The Elephant in the Mosque

Today, New York Congress Rep. Peter King (no relation to the CBS reporter) begins hearings today on radical Islam in the United States. He is expected to take testimony from all sorts of people, such as family members of converts to Islam who consequently committed violent acts, as well as the National Intelligence Director. One presumes that members of the American Muslim community were invited to participate, but likely declined because they were reluctant to walk into a Bill O'Reilly-style confrontation, such as Barbara Walters et al. faced when Bill appeared on her ABC talk show, "The View". Bill, in a fit of emotion, blurted out "Muslims killed us on 9/11", to the outrage of a couple of the show's panelists. Certainly, no Muslim would wish to be confronted in the same manner.

I don't know Rep. King, so I don't know if that's something he is likely to do, but that appears to be the fear. Critics are already calling it McCarthyism. Supporters are calling it a common sense response to Obama's own concerns about radicalizing influences in America. It's not like we don't have our own radicals already. We've had a smattering of Christian radicals cropping up every so often, though they seldom blow things up (Timothy McVeigh the exception proving the rule). Usually they'd rather keep to themselves on their own little communes, which is fine with me as long as they're not keeping women as prisoners and having sex with minors. As a Christian-majority nation, we don't have a problem with radical Christianity.

Likewise, there are countries around the world that are Muslim-majority, but strikingly, nearly all of them have problems with radical Islam. Those that don't were, until recently, ruled by secular dictators: Mubarak in Egypt, Ben Ali in Tunisia, and Qaddafi in Libya. All abolished Islamic organizations for reasons of security, national and personal, and used the spectre of radical Islam to rationalize their style of rule. Most other Muslim countries have issues with radical Islam as well, to greater or lesser extent.

Whether or not Islam is an inherently violent religion has been the topic of great debate. A Wikipedia article (yeah yeah I know, work with me here), "Islam and Violence", gives an overview of the ongoing discussion. Some historians have argued that violence in religion is unavoidable because churches wield power and typically believe they have God's favor. We cannot dispute that most religions have instigated violence at various times in history. The Christian endorsement of war can be traced to Augustine of Hippo, whose concept of "just war" was eventually subverted to justify all sorts of aggression in the name of Christ. Likewise, Muslim analysts of the Koran have suggested that the answer to the question, "Is Islam violent?" is "it depends". Like Augustine, the Koran lays out conditions for when violence may be justified, although some may be alarmed at the relative looseness of some of those conditions by Western standards. The nature of jihad has been discussed and debated, and many Muslims have used both to emphasize peace and the "inner struggle" that is an obligation of all Muslims, and in a way that makes it seem that being "not Muslim enough" is enough justification for violence.

It is, then, little wonder that Islam has been perceived by Americans as fundamentally incompatible with American culture. While gestures such as the Oklahoma state legislature passing a law forbidding the consideration of Sharia -- Islamic law -- in jurisprudence have been ridiculed by many as prejudiced, it reflects a real fear among Americans that we are harboring a subculture that benefits from our Constitutionally-guaranteed rights and yet cannot peacefully coexist with those rights in the end. In any given person's mind, perception is reality. That does not mean that their perception is an accurate depiction of objective reality, but it does mean that people will tend to make decisions about threats to themselves based on that perception. The flipside of this is that this gives cover to intolerance and the persecution of people who are different, which the Bill of Rights is designed to prevent.

We've resisted this before. Witness the defense of the rights of Neo-Pagans, especially Wiccans, over the last fifty years. In spite of the clear, if Old-Testament, admonition that "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live", Christians do not have carte blanche to murder Wiccans. And in spite of the widespread misbelief that they are agents of Satan, Wiccans have nearly the same rights as Christians in things like child custody cases and the tax exempt status of faith-owned property. Likewise, no part of the Koran should ever have the authority to excuse any number of acts of violence. The Bible is not the supreme law of America, and neither is the Koran. It is the Constitution, and we'd best remember that.

The other side of the argument, that Islam is a peaceful religion misunderstood by a bigoted Christian populace, is just as naive. One cannot wish away the portions of the Koran, explicit and implied, that appear to incite Muslims to violence, particularly against non-Muslims. Muslim countries typically have an absymal record of women's rights, and honor killings (murder of a female family member by a male for perceived sins) are commonplace, even in the most liberal nations, such as Jordan and Turkey. While the meaning of Sharia is wider than most Americans perceive -- it has much in common with Jewish Halakha, rules for living a good life -- Americans are understandably alarmed when they witness purported attempts at applying Sharia law on a national level, only to see it descend into barbarism, such as in Afghanistan under the Taliban. There are an alarming number of issues of conscience whose Sharia penalty is death or dismemberment: criticizing Muhammad, being gay, adultery, polytheism (the former), and theft (the latter). So application of Sharia is something that alarms Americans.

I have, in the past, called Islam a violent religion (see my previous article, Violent Religion Threatens More Violence Over Accusations of Violence). Perhaps I'm mistaken. I, like most Americans, am not an expert on Islam. But as a non-Muslim living in America, I believe the burden of proof lies with Muslims. Just as white people are indicted as racists for not denouncing instances of racism against other groups, Muslims will continue to be indicted as violent for not denouncing radical Islam's violence. Unfortunately for them, criticizing Islam, and how people interpret and practice Islam, can get you killed. Christians have had to tolerate centuries of having the Crusades thrown in their face. Muslims will have to come to grips with the fact that the world views them in the same fashion, and the burden of proof is ultimately on them.

Can Islam be reformed? While there are denominations that nibble around the edges, much in the same way that Christian denominations tweak their approach to the Bible, most do not have meaningful differences. The only major post-Islamic religion is Bahai, whose followers have taken it in the teeth worse than most non-Muslims because of the widespread accusation of apostasy. See, you can convert to Islam, but you can't convert away from it. The penalty, again, is death.

So, what does that have to do with Rep. King and his hearings? This should be treated as a learning opportunity for everyone. That Islam can and does inspire people in this modern age to commit heinous acts of violence against innocent people is something Europe has had some experience dealing with. America, up until 9/11, had not had to deal with Islam-inspired violence much. I don't envy American Muslims right about now. I'd bet that many of them came to America, not to spread Islam, but to flee its excesses elsewhere. A free society needs to keep an eye out for any dynamics that seek to limit that freedom, whether it's radical Islam or Neo-Marxism or Christian-influenced neo-conservatism. In the end, the problem is not about faith, it's about power and the ability to wield it over others.

In that case, Islam is by no means alone.