Jihad What?
Mar 6, 2007 Faith and Works, Orient
Robert Spencer was nice enough to invite me to write for Jihad Watch, as he recently acknowledged. As he puts it:
Anyway, a good many good writers jumped out of Esmay’s ideological gulag at that point, including Ron Coleman of LikelihoodofConfusion.com (who tells me that he is looking for a “home” for general-interest blogging; I invited him to write here but he politely declined my invitation because he is not primarily focused on the jihad …)
I’m not just unfocused on it. I’m downright befuddled by it.
Believe me, I’m (intellectually, not emotionally) scared of “the Jihad,” or whatever you may want to call the Suicide Belt Boys. I’d be stupid not to be. Dean Esmay does not argue “we have nothing to be afraid of” — far from it. Dean does, however, have his own preferences in terms of nomenclature, which is evidently quite a big deal. Fine. On the other hand, before 9/11 I remember having a perfectly civil, and quite interesting, discussion about GOP outreach to conservative Muslims with Grover Norquist, who by all indications is now pretty much “discredited.” It seemed like a good idea at the time.
On the other hand I don’t know what to make of this article in Jihad Watch on an exchange with Dinesh D’Souza which I thought would clarify everything, but most assuredly does not:
D’SOUZA: One of the problems here is a little bit of paranoia. These guys, Spencer, Serge, have been running around basically saying I am trying to silence them, whereas all I am doing is disagreeing with them.
Caught making an indefensible point, D’Souza lies about it. In his book, this is exactly what he says: “In order to build alliances with traditional Muslims, the right must take three critical steps. First, stop attacking Islam. Conservatives have to cease blaming Islam for the behavior of the radical Muslims. Recently the right has produced a spate of Islamophobic tracts with titles like Islam Unveiled [by Spencer], Sword of the Prophet [by Trifkovic], and The Myth of Islamic Tolerance [by Spencer]. There is probably no better way to repel traditional Muslims, and push them into the radical camp, than to attack their religion and their prophet.”
Okay, so I don’t understand how this is “trying to silence” anyone. Saying “shut up, you’re doing something stupid” is not “trying to silence” someone. (This is trying to silence someone.) It’s telling them — this is rhetoric — “you should not say what you’re saying if you want to come to an accomodation.”
I don’t agree with D’Souza. But I don’t think what he’s saying is what Robert says he is. Now, that also doesn’t mean Robert’s wrong about D’Souza. This — from that same posting — is truly damning:
HENNEN: OK, one at a time here; your question for Dinesh, Serge, is?
TRIFKOVIC: In what order are the Suras arranged in the Kuran?
D’SOUZA: [long silence] I really don’t know what you mean by that. When you say “in what order” then… err… [pause] there…
TRIFKOVIC: … an interlocutor who tries to pass authoritative judgments on the subject is refusing to tell me how are the Suras and the verses of the Kuran arranged. They happen to be arranged by SIZE, from short to long!
Well, that sure seems like something you better know before you write a book about Islam, isn’t it? I think Robert’s got plenty to work with here without stretching about being “silenced” by D’Souza.
But at the end of the day, you can see why I don’t want to make this “my topic.” I’ve gone through about half a dozen tractates of the Talmud from beginning to end and I don’t even really know what’s in them. Forget it. My main reaction to radical Islam is to stay out of its way.
March 7th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Wait…D’Souza hasn’t memorized a trivial truth about how Suras are arranged, and that deligitimizes his argument? That’s like saying a person should know exactly what number commandment “thou shalt not steal” is before writing about Christianity.
March 7th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
I would say that a person most certainly should know what number commandment “thou shalt not steal” is before writing about Christianity, yes. But I accept that someone might not and could still have something valid to say about the topic. I also believe that D’Souza has something valid to say about Islam (though he doesn’t seem to have said it.)
But I’d say this is more like not knowing that Exodus comes before Kings or how many books are in the Pentateuch. It sounds like a very fundamental fact you would want to know about the Koran before you held yourself out as expert enough to publish a book in which you hold forth about what its adherents really think it means.
Once more: I don’t think this demolishes the substance of what D’Souza says (I think his logic does, from what I’ve seen of it), but it does not enhance any claim of expertise or thoroughness on which his arguments must be based.
March 7th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
Trifkovic’s claim that the Quran is ordered by size seemed to me a doubtful proposition and contradicted my practical experience.
I took the liberty of taking the size of each sura, as mentioned on Wikipedia, and graphing that against their length by number of lines to examine this in a rough and ready way.
The resulting graph looks like this:
http://img213.imageshack.us/my.php?image=quransurahi4.jpg
I think this result demonstrate the false nature of Trifkovik’s accusation against D’Souza.
D’Souza hasn’t got this ‘fact’ at the tip of his tongue because the Quran does not have length as it’s organising principle.
The best that you can say that, averaged over the entire book, and with certain conspicuous increases in length ignored, that there is a general trend from small to large [or large to small depending on which end of the Quran you start with] but you certainly cannot claim that it is the dominant principle of organisation.
Such false arguments do more damage to Trifkovik’s claim to expertise then to undermine D’Souza’s.
March 7th, 2007 at 9:53 pm
I should have trusted myself and shut up about this. But in general, my casual perusal of the Internet suggests that, indeed, length is indeed the dominant principle of organization of the Suras. Here’s a typical citation. There do seem to be some exceptions to this general rule. But the point is, D’Souza should have known this. He should have been able to say, “Well, they are generally organized from longest to shortest, with some exceptions; some editions also have them in chronological order.” Instead he had no idea of how to even approach the question. I do think this bespeaks a lack of preparation on the topic, yes.
UPDATED: I ran your question past Robert Spencer, too, who courteously and promptly responded as follows, giving me permission to publish his response:
March 7th, 2007 at 11:19 pm
I appreciate that you want to “stay out of the way” of Islam, as it’s not your topic, so thank you for your willingness to engage on this.
I agree with both yourself and Robert Spencer that I have been overly critical of Trefkovic and overly strong in stating that this demonstrates ignorance on his part. I withdraw those statements unreservedly.
At the very least though, Trefkovic relied on an assumption that was incorrect in fact, regardless of it’s popular currency. The graph clearly shows that to say that the Quran is organised by length is a statement so subject to caveat, that the original assertion is lost within the exceptions.
Given that Trifkovic is a published author on Islam himself, surely he should be aware, as Robert Spencer readily agreed, that length cannot be taken as the organising principle without considerable reservations. Such dogmatic statements on his part, when they turn out to be demonstrably incorrect, and on such a basic detail, do not seem to induce faith in the rest of his arguments. This is precisely the effect that D’Souza’s hesitation had upon yourself.
I don’t think either party comes out of that particular exchange looking pretty, but it certainly seems to me that Trefkovik does more that might be found quesionable than D’Souza does, given that he both asks the question, provides an incorrect answer, and along the way implicates ad hominem that D’Souza is incapable of responding to even basic questions on the Quran.
The lack of a snappy response to an unexpected question should not be conflated with a lack of ability or knowledge on the issues being debated. It’s certainly one of the inferences that it would be possible to draw, but I don’t see it as the only reasonable inference, and is not “damning” as you put it of D’Souza or his arguments.
March 8th, 2007 at 12:21 am
Mohammed, I don’t see how you can say “length cannot be taken as the organising principle without considerable reservations.” It seems to be a minor reservation at best. But I am satisfied to reserve judgment on the materiality of that question as it relates to D’Souza’s expertise. I do, however, think he has plenty of other problems with his thesis, and evidently I have lots of company.
March 9th, 2007 at 8:24 pm
The problem with the whole issue here is that people aren’t always debating on the same terms. Often the problem really is semantics. I kind of prefer to avoid the topic myself.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is a kingpin of fomenting terrorism, and they claim it to be in the name of Islam. Al Qaeda claims that there war is Allah’s will. Nearly every tyrannical, despotic, psychotic regime in the Middle East uses Islam as a pretext for their actions.
It honestly does not matter which sect of Islam is the “true Muslim.” The ones hoping to destroy our way of life do so in the name of Allah, and they are powerful. They prohibit the free exchange of ideas. They kill “apostates” who are “not Muslim enough.” They control the media in their countries. They wield death and fear over the citizens of those nations.
The claim to Islam is an integral part of their ideology of death and hate.
I really don’t see the issue as being much different than saying, “is the problem the Germans or the Nazis?” Sure, you could find plenty of Germans that are fine, upstanding, moral, likable people. Many of them may even have self-identified as National Socialists, but for all intents and purposes, while at war, it’s irrelevant.
You kill the enemy, destroy their infrastructure, break their will, and once you have done that, you sort out the rest. I think people like Dean want to sort it all out in an effort to sanitize, and strategically target war. I fully understand the motivation to do so too. War is a horrible, terrible thing. It’s perfectly understandable to want to target only the leaders and their henchmen, but it’s just not possible, or at least I don’t believe it is.
It’s unfortunate, really. There are many psychotic regimes that are not at all Islamic. North Korea to name one. I think the problem is tyranny, but it really doesn’t matter. We have an enemy that we must destroy first, and ask questions later.