Faulty

It's time for people to start paying attention to the methodologies behind the polls they cite, or the implications of arguments they make, because failing to do so is going to get people killed. The interim government in Egypt is making demands about the new constitution, Libya is on the verge of more violence, and the government of China has deleted all Chinese blogs that mention the word "jasmine" (referencing the various revolutions in the Islamic world). This isn't just a phenomenon distant from its American and European critics - now with calls for live ammunition to be used on the Wisconsin protesters. Being sloppy about who deserves ("Western" or UN or American or whatever) support and who doesn't is going to get people killed - and arguably already has, in the form of massive arms deals with various dictators.

There actually are people making insane, disturbing claims about these recent events. Fred Clark on Slacktivist has already done lengthy and complex responses to John MacArthur's statements in this interview, but his basic argument bares repeating here. He states-

I just think the upshot of all of this is more instability, more chaos, you can’t make a transition to democracy this way; it’s impossible. After all, who said democracy’s the best form of government? No matter what the form of government is, the Bible doesn’t advocate anything but a theocracy.

That is literally the reasoning behind many of these American and European critics of the various protests in the Middle East and elsewhere as of late. They see the Islamic world as incapable of producing anything other than an at least partially theocratic government system - which either threatens them (among the more libertarian critics) or threatens their competing theocratic systems (as with MacArthur). The inevitable conclusion of this line of thought is that secular government (even if dictatorial) is ordained as a back-up when an ideal (ie: not Islamic) theocracy is the only alternative:

I’m not saying Moammar Gadhafi is the best leader, I’m not saying that Mubarak is a great, benevolent and just leader, not when he’s got $70 billion in his own pockets at the expense of people. But what I am saying is that whatever the government would be, even if it was Caesar in the New Testament, that the believers are commanded to live orderly lives, peaceful, quiet lives, subjecting themselves to the powers that be because they’re ordained of God.

This is the best of all possible worlds, so they say. God has blessed the Muslim world with brutal dictatorship, so they say. Naturally, this argument has to admit that it doesn't care about what life is like under such circumstances, with MacArthur explaining, "I don’t think religious freedom is even an issue in the advance of the church. If you look at China, I don’t know what the numbers are, tens of millions of believers in China when it was forbidden." He not only supports dictatorships but openly acknowledges that this requires caring less about the quality of life for... well... everyone. Or rather, as I'm sure he thinks about it, it matters more what type of life you lead with relation to the next life than what type of life you lead with relation to the present. MacArthur goes beyond that though and explains that he even prefers some persecution, because he sees it as a purifying force:

Look at Japan which was open and free and you’ll search forever in any city in Japan to find one Christian. So democracy, freedom of religion or persecution, if you had to pick your poison I think you might want to pick persecution because you get a purer church.

Note the subtle allusion there - you pick your poison, choosing between persecution (of some in determinate group of people, if not everyone) and freedom of religion. Freedom of religion isn't just compared unfavorably to persecution - it's seen as something bad and without the benefit of creating zealous would-be theocracy supporters.

Beyond these ideological problems, there's been misused statistics to back-up many of these claims. Some of this is deliberate, but in some cases the fault lies with flawed analysis or explanation within supposedly impartial polls themselves.

Take the example of this series of Pew Research polls, which contains this lovely graph:



Can you spot the problems? There's an assumption that what varies between these countries is merely people, not the forms that Islam has taken in their life, let alone their political culture. Egypt and Pakistan are distant countries, but they're united by (until recently) both having an openly American-backed secular dictatorship. In those conditions, political reforms in the name of Islam are quite attractive - they're responsive to local needs, legitimize themselves with appeals to justice, and are often more democratic than the secular status quo (even if they are radically less democratic than other secular options). This contrasts with places where the secular status quo is more democratic (namely Turkey) or Islamic social movements have had distinct negative impacts on the way of life (namely Lebanon, where Islamist attacks resulting in the recent Israeli occupation). It's telling that these surveys never asked these various Muslims why they have the opinions about political Islam that they do.

But beyond those blatant flaws, there's clear methodological flaws that went into the creation of these figures. As the article explains (if you follow the asterisk!):



I suppose that might word, for those that see Islam as playing a large role (if that's bad, then it's because Islam is playing a negative role - whereas if that's good, then it's because it's doing good things). But, I don't follow the train of thought when it comes to analyzing those that see Islam as playing a small role. If Islam is playing a small role (supposedly), and that's a bad thing, how can you rule out that it playing a role at all is what respondents have a problem with? Why assume that problem with that is that Islam is playing an inadequate role? All this emphasis on the metaphorical size of Islam in certain places seems to just obscure what various Muslims see Islam as even doing.

In the end, this entire section of these polls seems framed around not actually asking the Islamic world what they want, and then inferring from what little questions were asked very broad determinations. That's irresponsible. What's more, cavalier representation like that is what's getting people killed.

Post Script

Least any one get the wrong idea from my last post, Muslims aren't somehow fundamentally different from Christians. As a recent group of attacks in Indonesia, on three separate churches and a small group of "heretical" Muslims of the Ahmadiya sect, shows, Muslims throughout the world can indeed be motivated towards collective violence and all of the awful things many "Westerners" seem to think they're inherently inclined towards. This, however, doesn't somehow invalidate the democratic and pluralistic and egalitarian goals put forth during the Egyptian Revolution - which literally occurred on the other side of the world from these reprehensible attacks. This idea of collective guilt is repulsive, that somehow Muslims (like many other dis-empowered groups) somehow all belong to an exclusive club and are linked to the actions of all the others.

Likewise, many voices from the "West" are hypocritical in denouncing Muslims for things they haven't done or accusing them of some sort of incompatibility with the "West." If you want to go to a nice, big protest-party somewhere in the United States to show you stand with the Egyptian Revolution, check up on this page, which has a list of upcoming events of such a nature.

The Clash of Civilizations

I recently had a discussion about the "Clash of Civilizations" so the issues it raises have been jumping around in my head over the past few days, and recent news certainly hasn't helped. For those who don't know, the "Clash of Civilizations" is a theory, popularized by Samuel Huntington, that basically argues that there are several major groups of people (the civilizations) founded on various values and conceptions of reality (namely religious identities) that are fundamentally incompatible with each other. His basic premise takes religious identities and then credits them with various ideological and political outcomes in areas where those identities predominate - Protestantism and (European) Catholicism apparently solely produced capitalism, while Orthodox Christianity paved the way for Stalinism, Oriental Orthodox Ethiopians established their own poverty, and Muslims are prone to violence and mindless orthodoxy.

Immediately, some problems become clear - a lot of his divisions are more strongly defined by his perceptions about ethnicity and regionalism than religion, in spite of his claims that his theory relies on religious identity and ideology. He lumps the whole of Latin America together (with the curious exceptions of Haiti, Suriname, Guyana, and French Guyana), in spite of it's overwhelmingly Catholic (and otherwise Christian) presence, and likewise treats sub-Saharan Africa (obviously subtracting Islamic North Africa and pre-Colonial Christians in Ethiopia) as some how fundamentally different from the Catholic-Protestant "West" even though there's no clear religious distinction to be drawn. More confusingly, Papua New Guinea is included with the West, while these other colonial era Christian converts are mysteriously not.

(It's also worth pointing out that his categorization of Eritrea as "Muslim" and Ethiopia as "independent" reflects that he had to explain their various conflicts and casts doubt on his use of statistics, as both have a slim plurality of Oriental Orthodox Christians. In other words, he's blatantly manipulating his categorizations to explain events.)

There are other problems, but the main driving goal of this argument seems to be a categorization of various groups within "Christendom" (that is, the Latin American, "Western," Orthodox, African, Ethiopian and Haitian civilizations) and a contrast between those groups and the Islamic world (which, tellingly is given none of the loving attention to internal schisms and muddled ethnic and religious identities that the Christian world gets). This argument is clearly ripe for demagoguery - from any angle. It's basic premise has been used by various Islamists to rationalizing violence against Christians and Hindus according to Benazir Bhutto, as much as it plays a role in promoting "Islamophobia" globally. It's constructed according to false premises, with an aim to promote conflict.

At no point has this ever been as clear to me than in the past weeks. Today, a revolution reached fruition in Egypt - Mubarak resigned. Regardless of what you've heard about this revolution, there's solid evidence that it's open to female participation in ways that blatantly contradict most Islamist demands on sex roles and it's overtly religiously pluralistic. It's a demand to reform Egypt, which hopes to restructure the country into a democracy, and with some sort of economic justice. It's a movement that violates, over and over again, what the "Clash of Civilizations" and other "just-so" explanations tell us about the entire Islamic world.

Meanwhile, the "Western" world, the civilization that is allegedly founded either on democracy, pluralism, and equality, or founded on principles that make those necessary and natural conclusions, has been rocked by a serious of responses to this revolution in Egypt and similar news regarding Muslims. In the United States, Glenn Beck denied the authentically democratic and pluralist nature of the Egyptian revolution, and argued that it was part of a global scheme, involving a rebuilt caliphate (who on earth gets to be the Caliph then?). In short, because these protests are occurring in the Muslim world, they are incapable of being actually democratic. They must be socialist (which Beck tends to use to mean authoritarian), or Islamist, or some other ideology (if not several) that are presented as alien to the "West." Why? Because these protests are in Egypt, in an Arab and Muslim country, a place supposedly not merely ideologically different but fundamentally and irreparably so. Muslims cannot produce democracy, because they are not the "West".

In the midst of this Egyptian Revolution, various European figures made alarming statements. British Prime Minister David Cameron declared state multiculturalism a failure, and while his tacit supporters are correct that he was not directly accusing any particular group of various misdeeds (including kidnapping) his suggestion is clearly aimed at British Muslims. Even as anti-immigrant groups held a protest in the same city, at the same time as his talks, he clearly was emphasizing the "shadiness" and "untrustworthy" nature of Muslims. The Economist perfectly describes his point, based on the same idiotic terms as the "Clash of Civilizations" argument, "Mr Cameron thinks multiculturalism has drifted from a tolerance of other cultures towards a tolerance of other value systems, some of them hostile to Britain." Islamic beliefs, by nature, are on some level incompatible if not hostile to "Western" states, is the claim he is making.

Meanwhile, Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany, has made similar statements. What exactly she meant is somewhat confusing - is she describing the existing policies as failing (since, as she mentions, they're based on a polite fiction that immigrants will leave eventually) or is she suggesting that the very concept of multiculturalism is failing? She seems to be trying to have it both ways, since in her speech she immediately explains that some degree of openness is necessary, for trade. She doesn't apparently see human rights, however, as a workable argument like commerce. Yet she decided to give this speech in spite of the fact that alarming numbers of Germans want to restrict the practice of Islam (in addition to other opinions about targeting religious minorities). The logic seems to be similar to Cameron's or Beck's: Islam is somehow out of place in Germany, where other ideologies and religions prevail, or by some means must be made to prevail.

Whether you're English, American, or German, you need to be prepared to explain (if you think this way) why you think this way. How does this revolution, grounded in concepts that the "West" has laid exclusive claim to for centuries, somehow not what it is?

Egypt today, where tomorrow?

The seemingly populist revolution in Tunisia appears to have touched a nerve in Egypt, where it's brought out an entirely different political culture than most Americans see depicted. "Western" perception of Egypt seems rooted in the Six Days War and the Nasr Presidency - with Egypt as a nation trapped in a religiously-imbued nationalist fury, typified by extremists like the Muslim Brotherhood. The existence of several notable Egyptians within contemporary international islamist organizations hasn't helped this.

But as some have pointed out, the basis of this populist uprising, at least in Egypt, is avowedly secular and what little involvement there has been by organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood has come after decades of negotiations which have largely resulted in them abandoning violent tactics. Likewise, others have suggested that recent anti-Islamist events have played an instrumental role in creating a secularized Egyptian identity. In all, I think we can be emphatic that this is not an Islamist event, at least not currently.

You'll have to weigh your conscience on this, but I signed this petition urging the US to at least get nominally involved against the government. I think there's valid concern that the US actually getting involved might damage the credibility of protesters (like in Iran), but I'm not convinced that it's quite the same situation - Iran is well known for perceiving itself as highly unique and highly victimized by American interests, in ways that I don't think Egypt can compare. Still, a gamble.

(EDIT: Live coverage from Egypt, here)

"The Siege of Mecca" is a mixed bag, but necessary read

I've disappeared for quite a while, because I've been preparing a couple of new things for this blog. First and foremost, I've been reading through The Siege of Mecca: the 1979 Uprising at Islam's Holiest Shrine by Yaroslav Trofimov.

It's an engaging and, in my opinion, essential guide to how Islamism has evolved in recent decades. At it's core, it revolves around the massive importance and implications of a brief hostage situation in the Grand Mosque of Mecca in 1979 (as the title suggests). This act of terrorism occurs in a context seemingly disconnected to the modern War on Terror - the location seems somewhat unusual, but odder still are the players. The leader of rebels was Juhayman, a Bedouin with only informal Islamic training who held a grudge against the Saudi state because of its betrayal of his parent's generation of Bedouin. Ignited by fanatical claims of the Mahdi's return (a pseudo-messianic aspect of Sunni Islam), he led a band along with a man believed to be the Mahdi into the spiritual center of the Islamic world, to take it hostage in the first shot of what was supposed to be an apocalyptic war against the Saudi state.

Ultimately, the real power of this work lies in how it describes the shifting alliances of political forces in the Islamic world. Until this act of terrorism, however, Islamist ideals clearly wanted to reform states, rather than demolish them. Saudi Arabia and other governments in the Arab world that placated Islamist interests with favors extended to Muslims and even in some cases incorporated aspects of Islamic religious law into conduct laws were previously safe. They were model states, even if none had quite reached the state idealized by Islamist groups - the substitution of virtually all political power for merely a circuit directing and focusing Islamic legal ideas. Raised in an environment of contempt for the Saudi government, Juhayman was already distrustful of the state, but his botched revolution would eventually begin a process of severing Islamism from state intentions, as many of the pseudo-Islamist policies were slowly revealed to be merely staged attempts at gaining legitimacy.

Initially, Juhayman attempted to bring the alleged Mahdi to Saudi-backed ulama (Islamic clerics some of which are given positions of great importance by states such as Saudi Arabia), but ultimately the resistance of the ulama to declare the chosen man to be the Mahdi cemented biases against them among the more extreme Islamist factions. Western fashions had begun prevailing among certain groups and minorities of Shiites continued to live (uncomfortably, but still) on the Arabian Peninsula, about which the Saudi-backed ulama had failed to act, according to the growing extremist forces. The failure to recognize the Mahdi, out of fear of sharing greater power with Juhayman and upsetting the delicate balance the Saudis had attempted to create established a clearer understanding of their motivations for Juhayman and other Islamists in Saudi Arabia.

In short, the Saudi-backed ulama had become part of the government, and with their authority delivered from the state, they sought to maintain its security, even at the cost of perceived Islamic ideals. The gradual shift of government into an increasingly theocratic structure had to an extent backfired, with religious authorities becoming more political, rather than politicians becoming more religious. Essentially, existing state authorities could never be purified, only replaced. Even a state as unbelievably theocratic (in that religion is a clear driving force in its authority and legal system) as Saudi Arabia is not theocratic enough, as it has been tainted by a monarchy with worldly aims, such as maintenance of the house of Saud's political power.

As a result, the history of Islamic movements is cleft in two - between those that pre-existed Juhayman's startling rebellion against mere pseudo-theocracy (such as the current government of Iran, which is quite friendly with the idea of theocracy negotiating with politics) and those that follow (such as the Taliban, Al-Qaida, and other familiar names, which larger oppose all known governments). Likewise, Juhayman's radical breaking from theocracy-light has been largely confined to the Sunni Islamic world, while the Iran-dominated Shiites have not need of his political philosophies, as they had already achieved some degree of Islamist government prior to his conquest of the mosque.

In any case, the illuminating aspects of this book are counterbalanced by its failure to understand the nuances of anti-Americanism. Islamism is largely fueled by a reaction to American dominance and abuse of power, but to leave the issue there is somewhat simplistic. In its political context, Islamism frequently depends on a coalition of related counter-American groups. The Islamic Revolution in Iran succeeded because of a fusion of both liberal and conservative elements directed against the Shah (and it was only after his ousting that the leftist communists and socialists were massacred by the Islamists who then exercised total control of the future government). In many ways, this was an additional change among the Islamists during Juhayman's failed revolution - dissatisfied anti-colonial youth even with leftist leanings became attracted to their positions. In this highly non-nationalistic context, leftist youths' contempt for the American government for both perceived slights and factual pseudo-colonial wrongs goes unbalanced against concern to separate this from contempt for the American people or for modern culture, because the latter are understood as completely distinct from the former (or at the least adequately distinct).

The section of Trofimov's book I found most illuminating in this regard concerned an anecdote about the American embassy in Tripoli, Libya, after it had been raided by Islamists and Islamists-inspired youths:

The following day, just after embassy personel managed to reattach the dislodged front door, a young Libyan man arrived and started pounding at the entrance. One of the rioters who attacked the building the previous day, he surveyed the damage with glee, proud of a job well done. Then he told McCavitt [the American ambassador] he needed a visa to return to a college he was attending in upstate New York. Once McCavitt slammed the door with a curse, the flustered Libyan started screaming in English: "You can't do this to me!"

The implications that Trofimov seems to be trying to draw are that this behavior is laughable, because the young man was simultaneously an active participant in an almost violent protest against perceived and real American militarism and a student embedded in American culture and educational institutions. On closer examination, this reveals at least as much about Trofimov as the student.

The student clearly saw less of a contradiction, as he opposed the American government's actions, but not the American people and his interactions with them in terms of education, if not also financially. This seems to be the part of a classic Muslim left-wing youth's political life, as they are drawn into co-ordination with Islamists in the very limited situations where both hold contempt for the American government. Alternatively, the fact that Trofimov sees this as ridiculous shows that he equates the two - the American people are the American government, a surprisingly nationalistic thought.

More importantly, Trofimov's writing shows that he can not entertain the idea that some Muslims might not make this mental equation of government and entire society, which, as I've explained before, is a key aspect of how Islamists have garnered even remotely enough support to exert the control they have in the Islamic world and the world at large. In short, this misunderstanding of the intentions of Islamists' political allies by Trofimov and his ilk (such as Zbigniew Brzezinski, I suspect) has led to a situation where many American policy-makers simply can not figure out a method of defusing the Islamist bloc. Without any ideas, they turn to what they know best which is usually war, which in the end only gives the Islamists more support.

In short, we need a new generation of leaders who can see the flaws in Trofimov's and others' seemingly rational analysis of the Islamist bloc, if we want a lasting solution to the problem of one of the big three.

Targeting Weapons Not Ideas

The unsurprising reaction to the Christmas Day (attempted) bombing has been more restrictions on travel, more troops in a relatively innocent Middle Eastern country, and generally more of the same. Obama, how you've failed us.

Since this marks now the third attempted terrorist attack on a plane since 9/11 which managed to only be thwarted by passengers, people are asking once again how can the TSA prevent would-be terrorists from bringing various explosives on board. There's quite a precedent for this sort of recoiling in the face of an utter failure of a terrorist act - the Shoe Bomber nearly caused matches and lighters to be more strictly controlled, and the London-based cell that attempted to create a lethal chemicals in the lavatory famously caused the ban on liquids (with varying forms, from either all liquids being banned as in parts of Europe, to the lighter American ban that restricts passengers to only three ounce containers). So what exactly are the recommended changes this time around? Well, according to one expert:

There are two machines that might -- and I say might -- have revealed the old bomb in the underwear ploy. One is the machine, which we encountered in the airport in Paris and is in a few airports in the US, that puffs air at you and analyzes the atmosphere for chemical residue. The other one is the X-ray machine, which was very controversial in the US for the prudish reason that it showed the faint outline of genitalia.

Are we honestly reaching the point where essentially strip-searching people is being debated? Both are fairly invasive procedures, and yes I've been subjected to both while flying in the United States. The ultimate irony is that the paragraph a few lines above this intense search for methods to prevent terrorist suspects from bringing dangerous chemicals or devices onto planes, the same expert mentioned that:

And yet, what we have so far is incredibly expensive and cumbersome security procedures that can be easily circumvented by your average Joe Terrorist. I have always wondered, for example, how metal detectors would respond to explosives made of plastic. Answer? They don't. I have also wondered why, since it is well known that one must remove one's shoes at airport, any terrorist would put explosives in his or her shoe. Answer? They don't: they sew the bomb in their underwear.

Truly what we have here is a failure of the imagination with this expert specifically and on almost every party in this debate generally - humans solve puzzles naturally, what we need to target is the motivation, not the ultimate action. That isn't to suggest that we resort to criminalizing the idea of terrorism (to an extent that's already happened, it seems), but that we should attempt preventative measures that start before people board planes - that start with addressing why such a large percentage of the Muslim world is so angry at Americans and the West. This isn't, as that expert says, "cooperation and meekness in the face of jihadi fanaticism," this is actually addressing the problem instead of ignoring the conflict and preventing it from affecting Americans outside of airport security.

Obama's landmark speech earlier this year to the Islamic world seemed to be the end of a long violent campaign against Muslim nations, and the beginning of a dialogue and a constructive solution. Hopefully this single failed attack won't break the nascent reconciliation and boost the chances of a war in Yemen.