Conservatives feel heat from Norway
Whatever the political, religious or cultural motivations behind the Oslo bombing and shootings by Anders Behring Breivik, his actions have put American conservatives who he cited as inspirations on the spot. Folks like Pamela Geller, of the “Ground Zero” mosque infamy, and Jihad Watch author Robert Spencer, who Breivik cited numerous times in his 1,500-page manifesto, are facing the same questions that for years they have put to Muslims about Islam, and they are not too happy about the karmic blowback, as I write in my latest RNS story:
“Attempts to link us to these murders on the basis of alleged postings by the murderer mentioning us are absurd and offensive,” Geller wrote at her website, Atlas Shrugs. Breivik “is responsible for his actions. He and only he.”
Spencer also rejected suggestions that Breivik “has anything remotely to do with anything we have ever advocated.” In a later blog posting, he grew even more defiant: “The Breivik murders are being used to discredit all resistance to the global jihad and Islamic supremacism. But we’re stealing it back.”
Other conservatives deployed calmer arguments to put distance between Breivik and conservatism and Christianity, much as Muslims try to distinguish between “genuine” Islam and the actions of extremists.
New York Times columnist Ross Douthat argued that Breivik bore much the same relationship to conservatism as the notorious anti-technology Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski, did to Al Gore’s environmentalism—which is to say, hardly any.
Douthat instead advised his fellow conservatives to push back against such analogies—and what he saw as liberal efforts to exploit the tragedy for political gain—by acknowledging Breivik as a “right-winger” but at the same time reasserting the truth of their own convictions about Islam and the wider cultural peril facing the West. If Breivik shared some of those convictions, Douthat argued, his actions don’t automatically invalidate them.
Bruce Bawer, who lives in Oslo and is author of “Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom,” made a similar argument in The Wall Street Journal, writing that Breivik had hurt his cause.
“In Norway, to speak negatively about any aspect of the Muslim faith has always been a touchy matter, inviting charges of `Islamophobia’ and racism,” Bawer wrote. “It will, I fear, be a great deal more difficult to broach these issues now that this murderous madman has become the poster boy for the criticism of Islam.”
I’m not sensing a trend toward repentance among these conservatives, so I don’t expect the taste of their own medicine to change much. But I do end the piece with what think is the most thoughtful quote on the episode that I’ve seen:
“If Islamic people do something bad, you think, `Oh, it’s Muslims,’” Sigrid Skeie Tjensvoll told The Washington Post. “But if a white Protestant does something bad, you just think he’s mad. That’s something we need to think about.
PS: Time’s Massimo Calabresi has a great post on how the WSJ editorial page blamed Muslims on Saturday then tried to stuff their error down the Memory Hole. Not cool. Others tried to do much the same.
UPDATE Part Two: David Goldman of First Things, aka “Spengler” of the Asia Times, does some maneuvers worthy of the Cirque de Soleil in trying to cordon Breivik off from conservatives while arguing that Islamists are the real problem. His opening line would be hilarious if it weren’t so spooky:
There are moments when we should suppress the impulse to make sense of things.
Of course, he can resist anything except that temptation. Alas.
Just read this article about the conservative Dinesh D’Souza, the new president of the evangelical King’s College in Manhattan. He says he hopes the college will produce “dangerous Christians”.
http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/kings-college-2011-8/index3.html
Disgustingly, the Catholic Church and Christian fundamentalists like the Bachmanns are being tarred with the Norwegian crimes. Why must liberals in their accusatory zeal end up behaving exactly like the Islamophobes they shun? The Norwegian police categorized the killer as a Christian fundamentalist on the basis of the Crusade fantasies in his manifesto, ignoring the fact that he supports atheist Christianity (sic) as an affirmation of European cultural superiority and exclusionism. Mein Kampf could be labeled Christian fundamentalism in the same way. To tar Catholic and Protestant conservatives with the obscene crime is playing dirty and is a kind of hate speech.
Ann Olivier, you associate D’Souza with the obscene killer — this is one of your wildest flights. Jesus said “I bring not peace, but the sword” — do you link Him also with neonazi slayers? That D’Souza intends the phrase “dangerous Christians” in the sense of Jesus, and not in a perverted neonazi sense, is clear: ““We don’t avoid tough issues; we plunge into them,” D’Souza said in his first speech as president of King’s. “We engage [our opponents] in a civil way, seeking to convince not only with the clarity of our reason but also by our winsome manner.””
The politically opportunistic blame game starts so soon? This reminds me of a Rahm Emanuel quote: “never let a good crisis go to waste.”
Douthat is right. The terrible actions of one extremely disturbed individual does not repudiate the conservative critique of mindless liberal immigration policy and ideologically-inspired globalist politics that seek to erase boarders regardless of consequence. This is especially true considering the damage such policies do to blue-collar workers and local communities. Europe is rife with problem due to these illogical politics and the right-center critique as such did not cause this attack.
Would the left be at fault if a disgruntled/unhinged individual of their own political persuasion attacked a shareholders meeting a large corporation? Although the left has put forward severe critiques and hyperbole regarding “fat-cats” and the diabolical nature of the business community, they would not be culpable for such a tragedy.
Heated policy debates and arguments over the common good are not the cause of such attacks by the left or the right — it is first rate political opportunism and demagoguery to suggest otherwise.
Let’s not forget who else this nut quotes in his “manifesto” according to Mark Steyn:
Theodore Dalrymple, Daniel Pipes, Roger Scruton, Melanie Phillips, Daniel Hannan (plus various pieces from NR by Rod Dreher and others) — and many other people, including Churchill, Gandhi, Orwell, Jefferson, John Locke, Edmund Burke, Bernard Shaw, Mark Twain, not to mention the U.S. Declaration of Independence.* Those new “hate speech” codes the Left is already clamoring for might find it easier just to list the authors Europeans will still be allowed to read.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/272617/islamophobia-and-mass-murder-mark-steyn
Some say that since he urged traditionalist Catholicism, albeit of atheist case, the Catholic Church must take some blame! The language of hate is opportunistic by its nature. The same sort of tarring Christianity by association can be applied in the case of Hitler. Oh no, say the tarrers, Hitler was clearly anti-Catholic! Yet Friedrich Heer in his book on “The Faith of Adolf Hitler” interpreted Hitler as an Austrian Catholic, against the legend that ‘Holy Austria’ was violated by someone with no home or faith. Hitler’s eschatological fixation on a final battle between Good and Evil, Light and Darkness (cf. final solution) drew on his religious background. ‘Saving the West’ from Jewish-led Bolshevism was, according to the author of ‘Mein Kampf’ was ‘the work of the Lord.’ It amazes me that people who call themselves “liberals” have fallen into this bad reasoning, fouling their own nest.
Wow. American conservatives conspired to murder eighty-five Norwegian children. I’m shocked. Thank you, David, for shining a spotlight on this. Who’d have known?
In looking for a precise number just now, google offered this:
http://theforeigner.no/pages/news/thousands-of-norwegian-children-sexually-abused/
No doubt more work of American conservatives. Where will it stop?
A couple of early morning thoughts:
1 – Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer are perhaps better termed “extremists” than “conservatives”. I say this at least partly in the hope that this terminology makes it easier for conservatives (like Ross Douthat and some regular commenters here) to join the rest of us in condemning such extremist behavior and rhetoric.
2 – This recent Esquire article by Charles Pierce http://www.esquire.com/features/homegrown-terrorism-us-0811 is worth reading and meditating on. Pierce uses the occasion of the failed Spokane MLK Day bombing to argue that because of our common humanity, the politics of Anders Brievik and Jared Loughner are not separate from us. Although written and published before the Norway massacre, Pierce’s intellectual arguments are, in many ways, a detailed (and, to my mind, devastating) critique of David Goldman’s column linked to in the 2nd update above.
Spencer and Geller preach suspicion of Muslims and compulsory assimilation to Western mores, but rarely (if ever) expulsion and never murder. On the other hand, murder is preached every Friday in mosques around the globe, including in the West. It is reasonable to say that those who preach hatred and murder are partly responsible when murder occurs, but not those who merely preach hatred. Allowing people to preach hatred has many undesirable consequences, but forbidding people to preach hatred has even worse consequences.
The meme that Breivik was a Christian in the same sense that bin Laden was a Muslim is mere wordplay, and clumsy wordplay at that. Breivik used “Christian” the way Americans use “white.” It was his designation for the mainstream culture on a continent where minorities are not racially distinct. He has probably never heard of the Incarnation, the Redemption or the Resurrection.
David,
thank you for the link to “Spengler’s” piece that I would probably not have seen.
I was moved by it, in a way that you clearly were not. He writes:
“Grief – wrenching, uncomprehending and mute grief – is the response that life elicits to the appalling deaths of so many people, so many of them children. Our silence and our tears in the face of repudiation of life bears witness to life. ”
I think that further develops his opening line.
I confess I can’t see the basis of your claim that he is “arguing that Islamists are the real problem.”
Breivik saw a threat to European civilization and decided to commit a crime to call attention to the danger to Europe and thereby to avert an even greater evil. That is, he killed 80 people so that a whole civilization might be saved. He was a practical exponent of proportionalist consequentialism. He ignored the moral absolute: you shall not murder.
Similarly the Unabomber and eco-terrorists were so certain that our way of life threatens the planet that they commited crimes to call attention to the anger we are facing. It looks like Ivins saw that the U.S. could be devastated by bioterrorism, and conducted the anthrax attacks to call attention to the danger that Congress was neglecting.
We too often think we understand history, and do wrong so that good may come of it.
But is Edward Abbey responsible for ecoterrorism? Should we not talk about dangers to the environment for fear that it might inspire ecoterrorism? Should we not consider what effect the combination of the demographic winter and Moslem immigration will have on Europe for fear it might inspire people like Breivik?
“Spencer and Geller preach suspicion of Muslims and compulsory assimilation to Western mores, but rarely (if ever) expulsion and never murder.”
Once you cast a group as suspicious and conspiratorial you open the way and implicitly invite violence. We are aware of the dangers of rhetoric by the very public murders of gay people. If you listen or mingle with the crowd that regales in Limbaugh you will find many who care less if a million blacks, muslims or Jews were thrown into incinerators. We use the phrase “incendiary language” for a reason. It is like saying “I told you to rough him up a bit. I didn’t say to kill him.” You preach suspicion and hate, you unleash the worst in human beings.
I think that an element of the situation is the WAY in which we talk about dangers of every stripe. Public political discourse is filled with finger-pointing accusation as well as with predictions of absolute disaster. Discerning what the truth of matters might be, takes commitment and perseverance as well as a tolerance for the often confusing emotionality of this accusation or that prediction. I’ve been an educator for years and I know that there are fragile people, many fragile people who get blasted by the emotions and make their plans accordingly–survivalists, those caught up in the extremes of identity politics, ecology and religions. We have to take responsibility for the effect that endless public accusations and predictions of disaster have on such fragile people. Bomber/shooters like Breivik bear responsibility for their actions but they are not acting from a mysterious void—the context of contemporary political discourse plays a noticeable part in such events.
Islam is a “western” religion—from the same “family tree” as Judaism and Christianity.
For most of the past two millenia (starting in the early 700s in what is now Spain, continuing until the fall of the Ottoman Empire after WW I), there have been Muslim-dominated governments/societies on the European mainland.
From those two facts I would draw the conclusion that there is a heavy burden of proof on those who argue that Islam is a threat to “western civilization” or to European culture.
Tangentially, to the extent that we Christians are heirs to the Crusades, it seems to me that tragedies like the one in Norway are, among other things, reminders that further repentance is in order.
“Once you cast a group as suspicious and conspiratorial you open the way and implicitly invite violence.”
This is a false statement. The part about “opening a way” shows how false; when you saw what a weak thesis you proposing, you carefully provided yourself with an escape hatch.
I think you are right about Limbaugh’s listeners’ personal sentiments about minorities. But they do not commit murder. Millions of people listen to him every morning on their way to work, then calmly shut off the radio, turn their attention to other things and work peacefully and harmoniously with members of those minorities for the rest of the day. Hearing hatred does not cause murder.
Moreover, the public authorities in Boston have been casting muggers as suspicious and conspiratorial for decades, but mugging has remained a flourishing profession in spite of their “hate speech.”
Interesting the reactions when the shoe is on the other foot. Whether conservative and right-wing extremists are some how responsible for Breivik is another and a dicey question, but what is telling is that these conservatives are facing the same reaction they deploy against others, usually Muslims, though often liberals and Obama and such.
And they don’t seem to like it, judging by the caterwauling. So it goes.
Bob, I think Goldman’s sentiment is an admirable one, but I think it is undermined by his effort in the rest of the piece to bracket off groups he likes (Israelis, conservatives) while using the tragedy to smear Muslims, who he does not like:
That hardly seems like an admirable thing, and it is the exact opposite of the sentiment he expresses in the beginning.
@David Gibson (7/25, 9:27 am) I just want to follow on about a flaw in Goldman’s column. The argument that violent right-wing extremists are not “sociological phenomena, but radical anomalies” is precisely the point Pierce rebuts in his Esquire piece about the failed Spokane bombing:
“At the beginning of this year, not long after they’d found the bomb on the bench in Spokane, a journalist named David Neiwert put together a list of nearly thirty acts of right-wing political violence that had taken place, or had been foiled, in the United States since the summer of 2008 — or roughly since Barack Obama’s presidency began to be seen as a genuine possibility. The list began with Jim David Adkisson, who killed two people in a Unitarian church in Tennessee because he was angry at how “liberals” were “destroying America.” It included two episodes in April 2009, one in Pittsburgh and one in Florida, in which men who were sure that Barack Obama’s government was coming for their guns opened fire on law-enforcement officers who had come to investigate them on other matters.
Some of the crimes on the list were briefly sensational — Scott Roeder’s murder of Dr. George Tiller in Wichita, or Joseph Andrew Stack’s flying his small plane into a building in Austin in protest of the Internal Revenue Service, or the incoherent array of violent crimes committed by the “Sovereign Citizens Movement.” But most of them barely made the national radar at all. In December 2008, a woman in Belfast, Maine, named Amber Cummings shot to death her sleeping husband, James, who’d been savagely abusing her. Upon arriving at the Cummings home, investigators found Nazi paraphernalia and a stash of chemicals indicating that James Cummings was preparing to make a “dirty bomb” that he planned to detonate at Obama’s inauguration. Except in the local media, that aspect of the case disappeared completely. James Cummings and his bomb had nothing to do with Scott Roeder’s handgun or Joe Stack’s airplane.
It is a fertile time for such things. The country elected a black president with an exotic name. The economy, wrecked by a rigged game at the highest levels, continued to grind through a jobless recovery. The national dialogue grows coarser and wilder, and does so at a pace accelerated by technology. People sense the fragmentation — things are falling apart — even while they take refuge in those fragments of life that seem safest and most familiar.”
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/features/homegrown-terrorism-us-0811-2#ixzz1TDfWVt1L
Bill Mazzella got it right:
there are lots of extremists among concervatives, even if they don’t kill people;(how nice), but not all aconservatives are extremists.
Unfortunately, most are intransigent in their ideolopgical love and are killing our country -but that’s another thread.
Here’s a link to David Niewert’s map of domestic right-wing “terroristic violence” (to use his phrase) over the past three years:
http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/violence-directed-liberal-and-govern
It seems to me that (1) David Gibson’s original post lumps Geller and Douthat together as if they were the same kind of conservatives, and (2) many responses here react to the partisan lumping and misunderstand Gibson’s main point about “the shoe being on the other foot.”
Let’s focus on (1). This seems to me to be Gibson’s main point: conservatives tend to think of Muslims as a single entity and don’t distinguish among radical and moderate Muslims. (Or, at least, don’t distinguish enough.) So conservatives tend to attack Muslims indiscrimately, including moderate ones. But now that the spotlight is on conservatives, they immediately protest and make all sorts of distinctions between themselves and the likes of Breivik.
My bad. It should be “Let’s focus on (2).”
“’ve been an educator for years and I know that there are fragile people, many fragile people who get blasted by the emotions and make their plans accordingly–survivalists, those caught up in the extremes of identity politics, ecology and religions. We have to take responsibility for the effect that endless public accusations and predictions of disaster have on such fragile people.”
Molly,
Too true. Still, how to do this without minimizing some very real and sometimes threatening problems, like the ecological disasters that loom.
I say one way is to try to change the culture into one in which rationality is valued, not scorned. Too often Americans are anti-intellectual, anti-egg-head, anti-reason, whatever you want to call it. The consequence is that self-criticism, a mark of a rational person, is not valued in this society. By default many people appeal to their feelings as the ultimate revelation of what is — the “I FEEL that X is so” symdrome. When those peoplel are paranoid and very crazy society is in very big trouble, and it doesn’t make any dfference whether the crazies are coming from the liberal or conservative ends of the political spectrum.
Luke –
Yes, historically the Christians and Muslims have wronged each other. But Americans are not usually taught the whole story, I think: the Muslims started the wars. Having converted North AFrica by conquest, they conquored Spain, but did not succeed in finally establising Islam as the religion of Spain. They also tried to conquor Gaul. (I had French ancestors who moved to northern Spain to fight the Muslims. It still hasn’t been forgotten in my family. Kind of like the Irish and the English though the memories aren’t that sharp.) There were great battles between the French/Gauls and Muslims at Bordeau and Toulouse. Finally at the Battle of Tours in 732 the Muslims were decicively beaten, but they had made it all the way to Paris at one point.
So the notion that the Muslims are justified in their animosity to Christians because of the Crusades is not exactly true. They started it.
Are Muslims being ethnically cleansed from Europe or the US in a similar manner that Christian are being attacked, oppressed and driven from the Middle East (esp. Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, Iran, and Afganistan)? I hardly think so.
Is there a Christian al queda? Does the New Testament call for jihad and conquest?
While many, many of Muslims are not engaged in violence or supportive of this trend, it does not change the facts on the ground or the words in the Koran.
Gibson making a false equivalence between this isolated incident of a deranged right-wing “Christian” attack and systematic violence against non-muslims found throughout the Islamic world and terror in the West.
Like I said, this is pure political opportunism.
@Ann Olivier (7/26, 12:22 pm) Can we agree that Muslims started *some* of the wars? (If for no other reason than “they started it” is uncomfortably schoolyardish rhetoric.)
I recently read “Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes” by Tamim Ansary. He argues that from an Islamic perspective the 732 C.E. Battle of Tours was trivial, almost to the point of insignificance. Northern Europe (i.e., the part not connected by water to the Mediterranean) simply wasn’t that important at that time—nor would it be for several more centuries. (IIRC, the armies of both the 13th century Khans and 14th century Timur-e-lang stopped conquering in the West at least partly because western Europe was so relatively poor and uncivilized that it wasn’t worth the fight.)
When the Franks (as Muslims identified them) arrive in the Middle East to wage the Crusades, Muslims were (according to Ansary) alternately bewildered at the Crusaders’ motives and horrified at their bloodthirstiness. (And it’s largely after the Crusades that *jihad* acquires its most warlike and fanatical interpretation.)
For large stretches of what we call the Middle Ages, most Muslim rulers were more tolerant of religious minorities (particularly Jews and Christians, the “people of the Book”) than most Christian rulers.
This is not an apologia for Islam on my part. It’s more in the nature of a plea that we Western Christians work harder at understanding the experiences of other peoples in the world, and then bring that understanding into our encounters with them today.
Most people of common sense realize that the actions of shooters like Breivik have nothing to do with the political commitments of most people; nonetheless whenever these events happen, we immediately get reams of advice/hand-wringing from the left on how dangerous conservative thought is. Indeed its so commonplace, its become an almost rote piece trotted out by the commentariat. Yet they never mention groups like Code Pink or nefarious liberal groups who routinely disrupt public meetings and who have used incendiary language, or those liberal groups primarily in Europe who have used REAL violence to try to disrupt trade summits, or the rhetoric of the union leader in NJ who last month publicly referred to Gov. Christie as “Adolf Christie”.
And I find it strange that the two “American conservatives” cited in the piece above I have never in my life heard of before reading their names (and I like to consider myself a well-read conservative).
Luke, thanks for the links to the very good Esquire piece.
Brett, I’m not sure I’m the one making the false equivalencies. Did I say that U.S. conservatives are responsible for Breivik? I don’t think so.
Jeff, I’m not sure what you are saying. First that the actions of folks like Breivik have no connection to political arguments, and then that political arguments from the left do inspire violence. A point of this article and post is that the logic and tactics run both ways. It’s painful to be hoist on your own petard, as they say, and who among us finds it easy to looks at our own reflection. But that kind of soul-searching is to my mind one of the fundamental roles of religion.
As for Pamela Geller, it’s certainly hard to believe that you haven’t heard of her if you followed the Ground Zero mosque controversy at all, or any of the other conservatives/right-wingers mentioned here. But perhaps you spend too much time among the liberals at dotCommonweal…
@Brett (7/26, 12:29 pm)
“Are Muslims being ethnically cleansed from Europe or the US in a similar manner that Christian are being attacked, oppressed and driven from the Middle East (esp. Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, Iran, and Afganistan)?”
No. However, Muslims were “ethnically cleansed” from Spain in 1492. Additionally, western Europeans spent the better part of two centuries trying to “ethnically cleanse” the Holy Land via the Crusades. And there was the spectacularly—and horrifyingly—successful effort by Germans to “ethnically cleanse” Europe of Jews in the last century. Here in what is now the United States, we’ve had our own experiences with genocide and ethnic cleansing—beginning almost as soon as the English first secured a foothold on the Atlantic coast.
Without minimizing how badly Christians are treated in many parts of the Middle East, it’s also worth noting (I think) that the vast majority of the world’s Muslims live in other parts of the world; and in many of those countries Christians are not subject to that kind of persecution.
“Is there a Christian al queda?” No. Are there historical examples of equivalently violent and terorristic Christian organizations? Yes.
“Does the New Testament call for jihad and conquest?” I don’t think so. Neither do many (most?) Christians today. However, Pope Urban II and St. Bernard of Clairvaux—among other devout Christians—thought (and acted) differently. Certainly we Christians have found justification for violence and war in our Scriptures for even longer than Muslims have found similar justification in the Koran.
“(T)his is pure political opportunism.” Mr. Gibson can speak for himself, but I’d like to think that I can love my faith, my country and my heritage without having to defend or ignore the ugly and sinful parts of them.
“This seems to me to be Gibson’s main point: conservatives tend to think of Muslims as a single entity and don’t distinguish among radical and moderate Muslims. (Or, at least, don’t distinguish enough.) ”
historyman —
Indeed. Not making enough distinctions is a very large part of being irrational. Rationality requires recognition of differences. Otherwise we fall prey to black/white thinking, the self-blinding that makes us our own worst enemy.
Complexity, complexity. Whether we like it or not, complexity, complexity.
Luke,
Those are valid points; however, they must be taken in historical context and in regards to the development of each distinct tradition. While Christian may have acted in a similar fashion 700 years ago (i.e. politicized religion that emphasized conquest and conversion by force), we actively condemn such things today as distortions of Christianity. Why then has Islam not progressed in a similar fashion? Why is it still dominated by violence and conquest 700 years after the fact?
To say that we have done terrible things in the past as a method of equivocation between modern Islam and Christianity is to ignore real differences and real problems in the name of a false tolerance.
Rene Girard has something interesting to say on the subject:
“The Crusades were an archaic regression without consequences for the essence of Christianity. Christ died everywhere and for everyone. Seeing Jews and Christians as falsifiers is more irremediable. It allows Muslims to eliminate all serious discussion, all comparison among the three religions. It amounts to not wanting to see what is at stake in the prophetic tradition. Why has Christian revelation been subject to the most hostile and ferocious possible criticism for centuries, but not Islam?
There is an abdication of reason here. In some respects, it resembles the aporia of pacifism, which can be a strong encouragement for aggression. The Qur’an would thus benefit from being studied in the same way that Jewish and Christian texts have been studied. I think that a comparative approach would reveal that it contains no real awareness of collective murder. By contrast, there is a Christian awareness of such violence.”
Luke –
I agree that there was wrong on both sides. My point was, however, that Muslims, not Christians, were the original aggressors – - they started the wars, they weren’t no lilies. Whehter or not France was poor at the time was, as I see it, irrelevant. Just because you’re poor that’s no justification for your rich neighbor to conquor you. And notice, Tours wasn’t the only attempt to conquor northern Europe, it was just the decisive battle.
Tours was most important to the Franks and resulted in the unification of the French by their leader Charles Martell. He was the first of the Carolingian kings. and the Battle of Tours is seen widely as a thoroughly crucial battle in the history of the whole of Europe.
It seems that history almost always has two sides. At least two.
Luke -=
P. S. They started might be schoolyard rhetoric, but it shows that even children see that something particularly bad has been done by the initiators of the aggression.
David Gibson wrote: As for Pamela Geller, it’s certainly hard to believe that you haven’t heard of her if you followed the Ground Zero mosque controversy at all, or any of the other conservatives/right-wingers mentioned here…
—-
A couple of non sequitors on Gibson’s comment… I assume everyone here knows who Casey Anthony is. I myself never heard of her until the trial. More astoundingly, as learned on my Facebook, a few of my friends had no idea who she was until the day she was found not guilty.
There is a tribute about a deceased NYC music critic by a friend of the critic. The friend wrote something along the line: “I never asked, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Sam did not know who Michael Jordan was.”
Back to this blog, I’m not a conservative but I’ve never heard of Geller or Robert Spencer until the Oslo bombing/shooting. Maybe I need to get out more.
“…we actively condemn such things today as distortions of Christianity. Why then has Islam not progressed in a similar fashion? Why is it still dominated by violence and conquest 700 years after the fact?”
Brett,
Are you kidding? Both world wars involved Christians as principals. And too many Christians knew what Hitler was doing and turned the other way. You might say that many Christian leaders objected, especially John Paul II. So did many Muslim leaders object to terrorists….
“The part about “opening a way” shows how false; when you saw what a weak thesis you proposing, you carefully provided yourself with an escape hatch.
I think you are right about Limbaugh’s listeners’ personal sentiments about minorities. But they do not commit murder. Millions of people listen to him every morning on their way to work, then calmly shut off the radio, turn their attention to other things and work peacefully and harmoniously with members of those minorities for the rest of the day. Hearing hatred does not cause murder.”
Felapton,
Maybe the heat is getting to you. You are right about causation if you want to wax philosophical. We are talking here about influence. A violent influence will lead to violent acts. Thus the tacit approval that many pro lifers gave to the murder of abortion doctors. Yes they did not approve but their silence and sometimes compassion for the murderers speaks volume.
The battle of wo/men’s minds goes on forever. This is why many on this blog who are hacks of the bishops or on their payroll as well as the Vatican seek to influence or sabotage this blog. And if Commonweal were not an independent group there would have been pressure to get certain people the way Thomas Reese was targeted. You must be aware of the violent trend of many right wing blogs. There are some on the left also.
To get back to your example. Many Americans would turn on blacks, Muslims and others, given the opportunity. Just as many Germans, and other Europeans turned on their fellow country persons who were Jews once the “final solution” was going on.
Rhetoric must be accompanied by responsibility.
@Brett (7/26, 1:55 pm) Thanks for your reply, and for your further questions and thoughts.
“While Christians may have acted in a similar fashion 700 years ago (i.e. politicized religion that emphasized conquest and conversion by force)….” There’s a good case to be made that Christian conquest and conversion by force continued until more recently than 700 years ago. Some examples:
*the Columbian conquest of Central, South and parts of North America by the Spanish and the Portugese;
*the English (and later, American) conquest of much of North America, continuing into the 20th century (if we go by when Arizona, for example, became a state);
*the slow but steady European colonization of Africa—beginning in the 1400s, accelerating in the 1800s, ending within the lifetimes of many of us;
*the more recent dismembering of the Ottoman Empire and European control of much of the Middle East.
“(W)e actively condemn such things today as distortions of Christianity.” Well, we do here. For the record, not all Christians today do. While the Catholic Church has, in effect, renounced crusader theology, not all churches have.
“Why then has Islam not progressed in a similar fashion? Why is it still dominated by violence and conquest 700 years after the fact?” Good questions. Reza Aslan, in his book “No God But God” argues that Islam is, in fact, in the midst of its own reformation (and that—among others—al-Qaeda and other “purist” groups are a part of that, as are the leaders of the Iranian revolution, as are American Muslims who argue for the compatibility of American democracy with Islam). Aslan also argues that given the experience of the Christian reformation in 16th and 17th century Europe, it’s not surprising that violence is part of the current Muslim reformation. As for Islam being “dominated by violence and conquest”, again, it has been Christian-dominated nations that have most effectively used violence (and other means) to conquer the world in recent centuries.
Again, I’m not writing any of this to excuse Islamist violence in the world today. I do, however, think we’re fooling ourselves if we Christians think we’re more different from Muslims than we are the same. What I mean by that statement is that we share a common humanity—with all its glories and all its failings and limitations.
“…you will find many who care less if a million blacks, muslims or Jews were thrown into incinerators.”
“Whether conservative and right-wing extremists are some how responsible for Breivik is another and a dicey question…”
“there are lots of extremists among concervatives, even if they don’t kill people…”
Oh my.
We might do well to recall that the never-let-a-crisis-go-to-waste mentality is most unchristian.
[...] the Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC), sees hope in the shifting of so more… Conservatives feel heat from Norway – Commonweal (blog) – commonwealmagazine.org 07/26/2011 Globe and MailConservatives feel heat from [...]
How does the Norwegian murderer reflect on Archbishop Chaput? Simple, Glenn Beck compared the victims with Hitler Youth. Abp Chaput shares some conservative views with Beck, or is “in bed” with him as William Lindsay puts it. By this “reasoning” it would be hard to find anyone who is not tainted with the Norway murders.
Even if Breivik has happened to be a Muslim, it would still be incorrect to call his crime Muslim terrorism, since that phrase correctly refers to terrorist movements, such as Al Qaeda.
“Gibson making a false equivalence between this isolated incident of a deranged right-wing “Christian” attack and systematic violence against non-muslims found throughout the Islamic world and terror in the West” says Brett.
Yes, he is. But let’s not forget either the real “Christian terrorism” of Blair and Bush, and the long preceding chapters of Western crimes against Islamic peoples (Algeria, Iraq etc.).
“let’s not forget either the real “Christian terrorism” of Blair and Bush, and the long preceding chapters of Western crimes against Islamic peoples (Algeria, Iraq etc.).”
I suppose; however, I would consider the US and UK post-Christian or secular/industrialist nations rather than traditional Christian ones. Iraq was certainly not a Christian war and was even declared unjust by JPII.
Yes, but remember Bush’s use of the word ‘Crusade’ and the bible verses Rumsfeld fed him every day. If Breivik is called a Christian terrorist, Bush has much more claim to the unlovely title.
Joseph O’Leary, how was Archbp Chaput introduced to this discussion?
I’d just note that (Crazy) Glen Beck on Fox News – where else? -said the kids at the youth camp were like a Hitler youth camp.
Crazy conservatives? Crazy Chtistain conservatives?
Poor Mark is worried about people acting like Christians to one another in our toxic times.Think about the beam in thy own eye.
Davd Gibson, I was thinking of your supported William Lindsay who wrote: “And Glenn Beck is defending Breivik, in his own way. And Bryan Fischer has said his anti-Islamic, Christianist analysis is correct. All of this should be a mirror for the Catholic right, so they could see clearly the dreadful folks they’ve gotten into bed with in recent decades. I suspect they’ll choose to shatter the mirror instead of looking in it.”
In the same vein: http://michael-in-norfolk.blogspot.com/2011/07/christianists-and-far-right-continue-to.html
And this: http://michael-in-norfolk.blogspot.com/2011/07/christianists-and-far-right-continue-to.html
Sorry I mean this: http://michael-in-norfolk.blogspot.com/2011/07/maggie-gallagher-its-gonna-be-bloody.html
Maggie Gallagher is linked to Breivik. The Canadian bishops quote Gallagher in their document against gay marriage. Ergo…
Mark et alii,
The reason the US does not have the atrocities that occur in other countries is because we prosecute killers. Many Americans would kill and plunder their neighbors if they would not be subject to Jail. Of course many do kill and plunder wtih a good deal winding up in a jail. Most people are not better than criminals. They are just “smarter.” Without laws many of us would behave lawlessly. That is just the way it is.
Most people would be criminals… Maybe most Americans, in a violent culture. I am quite sure that most Japanese would not be criminals — in regard to theft for example, they regularly go out of their way to return to the police wallets or other valuable objects they find; also they are a very non-violent people. In the recent tsunami, American commentators asked, “Where’s the looting?”
Michael Moore showed the huge gulf between levels of gun violence in the US on the one hand and in Canada, Britain and Japan on the other.
Bill, “we prosecute killers” — on a bustour of Singapore from the airport our guide told the largely US audience: “You see how orderly our city is, in contrast to the crime and mayhem that are rife elsewhere. And do you know why? Because we have capital punishment, that’s why!”
I think we have lots of gun violence here, and the NRA does its best to continue that under constitutional rationale.
But Fr, O’Leary overstates his cases(s) on American violence and justice from afar.
I still think there’s lots of prejudice in the US but it’s covered over more “to keep up appearances,” not out of fear of the law but of public shame.
I’m not sure what a lot of this has to do with the crazy Christian guy(or is it maybe others also?).
But here it is the rubric of free sppech and exceptionalism, crazy Christians and other loonies can sound off.