Muslims are no Different, or why Bill Maher’s blood libel is Bigotry

[Prophet 451]

99. OK, we have a constructive dialogue here

Now, I'm defining "fundamentalism" slightly differently to you. I was defining it as an unusually strict and unforgiving adherence to the holy book, combined with a sense of being constantly embattled. A distinction without a difference? Maybe. However, but the Amish (and, I believe, the Quakers, but I could be wrong) also interpret their Bible literally and cause no trouble to anyone. Hell, my own faith (Luciferian Satanism) is technically an Abrahamic faith (as we acknowledge the god of Abraham, we just hate the bastard) and we don't even have a holy book, the faith being entirely experiential.

I would suggest the reason so many Muslims in the MidEast poll as having such regressive attitudes is mostly because of their environment. Saudi (for example) Muslims are living under an absolute monarchy where there are literal secret police enforcing the fundie version of Islam. I would not be at all surprised if at least some of the respondants were afraid that the survey taker was secret police out to catch them in being insufficiently fundie. On top of that, there is very little media freedom in those countries. What gets broadcast is only what the fundies approve. Finally, your country and mine have been periodically bombing the crap out of them for twenty years in your case and about eighty in ours. So you take an average Muslim. Let's call him Aziz. Aziz might not be especially well-educated, he's probably not acquainted with more modernist religions. Now you feed him a continual diet of of stories that the west and, by extension, modernity, is a terrible, awful, no good thing.

Are you familiar with the concept of "incestuous amplification"? It's a psychological term that describes what happens when someone gets all or most of their information from sources that agree with them. Gradually, their opinions get more and more extreme. Take a bunch of guys who think Bush was an OK president. Lock them in a room together for a while and eventually, they'll come out claiming that W was the best president ever, he should be on Mt. Rushmore and the one dollar bill (and yes, this has already happened with Reagan). That's why those who get all their news from the conservative bubble get so extreme. So take our Muslim. He's fed these stories and he believes them because, at this point, he has no reason not to. And these stories are everywhere and the secret police seem to be everywhere. The only thing that really compares to it is Soviet Russia, that level of paranoia and distrust.

Now, drop a bomb on the next village over. Or maybe his son. Suddenly, modernity isn't just bad, it's trying to kill him! And his sense of what it means to be a proper Saudi is also heavily tied up in this fundie version of his religion because the rise of Wahabbiism was also the rise of Arabic nationalism. Consider also, the psychological bias that means that if we hold a view, not only will we resist correction when that view is wrong, the correction will make us hold that belief even more strongly. And remember that humans will instinctively obey a perceived authority (Milgram proved that) and are instinctively conformist (Asche proved that). And everyone around Aziz is faithfully parroting the government (fundie) line (for all those reasons). And remember also that the Arabic culture places a lot of store in history and the history of the west's primary religion (Christianity) is, shall we say, not very good in that area (And when we haven't been bombing, we've been propping up tyrants). He's scared, he's angry and the fundies are telling him the same thing fundies always do: It's not your fault. It's their fault. If they'd just do this or that or adhere to this religion more strongly, everything would be fine. And that's how a normal Muslim in those countries, our little Aziz, ends up believing such extreme stuff.

Maher being so abrasive about it actually sets the discussion back. I'm of the opinion that Hitchens was the worst thing to ever happen to atheism. Not because of his message (Dawkins, among others, has the same message) but because his smug, sneering condescension was alienating to everyone except the internet atheists who try and copy that smug, sneering condescension. Yes, there is a time for forceful argument but there is a difference between arguing forcefully and being a prick about it. Sagan, among numerous others, mastered the difference wonderfully. Tyson does the same on a slightly different subject (I have no idea what Tyson's religious views are). Honey and Vinegar.