Jason Motlagh posted a nice short piece about anthropology and HTS at Time.com on Thursday. Motlagh points out some key issues at the heart of the HTS acrimony and makes note of both the AAA’s CEAUSSIC statement and the campaign by the Network of Concerned Anthropologists (NCA).
Despite the piece giving voice to many of us HTS critics’ greatest hits, there are a few more that I feel the need to shout out myself.
Motlagh writes:
Its backers contend that civilian specialists — particularly anthropologists — with in-depth field experience are best suited to “map” Afghanistan’s complex tribal structures and fault lines. […] The prospect of getting blacklisted in U.S. academia has sapped the pool of seasoned anthropologists. Today recruits are more and more likely to have a degree in political science, history or psychology. Some only have a bachelor’s degree.
Certainly some of the credit (or blame, depending on how you slice it) for the lack of anthropologists in these positions goes to the efforts of the NCA and the AAA, but I think the balance is due to the fact that well trained and experienced anthropologists know you can’t ‘map’ culture as if it were mountains: it’s neither static, bounded, nor quantifiable. As Hugh Gusterson points out in theHuman Terrain film, HTS is built on a faulty metaphor.
Because of a fundamental confusion about what anthropologists are and do, and the (understandably) instrumental and operational bent of the program, “in depth-field experience” was never HTS’s main hiring priority. Given a definition of anthropology as a methods suite for gathering information about some thing called culture, it’s technical ability, not experience, that matters most.
Among those speaking for HTS (perhaps from within it, but that’s not totally clear) Motlagh cites Brian Ericksen, “a burly former Army ranger with a political science degree who works with Marines in insurgency-wracked Helmand province.” Erickson dismisses critiques of HTS, saying “For me, the politically motivated criticism just isn’t valid.”
But the politically motivated participation in national military action is? Does Mr. Ericksen’s comment “when your country is at war … you support your armed forces in the vested interest of the country” imply that people should make such decisions on anything but political grounds (which, as I’m sure Mr. Ericksen knows, they actually do all the time)? In any case, dismissing criticism of HTS because it’s politically motivated is, frankly, kind of ridiculous. It’s political criticism of a political project unfolding in a political arena. Seems like solid ground to me.
And for those HTS proponents who dismiss critics by claiming all we do is say ‘nay’, I have something more substantial for you to chew on:
You want to give soldiers and marines some information on the social, cultural, and political worlds they are about to enter? Great idea. The soldiers I worked with at Walter Reed often wished they’d had more of it. But let’s be realistic. As a one former Marine who had served with a Civil Affairs unit in Fallujah told me “think of a soldier who gets as many hours of training on Iraqi culture as you can imagine, 40 hours, 60 hours, and then you send him over and after a month of living with the awareness that all the white guys are safe and all the brown guys might not be, what do you think? That training can’t hold.”
You want to have people in patrol units who have learned qualitative interview techniques and whose job it is to talk to people and get information about social structures in the local area? Terrific. I’m not sure why you can’t just have Civil Affairs folks doing that, but hey, why not make it its own MOS (Military Occupational Specialty)?
You want to have people devoted to providing officers in the field with contextual information about their AO (Area of Operations)? More power to you. Some version of this is already happening. If a National Guard medic I know prepared an in depth presentation on the dangers of Camel Spiders before deployment to Iraq, I’m not sure why other soldiers couldn’t do the same for other kinds of information within the existing practices of training and support. I’m sure the new crop of warrior scholars graduating from various military colleges is up to the task, don’t you?
Clearly, I think that a special, subcontracted HTS project unhelpful no matter who is staffing it. But if General Petraeus wants to have some ‘human terrain’ mapping, he should stop thinking that anthropologists are the folks for the job (or that such mapping is ‘ethnographic’) and start training his own cartographers. It would save everyone a lot of aggravation and ink, not to mention $150 million a year.
quick clarification for Seth:
That “glorious freedom fighters” thing was a quote from Chris. I was suggesting that he was ignoring differences between what he called “Western radical left” arguments in the context of Israel/Palestine and in the context of Afghanistan.
Me: ““It sounds ridiculous right?”
MIA: “Possibly never heard of Sri Lanka. Or Aum Shinrikyo. But yes all forms of religious terrorism sound ridiculous – well, until someone gets blown up that is.”
This is an apples to oranges comparison. In Sri Lanka no one is killed in the name of Buddhism. They happen to simply be in a country where people call themselves Buddhists or Hindu. That is much more like the Irish conflict. The fact that Catholics and Protestants were on opposite sides didn’t make the conflict religious in nature. And, Aum Shinrikyo is a cult, they are not Buddhist.
The US didn’t invade Afghanistan because most Americans are Christians. When Islamists attack people they say it is specifically due to their adherence to their religion. This isn’t just a few loons, this is over a hundred million people who openly admit that.
When the Church ran Europe and was very brutal we openly admit that it was the Church that was brutal. Would you say the Church was hijacked by radicals, or would you simply say the Church needed to be defeated and a separation of church and state had to be instituted?
Rick, always talking confidently of things you know nothing about. Do some reading, maybe start with “The work of kings: the new Buddhism in Sri Lanka” by H. L. Seneviratne.
The sword is pulled from the [scabbard], it is
Not put back unless smeared with blood.
I turned by blood to milk to make you grow
Not for myself but for the country
My brave, brilliant soldier son
Leaving [home] to defend the motherland
That act of merit is enough
To reach Nirvana in a future birth.
– Elle Gunavamsa, Buddhist Monk.
To you a loony monk, hijacking peaceful buddhism – so different from those radical clerics and their inherently violent islam. But who made you the decider? They are all cults. There is no true version. All interpretations of scripture are ideological and political, no matter whether peaceful or violent. There is nothing to hijack because the author is dead. You have a double standard.
“You have a double standard.”
There are always exceptions to be found for every general rule. Finding them, especially the very obscure ones, doesn’t retract from the undeniable difference in relative scale. There is nothing in any science to be found that yields the same results for every measurement. What matters in the end is what is most likely to be the case for any given event.
For example, your citing of that poem involves a logical fallacy of deduction on your part. I.e., a Buddhist monk wrote a poem about war, therefore Buddhism is a violent religion. That’s as flawed as saying that some priests molested kids, therefore Catholics are pedophiles. When an event happens is it considered to be aberrant among a group of believers? For example, did Buddhists outside Sri Lanka celebrate with Tamil Tigers were killed in brutal military campaigns? Do Catholic go to sleep at night tacitly praying that more kids get molested? Do large groups of people celebrate in the streets when innocent people are mass murdered in a terrorist attack? (The answer to the last one is ‘yes they do’.)
It is my contention that people will utilize whatever their religion is, or other superstructural aspects of social life, in order to bring them more consistently in life with material realities. In doing so there is always a cognitive and social dissonance which must be attended to. The difference is where the dissonance comes from. Does a person commit violence because they are told to by their religion, or do they do it in spite of it? There is a huge difference there, because it will dictate how far people will go, how supported they are by others, guilt, and how easily violent action can be used as a viable option. Imagine for a minute if the Aryan Nation (KKK) took over a state like Texas and used it’s oil wealth to define it’s particular version of Christianity by monopolizing schools, and Christan education and scholarship over all of Christendom. This is a good description of what Chris is talking about with Islam, but it’s my contention that there isn’t that much of a cognitive or historical disconnect between Wahhabism or Salafism and traditional Islam. There wasn’t much of a fight put up. Jihad is redefined in some ways in the new more radical versions, but they didn’t invent the concept rewrite history to say their founder not only practiced it, but insisted upon it. It went from an obligation of the Islamic state to an individual obligation.
On the contrary you can find thousands of quotes very easily from very influential and famous people in the Islamic world without having to get clever with google.
“Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those are witless. Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all! Does this mean that Muslims should sit back until they are devoured by [the unbelievers]? Islam says: Kill them, put them to the sword and scatter [their armies]. …Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to paradise, which can be opened only for holy warriors!”
Ayatollah Khomeini: Islam Is Not a Religion of Pacifists (1942)
“For example, your citing of that poem involves a logical fallacy of deduction on your part. I.e., a Buddhist monk wrote a poem about war, therefore Buddhism is a violent religion.”
When you present such a willful misreading it becomes apparent there is no point continuing. You are just perpetuating ‘debate’ for the sake of it. Are you lonely?
Rick, I’ve given you links on Fadlallah, on Hamas’ behavior as opposed to their rhetoric -again: who breaks the truce first? Why did Israel support their rise while arresting pacifists?- and to discussion of the Tamil Tigers and the political roots of suicide bombings.
There are 25,000 Jews in Iran, to this day, and with all that’s happened there is no fear of pogroms, like those in what some people still without sanction[!] call “Christian Europe” that drove my Jewish family to this country. Shouldn’t Angela Merkel be shamed into silence for her use of that term?
Hezbollah ran Christians on its slate in the last election [and they won the popular vote but lost the election itself]
Christmas in Gaza
None of this is to idealize religious fundamentalists, Islamic or other, and Islam has a history of militancy, but have you read the unexpurgated Maimonides? Or the Haggadah? Islam was spread by the sword, but it was spread by the sword and the taxman more than the sword and the priest. Better to be a Jew in the 19th century Levant or earlier than in Russia. If you want information on the tension in Hamas and between Hamas and more radical Islamists let me know. Or follow my older links.
Rick “it’s my contention that there isn’t that much of a cognitive or historical disconnect between Wahhabism or Salafism and traditional Islam.”
Again, Max Rodenbeck
Why didn’t you read it the last time I posted it?
You can’t or don’t want to imagine outside the present crisis in Islam to see similar crises in other religions in the past. But then don’t go to the past, just look at Israel and the crisis of Judaism. Calls for expulsion and extermination are common enough. Is Jewish radicalism ultimately religious or political? Again: Have you read the unexpurgated Maimonides or the Haggadah?
I’m half Jewish and half white. My mother outlived my father by long enough to fade into a doddering anti-semitism which I took to be a reversion to her midwestern childhood. So I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to have to listen to white people defending the semites they like from those that scare them; and to mealy mouthed “anthropologists” who when they’re not studying their pet tribes play video games, and when it comes to any issue that can’t be bundled off into theoretical abstraction plead the fifth. That’s why discussions of HTS limit themselves to generic definitions of scholarship and not moral questions of democracy and war. And if it’s not that it’s the pompous blatherings of “Maximilian Forte, Super Genius”
Everyone on this page should have been able to rip you a new one without a second thought but they didn’t and not because they didn’t want to feed the troll. It bothers me that they can’t answer your shallowness. Everything I write I write for those others, otherwise I’d have no excuse at all.
And as I’ve noted the pop star MIA is a defender of suicide bombers who’s marrying a billionaire zionist. I’d be more impressed if she were marrying the son of the founder of Al Jazeera.
Seth,
I’m genuinely sorry that you feel you need to answer for everyone here, and given that you do, let me absolve you of my share of that responsibility. I’m not going to testify, but I will do something other than plead the fifth.
You are absolutely right to suggest that I (and perhaps others) don’t have your moral certainty. But I do think that, in the face of stubborn racist essentialisms like Rick’s, an insistence on complexity, uncertainty, even equivocation (all things you might dismiss as theoretical abstractions), can actually represent a serious challenge and critique.
I’m not interested in engaging Rick in part because I don’t want to feed the troll, but also because the kind of tit-for-tat, link-for-link, example-for-counter-example, debates that such engagement become are intractable.
You’re right, lots of us could tear him a new one, but it would just be another orifice for his toxic drivel to leak out of. I really don’t see the point.
Please don’t misunderstand, I’m not—and would never be—trying to convince you that my stance is the right one. I actually think it’s important for there to be multiple modes of engagement around issues that we can all agree are of essential political and moral importance and for which, in their connection to American economic, military, and cultural neo-imperialism, all American’s bear some responsibility.
I am, however, suggesting that you make a little more room in the tent and not be quite so dismissive of people with whom you might actually have some common ground. And at the risk of being defensive, I’d like to add that I don’t actually spend all my spare time playing video games. Sometimes I spend it doing things like making anti-war Haggadot and writing blog posts about the ramifications of war.
“Stubborn, racist essentialisms”? As I have indicated, I stand with Chris in this debate. My own position on national security matters is nicely summarized by Teddy Roosevelt’s “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”
That said, when I read what Rick has to say, I know that nothing is more despised or dismissible in my favorite intellectual circles these days that playing the Nazi card. But I can’t evade the historical memory that, when push came to shove, it was neither the Oxford Union resolution to never fight for king or country nor Neville Chamberlain’s negotiations; it was Winston Churchill et. al’s recognition that, when they read Mein Kampf,Hitler was telling them precisely what he had in mind, who correctly read German intentions and won WWII.
In a less melodramatic mood, I recall the Telluride summer program in which I participated as a high school junior. The topic that summer was the history of US labor relations. Innocent that I was, I spoke up one day to suggest that, if only people would take the trouble to understand each other, unnecessary conflict and suffering could be avoided. The professor from the Cornell ILR school who was leading the seminar (to my shame I have forgotten his name) replied that, “There are, you know, times when people understand perfectly what each other want and also know that there is no common ground.”
A third bit of history intrudes: The memory that what we call the Enlightenment followed the Wars of Religion that devastated Europe for more than than a century following the Protestant Reformation, themselves only a fraction of the long and bloody history documented in, for example, James Carroll’s Constantine’s Sword.
I may deeply hope that Rick is wrong and that soft words should always be tried first before the big stick is brought out. But history does suggest that dismissing what he says as “racist essentialism” may deserve its own ephitet: “Polyanna.”
“There are, you know, times when people understand perfectly what each other want and also know that there is no common ground.”
Just like Michael Crichton on Japan. Anyone remember “Rising Sun”?
You want the anti-enlightenment, read John’s comments, it’s is in spades:
facts don’t matter, history doesn’t matter, numbers don’t matter. All that matters is fear
Piffle. Facts matter. History matters. Numbers matter. No one here is saying that they don’t. Whether people will agree that the facts, the history, or even the numbers mean the same thing?There’s the rub. The verbal vomit of ad hominem labels is not likely to lead to agreement.
“Piffle. Facts matter. History matters. Numbers matter.”
If they do than respond to my sources. Any of them.
Insult is the icing on my cake. You got no cake.
than/then
I’m sloppy when I’m drunk.
““Stubborn, racist essentialisms”? As I have indicated, I stand with Chris in this debate. My own position on national security matters is nicely summarized by Teddy Roosevelt’s “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”
That said, when I read what Rick has to say, I know that nothing is more despised or dismissible in my favorite intellectual circles these days that playing the Nazi card. But I can’t evade the historical memory that, when push came to shove, it was neither the Oxford Union resolution to never fight for king or country nor Neville Chamberlain’s negotiations; it was Winston Churchill et. al’s recognition that, when they read Mein Kampf,Hitler was telling them precisely what he had in mind, who correctly read German intentions and won WWII”
When you conflate 100 million Muslims worldwide with, simultaneously, the medieval Catholic Church (a centralized hierarchy whose relationship with European power was a little more complicated than “evil, must destroy for Progress!”) and Nazi Germany (again, a centralized state power with one of the largest war-machines the world had ever seen), and suggest they all need to be “defeated” and have European wisdom imposed on them — uh, ya. That’s pretty fucking racist and essentialist.
Andrew, I do no such thing. I only suggest that the evidence that Rick offers cannot be dismissed out of hand because we find it uncomfortable to think about. I sincerely hope that he is wrong—but unlike many here, I do not assume that he is wrong because what he says is deemed offensive by adherents of what may turn out to be an excessively optimistic view of human nature, a view summarized in the familiar progressive kindergarten refrain: “If only we understood each other better and were willing to play nicely together.”
Personally, I find the Shaker hymn “Tis the gift to be simple” enormously appealing. I marched against the Vietnam war in the company of Quakers and the brothers Berrigan. I spoke up against the unprovoked, unjustified, preemptory war in Iraq and contributed substantial time and money to Howard Dean’s run for the presidency because of his early and firm opposition to the war. I see no compelling evidence that U.S. involvement in Afghanistan is anything more than a prolonged and horrible tragedy.
I take what Rick says with a large grain of salt. Christianity has been the bloodthirsty madness of the Wars of Religion but also the simplicity of the Shakers, the peacefulness of Quakers, the bland transcendentalism of Emerson and Thoreau. I surmise, albeit with no authority, that Islam, being the religion of several hundreds of millions of people, probably includes a similar range of attitudes. Having, albeit a long time ago, read Geertz’s Islam Observed, I know, at least, that Islam ranges from Wahabi fanaticism to Javanese mysticism.
It is not, however, racist or essentialist to note as Rick has done that jihad, while it might be reinterpreted as a purely internal, moral struggle, is central to traditions in which defending and spreading Islam by the sword is celebrated. And given the fact that most Muslims live in parts of the world that have been grossly exploited by the West, at what can only be described as the shitty end of the world system’s stick, the appeal of that celebration to young men who identify with the tradition and feel degraded, dishonored, and disrespected by the global powers that be is, I project, undeniable. I say “project” deliberately, since here I draw upon my own Scotch-Irish heritage and note that were I in their shoes I, too, would want to rain death and destruction on those I saw as devils incarnate. I know that I could be wrong. Indeed, I hope that I am. I would infinitely prefer a future in which soft words and constructive actions replaced the big stick in all but the most extreme circumstances. But, once again, in other words, I see no grounds for rejecting out of hand the possible dangers that Rick has sketched because they offend utopian assumptions for which history, bloody history, provides scant evidence.
My rebuttal, and likely my last comment on this thread is currently in moderation.
“It is not, however, racist or essentialist to note as Rick has done that jihad, while it might be reinterpreted as a purely internal, moral struggle, is central to traditions in which defending and spreading Islam by the sword is celebrated. ”
Until that comment is out of moderation, I’d like to comment on this. The concept of greater or lesser jihad, the former being spiritual and the latter being militaristic, is not something uncontested. It isn’t in the Koran for example. Generally jihad is divided into military struggle to spread Islam, and jihad to defend Islamic land from outside invaders. It is this second form of jihad that is often seen as more important.
Within Islamic theology, Allah generally understands if you can’t do something. Like if you can’t afford to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, Allah really isn’t going to hold it against you. Or, if you can’t pray for some reason, you can make it up later (prayer is mandated 5 times a day).
It’s the defensive jihad which is usually more important.
Rick [way back up thread]- “In fact, in an op-ed for the London Observer Hasan [sic] Butt (former member of the British Jihadi network wrote this):
‘When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network…’ “
I’ll put that alongside your “security clearance” and the study, “since uncovered by the media” that somehow manages to reproduce common knowledge about Pashtun sexuality.
thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100713/FOREIGN/707129834/1002
Watching video games
Going back over the thread I realized that the sources I provided added up to quite a lot. And that reminded me of something obvious, that I can’t help but keep forgetting,or ignoring, again and again.
Communication is formal social activity, the “content” the ideas discussed (rather than exhibited or manifest) is a McGuffin. People change their opinions by adapting similarities and forming friendships. The Internet and contemporary culture it’s a part of are so suffused with the logic of transparency that people who should know better forget how communication works. The internet is the perfect community for Asperger’s patients, for chats and discussion groups on ceiling fans, blenders and every other form of discrete fixation. The difference between physics and Proust is the possible complexity of signification, Proust bring the most complex, by far. Quarks can have Charm but not subtext, not without leaving physics behind, at which point a quark is like a cookie. But the combination of instrumentalism, desocialization, and electronic media combine to create a dream of the social short circuit, as ideal.
Nobody learns they just change, and as always things are changing, for better and worse.
I’ll repeat a link
But John, you really should read Rising Sun. As you said, evidence shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand just because it makes you uncomfortable.
Rick, I have never denied that there will always be a militant strain of Islam. The whole focus of my research has been on those militant strains. I just do not see every devout Muslim as believing or practicing that militant interpretation of Islam. I also believe in countering that militant variant of Islamic ideology with less militant TRADITIONAL based teachings. That is the key difference from what I advocate and what the “reformers” you speak of advocate. I’ve watched their videos and heard their lectures. What they advocate generally has very little basis in anything traditionally found in Islamic teachings. Essentially they advocate the Westernization of the Islam, which incidentally, is what Daniel Pipes usually advocates. This is simply a form of mind colonization. In other words, it is a post-colonialist vestige of forced Western cultural hegemony. While these “reformers” will always have a small number of advocates in the Islamic world, they lack the psychological mechanisms required to actually make such shifts in the core belief systems of fundamentalist Muslims around the world. At any rate, most of the Islamic world is in fact already ruled by such secularist-friendly (often Western friendly) political elites who only pay lip-service to Islamic values and scholars. The citizens of these countries all know this and most of them haven’t gained anything from it. What you and Pipes envision is just more of the same. The aggressive American foreign policy that essentially supports your views, is in my opinion, one of the very reasons why Islamist movements have been gaining in popularity. It is seen as a way to fight and break free from the juggernaut of Western hegemony. This is what people like Max Forte describe as resistance and they have a point, but unfortunately do not see the flip-side of the coin which is brutal Islamist regimes and endless terrorist attacks on Western institutions and nations. But I don’t see this issue as a zero-sum game. There are many alternative policies that have yet to be pursued when it comes to dealing with Islamist movements.
As for me being afraid of death threats, no not really because I don’t advocate radical Islamic reform. Speaking of which I’ve been meaning to setup a web forum to attract radical Islamic commentary on some of my ideas (and to develop dialog), however I’m still looking into legal issues. I’m sure there would be a few wackos doing death threats now and then, but it’s not something I worry about too much. I’m sure radical leftwing supporters of Islamic extremists like the anthropologist Max Forte, probably get A LOT more death threats then I ever would.
As for Indonesia, what do you mean a very different material reality then desert nations? There are different “material realities” even between Middle Eastern nations. The biggest difference I saw was the simple fact that they had a much stronger influence of Tasawuuf (Sufism) there for a very long time which gave them a much stronger tolerance for other religions. However they are also not a homogenous group of people. They are in fact made up of hundreds of different ethnic groups that are very difficult to hold together. The ethnic Javanese (the predominant ethnic group) have also traditionally committed a lot of violence against ethnic Chinese and continue to do so. So they do have a very war-like aspect to the Javanese culture and traditions. To this day many older men still proudly carry their family Kris knife in their waistband. It is a traditional Indonesian knife shaped like a snake whose primary purpose is for stabbing.
So I would not blow off their different attitudes towards Islam as solely being the result of different material cultures. A big part of the difference is simply that they embrace their Hindu and Buddhist past as an essential aspect of their culture. I don’t think that most Indonesians could imagine their culture without traditional Ramayana dances and shadow puppet plays.
As for Muslim student groups fund-raising for terrorists, I’ve not seen any proof that such fund-raising is wide-spread, at least not here in America. I’ve gone to a lot of Islamic student meetings here in Texas and never saw anything like that. If there was even a shred of evidence that they were doing fund-raising for terrorist organizations, they would be shut down immediately and their leaders arrested. The FBI has already done this on many occasions namely with groups raising money for Palestinian charities who they accuse of raising money for Hamas (which is hard to prove as even some Christian charities are forced to work through Hamas).
Also comparing psy-ops in North Korea to psy-ops in the ENTIRE MUSLIM WORLD is not even apples and oranges. It’s more like comparing apples and beef. Why? Because:
#1 We’re talking religion followed by billions vs. an Marxist ideology in one particular country.
#2 You’re comparing changing a government vs. changing the core belief systems of billions of Muslims who have a vast range of spiritual leaders and variations of Islamic beliefs.
Likewise, you make a false analogy comparing it to trying to convince Buddhists that their religion is violent. They are two vastly different religions with entirely different modes of interpretations, cultural contexts, histories, and traditions. So no, I can not accept that comparison as it is not a logical one. Such a comparison only serves to overly-simplify and thus cloud the issue. Such comparisons also take the issue at hand completely out of context. You seem to see this as more theory driven, while I see this as more context driven in terms of how we approach this issue. Correct me if I am wrong. I suppose that I am a bad anthropologist as I tend to gravitate away from theory and more towards the emotional context of the cultures I’ve lived in that I prefer describing as opposed to trying to fit them neatly into a social theory or trying to quantify it into statistics. I expect that both you and Zoe will agree that this is bad social science and I accept that criticism as valid and something I’m trying to shore up a bit more.
Finally you say that what I advocate can only work in private, but I’ve never said any such thing. What I do on my own (direct dialog with extremists) is done on open public forums and what I advocate is covert in terms of funding, but with an absolutely public message using as many means of media as possible. The only difference between what you are talking about and what I am talking about is the message. If you want to preach the Daniel Pipes call for reform… then yes…like you said, it sounds like utter bullsh*t to the vast majority of Muslims. If, however, what is preached is more along the lines of the Sufi interpretation of Jihad that I posted a link to earlier, then no it does not sound like B.S. as it has solid foundations in Islamic theology. If the references to Sufism (the word tasawuuf and names of Sufi scholars) are removed and only the Sufi concepts left in, it becomes even more acceptable to fundamentalist Muslims who recognize most of these concepts as things that even the primary Salafi/Wahhabi scholars (like Ibn Tammiyah) talked about as being important. Such differences in interpretation are not radical and no, they are not totally Western friendly. But they CAN help to move mainstream Islam away from the influence of radical Islamic theology that advocates terrorism and violent jihad against anyone who doesn’t accept Islam. This has not been tried in psy-ops primarily because the US military, state department, and department of defense have very few people trained in Islamic theology other then in the Daniel Pipes brand of theological study that focuses in on the most militant aspects of the religion and that sees only “Westernization” as the only resolution. They also do not dare “experience spiritually” the religion through long-term immersion in Islamic communities and practicing many of the aspects of Islamic worship. You might call that “going native” but I call it essential to understanding what Islam means to its followers. Because of this, the ideas regarding what I advocate are generally crushed in overwhelming cynicism.
“an excessively optimistic view of human nature, a view summarized in the familiar progressive kindergarten refrain: “If only we understood each other better and were willing to play nicely together.” ”
“But, once again, in other words, I see no grounds for rejecting out of hand the possible dangers that Rick has sketched because they offend utopian assumptions for which history, bloody history, provides scant evidence.”
So, let’s be clear here. You regard as fairy-tale utopianism the attitude that we should not invade dozens of countries, crush them beneath our heel, and forcibly convert them to a religion with which we are more comfortable?
This is Rick’s position. All muslims are the enemy, and the enemy can only be destroyed with superior firepower. Well, gosh, call me Pollyanna (in that smarmy, passive-aggressive way you’re getting so good at) but that doesn’t seem particularly realistic or practical.
Andrew, absolutely not. I, too, oppose invasion of other countries, see little likelihood that we can crush them under our heel (I am old enough to remember the last helicopters flying off the roofs of the U.S. embassy in Saigon), and have no interest in converting anyone to any religion whatsoever. How is it when, blinded by your prejudices, you failed to read what I wrote,
Personally, I find the Shaker hymn “Tis the gift to be simple” enormously appealing. I marched against the Vietnam war in the company of Quakers and the brothers Berrigan. I spoke up against the unprovoked, unjustified, preemptory war in Iraq and contributed substantial time and money to Howard Dean’s run for the presidency because of his early and firm opposition to the war. I see no compelling evidence that U.S. involvement in Afghanistan is anything more than a prolonged and horrible tragedy.
I do not agree with Rick’s policy proposals; I have said repeatedly that I favor Chris’s approach. Soft words are always better than big sticks, so long as people are willing to talk with each other. I have only disagreed with those who peremptorily dismiss what Rick says about our current situation. He may be wrong. I certainly hope so. But, for reasons that I have already articulated, I see some possibility that he could, alas, be right in his diagnosis of the problem we confront.
I find it sad but amusing that both you and s.e. adopt attitudes indistinguishable from zealots on both sides of every major conflict in history. You are so busy damning the other, that you weaken your case by going overboard. By demonizing those with whom you argue and insisting on absolute surrender, you ensure that the argument can reach no useful conclusion.
Chris, the great leaders of Sufism did not differ in their definitions of Jihad. This has been true since the 11th century. I have no idea where you are getting this information that there are whole branches to be found anywhere in “traditional Islam” which don’t advocate for theocracies and jihad. Yes, I think you need to strive more for objectivity in your work. You don’t want to go the way of Carlos Castaneda, do you? You also need to start looking into the material, economic, political and historical realities and differences between different places in the Islamic world for a better understanding of why there are differences, and how these differences have changed over time. For example, it’s lazy scholarship to look at Kashmir and say it’s Islam vs. Hinduism, which it has more to do with geography and water rights than anything.
I also think that theocracies are inherently worse than secular, liberal, democracies. So, yes I think real reform is necessary, just as real reform was necessary in separating church and state for us. Individual people can change, but cultural evolution, like biological evolution, happens at the level of the population. I think a good comparison, which I make in the very long comment that’s in the spam filter right now, is of capitalism as a system. You can talk to individual capitalists and try to get them to self regulate, but its a fools errand to think that you’re going to be able to compete with the system without actual reform and regulation. You can’t trust banks, so you set up a system so that they can’t be larger than a certain size. You can’t trust religion in government so you have to simply separate the two. Ataturk understood this, and that’s why Turkey is not only freer than Iran, it is more spiritual as well. It benefited both aspects of social life, and it didn’t happen with just talking. You want to show up to the market place of ideas and compete with people that show up with high explosives.
“This is Rick’s position. All muslims are the enemy, and the enemy can only be destroyed with superior firepower.”
Nowhere do I state that. I make a clear distinction in the post in the spam filter between Muslims and Islam. A good comparison might be between the Russian people and the Soviet Union. Islam itself does not allow for a separation of social, cultural, political, economic and religious life. This is similar to the way the Soviet system was a totalizing system, but Islam goes even to the bedroom. To the extent that it doesn’t is the extent to which is it mixed with various other local traditions.
“insisting on absolute surrender”
Point it out, or apologize.
““insisting on absolute surrender”
“Point it out, or apologize.”
The Soviet Union surrendered absolutely without a shot being fired, in any official sense. The US had overwhelmingly superior firepower in Vietnam, and yet the US surrendered absolutely. We didn’t lose tactically, we lost the propaganda war. But, the point is that neither of these examples, or any other example of peace from conflict, were not ultimately influence via material social realities. We didn’t just talk the Soviets out of anything, and the Vietnamese didn’t just talk us out of anything. That’s just not how these things happen.
Israel changed it’s policy in 1993 from deterrence to appeasement, and violence only increased. Syria, Egypt and Lebanon don’t mess with Israel, because they admitted defeat. Only when Palestinians come to terms with the fact that Israel isn’t going anywhere will there ever be peace. This isn’t vapid theoretical musing, this is an accurate appraisal of the history of global conflict. Peace is made between parties in conflict only when one side admits it’s defeated. Otherwise, you’ve only postponed present conflict for future conflict, and you’ve leveraged the lives of today’s children to future conflicts. The Cold War kept this conflict in stasis, but it is here and we don’t have an option to avoid it. If you think that these folks will just leave us alone if we leave them alone, then you’re not dealing with reality.
The reason the Islamists come at us is because they have hope. They feel they can win. Why shouldn’t they when we are too afraid to even have a conversation about the very real threat. You call me a racist, yet Islamists kill more Muslims than anyone else. They just killed over 70 Ugandans who are not Western Imperialists. There hasn’t been a single protest over that, and yet you can get thousands of people in the street over a cartoon?
They see us as weak, and too afraid to defend our values and ideals. If it was make very clear to them that we will never surrender our ideals, and we will never give up things like secularism, rule of law, equality of religion, woman’s rights, etc… and that we won’t waver in defending them, then they wouldn’t have such popular support.
What they see is what I am seeing here; a lot of people that don’t feel their own culture is valuable and worth defending.
(Can a moderator please get that post where I talk about all this out of the spam filter?)
Another problem here is that ya’ll think Chris and I are saying different things. We’re not, where simply in disagreement about how to defeat radical Islam. It is Chris’s contention that this can be done utilizing Islamic theology alone. As a cultural materialist the idea of changing superstructure with superstructure is not something that can be done. The cultural revolution of the 1960’s did nothing to change the political, economic or technological reality of the US. If you think we can even affect that kind of cultural change on the Middle East, the Maghreb, and others in the first place then I’d say you’re delusional. Unless you drop a bunch of acid in their drinking water.
The other fallacy in all of this is the belief that a person’s belief dictates their behavior. It is behavior change we’re after. Belief and values are poor predictors of behavior. Things like social networks and material realities are very good predictors of behavior. A person can tell you they love the environment, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to recycle. We have a very good understanding of what causes someone to become a mass murderer, and personal belief is a small part of that.
Point it out, or apologize.
Is there any rhetorical gesture more pointless than demanding an apology? Especially with no visible support or sanction if the person you demand the apology from says, “You and what army?” or “Not in a million years”?
Remember the wisdom of that evil bastard Frank Luntz: “It isn’t what you say, it’s what people hear.”
So, you admit, in fact, that nowhere have I called for “absolute surrender”, and that this is more panicky, right-wing garbage.
If what people hear is filtered through their viewership of Fox News, there isn’t a whole lot I can do about that.
“They see us as weak, and too afraid to defend our values and ideals. If it was make very clear to them that we will never surrender our ideals, and we will never give up things like secularism, rule of law, equality of religion, woman’s rights, etc… and that we won’t waver in defending them, then they wouldn’t have such popular support. ”
This seems incorrect to me, though I don’t have any informants testimony that I could cite. But my impression is that it is the seeming surety and constancy of purpose, the unreflexive assumption of rightness, the arrogance of refusing other perspectives, that infuriates many in the world about US/Westerners. America is fond of its diversity of voices and opinions, but this is seen as largely ineffectual debate surrounding a constant purpose – you note yourself that nothing changed despite the 1960s. I was living in Europe when Bush was elected for a second term, and at first people couldn’t fathom it, perhaps having been convinced that he was unpopular by media fanfare – but then they began to just knowingly nod “of course”, the reality confirming what they had suspected all along. They have the same attitude as you do about Muslims Rick: silence is tacit support.
I would wager most young people drawn to Islamic terrorism are deeply convinced of the constancy of purpose of US ideology – they have watched the films, absorbed the music, read the books. I have heard that most are well educated, often new converts to extreme islam, from not particularly religious backgrounds, middle class etc. Don’t terrorists typically also come from disapora communities: Yemeni’s from Saudi Arabia, Algerians from France, Uighurs from China, Chechens from Russia etc. As such they often feel disenfranchised, isolated or worse, persecuted by the dominant ideals, and unswerving intent of these states: witness the banning of face veils. Really I don’t think they suffer from any illusions about the world Westerners want and will defend. It is very likely exactly where they get their popular support from.
Andrew, I admit nothing of the kind. Your inability to read what is plainly written puts you, my friend, on a par with Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly. If you had half the grace and intelligence of Rachel Maddow or the passion and with of Keith Olbermann, you might be worth listening to. I do hope that your day job isn’t teaching. If it is, I pity your students.
On the other hand, you seem very adept at reading things that have not been written, and then getting rather snooty about them!
Still waiting to see where, outside of your active imagination, Zoe or I or anyone else has advocated “absolute surrender” to anyone.
Andrew, I was pointing to the whole and to you and s.e. specifically.The demand for absolute surrender is implicit in the the supreme self-rigteousness of the tone in which you habitually write. I exclude Zoe from this charge because, except for the occasional slip, I find her tone and manner attractive. It may be ingenuous to say that she doesn’t want to persuade anyone, but the graciousness with which she says it is, in my view, to be commended.
My distaste for the sort of reading and writing that you and s.e. represent is directed at what has become an all too common rhetorical style. Ignore the common ground you share with the person with whom you are debating, feel free to demonize the other, and react with poor-little-me and demands for apology when that tit elicits tat. It’s not very nice in my four year old grandson. In people who purport to be intelligent adults, it is irritating in the extreme.
Think about it. Is anyone here happy with U.S. actions in Iraq and Afghanistan? I don’t think so. Is anyone here advocating a global pogrom directed at Muslims? I don’t think so. I see a range of opinions that stretches from Iraqis and Afghanis are victims; big bully America should instantly cease and desist and leave them alone to a concern that, both because jihad provides ideological justification and deep-seated and perfectly natural resentment of how Muslims have been abused, exploited and disrespected by the Christian West, are, whether we like it or not, potentially very dangerous. Between these extremes are those who note that, like Christianity, Buddhism or any other major religious tradition, Islam includes a huge variety of views and that the world’s hundreds of millions of Muslims inevitably include a huge variety of people, most of whom are not zealots with whom no discussion is possible.
It seems to me that a reasonable sort of discussion would be one in which, having mapped the range of opinions at the table, scenarios were developed for each of the major sets of assumptions. These could then be compared and assessed for plausibility. Then, like any other interest group, anthropologists could decide if or how they might like to be involved. Opposing positions could then be debated as moral as well as political questions.
Characterizations like “racist” and “essentialist” or, I, too, am at fault here, “kindergarten” or “piffle” contribute nothing to reasoned, reality-based discussion that may, in my view, lead to discovery of tragic dilemmas that will never be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.
As one example, I point once again to Howard Dean’s response to the question whether, having opposed the invasion of Iraq, he would support immediate withdrawal. He replied no, that having been trained as a surgeon, he knew the difference between opposing a particular operation and leaving the already opened-up patient bloody on the table.
I think, from the perspective of someone who was deeply involved in Barack Obama’s campaign for the presidency that the line he adopted, that Iraq was a distraction from the real business in Afghanistan was politically beneficial. To have called for withdrawal from both and for immediate withdrawal in particular would have been political suicide. As Bill Clinton famously remarked, given and choice between wrong and strong and right and weak, the American voter will always choose the former. I see no likelihood, however, that the U.S. will succeed in Afghanistan where a whole series of previous empires have failed. This is the tragic flaw in the position Barack adopted.
I think, too, as someone with a more than casual interest in geopolitics, that immediate U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is unlikely to leave the place any less war torn. Afghanistan’s tragedy is its geographic location squeezed between Russia, China, Pakistan, and Iran, with India behind Pakistan looking for enemies of my enemy in pursuit of its own interests. Morally speaking, this clash of interests is despicable. It is nonetheless real.
I have the highest regard for conscientious objectors who reject participation in war whatever the consequences to themselves. My heroes include Ghandi and Martin Luther King because, unlike our keyboard combatants here, they not only put themselves on the line; they were both superb politicians, able to mobilize support without demonizing their opponents.
I recognize that these musings are what they are, thoughts that draw on a range of experience that is highly idiosyncratic, are missing most relevant information, and may be fundamentally incoherent. All I can do is lay them before you and hope for useful correction.
Alas, Andrew. In neither you nor s.e. do I find anything useful. It may be there but I don’t see it, blinded as I am by annoyance and growing anger at the attitudes you display.
I bid you adieu and turn to other topics where signs of intelligent life may be found.
“It seems to me that a reasonable sort of discussion would be one in which, having mapped the range of opinions at the table… …Then, like any other interest group, anthropologists could decide if or how they might like to be involved. Opposing positions could then be debated as moral as well as political questions.”
Yes, exactly. It’s harder for me to take these things personally, or to get upset at these comments, because I understand them. I’ve made them in the past. Not the ad hominems, but the assumptions stated. I’ve worn so many different hats that black and white truths are a distant memory, but I remember them.
The problem is that only Chris and I are utilizing facts and an understanding Islam, history, and present reality itself. Everyone else is arguing utilizing preformed narratives and discourses of left and right. Once a statement is uttered it is framed within a larger field of discourse which colors the interpretation of that utterance, but also the person and everything else they say. Being that this medium of conversation is void of any personal knowledge of the participants, or much of what makes communication work, these effects are amplified.
The only solution is to educate oneself on the relevant facts, but I don’t think that’s going to happen, because America really isn’t at war, it’s military is. Americans have little reason to look into what is going on.
There is still a long post of mine which is in the spam filter, and has been for a couple of days. In it I lay out my case in a more detailed way. I would appreciate it if that got posted. Until then, I’d just like to state that I think it matters what our enemy says. Our enemy states in no uncertain terms that what they are doing is completely within the tradition, texts, and history of Islam. Every single thing they say and do is explained using this. That in no way means that every Muslim is a terrorist or our enemy.
The same thing can be said of capitalism versus capitalists. Individual capitalists, or investors, or those who live under capitalist systems are not ipso facto evil or greedy. However, the system and ideology itself has a definite tendency toward exploitation, creation of a working class, etc… Yet, through regulation, socialist initiatives and the like, the benefits of capitalist free enterprise can be harnessed for the greater good, and the more pernicious aspects of it can be minimized. The degree to which capitalism is good is the degree to which capitalism is restricted though. I think this is a very good comparison to Islam.
There are those out there that say that the evils of capitalism are nothing more than a corruption of true capitalism, and that it is a misunderstanding of capitalist ideals and theory, which lead to the problems. I would disagree with those people, and say they were living in the world of ideas and not in the world of phenomena.
Listen and read what Islamists like Bin Laden actually say, and then look it up. You’ll find that they have a very solid understanding of their own history and tradition. You’ll also find that they have zero reflection on their own past mistakes, the same way we do.
What this does is allow people like Edward Said to ignore these facts. The protagonist in his narrative is the Islamic or Oriental world, which gives an example of anti-Oriental bias and racism on the part of Europeans, but covers up this exact same process and bias taking place within those very groups. While he does mention the atrocities of various Islamic groups, he quickly glosses over them with immediate counter platitudes of their contributions to art and science; yet such an argument could also be made of the imperial, European powers that he criticizes. The crusades are taught in the Islamic world as though they were complete victims to Christian aggression. This ignores the fact that the first Crusade takes place a little over 400 years after continuous Muslim invasion and aggression to what I guess could be called Christendom. That doesn’t excuse some of the horrible things that some crusaders did, but you see how the picture changes when you have all the facts at hand. The point of this is that the kind of inner conflict and reflection that’s taking place in the west is largely absent in the Islamic world, outside maybe a few intellectuals. A very good example of this can be seen in this exchange between a Muslim reformer and an apologist on Democracy Now:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntr3Q3S3dmA&playnext_from=TL&videos=NGDKOBoriC0
Ok, I have 2 posts that are in the spam filter. Can a moderator get those out please.
There’s something wrong on the fucking internet.
“I was pointing to the whole and to you and s.e. specifically.”
Surrender to what? You haven’t made an argument you’ve made accusations. Back them up.
Rick tries and fails. If through throwing sources out. Ask me a question I’l answer it.
It’s like arguing with a global warming denialist.
And by the way: I’m not a pacifist and I never said I was, so enough with the “I sang Kumbayah once” bit. Berrigan stayed with my family for a few days when he was on the lam. He was an unctuous creep.
I never thought I would see the day when a thread ended up beating the length of some of the longer Jared Diamon threads on Savage Minds.
This is also the first time I have seen someone singlehandedly destroy the level of discourse on a blog sight and drag down other posters with them. Ever since a certain poster started posting long screeds in response to posts here the level has discourse has been poisoned. In addition, one of the regular posters started agreeing with him and as a result completely destroyed his credibility. Hopefully, the level of discourse improves in the future because this sight is becoming much less interesting to read. I haven’t been motivated to post a response to anything for a long while for fear being sucked into a stupid counterproductive “debate.”
I agree completely with Grad Student Guy.
Michael, I have taken the trouble to discover that you are a distinguished archeologist. Thus, the question I’llput to Graduate Student Guy can’t, strictly speaking, apply. Still, I’d like to hear your input.
Graduate Student Guy, I’m going to assume that you are a social or cultural anthropologist. If I’m wrong, please say so. But the question I’ll ask makes that assumption.
You are in the field. One of your collaborators (we used to call them informants) says something you find deeply disturbing. Do you call him out and demonize him in a public space? If not, why wouldn’t you extend the same courtesy to the others you encounter in a public space like this one?
What is the benefit to the list of allowing people to label others with words like “racist” and attribute motives to others without asking first, “Is this really what you have in mind?”
What sort of guidelines would you suggest for people in this situation?
John- I don’t think that an ethnographic encounter is necessarily a good analogy for a (supposedly) scholarly blog, and I’m not sure what you mean by “guidelines.” But you asked for a reply, so here goes. People should be free to discuss and argue politics vigorously, but that is not what I want out of Savage Minds. In my opinion, too much of anthropology has an overly political orientation. I don’t think the AAA should spend its time and energy passing political resolutions, and my interest in SM wanes with these extended political arguments. I am not saying that social science can be apolitical, but rather that my own interests in anthropology (and thus in SM) center on professional and intellectual issues, not political positions. The politicization of anthropology, particularly cultural anthropology, is one of a number of reasons why I increasingly prefer to categorize the kind of archaeological research I do to as a historical social science, and not as a branch of anthropology. Not sure if this answers your questions, though.
Michael E. Smith,
“People should be free to discuss and argue politics vigorously, but that is not what I want out of Savage Minds. In my opinion, too much of anthropology has an overly political orientation.”
I can understand your point…and I agree with you that anthropology can get quite political. But I am not sure how people can avoid politics when talking about something like HTS. Should we just avoid the issue altogether? This is definitely a subject that I want to hear more about. Do you think that anthropologists should just not talk about it? Or is there another way of approaching the issue that you would suggest?
In my view, there is plenty of room on sites like Savage Minds to cover a wide array of interests and topics. I don’t see why political issues should be avoided–especially when they are directly tied to the practices of the discipline. But that’s just my view of things.
“I am not saying that social science can be apolitical, but rather that my own interests in anthropology (and thus in SM) center on professional and intellectual issues, not political positions.”
It seems to me that HTS is a professional, intellectual, and political issue all rolled into one. I think that discussions about the role of anthropology and the military are critically important, and I would like to hear more opinions about this from more anthropologists (not just one or two small groups). I’d prefer to know what people think, since sometimes the discussion of this issue gets really muddy and one-sided really quickly.
“The politicization of anthropology, particularly cultural anthropology, is one of a number of reasons why I increasingly prefer to categorize the kind of archaeological research I do to as a historical social science, and not as a branch of anthropology.”
On one hand I definitely understand your concerns, since some issues can get pretty polemic. And I definitely think that different camps can approach dogmatism that only breaks down communication.
On the other hand, when I think about the “politicization” of cultural anthropology, when was anthropology ever apolitical? Did I miss that? Was that in the days of LH Morgan? Or Boas? E.C. Parsons? Kroeber? Malinowski? Benedict? Mead? Steward? Leslie White? Mary Douglas? To me, it’s pretty impossible to simply remove politics from anthropology (and this includes archaeology IMO).
I don’t look back at the history of the discipline and see a golden time when everybody just stuck to “intellectual” and “professional” issues and left politics out. If anthropologists address politically relevant issues, I don’t see how they can avoid getting into politics.
If there was a way to be completely objective, to analyze everything without any political bias whatsoever, then I would be all for it. But to me that’s pretty much an impossible task, so we all have to do our best to foster open, honest dialog in order to attempt to address the most difficult and frustrating issues that stand before us.
I agree with Michael on this one as well. I understand that politics is something which no social science can avoid, I see so much of what’s happening an anthropology veer off into the realm of personal politics.
Socio-cultural anthropology is a bit self-obsessed, and too often getting an education in it is like joining a religious order (though I suppose that’s par for the course in any academic field). Somewhere and somehow a lot of anthropologist felt they had the right to dictate their personal politics on their peers, even when connections to any unethical behavior are tenuous at best.
And, that’s really what this is about. Personally, I don’t think anyone has the right to look their noses down on me or anyone else for practicing anthropology outside of the academy.
But, it also comes down to whether or not someone thinks that the work of the HTS is valid ethically; something that is predicated on whether we have a valid enemy. People are against HTS, because they are against US militarism, and ultimately because they feel that the current militarism is based more on simple imperialism than on fighting a real enemy. Even though the HTS incorporates many different disciplines, it still prefers to get anthropologists. It’s been my contention that our enemy is a valid one, and that this fight is more like WWII than Vietnam. How we are fighting the enemy is very much open to debate, and I don’t know of anyone here that would say we are doing a good job (although I wouldn’t sanction someone if they made a case for it). For example, the case can be made that this should be a law enforcement model, not a military one. I agree with that in principle, but that doesn’t invalidate the HTS in such a model. Also, the recent drug wars in Mexico show that law enforcement can do only so much (Islamists are better funded, trained, organized, and powerful than drug cartels).
Both Chris and I have made cases as to why this enemy is a valid one, which would ethically make the HTS equally valid, and so far no one has made any kind of a case to counter this position rooted in any kind of fact. Thus far all that’s happened is a bunch of link posting (when a link is posted as an argument, not just to give an example of an argument, then the linker is relying on others to make their case, because they can’t articulate one), various polemics that have nothing to do with the issue at hand (if you don’t know anything about the issue and just want to argue meta-level, abstract political discourse of left and right), and a series of ad hominem attacks. The fact that people know little about the global jihad movement is a testament to the little importance they place on it, which automatically informs their view of the validity of the HTS to counter it.
Finally, to the personal attack on me, calling me a racist. Normally, I don’t respond to such attacks, because they are designed to inhibit debate, rather than add to it. However, especially in this case the claim is invalid. About 77% of Arabs in the US are Christian (many escaping persecution for being Christian), only about 8% of Muslims are Arab, which Indonesia being the most populous. The state with the second largest number of Muslims is India. What I am discussing is an ideology, not a race or ethnicity. Another fact is that more Muslims are killed in Islamic terrorist attacks than anyone else. Much of the discussion is also ignoring that this ideology of global jihad is removed from the polemics of leftist ideology. For example, what do the Islamist guerrilla groups in the Philippians have to do with something like Palestine?
John, the level of discourse you’ve defended is in the lower depths of the low end. Rick links to tabloid newspapers and racists, otherwise he writes without sourcing. If you want to treat him as an informant than you’ll have to take his mythology into account as well, which in fact is what I’ve tried to do. If you want to have a dialogue that engages questions of the external world (and our access to it) you need to present something that the rest of us can agree is concrete. I may agree to stipulate the existence of specific acts, gestures, statements, measurements etc. it they are supplied, but Rick has supplied little that is not in conflict with the public record. Give us records of actions and then we can weigh them against others. Say: “Hezbollah attacked the Marine barracks” and I’ll respond: “After US warships fired on their positions.” Then we can argue over the weight of those actions and how we each choose to construct narratives around them.
On Irshad Manji read Geneive Abdo “Mecca and Main Street: Muslim Life in America after 9/11”
Though in fact As’ad AbuKhalil does well enough on Democracy Now.
On Rick’s statements about Turkey, once again, his ignorance shows.
nytimes.com/2008/02/19/world/europe/19turkey.html
‘I’m afraid, so I’m right.’
That’s your argument in essence. And it is very similar to Crichton’s Xenophobic Rising Sun
On Oslo et al. the timing is perfect. Bibi makes it easy.
tabletmag.com/scroll/39692/fibi-netanyahu/
I just wanted to briefly add (if anyone is still following this thread) that the reason why I stopped responding is that I was getting a burnt out on the issue and having to spend 3-8 hours doing research for a response only to have it ignored when I could be doing something else more productive.
However I completely disagree with Michael E. Smith in it’s quite simple if such discussions do not appeal to him… he simply shouldn’t read them. I’m assumng he was refering to either myself or Rick (we are both long-winded) but personally I believe that ANYONE involved in applied anthropology that involves politically sensitive issue has to be prepared to take some nasty punches (and be able to dish it out if need be). It may anger many people in AAA in their ivory towers who are SHOCKED and intensely angered that anthropology is being used for political purposes, but I’m afraid they’re a bit naive if they think that they can control their students from doing so.
Sure, they can blacklist people, kick them out of grad school, ban them from anthropological forums, etc… but such people will just end up creating their own forums and outlets for teaching others their views. I think it’s kinda amusing that some anthropologists wish for a more sterile, clincal academic discussion devoid of politics and emotion. I am completely the opposite. When I read much of anthropological literature today, I tend to cringe at the lack of emotional content and the theoretical debates that often are insanely abstract with very little real-world relevant information that I can do anything with.
To me anthropology = studying humans in totality including using and understanding emotions rather then pretending that they don’t exist or that we are somehow seperate from our brutish social-science cousin, political-science.
But with that said, I respect the fact that (generally speaking) writing in a highly academic language and discussion manner is a normative practice for the majority of those in the field of anthropology. However on a open-blog, unless moderators change posting criteria, they shouldn’t expect every anthropologist to agree to certain styles of writing as if we were putting forth an academic paper.
At any rate, I think that we should still expect civil behaviour and so far overall I’ve seen generally very good behaviour on this particular blog and I like the fact that the topics are all over anthropology and often extremely interesting.