Somewhere in Mao's little red
book, I forget where, he refers to Chinese peasant culture as "the water
we [revolutionaries] swim in." So, Communist soldiers, if you find an encouraging culture,
go with the flow. Don't buck the
current.
Mao's metaphor condenses an
obvious truth about cultures: that some encourage or tolerate particular
behaviors and others discourage or inhibit them. The comparison is so apt. A fish thrives or sickens according to the chemistry of the
water. Guerrillas operating behind
enemy lines thrive or sicken according to.... and you supply whatever mores, belief systems, myths,
narratives, theology, and whatever else makes up the accommodating social
chemistry. Perfect.
OK, an obvious truth, but it
arrives with a clunk when you're in the middle of a debate about Muslim
religion. Does that religion, as a
determinant of culture, encourage or does it not encourage acts like the one in
Paris recently or the one in New York thirteen years ago? Is Islam the water those terrorists
swim in? Answer yes and we're
making accomplices of every Muslim believer. Answer no and we're letting nearly all of them off.
The answer doesn't matter much if you're
in a faculty lounge, scoring scholar points, but if you're in a governor's
chair or legislator's seat, or on a court bench, deciding what action to take
or allow, it's thunder.
There you can't blow away what
responsible surveys show: that there is significant support in the broader Muslim
community for extremist groups. Across
eleven countries 13% of Muslims have a favorable view of Al Qaeda (Pew,
2013). France doesn't
distinguish among French voters but a survey there shows that 16% of them
support ISIS. Where else can the
support come from if not from Muslims, among whom the percentage must be fairly
high?
Those figures make it hard to say
that the terrorists swim in entirely different, or counter-cultural,
water. And the figures we got a
few days ago, about the number of Muslim school children refusing to observe
the moment of silence in memory of the slain, those figures really put it to
you: 200 different incidents of disruption (Education
Ministry, cited by Reuters, 1-22-15), 75% of the pupils in one class disrupting
(Éric Bettancourt's class, in Clichy-sous-Bois, cited NYT
1-22-15).
Or do
they make it hard? Maybe the students
misunderstood the issue. Maybe
they thought the challenge put to them was, "Do you approve of mocking The
Prophet?" Maybe they didn't
see that the challenge, if there was one in the memorial silence, was, "Do
you approve of the killing of those who mock The Prophet." Young children don't always get things
straight, you know.
Whatever it was, the far right jumped on
it. Cherry-picked figures and
anecdotal horrors. And at the
American extreme the usual howlers: wouldn't have happened "if the
Europeans weren't for the most part unarmed"; "France needs a
dictator to save itself now like Napolean."
Oh that far, and sometimes not-so-far,
right. How hard they make it for
us to resolve our doubts about Muslim culture by putting any kind of challenge
to Muslims. David Cameron tried it
recently with a letter to 1000 Muslim leaders in Britain and was told by some
leaders that he "sounded like the far right." The last people a liberal wants to
sound like.
Cameron's challenge, though put moderately
and gently, is essentially the challenge all of us Westerners would, I think,
like to put to mainstream Muslims:
"Distinguish yourselves.
Show that you take these acts as seriously as we do. Satisfy us."
And, I think, we would like to make it
clear that "sounds-like" counter-challenges are not serious. They are moves in the guilt-by-association
game, the game postmodern Westerners are so good at and Easterners are learning. It's Tom Smothers' game. Tell Tom his shirttail's out and he'll
ask why you hate him. (See Post 97.) Serious responses address what's out
there, visible in behavior and doctrine.
Most Muslim leaders in Britain responded
seriously, but enough didn't to make you wonder. Talha Ahmad, of the Muslim Council of Britain,
told Sky News that the Cameron-approved letter had "all the hallmarks of
very poor judgement which feeds into an Islamophobic narrative" (The
Nation, 1-20-15). How does
Cameron deny the feed?
What would it take to
persuade Mr. Ahmad that he's not being serious? How about citing the way some mainstream Jews have responded
to criticism of settlements on the West Bank? Fundamentalist, extremist Jews, claiming that God gave Jews
that land, power the settling.
When mainstream Jews say that complaints about it feed into an
anti-Semitic narrative, or that they unjustifiably connect the Jewish religion
with the settlers' actions, or that the settler's religion is not the same
religion as that of mainstream Jews (i.e., that they are not all swimming in
the same Hebrew water), those Jews, you (and half the world) say, are not
making a serious contribution.
Right, Mr. Ahmad? Right,
mainstream Muslims? We've got some shirttails out here.
This is such a
complicated, difficult issue, and people on both sides are so wired about it,
that you wonder if we'll ever get anyplace. Maybe we won't.
But we'll be making a good start if we can agree on what is a
serious contribution to the debate and what is not.
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