This goes beyond taking positions and stating views. It has to do with factual claims and verifiable world history.
Yes, we probably do have that in common, though it wouldn't be apparent from a couple of flippant, off-the-cuff posts on fairly complex issues.
Btw, I thought we were making inroads as far as exploring the facts. It seems you're not interested in the facts I have to share. I'm not totally surprised. The reason I talk to myself is because no one else will listen.
Well, I’m glad you ended with a happy face! But please do present whatever facts you like. Even if I don’t respond, I’m sure I’ll be enjoying them in silence.
But again I was never interested in a debate on this. I was only suggesting that in your response to Tao’s full frontal assault on Islam you meet him at least some small distance part way and not completely bracket Islam out of consideration in those societies and cultures it has done so much to form.
To recapitulate: Islam (religion) is either a motive force in a given society or it is not. If it is not, then it’s irrelevant, simply not a factor, and therefore not worth defending. If religion IS a motive force, then it is either a positive force, a negative force, or mixed. The new atheists maintain that it’s purely (or nearly purely) a negative force, and whatever positives are associated with religion are not intrinsic to religion but to human experience as a whole. For certain believers or apologists, religion is purely a positive force, and any negative associations are the result of outside forces or errors of application.
My position as you know is the boring old commonsense every day pragmatic one that religion is a mixed force, like all cultural institutions, like all human projects and products.
And that’s why I suggested that we “leave it at that”, for you’ve repeatedly referred to religion as if it’s some kind of essence that can be isolated and more or less correctly applied. For me religion is not an essence but a process, an activity that as I’ve said has no precise boundaries, and whose boundaries are constantly under negotiation.
So when we go through the above train of reasoning, the stack is decked for both of us; we’re bound to come out on opposite sides.
As for the historical record, I seriously doubt that you’re going to find the magic bullet that settles the question, particularly in a forum like this where necessarily our focus is going to be sporadic – after all, we do have lives, don’t we? (Well, sort of!) This isn’t graduate school, at least not for me.
What usually happens with any serious immersion in history is that our sympathies get engaged, and in this case that will dictate whether we locate the difficulties of Islam internally or externally, and to what degrees (and to be clear, by difficulties I mean not just the phenomena of suicide bombers, but also the radical theocracy of Iran, the medieval theocratic kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the long history of despotism in many countries, poorly developed economies, the squandering of oil revenues, the inability for Arabs to unite against who they claim is their common enemy, and so on and on).
Compare Bernard Lewis, a prominent scholar who has written much on Islam, and Edward Said, the author of “Orientalism”. Lewis, from what I know of him is the far deeper scholar, but there’s no doubt that he needs to be read with caution because of his engagement on the side of Israel. Said, on the other hand, invites one’s sympathies in that he’s an advocate for his Palestinian countrymen, and on this side of the pond at least, the Palestinian and Arab point of view is to this day nearly invisible. He has much to say about the trauma of colonialism still operant in the Arab world. At the same time his advocacy tends to paint Arabs as victims, and so again he must be read with caution. It helps to read two authors like this together.
One book I would recommend that seems to me as balanced as humanly possible is Albert Hourani’s “A History of the Arab Peoples”. He writes from inside the culture, sympathetically, and certainly touches on all the achievements of the Arabs and Islam, but he writes accurately and dispassionately, so that you can make up your own mind about the general shape and trends of Arab and Islamic history.
Dipping into history, everyone is going to come to his or her own sense of things. And if after deeper study, you decide that Islam is indeed an essence, a purely positive force, I’m hardly going to try to talk you around. Or let’s put it this way: I don’t have the time or energy available to effect your conversion!
Happy face! (I prefer typing mine.)
Shanti.
