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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   29524 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023

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Not posting in the Gaza/Israel thread since this is more generic, IMO.

In the most recent Sam Harris podcast, he elevates the problem with Hamas to the more general problem of jihadi terrorism. The episode is here and there's also a transcript here.

In this, he paints a picture of Hamas being a jihadi terrorist organization that's beyond reasoning with in terms of any reasoning we'd consider compatible with liberal western civilized order. He reads this quote from a member of a different jihadi group that had just finished slaughtering young children:

Human life only has value among you worldly materialist thinkers. For us, this human life is only a tiny, meaningless fragment of our existence. Our real destination is the Hereafter. We don’t just believe it exists, we know it does.

Death is not the end of life. It is the beginning of existence in a world much more beautiful than this. As you know, the [Urdu] word for death is “intiqaal.” It means “transfer,” not “end.”

Paradise is for those of pure hearts. All children have pure hearts. They have not sinned yet… They have not yet been corrupted by [their kafir parents]. We did not end their lives. We gave them new ones in Paradise, where they will be loved more than you can imagine.

They will be rewarded for their martyrdom. After all, we also martyr ourselves with them. The last words they heard were the slogan of Takbeer [“Allah u Akbar”].

Allah Almighty says Himself in Surhah Al-Imran [3:169-170] that they are not dead.

You will never understand this. If your faith is pure, you will not mourn them, but celebrate their birth into Paradise.

He makes the point that atheists have a lot of trouble understanding how utterly fanatical and unreasonable jihadis can be. People of Christian or Jewish faith know, because they know how powerful their own faith is in their lives. But atheists are eager to attribute this kind of proclivity towards sadism and murder as a reflection of terrible conditions that they must be living under. That people living in a utopia would never succumb to such depravity. Sam argues that Muslims of faith are just as destructive outside of Israel and disputed Israeli territories.

For more concrete stats, I found this from Google generative results

According to a French think tank, between 1979 and May 2021, there were 48,035 Islamist terrorist attacks worldwide, causing the deaths of at least 210,138 people. Of these attacks, 43,002 occurred in Muslim countries, resulting in 192,782 deaths. This represents 89.5% of Islamist terrorist attacks worldwide and 91.7% of deaths

The culmination of this episode is Sam practically condemning belief in Islam entirely. Almost bordering on saying that every Palestinian is a mope in the Muslim Matrix who could become inhabited by a jihadi Agent Smith at any time. He argues that unlike Jesus, or Buddha, the central most beloved figure in Islam is Muhammed, and he was not anything like a saint:

The problem that we have to grapple with—and by “we” I mean Muslims and non-Muslims alike—is that the doctrines that directly support jihadist violence are very easy to find in the Quran, and the hadith, and in the biography of Muhammad. For Muslims, Muhammad is the greatest person who has ever lived. Unfortunately, he did not behave like Jesus or Buddha—at all. It sort of matters that he tortured people and cut their heads off and took sex slaves, because his example is meant to inspire his followers for all time.

There are many, many verses in the Quran that urge Muslims to wage jihad—jihad as holy war against apostates and unbelievers—and the most violent of these are thought to supersede any that seem more benign. But the truth is, there isn’t much that is benign in the Quran—there is certainly no Jesus as we find him in Matthew urging people to love their enemies and turn the other cheek. All the decapitation we see being practiced by jihadists isn’t an accident—it’s in the Quran and in the larger record of the life of the Prophet.

What I hear from this is that there are no "good" Muslims, or if they are good it's an aberration, or that they're Muslim in name only.

How does one operationalize such a belief? Is Sam arguing that accepting Muslim refugees is a mistake, full stop, and that the only way to deal with jihadis is the grant them their wish: death, because there's nothing else in the world we could offer them? Is that even enough to cure the problem?

There are two billion Muslims in the world. If bringing them capitalism and the pleasures of modernity (everyone gets Starlink, Steam deck, dirt cheap halal KFC and Chil Fil-A, etc as a poster recently suggested for pacifying the Palestinians) does not innoculate against jihadi mind viruses, what would?

It took Europe about 1000 years for their culture to develop antibodies to dogmatic below-the-sanity-waterline Christian crusader ideology, and Christianity's deck was not nearly as stacked against it (its central figure was still practically a hippie). Will we have to wait this long for Islam to do the same? Sam sounds like he's advocating a form of genocide by another name.

The quote from Sam made me chuckle. This was my "dumb normie" understanding of Islam back when I began trying to understand it a decade ago. The violence, sex slavery, torture, and oppression are a feature, not a bug. They made Islam successful. No amount of historical whataboutism from people who are still mad that they had to attend Sunday service as kids will change this.

The only Muslim that a non-Muslim can coexist peacefully with is an unobservant one, and even then there's the Agent Smith risk that you correctly identified. Fast food and unlimited porn aren't going to fix that. Just look at Europe.

It took Europe about 1000 years for their culture to develop antibodies to dogmatic below-the-sanity-waterline Christian crusader ideology

The culture didn't develop "antibodies," its religion was displaced/cannibalized by the growth of heresy/new religion that is even more destructive. The religion of the elites and then the masses slowly changed to Enlightenment humanism and soft/hard persecuted any decisive action in the name of the Christian religion. There are plenty of Christian men who would be willing to pick up a sword in the name of Christendom today, but they're not allowed to organize. In fact their own leaders discourage it, since many of them are converts to the new religion themselves, consciously or otherwise.

Isn't this a contradiction? On the one hand, you bemoan the dilution of some truer, nobler Christianity of the past, presumably sullied in your view by forces such as the reformation and liberalism. Instead you would seem to want Christians to behave as they did in the Crusades and fight back against the intrusion of those with a foreign religion.

But then that would surely bring you closer in your Christianity to Islam, undermining your Muslim exceptionalism claim.

On the one hand, you bemoan the dilution of some truer, nobler Christianity of the past, presumably sullied in your view by forces such as the reformation and liberalism.

The sneering is pretty lame and unconvincing. Are you arguing that liberalism/protestantism didn't have any effect on Christianity? That it was good, actually? That there's no such thing as Christianity? What's your point?

But then that would surely bring you closer in your Christianity to Islam, undermining your Muslim exceptionalism claim.

It wouldn't, though. It's not as simple as "violence = Islam, nonviolence = Christianity."

Christians believe in the right (some would say duty) to inflict violence in self-defense, both personally and collectively. Muslims believe the same, but they also believe that dar-al-Islam must wage unceasing, righteous, bloody war on the dar-al-Harb until all profess the Shahada. That's a huge difference. So yeah, Islam is exceptionally violent.

Not sneering, just trying to figure out what breed of Christian you're promoting.

I described one religion overtaking another, and I described how one religion differs from another. Not sure what you're talking about.

From my perspective, the main difference with Islam vs. Christianity is that Islam was started by a warlord and the tales of his good deeds include beheading all the men of a Jewish tribe that had surrendered. I think this is going to result in a religion that is much different from one started by (either in reality or simply in story) a former carpenter who preached peace and turning the other cheek.

Did he circumcise an entire tribe and kill them the next day when they were recovering?

This seems likely to me too, but it could be a genetic fallacy. Islam, after all, is known as the religion of peace. Though presumably the peace comes when everyone is Muslim...

...or in heaven

Cosmology matters.

My fellow churchgoers will be my literal brothers and sisters for eternity, while my cousins, countrymen, and conversational partners might only be in my life for a meager century.

I don’t have to worry about being forced into a moral quandary, because my Lord has assured me that if I act from love, He will work it out; after all, He’s not only outside of time and knows the ends from their beginnings, He also knows literally everything and can figure out a better method for accomplishing our goals than anything I can come up with.

I’m a libertarian Republican, yet I have a Master and a King.

Cosmology matters.

Sam sounds like he's advocating a form of genocide by another name.

You're right. External change of the type that Sam Harris wants can only be facilitated through genocide. Or atleast soviet style totalitarianism.

However, internal change is entirely possible...... but that needs some cunning politicking.

Islam stays stuck in the 1st millenium because the global islamic idenitity is flows through a small network of highly conservative Arabs. Break the Muslims away from the middle east, and only then can you begin to reverse the rot. Thankfully, South Asia and SEA are ethnically distinct enough that it should be kind of possible with them.

Second, coopt scripturally nonviolent muslims into the global elite and dangle the carrot. Ahmediayyas are mandatorily nonviolent muslims and have a decent track record to back it up. Some sufi and african-animist muslims have stayed decent non violent. At the same time, dilute islam. Saudis are trying the capitalistic approach to dilution, but coopting prediluted muslin subgroups is another approach that works well.

What's most important with internal change, is that the instruments of change need to be onboard. Your muslim global elite needs to put in effort into this sort of conversion. That's the impossinle part. Somehow, the global muslim elite seems to love their conservatives and sympathizes with violent terrorists. Somehow, the more 'westernized' they are the even louder their support for conservatives. Yeah, that's a non starter.

Islam stays stuck in the 1st millenium because the global islamic idenitity is flows through a small network of highly conservative Arabs. Break the Muslims away from the middle east, and only then can you begin to reverse the rot.

It doesn't get brought up too often, but the history of Islam (although, generally not the letter of the Quran, but in some of the hadith) as I've seen it described by historians has a tint of Arab ethno-supremacy that continues to play out in the present. There are the obvious bits: heavy ties to the geography of Medina and Mecca, or that Shia Islam believes explicitly in divine leadership from the blood line of -- the Arab -- Ali. But the history of slavery in the Islamic world is probably at least as complicated as slavery in the West. Notably, Muslims could not be enslaved, but conversion to Islam didn't liberate existing slaves, so the growing Islamic empires starting in the seventh century looked a lot like Arab slavemasters of non-Arab slaves. To a large extent you still see this playing out with conflicts in the whole MENA region (although plenty of Muslim states don't consider themselves Arab, Turkey and Iran probably most notably). Look at Darfur in Sudan, which was pretty explicitly a Arab-led ethnic cleansing, or how some Arabic versions of the Palestinian "From the river to the sea..." specifies that the land should be Arab rather than free.

This isn't to say that all, or even most, of Islam expresses these values (the text of the Quran is supposed to be pretty even-handed), but to make a claim that, similar to how Christianity is often coded as implicitly White (and much of Europe is historically Christian), Islam often codes as implicitly Arab. Neither claim really applies universally, since there are Christians in India and South America or Muslims in Indonesia that don't really fit the mold.

There are the obvious bits: heavy ties to the geography of Medina and Mecca,

I remember reading a discussion online once, talking about how a number of Arab cultural elements, while not explicitly part of Islam, seem to have diffused out into the broader Muslim world. (The one of particular focus in that particular discussion was their patterns of cousin marriage.) One factor brought up as a likely major contributor was the Hajj.

similar to how Christianity is often coded as implicitly White

I'm not sure this is on the same level. The only reason for this seems to be "a lot of Christians were white" and "white Christians made religious art portraying holy men and women as white," and that the same people who dislike Christianity also tend to dislike"whiteness" so the two get linked. Meanwhile, in Islam, Arab blood really does seem to have the special status as you described.

Ahmediayyas

These guys are not considered to be Muslim tm by every substantial group on the planet, including Sunnis that make up the overwhelming majority. You need something else to break into the hardened core.

He also misses the obvious point that even if people in Hamas are crazed terrorists who must blindly kill, there’s a lot you can do to prevent people from being crazed terrorists who must blindly kill in the first place (e.g., by not killing tons of Palestinians or conquering their land in the West Bank).

Sounds to me like he might overestimate the threat posed by Islam. Most Muslims are not hardcore Islamists. If they were, then Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan would all be fighting as a joint force against Israel and/or the West with their entire military forces, not engaging in boring, cautious realpolitik-driven great power diplomacy. And even if they were doing that, I am not sure how far they would get.

Iraq's secular government attacked Iran in 1980 and killed more people in 8 years than the approximately 200,000 people allegedly killed by Islamists in 40 years.

The Soviet Union, certainly no Islamist power, killed more people in Afghanistan in 8 years than Islamists killed world-wide in 40.

The US killed over a million people directly in about 10 years in Vietnam. US-allied military dictatorships killed over a million people during the Cold War in about the same span of time as the Islamists killed the approximately 200,000.

I think there is a real danger that at some point hardcore Islamists will either take over a nuclear power or take over a non-nuclear country and develop nukes in it. And that they would then launch the nukes in a great act of mutually assured destruction. However, I think that this threat is often overestimated. Actually taking power in a country tends to soften militants' desires and make them more interested in enjoying the spoils of power than in mutually assured destruction.

I think the real danger is the irrationality of religious behavior. You can negotiate with the USSR and given a certain level of concession they’ll stop. Russia doesn’t have a religious mandate to take over the globe, it has pragmatic reasons to try to take Ukraine. Even when the Soviets were banging the table and claiming to be able to bury America, they weren’t willing to die themselves to do it. They wanted and still want things in the material world, and they are not willing to die to get that stuff.

Even if Islamists are a small portion of the population of Muslims, they still are a problem because they’re irrational and are willing to kill and die to get their way.

You know Marxist terrorism was legitimately a problem for a while there, right? Communist true believers are a lot like islamists- although the USSR for much of its history was not run by true believers.

I think there is a real danger that at some point hardcore Islamists will either take over a nuclear power or take over a non-nuclear country and develop nukes in it

Iran is an Islamic theocracy with a nuclear program, and Saudi Arabia is an Islamic theocracy which has plans for a nuclear program.

I think there is a real danger that at some point hardcore Islamists will either take over a nuclear power or take over a non-nuclear country and develop nukes in it.

Is this not already the case in Pakistan?

Nope. The military in Pakistan that I know are quite secular. And heavy drinkers when they are in the West.

Pakistan is not controlled by the kind of hardcore Islamists that Harris is worried about. From what I can tell, it is controlled by a typical military authoritarian government that has little or no interest in risking its survival for the sake of Islam.

But atheists are eager to attribute this kind of proclivity towards sadism and murder as a reflection of terrible conditions that they must be living under.

As an atheist myself, I certainly don't succumb to this failing. If one sincerely believes in that their holy book is the Word of God and doesn't contort themselves into knots when the literal interpretation is inconvenient, then yes, performing jihad or other activities offensive to modern western sensibilities is the right thing to do.

I agree with Yudkowsky that the men who flew the planes into the WTC were many things, but not cowards.

Since I aim to be sincere in my beliefs with minimal delusions of convenience, I respect such adherents more than insincere mealy-mouthed Cultural Catholics or the "moderate" Muslims who eat pork, smoke and drink while nominally calling themselves Muslim. Do I get along better with such people than a Hamas operative? Of course, doesn't mean I don't respect them less.

As has been discussed before, religion both shapes and is shaped by the human carriers of its memeplex. Beliefs and traditions that are grossly bad for flourishing (in the sense that the humans who believe them tend to die early without reproducing), tend to be marginalized or explained away. Despite believing that Life is Dukkha, the average Buddhist doesn't have the stomach to starve themselves to death. Things like excessive fasting, self-flagellation and the like usually die out, but as always, there's plenty of ruin in a civilization, and plenty of bad things persist or arise de novo.

Think of it as exactly analogous to the competing drives of a virus seeking to infect humans. On one hand, they want to maximize the number of copies of themselves, on the other hand, they wish to persist (in a metaphorical sense, virii don't actually want anything at all).

If a virus disregards the health of the host and maximizes reproduction, then it usually causes debilitating illness or even death, and in most cases, prevents further spread of the virus.

Hence, in combination with host-immunity, viruses tend towards becoming as benign as possible. This is not out of any charitable inclination, since they're strictly agnostic to the host's wellbeing, it just happens to be robust way of ensuring its own goals are met.

The typical mainstream religion today is cowpox to the smallpox of a brand new cult, it has adapted to not get too much in the way of human desires and affairs, or provoke frenzied behavior that leads to itself dying out or being stamped out.

On the other hand, for a new virus/cult, it might make sense to maximize infectiousness or zeal in the early stages when it has to overcome other competitors, and then let itself mellow out when it's dominant.

I personally know plenty of moderate Muslims, both at home and abroad, and they don't strike me as particularly evil people, the majority have, with various degrees of self-doubt and internal conflict, adopted the tenets of their religion that aren't too much of a hindrance for normal life while avoiding the drive to murder and kill in the name of the Prophet. They might be more zealous than average, or at least the average Muslim is compared to the average Hindu/Jew/Christian/Buddhist, but Islam is a religion that was designed to minimize value drift, as the Prophet declared all prophets after him as false, and their culture strongly endorses a literal interpretation of the Koran and Hadith, not that that removes all room for sectarian splits. There's also the strong stigma against apostasy, making the average lukewarm Muslim keep the branding from convenience if nothing else.

Even then, that can't last forever under the cold imperatives of incentive, and I don't think Islam is worth losing too much sleep over, certainly not to the extent the majority of its adherents deserve to die, even though I don't disagree that they're not the most desirable immigrants to the West, not if you want to keep liberal culture intact.

The fact that you think Islam isn’t worth losing “too much sleep over” is akin to a blue state New Englander saying that illegal immigration has no negative consequences worth worrying about. Geography saves you from having to live with the consequences of your tolerance, which amounts to little more than a virtue signal.

Atheists have spent decades now sweating and tryharding to explain how Muslims are really no worse than Christians, when only one of those two religions is throwing gays off buildings and subjecting women to state-sanctioned torture if they get too uppity. It’s a meme at this point that the leader of the Westboro Baptist Church was considered one of the most evil men in the world while having opinions that would be considered a bit too gentle by more than half the Middle East. Whether you were or are one of those atheists, that level of disingenuous both-sidesing demands a sharp rebuke.

Geography saves you from having to live with the consequences of your tolerance, which amounts to little more than a virtue signal.

Record scratch.

You do know that I'm an Indian right? We've got so many Muslims here that if it was just them, we'd be one of the largest Islamic nations, there's over 200 million of them.

And there are plenty of them in the UK too, where I'm likely to live in the foreseeable future.

Whether you were or are one of those atheists, that level of disingenuous both-sidesing demands a sharp rebuke.

Did your eyes gloss over the part where I said I considered Muslims more fanatical on average than most other major religions? Still not worth "losing sleep" over, and I even suggested checks on immigration from the most traditional countries.

Do tell, if you still think I'm a disinterested observer with no stake in the matter.

I agree with Yudkowsky that the men who flew the planes into the WTC were many things, but not cowards.

Yudkowsky apparently doesn't believe in the concept of moral cowardice.

Since I aim to be sincere in my beliefs with minimal delusions of convenience, I respect such adherents more than insincere mealy-mouthed Cultural Catholics or the "moderate" Muslims who eat pork, smoke and drink while nominally calling themselves Muslim. Do I get along better with such people than a Hamas operative? Of course, doesn't mean I don't respect them less.

This only makes sense if you are assigning respect entirely based on honesty/loyalty/commitment, and not at all on things like caring about the welfare of other people. That is, the amount of respect I lose for a hypocrite is less than the amount of respect I lose for a murderer. Even if an honest and committed terrorist Muslim is more respectable for their commitment than a terrorist atheist who just kills for fun, it's less respectable than a Muslim who realizes that murder is wrong and chooses not to do it, even if they reduce themselves to hypocrisy in the process.

This only makes sense if you are assigning respect entirely based on honesty/loyalty/commitment, and not at all on things like caring about the welfare of other people.

I disagree with this framework, or at least find it overly broad. I weight sincerity in ideals strongly, not exclusively when it comes to assigning respect.

Consider it akin to the perspective of the relationship between Patton and Rommel. From what I've heard, both respected each other a great deal, perhaps more than they did the average general on their side. This respect did not stop them from ordering their forces to shoot at each other in the field, or make them betray their own side.

While I'm lucky enough not to find myself holding a gun and facing off against a Jihadist, I would have no qualms in killing them if it came to that, whereas I have little desire to enter a war with the average Muslim unless they raise arms against me and my ideals by force.

You can respect an ideological opponent and still hate their guts till death resolves the issue once and for all.

I think there's a difference between being enemies as a result of material circumstance, which can allow for mutual respect, versus fundamental ideological differences, which I don't think do, or at least severely cap the amount.

Like, if I found myself in a family/tribe/guild/nation, and someone else is in another, and we both want the same land/resource, or are fighting for sovereignty or global hegemony, then we could have approximately the same values but still be at odds against one another, because we each want what's best for our own group to the exclusion of what's best for the other group. Similarly, I can respect an opponent who has different factual beliefs (provided they're not absurd and obviously false such that no respectable person would be wrong in the way they are). Maybe we both want what's best for everyone, but disagree on what course of action is best to do that. Or even with slight ideological differences there can be mutual respect. Like, if there's an opportunity to tradeoff freedom points versus security points at a 1:1 ratio, and I value freedom at 6 utils each and security at 4 utils each, while person B values freedom at 4 utils each and security at 6 utils each, then we're going to end up on opposite sides of the issue of the tradeoff despite both valuing freedom and security. Ideally, neither of the latter two scenarios would lead to war, but maybe they would.

But if the other person's ideology is just straight up evil then no, I can't respect that. Or rather, the sum of my respect would be all of the other traits about them that might be respectable, minus the massive loss from them being an evil person. I don't think it's respectable to be evil, even if you're loyal and devoted to your evil ideals. To the extent that Rommel wanted what's best for the German people and genuinely thought that he was helping them, I can respect that. To the extent that Rommel turned a blind eye to genocide in as a sacrifice towards that end, I lose a decent amount of respect. To the extent that Rommel might have genuinely believed in genocide as a means itself, if any (it's not entirely clear) I would lose a ton of respect for him. I would have much much more respect for a counterfactual Rommel who had pulled a coup on Hitler, stopped the genocide, and then tried to conquer the world, because it would have shown more moral fortitude than someone who's blindly loyal.

In the end this is again a semantic discussion. Respect comes form the latin respectere/respicere, which is generally taken to mean "looking back;regard;consider". I'd interpret this - and to some degree the modern usage - that to respect someone means that you always keep them in consideration. This can apply to an enemy, which is so dangerous that you simply can't ignore them. We see this in the fact that talking about threats also has historically included respect as a term - "keeping my respectful distance" for example. In this usage, respect is a positive term, but it's strictly about "greatness" in a sense, not goodness. So even the most despicable mortal ideological enemy can be respectable, as long as he is sufficiently great.

Of course, most positive terms go through an evolution where other generically good things get attached to them, and respect is no exception (similar to how many negative terms end up as generic insults). This is reflected in the wikipedia entry of the term, which takes it to mean, among other things: "a sense of admiration for good or valuable qualities". To be honest, while ultimately words always change meaning and people can use words in the way they choose, I greatly prefer the old meaning. We already have plenty of good generic words for liking people and appreciating their positive qualities. But in the old meaning, respecting a true enemy is a fairly unique concept, and word. It's a pity to let go of that.

I think this still demands a distinction in different contexts, especially between respect in ones physical capabilities, and one in their mental capabilities. I respect a lion as a powerful beast and I would avoid trying to fight one in unarmed physical combat. I do not respect a lion's intellectual abilities, and would happily trounce one in a game of chess if I could play in safety from its aforementioned physical prowess. Further, I do not respect the physical abilities of lions as a whole in comparison to humans as a whole, because we have guns and missiles and they do not. They simply do not pose an existential threat to humans as a species, while we do pose such a threat if we cared to wipe them out (and maybe even if we half-heartedly try not to).

Bringing this back then, I respect the physical threat of a jihadi in a similar way to a lion, they're extremely lethal if you face one underprepared, and I would personally try to avoid them, but I do not respect them as an existential threat to my people, we have nukes and they do not. But this is a separate consideration from the original issue of respecting their conviction. On the moral front, I do respect the specific integrity of standing up for one's beliefs, but overall do not respect their general moral character, because their beliefs are evil and selfish. Even from a classical sense, they don't exhibit honorable behaviors worth respecting. If they stood and fought against overwhelming odds and died for their beliefs, I could respect that more. But guerilla warfare, hiding behind civilians, and terrorism are incredibly dishonorable and unrespectable. If their beliefs tell them to do that, then they're just standing up for dishonorable beliefs. If you're going to respect that you might as well treat the hypocritical Christian as someone who believes in being a hypocrite and respect them for being so good at it.

I think Sam is right about the naivety of most modern Westerners on religion— even the religious Christians, Jews, etc. Most people in the west were raised in a comparatively nominally religious household, especially as compared to modern Islamist households. Unless you’re extremely devout, chances are that you don’t order every step you take by your religion. You might be observant enough to pray before meals, attend services, and conform to the ceremonial observances of your religion, but you’re not necessarily thinking about your religion all the time. You aren’t bothered by things your ancestors would have considered blasphemous. You don’t really see this life as a preparation for the next one. You don’t really expect God to break into history or determine the course of events.

Probably the best explanation of the difference in the religious and secular world view is found (https://glory2godforallthings.com/christianity-in-a-one-storey-universe/) here, in an essay about the one story universe vs the two story universe. The two story universe has a “real world” in which mundane reality takes place, where the laws of nature always hold and history is contingent on human behavior and nature, and a “heavenly world” where God(s), angels, demons, the souls of the dead (and depending on the religion the souls of the yet to be born) live. In that kind of a universe, the spiritual is unseen and unreliable and even unknowable, that world can only rarely interact with ours, and we can never really be sure that the squeak you heard was the guys upstairs making noise, or even that there is someone up there to make noise, or that it was your guy making the noise.

This, I think is the problem. It’s not really a material problem. It’s a philosophical problem that’s two-fold. First that God is in this world and active and makes demands on everyone. Second is that said God in their minds demands that one either submit to Islam or pay the fine or be killed. There’s no real model for enlightenment thinking here, no room for secular coexistence. Either you are a Muslim and pray to God, or you don’t and are an enemy of God.

I think Sam is right about the naivety of most modern Westerners on religion— even the religious Christians, Jews, etc. Most people in the west were raised in a comparatively nominally religious household, especially as compared to modern Islamist households.

I wonder if the whole "Judeo-Christian" ecumenical religion where people insist on the commonality between all faiths may play a role here.

I've heard many Christians just apply the same conflation to Islam: basically all religions are the same in essence (and, of course, they resemble liberalized Christianity). I remember a speaker at my college saying something to the effect of "Jesus said it, I'm sure Moses and Mohammed did too". Just taking it for granted that these religions and their central figures are the same.

This is one of the reasons I consider Christianity the best religion. Men don’t need a civilizational exemplar who is also violent, horny, and acquisitive. That’s our default state as is. Our exemplar instead needs to be exaggerated in the other direction: compassionate and loving up to self-sacrifice, pure of heart, freely giving. So when men come together as a community to hoist one of their own up as an ideal, they see the exact ways in which they are deficient (per our nature) and the virtues that complex civilization requires to function. The crucifixion is literally the hoisting of a man up on a cross for this reason. “Behold, (the) Man.” Why would you want to extol a warrior? They already have their reward.

Sam Harris really is a demonstration of everything wrong with New Atheism, and he's finally mask off as a partisan for his preferred Yahweh cults. He wants to read the rhetoric of the Jihadi group, how about he reads the rhetoric of the intellectual Zionist figureheads and the leaders of "liberal western civilized order."

I remember when it was a scandal that George Bush reportedly told a Palestinian delegation that God told him to go to Iraq. I remember "New Atheists" being rightfully apoplectic. Reading that article about the Bush scandal again, there is one detail I never knew, which is that Bush's statement that God told him to invade Iraq was proceeded by another statement:

And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, 'Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East'. And, by God, I'm gonna do it.

Maybe Sam Harris wants to read the apocalyptic and messianic prophesy that formulates the foundational core of Zionism. This conflict is eschatological, the Zionist claims are fundamentally and intrinsically based on bible stories of Yahweh giving them the land. Where is Sam Harris when Bibi is invoking the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy to moralize Israel's war against Hamas? Where are the New Atheists now that our brand new House Speaker is saying "God will bless the nation that blesses Israel." Or Mike Pompeo saying:

Christians have an obligation to ensure that Israel continues to be the rightful homeland of the Jewish people

Where are the New Atheists now? Converting to "Judeo-Christianity"?

This conflict isn't about oil or about Islam, it's about the Bible. That's why we are here in this endless conflict over a small piece of desert land. We need a New New Atheist movement that takes all of Yahwehism to task because all strains of it are anti-civilizational. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, none of them are innocent in these inter-Abrahamic wars and it's time to move past worship of Yahweh if we actually care about Western civilization.

I mean without the reference to a verse I have no idea what Bibi is supposed to be claiming. The rest of the statement sounds like pretty much any politician during a war “we will win by working together”. I mean if you know what he’s quoting here, I’d be interested, but unless it’s actually talking about genocide I think it’s a bit inflammatory to use an article that talks about the genocide of the Palestinians without a direct quote of whatever the prophecy is supposed to be.

Netanyahu also invokes "Amalek":

NETANYAHU: (Through interpreter) You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible.

FADEL: Speaking Hebrew, he's comparing Hamas to the nation of Amalek in a passage from the Book of Samuel. That passage says to smite the Amalekites after the nation launched a vicious surprise attack on the Jewish people. Motti Inbari is a professor of religion at the University of North Carolina, Pembroke.

MOTTI INBARI: The biblical commandment is to completely destroy all of Amalek. And when I'm talking about completely destroy, we're talking about killing each and every one of them - including babies, including their property, including the animals - everything.

The passage in question is 1 Samuel 15, where God commands Saul to "kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey", but Saul spares their king and some of the animals, and is punished by God for not killing them too.

From a few other sources it looks like the quote was from Isaiah 60:18 and the prophecy was Isaiah 60. Nothing irrevocably genocidal there, but "For the nation or kingdom that will not serve you will perish; it will be utterly ruined" isn't exactly the sort of footnote you'd put on a Coexist bumper sticker.

From the article:

The alleged prophecy Netanyahu referred to is linked to a figure named Isaiah who would be a leader, raise a banner for the nations, gather the dispersed of Israel, and assemble the outcasts of Judah from the four corners of the Earth.

That's some pretty brutal Biblical illiteracy. Isaiah of course was a prophet, not a figure foretold in prophecy.

I think Sam Harris would say both sides' theologically motivated claims are bullshit, but that support for Israel nevertheless makes sense from a utilitarian perspective.

I don't think the 'inoculation' idea is realistic, those ideologies have been turned towards justifying plenty of atrocities in recent history (slavery, native genocides, etc). I think that any religion could be turned towards those ends if that's what its leaders and zealots want to be doing with their time.

(Well, maybe not the Jains. You always gotta caveat the Jains.)

To whit:

People of Christian or Jewish faith know, because they know how powerful their own faith is in their lives. But atheists are eager to attribute this kind of proclivity towards sadism and murder as a reflection of terrible conditions that they must be living under.

I don't think there's really a conflict between these two views, as evidenced by the fact the Christians and Jews who live comfortably in peaceful societies don't commit this type of sadism and murder en masse.

Yes, people need a justification for doing horrible things, something that lets them tell themselves a story about how they are justified or good. Religion is one of several things that can provide this type of justification.

But people also need a motivation to do horrible things. The justification isn't itself a motivation, it just allows you to act on that motive, and live with yourself afterwards.

Terrible conditions are one of several things that can provide this type of motive.

To stop horrible things happening en masse, we can get rid of all the justifications, or we can get rid of all the motives. Or, ideally, both.

I think that working on the motives is lower-hanging fruit, partially because people can just invent new justifications really easily when they want to, but mostly because the motivations are usually themselves stemming from bad things that it is good to fix.

I think that's a lot of the lefty view of these systems and how to address them, and I don't think it's incompatible with these insights into religious justifications. As an atheist, I'm fully capable of intellectually understanding what that perspective would look like to someone who actually believed it, and at the same time thinking that cleaning up the terrible conditions pushing them into those actions is the best way to solve the problem.

If bringing them capitalism and the pleasures of modernity does not innoculate against jihadi mind viruses, what would?

Blasphemy. That’s how we got the christians to calm down. Certainly not by respecting their beliefs and community, or by celebrating their historical accomplishments. Islam’s stupidity and failures should be constantly rubbed in the face of its believers. Of course all muslim immigration to the west should be stopped on purely practical grounds, the insult is just a bonus.

Usually free speech can deal with those superstitions. The problem is that Islam has a built-in counter-strategy, death for apostates and critics. As sheikh qaradawi says, if not for the death penalty for apostates, Islam would not have survived to this day. This is the mechanism islamophobes need to target first, because it’s utterly poisonous to free expression. Free speech of muslims should be curtailed on that point, anyone preaching that doctrine should be deported or imprisoned. Apostates and critics should always be protected by the full force of the state, and get into a sort of witness protection program if they so desire.

Israel should bulldoze al-aqsa on live TV while ceremoniously asking Allah to do something about it. Muslims should be given the chance to reflect more often on their impotent rage and impotent god. Spurn the symbol and spare the man.

I largely agree that mockery and blasphemy are good routes to undermining any religion.

But I also think that it's easier for that project to start in places like the US that already have relatively a lot of free speech, and which export a lot of culture globally.

And the primary thing stopping that from happening here is folks on the right linking hatred and mockery of Islam with hatred and legal restrictions on Muslims. Elite thought-leaders, Hollywood content creators, and rabid social media teens are never going to get on board with the project as long as it's synonymous with right-wing shibboleths like that.

If the rhetoric switched from 'Islam sucks so all Muslims are dangerous and we shouldn't let them immigrate' to 'Islam sucks so we should let Muslims escape its grasp by coming here to learn our ways instead,' you'd still get some number of lefties complaining about that stance on social media, sure, but you'd get a lot more leeway to attack the religion on its own merits.

And you'd also recruit a lot more westernized Muslims to the cause, which would help it spread back to the homelands.

And the primary thing stopping that from happening here is folks on the right linking hatred and mockery of Islam with hatred and legal restrictions on Muslims. Elite thought-leaders, Hollywood content creators, and rabid social media teens are never going to get on board with the project as long as it's synonymous with right-wing shibboleths like that.

How does that work? “We can’t accept one true claim before you withdraw another claim that sounds low-status right-wing”? Why would I be bound by the confines of their self-imposed ideological prison? Like Harris, I think low-class christians, because they believe, have a much better understanding of why muslims do what they do than progressive elites.

They themselves hate, and support legal restrictions on, groups of people they dislike (“oppressors”, men, whites, right-wingers) . And unlike my dislike of muslims, which is rooted in a choice those believers made, some of the categories progressives dislike & want legally suppressed are biological.

“We can’t accept one true claim before you withdraw another claim that sounds low-status right-wing”?

"I won't choose to use my cultural and political influence on pursuits that will lead to outcomes I disagree with".

It's not just about those beliefs being low-status because of who currently expresses them. The political alignment between anti-Islam sentiment and anti-Muslim politics is strong enough that effectively attacking Islam will actually, consequentially, assist anti-Muslim policy proposals and cultural pundits.

You can caveat every statement you ever make on the topic with 'This is not anti-Muslim, just anti-Islam." But caveats rarely work. The average reader will not be able to completely disassociate those in your head, and will end up with stronger anti-Muslim priors after reading it. And anti-Muslim groups will quote sections of your anti-Islam arguments out of context and with no caveats in sight to support their anti-Muslim arguments.

Political narratives and alliances are real, consequential things. You decide to unilaterally ignore them for yourself, but you can't unilaterally force the rest of the world not to be influenced by them when they are interpreting and reacting to your content.

This is why we can't have nice things. Using such consequentialist logic, I can't support the woke even when they are doing and saying things I agree with. This is really the best way to polarize an open society into two groups who hate each other and will support their team whether they are right or wrong.

I don't think wokes are the only people who choose their political rhetoric based on consequentialist aims.

Just for example, I think the average use of the word 'woke' by a politician or pundit on the right is aimed at a consequentialist goal (rallying the base, pushing a narrative) rather than it being a meaningful term used carefully and precisely to optimal describe a situation.

People get involved with industries that are trying to change the world because they care about the state of the world. This is true on all sides of every issue.

Asking people who care about the state of the world and want to change it, to not be consequentialist when considering their rhetoric and actions, is sort of definitionally a losing fight.

Just for example, I think the average use of the word 'woke' by a politician or pundit on the right is aimed at a consequentialist goal (rallying the base, pushing a narrative) rather than it being a meaningful term used carefully and precisely to optimal describe a situation.

This is false. The group in question objects to this word, has object to all the other words in the past, and will object to all future words that refer to them and have caught on, because they do not wish to be identified by outsiders.

They have to call them something. I can offer ‘progressives’, or ‘PC left’(that one aptly suggests the outsized importance they place on ‘political rhetoric’), or any other term that’s sufficiently neutral. The negative valence opponents assign to whatever term they use is unavoidable, simply a function of their alignment.

To be clear, strictly speaking I am a consequentialist myself, I just don’t think their calculation of consequences is correct. “Your policy results in two groups incapable of finding the truth, who hate each other and cannot compromise” is consequentialist reasoning.

How does that work? “We can’t accept one true claim before you withdraw another claim that sounds low-status right-wing”?

I understand OP's point to be that legal restrictions on Muslims would be seen as objectionable by those people because they would consider is unjust, not as low status. Opposing invidious discrimination against despised minority groups is, after all, a pretty common sentiment among the people in question.

Then the fairness of that policy should be debated separately, not abandoned as a preemptive concession before they agree that the truth is in fact the truth on some other point("get on board with the project"). The "rhetoric" is the problem, you see, not the fact that it's wrong. His use of “linked to” and “right-wing shibboleths” strongly suggest a status/ideological purity motive. He doesn’t want to be “linked to” “right-wing shibboleths”. I mean, who are we kidding here? If even I feel the need to avoid giving off low-status right wing vibes, they assuredly experience a much stronger pull.

OP did not say that they don't want to be linked to right-wing shibboleths. Rather, OP said that potential allies of the project are not going to "get on board" if it is framed in a way which is offensive to their core beliefs, and is instead framed in a way (helping people escape a place where they are subjected to an oppressive ideology) that is instead consistent with those values.

Your suggested strategy (debating the fairness of "hatred and legal restrictions on Muslims") amounts to a suggestion that the way to achieve the goal is to get people to change their basic principles. That is a fool's game, especially when the principles in question (freedom of religion and nondiscrimination) are very much mainstream.

With an attitude like that, societies could never change and correct their mistakes, comrade. Anyway, I’m suspicious of the strategic advice coming from political opponents. Let's just debate the ideas and let me worry about what people will accept.

No one said that has to be the only strategy. There can be short-term and long-term strategies (and if you mean that society should correct its "mistakes" of valuing freedom of religion and freedom from insidious discrimination, that is long-term indeed).

Finally, I don't know what you hope to gain by addressing me as "comrade."

More comments

Blasphemy. That’s how we got the christians to calm down.

No, it isn't.

Free speech of muslims should be curtailed on that point, anyone preaching that doctrine should be deported or imprisoned.

...Haven't you repeatedly argued with me that Free Speech Maximalism is one of your core values, and that I'm wrong when I argue that almost all people aren't actually free-speech maximalist but rather want as much free speech as possible so long as the speech isn't too objectionable? Because this sure looks an awful lot like "speech should be free as long as it's not too awful." I guess my point is that we are in agreement here, but that your previous statements indicate that this should be surprising to you.

Israel should bulldoze al-aqsa on live TV while ceremoniously asking Allah to do something about it.

It seems to me that your logic comes from a place where you assume the other side isn't going to actually be able to execute what they see as the righteous vengeance of God. That's not an assumption I would want to make a habit of relying on.

and that my argument that no one is actually a free-speech maximalist but rather wants free speech as long as the speech isn't too objectionable is wrong, somehow?

What I object to is your argument that just because there are limits to free speech, free speech is a meaningless concept no one really believes in. Your "speech should be free as long as it's not too awful" erases all distinction. If someone argued that all christian or non-christian books should be banned, how would you describe him? “I guess he’s just like everyone else, he doesn’t really believe in free speech” ? I’m not religiously committed to 'absolute free speech', or to classical liberal ideas in general for that matter, I just think they work in almost all cases, and I explained why they don’t here.

It seems to me that your logic comes from a place where you assume the other side isn't going to actually be able to execute what they see as the righteous vengeance of God.

I don’t think they could hate jews any more than they already do. Their tremendous animosity has failed to bring about the downfall of the enemies of god so far. The schock between islam’s secular powerlessness and its religious claim of omnipotence is the entire point.

Your "speech should be free as long as it's not too awful" erases all distinction.

That's because there very obviously is no distinction. There is no objective measure of any of the terms involved in this discussion: "harm", "severity", "threat", "balance" etc and so on. You can call me a postmodernist again if it makes you feel better, but that doesn't change the fact that if someone disagrees with your definition of a word, there's piss-all you can do about it. And the distinction, if you're keeping track, is that actual postmodernists think the language games are all there is, whereas I think that there is a bedrock truth readily available to all men, but understand that I cannot force another to recognize that truth against his will any more than he can force me, because communication is not deterministic. And if we cannot reconcile, what is there left to do but fight?

You cite Islamic calls for attacks on blasphemers as a clear case where speech should be constrained, but I say there's zero need to restrict such speech in any way. Why not respond that such calls are entirely permitted, and if anyone tries to act on them within our communities we will simply shoot them to death on the spot. It worked in Texas, when a pair of heavily-armed Jihadis (escorted by FBI agents, naturally) rolled up to a Mohammed cartoon contest and managed to lightly wound one person before having their limbs unstrung.

I don't think you've actually demonstrated a need to restrict speech, because there never is a need to restrict speech, only a want. And it's okay to want things, and to be honest about the fact that we want them. You can, in this moment, cease from framing your desires and values as some sort of universal imperative, and admit that you want to do a thing because you think it should be done.

If someone argued that all christian or non-christian books should be banned, how would you describe him? “I guess he’s just like everyone else, he doesn’t really believe in free speech” ?

I'd describe him as "an enemy", but from the outside view, sure. An example would be the Japanese when they extirpated the Christian faith from their nation in the 1600s. Nothing they did was special or unusual. They perceived a threat, and acted on it. That's what people do. The trick comes in figuring out whether something is or isn't a threat, and finding alternatives to conflict with the former, or winning the conflict with the latter.

It is, in fact, relative. There are people I would prefer to treat as the Japanese treated Christians. My problem with the Japanese is not, to a first approximation, that they used the power of the state against those they saw as a threat to their society. It's how they defined "threat to society".

I’m not religiously committed to 'absolute free speech', or to classical liberal ideas in general for that matter, I just think they work in almost all cases, and I explained why they don’t here.

The vast majority of people want free speech and something at least approximating liberal ideals in "almost all cases". No one suppresses speech they like and consider wholesome. It's the dangerous speech that needs protecting, or none at all. Your "almost all cases" doesn't cover a broad swath of topics of immediate importance to a large percentage of the earth's population. And if you think you're free to "explain why they don't" here, why am I not free to "explain why they don't" somewhere else?

From previous discussions, it seems clear that you understand that we don't actually disagree much on the object level. The disagreement is that you claim to defend speech, but I don't trust your defense to protect me when I need it, because the principles you are basing it on have observably failed to protect me when I needed it. My stance, on the other hand, is an attempt to not imply promises of protection that I won't actually be willing to live up to. "Free Speech" with an invisible asterisk applied is a moral hazard. Better to forego the asterisk and simply be straightforward about what we're actually willing to commit to.

I don’t think they could hate jews any more than they already do.

"I don't think they can hate [X] more than they already do" is a poor bet when it comes to humans. Hate is fractal. There is no bottom.

Their tremendous animosity has failed to bring about the downfall of the enemies of god so far.

So far.

The schock between islam’s secular powerlessness and its religious claim of omnipotence is the entire point.

By my reckoning, Islamic Terror won the War on Terror hands-down. I think they're doing pretty okay.

And if we cannot reconcile, what is there left to do but fight?

I’m not in principle opposed to a scuffle, but a failure to communicate on a failure of communication seems like a flimsy reason. How about we just stumble home like two deaf-mute assholes ?

I don't think you've actually demonstrated a need to restrict speech, because there never is a need to restrict speech, only a want. And it's okay to want things, and to be honest about the fact that we want them. You can, in this moment, cease from framing your desires and values as some sort of universal imperative, and admit that you want to do a thing because you think it should be done.

I think that there is a bedrock truth readily available to all men, but understand that I cannot force another to recognize that truth against his will any more than he can force me, because communication is not deterministic.

What are you even trying to achieve with all this? If you prove your thesis to my satisfaction, you will have proven that communication works, and the paradox monster will eat us both.

I think the problem with “just wait until they actually do it” is that it essentially requires an omniscient government. The level of spying on civilians needed to know if I’m going to commit any crime is pretty high.

I would regulate calls for jihad much like I’d regulate any other exhortation to commit a crime. We don’t allow someone to advocate for breaking the law. I can’t get on Twitter and call for the death of a celebrity you’re mad at. Likewise calling for the bombing of buildings, death of groups of people, and other criminal activities should be illegal.

I think the problem with “just wait until they actually do it” is that it essentially requires an omniscient government.

...Or a heavily-armed populace, which we have.

Others have noted that the speech you think should be illegal is not, in fact, illegal.

I don't think you're correct. My understanding is that only speech which advocates imminent lawless action is illegal in the United States. You can absolutely advocate for genocide, say that a celebrity should be executed, and that someone should bomb this particular building, and no one will arrest you.

Absent a real threat of imminent lawless action, all the examples of obviously-banworthy speech you mention are (at least in the US) protected by the 1st amendment. So in the US, regulating calls for jihad much like other exhortations to commit a crime means not regulating it at all, except in the rare case for a call for jihad against X where X is sufficiently specific to meet the imminent lawless action standard.

Looking at politics rather than law, whether vague or remote exhortations to commit a crime should be default-banned (the "stochastic terrorism" theory) or default-legal (the US status quo) is pretty much at the edge of the Overton window on free speech. Add culture war toxicity, and it isn't surprising that this topic generates a lot of heat and not much light.

I am not as hopeless as Sam. The existence of ex-muslims in western nations, many of whom stand firm in their beliefs despite risk of ostracisation/decapitation at hands of their family, friends and wider community gives me some hope.

The main problem is that young people originating from a muslim background in Europe face both internal pressures from their own community to behave and act a certain way, and external pressure from the white lumpen majority who perceive them to be encroaching on their territory. In addition, many are poor as they come from very religious, very poor rural stock, compared to the middle class educated types that the US gets, and so are more susceptible to extremist views than otherwise. Moreover, the god-is-dead post industrial society gives you no greater aspirations to work towards, since deciding that something is a greater aspiration necessarily privileges one thing other another, and doing is in contravention of the "everyone's a winner" mentality of the modern day.

Between these problems, it is not suprising that many young people go balls deep into their religious heritage: they feel have no other choice. Given the behaviours of states during the pandemic, I would say that they are completely capable of of crushing theist behaviours and thought underfoot by drowning them with Starlink, Steam deck, dirt cheap halal KFC and Chil Fil-A, etc. Our lawmakers don't even try.

In addition, many are poor as they come from very religious, very poor rural stock, compared to the middle class educated types that the US gets, and so are more susceptible to extremist views than otherwise.

I think there is another reason this pushes them towards their religious heritage - they have been told class doesn't matter, so what else explains why we Muslims are poor and these westerners are rich if they aren't oppressing us? And then they see Muslims make money and subsequently tone down their rhetoric and naturally conclude that the West has corrupted them. So their identity develops poor and backwards as a marker of faith. It's a constant issue for groups made up of the poor and disenfranchised, you see a similar dynamic with the right these days.

What I hear from this is that there are no "good" Muslims, or if they are good it's an aberration, or that they're Muslim in name only.

This is my position. The extent to which I find Muslims to be good neighbors is the extent to which they aren't actually very Muslim at all. Consider the Takbir, the famous cry of Allahu Akbar:

Historically, the takbir has been used as a cry of victory.[22] Ibn Ishaq's Life of Mohammed narrates at least two incidents in which it was so used.

"When the apostle raided a people he waited until the morning. If he heard a call to prayer he held back; if he did not hear it he attacked. We came to Khaybar by night, and the apostle passed the night there; and when morning came he did not hear the call to prayer, so he rode and we rode with him, and I rode behind Abu Talha with my foot touching the apostle's foot. We met the workers of Khaybar coming out in the morning with their spades and baskets. When they saw the apostle and the army they cried, 'Muhammad with his force,' and turned tail and fled. The apostle said, 'Allah akbar! Khaybar is destroyed. When we arrive in a people's square it is a bad morning for those who have been warned.'" (page 511) "So he got off his horse and came at him and 'Ali advanced with his shield. 'Amr aimed a blow which cut deeply into the shield so that the sword stuck in it and struck his head. But 'Ali gave him a blow on the vein at the base of the neck and he fell to the ground. The dust rose and the apostle heard the cry, 'Allah Akbar' and knew that 'Ali had killed him." (page 456)[23]

The history of Islam is as a religion of conquest and exultation in the defeat of enemies. The only reason we can shrug this off is that Islamic nations in the 21st century are pathetically weak compared to the West, incapable of doing anything other than slapping feebly with terror attacks intended to provoke, exploiting the humanitarian tendency of Westerns to reject total annihilation of their enemies.

How does one operationalize such a belief?

My starting point would be rejecting Muslim immigrants to the United States. The best time to do that would have been five decades ago, but the second best time is now.

Isn’t that all technically applicable to (post-Constantine) Christianity, too?

It’s a universalizing religion with specific prescriptions. A big part of its canon is pacifist rather than martial, but clearly that didn’t stop the internal or external bloodbaths. A Christian state with a well-maintained standing army was much more competitive than a gathering of monks. Pragmatism has always trumped ideological purity.

But this goes both ways. We’ve manage to suborn most, if not all, of the violent bits. The same Protestantism which butchered Catholics would go on to tolerate one as President. If universalist liberalism could tame Christianity, why can’t it manage the same for Islam?

There are plenty of local areas in the US that are more or less completely controlled by fundamentalist Christianity. Granted that they don't have as free a reign as the leadership in Gaza, you'll notice these areas are not exactly persecuting nonbelievers, although it is difficult to get permits for a strip club there.

You're free to go visit St. Mary's Kansas; by all accounts it is a fairly pleasant town and the non-tradcath population is shrinking at about the average rate for rural Kansas. Likewise the town in Footloose was not completely a figment of Hollywood's imagination, and yet we don't hear about cases of religious persecution in the US from mainstream Christianity even in areas where the people who would likely be doing it could easily get away with it.

Right. Give Muslims 100 years of controlled immigration, and I really do believe it will dilute the extremism for them, too.

I understand this hasn’t panned out for Western Europe yet, but I remain optimistic.

It hasn't panned out for Western Europe, because they're a bunch of weirdos who think being French or German is determined by whether your ancestors were peasants dying for some Lord who wasn't even from that area 1,000 years ago. Throw in bad housing policy, and you have a situation where even fairly well-meaning multi-generation Turks in Germany don't feel German, let alone other Muslims with more touchy backgrounds with the West.

OTOH, if you come to America, have some kids, start a business, learn English (even if it's broken), and don't wall yourself in some ethnic enclave after your first or second generation, even many Trump voters will be happy to have you as neighbors. It is funny how so many people who despise birthright citizenship don't realize the moderating influence it has.

Yes, yes, yes, I know 3rd or 4th generation college educated immigrants are all SJW's who complain about America all the time. Well...what's more American than that?

France does have birthright citizenship (with some minor, practically pointless limitations), along with a host of cultural habits such as not asking anyone about their race or insisting that everyone with their passport really is a Frenchman. Their outcomes aren't much better than anywhere else in Europe, arguably even worse, given that something like a plurality of race riots in post-1945 European history happened there.

Yes, yes, yes, I know 3rd or 4th generation college educated immigrants are all SJW's who complain about America all the time. Well...what's more American than that?

You seem to imply some sort of seamless assimilation here. That's simply not the case. Persistent differences in voting patterns and political attitudes between post-Hart-Celler immigrants and the legacy population are pretty well known, but even within the ostensibly fully assimilated white group there are significant differences. A US without e.g. Italians or Irish would be much hostile to the welfare state or restrictions on free speech.

but even within the ostensibly fully assimilated white group there are significant differences. A US without e.g. Italians or Irish would be much hostile to the welfare state or restrictions on free speech.

Uh, did you adjust for region? New York is a lot bluer than the deep south- where statistically people have been there longer.

they're a bunch of weirdos who think being French or German is determined by whether your ancestors were peasants dying for some Lord who wasn't even from that area 1,000 years ago.

Is a nation nothing but an economic zone?

The main characters in the two religions really are quite different. Jesus simply wasn't going around celebrating the destruction of his enemies. Perhaps it's true that the actual characters don't matter and that the level of violence from a given religion has more to do with local culture and conflict than it does with the tenets, I really couldn't say for sure, but I'm comfortable saying that I don't want my locale to be the test ground for whether we can eventually liberalize Islam.

The Old Testament does include plenty of tribal and national strife. Even though Jesus supersedes the Covenant, I think the inclusion of those stories gives Christians a decent dose of martial pride. The martyr mythology doesn’t hurt.

As for the test ground—I think America is our best chance for liberalizing Islam. Islamic controls on Western cultural exports are much harder to maintain on our home turf. If we can manage to keep it together, we can win this cultural battle. I do understand that it hasn’t played out so well in Western Europe, but I suppose I remain optimistic. After all, we’ve got our own martial tradition.

The martyr mythology doesn’t hurt.

Christian martyrdom is different from Islamic martyrdom. Christian martyrs die without fighting back.

Well, how has Muslim immigration the West worked out? I'd argue not very well and we should try to restrict to essentially zero. Do you think Rashida Tlaib is a net positive for the US? Has Muslim immigration made France or the UK better or worse? Where is the arrow pointing in regards to this assimilation we are told is going to happen soon?

Every Muslim I can think of in the US is chill and successful. They’re stereotypically doctors and IT workers.

Thats like me saying all the Asians I know are lawyers and engineers. I only know lawyers and engineers (and a few medical professionals of various ranks). Further the misconception is caused by the immigration system being somewhat tight, so it really is the top 2% of Arabs coming to join the top 50% of Americans. And even then, they have poor voting patterns and poor criminal outcomes, particularly income adjusted.

Do you think that is representative of the average Arab immigrant to the West i.e. the refugee waves in Europe or the average Arab in the Middle East or North Africa? Also not all of them are like that there were Afghan gangs at my high school whose parents were refugees.

Arab != Muslim. A plurality of Muslims in Christian Europe (i.e. not Turkey, TRNC or traditionally Muslim areas of European Russia) are ethnic Turks. They tend to be well-behaved, and whether you think that Turkish immigration to e.g. Germany has been a net positive for Germans will track your position on whether minimally-selective immigration is a net positive in general.

In the UK, South Asian Muslims are pretty clearly a net positive if you exclude Mirpuri Pakistanis (a specific community who came to greater Leeds to take up low-skill textile jobs after their villages were flooded by a dam, and which grows exponentially by fetching marriage). Turkish Cypriots are sufficiently well-assimilated that it is hard to tell, but that probably implies that they are a small net positive. Mirpuris and Somalis are the main source of problems - neither group is Arab.

Iranian immigrants are, in my experience, extremely intelligent and definitely a net positive.

Are you talking LA style Persians who fled after the Shah was deposed, many of whom are actually Jews?

I had a bunch of Persian electrical engineering profs and worked with a couple of Persians. They seemed like they immigrated in the last few decades.

I would actually agree with you here for the most part. Persians also aren't Arabs though so have a very different culture.

Muslim immigrants from where? India, home to about ten percent of the world's Muslims? Indonesia? The Balkans? Even Trump's original "Muslim ban" did not apply to 90% of the world's Muslims.

All of them, but especially Arabs, North Africans, Africans, and Pakistanis.

Rashida Tlaib has a law degree so are you happy she's here?

I mean, there are plenty of people who think we'd would've been better off if we turned the ancestor of the Boebert's around at Ellis Island.

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