Rod Dreher

Team Romney’s Appalling Assertion

Islam’s Useless Idiots

By Rod Dreher • September 14, 2012, 9:42 AM

Hundreds of protesters set alight a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli on Friday, witnesses said, chanting against the pope’s visit to Lebanon and shouting anti-American slogans.

Locals watching the attack said some people were shouting, “We don’t want the pope” and “No more insults (to Islam.)”

The incident came as Pope Benedict began a three-day visit to Lebanon and as anger over a film which Muslims have said is blasphemous to Islam spread across the region.

So, they’d rather have Chick-fil-A?

I didn’t know Pope Benedict was headed to Lebanon. God protect him! What is it about the Islamic religion that brings crowds of idiots out to attack embassies and fried chicken joints because a movie has offended them? You can talk all you want about American imperialism, and Israel yadda yadda yadda, and this and that and the other thing, but at the end of the day, you have a mob of barbarians burning down property and even killing people because some nobody somewhere in the West hurt their religious feelings.

Look, I know that not all Muslims are like this, and not even most Muslim are like this (and by the way, thank you Libyan Muslims for protesting against the murder of Amb. Stevens). Still, this keeps happening with Muslims abroad. Why? It goes back to Samuel Huntington’s point about “Islam’s bloody borders.” As Huntington wrote:

“Islam’s borders are bloody and so are its innards. The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.”

I hate the way many of us in the West — I’m thinking about the media now — react to these kinds of outrages by being more afraid that we might make a bigoted judgment against Muslims, instead of asking questions about why Islam — in particular, Middle Eastern Islam — has so much success whipping crowds of the faithful up into this kind of frenzy. After all, this whole thing started when an Egyptian Salafist known for his inciteful broadcasts highlighted the offensive anti-Muhammad video on his Cairo-based TV show.

Why would anyone want to live like such fanatics, or among them? Why do Europeans allow Muslims who believe so fanatically emigrate to their countries? This is not going to end well for us.

Burning down a Kentucky Fried Chicken. You just shake your head.

Posted in Islam. Tagged Islam, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Muslims, Salafists.

115 Responses to Islam’s Useless Idiots

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Andrew says:

September 14, 2012 at 11:35 am

At the end of the day, though, Christians who burn down mosques, burn heretics, wage holy war, and so forth, are doing so without warrant in the Christian scriptures. Muslims who do this have clear permission from their scriptures to do so. And that means something.

Well, it means pretty much all of it. Islam regulates everything in pious Muslim’s life. As for Christians burning down mosques under the banner of Christianity (whatever that banner might be)–cannot recall any as of lately, perhaps because it didn’t happen. I have to point out that use of the present indefinite tense was an unfortunate choice. BurnED heretics, wagED holy war–sure, but when!!!
Ampersand says:

September 14, 2012 at 11:35 am

‘It’s not a “convenient” interpretation. It happens to be normatively true. Don’t blame Christians for not reading the Bible like you think it ought to be read.’

Actually, I wish more Christians read the Bible like that–devaluing the OT in favor of the NT. But I was raised in a Biblical-literalist fundamentalist church, and most Christians I know are all for the “kill the sinners/outsiders” parts of the OT. After 9/11, I heard an associate pastor say that we needed to nuke all Muslims everywhere.

I think that killing people for no logical reason is bad, whether it’s an attack on a consulate or a war based on lies. But I think we should always take context into account.
niccolo and donkey says:

September 14, 2012 at 11:36 am

“At the end of the day, though, Christians who burn down mosques, burn heretics, wage holy war, and so forth, are doing so without warrant in the Christian scriptures. ”

That’s not what the Priests say where I come from (aside from the heretic burning).

The only reason Islam isn’t present in places like Hungary and Croatia is because the Christians had the intelligence to burn down the Ottoman mosques that had been built during the occupation.

In Bosnia, the Habsburgs tried a different approach and allowed the mosques to remain. The result? Massive bloodletting over the next century, and the proliferation of Salafist groups in the country.
AK says:

September 14, 2012 at 11:41 am

Honestly, as much as all the comparisons to Christianity and streams of history may be correct, is now the time to be thinking about them?

Theses so-called protesters are burning down fast-food joints and invading our embassies. Now two US universities have been evacuated due to terror-related threats. THIS IS THE ISSUE RIGHT NOW.

I don’t think we should bomb anybody or do any chest-thumping. I’m just saying the topic isn’t history, it’s ignorant MUSLIM freak-shows of violence RIGHT NOW.

But we’ve known that for years. Right now, my main question is: why after the last few days, were our embassies in Tunisia and elsewhere still vulnerable to attack?

The politics of the situation: THIS is where Obama is vulnerable. After Tuesday through Thursday – how could today have happened??

We should all demand answers from the Administration.
em says:

September 14, 2012 at 11:41 am

Rod Dreher, it is true that at the end of the day it does mean something that there is a difference between the Christian completed Bible and the Quran – though for your intellectual integrity I also wish you would really learn the historical context and instruction of those lines from Quran you picked out. It was kind of disappointing seeing you reduce to that! And to have also more patience for the voices that can bring up the same claims against some of the very bad sounding lines from the Hebrew old testament, and their use in Christianity’s violent history, as well.
Fran Macadam says:

September 14, 2012 at 11:45 am

People seem to have forgotten the extreme violence under the rubric of Catholicism and Protestantism in Ireland, not very long ago now.

We’re flying drones over these countries and killing people with impunity through technology, in their own lands, at the behest of our financial elites. They want to control natural resources for profit and these people only have their Prophet.

If we look at the number of foreigners killed in our wars of choice, since World War 2, our own nation has quite a dismal record.

Obviously most of our pundits don’t have a clue about what foreigners think. So many of them die each day without any of our tears, from our nation’s own actions. Naturally, just one of ours dying in an area where our nation lives by the sword, seems to be worth a million deaths of theirs.
JMorrow says:

September 14, 2012 at 11:47 am

What’s been happening in Libya, Egypt, and Yemen is mob violence plain and simple, as well as premeditated violence executed under the cover of the mob. The attempts to make this fit into a paradigm of Xtianity peaceful and Islam violent are less useful IMHO.

Can one draw a correlation between violent commands or scenarios in the Qu’ran and the attempt to do violence in the name of Islam today? Sure, but it can be done with Christianity as well.

Rod focuses on the lack of examples in the US today, but it should be said that some of those who watched or participated in lynchings in this country are still alive, and that practice as a whole, took way too long to universally condemn. But there are examples of Christian violence around the globe, Rwanda, Nigeria to name two. Also so much of religious violence is intertwined with cultural issues, not simply matters of doctrine.

Lastly, the Christians who have committed acts of mob violence in the US and in other countries throughout history did not suddenly close their bibles in order to muster up the strength to kill. They looked in those bibles for inspiration too. They looked to the cleansing of Canaan by Joshua, to the slaying of Baal’s prophets by Ezekiel, to the war of the Lamb in Revelation. Of course they didn’t do the kind of Christocentric analysis that I, Rod and others would suggest, but often people see and interpret what they choose, with a little help from the text.
bones says:

September 14, 2012 at 11:47 am

Tripoli is one of the poorest cities in a country that has been racked by civil war and awful governance over the past 40 years. I think this incident says less about Islam than it does about the long term effects of civil-war, poor governance, poverty, and high-unemployment.
Peter says:

September 14, 2012 at 11:49 am

Good to see the no true Scotsman fallacy is alive and well.
jaybird says:

September 14, 2012 at 11:49 am

Yes, nobody denies, or should deny, that these things have happened in Christian cultures and all cultures. It really is part of the human condition. Nevertheless, we don’t see that in Christian cultures today. Why is that? I would suggest that it is in part because Christians learned, at last, to be ashamed of such things, and to repent of them.

And in turn, I would suggest that the much-maligned-on-these-pages Enlightenment played no small part in showing why Christians should be ashamed and repent of suchpast atrocities. But I do agree that Christianity may be much more ammenable to the moderating influence of Enlightenment philosophy than Islam… Islam is a tougher nut to crack in that regard.
em says:

September 14, 2012 at 11:53 am

Christian Europe went one was in development of civilisation and in general the Arab and Middle East went another way. This is not because the Muslims were stupid, inferior, did not even at one time have all of civilisation in their hand while Europe was extremely backward and ignorant people. It is because time and again, the Muslim leaders and their followers made choices that were in preservation of their traditional ways, rather than choices that sought after technology, wealth, ease.
They made these choices for some reasons of cultural comfort, but also in great faith with God and wanting to preserve the beauty of older days. And they have never been fully united as people in these things, which is why they have continued with fully as much infighting amongst themselves as they do in conflict with the West. It does not even hit the mark for people in the West to make the accusations against these Muslims as they do. There is so much greater evil in this world to resist and fight than people who are still loving and following after an old testment style prophet/king like Muhammad.
All the words of angry hatred against Muslims are from hearts of murderers, who dropped into their culture and situation would act exactly the same.
Fran Macadam says:

September 14, 2012 at 11:54 am

I’d like to remind folks that the Bible has passages that to some who are prone to justify war, are interpreted to command smashing the babies’ heads against the rocks and justifying genocide and ethnic cleansing down to every last man, woman and child.

I urge anyone who thinks these passages have not been misused by major Christian theologies to read Martin Luther’s diatribes against the Jews, whom he urged his countrymen to burn out of their homes and synagogues and drive their presence from Germany. It wasn’t so long ago that was a major strain running through all of the West, which culminated in no one doing much about Germany until our own oxes were gored.

Moreover, the founding of our own nation was upon a foundation of both slavery and merciless ethnic cleansing, a heritage that today is expressed in our global expansionism and military domination – and we just can’t see it. We, too, are driven by the same psychology of exceptionalism that Islam is claiming and no one can claim we are not prone to violence and domination as our methods of choice.
Matt says:

September 14, 2012 at 11:55 am

Breaking News: Muslims Burn Down KFC In Lebanon; Christians Blamed
Andrew says:

September 14, 2012 at 11:55 am

I hate the way many of us in the West — I’m thinking about the media now — react to these kinds of outrages by being more afraid that we might make a bigoted judgment against Muslims, instead of asking questions about why Islam — in particular, Middle Eastern Islam — has so much success whipping crowds of the faithful up into this kind of frenzy.

I made exactly the same point yesterday in the discussion thread to the piece titled Romney Needs More Tutoring. Moral cowardice, moral relativism and complete incompetence and narcissism of the so called media “elites” and academia, combined with their lefty agenda, are some (not all)of the major reasons. Academic truth long ago was abandoned in favor of “sophistication” and academic cuteness (flavor). We observe (it will only accelerate) the collapse of the multiculturalism.
Steve says:

September 14, 2012 at 11:55 am

“The reason Christians don’t riot in the U.S. is that most people don’t riot in the U.S. anymore.”

This is very true – Talking about 19th century American Protestant riots against Mormons and Catholics is not to say “Oh, Christians did this once too” but to point out that Americans used to riot all the time in US cities over petty controversies – 25 people were killed in New York in a riot over which Shakespeare actor was better.

Some places have a culture and lifestyle that encourages urban riots over petty scandals and controversies – North Africa is like that now, 19th century American cities were definately like that – and while the excuse for a given riot may be religious, the habit of rioting is not particularly religious.

India has had plenty of riots in recent years by Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims, and all those riots are more similar to other than urban Indian riots than they are to some connection to the cultural values of those religions.
EngineerScotty says:

September 14, 2012 at 11:55 am

At the end of the day, though, Christians who burn down mosques, burn heretics, wage holy war, and so forth, are doing so without warrant in the Christian scriptures. Muslims who do this have clear permission from their scriptures to do so. And that means something.

Many of the Christians who have behaved badly over the millenia, have done so out of belief that they were commanded to by the Bible. It’s not hard to use Google to find examples of “the Bible says we should do X” from various nitwits, where X is some terrible thing. Westboro Baptist Church, while non-violent, is entirely convinced that they are doing God’s will. Neither Biblical nor Koranic exegesis is an exact science–and while you may assert that the NT repudiates all of the nasty stuff in the OT, and anyone who says otherwise is full of it–fundamentalist Christians in the US quoting the OT in support of reactionary politics (Leviticus, anyone?) is old hat. Sauce, goose, gander.

The problem with this article is revealed in the title: “Islam‘s useless idiots”. You seem to take it as a given, Rod, that the fundamental problem here–the thing that separates the Egyptian mobs from those of us gently discussing politics while we smoke virtual cigars and sip virtual brandy, like good gentlemen and ladies–is religion, and not any other circumstances that may separate us from them: And there are plenty of alternate explanations–wealth, employment, economic prospects, education, quality of governance.

Simply boiling it down to a religious pissing contest is quite simplistic and short-sighted.
German_reader says:

September 14, 2012 at 12:00 pm

@Charles_Cosimano:
“In 1946, an American soldier was killed in occupied Germany. The troops were withdrawn from the town and then it was levelled with artillery fire.”

Oh come on, you’re just making this up. It’s so silly not even anti-American German Nazis would claim something like this.
Chris says:

September 14, 2012 at 12:00 pm

Nevertheless, we don’t see that in Christian cultures today. Why is that? I would suggest that it is in part because Christians learned, at last, to be ashamed of such things, and to repent of them.

It might also be because those Christian societies have become secular ones.
Hunsdon says:

September 14, 2012 at 12:02 pm

Rod asked: Why do Europeans allow Muslims who believe so fanatically emigrate to their countries?

Hunsdon echoed: Why do Americans allow Muslims who believe so fanatically to emigrate to their country?
Nick K. says:

September 14, 2012 at 12:08 pm

Good post, Mr. Dreher. I like the excerpt from Huntington, it succinctly captures a good part of why Muslims feel justified in such appalling arrogance toward the West.
Chris says:

September 14, 2012 at 12:23 pm

At the end of the day, though, Christians who burn down mosques, burn heretics, wage holy war, and so forth, are doing so without warrant in the Christian scriptures. Muslims who do this have clear permission from their scriptures to do so. And that means something.

Those Christians who do such things do believe they have clear permission from scriptures, Rod, and stand in the mainstream of Christian history in these regards. It is a relatively recent thing that Christian societies believe otherwise.

What’s going on in Islamic nations is actually the result of centuries of social and religious stultification. Imagine that Catholics and Huguenots had YouTube and Twitter in the 16th century.
loudonisafool says:

September 14, 2012 at 12:25 pm

Nevertheless, we don’t see that in Christian cultures today. Why is that? I would suggest that it is in part because Christians learned, at last, to be ashamed of such things, and to repent of them.

I don’t think so. I think the answer is simple. The Brits, the Brits, and the Brits. I don’t know how or why, but somehow the Brits civilized the world. The Greeks and the Romans could bring crazy people to heel with force. But somehow the Brits learned to appeal to mens’ better natures. The Brits have gone pagan now, which is too bad, but thankfully they seeded sanity around the world. Probably not enough. But that’s why, notwithstanding massive immigration from our Southern non-British hemisphere, OWS style protests are still met in the US with a shrug and a muttered “why don’t these weirdos go back to work.”
cermak_rd says:

September 14, 2012 at 12:25 pm

I think the reason Christians, at least in the US, no longer do these kinds of things is that we subscribe far more to Enlightenment values than we do religious values. Most Christians, thankfully, in the US, are not moved to violence against their non-Christian neighbors, heck they’re usually not even moved to witness to their non-Christian neighbors. Religion is largely considered a hobby that some people engage in and others don’t and it’s a hobby with a lot of different varieties.
ac says:

September 14, 2012 at 12:32 pm

“Interesting that we don’t hear about sushi joints or Chinese places getting mobbed like this…”

Exactly this is happening to sushi joints in China right now.

“Go visit their holy sites.”

I’d love to but I can’t since I’m not a Muslim. I worked in Saudi Arabia some years ago and was forbidden to go to Mecca or Medina. The two holiest cities in Islam. Not just to the shrines, but to the whole cities. Mecca is actually quite a large city.
Franklin Evans says:

September 14, 2012 at 12:33 pm

I take a third position here: you are all wrong.

Translation: can we lighten up just a little bit?

Actually, the logic is flawed. You’ve all glossed over the “humans do this thing” without realizing that as the result of Occam’s Razor. It is by far the simplest explanation. Bringing religion into it is just commentary.

Rod, does it really matter that parts of the Koran can be interpreted as a call to violence? Aren’t they going to be violent anyway? Regional and global economics, political/national conflicts, that and more examples are all singly more than enough without caring about which religion is in the majority in each place.

The contraints on American imperialism are not religious. They are economic, military and political. The US waged an unprovoked war against Iraq. Can you name more than one or two non-Christian in the Bush administration at the time? Seems to me that the Bible failed miserably in that case. And while admitting my bias/sensitivity around it, I find it disingenuous at best to deny that the post-9/11 comments/rants by Roberts and Falwell naming scapegoats implied condoning violence against them (us).

All that said, I propose a simple test: If an outsider is capable of peaceful co-existence with the local members of a religion, I will give that religion the benefit of the doubt. In the meantime, Rod, we have the One Truth can of worms lurking, and how that informs and corrupts how many Christians and Muslims deal with non-Christians and non-Muslims. Violence is about much more than explosions, debris and blood.
EngineerScotty says:

September 14, 2012 at 12:47 pm

In Bosnia, the Habsburgs tried a different approach and allowed the mosques to remain. The result? Massive bloodletting over the next century, and the proliferation of Salafist groups in the country.

OF course, much of the blood that was being let to flow was the blood of Bosnians, Kosovars, and Albanians…
Andrew says:

September 14, 2012 at 12:52 pm

Rod, does it really matter that parts of the Koran can be interpreted as a call to violence?

Sure, it does not. Islam is just another religion (sarcasm).

Qur’an:9:112 “The Believers fight in Allah’s Cause, they slay and are slain, kill and are killed.”
Qur’an:9:29 “Fight those who do not believe until they all surrender, paying the protective tax in submission.”
Ishaq:325 “Muslims, fight in Allah’s Cause. Stand firm and you will prosper. Help the Prophet, obey him, give him your allegiance, and your religion will be victorious.”
Qur’an:8:39 “Fight them until all opposition ends and all submit to Allah.”
Qur’an:8:39 “So fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief [non-Muslims]) and all submit to the religion of Allah alone (in the whole world).”

And so on and so forth. Just “innocent” passages (about 0.005% of them) which somehow were “interpreted” incorrectly.
Theophilus says:

September 14, 2012 at 1:21 pm

I think it is worth considering not just “Islam” per se, as its history is long and broad enough to provide examples that would support just about anything you might want to say about that faith. But examining contemporary Islamic theological trends is significant, I think. I suspect that figures like Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, founder of the Wahhabi/Salafist movement in the 18th century, represent a kind of “Islamic Reformation” with an emphasis on basing the faith on the Scriptures rather than mystical, traditional accretions. It has played out rather differently than the Protestant Reformation, particularly because Islam was not centrally organized like the Roman Catholic Church, and so Wahhabi/Salafist ideas didn’t run up against such a monumental organization guarding traditional forms of the faith. But the combination of a reformer’s zeal and an emphasis on seeing Islam’s early years (including the conquests of the early caliphate) as normative for contemporary Islam can, I think, be connected to Islam’s status today as the major religion most closely associated with this sort of violence.
Sisarlys Jenkins says:

September 14, 2012 at 1:22 pm

Its called tribalism. It is endemic to human history, but remains particularly strong in areas of the world that overlap with Islam. If one of THEM committed an outrage, WE are entitled to take revenge on any of THEM we can get our hands on.

Europe was full of it until and somewhat after the Enlightenment, which was among other things a rejection of tribalism in favor of reason. In America, there are many examples, as J. Morrow coherently points out.

Islam was first preached to a tribal culture, but a member of one of those tribes, and was initially spread by a tribal culture. Initially, it wasn’t even to be shared with non-Arabs, but they insisted on converting because they wanted to be with the in crowd.

Parts of the Tanach (“Old Testament” to Christians) and even parts of the New Testament can be read as a call to violence. But, we don’t do that presently. It night recur, it might not.
RinTX says:

September 14, 2012 at 1:22 pm

“There is nothing like that in the Scriptures binding on Christians, which is to say, the New Testament, through which the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) must be interpreted.”

“It’s not a “convenient” interpretation. It happens to be normatively true.”

Does that mean we should consider Judaism to be an inherently violent religion? The OT (Hebrew Bible) has some very violent commands in it, as Ampersand states, and the Jews don’t have the “filter” of the NT that we Christians claim.

Serious question, not trying to be facetious. If we consider a religion to be inherently violent based on the violent rhetoric in their scripture, wouldn’t we need to consider Judaism to be just as violent a religion as Islam? I know the majority of modern Jews are (to their credit) non-violent, but couldn’t one argue that any Jew that is not killing adulterers, prostitutes, homosexuals, people who engage in pre-marital sex, or members of other religions (including Christians) proselytizing to Jews (see Deuteronomy 13:6-10) is actually not living in obedience to their scriptures?
Raskolnik says:

September 14, 2012 at 1:37 pm

One pivotal moment in my life was when I went to the Topkapi museum in Constantinople. The swords of the first four Caliphs are the absolute centrepiece of the museum. Nearby is the war-bow of the Prophet.

I remember thinking: really? It’s hard to imagine the mace of Jesus, or the warhammer of the Buddha…
pjsmoov says:

September 14, 2012 at 1:54 pm

reflectionemphemeral:
“These riots, born of ignorance, hopelessness, and a vague sense that outsiders are doing bad, don’t show us any more about “Islam” than riots in Greece show us about the nature of Orthodox Christianity.”
What? It seems like your omission of a film about Islam sparking some of the protests is all we need to know about your interpretation. Causes of riots in Greece and Cairo…all the same apparently.

That you didn’t mention the century of religious warfare and instead focused on wars resulting from things like excessive nationalism, Social Darwinism, and Nazism, that is conflicts among nation states and rival ideologies within western civilization of which Christianity is but one aspect (and a declining one), is also telling.

And Huntington’s conclusion that Islam is especially violence prone is based on a serious analysis of patterns of violence from low-level conflicts to high intensity warfare since the end of the Cold War. His study led him to conclude that the fundamental source of modern warfare will likely be culture (clash of civilizations), a conclusion that’s not simply based on a daydream he had while showering.

“Quoting a couple of lines from the Koran (which are, as is the way with holy texts, contradicted by other quotes elsewhere in the Koran) doesn’t really get us too far in understanding how people act now.”
When Islamic clerics quote those very passages to justify violence we should treat their words and their book seriously. What you brush aside as merely premodern,Islam, is an entire way of life. There is largely no alternative to leading a religious life in much of the Arab world which makes it a culture at odds with much of the world. It would be wise to try to understand Islam on its own terms (including it’s diverse forms).

You seem to believe that, although you think there’s really nothing terribly unique about Islam, once Muslims stop being all Muslimy, things will improve. Muslim clerics apparently just need to let the boys have a few beers and allow women to show a little leg once in a while. You’re really just asking another culture to extinguish itself and adopt our ways (fine with me even though it’s quite an ethnocentric view). But much of the Islamic world is fighting to prevent this from happening.
em says:

September 14, 2012 at 2:00 pm

Jews as a population have been very interested in and motivated by the kinds of things that friendship with enlightenment and christian nations would offer – wealth, secular education and knowledge, power – and this has caused them to make peace in spite of how their scriptures may otherwise be interpreted and lived. They have also usually been such a tiny portion of population, compared to the many nations of Muslims whose numbers give them greater resistance and greater hope for victories of culture and religion.
em says:

September 14, 2012 at 2:05 pm

Understanding the rioting anger of Muslims – for all the Americans I hear speaking angrily in suspicion of influence in government from Latinos, Jews and Isreali interests, even European criticisms or friendships amongst politicians, there are few men who would stand for the kind of meddling and worse that Western nations have for so long done in countries of Muslims. If Americans were being subjected to such things here, I would be very surprised for men to NOT rise up frustration and activism – and if they would not, if beer and sports, porn and food and other things kept them tame and sedate in spite of such injustices and violations, I do not know if I would find that admirable either. It is not in loving obedience to Jesus’ teachings of nonviolence that Westerners today are as peaceful as they are.
Andrew says:

September 14, 2012 at 2:25 pm

@Raskolnik I remember thinking: really? It’s hard to imagine the mace of Jesus, or the warhammer of the Buddha…

Jihad (and warfare in general) is a centerpiece of Islam.
Al-Dhariyat says:

September 14, 2012 at 2:41 pm

Where are the attacks in the UAE or Singapore or Malaysia? Is the US Embassy in Dubai or Dhaka being threatened? Show me a prosperous country, one not in thrall to the d*mned Wahabis and I’ll show you less riots. American Muslims aren’t up in arms of this idiot movie. Nor Canadian Muslims. It’s the ones whose grip on our glorious modernity is tenuous at best who feel the need to rage at nothing.
VikingLS says:

September 14, 2012 at 3:00 pm

There are two fallacies here. The first is the presumption that that all Muslims are bloodthirsty killers who spend all their time plotting jihad.

The second is that we must always see Muslims as more sinned against that than sinning or we’re Islamaphobes.
Roberto says:

September 14, 2012 at 4:24 pm

“The reason Christians don’t riot in the U.S. is that most people don’t riot in the U.S. anymore.”

This is very true – Talking about 19th century American Protestant riots against Mormons and Catholics is not to say “Oh, Christians did this once too” but to point out that Americans used to riot all the time in US cities over petty controversies – 25 people were killed in New York in a riot over which Shakespeare actor was better.

+1. I’m currently reading “American Aflame” by David Goldfield and the idea that Christians gave up tribal violence centuries ago is pretty a-historical.

Case in point: lynching. A large part of the impetus towards the murder of 5000 American blacks in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was a concern over the purity of white women. Where did that concern from purity come from? Not Islam.

Arguing that Christians were going against the teachings of their religion when they committed horrific acts of violence is equally a-historical: given the fact that adherence to these standards has been the exception rather than the rule, at least until relatively recently, we are left with comparing idealized versions of Christianity with Islam as its critics insist it really is.

In any case, the idea of religious violence qua religious violence is a problematic one as William Cavanaugh amply documents in “The Myth of Religious Violence.”

Even if you can define “religious” in a way that consistently makes sense without, at the same time, including a bunch of stuff that is normally thought to be distinct from religion, the fact remains that a great deal of violence is over-determined. Politics, economics, environmental pressures, etc., all contribute to the outbreak of violence. Religious beliefs play a role, to be sure, but they are rarely enough on their own.

Then there’s the distressing possibility that we in the west are less violent not because we are Christian so much as we are modern. In his (deeply) flawed but fascinating book, “The Better Angels of Our Nature,” Steven Pinker documents hair-raising levels of violence, cruelty, and just plain barbarianism perpetrated by our Christian ancestors in early modern Europe. They were callous and indifferent to suffering in ways we can’t imagine and prefer not to know. (Bear baiting, anyone? Picnics at lynchings, y’all?) Christianity didn’t change this so much as modernity did.

I say this despite being a committed Christian (Papist branch): Pinker has a point or twelve.
Franklin Evans says:

September 14, 2012 at 5:30 pm

I nominate Roberto’s latest post for the E-M award on this thread. You said what I was getting at earlier, only very much more cogently and coherently.

I would add (as I am wont to do) this axiom (or so I see it) first seen in the writing of Robert A. Heinlein: Nations always go to war for practical reasons. They need high ideals to convince their men (and modernly, women, I add) to put their lives at risk.

What better motivation is there, I submit, what stronger hook into the emotions of the masses than religion? None stronger, I opine.
JonF says:

September 14, 2012 at 5:30 pm

Nicolo, the late unpleasantness in the former Yugoslavia had zilch to do with Islam, and everything to do with the ethnic hatreds of the Croats and Serbs, with the Bosnians caught in the middle. And the trouble was mainly instigated by the Serbs, though to be fair, they were conditioned by the appalling genocide their fathers and grandfathers suffered at the hands of the Croatian Ustashe in WWII– If any outside party is to blame, I would lay it at the door of everyone’s favorite old villains, the Nazis.
As for Salafis in the Balkans, yep, the Saudis sent some clergy over there to make converts, but they had very little luck and the imams mostly came home muttering in their beards about the decadence of Balkan Islam. The folk of Bosnia and Albania like their booze and cigarettes and women in scanty western garb.
M_Young says:

September 14, 2012 at 6:14 pm

“. A large part of the impetus towards the murder of 5000 American blacks in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was a concern over the purity of white women. Where did that concern from purity come from? ”

Lynching is bad, but that’s not quite accurate.

According to the Tuskegee Institute figures, between the years 1882 and 1951, 4,730 people were lynched in the United States: 3,437 Negro and 1,293 white.

Also a significant percentage of victims of lynching actually committed serious crimes and were, indeed, guilty. That isn’t to justify extra-judicial violence, it is just to put lynching some historical and social contest.
M_Young says:

September 14, 2012 at 6:19 pm

Where are the attacks in the UAE or Singapore or Malaysia?

Are you speaking in general, or specific to embassy attacks in the last week. If the former, here you go.
M_Young says:

September 14, 2012 at 6:23 pm

“I’d like to remind folks that the Bible has passages that to some who are prone to justify war, are interpreted to command smashing the babies’ heads against the rocks and justifying genocide and ethnic cleansing down to every last man, woman and child.”

Not in the NT it doesn’t.
Siarlys Jenkins says:

September 14, 2012 at 8:05 pm

Theophilus offers a very sensible analysis, based on a long view of history, and resisting the temptation to sterotype. Yes, there are currents within Islam that tend toward violence, irrational mob action, etc., and there are specific reasons for that. To either write off Islam as inherently violent and triumphalist, or to deny that this has ANYTHING to do with the history and content of Islam are equally blind positions to take.

At to the New Testament, “I come not to bring peace, but the sword,” is certainly open to militant interpretations, as are some lines from Paul about the state being God’s instrument for punishing evil, and maintaining good order, and many of the feverish visions in the Revelation to St. John.

We can all thank modernism for the fact that we are simply too polite, or too apathetic, a culture to riot much any more.
Francis Beckwith says:

September 14, 2012 at 9:51 pm

Roberto, I counter your Pinker with a David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions.
Monterey says:

September 15, 2012 at 3:19 am

Have you even seen the supposed trailer for this movie? It’s completely stupid. So lame I was actually laughing as I watched it for how stupid it was. Can’t believe anyone would be so upset over a poorly done, completely silly movie. I can’t believe the Whitehouse tried to get Youtube to remove it. As if this would solve everything. Brother!
David Lindsay says:

September 15, 2012 at 9:28 am

The paid Lebanese supporters of our dear friends in Saudi Arabia, in the same position as the Bushes and the Clintons, have been demonstrating against the Holy Father’s visit – http://www.jpost.com/Headlines/Article.aspx?id=285118
David Lindsay says:

September 15, 2012 at 9:30 am

Sorry, pressed Post Comment too soon.

“Extraordinary and historic” is how the Holy Father’s visit to Lebanon been described. By Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah.

Today has been declared a public holiday by the Government headed by the legendary Maronite General, Michel Aoun, and including Hezbollah, to which the Christians now look as their last line of defence. People whose view of Lebanon is stuck in the 1980s are precisely that: stuck in the 1980s. They often are about a lot of things.

Whereas the other side, favoured by those against whom Hezbollah is defending Christian Lebanon, is bankrolled by Saudi Arabia. That Kingdom, like Turkey and Qatar, is funding, arming, and engaging directly in, the Islamist insurrection in and invasion of Syria, to the terror of the Christian population there. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have told their citizens not to visit Lebanon. Mercifully, Benedict XVI is neither Saudi not Qatari.
Andrew says:

September 15, 2012 at 11:40 am

Show me a prosperous country, one not in thrall to the d*mned Wahabis and I’ll show you less riots.

Today’s Sydney Morning Herald provides interesting details on the behavior of those who, obviously, are not “the d*mned Wahabis”(c) The headline goes like this: Police gas Sydney protesters. And then this: Eight people were arrested and six officers were injured after a protest swept through the Sydney CBD this afternoon. Police said that, about 1pm today, a group marched from Sydney Town Hall to Martin Place, where a confrontation occurred between protesters and police outside a building housing the US consulate. And so on–a familiar pattern.

There is a lot of photos there too. Yes, last time I checked Australia was a prosperous (very) country. And then there is AFP’s report with this title: Kuwaitis stage anti-US demo, wave Qaeda flag.
Brian says:

September 15, 2012 at 11:49 am

“Look, I know that not all Muslims are like this, and not even most Muslim are like this…” (Question: How, exactly, do you know this to be true?)