The Doctor Is In » The Pornography of Ideas
Dr. Bob of The Doctor Is In blog has done it again. He has an extremely well written post about those on the far left of the political spectrum. He shows some amazing insight into just what makes some of those extreme ideas so dangerous.
Definitely a must read!
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March 14th, 2006 at 4:23 pm
Moof, I just looked over the article, and I must say that I find Dr. Bob very hard to take. I resent his notion that liberals are pornographers. Basically, his shtick, as I see it, is that leftists should just stop thinking what they think. In other words, he wants his opposition to just go away.
I can’t see the sense in this. People are entitled to think whatever they want to. Why is it that so many conservatives believe that liberals are just nuts, or pornographers, or “indeed, a glum lot.” Does he really think liberals don’t have fun? That they don’t love their children? That they can’t believe in God? That they want to see the destruction of America?
He writes well, but his thinking is very shallow. I will confess something to you. My wife is not a Christian. She is a Sikh, which is an Indian monotheistic faith, an outgrowth from Hinduism.
How can a mainline Catholic live in the same house with a non-Christian Indian? Only a Conservative Christian like Dr. Bob would really have a problem with that question. To the liberal minded, it seems natural . . . .
March 14th, 2006 at 8:40 pm
Dr. Hebert … thanks for taking the time to comment.
I’m sorry that Dr. Bob upset you. I didn’t see his post in the same way you did, I’m afraid, and I’m strugging to try to see all of what you’re saying.
You know, I didn’t get the impression that he was writing about all liberals … since all liberals are no more alike than all conservatives are. I know that you call yourself a liberal, but as I’ve told you before, I don’t really see that except in a few particular subjects - like socialized medicine (which I would still love to discuss with you, by the way … ;)
The people that Dr. Bob is talking about are those who don’t see anything right here in America, and sometimes even seem to take the side of the terrorists over ours. I’ve seen it too, and it hurts me to watch that sort of thing. I don’t see that in you.
I can see that you’re not happy with what’s going on regarding a host of subjects, but I don’t see you defending Bin Laden’s terrorism, or Saddam Hussein’s torture of his own people …
I know that you’re not happy with the response that came after Katrina … and I’m with you on that. But you’re not talking about conspiracies and Hitler …
Actually, please don’t be upset with me, but I think that you and Dr. Bob have more in common than either of you could perhaps fathom at this point. I’ve gotten to know Dr. Bob a bit in the last several months, and found that he’s a kind, generous person with unnusual insight. Not a lot of pride there, although his powerful writing might indicate otherwise. Very humble and honest about his shortcomings. Although I’m only beginning to get to know you through your blog, and in our exchange of comments, I see the same stuff in you. Generosity, kindness, humility, honesty …
Dr. Hebert - he wasn’t writing about you, or people who are like you … he was writing about the worst of the extremists.
Whether it’s conservative extremism or liberal extremism … it’s not right. No extreme is ever healthy.
Now … after I’ve said all of that, I hope that I’ll still be welcome to visit your blog, and that you’ll still come visit mine. I have a tremendous amount of respect for you, and I feel very badly that you were upset.
March 14th, 2006 at 8:45 pm
This may be a simple question, maybe I missed something?, but it’s genuine. I’ve read a few things, including this reference and on your site Moof, which seem to proport that Muslims are just violence-mongers. Do you not think this is just a few extremists within a larger party of many common, peaceable folk? I mean, EVERY religion has ugly acts of violence in it’s name. Northern Ireland? I’m honestly not trying to spark a debate (walking on eggshells here!), just interested in your response.
March 14th, 2006 at 9:35 pm
Hi Maribeth! Thank you for dropping in. Please - don’t feel like you’re walking on eggshells. We may not agree, but if that’s so, we can agree to disagree with an attitude of mutual respect.
I do not see Islam as a peaceful religion, and I don’t think that it’s just extremists where the majority of Islamists are concerned. That said, yes, I know that there are moderate or even secular Islamists, but those who are truly so, are so at the peril of their own lives, from their own people. And that is what I’m talking about.
I’ve cut and pasted a recent article into this comment. It’s a very interesting article. Please take a look at the opinion of an Islamist Syrian woman, because what she is saying about her own people is also what I see.
On my many trips over to the Holy Land, I got to know quite a few Palestinians. Many of the Palestinians in Jerusalem are “westernized,” and were “safe” to befriend, however we were often reminded to stay out of entire neighborhoods for our safety unless they were with us … and told things like: “What do you mean, am I PLO? I am Palestinian!” I learned from their own mouths that there were no compunctions against violence toward whatever end they thought was righteous - including against their own families.
One fellow who was kind enough to open a restaurant he owned at the top of Mt. Olivet on a Friday and cook a really nice meal for us told us how they kill their own sisters if they have one who wants to leave Islam … or if one does something to disrespect her family, like get caught in adultery. This was a very nice guy … and this was all discussed over one of the best lamb dinners I’ve ever had … as casually as if we talking about the weather.
These men were not extremists - they were “westernized” Islamists or they would never have opened their doors to us on a Friday, yet even they admitted to being casual about violence in a way that we could not imagine.
Here at home, I’m a member of a Lebanese church, although I’m not Lebanese myself. Our pastor is from Lebanon, and a large percent of the people are from Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Jordan … they’re as afraid of the Islamists are the rest of us.
Our biggest mistake, in my opinion, is to underestimate the threat the Islamists pose to us as a nation, and to us as individuals.
And now, please take a moment to read the article. It’s very revealing. Thank you.
For muslim who says violence destroys islam, violent threats
By JOHN M. BRODER The New York Times
MONDAY, MARCH 13, 2006
LOS ANGELES, Three weeks ago, Dr. Wafa Sultan was a largely unknown Syrian-American psychiatrist living outside Los Angeles, nursing a deep anger and despair about her fellow Muslims.
Today, thanks to an unusually blunt and provocative interview on Al Jazeera television on Feb. 21, she is an international sensation, hailed as a fresh voice of reason by some, and by others as a heretic and infidel who deserves to die.
In the interview, which has been viewed on the Internet more than a million times and has reached the e-mail of hundreds of thousands around the world, Dr. Sultan bitterly criticized the Muslim clerics, holy warriors and political leaders who she believes have distorted the teachings of Muhammad and the Koran for 14 centuries.
She said the world’s Muslims, whom she compares unfavorably with the Jews, have descended into a vortex of self-pity and violence.
Dr. Sultan said the world was not witnessing a clash of religions or cultures, but a battle between modernity and barbarism, a battle that the forces of violent, reactionary Islam are destined to lose.
In response, clerics throughout the Muslim world have condemned her, and her telephone answering machine has filled with dark threats. But Islamic reformers have praised her for saying out loud, in Arabic and on the most widely seen television network in the Arab world, what few Muslims dare to say even in private.
“I believe our people are hostages to our own beliefs and teachings,” she said in an interview this week in her home in a Los Angeles suburb.
Dr. Sultan, who is 47, wears a prim sweater and skirt, with fleece-lined slippers and heavy stockings. Her eyes and hair are jet black and her modest manner belies her intense words: “Knowledge has released me from this backward thinking. Somebody has to help free the Muslim people from these wrong beliefs.”
Perhaps her most provocative words on Al Jazeera were those comparing how the Jews and Muslims have reacted to adversity. Speaking of the Holocaust, she said, “The Jews have come from the tragedy and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror; with their work, not with their crying and yelling.”
She went on, “We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people.”
She concluded, “Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them.”
Her views caught the ear of the American Jewish Congress, which has invited her to speak in May at a conference in Israel. “We have been discussing with her the importance of her message and trying to devise the right venue for her to address Jewish leaders,” said Neil B. Goldstein, executive director of the organization.
She is probably more welcome in Tel Aviv than she would be in Damascus. Shortly after the broadcast, clerics in Syria denounced her as an infidel. One said she had done Islam more damage than the Danish cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad, a wire service reported.
DR. SULTAN is “working on a book that - if it is published - it’s going to turn the Islamic world upside down.”
“I have reached the point that doesn’t allow any U-turn. I have no choice. I am questioning every single teaching of our holy book.”
The working title is, “The Escaped Prisoner: When God Is a Monster.”
Dr. Sultan grew up in a large traditional Muslim family in Banias, Syria, a small city on the Mediterranean about a two-hour drive north of Beirut. Her father was a grain trader and a devout Muslim, and she followed the faith’s strictures into adulthood.
But, she said, her life changed in 1979 when she was a medical student at the University of Aleppo, in northern Syria. At that time, the radical Muslim Brotherhood was using terrorism to try to undermine the government of President Hafez al-Assad. Gunmen of the Muslim Brotherhood burst into a classroom at the university and killed her professor as she watched, she said.
“They shot hundreds of bullets into him, shouting, ‘God is great!’ ” she said. “At that point, I lost my trust in their god and began to question all our teachings. It was the turning point of my life, and it has led me to this present point. I had to leave. I had to look for another god.”
She and her husband, who now goes by the Americanized name of David, laid plans to leave for the United States. Their visas finally came in 1989, and the Sultans and their two children (they have since had a third) settled in with friends in Cerritos, Calif., a prosperous bedroom community on the edge of Los Angeles County.
After a succession of jobs and struggles with language, Dr. Sultan has completed her American medical licensing, with the exception of a hospital residency program, which she hopes to do within a year. David operates an automotive-smog-check station. They bought a home in the Los Angeles area and put their children through local public schools. All are now American citizens.
BUT even as she settled into a comfortable middle-class American life, Dr. Sultan’s anger burned within. She took to writing, first for herself, then for an Islamic reform Web site called Annaqed (The Critic), run by a Syrian expatriate in Phoenix.
An angry essay on that site by Dr. Sultan about the Muslim Brotherhood caught the attention of Al Jazeera, which invited her to debate an Algerian cleric on the air last July.
In the debate, she questioned the religious teachings that prompt young people to commit suicide in the name of God. “Why does a young Muslim man, in the prime of life, with a full life ahead, go and blow himself up?” she asked. “In our countries, religion is the sole source of education and is the only spring from which that terrorist drank until his thirst was quenched.”
Her remarks set off debates around the globe and her name began appearing in Arabic newspapers and Web sites. But her fame grew exponentially when she appeared on Al Jazeera again on Feb. 21, an appearance that was translated and widely distributed by the Middle East Media Research Institute, known as Memri.
Memri said the clip of her February appearance had been viewed more than a million times.
“The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions or a clash of civilizations,” Dr. Sultan said. “It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality.”
She said she no longer practiced Islam. “I am a secular human being,” she said.
The other guest on the program, identified as an Egyptian professor of religious studies, Dr. Ibrahim al-Khouli, asked, “Are you a heretic?” He then said there was no point in rebuking or debating her, because she had blasphemed against Islam, the Prophet Muhammad and the Koran.
Dr. Sultan said she took those words as a formal fatwa, a religious condemnation. Since then, she said, she has received numerous death threats on her answering machine and by e-mail.
One message said: “Oh, you are still alive? Wait and see.” She received an e-mail message the other day, in Arabic, that said, “If someone were to kill you, it would be me.”
Dr. Sultan said her mother, who still lives in Syria, is afraid to contact her directly, speaking only through a sister who lives in Qatar. She said she worried more about the safety of family members here and in Syria than she did for her own.
“I have no fear,” she said. “I believe in my message. It is like a million-mile journey, and I believe I have walked the first and hardest 10 miles.”
March 15th, 2006 at 7:18 pm
I read the transcript of her interview on Al-Jazeera a week or two ago. Certainly Dr. Sultan is a courageous woman. Nontheless, the story does nothing to assuage my mounting concern that a lot of people in this country intend to damn Islam with one sweeping judgment.
Islam is not a “nation.” It is a set of beliefs. Where Westerners get confused is with the concept of jihad. Jihad is interpreted by some Muslims to mean that war and violence to promote Islam is commendable. But there are many, many Muslims who interpret jihad to mean a holy struggle, a peaceful struggle, against the evils of the world. Not all Muslims believe in suicide bombing. Do you really think the average Syrian boy goes to school every day saying, “I want to blow myself up when I grow up”? Of course not.
Terrorism is so effective because it only takes a few people to do it. In a population of 10 million, about 100 people willing to commit suicide bombings can cause havoc. But that is far less than 1% of the population!
I completely reject the notion that the Islamic religion is filled with psychopathic killers. We quote and quote Islamic clerics. Yes, they say stupid things. But Christian clerics say stupid things too, like when several said the Hurricane Katrina was God’s judgment on New Orleans.
I remember the Iranian hostage crisis in the late 70s. There was a popular song on the radio, a parody of the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann” called “Bomb Iran.” Do you think the people in the Middle East did not know about that song? I can’t count the number of times I have heard Americans say we should just nuke the Middle East and take all the oil.
When Americans say things like that, we think it is a joke, or a stupid comment. Perhaps Muslims hear many of these clerics talk and feel the same way about them. A joke to you is a threat to me, and vice versa. Why is it that when Pat Robertson says something stupid about the Islamic world, it is just Pat Robertson talking, but when a “Muslim cleric” talks it is the united voice of the evil infidels?
March 15th, 2006 at 10:04 pm
Dr. Hebert, you’re right when you mention those of us in the west who make jokes and poke fun … with “Bomb Iran” and so on. Unfortunately, there are always going to be ignorant, uncouth responses to serious issues. That sort of thing only makes a bad situation worse.
Neither do I believe that Islam is “filled with psychopathic killers.” However, from their own mouths directly to my ears, their religion advocates violence toward those who do not comply with their religious mores.
They relate with apparent pride terrible things which have happened in their families … casually, over dinner, as if you’re discussing who won a ball game. You sit there and listen, and a feeling of surreality and horror takes over as you realize that they’re serious … they’re not joking.
To be a good Moslem, you have to follow the teachings of the Koran. Those are the teachings of the Koran.
There are many Moslems who are not following the teachings of the Koran, and who would not kill their own kith and kin for trying to leave Islam … but they are not religious Moslems. However, even in this case, you need to be careful - the fellows who were casually discussing having put a sister to death for adultery were also not devout, since they hosted us on a Friday.
I’m sure that there are also Moslems who are even more secular, but most are very quiet about their lack of proper Moslem observance. They need to be to survive.
I can listen to any number of arguments, but having heard it from their own lips … and seeing the bombings and so on in Jerusalem … and then the things which have happened here in our own back yard, I’m afraid that they’ve made a believer out of me.
I haven’t developed my mindset from partaking in philosophical discussions, or from reading the news, or from hearsay, but from being there, seeing it, and being told by the Moslems themselves about their beliefs … more than one Moslem … more than one time. I visited there frequently, and we were occasionally guests in Palestinian homes.
When I was still there, the suicide bombers had not begun their reign of terror, but there were bombs, nevertheless. The Moslem people I knew would never have gone out and blown themselves up, but things have apparently changed in the decade or so since I was last there.
It’s a terrible situation, and really, those who are living with these ideas are also victims - by their being born into a culture that follows a religion that advocates violence.
Trying to talk a Moslem out of his violent religious beliefs is like trying to talk a Christian out of the idea that Christ died for them. You might suceed, but if you do, the former will no longer be a “good Moslem,” and the latter will no longer be “believing Christian.”
I don’t hate the Moslems, and I consider some of them my friends, but I also know what their religion makes them capable of doing.
Sorry this is so long, but it’s important to me that my reason for believing the way I do is understood. I don’t hate anyone, and I’m not prejudiced against anyone. However, I’m also not blind.
March 16th, 2006 at 11:07 am
I would never accuse you of predjudice. I used to own a copy of the Koran, but I lost it somewhere or another. I intend to buy a new one, but at the moment I cannot debate you chapter and verse.
Allow me to point out some facts about Christianity, and then about the U.S. Constitution. The Bible, in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, specifically says that adulterers must be stoned. It also explicitly approves of polygamy, since Abraham, King David, and Solomon all had harems. The Bible says homosexuals should be put to death. It fairly consistently puts its seal of approval on slavery. Even Jesus talked about slaves as a fact of life, and made no effort to deplore the practice.
So why don’t Christians stone adulterers? Because most of us do not take the Bible literally. Even fundamentalists who claim to take the Bible as word for word truth seem to shy away from stoning as a way of life. We implicitly understand that the Bible was written in a time different from ours, and that its ideas have to be applied to our time, not simply mindlessly superimposed.
As for the Constitution: if you read it, you can see that it clearly approves of slavery (slaves are counted as 3/5ths of a person in the census), women are excluded from voting, and Native Americans are not recognized as rightful owners of American soil. So what did we do — we changed it. We did not deny the original principles of our county, we just expanded them and applied them to a new time.
Muslims can do that, too. Many Muslims read the Koran and interpret it. They cannot be nailed down just because the Koran itself literally says one thing or another. Surprisingly, they are human beings in charge of their own free will, and they choose not to kill because they are fundamentally decent.
I do not think it is right to dismiss an entire religion based on its holy book. Christianity would not do well with this standard. And America’s Constitution would not either.
March 16th, 2006 at 1:21 pm
Dr. Hebert, I have to admit that you’ve given me an excellent response, and for at least some of your very logical points, I have no ready answer.
Let me try to tackle this one idea at a time.
Where Christianity is concerned, we’re not living the Old Testament codes. Jesus prevented the stoning of the adulterous woman. He also said that He was presenting us with a new commandment, which was to love one another as He loved us. So - hopefully, we’re not going to start stoning adulterers and homosexuals.
Also … I feel that any war which we fought for religious reasons - other than for personal religious freedom - were wrong-minded wars. People convert through a change of heart, not through being impaled on the point of a sword. Again - Jesus showed us plainly that He was not here to force anyone to do His will. Any application of the Christian religion which forces another human being forego self-determination is wrong.
I should add, however, that the “self-determination” should be just that: individual. In other words, one person’s free-will should not abbreviate another person’s well being.
With our Constitution and slavery though … and even with the New Testament’s addressing of the issue, you’re right. We don’t come off looking very innocent. I’m ashamed to think of where we’ve been along those lines. You’ve made a very good point.
To continue, I’m not arguing against the idea that each individual is able to Moslem reads and interpret the Koran for himself, and with free will, chose to eschew the advocated violence. Most of the really westernized Moslems do exactly that, and many are horrified at what’s happening with their more zealous brothers.
- God the Father sent Christ, and our “old laws” became laws of love and peace. No, we haven’t always followed those new laws, and when we didn’t we were wrong.
- A product of the Civil War was the abolotion of slavery. Our constitution now offers everyone the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We now fight slavery wherever we find it.
- Will the Moslems rewrite the Koran to remove the clauses that cause the most religious among them to feel as if they’re not loved by Allah unless they murder infidels? How about the clauses that cause some of the more moderate among them to butcher their own sisters because of adultery?
As long the Koran’s advocacy of violence is not mitigated somehow, it will remain a dangerous religion. Even if only a small percent of them are actually zealous enough to become violent … and I question that when I see little girls 12 year old girls as suicide bombers in Israel … then that small radical percent can not be ignored.
… and we have no way to tell the pacifists from the conservatives.
I’m not dismissing Moslems as people … but I am watching Islam itself with a very wary eye … and I’m doing so because Islamic individuals have themselves taught me the wisdom behind the watchfulness.
When Islam concerns itself with ISLAM and no longer requires violence against those who are not Islamists I will no longer see Islam the way I do now. It needs to start with those religious leaders in the highest places of authority … and it can happen. Our making excuses for the violence promulgated by their leaders not only encourages it to continue, but is dangerous to each and every one of us, and to those Moslems who do happen to be peaceful individuals.
March 16th, 2006 at 3:22 pm
Permit me a few quick points. I think overall you have acquitted your position very well. I guess I am less worried about Islam than you are because violence has always, always been with us, and if Islam softens it will be replaced with something else, just as Islam replaced Communism as the threat du jour. I do think America has to be firm with Islamic extemists. But I take a page from behavioral psycholgists and say we should criticize their behaviors, not their beliefs. Communism didn’t collapse because we attacked them as morally wrong. It collapsed because the USSR was poorly run and didn’t meet the basic needs of its people.
There was a historian on NPR this morning talking about Islam in Nigeria. She suggested that the Nigerian leadership is in trouble now because its Muslim leaders cannot provide basic needs, like running water, food, etc. This will take down the Nigerian government more than anything America does.
The Islamic extemists will fail. Their assumptions are Medieval, and a Medieval state simply can’t exist in the 21st century. How could our society function if women couldn’t drive? How could the stock market subsist if police shut it down 5 times a day for prayers?
To beat this mentality, we do not have to do anything except be ourselves. Succeed. Prosper. The prosperity of the West ate the USSR up. It is eating China up. Islam is next. The only reason it has lasted this long is that the wealth of oil has propped it up.
I would also split hairs with you about the teachings of Jesus. Yes, Jesus did stop the crowd from stoning the adulterous woman. But what did he say? He said, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” He did not tell them not to do it. He was gently and cleverly reminding them that the spirit of the law is fairness, and that if they enforce the letter of the law on others, the letter of the law would be enforced upon them. Jesus never negated the old law. In fact he explicitly stated that the Law should be followed. Instead, he added to the old law by putting it in a larger moral context.
For many scholars, the most outrageous thing Jesus did in the Gospel was to have a conversation with the Samaritan woman by the well (John 4). For the Jews, Samaritans were heretics and were not spoken to in public. Double that for a woman, especially one who was living with a man not her husband. His message was that compassion for individuals should always trump the letter of the law.
Perhaps we can think of the Samaritan woman by the well as a Muslim?
March 16th, 2006 at 4:15 pm
Dr. Hebert … you’re quite good at this. I can see that if you and I were to discuss socialized medicine, I would really have to do my homework! :-)
I tend to agree with you that Islam will fail - and for the very reasons which you’ve outlined. I’m hoping that you’re right, and hoping that it happens soon. Although it appears they’ve had the wind knocked out of them a bit in the last few years, they’re still “enjoying” a period of international power.
A Palestinian once assured me that they would beat the Israelis because they would breed until there were so many of them that the Israelis could no longer stand against them. That set me aback a bit. Fortunately, on a grander scale, that’s somewhat self-limiting.
One thing you mentioned struck a note with me:
I’m sure I don’t need to remind you about our own dependence on that oil. Because of the prices of oil here (Maine) this year, many people have gone without heating their homes for the entire winter. Imagine - if you will, living in an unheated house all winter, day after day, with temperatures in the single numbers and teens. They are capable of impacting us in areas other than through violence.
About the Christ - you’re right again. However, He also did say:
… and even more appropriately:
He replaced the old law of violence and revenge with a new law of forgiveness and love. Please note that you’re probably more religious than I am. I’m only quoting what I know is there.
That parting note was particularly poignant, and even more appropriate than you might realize. The vast majority of the Samaritan lands are Palestinian.
Let me reiterate: I have nothing against the Moslem people as individuals. But having a will to survive, I’m going to continue to be wary of the religion itself - and of what it’s capable of bringing forth in its followers.
As the saying goes: “It’s not over - ’til it’s over.”
Dr. Hebert, I want to thank you for this conversation because you’ve allowed (and caused!) me to see things from a completely new perspective. I have great respect for you, for your logic, and for your very sharp debating skills. I sincerely hope this won’t be the last time we engage in this sort of thing.
If you would like to add a final word, please feel free to do so.
March 16th, 2006 at 4:57 pm
Just this: My religion ebbs and flows. Sometimes I have much, sometimes next to none. This is why I maintain respect for other faiths. I am not always so sure of my own.
There is a book on my shelf, called God: A Biography, by Jack Miles, that I am waiting to read. But I have St. Augustine’s Confessions and a couple of books on Louisiana history to get to first.
Miles is an ex-priest. I do not know what his faith is. But the thesis of his book, I gather, is one close to mine. He sees the Bible as a book in which the concept of God evolves over time. The God of Genesis is not the same God as the God of Kings, or of Corinthians. He views the Bible as a flawed document (flawed in the sense that it is told from the human viewpoint) that gradually comes around to the modern God as it progresses.
I feel the same way. An approach to any holy book has to come through the eyes of the people who produced it. A faith is always evolving. Christianity is not done evolving. Neither is Islam. And I have news for you: neither is secular humanism.