283. What's It Like To Be a Muslim Prison Chaplain for Jihadists?

According to Salah Hamidi, writing in Wednesday's NYT (3-4-15), being a Muslim chaplain in a French prison these days is like being "between the cutting board and the cleaver."  On one side he's got the administration, expecting him to detect and counter Islamic radicalization with sound Islamic doctrine, and on the other side radicals thinking their Islamism is sounder than anybody's.  He tells us it's "mentally tiring" and we can imagine it, though for most of us Christians, not well.  We don't have enough Islamic doctrine to draw on.

How do we acquire enough doctrine to be able to put ourselves in Hamidi's shoes?  Through thorough study, obviously, though whether we will ever be able to bring ourselves up to Hamidi's level, or the level of any Muslim chaplain, is doubtful.  Seeing that, most Christians do what I do: Google. 

I can't begin to tell you what a mess that takes you into these days.  Page after page of the Quran's "peace verses," read one way then the other.  Proclaims non-violence, does not, justifies violence, does not, yes but the context, yes but the next verse, ah but there are more violence-promoting verses in the Quran than in other scriptures, there are not, count them, OK but there are degrees of promotion.  It's a contest as intense as the one over whose religion promoted the most, or the worst, atrocities.

Over all the Quran-quoters give as well as they take from the Bible-quoters, even though, as I see it, they're fighting under a handicap.  Too many other passages in the Quran make clear that the ground supporting all their effort is political, of this world, while the ground of all their opponents' effort is spiritual, of a another world.  It's hard to proclaim peace if you're responsible for victory over another faction or nation on earth.

It's easy, though, to claim that your side is peaceful if you think inductively (from observed behavior to general characterization), as Western peacemakers, usually liberals, do.  The Muslim who makes the following contribution to a forum (http://www.goodreads.com) is thinking inductively:

The majority of Muslims are peaceful people.... For example, in Indonesia alone, there are over 200 million Muslims. And how many of those are militants? A drop in the ocean. Unfortunately, some people stubbornly consider the acts of these militants as correctly representing Islam, instead of the acts of the 200 million Muslims.  (Femmy Syahrani, Indonesia)

The Christian says yes, but it's that drop that's killing us, and the drop comes from your theological water, distilled in the Quran. 

The observer, noting that the Christian is thinking deductively (from authoritative statement to particular consequence— see Post 275), sees them talking past each other forever.

Hamidi is facing passionate, narrow-visioned deductive thinkers.  "The Quran says this and I therefore must do that."  He gets no place if he says, "But millions of Muslims don't think it says this and are not doing that."  To the militant those people are not good Muslims and their reading is not sound. And he whips out the passages.  Who's the better Muslim?  Who's the better reader?  I can see why Hamidi would be tired.

I can't help picturing a Christian chaplain facing his killer-for-God.  What a pile of scriptural ammunition he has!  How little need to shape it and clean it for use. "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you."  No equivocation, no qualification, no following abrogation.  (What follows is "If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also.")  And underneath it all the solidest possible ground: "My kingdom is not of this world."  For those inclined to go political there's only the slightest compromise: "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's."

Yes, there are contrary passages, like "I come to bring not peace but a sword," but these are few and easily taken from the hands of a disputant.  The Christian chaplain goes home much less tired.

Now we're at the dangerous place, and I mean danger.  We're about to take the first step down the path to world-wide religious war. 

I don't think that's scare-monger's hyperbole.  I am drawing on the wars I have seen in my lifetime and those I have read about in greatest detail.  In those wars I think the first steps are taken when one people starts picturing another people as bad people.  They leave the practical and political, the specific injuries, the dangers, the threats, and go ethical.  These people, their religion, their culture, are bad. 

Say that and you've put yourself on a genuinely slippery slope.  Let those other people hear you and you help them onto their slope.  The two of you are soon in the goodness-badness war that leads to, is almost necessary to, a shooting war.

I think Femmy Syahrani, the Indonesian Muslim I quoted in the passage above, has the kind of ear we need to worry about.  It is tuned to the representation of Islam, Islam as a whole.   That will take in the Islam that, I daresay, gives order to her life.  Call that bad, call her people bad, and she will begin to think of  you as bad.  Already you are "stubborn" in considering "the acts of these militants as correctly representing Islam."

I know, worrying about the sensitivity of the other side's ears when ours are getting "Great Satan!  Baby killer!" may seem over-scrupulous, but I think the stakes here are too high to worry about that.  We claim to be the enlightened ones, don't we?  And doesn't that impose a greater responsibility?

So, what do we go for?  I say (and have already said, in Posts 273, 275) go for the smallest changes in our law books that will protect us from the new threats to our security.  Turn the problem over to lawyers.  The more we can get public commentators to follow the discipline enforced on them by judges the better chance we'll have of avoiding what endangers us most, free derogation of other people.  Badmouthing.