Reading The Veil and The Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women’s Rights in Islam, by Fatima Mernissi

On and off over the past year or so, I have gotten into some pretty heated discussions here about Islam. In August of 2014, I wrote a two-part post called “Trying to Be an Ally: Thinking About Hejab, Muslim Invisibility, and the Casual Hatred that is Cultural Appropriation.” (Part 1 and Part 2)1 I wrote those posts in response to this one on Ms. Muslamic about “hijab tourism.” I put this one up about Sahar Amer’s book What Is Veiling? in response to some of the discussion on the other two posts; and I posted this one , about Reza Aslan’s response to what Bill Maher said in this clip because I was tired of listening to Maher trying to pass off his anti-intellectual Islam-bashing as some kind of crusade for justice.

 

For me, perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the discussions on Alas that these posts engendered was what I perceived to be some people’s inability to distinguish between criticizing the oppressive behaviors of Muslims–whether as individuals or governments–and characterizing Islam itself as somehow inherently “barbaric,” which is not the word they used, but is consistent with the emotional tone of Maher’s (and some of Sam Harris’) rhetoric.

One of the points I kept trying to make in these discussion was that there are already Muslims addressing on Muslim terms many of the critiques that we in the West have of religion. There was some not insignificant pushback against this point. So, for example, when I linked to evidence that there is at least one Muslim scholar, Dr. Amanullah De Sondy, who argues that being gay might in fact be compatible with Islam, G&W responded with this:

In all seriousness: so what? Who cares that there are some people who are deliberately promoting a view that contradicts the plain language of the text? Why on earth are they relevant in a general conversation, since they are a tiny fraction of all Muslims?

To be fair, I have taken G&W’s comment a little bit out of context because I am not really interested in reopening the precise conversation that was going on at that point. Rather, I have quoted him here because it was this comment that brought home to me my own ignorance about the very discussion within Islam that I was insisting we had to acknowledge and respect. Obviously, unless we are reading the Quran in Arabic, and also have access to the necessary and appropriate etymological, historical and other commentaries, we have to be very careful about what we actually mean by the phrase “plain language.” Nonetheless, granting for the sake of argument the aptness of G&W’s question and phrasing, the fact is that I had no idea, and I still don’t know, if Dr. De Sondy’s argument is or is not based on the Quran’s “plain language.”

Realizing this, I decided that I would take down from my shelf a book that I have owned for more than twenty years but never read: The Veil and The Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women’s Rights in Islam, by Fatima Mernissi. My plan was to read her book and post a kind of reading journal as I went, but a host of circumstances intervened, making my reading a far more disjointed experience than such a project would have required. It’s only now, two or three months after I first picked the book up, that I have finally finished it. One of the things I learned as I read was that, even if I’d been able to devote the time to the book that I’d wanted, a single reading would not have been enough for me to post in the way I originally had in mind. Mernissi’s argument is subtle and complex and relies not only on a textual analysis of passages in the Quran, which I have never read, not even in English, but also on a body of religious and historical research and commentary with which I am completely unfamiliar. I simply don’t know enough to do what I originally wanted to do in the way that I wanted to do it.

Instead, then, what I’d like to do is offer some passages from Mernissi’s “Preface to the English Edition,” which is clearly intended to frame her book for a Western audience, because I think encountering the very different framing that she, as a Muslim woman, brings to this issue is instructive. It certainly was for me.

From page vi:

Is Islam opposed to women’s rights?….Is it not odd that in this extraordinary decade, the 1990s, when the whole world is swept by the irresistible chant for human rights, sung by men and women, by children and grandparents, from all kinds of religious backgrounds and beliefs, in every language and dialect from Beijing to America, one finds only one religion identified as a stumbling block on the road to true democracy? Islam alone is condemned by many Westerners as blocking the way to women’s rights. And yet, though neither Christianity nor Judaism played an important role in promoting the equality of the sexes, millions of Jewish and Christian women today enjoy a dual privilege–full human rights on the one hand and access to an inspirational religious tradition on the other.

That initial framing question is important. She is not denying that there are Muslim governments which actively deny rights to women; she is asking if Islam itself is opposed to women’s rights, asserting that if nothing inherent in being practicing Jews or Christians prevents Jewish and Christian women in the West from accessing their full rights as citizens and asking why we should assume the same can’t be true of islam.

From pages vi-vii:

Westerners make unconscious religious references constantly in their daily activities, their creative thinking, and their approach to the world around them. When Neil Armstrong and his fellow astronauts walked on the moon on July 20, 1969, they read to the millions watching them, including us Muslims, the first chapter of the Book of Genesis: “In the Beginning God created the Heaves and the Earth…” They did not sound so very modern….Here is a clear message for those who doubt Islam’s capacity to survive modernity, calling it unfit to accompany the age of higher technology: why should Islam fail where Judaism and Christianity so clearly succeed?

Again from page vii:

[H]ow and where can a businessman who profitably exploits [Muslim] women…find a source in which he can dip his spurious rationale to give it a glow of authenticity? Surely not in the present. To defend the violation of women’s rights it is necessary to go back into the shadows of the past. This is what those people, East or West, who would deny Muslim women’s claim to democracy [as practicing or at least consciously self-identified Muslim women] are trying to do. They camouflage their self-interest by proclaiming that we can have either Islam or democracy, but never both together.

From pages vii-viii:

Any man who believes that a Muslim woman who fights for her dignity and right to citizenship excludes herself necessarily from the umma and is a brainwashed victim of Western propagand is a man who misunderstands his own religious heritage, his own cultural identity. The vast and inspiring records of Muslim history…speak to the contrary. We Muslim women can walk into the modern world with pride, knowing that the quest for dignity, democracy, and human rights, for full participation in the political and social affairs of our country, stems from no imported Western values, but is a true part of the Muslim tradition….Women fled atristocratic tribal Mecca by the thousands to enter Medina, the Prophet’s city in the seventh century, because Islam promised equality and dignity for all, for men and women, masters and servants. Every woman who came to Medina when the Prophet was the political leader of Muslims could gain access to full citizenship….

From page ix:

[That Mohammad’s] egalitarian message today sounds so foreign to many in our Muslim societies that they claim it to be imported is indeed one of the great enigmas of our times […] For those first Muslims democracy was nothing unusual; it was their meat and drink and their wonderful dream, waking or sleeping.

These last two quotes made the most impression on me, not because I am sure Mernissi is right–I find her book persuasive, but I don’t know enough to say more than that–but because her assertion that “the quest for dignity, democracy, and human rights, for full participation in the political and social affairs of our country…is a true part of the Muslim tradition” so thoroughly undermines the Western-centric framing used by people like Bill Maher and Sam Harris. Mernissi is a serious scholar of Islam in ways that Maher and Harris are not. On that count alone, her assertion deserves to be taken at least as seriously as anything they have to say on the matter.

Finally, I’d like to say this. In writing this post, I am not trying to defend Islam as a religious practice, a body of law, or a way of life. Rather, I am interested in making visible the often very biased framing that we use to understand and critique Islam here in the West–which, I hasten to add, doesn’t mean that I think we have no right to call out the oppressive behavior of Muslim governments, organizations, or people, or to call oppressive Islam as it is practiced and/or enforced by those entities. To acknowledge the existence of Mernissi’s perspective, much less its validity, is merely to acknowledge that the most useful, constructive, and effective answer to that oppression may not lie with us and that perhaps we ought to stop behaving as if it did.

 

  1. The images in Part 1 are a little messed up on Alas, so if you want to see the post with the images, here’s a link to the post on my blog. []
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61 Responses to Reading The Veil and The Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women’s Rights in Islam, by Fatima Mernissi

  1. 1
    Ben David says:

    1. Maybe she should stick to her own religion:

    And yet, though neither Christianity nor Judaism played an important role in promoting the equality of the sexes

    Well, no.
    The Jewish Bible begins to stamp out concubinage and other forms of victimization/second-class citizenship – the ability of women to own property is stated explicitly, while other cultures – including Greece and Rome – had a while to go to get there.

    And Rabbinic Judaism continued the trajectory, adding the marriage contract – the world’s first prenup, if you will – and making explicit the equal moral/legal status that the Torah describes in passing.

    The decision of early Christianity to adopt the Roman notion of the wife as chattel is, from this perspective, a step backwards – but Christendom drew on the core humanism that follows directly from Jewish monotheism to get to where we are today.

    So modern talk about equality springs uniquely from Judeo-Christian Western culture.

    2. The egalitarian vision in Islam may exist in theory, but we’ve seen precious little expression of it in practice over centuries – and they don’t seem to be motivating the current leadership of the umma.

  2. 2
    Harlequin says:

    Ben David, it strikes me that these two paragraphs of yours…

    The decision of early Christianity to adopt the Roman notion of the wife as chattel is, from this perspective, a step backwards – but Christendom drew on the core humanism that follows directly from Jewish monotheism to get to where we are today.

    The egalitarian vision in Islam may exist in theory, but we’ve seen precious little expression of it in practice over centuries – and they don’t seem to be motivating the current leadership of the umma.

    …contradict each other. In the first instance, based on the context in which that paragraph appears, you say that you can consider Christianity a force in the equality of the sexes, not because of any actions it has taken itself, but because it’s part of a tradition that includes advancement for women at its founding. But Islam, which had some advancements for women as part of its founding but did not continue to push that idea–that, indeed, it took a step backward after its founding, just as you say Christianity did relative to Judaism–you say we cannot consider a force in the equality of the sexes because of that step backward. Which is it? Either you can count the way something was founded, or you can count the way it has played out since then, but you can’t look at the favorable founding for one religion and the unfavorable playing out of another and call it a fair comparison.

  3. 3
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    which, I hasten to add, doesn’t mean that I think we have no right to call out the oppressive behavior of Muslim governments, organizations, or people, or to call oppressive Islam as it is practiced and/or enforced by those entities. To acknowledge the existence of Mernissi’s perspective, much less its validity, is merely to acknowledge that the most useful, constructive, and effective answer to that oppression may not lie with us and that perhaps we ought to stop behaving as if it did.

    Useful, constructive, and effective as defined by who? I think you and I are having two very different conversations.

    You seem to be to be taking a theologically-based position which I would roghly define as akin to “Islam is a complex religion. Fully understanding it requires expertise and study. There are a variety of highly educated people who have very complex opinions and debates and who are coming to interesting conclusions and defenses, based on good research and excellent analysis, which are often quite different from the public perceptions. You should rely on those experts regarding Islamic theology, and not the people who have not studied it in detail.”

    I agree, that is true. (and yes, I know those are my words and not yours.)

    But I don’t think that’s the issue which most people are concerned about, because that represents a focus on theory and not on practice. To use an example: it may be that christian theology, if properly analyzed, supports killing Jews. Or not. But during various historical periods, the main concern of Jews is “how many Christians think they should kill us?” and not “do their thoughts properly comport with scholarly analysis?”

    Also, for better or worse there are, obviously, a lot of powerful people who oppose those scholars, some of whom are claiming they are right and the scholars are wrong. So it’s not clear how someone like me (a non-devoted non-expert) would even distinguish between someone who is “wrong,” and someone who is the Islamic equivalent of Thomas Aquinas.

    And finally, to the degree that we are to believe those experts it requires us to focus on the future over the present. It would be a bit like referring to Christianity as a “religion of peace and tolerance,” during one of its many violent and nasty periods. While there is no question that Islam (or almost any other religion) CAN support peace and tolerance, and that most of its practitioners DO support peace and tolerance, for the moment it seems to be unusually associated with the opposite.

    For most people the primary goal is self-interest. Their goal is not to prevent oppressive Islam as it is practiced against other people, unless there’s a collateral benefit. Instead it’s to stamp out or prevent any effects of oppressive Islam as it may be practiced where they are, or as it may affect them.

    For those people, the desire to protect onesself from radical Islamists is the primary goal, and exceeds the desire to avoid collateral damage to NON-radical practitioners. This is no surprise, as it is fairly universal human nature to want your own “team” to win: you would expect to find–and do–people on both sides, including those who spend most of their efforts working to avoid any damage to NON-radical Islam, versus attacking radical Islam. (That “don’t attack radicals” approach may also be because outside the US, too much opposition to radical Islam–or, in some cases, to Islam in general–has an unfortunate tendency to get you killed or otherwise punished. Especially if you’re in a country controlled by ISIS, of course…but not always. )

    So we’re in one of those “who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?” kinds of places here. In practice, the power of radical islam seems to be increasing, not decreasing. In practice, the number of people who take views which are different from the experts/analysts seems to be going up, not down.

    So while I agree that they may be theologically correct, I don’t think it’s reasonable to rely on them to accurately represent the “holy shit I want to prevent this stuff” group.

  4. 4
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Forgot this:

    Obviously, unless we are reading the Quran in Arabic, and also have access to the necessary and appropriate etymological, historical and other commentaries, we have to be very careful about what we actually mean by the phrase “plain language.”

    But that isn’t true at all. Not practically.

    Imagine your argument as applied to the Christian Bible: it would suggest that you can’t properly read it unless you’re reading it with a full scholarly understanding of what everything means (perhaps you also would suggest reading it in a language other than English.)

    But the vast, vast, majority of Christians DO NOT READ THAT STUFF. They have not read Thomas Aquinas. They have not studies Martin Luther. They may not have read (if they’re Catholic) the latest papal decrees. They may well be be illiterate and unable to read those things anyway–I don’t know about stats for Christians but according to this quick Google search, roughly 1/3 of Muslims are illiterate and therefore aren’t reading this analysis anyway.

    For most folks, what “plain language means” is that they pick up the Bible and see “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” And they think that means what it says: in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Whether some theologist thinks that is a metaphor for the big bang doesn’t matter because they never get exposed to that theologist anyway.

  5. G&W:

    I think you and I are having two very different conversations.

    You’re right and, quite frankly, I am not interested in having your conversation in this thread. We have gone around and around about this in the other threads, and since we do not disagree on this fundamental issue—that Islam as practiced in many, many places, as enshrined in and enforced by governments like Saudi Arabia, as promulgated by groups like ISIS is oppressive—I don’t see the point in having at it again in this thread. (And I would point out that I don’t think Mernissi would disagree with that statement either.)

    If, on the other hand, you want to engage what I am actually writing about, which is not, as you wrote (and I agree with your words here too, of course):

    Islam is a complex religion. Fully understanding it requires expertise and study. There are a variety of highly educated people who have very complex opinions and debates and who are coming to interesting conclusions and defenses, based on good research and excellent analysis, which are often quite different from the public perceptions. You should rely on those experts regarding Islamic theology, and not the people who have not studied it in detail.

    but is rather the idea, as I wrote, that the “answer to that oppression may not lie with us and that perhaps we ought to stop behaving as if it did,” then maybe there’s a conversation here that will go somewhere other than the circles we’ve gone in till now. (I will concede that the words “useful, constructive, and effective” were probably not the best ones with which to contextualize that last bit of the post.)

  6. 6
    Ben David says:

    Harlequin (post 2):

    In the first instance, based on the context in which that paragraph appears, you say that you can consider Christianity a force in the equality of the sexes, not because of any actions it has taken itself, but because it’s part of a tradition that includes advancement for women at its founding.

    I meant that the original unfortunate decision to adopt the Greco-Roman notion of women as chattel was, eventually, overtaken as Christendom worked out the political and social consequences of core Jewish ideas of individual worth, individual moral agency, and human equality before one G-d.

    To use your phrase, Christendom “took a lot of actions” on the way to our current situation, where the Judeo-Christian West has almost entirely renounced its colonial past and is now an exporter of the equality meme.

    In contrast, Islam stepped back from proud initial statements about equality – and has mostly stayed back… with the modern trend to fundamentalism and rejection of foreign influence leading to even greater inequality.

  7. 7
    Patrick says:

    I haven’t read her book, but from the excerpt it seems like two questions are being conflated.

    She’s completely right that there’s no particular reason to single Islam out as incompatible with [she says democracy, I’m going to say] modernity over top of Christianity and Judaism. And she’s completely right to note that there are Christians and Jews who are completely fine with modernity, and there’s no reason to think Muslims can’t do the same thing.

    But… the fact that people who identify as members of a faith group endorse modernity doesn’t mean that their religion is compatible with modernity. People are compatible with contradicting ideologies. And people are REALLY good at lying to themselves about their belief systems.

    I have a Muslim friend who regularly posts quotes from the Quran or Hadiths. They are always quotes that he feels are beautiful, or peaceful, or positively representative of his faith. He takes negative portrayal of Islam very seriously, and this is his small effort at pushing back.

    Because at heart I am a spiteful jerk, I regularly look these up on quran.com, and press the “more context” button. About half the time, if you look for more context on the quote he’s selected as peaceful and kind, it’s actually part of an angry rant against Christians and Jews. Stuff like “be kind to people” turns into “We told those Christian and Jew bastards to be kind to people, but they weren’t, because they suck, and that’s why no one should associate with them and that’s why they’re going to burn forever in the agonies of hell.”

    I don’t think he knows, and I’m not going to tell him.

    I think this is far more likely to be the model of Islam coming to peace with modernity. It certainly mimics what Christianity and Judaism have done.

  8. 8
    Kohai says:

    Richard,

    You conclude your post with this,

    To acknowledge the existence of Mernissi’s perspective, much less its validity, is merely to acknowledge that the most useful, constructive, and effective answer to that oppression may not lie with us and that perhaps we ought to stop behaving as if it did.

    and also attempt to refocus the conversation back specifically to that in your reply at comment #5 with G&W.

    I’ve read through your post multiple times and… I’m not clear what exactly you’re mean. I think maybe I’m being dense. Can you state, plainly, what exactly you’re proposing?

  9. 9
    Pete Patriot says:

    “the quest for dignity, democracy, and human rights, for full participation in the political and social affairs of our country…is a true part of the Muslim tradition”

    What Mernissi says goes against every serious historical study of human rights. It’s ridiculous. We know where they came from. Every single credible history traces human rights back to 17c/18c Europe, through Christian natural law theology, Locke, Kant, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, Wollstonecraft and so on. It’s bizarre to claim the Christian / Enlightenment atheist product of the French revolution is an authentic part of the 7c Quranic tradition. It’s not.

    All she’s doing is politically useful retconning. Good luck to her, but it’s not remotely true.

  10. 10
    brian says:

    You can pick and choose scraps from any ethos to justify it as a “good thing” for humanity.

    But as the Jesuits say when debating Fundamentalists and Atheists both, “Text out of context is pretext.” Are there lines in the Koran or the Hadith that can make Islam sound totally awesome? Sure. But in CONTEXT are those the passages that get any USE?

    I’m asking. Show me a part of Islamic history that was enlightened, I’m curious.

  11. 11
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    RJN:
    Sorry that wasn’t the response you’re looking for. Let me try again.
    You want to engage with the idea that

    To acknowledge the existence of Mernissi’s perspective, much less its validity, is merely to acknowledge that the most useful, constructive, and effective answer to that oppression may not lie with us and that perhaps we ought to stop behaving as if it did.

    Frankly I don’t think you’ll find many (any?) people here who would DISAGREE that, for example, “having Mernissi argue her point to others” would probably be positive or, at worst, neutral. I can’t easily imagine a negative consequence from the views themselves; they mainly matter as an issue of recourse competition and opportunity cost. (But those are important, as I’ll get into later.)

    And similarly, I don’t think you’ll find many (any?) people here who would have refused to concede, even without your links, that there were at least some people arguing for a feminist version of Islam. Just as there are at least some arguing for a liberal one; and some for a radical one; and probably some–though I haven’t encountered it–for a a libertarian one; and so on.

    To the degree that you are simply trying to get us to “acknowledge the existence of Mernissi’s perspective and its validity,” that is an instant step: I hereby acknowledge both that it exists, and that it appears, to the best of my limited understanding, perfectly valid. You hardly needed your post.

    But that doesn’t seem to be what you really mean, right? Because nothing is without consequences, including inaction. IOW, the acknowledgment isn’t meaningful without a decision about what to do next.

    [edited to change to political example] And evaluating the followup requires an argument that we should (or should not) decide to devote a portion of shared resources to examining it, adopting it, and so on. So if you have a given political goal–whatever it is–there’s a big difference between “if asked, should we let our lobbyists acknowledge that this position exists” and “should we direct our lobbyists to proactively spend some of their limited time and money focusing on this position.”

    The problem is that you don’t seem to want to have that argument. Yet it seems almost literally impossible to decide which option is best, without comparing the relative merits of each–and that includes things like “relative success” and “relative likelihood of adoption” and “relative potential for future success.” And of course, any relative answer requires you to evaluate not only your proposal, but the competing ones… which you don’t seem to want to discuss.

    I’d like to engage you in the conversation you want to have, without raising the topics which you are asking me to avoid. But I’m having a bit of trouble figuring out how because it seems to me that your argument can’t work without going outside the boundaries you have set. If you want acknowledgment that my current position is not 100% successful, 100% supported, or entirely predictable, you have it! Lord knows it is imperfect. But nonetheless, if you want to argue for changing the position then you have to go down the rabbit hole of actually talking about both options you’re considering.

    (And of course, “considering that the current position may be wrong” is pretty much the same thing. To the degree that it isn’t intended to produce any change other than “consideration” it’s a meaningless resource expense; to the degree that it’s just a semantic way of arguing for a change then it should be analyzed like one.)

    I may well be missing something, in which case, my bad. Can you try to clarify your argument? Or, perhaps, clarify the boundaries? Or, more generally, explain what you imagine the responses would/should be?

  12. 12
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    If I may try a different tack: It seems that this is like arguing about communism.

    Some folks think that it is very relevant to look at the theoretical ideal of communist laws–which is, like most theoretical ideals, pretty great.

    Some folks think that it is more relevant to look at the actual outcomes of implementing communist laws–which are, let’s just say, not quite so good as the ideals.

    You seem to want to talk about the ideals without talking about the actual outcomes.

    To me this seems problematic: since the point of the ideals is to produce outcomes; and since we can only objectively measure outcomes; it seems really confusing to ignore outcomes when discussing ideals.

    But you’re clearly a very smart dude, so I can’t shake this really annoying feeling that I’m missing something. Could you not just explain why you think ideals are important to discuss (I agree, they are) but also why you think that outcomes aren’t important evidence w/r/t ideals?

  13. 13
    brian says:

    To add to Gin and Pete`s points. Mernissi is from Morocco according to wikipedia anyway. How did her book tours in other Islamic countries go? I’m going to guess about as well as Maliah`s tour did. The existence of a lone opinion holder does not a social movement make.

  14. There is a lot to respond to here, and I am writing so it will be a little bit before I can get to it, but I do need to respond to this:

    Brian:

    You can pick and choose scraps from any ethos to justify it as a “good thing” for humanity.

    But as the Jesuits say when debating Fundamentalists and Atheists both, “Text out of context is pretext.” Are there lines in the Koran or the Hadith that can make Islam sound totally awesome? Sure. But in CONTEXT are those the passages that get any USE?

    This is so unspeakably arrogant and self-centered that the only answer I have for you is to read her book. That you would characterize as “pick[ing] and choos[ing] scraps” the work of a well-respected scholar of a subject you very clearly know next to nothing about—except what you have very clearly cherry-picked to confirm the biases you already hold—suggests that your positions are not worth paying all that much attention to.

    I’m asking. Show me a part of Islamic history that was enlightened, I’m curious.

    Well, you might start by looking at the Arab Andalusian culture of the 10th through 13th centuries. Enlightened by our standards? No. And certainly not perfect by any other standard. But then the European Enlightenment wasn’t particularly “enlightened” for Jews or women either.

    That’s all I have time for for now. I’ll be back when I can.

  15. 15
    Harlequin says:

    I think, for me, part of why this conversation is important is that right now a lot of people seem to be arguing that the fundamental problem is Islam itself–which implies that no progress (or little progress) can happen in the places where Islam is predominant. If that is true, then the only way to greater equality for women/democracy/whatever is to get rid of Islam, either by conversion or, I suppose, by violence. I don’t like that solution on a practical level or on a humanitarian level.

    Why should we care that some Muslim theologians believe you can find support for women’s rights and other more typically progressive positions in the Quran? Because as long as such theologians exist, they can try to counter the more conservative forces of Islam in their own language, their own milieu, in a way we can’t as outsiders. No, they are not the dominant force right now–but neither were some Christian theologians whose interpretations are now the dominant interpretations of the Bible. Christianity changed. It didn’t have to, but it did. And it may be that our interests and desires as outsiders are best served by supporting the people internal to Islam with different ideas, rather than trying to impose our own from outside.

    I think it is arrogant, incorrect, and, from a policy perspective, paralyzing to insist that the current interpretation of Islam held by the ruling powers in some Middle Eastern and North African countries is the only interpretation of Islam that matters or that can ever exist.

  16. 16
    brian says:

    Richard;
    I’m working on a book that applies to your posts. I have gotten a perspective on the topic from our back and forth, so I feel like I can share it with you. Since everything I’ll mention as it relates to you is very much a part of your public on line persona, I think discussing it with you here is totally appropriate.

    There is a personality type that I feel is starting to become a social trend, much in the way that the “collective-conformist” personality type became typical in the post-WWII – Cold War era. “Little boxes” by Pete Seeger or The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit give a quick impression of the “type” I refer to.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlSpc87Jfr0

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEWZpUhDu8g

    As the 21st Century has evolved into using new media, and society has become more divided and partisan in general, a subset that I refer to as “the Vessel of Truth” has become a common way for people to cope in a borderline dysfunctional way. These Vessels of Truth can be of any political, religious or assorted background. Their identifying characteristic is that they take a position that does NOT hold up critically or by available evidence. They can be convinced that the Freemasons sacrificed Princess Diana, for example. They can be 9/11 Truthers, Tea Baggers, Ayn Rand fanatics, or any opinion that goes against the main stream and is on the face of it a “weak argument.” (It can also be applied to artists, hobbyists, any obsessive person into something not generally considered worthwhile. Painters who work in dog shit, collectors of matchbooks, etc.)

    They come from childhood backgrounds of abuse, emotional neglect or poverty, which made a strong impression of having no power, feeling no one cares for them, a distrust of authority, and an overall low self-esteem and low sense of self-efficacy. To compensate for this, they use an easy way to have a false sense of self-esteem, namely by being the only one who “really knows the truth.”
    The MORE false the belief, the greater they can inflate their sense of martyrdom at the ignorant masses. In fact through cognitive dissonance, the more they are told what they say isn’t so, the more their self-esteem inflates.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF4gdOlP-fc

    Now you have chosen some interesting ways to look down on the ignorant masses. “ONLY Richard Jeffrey Newman knows the REAL Islam” and “ONLY Richard Jeffrey Newman knows what a literary translator is.” I would suspect that the people that know you personally find you illogically dogmatic about either trivial tasks (“The body should be washed in alphabetical order in the shower”) or some assorted minor heresy (“Howard Hughes helped fake the moon landing.”)

    I suppose your chosen manner of being a “Vessel of Truth” is more annoying than harmful. But it makes me suspect that you are a deeply unhappy individual, who would be much happier if he found a REAL source of self-esteem and a more meaningful way to feel as though you have control over your world. I suggest you spend more time developing insight, peace of mind and a sense of self efficacy and less time bloviating, pontificating, and holding forth on philosophically and objectively absurd positions.

    I recommend DBT, I think it would cut through the bullshit you’re currently using in place of genuine self-worth.

  17. 17
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    brian, WTF are you talking about? your analysis of RJN is bizarre, offensive, and inaccurate.

  18. 18
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    RJN, you don’t have to respond–this will be my last post as I think I know what I was missing.

    I apologize for not realizing this earlier. It just hit me (please correct me if I’m wrong!) that you’re aiming for something akin to the usual “ally” kind of relationship, where the interests of the outsider are (a) secondary and (b) mostly aimed at helping the insiders do better and (c) very focused on non-offense.

    IOW, I get the feeling your priority is something like “help people who want to reform Islam achieve their goals of reformation, using a process that respects their preferences.” And I think that if I felt like that, then I’d largely agree with your focus might simply be reading the reformers’ work and asking “what can I do to help?” That’s a very valid (and common, for ally work) perspective.

    But that isn’t my priority–my priority is to “oppose radical Islam” and “avoid effects of radical Islam.” And since I’m at best agnostic about religion, if I thought the best way to deter radical Islam was to oppose Islam in general, I wouldn’t hesitate to do it. I get the sense that you would not feel that way and it seems pretty obvious that the Islamic authors would not feel that way either, which pretty much explains our disagreement I think.

  19. 19
    Christopher says:

    Some folks think that it is more relevant to look at the actual outcomes of implementing communist laws–which are, let’s just say, not quite so good as the ideals.

    This is the part I’m incredibly hung up on.

    Like, if I were to say “Actually, I was part of a small commune in the 60s and it was a good experience for me” would that count as evidence about “the actual outcomes of implementing communist laws”?

    I think people would go, “Well, but that’s a small isolated example, compared to the horrors of the soviet union.”

    Right? Things which are clearly successful examples of communism can be dismissed in the face of other examples as we either build up a comprehensive, multi-volume history of communist thought and practice, or, more likely, just dismiss examples that don’t fit the conclusions we’ve already arrived at after cursory study.

    It seems to me that “The merits of Islam as practiced in the history of planet Earth” is just a subject that is too huge and nebulous to get a grasp on. It’s like asking whether, I don’t know, Language has been a force for good or ill in human history.

    Asking “What’s going on in Saudi Arabian politics right now?” just strikes me as an example of a much more useful and potentially answerable question than “How enlightened is Islam right now?”

  20. 20
    Charles S says:

    Brian,

    Quoting from the moderation policy “Debates are conducted in a manner that shows respect even for folks we disagree with.”

    Quoting from gin&whiskey: “your analysis of RJN is bizarre, offensive, and inaccurate.”

    Speaking as a moderator: You are banned from this thread. Please do not comment in this thread any more in any way. If you wish to respond to this ban, please do so in an open thread.

  21. I am just coming back to my computer now, and I have only just now seen Brian’s “diagnosis.” Thank you, Charles, for banning him from this thread.

    G&W: I’m not sure whether I will respond because of time considerations, but if I can I will, because I think what you wrote, if my first, fast reading is at all accurate, will be interesting to talk about. ETA: thanks for your response to Brian as well.

  22. Harlequin:

    Thanks for comment 15.

    G&W (and, Kohai, maybe this will answer your question as well):

    I thought I was not going to have time to respond tonight, but it’s actually better for me time wise if I say something at least briefly now and leave further discussion, if there is any, for later. You wrote:

    But that isn’t my priority–my priority is to “oppose radical Islam” and “avoid effects of radical Islam.” And since I’m at best agnostic about religion, if I thought the best way to deter radical Islam was to oppose Islam in general, I wouldn’t hesitate to do it. I get the sense that you would not feel that way and it seems pretty obvious that the Islamic authors would not feel that way either, which pretty much explains our disagreement I think.

    I think this does begin to get at something. So let me say a couple of things about it:

    1. I would say that my priority right now is to oppose not radical Islam, but rather radical Islamists.

    2. For me, this means focusing on behavior and the consequences of that behavior more than ideology, religious or otherwise.

    3. One reason for this is that, even if I thought it was the right thing to do, I am just not qualified to oppose Islam, radical or otherwise. Take, for example, the hejab. I have no problem calling oppressive and sexist governments like Iran and Saudi Arabia that enforce it punitively through rule of law, making it part of a web of discrimination against/oppression of women that goes far beyond anything one might call, simply, religious observance. I do have a problem with deciding that the hejab itself is oppressive—and I have an even harder time with this after reading Mernissi’s book—because I am very aware that I know precious little about the web of social, cultural, spiritual meaning in which it exists (and which exists for even the illiterate Muslim women you talk about above). This is important, I think, because calling the hejab oppressive suggests that you know what (or at least the kind of thing that) ought to take its place, but since you (general you) don’t really know what Muslims would be giving up by giving up the hejab (and here, again, I will say that reading Mernissi’s book really educated me), I don’t see how you can have any idea what might reasonably replace what giving it up will cost.

    4. Further, to oppose Islam as a whole—or radical Islam, for that matter—without fully understanding ideologically what you are opposing, or to suggest somehow that what Islam needs is an infusion of something at least resembling Western values of human rights, etc., is implicitly to deny that there are progressive Muslims who are right now working, in Muslim terms, to end the misogynist imposition of the veil, who oppose the atrocities committed by ISIS, and who see in their own religion the potential for realizing the values of human dignity, democracy, etc. that we have here in the West. It is to suggest, as I said in the original post, that we have the answer to the problem of Islam and that no such answer can be found within Islam.

    5. Now, I want to emphasize, none of what I just said means you can’t or shouldn’t oppose what radical Islamists do, that you can’t or shouldn’t call what they do Islamic (since they are Muslim and are practicing a version of Islam), that you can’t or shouldn’t use violence to stop them if necessary, and that you can’t or shouldn’t call oppressive those aspects of the Islam they practice that are indeed oppressive. For me it simply means that I will not take the next step and presume that I know Islam or what is good for Islam or what is good for Muslims better than Muslims who are taking precisely the anti-radical Islamist positions I mentioned above.

    And with that I am off to bed and might not be back for a day or so.

  23. 23
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    This is important, I think, because calling the hejab oppressive suggests that you know what (or at least the kind of thing that) ought to take its place, but since you (general you) don’t really know what Muslims would be giving up by giving up the hejab (and here, again, I will say that reading Mernissi’s book really educated me), I don’t see how you can have any idea what might reasonably replace what giving it up will cost.

    I guess I don’t see that as linked to the same degree, because it seems possible to me to classify a social/political/religious trait as problematic (“encourage submission to authority” as an example) without committing to which of the infinite alternatives one might choose.

    I also see that as a sort of experts-only claim. And that particular claim doesn’t work well with me.

    Honestly the hijab per se isn’t super my focus but I’ll roll with your example: which I might summarize as “we, as non-Muslims, cannot fully understand what Muslims feel about the hijab or what they would lose by giving it up; our views are biased and insufficient.”

    Which is, FWIW, something that I have no trouble conceding as true.

    But doesn’t the same claim apply in reverse? If we cannot appreciate their situation, is it still reasonable to assume that Muslims can fully appreciate our situation; i.e. what the benefits are of living without the hijab; living outside Islam; of never having any obligation to reject it; and so on?

    I don’t see how one could maintain the first position and not also concede the second position. At which point the options are basically “nobody tells me what to do because I am the only one who knows myself best” or “I guess we’ll just have to live with the inaccuracies.” I tend towards #2.

  24. 24
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    RJN said:
    1. I would say that my priority right now is to oppose not radical Islam, but rather radical Islamists.

    2. For me, this means focusing on behavior and the consequences of that behavior more than ideology, religious or otherwise.

    First of all, I am incredibly interested in this discussion, but I am taking up a lot of space. I’m happy to drop out for a bit; just ask. (And due to the enormous blizzard coming to the northeast, I may be dropping out anyway, like it or not.)

    I generally perceive you as someone who’s very interested in the causes of things. So the quote above surprised me a bit. To clarify:

    Do you focus on behavior over causes in this instance because you think your focus is, standing alone, the most effective way to reduce radical behavior? IOW, if someone appointed you Czar Of Reducing Radical Behavior Without Worrying About Fallout Or Anything Else, would your focus change to include more on “cause” or would it stay the same?

    Also, when you argue for reliance (whole or partial) on the folks you read, how do you internally address the issue raised by valuation on “how folks think like me?”

    That’s not a great phrase, so I’ll try to explain:
    People–not just Muslims!!–who write on their own religion often seem have a tendency (entirely human) to try to protect the aspects of their religion which they like, and attack those which they don’t. Christian writers might say “change this thing; reject the formal church… but keep Christ in your heart” but they are quite unlikely to conclude “actually, the whole believe-in-Christ thing is seeming like a bad idea”

    The liberals who are writing about Islam have the advantage of knowledge and specific empathy for other Muslims. But they also seem (unsurprisingly, they’re only human) to have a tendency to try to defend their own preferences, just as they attack other ones.

    So if you read things on Mohammed pictures you might see options vary from “we shouldn’t be concerned with non-Muslim images” to “it’s historically supported” to something else. But unsurprisingly they are rarely going to include “who cares; mohammed was just a dead guy,” or “relying on centuries-old dead men’s writings to tell us what pictures we can and cannot draw is a stupid idea, and we should reject it irrespective of the correct Islamic interpretation.”

    As a somewhat anti-religious and lifelong atheist, I obviously have a disadvantage (and a big one, at that) in terms of my empathy. But oddly enough I sometimes feel like I have an advantage in terms of objectivity, for a single and somewhat odd reason: I don’t really privilege one set of beliefs over another based on theology, because of course I don’t subscribe to any theology. It’s not as if I think it’s way better to believe that “praying will make God help you” than to believe that “you should keep kosher because God says so.” Or that I think one Islamic tradition is better or worse because it matches up with my own religion. And so on.

    For reasons of effectiveness I generally don’t make the “Mohammed was just a dude” argument to Muslims any more than I make the equivalent Jesus argument to Christians. But it’s mentally on the table in a way that (I think) makes it a bit simpler to cut through the theology and look at the underlying problem.

    Of course, as I keep noting, people’s ability to see outside their own Platonic cave is pretty limited. Including mine. Which is why these discussions are so interesting.

  25. 25
    Kohai says:

    Richard,

    That did help answer it, and thank you for responding! I have some comments in response.

    1. I would say that my priority right now is to oppose not radical Islam, but rather radical Islamists.

    2. For me, this means focusing on behavior and the consequences of that behavior more than ideology, religious or otherwise.

    This seems odd to me. I mean I could see this point of view with regard to almost any other social ill – spousal abuse, let’s say – and see how it can make sense to combat abuse without needing to focus on abusers’ ideology.

    But with regard to radical Islam (or radical any religion), it seems like belief and ideology are a central part to what’s at stake. Maybe I’m misreading you here, but it seems as if you’re saying something to the effect of, “blowing oneself up in a crowded market is bad, and I want to focus on that, but not put much emphasis on the problematic aspects of martyrdom or jihad.”

    This seems odd to me. I’m not saying it’s obviously wrong, and I’m certainly not claiming that I have some sort of special expertise as to how to overcome radical Islamists. But this just seems like a very counter-intuitive focus to me. Please correct me if I’m misreading you.

    4. Further, to oppose Islam as a whole—or radical Islam, for that matter—without fully understanding ideologically what you are opposing, or to suggest somehow that what Islam needs is an infusion of something at least resembling Western values of human rights, etc., is implicitly to deny that there are progressive Muslims who are right now working, in Muslim terms, to end the misogynist imposition of the veil, who oppose the atrocities committed by ISIS, and who see in their own religion the potential for realizing the values of human dignity, democracy, etc. that we have here in the West. It is to suggest, as I said in the original post, that we have the answer to the problem of Islam and that no such answer can be found within Islam.

    Again, I’m very puzzled by this formulation. I think I can say, “all people, including Muslims, should embrace classical liberal values such as free speech, tolerance and the marketplace of ideas” without implicitly saying, “literally the only way forward for Muslims is to become just like us.” I don’t at all agree with the way you’ve framed that.

    Having said so, I think this may reveal why I find some of the things you’ve written about (for example) Islam and its various interpretations so puzzling. It’s seeming like your view is that there’s something about secular liberal atheists like me who criticize elements of Islam that’s inherently… oppressive? Erasing? Or something? I’m not sure what label you’d put on it, but it’s what you seem to be referring to with regard to implicitly denying the work of progressive Muslims.

    Again, I very much disagree with this framing, but I think I can at least see why I disagree in a way that I didn’t before.

  26. 26
    Jake Squid says:

    I find it interesting that most of the comments here are directed at combating radical Islam. I take it that “radical Islam” is synonymous with “fundamental Islam”. (If I’m wrong about that… well, then my understanding of the conversation will be out of step.)

    As someone with no religion, it seems odd to me that the concentration is on Islam rather than on radical. None of the major religions to come out of the Middle East has historically been egalitarian. That’s a really, really recent development. If you look at the more radical/fundamentalist subcultures of those religions in the modern West, you find a lot less egalitarianism than you find in the mainstream.

    Would Christians of the 14th century recognize modern Christians as Christians? Would Christians of the 18th century?

    The existence of many, many egalitarian, democratic Muslims in the West would indicate that Islam is not, in fact, incompatible with Democracy or Equality or any of those things we value so highly. It appears to me that radical/fundementalist/conservative versions of any of the 3 major religions in the West are what is opposed to those values.

    So the question becomes, what is the most effective way to oppose radical Islam? Richard, I think, is advocating supporting non-radical/progressive Islam’s fight against fundamentalism as the answer.

    Since Islam appears to me a secondary characteristic of what we’d like to reduce, I end up wondering why the conversation is centered around Islam instead of fundamentalism as the thing to combat.

  27. 27
    brian says:

    Comment deleted by RJN, since Brian was very explicitly told not to comment on this thread again.

  28. 28
    Kohai says:

    BTW, since it’s related to the topic, I recently did start following the work of a particular liberal British Muslim, Maajid Nawaz. He became a radical Islamist in his teens, and later left the movement. Among other things, he now works with the think tank Quilliam (which he co-founded) to combat extremist beliefs. There’s an interview with him on NPR’s Fresh Air podcast (http://www.npr.org/2015/01/15/377442344/how-orwells-animal-farm-led-a-radical-muslim-to-moderation) in which he credits reading Orwell’s Animal Farm as part of his conversion from radicalism to liberalism. I think it’s a great listen if you have 45 minutes to spare.

  29. Brian,

    You were very explicitly told not to comment on this thread. That you did so demonstrates a serious lack of respect for the rules here. I have, therefore, deleted your comment.

    I will reiterate what Charles S said, except I am doing it as the person whose thread this is: Do not comment on this thread anymore. If you want to respond, take it to an open thread.

    ETA: G&W, Kohai, Jake: I have read your comments, and I have a response, or some responses, but I need to mull them and finish some other stuff before I can take the time to post them. So I will be back.

  30. 30
    brian says:

    Comment once again deleted by RJN, since Brian was told twice not to comment on this thread again.

  31. Jake wrote:

    Richard, I think, is advocating supporting non-radical/progressive Islam’s fight against fundamentalism as the answer.

    This is not precisely accurate. While I do think it’s important to support, at the very least by making visible, those Muslim’s who actively and vocally oppose radical Islam, that hasn’t been my purpose in posting. Rather—and I have obviously not been able to articulate this clearly enough—my purpose has been to raise as an issue a problem that I see in a lot of the rhetoric against radical Islam here in the States, and perhaps in the western media in general, i.e., the tendency to leap from criticizing behavior to a blanket condemnation of an entire religious tradition. Let me give a couple of examples of what I mean.

    Take the hijab, which I return to a lot because it is something that resonates very strongly with a lot of people. As I have said many times, I think policies such as those enforced by the governments of Iran and Saudi Arabia are oppressive. More than that, I agree that the way veiling is practiced and enforced at the level of family and community is oppressive; and I think it is true that the way veiling is practiced and enforced at this broad brush level is about subjugating women. It is, however, to me at least, a far cry from recognizing that fact, from arguing that women ought to have the choice not to veil, that women ought to enjoy equal rights, etc. to arguing—especially as an outsider to that tradition and culture—that Islam is, by definition, incompatible with those demands, and this latter argument is both text and subtext of a lot of the arguments I hear and read.

    As another example, take the idea of freedom of speech. Horrible atrocities have been committed—Charlie Hebdo is the most recent—ostensibly rooted, first, in a prohibition against creating images of Mohammad and, second, in a prohibition against insulting him. Absolutely there are Muslim authorities who have given legitimacy to this argument. In Iran, people have been put to death for this “crime;” in Saudi Arabia, most recently, Raif Badawi was imprisoned and flogged for expressing his opinions. No amount of cultural relativism can excuse such things, but, again, it is for me a big jump from criticizing this behavior—and, as I have said before, you have to call the behavior Muslim, since the people doing it are Muslim, and they are doing it within Islam—and declaring that Islam is, by definition, opposed to or incompatible with free speech.

    It’s not that I think there is some other, purer, more progressive version of Islam out there just waiting to be found, or something like that. It’s that making the by definition argument at least implicitly denies that Islam has within itself the potential and capacity to change over time, to become more progressive, or at least to develop in truly progressive directions—as Judaism and Christianity have done over the centuries. By way of a comparative example, when the foundational documents of the United States were written, the declarations of equality, of the right to vote, etc. were very explicitly understood not to apply to women and slaves. The only reason women have the right to vote now, that we have such a thing as civil rights, and the idea that any citizen of this country ought to be equal under the law, is that we have treated those documents as living documents, documents that can be reinterpreted as the times demand, despite the fact that there have been those who’ve argued against treating them that way.

    Religious texts are no different. Yes, there are people who insist that they are, word for word the word of God, unchangeable, perfect, etc. and so on; and yes those people usually argue that the traditional interpretations of those texts are the only valid ones, since they were made by people long ago who were that much closer to the holy origins of the tradition and so should not be questioned. But there are also people, and Mernissi is one of them, who use precisely the same exegetical methods and the same traditional texts and commentaries as those used by those traditionalists—in other words, they work within the orthodox tradition (to put it in the Jewish terms with which I am familiar)—to arrive at very different interpretations. Ones that we would recognize as progressive, as congruent with democracy, freedom of speech, equal rights for women, etc.

    It is not my place to say whether someone like Fatima Mernissi is “right” about the position of women in Islam or about what she argues, if I have understood her correctly, was Mohammad’s active pursuit of an ideal of free speech (though it might, given historical circumstance, not be precisely what we recognize as free speech). Her argument in that regard is with other Muslims, particularly the male establishment that, she would agree, oppresses and subjugates Muslim women through its imposition of, for example, the veil (which she argues it has manipulated to its own ends). For me, for the purpose of this post, it’s important to know about her work, and the work of others like her, and to insist that this work is no less a part of Islam than the radicalism of ISIS or the political theocracy of Iran, because that’s how we know that Islam is not by definition incompatible with values like equality for women and freedom of speech.

    Now, G&W might argue that it’s unreasonable of me to expect the average person to know about this stuff, and he’d be right. That doesn’t make the average person’s leap from critiquing behavior to making the by definition argument any less problematic. Nor does it make that person’s willful refusal to accept that the leap is problematic, once someone has tried point it out to them—and that’s a general “person;” I’m not thinking specifically of anyone here—any less (in my estimation) arrogant.

    Okay, I think that’s all I have to say about this. I probably will not respond to any further comments, since I really need to focus my attention on my work.

  32. 32
    Jake Squid says:

    I think you had made your point about Western criticism of Islam, Richard. There’s just so much going on in this thread that I lost my line of thinking. Thus my mention of the change of Christianity over the centuries and the existence of egalitarian Muslims.

  33. 33
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    It is, however, to me at least, a far cry from …arguing that women ought to have the choice not to veil…to arguing…that Islam is, by definition, incompatible with those demands

    To use the veil as an example: in other non-Islamic contexts I might expect you to generally oppose things which (even if voluntary) are inherently gender-linked, which the choice of veil obviously is. That isn’t only an issue w/ Islam: the gender stuff, for example, is one of the big issues which I have with orthodox Judaism.

    But the point is that even if women choose to veil or not, the fact that they are obliged to choose or handle the consequences of not choosing is itself a problem.

    it is for me a big jump from criticizing this behavior—and, as I have said before, you have to call the behavior Muslim, since the people doing it are Muslim, and they are doing it within Islam—and declaring that Islam is, by definition, opposed to or incompatible with free speech.

    But that seems to be setting the goalposts ridiculously high. If you’re going to deal with any opposition by pointing out that “an alternate interpretation exists” it’s pretty much equivalent to refusing to argue. Islam has billions of adherents, internal inconsistencies like all such religions, and probably near-infinite potential intepretations. Demanding perfect consistency doesn’t seem reasonable.

  34. 34
    Ben Lehman says:

    G&W: Right, exactly.

    Which is why, generally, one should not make blanket statements about billion-strong religions (except for basic statements such as: Muslims follow the teachings of the prophet Muhammed). Rather, it’s more appropriate to describe specific movements, for instance “Wahabbism is a Saudi-sponsored fundamentalist movement that…”

    I mean, heck, there are not very many jews, and I would expect you to criticize the Haredi rather than “Jews” re: female dress standards. The Haredi aren’t all jews, or even anything like a majority of jews, and thus laying their problems at the feet of Judaism is anti-semitic bullshit.

  35. 35
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    But RJN doesn’t want to talk about that, either. And he’s not raising the defense that you raise.

    And at some point you end up having to look at actual practices and numbers. For example, you might agree with me about the general statement “orthodox practitioners are the worst offenders, in basically every religion.”

    “So,” folks might say,”orthodox Jews are no different from orthodox Muslims. It’s all about personality. Treating all as if they have fundamentalist beliefs is therefore stupid and explains a lot of the bias in the US.”

    But.

    But then you actually look at the numbers, and you find things like this (link to Pew Center study):

    Nearly all American Muslims adhere to central tenets of the Islamic faith, according to Pew Research Center surveys of U.S. Muslims in 2011 and 2007. For instance, the percentage of U.S. Muslims who believe in one God (96%) and the Prophet Muhammad (96%) is about the same as the median percentage across the countries included in the current study who subscribe to these core tenets (97%). More than eight-in-ten U.S. Muslims say the Quran is the word of God, including 50% who say it should be read literally.

    which you can compare to this (a link to another Pew center study) which unfortunately doesn’t use the same metrics but contains statistics like
    68% think Jewishness doesn’t require belief in God;
    34% think it can include a belief that Jesus was the messiah;
    10% are orthodox (which keeps shrinking;)
    18% are conservative;

    and so on.

    The prediction about a random American Jew is that they’re likely to be “less religious than the U.S. public as a whole” unless they happen to be one of the 10% who is in Orthodox la-la land. In comparison, the prediction about a random American Muslim is that they have a 40% chance (a charitable “50% of 8/10, thought it may actually mean 50% of the whole) of thinking that the Koran is the literal word of God.

    Should I think about those groups the same way?

    Heck, even in freaking ISRAEL, only 8% of Israel’s Jewish population defines itself as haredi, 12% as religious, 13% as traditional-religious, 25% as traditional and 42% as secular. 50% of the secular ones or so don’t even believe in God.

    …there are not very many jews, and I would expect you to criticize the Haredi rather than “Jews” re: female dress standards. The Haredi aren’t all jews, or even anything like a majority of jews,

    Right. That’s the point. They’re a tiny and insulated minority in the US and don’t even come close to a majority in the most Jewish country on the planet.

    And THAT is why it isn’t appropriate to treat all Jews as “probably religious Jews.” Not because it’s inappropriate to make group statements but because the statement is not statistically accurate.

    At some point it would be nice to actually talk about this stuff in a way that didn’t feel like “attack my side but don’t present your own, and move the goalposts all the time.”

  36. 36
    Ben Lehman says:

    Those stats for Muslims are on par with similar stats for Christians in the US. Yet, at the same time, I think it’s appalling to say “Christians believe that you should murder your children for being disrespectful” despite that, yes, 75% of US Christians think that the Bible is the word of God and should be read “literally.”

    Honestly, I have zero patience for people who want to make broad pronouncements about a culture based on a hostile reading of a text in a contextual vacuum.

    yrs–
    –Ben

  37. 37
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    [shrug]Ben, If you want to enter an argument by saying you have “zero patience” for discussing it, I fail to understand the point. Surely you don’t expect that we’ll all just cave because of your say-so, right? I mean personally I have “zero patience” for people who do their best to shut down arguments early, but so be it. Feel free to not exercise your patience on me; I’m more than happy to move on to talking to the other folks in the thread.

    That said:

    Ben Lehman says:
    Those stats for Muslims are on par with similar stats for Christians in the US.

    Cites, pls? not disagreeing, but it’s polite to respond to cites with cites.

    Yet, at the same time, I think it’s appalling to say “Christians believe that you should murder your children for being disrespectful”

    I, too, think it’s appalling. Do you think otherwise? Do you think anyone thinks otherwise?

    However, if you chose something a little less straw-like–say, “christians are generally more opposed to evolution than non-christians” or “christians have a disturbing tendency to try to break down the wall between state and religion, and often claim the US is a Christian Nation” or “christians, especially catholics, are more likely to be opposed to reproductive freedom” or “fundamentalist christians of various sects often support some really insane and harmful policies” that would neither be appalling or, AFAIK, especially inaccurate.

    despite that, yes, 75% of US Christians think that the Bible is the word of God and should be read “literally.”

    They do? Where are you getting that?

    The best I could find (and the study I suspect you’re referring to) is this recent Gallup poll. Which is summarized by Google as “Three in Four in U.S. Still See the Bible as Word of God.” but which actually says something different:

    Twenty-eight percent of Americans believe the Bible is the actual word of God and that it should be taken literally. This is somewhat below the 38% to 40% seen in the late 1970s, and near the all-time low of 27% reached in 2001 and 2009. But about half of Americans continue to say the Bible is the inspired word of God, not to be taken literally — meaning a combined 75% believe the Bible is in some way connected to God….

    You can dig down into it for various christian sects as well, I think, though I haven’t done so on that one. From other things I’ve read (not on that particular poll) Catholics are less likely than Protestants to support a literal reading, etc. But I’m not inclined to spend my night googling for you; if you want to discuss data feel free to do that yourself.

  38. 38
    Ampersand says:

    If I’m following the threat of the argument correctly – always a dangerous assumption – then the statement Ben said people shouldn’t make was “declaring that Islam is, by definition, opposed to or incompatible with free speech.” According to Ben, people wouldn’t make such a statement about Christianity.

    You seem to be saying similar statements about Christianity would be reasonable. However, the statements you make are very different from the statement Ben was talking about (bold added by me):

    However, if you chose something a little less straw-like–say, “christians are generally more opposed to evolution than non-christians” or “christians have a disturbing tendency to try to break down the wall between state and religion, and often claim the US is a Christian Nation” or “christians, especially catholics, are more likely to be opposed to reproductive freedom” or “fundamentalist christians of various sects often support some really insane and harmful policies” that would neither be appalling or, AFAIK, especially inaccurate.

    You added some sort of hedging language to each of the statements about Christianity. But -as we’ve seen on this blog and in the news – often the statements made about Islam are not hedged at all. So I don’t think the comparison statements you’ve brought up really discredit Ben’s point; on the contrary, they seem to show that statements made about Christianity are much more likely to be hedged (and thus more accurate and reasonable) than Ben’s example was.

  39. 39
    Ben Lehman says:

    Thanks, Barry. Indeed, hedges help a great deal.

    G&W: You’re right. It is unfair of me to engage in a subject that I know I have little patience for. Be well.

    yrs–
    –Ben

  40. I have been resisting the temptation to wade back into this, but I did not want to respond to this comment by G&W, since I think it raises a fair question about my own consistency:

    To use the veil as an example: in other non-Islamic contexts I might expect you to generally oppose things which (even if voluntary) are inherently gender-linked, which the choice of veil obviously is. That isn’t only an issue w/ Islam: the gender stuff, for example, is one of the big issues which I have with orthodox Judaism.

    That something is linked to gender does not, in and of itself, seem to me objectionable. In the case of the hijab, or of the laws of nidah in Judaism (laws concerning menstruation), to take two examples, the fact that they are understood, imposed, sanctioned, etc. in ways the subjugate, denigrate, oppress women clearly is objectionable, and so is the religious institution by which that understanding is enforced.

    However, when a Muslim woman tells me that it is possible to understand the hijab as something other than what that institution says it is, something that is not denigrating of women, etc., and that she finds this understanding of hijab to be meaningful for her, who am I to tell her that she is wrong? Why should I oppose that?

    If you want an understanding of how that might function in Islam concerning the hijab, you’ll need to read at least those chapters in Mernissi’s book. I don’t have the time to lay it out here, but let me give you an example from Judaism that I hope I remember correctly.

    In the orthodox tradition, menstruating women are considered ritually impure, and there are all kinds of restrictions imposed on them, and they need, when they are done with their periods to go to the mikvah, the ritual bath, to purify themselves. (These days, only married women tend to go to the mikvah, but it used to be the case that all women did once they started menstruating.)

    As you might imagine, all kinds of rhetoric and cultural baggage has been attached to a woman’s ritual impurity, all of it devolving from a patriarchal mindset that sees women as dirty, disgusting creatures, etc. However, if you examine the actual biblical texts that concern ritual impurity—I think it’s from the biblical and not rabbinical texts that we know this—the ritual impurity of a menstruating woman is, in and of itself, in essence, no different from the ritual impurity of a man who has had a nocturnal emission, is no different from the ritual impurity of someone who has touched a dead body.

    Ritual impurity, in other words, attaches to someone who has come in physical contact with let’s call it a life-death nexus, and that person is required to withdraw from certain ritual activities (in the biblical text) until he or she has gone to the ritual bath. The length of time of separation has, if I remember the logic of this reading correctly, to do more with the “depth”—for want of a better word—of the nexus than with anything else. So, a nocturnal emission is not as “serious” as touching a dead body, and I am pretty sure that menstruation is the most “serious.” In the biblical text, except that the words are translated as pure and impure, my understanding is that there is no implicit moral value placed on either of these states.

    Now, if an orthodox woman tells me that his reading is meaningful to her—and I’m pretty sure this explanation was published in something written by orthodox women, or at least people who were trained in the orthodox tradition—that she finds in this reading none of the misogyny that informs traditional understanding of nidah, and that practicing the laws of nidah within this reading fulfills her spiritually, I ask again, who am I to tell her that she is wrong, that, in fact, she is merely practicing a kind of, say, internalized self-hatred because she simply cannot see outside the tradition in which she was raised?

    It seems to me that her ability to give this kind of reading to the text, her ability to see the reading as valid, meaningful and as one in which she can find herself, demonstrates precisely her ability to step outside the tradition in which she was raised.

    Anyway, I hope that makes my position a little bit more clear. And now I will be diving back into poetry.

  41. 41
    JutGory says:

    Amp @ 38:

    the threat of the argument

    Best typo of the day. Watch what you say or I might just have to disagree with you!

    -Jut

  42. 42
    Pete Patriot says:

    the “answer to that oppression may not lie with us and that perhaps we ought to stop behaving as if it did,”

    I ask again, who am I to tell her that she is wrong, that, in fact, she is merely practicing a kind of, say, internalized self-hatred because she simply cannot see outside the tradition in which she was raised?

    Someone with a clearer understanding than she does? The answer to oppression isn’t to concoct some justification to pretend it isn’t happening. And there’s no basis for your prefered solution of Mernissi and co being able to concoct and preach these justifications, and everyone else having to keep quiet out of respect / feeling of inadequate understanding.

    & just a warning I’m probably going to drop a series of comments here as there are so many misconceptions in this thread it’s unbelievable.

  43. 43
    Pete Patriot says:

    Some complete misunderstandings of history:

    No, they are not the dominant force right now–but neither were some Christian theologians whose interpretations are now the dominant interpretations of the Bible. Christianity changed. It didn’t have to, but it did.

    It’s that making the by definition argument at least implicitly denies that Islam has within itself the potential and capacity to change over time, to become more progressive, or at least to develop in truly progressive directions—as Judaism and Christianity have done over the centuries.

    Christianity did not spontaneously change of its own volition due to it’s own internal workings. The Enlightenment took place, and Christanity was subjected to incredibly harsh attack from atheists / agnostics which forced a re-evaluation of theology from an unwilling church.

    It’s incredibly pernicious that you are ignoring atheists / agnostics huge contribution to progress, presenting progress as the work of noble theologians, and then using this to tell atheists to shut up. The reason Christianity is less evil than it was is precisely because people behaved like Maher and Harris do.

    The only reason women have the right to vote now, that we have such a thing as civil rights, and the idea that any citizen of this country ought to be equal under the law, is that we have treated [the foundational documents of the United States] as living documents, documents that can be reinterpreted as the times demand,

    Just wrong. Women got the vote due to the 19th Amendment, equality was the 14th Amendment, etc – these documents were rewritten, not ‘reinterpreted’. The whole ‘final revelation’ idea makes this a problem for the Quran.

  44. 44
    Patrick says:

    The “who am I to tell her” argument is inadequate for the task to which it has been set. It gains its leverage from norms against inserting oneself into someone else’s business, but that isn’t sufficient to take a position on whether the hypothetical Muslim woman is right or wrong.

    I am sure that, were she still alive, my Italian great grandmother could go on and on about how her views on the proper places of the sexes were not sexist. For example, she believed that men should eat first at the dinner table and take the best food, and that women should be grateful for what remained. That’s just one example.

    Now maybe she completely believed that her views weren’t sexist. Knowing human nature and having some experience with religious apologetics, I’m sure there was a defense out there she could avail herself to that would claim that there was nothing sexist in this, and that it was in fact some deep and meaningful practice.

    And maybe it wouldn’t be my place to argue with her.

    But as someone who is part of her culture and NOT AN IDIOT, I know that if she believed her views to not be sexist, she was wrong. They absolutely were.

  45. 45
    Grace Annam says:

    Jake Squid:

    Since Islam appears to me a secondary characteristic of what we’d like to reduce, I end up wondering why the conversation is centered around Islam instead of fundamentalism as the thing to combat.

    Target acquisition.

    It’s a lot easier take aim at the wrong target from the safety of the rain shelter, hit it, and feel good about yourself, than it is to get wet and buggy bushwhacking through the scrub to find the little target, take aim on it, and then argue with all the people who will tell you it’s the wrong target.

    Grace

  46. Patrick,

    Your Italian grandmother is the wrong analogy. A better one would be a younger woman who spent a good deal of time critically examining, for example, the tradition that men should eat first and women be satisfied with what’s left over and who found a way to understand and practice this tradition that did not signify the second class status of women—which is very different from someone who lacks that critical distance from the tradition merely repeating the rationalizations that support the tradition.

    And with that I am truly out of this thread.

  47. 47
    Mandolin says:

    I could be wrong, but I think part of the trick here is to balance respect for people’s experiences with criticism of religion in general.

    I respect that people are doing feminist interpretations of Islam and, for what it’s worth, I look at them as being as legitimate (and probably more hopeful!) as other interpretations.

    However, I don’t think they’re more legitimate, or that they are capable of getting to the *real* Islam, etc. I feel the same way about feminist and queer interpretations of the Torah or the Bible. It’s good that you can find those ways to interact with this cultural insitution that’s important to you, and perhaps even pull that cultural institution in your direction. It’s a “better” interpretation of Christian/Islam/Judaism in that it serves better goals, but it’s not a “better” way of getting at the truth, because there is no truth.

    I regard the Abrahamic texts as being more or less like tea leaves. People can read what they want into them. If the common interpretations are damaging, by all means, change them; please do. And I don’t mean to belittle people’s personal experiences of healing or awe or whatever, which is why I practice what I consider to be “situational belief” when I’m in positions where it’s appropriate. e.g., I don’t believe-believe in ghosts, but I’m willing to suspend disbelief when talking to someone who does, and inhabit that world for the context of the conversation.

    But there’s no there there. Arguing about the meaning of the texts has utility–personal, cultural–but it’s not like it’s digging down to something more real. That’s more or less my objection to Abrahamic religion in the first place. It can’t react to fact-based claims.

    However, I see no particular reason to treat Islam as distinct from Christianity in this way. In fact, I think it needs to be treated with more precision and care in the American context, because there’s a lot of potential for what I consider to be legitimate and needful critiques of religion to be stated in such a way that they reinforce minority status and oppression.

    But I think reconciling these positions is at the heart (for me, at least) of responding to reinterpretations of Islam. I’m glad they’re out there; I’m glad for people personally that they are finding ways to interpret their history and religion that works for them; I’m glad for them culturally that they are moving in a more positive direction. But I still oppose the religion (while acknowledging that it is unlikely to go away) because while I like some interpretations of “what’s in the clouds” better than others, I still think it’s dangerous to base important decisions on what you can find in ambiguous texts that don’t and can’t change in response to fact.

  48. 48
    S says:

    Hi Richard,

    I don’t expect you to respond given how busy you are (and how much of your time this thread has already sucked!), but we had an interesting dialogue on the ‘intrinsic’ meaning of religious texts in the Maher/Affleck thread. Unfortunately, the comments were (understandably) closed off before I could post a clarification to my position, which was that if the vast majority of Muslims across a variety of places and times interpreted a particular text in a particular fashion (for example, sanctions against homosexuality), and if that interpretation fell within the scope of logical responses to core Islamic texts, then it was reasonable to regard this interpretation as an essential part of the ideology of Islam (as distinct from Islam as an *identity*). You pointed out that it was unfair to use ‘some sort of statistical analysis’ to effectively define those practitioners who do not adhere to that interpretation as being outside of Islam. (Guilty as charged, that is my academic background).

    The argument I was trying to make, however, was not that by sheer force of numbers, the majority invalidate the minority. Rather, it was that each of us comes to our position on an issue through a variety of influences – the era we live in, our economic and educational position, etc, which are difficult to disentangle. If we find a particular community of Muslims, in one time and place, who are opposed to homosexuality, this might be because of their practice of Islam, but it might also be due to any one of myriad other factors (cultural traditions, etc etc). However, if many, many communities of Muslims across many, many contexts, racial and cultural backgrounds, eras and geographic localities, economic positions and so on, come to the same interpretation which they explicitly attribute to their religion, this, in my book, would be prima facie evidence that there are attributes of core Islamic texts and beliefs which tend in this direction; and that it is reasonable to suggest that homophobia (in this instance) is an attribute of Islam itself (once again, the ideology as distinct from the identity).

    I don’t expect you to respond given how busy you are (and how much of your time this thread has already consumed!), but I thought you might find the following essay from the Islamic Monthly interesting. It relates to the idea I was trying to convey, but comes from a place of considerably more Islam-specific knowledge than I hold:

    http://www.theislamicmonthly.com/isis-islamophobia-and-the-end-of-sunnism/

    Mandolin, I really enjoyed your comment above.

    All the best,

    S

  49. S,

    Thanks for the link. I started skimming it and it does indeed look interesting. I think what he says about there being no institutional expression of authoritative Sunni Muslim teaching and how that relates to the how we understand the content of core Muslim texts is especially relevant, and some kind of thinking along those lines is what makes books like Mernissi’s—which I should point out is already a couple of decades old; there’s been a lot of work done since then—really important.

    Anyway, I haven’t finished the article, or read what I did read very closely, but I will. Again, thanks for posting it.

  50. 50
    Patrick says:

    Your response still isn’t… responsive.

    First, you’re saying that this person “who found a way to understand and practice this tradition that did not signify the second class status of women.” Well, if you’re going to presume that, you might as well just end the debate right there because you’ve started with the assumption that they’re right about what the tradition signifies. Not “signifies to them,” which might had been valid. “Signifies.”

    What might be more credible is to say that this person “found a way to understand and practice this tradition that they claim does not signify the second class status of women,” or “that does not make them feel as a second class citizen.” At which point it becomes entirely possible to listen to someone say that, and disagree.

    It’s not like this is a weird, wild idea that I have- we’ve been told for ages by our Christian friends that their religion doesn’t teach that men are better than women, lord no! Just that men and women have different roles in life, and it just so happens that the man’s roles involve being in charge- you know, because of intrinsically male characteristics that make them more suited to this than women. What could be sexist about that?

    It’s not crazy to look at that, and say, “Ok, I see that this is your tradition, and I see that both men and women use this apologetic, but still, this is not true.” Or even, “I, too, have been raised in this tradition, and disagree. Perhaps you do not feel demeaned by this tradition, but that is not because it is not demeaning, but because you are ok with being demeaned in this way.” People, inside and outside those traditions, listened to arguments analogous to the one you’re saying should not be critiqued, disagreed, and brought about significant and worthwhile change in a lot of extant Christian traditions.

    Again, you are levying norms of not intruding in other people’s business in hopes of making an argument about other people’s interpretation of their business being valid. That’s a non sequitor. And it ignores the fact that sometimes, what seems like “other people’s business,” isn’t at all just theirs.

  51. Patrick,

    This is not a discussion we can have unless we’ve both read Mernissi’s book. Not because I think she’s right–I said quite explicitly in the original post that I’m not saying that–but because she’s not making the kind of argument you’re describing. So we’ll just have to leave it there.

  52. 52
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    RJN,
    Are you back in, or not? I don’t want to specifically respond if you’re not in the thread, nor ignore you if you are.

  53. G&W:

    No, I’m not in. I just wanted to respond briefly to Patrick because he addressed me directly.

  54. 54
    Pete Patriot says:

    Mernissi is a serious scholar of Islam in ways that Maher and Harris are not. On that count alone, her assertion deserves to be taken at least as seriously as anything they have to say on the matter.

    No it doesn’t. First, Mernissi’s belief in the divine origin and preservation of the Quran has been shown to be false (we know some pieces pre-date Mohammed, others were in flux well after his death). It’s not possible for anyone who accepts the idea of a revealed Quran to properly understand or study the Islamic tradition.

    Second, Mernissi is employed in Morocco by a Monarchy which brutally supresses freedom of speech, practices Sharia law, and where apostasy is currently punishable by death. It is simply not possible for any serious scholarly study of Islam to be conducted in those circumstances and Mernissi is not a serious scholar.

    Maher and Harris, unlike Mernissi, have a correct understanding of the origin of the Quran and aren’t legally and professionally obliged to take a particular viewpoint.

  55. 55
    Pete Patriot says:

    Lots of people seem to be adopting the parking ticket theory of religion. There’s a text with many interpretations, so you pick the one that suits you – like you’re trying to argue your way out of a parking ticket. So long as you’re within the bounds of the text, you’re good.

    I see why it appeals to the irreligious, but the religious don’t think like that. They think it’s more like if your Mom gave you a shopping list. You get what your Mom would want, not try and use loopholes to make life easy for you. Just because there’s ambiguity, doesn’t mean people have discretion to make the call based on their wishes. They have to think of Gods wishes.

  56. 56
    brian says:

    Another comment of Brian’s deleted.

  57. 57
    Myca says:

    Brian. Seriously. Stop. This is rude.

  58. 59
    Harlequin says:

    Pete Patriot, it seems pretty dismissive to call this conversation an example of parking ticket theory. I haven’t read the specific books under discussion, but in a general sense I think it’s wrong to say that anyone looking for a more progressive vision in Islam must be self-interested instead of actually trying to figure out a proper understanding of the text. It may be the case for these books–again, I don’t know anything about them–but in general, not true.

    Also, of course, there are many religious people who use the parking ticket theory of religion in practice, though they wouldn’t call it that. I’ve heard some amazing justifications from people for ignoring various prohibitions of their religions.

    Maher and Harris, unlike Mernissi, have a correct understanding of the origin of the Quran and aren’t legally and professionally obliged to take a particular viewpoint.

    And they also have much less knowledge on the subject, and a different sort of ideological bias.

  59. 60
    Jake Squid says:

    I keep reading this thread and it’s like watching a car accident. Repulsive and fascinating all at once.

    I don’t have the words to enter the discussion in a productive way, but I can’t help but be amazed by what I’m reading here.

  60. For a list of books on Islamic feminism, here’s a link to check out.

    ETA: Another book worth checking out, Muslims in the Western Imagination. From the marketing copy, it focuses particularly on images of Muslim men in the west:

    Throughout history, Muslim men have been depicted as monsters. The portrayal of humans as monsters helps a society delineate who belongs and who, or what, is excluded. Even when symbolic, as in post-9/11 zombie films, Muslim monsters still function to define Muslims as non-human entities. These are not depictions of Muslim men as malevolent human characters, but rather as creatures that occupy the imagination — non-humans that exhibit their wickedness outwardly on the skin. They populate medieval tales, Renaissance paintings, Shakespearean dramas, Gothic horror novels, and Hollywood films. Through an exhaustive survey of medieval, early modern, and contemporary literature, art, and cinema, Muslims in the Western Imagination examines the dehumanizing ways in which Muslim men have been constructed and represented as monsters, and the impact such representations have on perceptions of Muslims today.

    The study is the first to present a genealogy of these creatures, from the demons and giants of the Middle Ages to the hunchbacks with filed teeth that are featured in the 2007 film 300, arguing that constructions of Muslim monsters constitute a recurring theme, first formulated in medieval Christian thought. Sophia Rose Arjana shows how Muslim monsters are often related to Jewish monsters, and more broadly to Christian anti-Semitism and anxieties surrounding African and other foreign bodies, which involves both religious bigotry and fears surrounding bodily difference. Arjana argues persuasively that these dehumanizing constructions are deeply embedded in Western consciousness, existing today as internalized beliefs and practices that contribute to the culture of violence–both rhetorical and physical–against Muslims.