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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   12956 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 14, 2026

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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):

(Dr. Abdullah bin Hamid Ali) I think like one of the first mistakes that Muslims after 9/11 made was to embrace the narrative itself, right? You know, that it was Muslims, right, who did it. Now, I think it would have been okay if Muslims said, you know, that, listen, you know, yeah, it's a possibility.

We accept that Muslims may have been part of it, you know, but to embrace the whole idea that this was done by Muslims because of Muslim backwardness and things like that, you know, and yeah, there's a certain level of backwardness involved with that. But at the same time, what it did was it gave the empire, I guess you would say, an excuse to do everything that it did afterwards, you know, and so, but I think that Muslims have pushed back a bit more and said, hey, listen, you know, you know, there are different perspectives here, even a lot of non-Muslims [inaudible] sceptical of this narrative, right? And even if we accept something like that, you know, yeah, maybe Muslims were in those airplanes, you know, but the idea that Muslims, that the airplanes made the building fall down, it's like, well, you know, I mean, so now all these things are coming out now, and so it's humbly allowed to see that even a lot of non-Muslims who are actually questioning the narrative and they're not falling for a lot of the negative propaganda.

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):

(Imam Farhan Siddiqi) Many of us were sitting here, remember, after 9/11. The stops that we received at the airport, members of this community, unfortunately, who were jailed unjustly, some of them still sitting in jail. Funds were frozen. Laptops, computers taken. Raids were happening. This [ie. October 7] is not the first time we were called terrorists. And why was it then? Because we didn't agree with the narrative. And we said that Muslims are just.

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.

To quote Sam Harris: "Islam is the mother lode of bad ideas."

Obviously every religion has its fringe elements of crazy extremists, so I won't condemn them for that. But in Islam, even the mainstream central religion just seems bad in a way I don't see in other religions.

It starts with Mohammed himself. This isn't some ancient figure who's life is shrouded in mystery, he's pretty well documented. He was a warlord who led his tribe to conquer the Arabian peninsula, by a combination of cunning tactics, charisma, and ruthlessness. He frequently executed captives and allowed his men to take sex slaves. This was brutal even by the standards of his time, so he made up his own religion to justify it.

He was also illiterate. In Islam, this is considered a miracle, for how could an illiterate man produce a book like the Quran? Except... when you read it, it's just not a very good book. It's mostly vague references to the bible, with a lot of aimless repition. It's almost like a family guy joke: "hey, remember that time when Jonah got swallowed by a whale? Huh? Wasn't that a good story?" It doesn't have any of the interesting insights or metaphors that other famous holy books have. In other words, it's exactly the kind of thing screed I'd expect from a charismatic, but illiterate leader. This is why the Quran is usually not actually read, but simply chanted, mindlessly, five times a day, as a form of brainwashing.

In older times, Europeans called Muslims "Mohammedans". That's now considered outdated, but I think they were onto something there. The real, central core of Islam is a cult of personality, centered on that one man. That's why so many of them name their kids after him, that's why there's so many fanatics who kill anyone who even draws a picture of him, and that's why the entire religion still seems weirdly stuck in the past, in a way that even the much older religions like Hindu or Buddhism are not. The modern Muslim-American clergy who are trying to whitewash or modernise are having to struggly, mightily, against the core problems.

I feel like I'd also apply this criticism to Mormons: the origin story is, to put it kindly, a bit hokey. That said, the organization as a whole seems to produce members that are, at least when I've crossed paths with them, consistently reasonable people. Clearly it's at least possible for an organized group to transcend the "quality" of its founding documents, even though I think they still believe them earnestly.

I would agree that the Mormon origin story is, like you said, "hokey." Or even just straight-up BS. That one book review on ACX pretty thoroughly eviscerated it, IMO.

That said, I like Mormons. They seem like genuinely nice people, with some good moral values, even though I disagree with them on a lot of things. I don't think it's a coincidence that so many of my favorite sci-fi authors are Mormon.

I can't say the same for Islam. I feel like the so-called "Islamic golden age" was mostly just leftover Greek knowledge mixing with Persian culture and the silk road at a time when Islam hadn't yet fully dug in its claws.

That said, I like Mormons. They seem like genuinely nice people, with some good moral values, even though I disagree with them on a lot of things. I don't think it's a coincidence that so many of my favorite sci-fi authors are Mormon.

Likeable and actually useful members of society. Like the Amish but less strange.

Although I've joked I want to become 2005 Amish (cell phones and internet but no smartphones or modern social media). If someone starts that society sign me up.

You can just live that lifestyle at the cost of personal friction

Although I've joked I want to become 2005 Amish (cell phones and internet but no smartphones or modern social media). If someone starts that society sign me up.

You could become a drug dealer, they still use flip phones and avoid advertising on social media...

If only that were true (perhaps it's true for successful ones). For the kind who get assigned a public defender when they get caught and charged, it is certainly not true. They love long text conversations full of "code" that wouldn't fool a 6th grader, and they never delete text chains. They are also very active on social media since it's not like they have anything better to do.

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