333. How can we live on the same planet with such people?

Here we are, on an earth made small by our jets, with communication made instant by our electronics, and destruction made sure by our physics, trying to live alongside people who, because they are true to their faith, want to come together from around the world and destroy us as quickly and surely as they can.  Why do we do it?

Because in our faith, I would say, putting the problem in the most general terms, the skeptical can live alongside the credulous and survive.  Our saints believe that we must live alongside them, and love them, and help them. 

It was through our skepticism that we came up with the physics and the engineering that the credulous, because they have lived among us, are now able to use.  The distinction between the skeptical and the credulous is no small thing; it's one of those profound distinctions, like Scott Fitzgerald's between the sick and the well, that lets you divide all mankind.

Both ancient Jews and Muslims were what David Hume, in a time when one could indulge in such accuracy, called "a barbarous people" — that is, extremely credulous.  They thought God made things work.  Then skeptical Christians figured out how things really worked, and then figured out how to live alongside credulous Christians.  I don't know how this happened, but I see it as the genius of their civilization.  And maybe credulous Christians get the credit.  Maybe by theological moves, re-conceiving God (as in France); maybe by ethical moves, re-theorizing hypocrisy (as in England); or just by falling into apathy, they did it.  I don't know.

Anyway, it's something Muslims didn't do, as made clear (if it weren't before) by Malise Ruthven in his review of three recent books on Islam (NYR (4-7-16).  The struggle for reason against dogma has in that faith been a losing one.  Whatever it was that reconciled the two sides in Christian society is very hard to find in Muslim society.  The re-theorizing hides itself and the apathy ... where is it?  What you can count on, eventually, to drain away the followers of every Kansas creationist, and put, alas, every sweet fundamentalist Sunday School out of business, cannot, in Islam, even get started.  People in this religion seem to know only one way to take their God: seriously.  Meaning, for many of us onlookers, barbarously.

One of the authors, Jason Burke, tells Ruthven (in The New Threat: The Past, Present, and Future of Islamic Militancy) that what makes adjustment to modernity so very hard for Sunnis is their "theology of manifest success."  For 1200 years their conquest and domination "assured them of divine favor," an assurance unavailable to Shias, who lost their leader to a rival, or to Jews, who lost their land to an invader, or to Christians, who lost their man-god to a government.  "This Allah, this God that we of the three great religions of the Middle East share, out of the same original book, favors us Sunnis, possessors of Baghdad and all the land for hundreds of miles east and west.  Look on us, you others of would-be might, and despair!"

We in the West should understand appeals to manifest success, since we've made so many of them.  Do you doubt that Christianity has a divine origin?  Look at the church, its early expansion and then its worldwide provenance.  Overcoming impossible obstacles.  Only by postulating God can you explain it.  That's at one end.  At the other is L. Ron Hubbard pointing at the success of Scientology.  In between are the Mormons pointing to an expansion that rivaled that of early Christianity.  Then there are Christian businessmen.  Do you doubt that there's a God that rewards virtue?  Look at that bank account, buddy.  And if your God is as good as mine, why aren't you rich?  (This has a name, "prosperity theology."  Rising in America.)  Then outside of theology there are Donald Trump's appeals, nearly all to his marvelous success, especially at the polls. 

Well, we know where appeals to manifest success take you, to a cliff.  Let the market crash, the attendance tank, the vote-count drop, and you are sprawled out at the bottom.  

And there, according to Hughes via Ruthven, is where the conquest of their territory by Western skeptics, unbelievers, left the Sunnis.  And they just couldn't handle it.

So what are we going to do, offer ourselves as an example again?  "Look, the British lost a bigger empire than yours, a lot bigger, the sun never set on it, and what did they do?  Cashed in what chips they had, sat back, and watched their young people make fun of the whole game.  What do the managers of the best teams in our best sport say after getting crushed in the big game?  'Win some, lose some.'  All right all you Sunnis, get with it, be cool.  Go watch The Princess Bride.  Get yooosed to disappointment."

Fine advice and, in its superiority and condescension, very satisfying to deliver, but breathtaking in its incomprehension.  You can't address believers as if they were players in a game.  This is a faith, the faith is in Allah, and sainthood is nothing like what Winston Churchill and Joe Dimaggio achieved.  No, Western examples of cool won't do.

Nor will Western testosterone. Bomb the hell out of them.  "Think your success proved the power of your God and his favor to you, do you?  Well, how about some failure?  More failure.  Bigger failure."  So we go over to the bottom of their cliff and stomp on them.  It would be as satisfying as burying Trump in a landslide.  Just the thing for people who stand on manifest success. 

But equally uncomprehending.  It's not this religion's ordinary followers doing us harm, it's its saints and martyrs.  Lump them and bomb them, collaterally damage them, and we create more saints and martyrs.  Furthermore, by making them victims we take the word "barbarian" right out of our mouths.  You can't call victims bad names, not in our country.

The problem opens our ears to our own saints, speaking liberal tolerance: "We should live with these people as we would with any other group in our diverse society.  All groups, including ours, have their lunatics.  Deal with the lunatics; don't worry about their religious identity."

Ah yes, we could do that — if all religious identities were the same.  But they're not the same.  Some religions, when their fringe followers go lunatic, have them going one way, others have them going another.  Israeli settlers are the lunatics they are because their religion is what it is, a religion promising a worldly reward, in their case a God-given piece of land.  Followers of other religions live on top of pillars or look at the sun until they go blind, all pursuing sainthood, all counting on a particular promise.  Our worry varies accordingly.  Climb a pillar or stare into the sun and I worry only about you.  Attack unbelievers and I worry about both you and myself.

In that worry I am worrying about religious identity and, though it could start from prejudice, it doesn't have to.  In concern for my safety I, in full academic mode, could have started simply by asking, "In what groups do the paranoiacs, rebellious children, and alienated misfits (found in all large groups) turn to this kind of behavior?"  No prejudgment.  Just rejection of saintly advice and indifference to cries of "Islamophobia."

I labor the point because the Christian has been so pervasively the dominant mode, even among academics.  In that mode we resist causing pain or offense even when our science justifies it.  Take profiling.  The question security forces ask when they lack the resources to identify the possible risks in each individual, and have to discriminate among them, is exactly the question scientists ask above: "In what groups do the extremists turn to the kind of activity we need to prevent?"  If the activity is illegal settlement on the West Bank the answer will be, "Ultra-Orthodox Jews"; if the activity is terrorist self-sacrifice, the answer will be "Muslims."   That makes your profile and gives your agents a marker.

So we skeptics of limited resources give ourselves the best chance of living on the planet with certain credulous people by profiling which, though it pains and offends the innocent among them, and rubs against our Christian upbringing and democratic faith, is justified by practical need and scientific analysis.  The same goes for surveillance.  At least those things are better than bombing.