Five Answers for Dennis Prager

Personal Note: My Iranian father is a secular Muslim, my paternal grandmother a religious Shi’ite Muslim who has been on hajj to Mecca. For what it’s worth my Iranian father has said that our family is seyyed, or descendant of Mohammad. In addition, I was raised as a Presbyterian, under the guidance of my maternal grandfather, who is a Presbyterian minister. I was baptized at the age of three and under family pressure was told that I had to become confirmed in the church when I was in eighth grade. As my own opinions formed, I no longer attend church and do not consider myself a Christian. I consider myself an agnostic — but I also consider it my duty as a thoughful human being who is concerned with the relationships between all people to respond to what I think are poorly thought out arguments that denigrate a particular religious faith. I have a deep respect for people who use religion to make positive change in the world and for people who are open to dialogue and peaceful co-existence and integration with other communities, religious or otherwise. Examples of these people would be my aunt Dr. Heidi Hadsell and Dr. Eboo Patel. I believe that faith is something that is extremely personal and cannot be imposed on others and rarely is it possible to convince religious people that their set of core beliefs is somehow flawed.

LA Times, Op-Ed by Dennis Prager:

THE RIOTING IN France by primarily Muslim youths and the hotel bombings in Jordan are the latest events to prompt sincere questions that law-abiding Muslims need to answer for Islam’s sake, as well as for the sake of worried non-Muslims.

Here are five of them:

(1) Why are you so quiet?

Since the first Israelis were targeted for death by Muslim terrorists blowing themselves up in the name of your religion and Palestinian nationalism, I have been praying to see Muslim demonstrations against these atrocities. Last week’s protests in Jordan against the bombings, while welcome, were a rarity. What I have seen more often is mainstream Muslim spokesmen implicitly defending this terror on the grounds that Israel occupies Palestinian lands. We see torture and murder in the name of Allah, but we see no anti-torture and anti-murder demonstrations in the name of Allah.

There are a billion Muslims in the world. How is it possible that essentially none have demonstrated against evils perpetrated by Muslims in the name of Islam? This is true even of the millions of Muslims living in free Western societies. What are non-Muslims of goodwill supposed to conclude? When the Israeli government did not stop a Lebanese massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps in Lebanon in 1982, great crowds of Israeli Jews gathered to protest their country’s moral failing. Why has there been no comparable public demonstration by Palestinians or other Muslims to morally condemn Palestinian or other Muslim-committed terror?

Answer: Firstly, the majority of Muslims don’t live in places that have strong traditions of freedom of assembly, speech and of the press. Did you read the NYT today? There was a great piece on Jordan’s secret police, the mukhabarat.

The State Department’s annual human rights report, unusually critical of a staunch ally, particularly one that offers widespread cooperation on terrorism issues, said the lack of accountability within the mukhabarat and the police resulted “in a climate of impunity” and underscored “significant restrictions on freedom of speech, press, assembly and association.” It said the agents “sometimes abuse detainees physically and verbally” and “allegedly also use torture.”

Don’t tell me that there aren’t similar agencies/fears in other countries in the Middle East. Most of these countries don’t exactly have a strong tradition of democracy, either. Wonder why that is? In the words of Jon Stewart: “Funny story . . .”

(2) Why are none of the Palestinian terrorists Christian?

If Israeli occupation is the reason for Muslim terror in Israel, why do no Christian Palestinians engage in terror? They are just as nationalistic and just as occupied as Muslim Palestinians.

Answer: I bet it has something to do with the fact that Christians are only six percent of the population of Palestine, according to Wikipedia. Also, Palestinian Christians tend to be demographically better off:

In today’s Israel, the Christian Arabs form a distinct socio-cultural group whose demographic profile resembles that of the Jews rather than the Muslim Arabs. The average number of births for a Christian woman is 2.6, a little lower than that of a Jewish woman (2.7) and far lower than that of a Muslim Arab (4.8 per woman). In 1998 the average Christian household had 3.6 members per unit, a little higher than the Jewish 3.2 and by far lower than the Muslim household (5.4 per family). The average Christian finished twelve years of schooling, compared with the average Muslim who finished nine.

(3) Why is only one of the 47 Muslim-majority countries a free country?

According to Freedom House, a Washington-based group that promotes democracy, of the world’s 47 Muslim countries, only Mali is free. Sixty percent are not free, and 38% are partly free. Muslim-majority states account for a majority of the world’s “not free” states. And of the 10 “worst of the worst,” seven are Islamic states. Why is this?

Answer: Well, for starters, you missed Senegal, a country that’s population that is 94 percent Muslim, according to the CIA Factbook. But besides that, Mr. Prager, you’re implying that it is Islam that is causing these countries to not be free. The bulk of these countries happen to be countries that were occupied as colonial territories until the mid-20th century. I would venture that the countries that are labelled as not free is more related to the fact that has little to do with the fact that these countries are Muslim and more to do with the fact that the United States and Europe in the 20th and 21st centuries have largely allowed petro-politics, anti-Soviet politics and other realpolitik ideas to trump human rights and religious freedoms.

(4) Why are so many atrocities committed and threatened by Muslims in the name of Islam?

Young girls in Indonesia were recently beheaded by Muslim murderers. Last year, Muslims — in the name of Islam — murdered hundreds of schoolchildren in Russia. While reciting Muslim prayers, Islamic terrorists take foreigners working to make Iraq free and slaughter them. Muslim daughters are murdered by their own families in the thousands in “honor killings.” And the Muslim government in Iran has publicly called for the extermination of Israel.

Answer: The extreme acts of a small number of Muslims should not reflect on the overwhelming majority of peaceful Muslims as a whole. When Muslim leaders to call out to condemn these acts of violent and horrific terrorism, often it is not covered in the media. Check these links for some examples. I agree that the silent majority of peaceful law-abiding Muslims that are across the world need to make their voices heard much more loudly. But you also should acknowledge that these acts of horrific terrorism are perpetrated by an extreme wing of what Dr. Eboo Patel calls “religious totalitarians.”

(5) Why do countries governed by religious Muslims persecute other religions?

No church or synagogue is allowed in Saudi Arabia. The Taliban destroyed some of the greatest sculptures of the ancient world because they were Buddhist. Sudan’s Islamic regime has murdered great numbers of Christians.

Instead of confronting these problems, too many of you deny them. Muslims call my radio show to tell me that even speaking of Muslim or Islamic terrorists is wrong. After all, they argue, Timothy McVeigh is never labeled a “Christian terrorist.” As if McVeigh committed his terror as a churchgoing Christian and in the name of Christ, and as if there were Christian-based terror groups around the world.

As a member of the media for nearly 25 years, I have a long record of reaching out to Muslims. Muslim leaders have invited me to speak at major mosques. In addition, I have studied Arabic and Islam, have visited most Arab and many other Muslim countries and conducted interfaith dialogues with Muslims in the United Arab Emirates as well as in the U.S. Politically, I have supported creation of a Palestinian state and supported (mistakenly, I now believe) the Oslo accords.

Hundreds of millions of non-Muslims want honest answers to these questions, even if the only answer you offer is, “Yes, we have real problems in Islam.” Such an acknowledgment is infinitely better — for you and for the world — than dismissing us as anti-Muslim.

We await your response.

Answer: Again, I would argue that persecution of non-Muslims in Muslim countries is much more tied to social, religious and economic freedom. Senegal is a country that is 94 percent Muslim, with a significant (five percent) Catholic minority. I am unaware of any anti-Catholic violence or persecution in Senegal. Senegal is one of two countries on that Freedom House list that is labelled as “free.” I’d say that you are right in spirit, but not in letter. What I think you mean is that “Yes, we have real problems in countries that are governed by poor and illiberal democracies that pervert Islam for their own ends instead of taking care of their own people.”

You clearly missed Moisés Naím’s article about Arab-Americans, presumably the majority of whom are Muslim, in Foreign Affairs:

People of Arab descent living in the United States are doing far better than the average American. That is the surprising conclusion drawn from data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2000 and released last March. The census found that U.S. residents who report having Arab ancestors are better educated and wealthier than average Americans.

Whereas 24 percent of Americans hold college degrees, 41 percent of Arab Americans are college graduates. The median income for an Arab family living in the United States is $52,300 — 4.6 percent higher than other American families�and more than half of all Arab Americans own their home. Forty-two percent of people of Arab descent in the United States work as managers or professionals, while the same is true for only 34 percent of the general U.S. population. For many, this success has come on quickly: Although about 50 percent of Arab Americans were born in the United States, nearly half of those born abroad did not arrive until the 1990s.

That immigrants do better than their compatriots back home is of course no surprise. What is far less common is for immigrants to perform that much better than the average population of their adopted home. This fact should prompt important debates that transcend how Arab immigrants are faring in the United States.

Consider, for example, the popular notion that cultural factors loom large behind the Middle East’s appalling poverty. Cultural explanations for why some succeed when others fail have a long history. In 1904, German sociologist Max Weber famously argued that the “Protestant ethic” was more compatible with capitalism than religions such as Confucianism and Taoism. Of course, the Asian economic miracle forced a revision of these assumptions. The same thing happened to “Asian values,” the idea that cultural factors explained the region’s phenomenal rates of economic growth. The Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s gave that cultural theory an even shorter shelf life.

You, sir, equate the dominance of poor countries that have Muslim majorities and fault Islam for their condition. Islam is not a static religion any more than any other religions or set of secular or religious ideas are. Islam used to be different and still can be. This is the same deceptive logic that is held by many American political conservatives and their allies in academia, such as David Landes and Samuel Huntington. I urge you to go read my critique of their work here, in which I wrote the following, which I feel is very applicable to your article:

Landes gives the impression that these attacks are against non-Muslims — thereby furthering the stereotype that Huntington says a bit more explicitly that Muslims, due to their innate and unchangeable incompatibility with the West, are driven to fight the West. What is a bit less clear, is that many of the instances of the violence that Landes talks about are against other Muslims. Kurds, for the most part, are Muslims. Much of the violence committed in Algeria and Pakistan has been against other Muslims. The instances of Muslims fighting non-Muslims, while often for religious reasons, tend to have reasons that have little to do with Islam — the civil war in Sudan can often be construed as a war of resources — the resource-deficient north against the resource-rich south.

One could quite easily make a similar argument that Christians are prone to violence, given that the two major wars in the last century were between Christian nations — but this argument is never made as it is perposterous. Similarly, the idea that Islam is a faith that clings to ancient ideas, that is incapable of change, that is inherently violent is nothing more than a rhetorical device used to divide people and to encourage the call to war. It is not based on any theological, scientific or historical fact. Within the last few decades, there have been those who will commit acts of violence in the name of Islam — but no one who knows anything about Islam actually thinks that these “believers” are any more representative of Islam any more than Pat Robertson is representative of Christianity.

In addition, if it were true that Islam is incapable of change, and that it is prone to being anti-Western, then the historical periods of Islamic coexistence with other major religious groups would never have been possible. Cooperative life between Jews, Muslims and Christians in Spain in the 10th century could not have happened if this were true. Similarly, Serbs, Croats and Muslims could not have lived in relative peace in Yugoslavia for centuries.

Thus, the idea that Islam itself is prone to violence, particularly against non-Muslims is one that fuels the worldview of both Huntington and Landes, and by showing that this third element is also false, in coupling with the fact that the previous two elements that it builds on are also false, it can be shown that Hungtington and Landes’ worldview — “an inevitable collision of two major world forces” — is misguided and incorrect. The falsehoods that are perpetuated in these works, once demonstrated, serve to illuminate how an overall historical tendancy or theory is completely implausible.