymar Sakar said...

Lucifer protects his own. And Southern Baptists need to read their Bibles, instead of treating Lucifer like Harry Potter. Then again, there's the Papacy too.

Islam has been de facto under his aegis for awhile now, ever since Mohammed converted.

But I have found people sometimes want to identify Yazidis as a sect of Islam, I think for the same reason: binary thinking about oppressor and oppressed.

Yazidis are not Christian nor Islam, they would be heresies either way. Since they are a combination of both plus Zoroastrianism before Islam wiped out the Zoros.

They are closer to primitive Christianity of the 1st AD Apostles than Orthodox and Roman Catholics. Which is why the mainstream Christian world prefers to see them die out, and Islam prefers to do the killing because the Yazidis also deny the divinity of Lucifer/Allah and Mohammed.

In the Old Testament, it was written that ye shall worship no other gods than the Alpha and the Omega. The "other gods" were not figments of human imagination, they were real.

I think it's also why so many people have so much trouble with the facts that 1) the Crusades started as a defensive war, coming to the aid of co-religionists whose lands were being invaded,

That's not true either, more Pro Western propaganda. Not all anti Islamic rhetoric and narratives are accurate.

Here's a hint. The first Cult of not so Nice Christians started the first Holy War against other Christians, burning them and their scriptures, plus selling them into slavery to Timbuktu and Arabian Caliphs. The kingdoms of Spain did start and win a defensive holy war to push the Umayyids out of Spain, but it was not orchestrated by the Catholic 'Vicar of Christ'.

The Byzantine Emperors were afraid of being sacked by the Western Crusaders, and Jerusalem was not given back to the Byzantines, even though they would have been able to better protect them. The problem with the West holding the Kingdom of Jerusalem was because they lost it since many of their merchant fleets were also involved in selling slaves to Islam. God was not going to bless the self proclaimed 'Vicar of Christ' with the holy land.