In keeping with this new tradition, a friend of mine recently sent me one of the first emails I’ve gotten from him that doesn’t mention the nascent socialist takeover of the United States at all. No, this one was all Islam, all the time. Actually it was just a link to a YouTube video. Have a watch, and then read my lengthy response below the jump.

Have you watched it? Good. Here’s the email:

Below you will find my response to the video link that you sent me. It’s long, but I think it’s worth reading. A few notes, though, before I begin:

a) Islam is not monolithic any more than Christianity is monolithic. Not all Muslims ascribe to Wahhabism just as not all Christians subscribe to the Christian Identity[1] movement. Videos like this one attempt to paint the entire Muslim world as Wahhabi, when that’s not true at all. Wahhabism is a movement within Sunni Islam that has a very rich sponsor in Saudi Arabia and had a nice base of operations in Afghanistan. It is not, however, particularly common in the Muslim world.

Here’s a map of the major legal and belief systems in the Muslim world.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Madhhab_Map2.png

To which is the video referring? They’re way too diverse and divergent for it to be referring to all three.

b) It’s easy to believe the malarkey in this video at face value if you don’t actually know or interact with Muslims on a daily basis. Dehumanization of any group of people is easier if you keep your distance. I haven’t had that option. Not at college, not at work, and not in my social life. And I’m very glad I don’t. I’d be more likely to believe the lies in this video if I did.

OK. Onto the analysis:

I did not think our country, the Western World, or the World (for that matter) was at war with Islam, so I watched this video and learned.

The first thing I learned is that whoever made this video had plenty of money for a very high-value production (even if it is just text). I watched it all the way through. And then I did 30 minutes of research. It’s what I do with any article or video that makes claims but contains no evidence to back up its claims.

The second thing I learned is that it’s astoundingly false. Not just one or two of the three points it makes, but all three are AMAZINGLY misleading.

The intro talks about how people surround themselves that agree with their preconceived notions. Ironically, that’s what this video relies on. And it seems to have worked. This video managed to make it to me with absolutely no comments about the content of the video other than a paragraph of glittering generalities about the West vs. Islam.[2]

I guess I’ll issue point by point refutations of the video.

1) Abrogation.

To say that the concept of abrogation is universally accepted in the Muslim faith is incorrect. It is widely accepted, but far from universal.

To say that every peaceful phrase in the Qur’an has been abrogated by the Verse of the Sword is very, very wrong. The Verse of the Sword was temporally constrained to a battle that took place against certain Pagan tribes that had broken a treaty with Muslims and had previously slain them on a pilgrimage.

There is no universality among those who ascribe to the doctrine of abrogation as to which verses have been abrogated. In fact, in the Middle Ages, the general consensus was that somewhere in the vicinity of 200 verses had been abrogated. Nowadays, most scholars claim only a handful of abrogations. The majority of Muslims do not accept abrogation of the “peaceful” phrases by the Verse of the Sword.[3] Abrogation is meant to resolve differences in laws, not differences in the laws of war vs. the laws of peacetime.

2) Sharia.

This one is even more false than the first one. Qur’anic verse states that “dhimmi” (“people of the contract”, or certain non-Muslims living in Muslim-governed land) need not abide by and are not tried under Sharia law. In much of the Muslim world, “dhimmi” is seen to refer to any non-Muslim living under Muslim rule.

Additionally, many Muslim countries (Turkey, Indonesia, Mali, Kazakhstan) are secular. These are countries ruled by Muslims and ruling over Muslims that do not have Sharia law. In its place are a constitution and a legislature.

The video tries to scare people by saying that EVEN IN THE U.K., Muslims are trying to establish and enforce Sharia law. It’s true. If both parties agree to have their claims arbitrated by a Sharia court rather than try the case in civil court, they can do so. It’s kind of equivalent to going on Judge Judy or The People’s Court. It’s an alternate forum that can be used if both parties agree to it. The U.K. has been doing the same thing with Jewish Beth Din courts for 100 years. Where have the videos been on that issue?

3) Taqiyya

If the filmmakers wanted me not to immediately do research to figure out how full of it their claims were, they should have left this one off the list. The problem is that I already knew about taqiyya. I came across it when studying the Druze religion, which is an 11th century offshoot of Islam. It’s a fascinating religion. It’s completely closed to outsiders, proselytization is strictly forbidden, and they keep their beliefs very private.

Here’s what taqiyya is all about: if you are living under a government that persecutes your religion, you’re allowed to hide your religion from those who would persecute or kill you. Taqiyya was used by Sunnis living under Shi’a rule and even more commonly by Shi’a living under Sunni rule. These are the limits of Qur’anic taqiyya. Any claim that this doctrine is designed for political doubletalk knows nothing of Taqiyya, and those who say its intended use is to deceive non-Muslims ignore history.

So there you have it. Some facts behind the slick production values. Thinking for yourself is good; researching what people tell you is even better. It’s the best expression of skepticism there is.

You told me to remain skeptical, and I do. I hope you continue to send these email forwards you get. I enjoy learning from and researching them.

In closing,

| If you never watch another “youtube” video, you should watch this one!

The only way I would never watch another YouTube video after this one is if someone reliably told me that all YouTube videos were this spurious. If that were so, I would swear off YouTube videos at a moment’s notice.

Andrew.

PS: I hope you had a good time in DC when you were up here for the rally. I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to meet up.

Footnotes:

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Identity

[2] The paragraph reminds me greatly of Oswald Spengler’s book, The Decline of the West (1918, revised 1922), about how the West is doomed to fall to the “Magian” Semitic societies of the Jews and the Arabs, while the “Faustian” West withers away. The book prompted a very eloquent refutation in The Rise of the West by William McNeill, excoriating Spengler’s flawed “clash of civilizations” analysis of world history.

[3] http://www.nicheoftruth.org/pages/the_quran_and_the_theory_of_abrogation.htm

How Long Do We Have?

About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:

‘A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government.’

‘A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.’

‘From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.’

‘The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years’

‘During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:

1. from bondage to spiritual faith;
2. from spiritual faith to great courage;
3. from courage to liberty;
4. from liberty to abundance;
5. from abundance to complacency;
6. from complacency to apathy;
7. from apathy to dependence;
8. from dependence back into bondage’

First off, the Scottish writer was Alexander Tytler, not Alexander Tyler. Furthermore, the quote apparently was first attributed to Tytler by one H. W. Prentis (Wikipedia), though it is unknown where the first part came from. Tytler never wrote the book about the fall of the Athens.

Onwards!

Professor Joseph Olson of  Hemline  University School of Law, St. Paul , Minnesota points out some interesting facts concerning the 2008 Presidential election:

Number of States won by:

Democrats: 19 /Republicans: 29

Square miles of land won by:

Democrats: 580,000 / Republicans: 2,427,000

Population of counties won by:

Democrats: 127 million / Republicans: 143 million

Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by:

Democrats: 13.2 / Republicans: 2.1

Professor Olson adds: ‘In aggregate, the map of the territory Republican won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of this great country. Democrat territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare..’ Olson believes the United States is somewhere between the ‘complacency and apathy’ phase of Professor Tyler’s definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation’s population already having reached the ‘governmental dependency’ phase.

First off, it’s important to note that Professor Olson of Hamline University has been trying to kill this email for years, as it mis-quotes him– he never actually wrote anything like this. Furthermore, all of these numbers are incorrect– though the populations and land area were apparently correct for the 2000 election.

If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders called illegals and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years.

If you are in favor of this, then by all means, delete this message. If you are not, then pass this along to help everyone realize just how much is at stake, knowing that apathy is the greatest danger to our freedom.

WE LIVE IN THE LAND OF THE FREE,

ONLY BECAUSE OF THE BRAVE

Please, whoever you are, do not forward this email. It is, again, a set of lies designed to divide along party lines, and is xenophobic to boot.

Awesome Senior

Here’s a quote from a government employee who witnessed a recent interaction between an elderly woman and an antiwar protester in a D.C. airport. There were protesters on the train platform handing out pamphlets on the evils of America.  I politely declined to take one.

The elderly woman was behind me getting off the escalator and a young (20-ish) female protester offered her a pamphlet, which she politely declined. The young protester put her hand on the old woman’s shoulder as a gesture of friendship and in a very soft voice the  young lady said, “Lady, don’t you care about the children of Iraq?”

The old woman looked up at her and said, “Honey, my father died in France during World War II, I lost my husband in Korea , and a son in Vietnam . All three died so a bitch like you could have the right to stand here and badmouth our country. If you touch me again, I’ll stick this umbrella up your ass and open it.”

This is an email I received back in July, and in this case I replied to the sender.

It sets up a situation with two characters: the naive, stupid 20 year old female protester, and the feisty old lady who knows all about life. It puts an insipid statement in the mouth of one (the “evils of america”? unlikely. sure there are extremists, but by painting all of those against the war in Iraq as being anti-American, it does a nice job of invalidating the message, because they are not in the majority), and gives the other a rude comeback meant to show how much better she is. It’s disrespectful to both of them.

First off, there’s the assumption that the 20 year old protesters are just dumb kids. It doesn’t take into account the many college students (because, let’s be honest– that’s what this is attacking; those college kids who think they’re educated but just don’t know about life. it’s another piece that appeals to the lovely trend of anti-intellectualism in this country) who may have lost fathers, mothers, siblings, etc. in the military. It ignores the fact that there are plenty of veterans in schools. That 20 year old student could be a refugee from a war-torn country, or the child of refugees. Maybe the 20 year old has given their time to something like the volunteer fire department, where she risks her life on a regular basis to help others . Maybe that 20 year old actually does know something.

Meanwhile the elderly lady: apparently while “my family has given a lot to this country” is insufficient to explain why she supports the war (indeed, I’ll agree it’s insufficient– that’s not a reason, just a statement), accusing the protester of “badmouthing the country” and threatening her is a great way to share her views. The elderly lady is apparently not capable of eloquently and politely explaining why she supports the decision to fight in Iraq, or to my firmly say “I do not want to talk to you”. Add to this that the most commonly seen anti-war protesters, in my experience, have been elderly ladies, dressed in black, holding candles, and an extremely warped idea of reality is presented. These women know very well what they are talking about, and can politely explain their views. They have a firm and sophisticated
grasp of politics, as I would actually expect from someone who has been a citizen of this country for longer than I have been alive. Furthermore, I would guess that most of them would never threaten to shove anything up someone else’s ass, not because of their age, but just because most people understand that being ugly and rude is immaturity that shouldn’t be tolerated from a 3 year old, much less someone in her 70s.

Beyond the tone, there’s the problem that this email is clearly made up: it refers to a protester on the platform at the metro station at Reagan National Airport. Soliciting is not allowed on any DC Metro platforms, and you can bet that the metro station at the airport is one of the most carefully guarded.

But my biggest problem with these forwards is that they are designed to be decisive– the entire aim is to push two sides of the debate further apart, to ridicule each other and devalue the other’s message. I hate these coming from either side of any debate, because neither ever represents my views. Our aim should always be to push *towards* agreement and compromise, never away from it. By sending on messages like this, it does nothing but to further strain the already badly stressed sense of American unity. It’s not un-American; you can write and say and forward whatever you like, at least within the limits recognized by Supreme Court precedent, but it certainly doesn’t advance the politics of our nation or improve the quality of life for a soldier who is in Iraq right now.

Personally, I think it was a terrible idea to go into Iraq, not for the sake of the “children of Iraq” (who doubtless would be better off under a non-Ba’athist government, provided there is some form of working government at all), but because there was no legitimate reason, and it could only result in more violence and our neglect of a country which we did have a good reason to invade. The invasion of Iraq was a terrible idea because it resulted in the neglect of the
Afghan invasion, and the timing of it has dragged both wars on and damaged the aim of each. It has resulted in more deaths because insufficient numbers of soldiers were sent in (even a very shallow student of defense policy, such as myself, recognized this at the start of the invasion. Rumsfeld knew it too, because he’s not an idiot, he just didn’t care). This is the most common antiwar stance– so if you’re going to send on stories that abuse the anti-war camp, at least have the 20 year old protester explain the legitimate arguments against it.

I should note that I’m writing this at the moment while a group of young Afghan students are visiting our lab– students who have been brought to the US to receive medical treatment which they could not have received in Afghanistan, for injuries received in what has been a botched war on the side of the US and its allies who were not able to commit enough troops to keep the Taliban out, because of the ill-advised war in Iraq. So, in fact, the argument I made above probably could be summarized as “don’t you care about the children”, but not those of Iraq, but those of Afghanistan, who we have let down terribly. We have also let down our own, who have not been made any safer by allowing the Taliban and Al Qaeda to regain a foothold in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

This was written up before the 2004 election. A classmate of mine was waving it around like a revealed text in the days following the election. I found the argument to be so simplistic and divisive that I wanted to sock said classmate in the gut. These sorts of polemics do nothing but allow urban, educated, stereotyped liberals like us to bathe ourselves in our own self-righteousness. This classmate, in everything he did in life, reflected the smugness contained in this email. It is a smugness I find suffocating and distasteful. Not only do I have respect for many “conservative” views that I do not espouse, but I actively work to understand and analyze the bases on which they rest.

We claim the right to ridicule based on numbers, unsourced numbers at that, and bask in our superiority. I guess it’s easier for people who don’t have family in “red states.” And that’s an interesting term, “red state.” States are always in flux. Jimmy Carter won Texas but lost California. In this election, the “reddest” state saw a third of all voters vote for the Democratic candidate. Was this state a southern state? No. It was Wyoming. (Only one former Confederate state had fewer than 40% of its population vote for Barack Obama). Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan both came from “blue” California. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton came from “red” Georgia and Arkansas.

The whole red state/blue state divide is a farce. If people want to make intellectually honest, nuanced arguments about differences in culture that play into our politics and how that culture gap can be bridged, count me in. But don’t throw dishonest, reactionary vitriol at me and call it argument. It’s beneath the effete corps of impudent snobs of which I count myself a part.

Seriously, guys. Put this kind of petty crap to bed. I certainly don’t want it cluttering up my inbox.

AGREE OR DELETE

DID YOU KNOW?

As you walk up the steps to the building which houses the U.S Supreme Court you can see near the top of the building a row of the world’s law givers and each one is facing one in the middle who is facing forward with a full frontal view … it is Moses and he is holding the Ten Commandments!

DID YOU KNOW?

As you enter the Supreme Court courtroom, the Two huge oak doors have the Ten Commandments Engraved on each lower portion of each door.

DID YOU KNOW?

As you sit inside the courtroom, you can see The wall, right above where the Supreme Court judges sit, a display of the Ten Commandments!

DID YOU KNOW?

There are Bible verses etched in stone all over the Federal Buildings and Monuments in Washington , D..C.

DID YOU KNOW?

James Madison, the fourth president, known as ‘The Father of Our Constitution’ made the following statement:

‘ We have staked the whole of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.’

DID YOU KNOW?

Every session of Congress begins with a prayer by a paid preacher, whose salary has been paid by the taxpayer since 1777.

DID YOU KNOW?

Fifty-two of the 55 founders of the Constitution were members of the established orthodox churches in the colonies.

DID YOU KNOW?

Thomas Jefferson worried that the Courts would overstep their authority and instead of interpreting the law would begin making law an oligarchy the rule of few over many.

I’ve also saved your eyes from the terrible formatting– be thankful. Italics are added.

First off, we’ll address this “since the 10 Commandments are depicted on the Supreme Court building, it means that separation of church and state is bunk”:

As you walk up the steps to the building which houses the U.S Supreme Court you can see near the top of the building a row of the world’s law givers and each one is facing one in the middle who is facing forward with a full frontal view … it is Moses and he is holding the Ten Commandments!

…etc…

This is handled nicely somewhere else:

• Discussion of the general topic
• Specific architectural elements

The gist of this is that yes, the 10 Commandments are present in depictions on the building but (a) architectural elements do not indicate Constitutional support; architects don’t make law, and politicians don’t design buildings and (b) contrary to the statements in this email, Moses and the 10 Commandments are not actually depicted as more important than any other ancient/historical/mythical lawgivers.  Furthermore, the third statement of the 10 Commandments appearing in the courtroom itself is erroneous.

I’m not even going to bother with the “Bible verses etched in stone all over the Federal Buildings.. etc” statement. While it would be an interesting bit of research to figure out exactly which verses are etched on which buildings and monuments, and what the artistic reasoning behind them all originally was, I have to draw the line somewhere. I’m supposed to be writing a dissertation in computer science, not really blogging, after all.

James Madison, the fourth president, known as ‘The Father of Our Constitution’ made the following statement:

‘ We have staked the whole of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.’

This one is beautiful. There is no evidence that Madison ever actually said this. See this press release by au.org. While I’m at it, here’s the snopes article on this email forward, one of my places to find the refutation of this statement.

DID YOU KNOW?

Every session of Congress begins with a prayer by a paid preacher, whose salary has been paid by the taxpayer since 1777.

The snopes article is again useful here. Digging a little deeper, the Madison quote from the Snopes page:

“Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom? In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the United States forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion. The law appointing Chaplains establishes a religious worship for the national representatives, to be performed by Ministers of religion, elected by a majority of them, and these are to be paid out of the national taxes. Does this not involve the principle of a national establishment?”

is from James Madison’s “Essays on Monopolies”. I can’t immediately find a copy of this online to confirm the quote, though, and I’m unwilling to state its legitimacy without seeing it myself.

The statement about the church membership of the “founding of the Constitution” is also debated, and is an excessively simplistic treatment. I’m just going to refer back to the Snopes page. This is outside the scope, and– quite frankly– I want to get to what I see as the major problem with this email.

First, an exercise:

Surveys by the Pew Forum suggest that roughly 16.1% of the US population is religiously unaffiliated, and if you include affiliation with religions of the book (all forms of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism), about 18.7% of the US population is not affiliated with a religious tradition that includes the 10 Commandments or the any portion of the Bible. This, of course, may include any number of lapsed individuals– we’ll say this is reflected in 71% of people absolutely believe in the existence of a god or gods. So if the assumption is made that all of that 71% of people believe that religion has a place in government– which is a pretty big assumption given that only 24% of the respondents stated that they believe “My religion is the one, true faith leading to eternal life”, and that 52% of respondents stated that government is too involved in morality (40% stated that government should do more) — then I think it’s reasonable to assume that at least 25% of the US population agrees that religion does *not* have a place in government.

But why is 25% a particularly special number?

Well, as of 2007, the General Social Survey found that 25% of all US adults are gun owners. This means, of course, that 75% are not gun owners. So why shouldn’t the 75% of non-gun owning Americans agree that guns are just a source of violence in this country, and so they should all be banned?

(At this point, I should clarify, I’m getting into the actual email responses I wrote to the person who sent me this forward; the individual himself is a gun owner– as am I, incidentally.)

What is most troublesome about this email is really that final quote:

It is said that 86% of Americans believe in God. Therefore, it is very hard to understand
why there is such a mess about having the Ten Commandments on display or ‘In God We Trust’ on our money and having God in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Why don’t we just tell the other 14% to sit down and be quiet!!! If you agree, pass this on

This is what sets me off. Not the random 86% statistic which is used, not the simplistic statement of the Pledge of Allegiance reference, but “tell the other 14%” to shut up. The statement of “Why don’t we just tell the other 14% to sit down and be quiet!!!” would be found extremely offensive by Madison, though this email claims to quote him anyway. See Federalist No. 10 for Madison’s ideas on factions, and the “violence of faction”, both of majority and minority factions.

(Now fully back to an email response I wrote)

I care very much about the writings of the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights– my last year at Swarthmore, I faced a tough decision of whether to focus on computer science in grad school, or else pursue a path of work and study in political science. I am fascinated by Constitutional law, and spent a great deal of time studying the writings of not just the Founding Fathers, but also the political theory that they studied and referenced in building their own political philosophies. I find it offensive when their words are twisted to support bigotry in any form.

There is a great deal to debate about the political theory behind the Constitution, and the reasons behind every paragraph and clause. But the “tyranny” or “violence” of the majority — or of minority factions with an excessive share of power — is something on which a great deal has been written, by many philosophers and political theorists– Plato, Rousseau, Madison, Mill, and de Tocqueville, to name a few– both before our Constitution was written, and since (note Mill and de Tocqueville). Again, Federalist No. 10, written by James Madison, is devoted to this issue.

The email which was forwarded spurns the words of all of these great men, old, dead, white, olive-skinned, Greek, French, American and more (also no doubt influenced by the wisdom of many great women around them, though history fails to credit them), instead opting for a militant, xenophobic populism which denies the political traditions of compromise and acceptance which have made this country work for so long. Granted, this is also a long tradition in US history, but one which we’ve struggled against.

Still, there’s something particularly nasty about some of what’s happening now, with people refusing to show even the slightest respect to a sitting President; if the news reports are correct, keeping children home from school so they won’t be “indoctrinated into socialism” by President Obama. Is this really the way to show respect to our Constitution and the Founding Fathers? By telling children that the President’s speech encouraging them to work hard at school is malicious political engineering?

Debate on political, social, religious, and moral issues will always be heated, but as long as it’s also reasoned and builds upon the ideas of those who have gone before, rather than twisting their words to contradict those ideas, it can be productive.