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I've had a recent rebirth of interest in studying Islam. This happened to overlap with the time of year that is 9/11. Now, I was mainly reading ancient thinkers and I didn't think that 9/11 would become relevant to my efforts.
Alas, I was also listening to podcasts on the side. From Talking with Teachers (at 39:50):
After parsing this as charitably and carefully as I could, it does not seem to me that he is directly claiming either that Muslims weren't on the plane, or that the plane didn't cause the building to fall. I believe that his basic claim is that one way to avoid the single-minded conclusion that Muslims are evil is to note that "Islamic terrorism" is not the only story that people have alleged here.
Ironically, this was spoken by the host, and not the guest Imam Farhan Siddiqi, who as far as I can tell appears to be the same Imam of the Dar Al-Hijrah mosque who claimed that he didn't condemn Hamas because he he had seen no proof of Hamas atrocities. He then said (in this video, not the podcast):
I'm beginning to wonder if the basic drive behind these startlingly alien statements is a kind of negative pluralism: take or promote any other perspectives than the allegedly thought-stopping truth of violence committed in the name of Islam. Why? Because those perspectives exist (People believe them! It's not just Muslims!), and because the central story that Muslims are just must be upheld.
Personally, I do not think that the tactics these two have chosen to deal with controversies will work in the long term, though in times of widespread distrust, it may appear to be effective.
This post doesn't really have a point. I've found that podcasts are the greatest gift that the internet has given us. I listen to people who I never would read. Reading them makes me feel dirty. But when there's a voice, they're people, even if they're bad people, or people who I tentatively want to see burn in hell for at least a few seconds and maybe even a little longer. I had no expectation that either of these two would make me do a double take when I started listening. I was there to learn about a community which I know little about, and to seek knowledge, as the Muslims say.
This episode began by talking about their experiences of studying Islam in majority-Arabic areas and continued with the experience of leading a flock. The discussion of different perspectives of faith, of avoiding partisanship in matters of faith, and of being tolerant of what people need in order to continue in their faith, even with doubts, was genuinely humanistic and worthwhile. It was what I came for, and I can't deny that to a certain extent I sought knowledge and I found it.
After the rather "wait, what" 9/11 part, the conversation continues to talk about how (apparently) Muslim clergy (I'm assuming this is in America) is mostly left-leaning, that MLFA and CAIR are left-leaning, that the host and guest are among the few right leaning in their circles. They talk about racism and discrimination towards whites, and appear to criticize Muslims who think that racism happens to everyone except whites. They talk about how some in the America First movement are talking about Zionists and mass immigration, but they don't necessarily care for the Palestinians either, as both are seen as foreign concerns. They talk about libertarianism and the virtues of Austrian economics (highly praised). At one point a story is told about how people confided in Siddiqi that they voted for Trump, and his response was "vote whoever." Dr. Abdullah reflects on pushback he got for promoting vaccine freedom during the pandemic.
I don't think they're making it up. There's a lot to ponder here about the possibilities and perils of Muslim integration in the West.
It's just garden variety tribal defensiveness, of the sort other groups with even less justification to deny their people are responsible use.
Muslims were more defensive and conciliatory in the wake of 9/11 and it didn't change that some people still suspect that there's something particular about Islam (in fact, it may have gotten worse) and it justified many things Muslims don't like both on the foreign policy and immigration fronts so why bother? Blacks don't ever go "Yeah, crime is on our heads alone. We need to be the ones work on it" and politically they've probably been better served by just forming an ever deeper phalanx of scapegoats and rationalizations.
Now that the left wing is totally on board with the alternate theories and has applied the "blaming culture==racist" paradigm and the Muslim population is just a fact of life, it all seems a bit embarrassing to have gone so far for so little. Just blame the West/American foreign policy/white supremacy like everyone else. Whitey clearly buys that shit.
The important thing is that it doesn't stop at terrorism, which most would be willing to write off. Muslims have been wrestling with the West and being seen as backwards across the board for centuries (I know some apologists who complain bitterly that the complaints about Mohammed bedding a pre-teen Aisha were unknown before modernity, implying modern liberal Westerners are the weird ones, which...well. How they raise their children, manage relations with women, etc. are all under suspicion under strong liberalism. Granting that there's something illiberal and backwards about Islam opens the door to correction on a broad number of matters from the West and that's just unacceptable because liberals don't know how to stop at a reasonable concession. They just take more and and more and more. As Americans, they see that.
They've seen what happened to Christianity. You cede that your religion should be subject to review by kaffir and next thing you know the the degenerate gays are dancing in your cathedrals and your daughters are being transed. Why wouldn't they? They saw you trying to be more British than the British, apologizing for the faith. You've ceded the moral authority to them.
No, nip it in the bud. We have our own ideas about justice and that's all there is to it. Some people did something, as a certain Congresswoman said, but we're not going to cede the whole moral core of the faith by saying it's Muslims as such
This post made me more firmly opposed to Muslim immigration. Sorry, but they're free to have their own ideas about justice in any of the 50 Muslim nations. Here they have to tolerate Piss Mohammad and getting tickets if they park illegally when they hear the call to prayer.
If not, remigration/expulsion are the kind, moderate options.
Your prerogative. I just don't think they believe you. Where's the great groundswell of support for the banning of Muslims? Even Europe, which has much more serious problems, probably won't.
So what's the point of catering to people like you anymore? You lost, as they see it. If 9/11 and the rise of ISIS or the grooming gangs didn't cause a ban or rethink nothing will.
If any part of my post is sympathetic to the case it makes about how people think it's that we all know it won't stop at this. Plenty or even most American Muslims tolerate this (I grant there's just a seemingly impossible to filter minority that become deranged and use violence that punches way above its weight) but "live and let live" is a lie. The minimal secular state is a lie.
Liberalism doesn't really compromise, it just pauses to reload. On many matters American Muslims are just conservative religious people circa a couple of decades ago and that is theoretically acceptable within the secular framework of the country, but will constantly be put under pressure by liberal hegemony.
What exactly has the constant compromising bought Christians? Have evangelicals stopped being the boogeymen? Did the liberal state take the win on gay marriage and leave it at that? Or is it demanding the right to trans and indoctrinate your kids as well? And what's the response to complaints? That it's just like gay marriage, which you were on the wrong side of history for. This argument actually works on people.
Muslims might be willing to accept some sort of millet system or one where each faith has its own way but with neutral strictures to protect freedom but clearly that's not what's being debated.
The debate is one side saying Muslims are incompatible with the country, and the other side saying they're compatible so long as they cede moral sovereignty and start down the long road of becoming Unitarians or some other faith colored appendage of globohomo that's gonna die anyway (the churches with the lowest apostasy rates are not the ones that just go along to get along). Hell, it's arguably already begun with Mamdani and co. You can see why people don't want to give inches away rhetorically.
I think education is and always will be the crux here. The progressive view trends towards the idea that religious freedom is a right to be exercised by legal adults making an informed, personal decision as to which religion seems true to them after being exposed to the full spectrum of options, such that attempts by parents to raise young children within a particular religion scan as prima facie sinister attempts to box in their thinking before they're old enough to make up their minds for themselves as they're entitled to. The conservative view, meanwhile, is rooted in a deep feeling that the right of parents to raise their children within their hereditary belief system is sacrosanct, and any attempt by the state to mitigate this amounts to a sinister totalitarian plot to brainwash kids and break apart communities. One is individualistic, the other is communitarian.
These are idealized views, of course: religious conservatives would struggle to defend against the charge that they're just upset at somebody brainwashing their children other than themselves rather than anything more principled, while progressives don't cover themselves with glory with regards to "okay, but are you actually giving young minds an unbiased range of options or are you just weighing the scales in a different direction". And misc. interference patterns arise from the ol'Oppression Olympics, such as progressives sweating bullets when asked to criticize sharia schools as their principles should normally dictate. But nevertheless, I think that's the basic dichotomy at work, the scissor-statement nature of "the state should stop parents from indoctrinating children into their religion" as a proposition.
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You're definitely correct about everything except that the Muslims are also going to go gay and trans just like Christians did.
Take a look at the cratering birth rates in Muslim countries. Look at the absolute softness of their military forces. The selection process of modernity hasn't even fully hit them yet. Can Abdul from Riyadh resist internet porn and video games? Doubtful.
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