Two Opposing World Views: Rights Versus Duties

"Endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights..."  In this phrase Thomas Jefferson not only proved himself to be a master propagandist but also a fine epitomizer of the Enlightenment idea which was deeply rooted not only in Christianity but the Hebraic seedbed from which the Christian tree grew.  Stop and think about the phrase for a moment for the focus on rights serves to define one side of the greatest, deepest, widest, and most unbridgeable gap between the West and Islam.

The foundational idea which emerged centuries ago in the Hebrew faith is that of free will.  The deity provided human beings with free will, the right to choose.  The right to choose, to either accept the grace, mercy, and gifts of the deity as well as the obligations imposed by the deity or, to reject the deity.  In a slightly different form, free will existed so that humans would have the ability, the right to sin as well as the right to repent.

Free will as part and parcel of the human condition has significance only insofar as the individual has both the capacity and freedom to decide, to choose.  This capacity coupled with the freedom necessary to exercise it constitutes the most basic right of all--the right to decide.

From this beginning the concept of inherent rights, rights which accrued to humans simply as a consequence of being born, grew to include not only the famed trio listed in the Declaration of Independence--life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but the plethora of rights which must exist so that humans could pursue that elusive and subjectively defined condition called "happiness."

The concept of people being imbued with rights by the deity is resident in Christianity from its earliest days.  So is the notion of happiness.  Jesus spoke of a deity who was not a remote, judgmental "father" but rather a kind and indulgent "dad" who very much wanted humans to enjoy, to have fun in the Earth over which man had been granted "dominian."  Jesus enjoyed eating.  He enjoyed drinking in the company of tax collectors and fishermen.  He went to weddings and presumably danced there along with the other guests.  In short, the behavior and words of Jesus bespoke of choosing, of having the right to pursue happiness, of having the right to liberty, the freedom to live and enjoy life.

Rights bring with them the companion necessity of duties.  Duties or obligations derive from the existence of rights, most particularly the right to choose.  When one looks at the history of law in the West, examines how the law has evolved over the generations, a conclusion is evident.  Duties emerged so as to assure that all could exercise their manifold rights freely and without fear.  Duty exists to protect the more fundamental feature of life: rights.  The rights with which humans have been endowed demand the handmaiden of duty.

Indeed the polity and its instrument, government, exist because humans have the right to choose.  Since it is inevitable that some humans will choose not to execute the duties incumbent upon them by virtue of the rights with which they have been endowed, the government must intervene to protect the rights of others against the individual's failure of duty.

Historically it was a simple and direct line: deity to free will, to right to choose, to ever broader rights all accompanied with commensurate duties and, finally, the justification of the state by the requirement that the freedom of the individual to exercise rights does not lead to license, to the absence of duty.  To the Jews, to the Christians, to the sons of the Enlightenment, the existence of rights and the direct linkage of rights with duties was not only self-evident but the sign of a deity directly involved in the nature of the human condition.

Islam has a diametrically opposed view.  The sacred literature of Islam makes clear that the deity has imposed duties on humans.  That the relationship of deity and human demands the human to submit to the duties placed upon him by the deity.  The submission is total.  Every bit as total as the breadth of Islam's authority over all aspects of human life, human society, the human condition, and the material universe.  There is no reference to endowed rights in the sacred writings of Islam.  Put bluntly but accurately, there is no such referent as divinely endowed rights resident in Islam.

While tortured arguments can and have been made which purport to demonstrate the process by which divinely imposed duties lead to rights, the logic is not as clear, simple, and accurate as the rights demand duties contention of the West.  Duties lead only to duties.  Duties also lead to doubts regarding whether or not the individual has adequately and completely performed his duties.  This second consideration can become of greatest importance when evaluating the nature of so-called "radical extremists" and the processes by which these people develop.

There was a time--centuries ago--when Islam made genuflections before the idea of free will and the right to choose.  At one time Islam maintained that the individual believer had to exercise personal judgement in matters of faith, doctrine, and praxis.  But, over time in an insensible fashion, this concept of personal judgement became attenuated.  Finally, it resolved itself to selecting which of the long established and well respected schools of theological jurisprudence one would affiliate.  This process became in practice choosing which local cleric one would follow.

There are a couple of ground truths you have to get a grip on before going further.  The first is Islam means "submission," that is, the total submission of the good slave to the will of the master, in this case the divine creator.  The will of the deity is transmitted through human instruments.  Whether the Prophet Mohammad or an established cleric or the collective of clerics, the human instrument interprets and explains the will of the deity to the community of believers.  The role of the believer is to accept and act upon the message provided by Prophet or cleric or the tradition of theological jurisprudence represented by that cleric.  Hear and obey.

All law comes from the deity through the several human instruments.  This means that insofar as the polity and its manifestation, the government, have legitimacy it is limited to passing and administering laws which apply the revealed will of the deity to a particular time and place.

The Western concept of the role of the government is antipodal to the Islamic ideal.  In the West the polity and its government are legitimate in their actions when and only when these acts serve to reinforce duties and thus protect the free exercise of the divinely imbued rights of the individual.  The government exists to backstop the general concept of rights occasioned duties to meet particular requirements of time and place as well as to accept the reality that humans are imperfect and likely to fail in fulfilling their inherent duties.  The state exists as a melancholy recognition that humans can and do choose to "sin."

OK, bucko, to summarize.  In the Western tradition derived from Hebrew and Christian roots and expanded by the Enlightenment and its follow-ons, rights are inherent to the individual but demand the performance of certain duties so that the rights of all can be exercised freely.  In Islam there is only duty.  There is only submission, total and abject obedience to the will of the deity as interpreted and set forth by human instruments.  There is no such thing as a "right" divine in origin or otherwise.  And, if there are no "rights" accruing to a Muslim, then infidels have no "rights" and even greater duties.

One more point deserves brief consideration before shifting from the general to a few specific examples of the vast gulf between Western rights and Islamic duties.  Both the Western and Islamic practice of jurisprudence rely upon applying universal principles--whether from sacred writings or human made laws and constitutions--to specific matters of fact.

A Western appellate or supreme court (or a Jewish Talmudic judicial body) makes a good faith effort to divine the intentions, purposes, and goals of the authors of the Constitution and amendments to a particular case with specific facts, facts which may have been utterly inconceivable to the original writers.  The judges and justices have some latitude in their translation effort, but are expected to refrain from exercises in creative non-fiction, that is rewriting the original document to meet the predilections of judge or the prejudices of time and place.

The judges or justices may lean to the strict constructionist pole of the spectrum of interpretation.  Or the individual may tilt to the opposite end of the continuum, the pole marked "living document."  As courts at all levels are political bodies and not immune to the winds of public opinion, the courts may veer from one pole to another as times or context changes, but overall the courts must stay within the parameters of precedent or run the very real risk of losing legitimacy in the eyes of the public.  The dynamic tension has resulted historically in jurisprudence which shifts over time but shifts slowly, cautiously, and in a way which allows stability and predictability in the application of law.

The Islamic view of jurisprudence places the greatest weight on precedent.  In a real way the several major schools of theological jurisprudence (and all jurisprudence must be theological in Islamic societies) can be characterized as strict constructionist, more strict constructionist, very strict constructionist and impossibly strict constructionist.  As a result even the most "liberal," most "living document" oriented of the schools, the strict constructionist one, does everything conceivable to "let the decision stand," which is to say fit the facts of a case into an intellectual bed of Procrustes designed and constructed in and for the ways of living in the Arabian Peninsula more than a thousand years ago.  Within the two most "conservative" schools, the temptation simply to lop off the inconvenient and unpleasant facts is irresistible.  That means repress new developments of whatsoever nature when these cannot be fitted on the ancient Arabic framework.

Whew!  That's it for the basics.  The very quick course in the roots of rights and duties in two opposing civilizations is done.  Short, even brutally short, but not inaccurate.

Now for some specifics of contrast.  Let's start with sex.  It is a good place to kick off, since all religions seem to be fixated on bodies thwacking together in a pool of sweat, other sticky liquids, and passion.

No, bucko, we aren't going to pop into the bedroom.  That is too much for the Geek's aging blood pressure.  We are going to start with the public presentation of women.  That's fair.  It is where all sex starts.

In the West a woman has the right to present herself in public in whatsoever way she believes shows her to her best advantage.  She has an untrammeled right to dress, to use makeup, to style her hair however she wants, however she believes will meet her needs and goals for the moment.  In exchange men have the right to an  aesthetic experience.  They have the right to whatever imaginings might result from encountering an attractive woman who presents herself well.

At the same time the man has a duty not to act upon his imaginings in an untoward or improper way.  He has a duty to limit his behavior, to control the hormones regardless of the visual provocation and the resultant fantasies.  If the man fails in his duty--as some will--the state has the obligation to intervene, to punish the man's failure of duty.  That is the job of the state.  It must act in order that women generally may exercise their inherent right to present themselves however they may choose.

The matter is rather different in an Islamic context, particularly one where the more austere and repressive schools of theological jurisprudence reign supreme.  In the sacred writings of Islam, the deity imposes the duty of modest dress on both men and women.  Over the centuries the more severe and austere human interpreters of this duty have defined it to mean that women must be placed in all encompassing garbage bags so as to prevent lust from bursting forth in the minds (and other body parts) of men.  The woman has the sole duty to protect men from their own presumed inability to control their twangers.  The fact that this duty reduces women to perambulating interchangeable lumps without personal identity or freedom is frankly irrelevant.

In the West a woman has the right to choose with whom she will publicly associate.  She has the right to walk down the street with a male coworker, a male friend, a suitor, or anyone (or no one) else.  Again the man, the coworker, the fellow student, the friend has an affirmative duty not to transgress the limits of the non-intimate relationship.  Even the suitor, a potential intimate, has the duty not to go over the edge of what the woman considers to be proper behavior.  Should the man fail in his duty, the government has the obligation to intervene, to punish in order that the general right of all women to select their company may be protected.

Not so in Islam.  The woman has the duty to not appear in public with a man who is not either her husband or a close relative.  She has no right in this matter only duty.

(Yes, it is true that Christianity has exhibited a similar sense of female "duty."  But that came long after the life and death of Jesus.  It was in large measure the artifact of a Church Doctor who was scared to death of his own sexual nature, his own "tumescence."  His own fears offloaded the responsibility on women and the preposterous invention of "original sin" which contended that the surrender of Eve to the smooth talking serpent constituted a rebellion against the deity subsequently transmitted like mitochondrial DNA down the generations.)

In the US as in the West generally people have the right to pursue happiness.  We have the right to have fun.  The Christian roots of the West acknowledge this, even celebrate it.  We can listen to music, participate in or watch sports.  Go to the movies.  Watch television.  Whatever constitutes "fun."

Not so in the more severe and austere parts of Islam.  As the Ayatollah Khomeini famously said, "There is no fun in Islam."  Certainly Taliban, al-Shabaab and other groups advocating violent political Islam agree.  There is a sound foundation for this in the sacred writings of Islam such as the Prophet's prohibition of musical instruments and singing.

Beyond the specific prohibition there is the general duty that all Muslims spend every waking moment possible contemplating the will of the deity, the duties owed the deity, and the requirements of being the perfect slave of the deity.  Music, sports, movies, all these other forms of fun are distractions from the basic duties of determining and obeying the will of the deity, of being the full and complete slave of the creator or the universe and all life.  The total absence of diversions is inherent to Islam--at least as interpreted by some of the deity's human instruments.

There is another, far more critical duty imposed on all Muslims, all members of the ummah.  This is the duty of perfect conformity.  Islam fears disunity.  Islam fears internal divisions.  It fears, therefore, all debate, all disagreement, all dissension.  Inherent to the sacred writings as well as the life of the Prophet, the "perfect man" is the duty to impose perfect uniformity upon all members of the faith community.

Nothing could be at a greater distance from the traditions of the West.  The right to dissent, to disagree, to oppose is a defining hallmark of the West generally and the US in particular.  The right of free expression is specified in the Constitution and well recognized by the courts.  As was true with the recent Westboro Baptist Church case, expression of even the most obnoxious and wounding sort is protected jealously.  The right to hold and express even highly unpopular and distressing views is foundational.  It is also a key to evolution in political, social, cultural, economic, and technological thought and deed.

In some Islamic contexts the dissident, the person standing in opposition to those in power, is subject to dreadful punishments as an apostate, even as one in rebellion against the deity.  Signs of discontent, of dissent, must be stomped on and stamped out lest the faith community be divided against itself.  Whereas in the West dissent and opposition are signs of positive change, in at least some Muslim contexts they are perceived as emblems of evil, refusal to be submissive to the will of the deity as interpreted by the clerics with power.

It is undoubtedly the case that the overwhelming majority of Muslims like their counterparts in Christianity and Judaism wear their religion lightly.  They follow the Five Pillars, perhaps renounce the temptations of John Barleycorn, dress modestly but reject the garbage sack, and are discrete in their sexuality but do not go the entire duty route.  Yes, it may be true, but, unfortunately for the world, it is also irrelevant.

The True Believers of Islam, the men who follow the lead of the most strict constructionist and impossibly strict constructionist schools of theological jurisprudence, the men who desperately fear the wrath of the deity, the fires of the pit, are the men who set the agenda for political Islam both violent and otherwise.  These are the men who take the duty of offensive jihad most seriously.  They are the men who are willing to die in fulfilling this duty--provided they can kill a suitable number of infidels, apostates, or the merely unfortunate in the process.  These men, the men who proudly proclaim they love death more than we infidels love life, are the fountainheads of terror, fear, war.

Their sense of duty.  Their commitment to the duty of offensive jihad like their dedication to the other duties serves to define Islam in the minds of most of us in the West.  These men are the enemy.  But what gives them a power far greater than their numbers may merit is the simple fact that they can invoke the pervasive sense of duty which is inherent to the religion.

It has often been stated that rights without duties leads to degenerate license.  That is true historically.  Equally true in the historical record is the blunt fact that duties without commensurate rights leads to fatal extremism which harms not only the target but the faith community which produces the attacks.

Rights must be balanced with duties.  So also must duties be balanced by rights.  The West has gotten the balance right.  Islam has not.  Unless and until Islam does address this reality effectively, the conflict of civilizations will continue and grow.  The responsibility rests with Muslims, particularly those Muslims who are not True Believers in the duty of offensive jihad.

Yo! Muslims! You Had Best Read History--Yours And Ours

Islamic societies have never been big on history.  They tend to be worse in consulting the past than even Americans.  Islam qua Islam argues against the study of history alleging that there was nothing worth knowing of the past before the arrival of the Prophet and that, since the revelations, nothing is worth knowing other than the lives of exemplary Muslims who merit study due to their living lives of faith, virtue, and conquest.

In a major way this absence of any pervasive understanding of the past, the history of Muslim societies and polities as well as that of the West, is pivotal in the rise of fear driven violent political Islam.  Muslims have felt with great accuracy for many years that people in the West have mocked and derided them and their faith, have presented one dimensional stereotypes, have trivialized, marginalized, and patronized Muslims generally and Arab Muslims in particular.

The pervasive feeling of deprecation and the sense the West has ridden roughshod over the desires, needs, aspirations, and, most importantly, dignity of Muslims and Muslim majority states has fueled the fear which has propelled violent political Islam to its status today--the greatest single threat confronting not only the West but the globe.  Even though most of the insults have been both unintended and inadvertent--such as the portrayal of Arabs as lascivious sheiks on horseback carrying off beautiful (presumably) Christian maidens to their harems--or the more recent all Arabs are dark, sinister terrorists--the effect upon even Westernized, multilingual European and American educated Muslims has been hurtful.  Hurt breeds fear.

Fear inevitably expresses itself in attempts to coerce respect from the disrespectful, acceptance from those who have been disdainful, or at least anxiety on the part of the contemptuous.  None of this, none of the dynamic which has resulted in the current global insurgency mounted by those whose antidote to fear is the espousal of violent political Islam would have been necessary had only Muslims understood their own history and possessed some knowledge of that of the West including the Great Satan, the US.

There is an old cliche to the effect that those who do not learn from history are condemned to relearn the lessons of history from their own mistakes.  Like all cliches this one contains a sizable grain of truth.  Had Muslims taken a look at the sorry blood soaked record of the Christian West in which the people of the word took recurrent counsel of their fears with the result that war became the normative condition of life for centuries, they might have concluded that regardless of the positive effects ultimately created from the windrows of corpses, there was no need for Muslims to repeat the process.

Had Muslims coupled the study of the European record with an examination of the long years of the Ottoman Empire, they might well have concluded, with accuracy it should be added, that their religion had given a base for a period of remarkable peace, noteworthy internal tolerance, and an environment of tranquility which may not have resulted in the technological and organizational advances of Europe and the US during the same time but did provide an acceptable quality of life for the vast majority of Muslims living under Ottoman sway.  The history of the Ottoman Empire as well as the lands and people on its periphery provide a powerful argument in favor of the contention that Islam was superior to Christianity as practiced in the West.

As the flames of Muslim conquest faded to cool ashes and stability under an admittedly ramshackle empire, the main feature of life that ensued was the preeminence of the mystical,  inward looking, liturgy rich Sufi school with its emphasis on inner peace being reflected in interpersonal harmony, charity, compassion, and empathy.  The "wordless" approach of the Sufis brought interpersonal peace quite unlike the "wordy" Christian understanding with recurrent wars over the precise words, doctrine, and dogma which defined a particular group.

If the primary goal of any religion is the assurance of a better state of inner and outer peace, a community exhibiting compassion, empathy, and charity as well as the feeling on the part of the believer that the will of the deity is being followed, the Islam of the long centuries between the end of the Western crusades and the encroachment of the West less than two centuries ago passes the test by any standard.  If the same standards are applied to the Christian West, the assessment must be that Christianity failed.

It is true that the West drove technological development, mastered new forms of governmental process, invented the essentials of modern economics, created entirely new forms of social, political, and economic organization while the Muslims were static in all these areas.  But, it deserves noting that stasis or a very slow pace of change are normative across the entire sweep of human history to the extent that the Western explosion following the Seventeenth Century is without precedent or equal.

It is true that wherever and whenever the West has placed its heavy foot on a traditional society, the results have been severely disruptive particularly so when the traditional society reacts by attempting a forced draft emulation of the West.  On occasion--think Japan and China--the arrival of the West and the response to that arrival has been bloody and destructive.

The wise Muslim might benefit from examining the history of the consequences of the encounters with the West experienced by both Japan and China as well as the immediate aftermath of the encounters.  Then this hypothetical wise Muslim might ask if he wanted his people, his society, to go the same route or is there a better way, a way which takes the best from Muslim history in a way which allows features of Western origin to be absorbed and employed with greatest benefit.

In considering the history of the relations between Japan and the West following the mid-Nineteenth Century, it is important for our hypothetical Muslim student to consider the history of the US, in particular how the US embodies in concentrated form the predominant feature of the Christian West, a feature which was the necessary product of centuries of war, wars of religion and nation.  That feature is simply a capacity for what can be best called "absolutism."

In the real world of history, the term "absolutism" means that the US, to an extent which may surpass the standard set in Europe, pursues victory in war with an intensity which almost surpasses description.  As the war in the Pacific demonstrates clearly, the American people once roused, will fight with a degree of ferocity and resolve which is either most admirable or most despicable depending on one's point of view.  We showed in the Pacific war a willingness to dehumanize the enemy of the highest sort.  This tendency to absolutism not only rests close to the surface of the American public, it is what gave US troops the capacity to win against what normally would be considered unbeatable odds.

When the absolutist button is pushed, the Americans and Europeans (particularly the British) have demonstrated time after time a willingness to use virtually all means necessary to win.  Our hypothetical Muslim student might wonder at what point the button marked "absolutism" will be pushed in today's conflict with the practitioners of armed political Islam.  He might wonder if the redress of fear will be worth the ultimate butchers' bill if the Americans are pushed too far.

History also shows that the American public is slow to reach the absolutist point, but it always gets there, if pushed long and hard enough, particularly by people whose behavior is inexplicable to most Americans.  This was evident in the war with Japan.  Before that it was part and parcel of the centuries of war against the Native Americans.  A close reading of the record of these wars should convince any observer that the Americans have a limit which cannot be crossed without great and negative consequences.

The historically literate Muslim would have a unique vantage point.  From this point he can easily see the greatness of his own faith over a long sweep of time.  He can see as well the potentials of seeking to out do the West using only the tools of the West.  He can understand the risks being taken by the adherents of violent political Islam, risks which will be widely distributed on Muslims generally.  He can (or should be) see the potential benefits of combining the inner directed faith of the Sufi understanding with desirable features of Western provenance such as democracy, an independent judiciary, the concept of the King's Peace, an open press and so forth.

In short, the historically aware Muslim would be in a perfect position to meld the best of his faith tradition with the most worthy of Western products for the good of all both Muslim and non-Muslim.  But none of this is  possible for those Muslims whose awareness of the past is limited to fear producing Western insults and slights no matter how unintended.  The historically blind are condemned to undercut the interests of their own people and empower the most implacable enemies of Islam in the West.

It is far better to hit the books and get smart than it is to build a bomb and get dead.  Words to the wise.

What The West Sowed Now It Reaps

Pull up a log and sit around the fire.  It is history time, folks.  Specifically it is time to consider the sea change in the nature of Islam which started in the mid-Nineteenth Century and continues at an accelerating pace today.  More, it is time to take a look at how the nature and focus of Western understandings of the basis of organized social, political and, yes, religious life had the unintended consequence of letting loose the forces of political Islam including its violent, armed expression which constitutes the greatest threat facing the West today and into the future.

The necessary starting point, however, is today.  Right now.  A poll conducted by the highly respected and very careful Pew Research Center shows that in several key Muslim majority countries a majority of people want their religion to play a central role in politics.  This means that, among other matters, the majority want to see the harsh penalties of Shariah imposed.  They want the strictures of Islamic doctrine to be applied to economic and social matters.  The majority have accepted the view that no government which does not operate in all respects according to the dogma of Islam as interpreted by religious scholars is legitimate.

If, a hundred years or more ago, this poll had been conducted, the results would have been dramatically different.  Even as recently as the start of the Twentieth Century the majority of Muslims were not of the opinion that their religion had a direct political dimension.  The predominant understanding then was--as it had been for several centuries--that Islam operated directly on the individual in his inner life and in the way in which he interacted with and related to other individuals.

A century and more ago the predominant form of Islam was that of the Sufi.  Religious life was internal, predicated on ritual and liturgy.  The goal and intent of religious practice was to achieve a sense of merging with the godhead on one hand and living life in full accord with the personally perceived will of Allah.  Charity, compassion, empathy, accommodation, peaceful relations with all and the quest for peace internally were the primary features of the kind, gentle, and essentially non-doctrinal approach of the Sufis.

Sufis espoused a religion of practice, not doctrine.  They advanced an Islam of wordlessness, not one of dogma over which arguments and disputations could occur--and blood could be shed.  From Somalia to Afghanistan and throughout the Ottoman Empire, the Sufi understanding was the majority view of Muslims.

Largely, it was for this reason that the Ottoman Empire could survive so long even with its decrepit, inefficient, massively corrupt bureaucracy, and ineffective military forces.  It was for this reason that Muslim, Christian, and Jew could and did coexist within the Ottoman Empire with a very high degree of peace, mutual tolerance, and even friendship.  It was for this reason as well that Shia and Sunni could live harmoniously in the province of Iraq.

The Sufi view with its emphasis on the mystical, the inexpressible nature of Allah, the necessity of seeking internal peace and reflecting that inner quality in daily relations had no need of a written creed enforced by clerical decree.  To the Sufi understanding, the written word was largely irrelevant, the idea of dogma or doctrine unthinkable, the notion of killing over differences of interpretation anathema.

When apologists for Islam speak of the religion as one of "peace and tolerance," they are speaking of an understanding of Islam which is long gone.  A form of Islam killed by the ascendancy of creedal Islam, an Islam based on the written word as interpreted by clerical experts.  The Islam of today is an Islam predicated on scripture, scripture which is malleable in the hands of trained exegetes, an Islam which is usable as a political tool.

The shift away from the Islam of the Sufis started in the mid-Nineteenth Century and accelerated slowly at first but with increasing speed for one reason and one reason alone. That reason was the impingement of the West.

The West is a word based entity.  The majority religion of the West--Christianity--is a word based religion without superior.  For centuries in the West the written word was the supreme authority.  All bowed before the totem of the written word.  More importantly, men fought to the death over the written word--and fine points of interpretation.

The cruciality of the written word, of dogma and doctrine to Christianity, became obvious very early in the life of the religion.  During the Great Schism, seventeen hundred years ago, men fought and died over abstruse points--even the existence of a single syllable--regarding the nature of Christ.  Later, doctrine and dogma served as the key litmus test of adherents, of orthodoxy, of the purity of faith.

The word, which is to say the approved words of doctrine and dogma, served to define Christianity as well as to assure that the faith was communal more than individual.  The Reformation and Counter-Reformation served to further embed this dynamic just as two other fulcrum events were taking place.  These were the rise of nationalism and the introduction of movable type printing.

To simplify slightly, the combination of printing and the rise of self-conscious nation-states provided the launching pad for a key definer of the West.  This is simply the primacy of the law before which all are presumed to stand equally.  The law demands the written word and hard fought battles over the precise meaning and applicability of the words as written.

States and organized societies could not exist without the written word any more than Christian denominations could define themselves without it.  National "creeds" joined with religious ones to define and motivate people.   This assured the foundational nature of the written word.  By the Seventeenth Century at the latest, it was literally impossible for people of the West to conceive of a "wordless" faith or of a society which did not invoke the majesty of the written word to solve the frictions within.

The encroachment of the West on the Muslim societies of not only the Ottoman Empire but the very loosely organized polities on the Muslim fringes brought with it a very real clash of cultures.  The clash was, at root, between the "wordy" and the "wordless."

By the late Nineteenth Century it was obvious to the politically articulate of the Muslim societies that the "wordy" folks of the West were getting the best of the interaction.  This started the process of displacing the Sufi understanding from its long held position of prominence.  As the West gained an ever larger hold on the Muslim societies, as the Western footprint grew, one reaction was the development of a more word based form of Islam.

The development of Islamic dogmas and doctrines was a defensive reaction to the encroachment of the West.  It sought to use the prime tool of the West--the word--as an effective counter to the West.  At the same time, the growth of creedal Islam allowed for effective definition of believers as a discrete community with an interpretive center--the cleric.  It provided for Muslims as it had earlier in the Christian West an armature around which self-conscious and self-defined communities could coalesce.

By mid-Twentieth Century, Islam was no longer a religion of individuals, it was no longer a mystical quest for wordless experience of the godhead, it was no longer a faith which sought accommodation, fostered compassion and empathy, but rather was a religion of sects and doctrines, of orthodoxy and apostasy.  In this Islam echoed the earlier experiences of Christianity.

With the word as supreme in Islam, it was not only possible but inevitable that the scripture would be mined for those features which best suited the political aspirations or popular fears of any given moment.  As Islam on paper is the most totalistic of the monotheistic faiths, the quest for political ammunition, for means to define a community as differing from and being better than others was successful.  This, in turn, meant that with faith being communal rather than individual, there was no chance of any separation of faith and political power.

The coming of the word assured that Islam would become political in its focus with the certainty of water flowing downhill.  With the advent of a communal scripture and doctrine based faith, it was also inevitable that there would be a race to the most demanding, most extreme, most austere, most purportedly pure version of Islam as interpreted by the far from neutral clerics.

This particular version of Crane Britton's "co-option to the left" is seen quite explicitly in the sudden reemergence of the Shia-Sunni split in mandated Iraq, in the ascendancy of Salifism and Wahhibism in North Africa and Saudi Arabia, and in the (literally) explosive growth of violent political Islam in the past quarter century.  Once the word based West had put its heavy imprint on the Muslim societies, the consequent response and its later outgrowths had a horrid sort of inevitability which could have been predicted by an unusually perceptive historian of the Western experience.

Of course no such paragon of the historian's craft existed and the West cruised on with its haughty sense of the superiority of its word based views of all aspects of life.  In many, perhaps most, aspects of human experience, this sense of superiority is justified.  The accomplishments of the word are self-evident.  But, like most all good things in life, there is a downside.

That downside is now facing us.  Islamic populations have embraced the word--including all of its potentials as a definer of people and a source of violent conflict with avidity.  It is not shocking that the "co-option to the left (or extreme)" has resulted or that Muslims demand more direct and total use of faith in the political realm.

By understanding the historical context more accurately, we in the West can cast aside the bogus explanations of Muslim hostility such as the "sins" of colonialism or "exploitation" and realize that the word is all conquering.  The Muslims embraced the word because word based approaches to life and its problems work best.  It is a very unfortunate collateral damage that by doing so the Muslims have empowered the most extreme ideas abroad in their intellectual universe with consequences damaging not only to the West but to Muslims as well.

We can take some small comfort in the fact that we in the West have lived through the battles of the words before and come out the better for it.  We can also take some comfort in the fact that by understanding the nature of the intellectual battlefield today, we can fight the long counterinsurgency before us with better tactics and tools.  When night falls the truth remains: Words are defeated by better words.

Turkey Must Be Christian Again!

And, while we're at it so should Egypt, Syria and Iraq. Similarly Iran (nee Persia) should be reclaimed by Zoroastrians.

These sectarian alterations are only in line with the oft repeated trope by various and sundry exponents of Islam to the effect that Jews are recent interlopers on "historic Muslim territory." This superficial plaint overlooks a basic reality of history which applies not only in the disputed territories but throughout the Mideast.

Christianity, for the benefit of those who are historically challenged, emerged in the land now known as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and, most importantly, Turkey. The great traveling salesman of Christianity, the Apostle Paul, worked with effective assiduousness to plant the new faith in gentile communities throughout the region. He did so with words, spoken and written, and not the sword.

The history of early Christianity is the history of the area which became the Eastern Roman Empire with its capital in the new city of Constantinople. For centuries before as well as after the moment when Constantine pronounced Christianity to be the state religion, the cities of the East, the bishops of the East, the Emperor of the Eastern Empire (and the Empresses ) created Christianity. The creation of the Church conferences--which occurred without major exception in cities now in Turkey--included the Great Schism which resulted in the split between Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic confessions.

The Eastern Roman Empire was Christian. So also was the North African littoral during the period of Visigoth domination. Constantinople outranked Rome as the center of Christianity. For centuries the same can be said of Alexandria, the center of the ancient Coptic church. Other cities of the (now) Arab Mideast were rivals of both Rome and Constantinople. While there was fighting between the Christians of differing perspectives on such key issues as the nature of the Trinity, the nature of the Christ, it is important to note that expansion of Christianity did not rely exclusively or even primarily on the use of armed force.

The most critical result of the internecine warfare which blotted so much of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh centuries was the weakening of the vibrant Christian communities of the Mideast so that no organized resistance could be mounted when the sword waving Muslims exploded out of the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula. So demoralized were the Christians of the region following the generations of internal fighting that the Muslims were initially welcomed as the bearers of peace and tranquility. (That view would change.)

Constantinople, however, held out. The wars between the Byzantines and the Muslims saw Christian fortunes wax and wane. Still, the ancient capital of the Eastern Empire held out--even after it was sacked by Crusaders of Catholic adherence. Not until 1453 and then only because two renegade Christians, one British and the other Hungarian, built and operated the giant artillery pieces capable of demolishing the city's walls were the Muslims--Seljuk Turks--successful in militarily obliterating Christianity there, replacing it with an Islam of forced conversion.

Turkey has been Muslim for only 557 years. Before that it had been Christian for more than ten centuries. By the reasoning employed Muslims as regards Israel and Palestine, the followers of Islam are recent interlopers not entitled to a right of peaceful enjoyment of the conquered Christian land.

The same analogy applies to other one time Christian centers of the Mideast. Sure, the Muslims have been squatting in these historically Christian areas for longer, but they established their presence by force of arms, by conquest, by subjugation of the indigenous population and culture--including religion. From Iraq to the Atlantic coast of Morocco, Christians whether Arian or Orthodox, Coptic or Roman Catholic were suppressed, robustly.

Following the Muslim line of logic--that "recent" arrival and the use of force equals illegitimacy, it is only right that Egypt be returned to the Copts, Morocco to the Arians (if any have survived their repression by Rome for "heresy.") Turkey must be given back to the Eastern Orthodox Church (and the great church of Hagia Sophia be restored to its pre-Muslim grandeur.) The bloody success of the Shia of Iran must be rectified by a bringing back of Zoroastrian beliefs.

Of course these reversions are as realistic as Obama's vision of a world free of the nuclear djinn. However, as a thought experiment the exercise does underscore the absurdity of the Muslim argument that Israel is a foreign implant in the authentic eternal body of Islam. It also shows the intellectual bankruptcy of the Muslim notion holding that the Iberian Peninsula having once been conquered and subjugated by force now belongs forevermore to the Sons of the Prophet.

Listen up, Muslims and apologists, history has no independent existence. It is not some sort of force standing apart from the actions of humanity. Rather it is a record, a record of, in part, winners and losers. The Christians lost in their own historic heartland--and they got over it. Muslims "lost" in Israel. They can't get over it.

The choice for the Muslims is simple: Accept the fact that your wars and terrorism have failed; or, accept more misery and death in the years to come. In either event your choices will not be an invocation of "history" but rather making more entries on the record of human actions, both the wise and the stupid.