The Islamic Larison

There's a fascinating story to be told in Mr. Larison's sentence, I imagine.

From my inadequate studies thus far, Islam offers three attractive features (at first blush): certitude, simplicity and community. As with most things, the reality is less than the ideal, but the appeal is quite understandable in a world gang aft aglay.

I leased the day shift of a taxi, and a Muslim man leased the night shift. While not really interested in converting, I brought the material home. I can still remember my wife asking incredulously if I planned to become Muslim now; this was not too long after I had decided to revert to Catholicism. I don't mean this to insult Baptists, from which I had converted when I wed, but there were a lot of similiarities. I thought both were quite strict with lots of rules when they really aren't. I didn't realize that both systems are kind of both anti-authoritarian or at least non-hierarchal.

Rod, Dale and M_David, a thousand times yes. Tepid, vapid religion has (by definition) nothing to offer. A robust faith is attractive. People want something to commit to. I heard Frederica Mathewes-Green (Orthodox Christian speaker/writer) give a talk, and I remember her talking about how we should spend more time worrying about living heroic lives within traditional Christian faith than worrying about how to become "relevant" to the wider culture. Powerful stuff. When the church adopts cultural forms and norms in order to become relevant, it becomes superfluous; in mirroring the culture it has nothing distinctive remaining to offer culture.

Islam has many attractive and beautiful elements, and judging it by its most literalistic and angry forms is certainly unfair. To name a few, Muslims:

• Believe in one God, who they identify as identical to that of Christians and Jews
• Accept that God has sent many thousands of prophets to people all over the world, of many cultures, to teach them the truth
• See no inherent division between scientific knowledge and faith. Science simply helps us understand God’s creation more thoroughly
• Promote charity and kindness towards widows, orphans, and the poor in general
• Requires engagement in prayer throughout the day, as a reminder of God’s presence in the midst of day-to-day life
• Promotes personal hygiene by requiring ablutions before prayer, and observing eating guidelines similar to those found in the Jewish kashrut (kosher) laws
• Have a full-bodied literature and spirituality of mysticism within the Sufi schools
• Accepts that people of some faiths other than Islam (People of the Book) can and will be accepted by God in the final judgement

Now, before anyone launches into the almost inevitable attempts at refutation, please note that these are the beliefs of many MAINSTREAM, MODERATE Muslims, Sufis, etc. Many of them are obviously not those of radicalized Islamist groups.

Again, you can no more say "Muslims believe" than you can say "Christians believe", without the need for qualification, since there is no one set of universal beliefs for either faith, as much as some would like to proclaim.

The bottom line is that, particularly in some of its more moderate schools of thought (Sufism being amongst them), Islam has much to offer. As with Christianity and all other faiths, the challenge is to draw people to its beautiful and enduring truths, rather than to its angriest, most rage-filled, tribalistic, ethnocentric streams of thought.

If you are ~18, hopelessly nerdy, internally conflicted about yourself, looking for history's "strong horse", and terrified by female sexuality (or at least by even the subtle expression of it), Islam offers a welcome prospect of certainty and reassurance, and a worldview that nicely dovetails with your inner angst. In western nations, this means conversion to a 'restrained' sort of Sunni (or better yet, Sufi) profession of the kind that we *want* most born Muslims in the West to adhere to. See Larison and Stephen Schwartz for examples of this. The problem of course is that in societies that are already Muslim, only radical Islam offers the kind of counter-cultural refuge that certain uncertain young men seek.

K Street, your analysis seems a bit one-sided. Remember, Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world. There can't be that many loser men driving the numbers up.

This article

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1227/p01s04-woeu.html

claims that women are more the driving force for Islamic conversion in the West. That is, more women than men convert, but only a minority do so in order to marry Muslim men...lots of women are reacting to the moral uncertainties of Western society...they like the sense of belonging and caring and sharing that Islam offers.

Others are attracted by "a certain idea of womanhood and manhood that Islam offers...more space for family and motherhood in Islam, and women are not sex objects."

According to this NYT article, Tavener remains Orthodox, though one of his brothers is a Sufi: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/17/arts/music/17whit.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5124&en=f75f55d704550bbd&ex=1339646400&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

JPL, from a liberal, secular perspective many of the things you listed are troubling rather than beautiful.

• Accept that God has sent many thousands of prophets to people all over the world, of many cultures, to teach them the truth

Allowing them to condemn with a clear conscience all those that disagree with them. "Don't try playing the innocent with me! Your people rejected your prophets or distorted their message." To my mind this is also an attempt to answer a big sticking point for non-believers in revelation relgions: "Why this ambiguous, inconsistent message delivered only at this one (or these few) point(s) in time and place(s) to this one people? Why does the revelation seem like a mere assemblage of some aspects of the of culture + conditions of origin and a reaction against other aspects?" Both the major proselytizing revelation religions must (and do) respond to this question, but Islam's rather pat answer has potentially nasty effects ("sorry, no excuses, conform or suffer") for the unconverted on the edge of its expansion or in its midst (poor souls).

• See no inherent division between scientific knowledge and faith. Science simply helps us understand God’s creation more thoroughly

Allowing them to insert faith into the realm of scientific knowledge and reject scientific knowledge that conflicts with their faith. This, combined with the explicit governing side of Islam, strikes me as very stultifying.

• Requires engagement in prayer throughout the day, as a reminder of God’s presence in the midst of day-to-day life

This, to me, is by far the most insidious aspect of Islam. Its also evidence of Mohammed's genius as a cult leader. The human mind is highly given to habitual thought patterns. By almost constantly re-affirming faith their brains have little opportunity to consider other possibile paradigms for interpreting the world around them. They become incapable of even considering any other worldview. Hence, perhaps, the visceral reaction against the west of many faithful Muslims who live within it. Or the often violent reaction against insults to their religion. Its so difficult for them to make sense of western ways they go nuts. They can't see that our inability to even question tenets of Islam without provoking extreme reacions is very threatening. Unfortunately, Islam combines a violent birth with a requirement that the surrounding society be consistent with Islamic practice (not necessarily to the extent of implementing Sharia, I realize). They have little trouble finding Islamic justification for attacking that which interferes with their practice of Islam.

I admire them, very much. I could never embrace their way, being a staunch Trinitarian. But I prefer their company and conversation to that of any denizen of Wall or K street, any day. Austerity's forever preferable to vapidity, after all.

This reminds me of another more-papal-than-the-pope paleocon, Lawrence Auster, who was scandalized at the anti-Syrian demonstrations in Lebanon in 2005...because sexy! Arab women! with boobs! were so prominent in them. Such decadence that he could come to sympathize with the Hezbollah POV against our western depravity.

But it's an old meme. There is a persistent topos in Islamic writing about the West regarding the babeliciousness of our self-reliant devil-whores, dating back to at least Crusader times.

Auster is an Episcopalian.

John E & Co.,

I think most of us (especially as we age, especially men) compromise and elide, smooth away emotional, cognitive & spiritual dissonance by force, through experience & faith, and achieve a certain humility. Peace with ourselves, others and circumstance.

Still, I'm pretty sure that if we examine ourselves, that the old fissures and fears are still there, if perhaps submerged and muted by marriage, fatherhood, and acceptance of the exigencies of physics & authority.

So let's be clear here. K Street wankers can sneer all they like. And secularists and smug Christians can sniff at Islam until they sneeze themselves blue. They know not of which they scorn. Islam is very potent stuff. Far more potent than the stuff of which suburbia is made, for sure. So beware.

So know that calling men from the West who are attracted to Islam "losers" while apparently giving the many women who do the same a pass, as M David seems to do, is ridiculous. What they all If you hare attracted to is real. It is potent. Far more than most Secular "humanist" materialists could ever imagine, this side of the veil.

If you had ever been to Friday prayer with ten thousand other men, and seen them pray.. well, you'd perhaps have a glimmer of understanding.. But I doubt any of you reading this have. So be careful of what you dismiss.

Daniel Larison is a freak.

So was Kierkegaard. But he was a visionary who saw more deeply into things than anybody else of his time and place. Sometimes a freak is just a freak. But sometimes they're geniuses, and we're the boobs for not recognizing that.

Rod, materialists take gravity for granted. This reveals their sublime & essential idiocy. Can they *really* explain what makes anything move? Matter has mass? Oh, really? How so?

They too essentially take physics on faith.

We Christians need to take Muslim claims to descendance from Ishmael very seriously. I've talked to Israelis and Jews who already do.

And K Street,

Concerning sexy Arab women with boobs, I substantiate your study. The most authoritative authorities concur.

[The Lebanese girl's] breasts are like two fawns,
like twin fawns of a gazelle
that browse among the lilies.

[The Lebanese girl's] breast's are like two fawns,
twins of a gazelle.

[Her] neck is like an ivory tower.
[Her] eyes are the pools of Heshbon
by the gate of Bath Rabbim.

[Her] nose is like the tower of Lebanon
looking toward Damascus.

And [Her] breasts are like towers.
Thus I have become in his eyes
like one bringing contentment.

Thus does Solomon praise the Women of Lebanon. And Paleocon that I am, I could never disparage his verdict.

But the essential logic of it remains inexplicable, John. Why anything is repeatable and falsifiable, or even in any sense comprehensible at all, remains a mystery.

John E., I think what Charles is driving at is that how do you know we live in a mechanistic and materialistic universe? How do you know that the laws of physics will be the same tomorrow or that they were the same one million years ago? Or, that those laws apply in the next solar system? You are assuming a materialistic universe. The problem is that a solely materialistic universe is self-refuting.

Sometimes I really wonder if Rod and other comboxers here have actually read Qutb, rather than read second-hand what others say he wrote. There's a nice excerpt of The America Which I Saw (Amrika Min Al Dakhil) in From the Outer World, Harvard University Press.

There is a lot about materialism, violence, attitudes towards death, lack of the spiritual in American churches, lack of art, lack of taste in food and clothing...say, does this sound at all familiar? Half the time he reads like a chapter from Crunchy Cons (the book, not the blog)!

But not really a whole lot about sex--that vice was far down his list. Some obvious misreadings -- you really have to wonder how anyone living in small town Colorado in 1950 could deduce that homosexuality was about to subvert the Western world -- and there is one sentence where it's obvious that he spent a little too much time studying the female student body: "in the glances of their eyes, their thirsty lips and bodies, the swelling breast, the plump thigh, the fat posterior, the smooth leg left entirely unconcealed." Although it should be pointed out that Qutb never married, and there is a school of thought that believes he was homosexual in orientation if not in practice (not that Islam is all that persnickety about the distinction).

But mainly, Outb's work on us is about how materialistic and shallow and uncultured Americans are. I have no trouble believing that Larison and other, ahem, genius/freaks, could find in it, and much else besides in Islamic literature, ideas to confirm their inner convictions.

But your're an informed guy. I'm surprised you found it "moving". When I read it, I was reminded of Mein Kampf.

In fact, I've been calling it the Islamist Mein Kampf since I first read it. But I found it "moving" not in the sentimental sense, but in the sense of being impressed -- and not favorably -- with the force and purity of the writing. If I were a Muslim feeling spiritually adrift, politically oppressed and economically deprived, I could see how that sort of thing would set my mind on fire, much as Hitlerism and communism did Westerners under certain conditions.

"The problem is that a solely materialistic universe is self-refuting."

How so? Because in metaphysical terms, Love and Freedom (not to mention personhood and every word on this page) refute determinism by proving (requiring of their very being or nature) both divine and individual human freedom.

A purely material universe would presumably be governed by (and I love using this word, because it's so cool) exigencies of matter, and the laws governing it. If human consciousness is solely an artefact of matter (brain tissue, whatever) then it would seem to follow that our freedom is nothing but an illusion at best. But I - and most of us - if we thought about it would remark this idea as absurd. Because it is. Sociobiologists' (like Dick Dawkins) mutterings aside, there are altruism, love and romance. We experience them everyday. And there is no so called evolutionary logic that can in any way explain that freedom to sacrifice oneself for another, even someone (or some animal even) immediately unrelated to you. Or the desire to write or read a novel, for example. Christus Rex!

Notice very closely how this human freedom is something someone like Sayd Qutb would very likely reject on on the basis of his theology, but which I, like any Christian this side of Calvin, believe is demonstrated in our very likeness unto God Himself.

This is what I call a delicious "irony:" the Muslims and unsentimental materialists (who usually love to mock religion, right?) have this fatalism in common. In fact, if you have read Ibn Rushd (Averroes) or Ibn Sina (Avincenna) you will notice that their ideas on scripture seem to anticipate the Higher Critics' by about a millennium. Just as Muslim fetischization of the Quran anticipates (not so oddly enough) Abelard, the rise of Scholasticism, nominalism, the Reformation, science supposedly untrammeled of metaphysics (which is of course absurd in every way, but don't tell Lord Russell's enthusiasts) as well as Derrida, Foucault & company.

But I do not digress.. These "contradictions" inherent in Western society are at the root of our now burgeoning malaise. As any man who has read Iron John or attended a Promise Keepers retreat would likely tell you John E, "masculinity is in trouble" in our culture. Every adolescent male knows this in his viscera, even if he cannot articulate it well. As we negotiate adulthood, and these contradictions, most of us make our concessions, and keep alienation somewhat at bay. The fact that the Man - even as he uses and even facilely promotes us- can so easily replace and outsource us as the interchangeable cogs in the machine that we are, really still gets to most of us.. at least subconsciously.

That very often our very own wives and children, so often scorn us, too.. based on the same logic.. well, that's killer, John. Talk about anomie.

The very great strength of Islam is it is coldly unsentimental about all of this. The Ummah is a great spiritual tribe, and even if it's members are individually dispensable before the scythe of history, they all rest in the conviction that it is the same for all of us, Pharoh and pauper alike. This is the brotherhood, I've seen it and felt it's power. And even if I have not myself stoned shaytan with the multitude , while rubbing shoulders with the high and low together, all dressed in the same humble shroud.. well, I can still appreciate the power of the Haj.

And I know that that power is unlike anything I've felt in the West. Excepting only the day I stood on a race track on the skirts of Paris with a million other Catholics in the sweltering sun, and received the Eucharist confected by the Holy Father himself.

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How so? Because in metaphysical terms, Love and Freedom (not to mention personhood and every word on this page) refute determinism by proving (requiring of their very being or nature) both divine and individual human freedom.
>>>>

Well, here's my take on that - faced with the existence of love, freedom, and personhood, I think that the question of how the electrical impulses of my brain generates this sense of self-awareness that I experience is a really cool question and I look forward with great interest to future research that might explain the phenomena and might also point to way to construct self-aware computers.

You seem to say, Hey, "God is really wonderful" and leave it at that.

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But I do not digress.. These "contradictions" inherent in Western society are at the root of our now burgeoning malaise. As any man who has read Iron John or attended a Promise Keepers retreat would likely tell you John E, "masculinity is in trouble" in our culture. Every adolescent male knows this in his viscera, even if he cannot articulate it well. As we negotiate adulthood, and these contradictions, most of us make our concessions, and keep alienation somewhat at bay.
>>>

My take on that - okay,the your individual masculine experience does not match up with the Joseph Campbellian ideal of how a Man as Hero should live. To that, I give two possible responses - take your pick:

1. Yeah, well Star Wars was just a movie, too. There are no giants to slay, there are no maidens to rescue. There are no castles to storm. Figure out what makes you happy, settle down, and get to it.

or

2. Life is full of possible adventure. There are mountains to climb, battles to be fought, and wrongs to be righted. Stop complaining about your alienated malaise and get busy living.

>>>>
The fact that the Man - even as he uses and even facilely promotes us- can so easily replace and outsource us as the interchangeable cogs in the machine that we are, really still gets to most of us.. at least subconsciously.
>>>>

Develop a skill set that makes it difficult, or at least uneconomical to outsource your work. Or better yet, get rid of The Man and generate your own income stream. Yeah, it is harder to that than it is to work a 9-5 job, but oh the independence is worth it.

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That very often our very own wives and children, so often scorn us, too.. based on the same logic.. well, that's killer, John. Talk about anomie.
>>>

If you have a wife and children that scorn you, then I suspect that you picked the wrong woman to marry and did a pretty sad job of raising your kids.

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.. well, I can still appreciate the power of the Haj.

And I know that that power is unlike anything I've felt in the West. Excepting only the day I stood on a race track on the skirts of Paris with a million other Catholics in the sweltering sun, and received the Eucharist confected by the Holy Father himself.
>>>>

Look, sorry if this seems harsh, but what you seem to be saying regarding the alienation of men is that there are a lot of guys who don't feel like they have the guts or skills to make an authentic life for themselves, provide their own economic security, and live in a way that generates love and respect from their wives and children - but they find relief from this anomie by taking part in a mass religious event such as the haj or the celebration of the Eucharist, during which they are emotionally subsumed in the group experience.

And this sort of sublimation would appeal to me - why?

And JPL,

what you see as an "ambiguous, inconsistent message delivered only at this one (or these few) point(s) in time and place(s) to this one people" is anything but. Genesis and the Gospel according to John are, on the contrary, of a piece. Exegesis like that displayed on the doors of the Baptistery of St. John in Florence ("the Gates of Paradise:

http://www.gracecathedral.org/enrichment/features/ghiberti/intro.html

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Florenca146.jpg

Illustrate this quite emphatically. The scandal of particularity overthrows your mind. That losing of the forest for the trees, or the leaves, or even chlorophyll molecule atoms, is the distinguishing bugaboo of secularist thought, which can only be palliated by myth and religion. Which is to say, true art. See "Leaf by Niggle" by Tolkien, which I read as a great mythical satire of this impulse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaf_by_Niggle

That the "gates of Islamic ijtihad" or interpretation have been putatively "shut" is of course the defining irony of Islam, which throws it into stark contrast to contemporary Christianity, where the freedom "to loosen and bind," and react freely both individually and as a Church to the present Revelation (Apocalypse) in time, is of course exactly the essential reality that my previous posts have been attempting to delve into.

Is it really wise to identify someone as a possible apostate from Islam?

I know one American who was a Muslim in his teen years. Now a Catholic and an Army vet, he is quite careful about revealing his past for fear the wrong people should hear. I know of another Christian convert whose father is a prominent Kuwaiti Imam. Now living in America, he constantly faces harassment from his former coreligionists. He's had to change his phone number twenty times.

These incidents haven't risen to the level of violence yet, but they incline me to circumspection.

I'm not discounting evolutionary theory at all, Jaybird. In fact, I believe in evolution. I mean, I'm down with Bl. Nicolas Steno, Fr. Gregor Mendel, and Fr. Georges LeMaitre. My admittedly rather Pavlovian reaction to socio-biological theories that on the face of it seem to deny our freedom and personhood by explaining away our ethical agency with a rather crude materialistic determinism, elicits what is perhaps a rather unsophisticated response in me.

I mean, apart from faith in our individual transcendence, what does set us ontologically apart from a tapeworm? Sorry if that is a moronic question, but I'd really like to know.

I have mentioned before that there were a few classmates at language school who converted to Islam, despite an official policy against proselytization which our teachers largely abided by. (Teaching staff there is about half Muslim.)

A lot of these kids had simply never thought deeply about their own faith, if they were even raised in one. They were away from home for the first time, facing the the demands of the military lifestyle and the uncertain future which faces anyone in this line of work. They saw before them upright, generous, and wise teachers who happened to be Muslim. They then saw the rituals and traditions of the faith (live on Al Jazeera!) as the Islamic year progressed, from the poverty of the month of Ramadan, to its rich ending, to the great global pilgrimage to Mecca where rich and poor and black and white truly become equal, and back through the lesser memorials and remembrances. Islam combines simplicity with a certain measure of pageantry. It is great, and its God is great, it is something grand you can subsume your identity to and become somehow bigger yourself in the process.

I guess the process applies in some measure to all faiths.

The attraction to the faith is real, and I don't fault any of those young students for converting. They weren't really converting at all in my view, being only nominally Christian. They started from a lack of something, and they gained a great deal. Not the least of which is an ability to comprehend the battle raging in the hearts and minds of the Islamic world. May they become bridge builders and militant idealogy destroyers.

Of course, I would hope that the merely nominally Christian among us would embrace the demands of our faith, which is truer and best of all faiths. But the prize of converts goes to he who makes his faith look and sound more reasonable, more true, and greater. And lifestyle speaks much louder than words. That is the lesson of the quiet teachers at the Defense Language Institute.

Poor editing, there. It was actually 1967 when the IDF took Hebron. And I believe Abu Hazim was in Tripoli or Tunis the time.. but he has been a refugee for over sixty years, in any case.