There's a very strange marriage between far left radicalism and fundamentalist Islam. I've yet to fully understand why, but it's something I keep seeing. My current explanation is that it has something to do with the white guilt complex TGW talks about. Teh brown folks seem oppressed! And since they obviously can't oppress themselves (being brown), it must be the West and white males who are the cause of their misfortune.

White, non-religious leftist academics in the humanities and social "sciences" in particular are infatuated with Islam, but their research always has an apologetic tone to it. Contrast this with most academics who study Christianity. There's no desire to understand how the Quran was written, who wrote it, Muhammad's place in history, etc. No, just endless books and articles being created on how queer black Muslims in Belgium negotiate relations of power. Blegh. My professor is merely typical in this regard.

A buyout would have been cheaper than a war. I think people only pay lip service to traditions until there's incentive to abandon them. Just pay them.

I'm also fascinated by the left's defense of Islam. This isn't a genius idea or anything, but I think it may stem from the coherency of the enemy: white, male, capitalist, straight, cisgendered, Christian and so on. Any deviation from this is grounds for alliance, regardless of whether the different sorts of deviations from it are mutually conflicting (as with the European attempt to reconcile Islam with LGBT acceptance). Once your enemy isn't monolithic, things get complicated.

I also get the vague impression that leftists closer to the source, especially those fleeing Muslim countries for persecution, have far less patience for it. It's easier to tint it with roses when you don't have to deal with it. And it's of course the oppressive Christian countries in which you're free to be openly critical of the 'reigning' religious values.

It would be, but are other people going to agree with it? To open with a policy of: "I'll pay you to free your slaves" is a great, but will people agree to it? Some will, no doubt, if you offer enough. But what of those people who's identity is tied-up in being owners of slaves? They'll read the buyout as a betrayal of how people need to live and recognise it as a existential threat to their way of life. We could well have war anyway.

I don't know the amount of people who went along with it in England, and of course America's economy was more deeply tied to slavery, but it certainly isn't without precedent or fantastical.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend, in other words.

Also, I believe the Radical Abolition Party in mid 19th-centry America went around buying out individual slaves and releasing them, on the eve of the Civil War. I believe a man by the name of Smith of that party proposed a mass buyout before Congress, citing Britain as precedent. He was apparently trying to forestall war in doing so.

England's Emancipation Act of 1834 was essentially a mass buyout of all slaves in the British Empire – they paid off the slave owners with recompense to have it pass.

I read about this in some book, but I can't remember the details, and don't have good citations.

Whatever one thinks about the left's relationship with Islam,

this:

There's no desire to understand how the Quran was written, who wrote it, Muhammad's place in history, etc.

is a dumb thing to say.

There are tons of books on these subjects. I took a middle east studies 101 course by a suuuper liberal professor and we covered - tho in a brief 101 way - precisely these topics. They were an integral part of the course.

There are some points you make I agree with, but stuff like this makes it seems like either have no idea what you're talking about or just like the sound of your own rhetoric. You're poisoning your own well.

It's more to do with recognising the "oppressive" impact the West has on other cultures. Not so much a question of creating monolithic enemy, but being careful of putting down another culture and its people, pretty much regardless of the exact ethical worth of their practices. I mean does Saudi Arabia needs us in their country spreading our "enlightened" values to their ignorant people? Or are they their own people, with their own values, who a worth enough to practice the culture the believe in?

The point is there is a racism in our insistence that we must know better. If we are to say, for example, that Islam is a tradition of war that has no just place in our world, as is the standard of many critics, we are really calling for a genocide of the tradition in a favour of our own.

"Islam" becomes a scapegoat. In our denouncing of Islam, we create an image that we are addressing a problem (Islamic terrorism, local oppression within Islamic countries, tensions between Islamic immigrants and our culture, etc., etc.) which makes us feel safer. But does nothing of the sort. All the problems we are so worried about continue, only we now dump derision upon the way of life of many respectful and peaceful people within our own communities too.

Or we support a situation and policy which have deeply damaging effects on Muslim communities around the world (e.g. the war in Iraq, Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, etc.,etc.), where our political interests (e.g. oil, rallying our community around an enemy, the safety of Israel) are more important than Muslim lives and communities.

I was making a comparison. Quranic scholarship is a joke compared to Old and New Testament scholarship. That's simply a fact. Muhammad is not scrutinized or written about as Jesus is either.

Modern academia in the West has a historically exceptional place with regard to Biblical scholarship, though, since as a historical fact numerous disciplines and techniques in the humanities were launched from German Protestant Biblical exegesis and historical inquiry.

It strikes me that there's one very obvious reason why anglo-european countries would have significantly deeper and richer scholarship re: christianity.

I voted for Trump because in the debate when asked what he was looking for in a Supreme Court Justice, he, unlike Clinton, mentioned the word "Constitution." Yes, their job is Constitutional interpretation, not contemporary morality enforcement.

Do you think it's racist to disapprove of Islam? Is it racist to disapprove of any religion? Is it ever fair to disapprove of a religion? What would a religion have to do, or what would it have to teach, to be worthy of disapproval?

Alright, so let's ask ourselves why it lags behind. The reason is quite simple. Sure, the West was Christian, thus resulting in scholarship on the Bible. However, the Islamic world doesn't value or permit critical scholarship of their religious texts to any comparable degree. And for many of the Western scholars who do work on Islam, in say "Islamic studies" departments, they are primarily not interested in the things I listed. Instead, you'll find a lot of stuff to do with leftist identity politics, postmodernist theory, and so on.

Fear and intimidation are also things to take into consideration.

It is interesting to me that I cannot say, draw a chalk picture of Muhammad on the ground in the middle of a Western university. What does a religion have to be like that people fear for their safety in doing these sorts of things, even in the hearts of supposedly liberal institutions? It's not a good situation. And I'm not comfortable with people coming to the defense of Saudi Arabia with accusations of racism if anyone decides to be critical. But OK, I have heard this discussion before and understand that there are genuinely racist people who hate Muslims.

The Civil War was not just about ending slavery; it was also about denying states the prerogative of leaving the union (California secessionists, take note). — Bitter Crank

As far as I understand it, the succession from the union was indeed first and foremost about preventing central - or northern - authority from being exercised on the lower states given that the north had been growing much faster, and with the addition of Minnesota and Oregon in 58 and 59, basically had tipped the balance of power in congress.

In a letter to Horace Greeley in the midst of the civil war, before the emancipation proclamation, (although he would have been working on it) Lincoln wrote the following:

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. — Lincoln

Kinda reminiscent of modern political maneuvering if you ask me. The north wanted to keep the south in the fold, freeing the slaves was just something that helped to achieve that.

I mean does Saudi Arabia needs us in their country spreading our "enlightened" values to their ignorant people? — TheWillowOfDarkness

Yes.

The point is there is a racism in our insistence that we must know better — TheWillowOfDarkness

White people can be Muslims too, Islam is not a race.

And we DO know better. Homosexuality can be punished by death in Saudi Arabia. Surely you can't excuse this with an appeal to cultural relativism?

, we are really calling for a genocide of the tradition in a favour of our own. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Yes!

In terms of how it usually manifests within the West, yes. Islam is the "The Other," a people with a history and culture considered outside anything worthwhile, something understood to be so savage that it ought to be wiped off the face of the Earth. I would go as far to say a lot of us think of Muslims as "savages" who we must enlighten.

To disapprove of a religion is certainly discrimination. Whether it is racist will depend on how deeply a religious tradition is embedded and tied to a racial or ethic group. Given the place of most major religions in their culture, I would say that most disapprovals of religion would be racist, if they are suggesting the religion is entirely Other to culture and civilisation.

Religions teach many unethical things. Most, if not all, have I would say. Islam is no exception to that (whether it be "textually supported" or merely "cultural" ). As such I'd say they are all worthy of disapproval in some way or another.

The point is our criticisms don't usually talk about these issues effectively. We don't name a particular issue and how to build a just society from the point of view of the religious tradition (i.e. we-the religious tradition- were wrong). Rather, we call for the tradition to be wiped out, acting like it gave nothing of value or provided nothing to a community, turning entire populations of people into "savages" who never had a civilisation (unlike us enlightened liberal Westerners).

Your mentioning Saudi Arabia reminds me of just how hostile that country has been to scholars trying to discover more about the Islamic and pre-Islamic past of the region.

So no, @csalisbury I don't think I'm being dumb. I was making a comparison of the amount and level of critical scholarship on Islam and Christianity, concluding that the latter is greater than the former, which I don't see how you can dispute. As such, it was intended to be a very general statement, so your anecdote is quite irrelevant. Plus, I would love to have sat in your class to confirm your impression.

I don't really have a priori respect for religious traditions, Willow – it seems to me that in the same way Christianity was a faith-healer and apocalyptic grassroots revolt that spun out of control, Islam was a war campaign that spun out of control. It's not obvious to me why any movement deserves a priori respect just for existing. The 'but my culture' line is appealing, but the problem is liberals aren't willing to grant it to the Confederacy, so on pain of consistency something has to give. You cannot love the religion and hate upwards of everything it actually does. Yet if you don't hate upwards of everything it does, you can't consistently be a liberal and dislike those things only when they happen at home.

Nah, you were being pretty dumb.

Brilliant rebuttal.

I wasn't saying white people couldn't be muslims.

My point was that many muslims aren't "white," and so acting like Islam is just savagery amounts to equating their way of life, and so them (the non-white muslim), with nothing but a heinous harm to the world.

In terms of ethic identity, it may even end-up getting white muslims-- what do you think would be the reaction of many to white muslim who defined Islam? Accusations they had betrayed all that was good for a savage way of life.

And we DO know better. Homosexuality can be punished by death in Saudi Arabia. Surely you can't excuse this with an appeal to cultural relativism? — dukkha

Do we know better? What of all the muslims in Saudi Arabia who find that punishment abhorrent? Us Westerners aren't the only ones capable of recognising the worth of gay people. People from Islamic cultures and traditions can do so too. Just as we, from a Christian culture and tradition that despised gay people, did (at least to some degree).

and so acting like Islam is just savagery amounts to equating their way of life, and so them (the non-white muslim), with nothing but a heinous harm to the world. — TheWillowOfDarkness

This is pure insanity. A belief system and a person are two different things. Criticizing the former doesn't harm anyone. For your claim to get off the ground, you would have to expand the notion of harm to near meaninglessness.

What it also says about you is that you don't value free speech, which is good to know, if only to know that I will have people like you to thank for putting me in jail in the future for speaking ill of a particular religion.

Listen, if you want to pretend that this

There's no desire to understand how the Quran was written, who wrote it, Muhammad's place in history, etc. No, just endless books and articles being created on how queer black Muslims in Belgium negotiate relations of power.

should have been charitably understood as this:

" I was making a comparison of the amount and level of critical scholarship on Islam and Christianity, concluding that the latter is greater than the former"

then, yeah, you're being dumb (ok, ok, disingenuous.)

You don't have to pretend, you just have to see that that's what I was trying to say. I'm sorry you didn't get it. Now let's stop this silly conversation.

Us Westerns aren't the only ones capable of recognising the worth of gay people. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Do you think the West in the las 50 or so years has had a unique and unprecedented relationship with homosexuality? This is something I don't know the answer to, but looking at the world stage as it is now, it can certainly feel that way. There seems to be exactly one culture on this planet that's even pretending to give a shit about you if you're south of straight. When I want to fuck men, I'm going to go to the whitest, most Western place possible, ASAP. And I'm going to stay the hell away from Muslim nations (and Muslim neighborhoods).

That was never the point though. You are only speaking of the (classical) liberal utopian myth, where every person gets whatever they want, whenever the want it.-- "everyone equal no matter what"

At some point, whether at home or abroad, someone's doesn't get their values and beliefs respect. They are discriminated against and it is just--e.g. those who want to own slaves don't get what they want. The question is when such discrimination applies.

The "universal" application isn't needed at all. In some cases it may make sense for the discrimination to apply in one place (e.g. one's home) but not in another (e.g. another culture which has slavery enshrined). Slavery in the US, for example, can be addressed by us (whether it results in war or occurs by some better means). Deeply embedded prejudice against gay people within Islamic culture in other countries? We can't really touch that. It needs to be addressed from the inside.

Consistency isn't what makes ethics. That's the old myth that ethical significant comes from an image. Difference is what makes ethics, an expression of a particular time and place, which means some actions are preferable to others. Sometimes this means living with people and actions you disagree with.

Deeply embedded prejudice against gay people within Islamic culture in other cultures? We can't really touch that. It needs to be addressed from the inside. — TheWillowOfDarkness

OK, but I just don't believe this. Being from somewhere else on the planet doesn't give you free reign to do whatever you want to gay people. And they matter more than the feelings of Muslims whose religion gets criticized.

And if the 'disagreement' is between wether you get to live or die because of your sexual proclivities, then no, I don't have to live with people who disagree with me on that, and I won't be cowed into 'respecting' that opinion. I'm not interested in the relativist slant.