Letters
Fall, 2005
Collapse
William Thomas’s review of Jared Diamond’s Collapse (The New Individualist,
April/May) did not mention aspects of the book that I found most
compelling. These include Diamond’s treatment of environmental issues
surrounding oil and gas exploration—including motivations for doing
sensible things—and his discussion of mining, such as the
Despite Diamond’s repetition of the various environmentalist bromides
that Thomas criticizes, I think Objectivists would find this book
valuable because it includes well-drawn cases that challenge simplistic
notions of property rights and the structure of government. For
instance, Diamond’s examples of mining and foresting challenge those
who would advocate no regulation or remediation only through the
courts. Likewise the issues that he raises regarding salt formation and
flow, in the context of irrigation.
I have recommended Collapse to
colleagues in the nuclear fission business because it offers practical
examples of how business can proceed and succeed. I was sorry that the
review was so dismissive and focused only on the book’s more obvious
weaknesses.
R. Paul Drake
Professor, Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences; and
Professor, Applied Physics, Space Physics Research Laboratory
William Thomas replies:
I thank Paul Drake for pointing out some of the strengths of Collapse that
I did not have space to address. I think Drake is right that Diamond’s
examples are a check against simplistic thinking about capitalism and
property rights. However, for reasons I gave in the review, I lost my
confidence in Diamond’s honesty and objectivity due to his treatment of
cases and issues that I knew better than those I omitted.
Islam and Jihad
In his speech at the May 14 March Against Terror in Washington, D.C. ( The New Individualist , April/May), David Kelley observed:
The
terrorists claim that violent jihad is the true path of Islam. I do not
believe this for a minute. But I am not a Muslim. I have studied Islam
and the history of Islamic civilization, but I am not a believer, I
have not absorbed its traditions and practices, I do not know it from
the inside. So it is not for me to say what is and is not part of
Islam. Since 9/11, many people who knew nothing about Islam before have
taken to citing passages from the Quran ,
either to prove that it does call for violent jihad or to prove instead
that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance. But you can’t tell
what a religion means by citing passages out of context. Christians,
too, can cite passages in the Bible to support different ideas about
their religion. Like Christianity, and Judaism, and the other world
religions that have endured for centuries, Islam includes many
different sects and interpretations. Within the broad outlines of
Islamic doctrine, the pillars of the faith, the meaning of Islam is a
function of what it actually means to those who believe it, practice
it, and study it.
The
meaning of Islam is for Muslims themselves to determine in their
thoughts and actions. If they believe that violent jihad is not
compatible with Islam, then they are the ones who have the power, and
the responsibility, for making it so. They and they alone must define
what the religion means in the world today.
These remarks were appropriate to the audience and circumstances in which they were delivered, but are they actually true?
What
is the basis for rejecting, out of hand, the notion that violent jihad
is the true path of Islam? The terrorists do not in fact make quite
that claim. They claim that it is the duty of Muslims to wage jihad
against those non-Muslims who do not convert to Islam voluntarily,
after which the other, presumably more benevolent aspects of the
religion will assert themselves. In other words, they claim that
violent jihad against non-Muslims is one part of Islam, but not the
only true expression of Islam.
What
is the basis for claiming that only a Muslim can truly know Islam? We
don’t make or accept that type of claim towards any other religion or
philosophy.
Many
arguments made against Objectivism misrepresent what Ayn Rand wrote,
but not all do, and not all are dishonest. But, whatever the
motives of a critic of the philosophy, we have an obligation to refute
that person’s arguments by reference to the appropriate
facts. When a critic raises questions regarding its principles,
practice, and history, he has a right to receive an answer that
consists of more than “We, as Objectivists, know our philosophy best,
and it is for us and us alone to say what it is.”
During
the Cold War one of the enduring debates concerned the basic nature of
communism. Was communism/socialism inherently immoral and tyrannical,
or had its “noble” ideals had been corrupted or merely misapplied by
Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Castro, etc.? Did an ideology that rejected
the free association of individuals and the market-trader principle,
and that consequently insisted on the subordination of the individual
to a collective, have to be tyrannical or bloody in practice?
Objectivists
hold that communist principles are logically incompatible with a free
society and a free economy, and so could not be applied in a way that
preserved human freedom. No matter how much socialists have sought
to “humanize” their philosophy, the fact remains that it demands at the
very minimum the subordination of the individual to “society,” and
every attempt to apply it has achieved just that—even if not always
accompanied by torrents of blood. At the very least, a
non-Stalinist socialism would have to mean an authoritarian and/or
bureaucratic state, whether with elections or without. At some
point, an observer might conclude that there is some logical
relationship between the theory of communism/socialism and its practice.
Why does all of this not necessarily apply to Islam?
Islam
has a variety of fundamental principles and practices set down by
Muhammad, and subsequently cited, followed, interpreted, and applied
for centuries. There is a large body of
evidence that anyone can look at to judge what is and what is not
compatible with Islam. The quality of their investigation, not
whether they are Muslims, will determine the merits of their
conclusions. For example, individuals who have studied Islam
objectively (among them Robert Spencer, Bat Ye’or, and Ibn Warraq), and
who published extensively on the subject for many years prior to 9/11,
cite extensive evidence to support the conclusion that the doctrines of
Islam lend themselves best to the interpretation currently given by bin
Laden et al . (They have not all concluded that this makes Islam incorrigible.)
Like
Dr. Kelley, I am not an expert on this subject, and I agree with him
about the dangers of out-of-context quotations. However, we are
currently at war with people who claim that their interpretation of
Islam is the only true one, and that it demands violent jihad against
the West (more generally, against all non-Muslims). We need to
understand the true nature of Islam if we are to fight this war
effectively.
I
respectfully suggest that even a cursory look at the historical record
would note that Islam spread by conquest, that it was harsh to those
who did not convert, that it had no tradition of separation of church
and state, that its laws were applied equally only amongst Muslims,
that the period during which it was most intellectually catholic and
tolerant was short-lived, and that all of the most tolerant and
cosmopolitan Muslim polities were toppled either from within or without
by other Muslims who claimed to be more true to their religion.
This doesn’t have to be Islam’s future, but it has been its past.
Anthony Mirvish
David Kelley replies:
I
thank Anthony Mirvish for his thoughtful challenge to my remarks at the
“March Against Terror” rally. The questions he raises are good ones,
and I welcome the opportunity to clarify and elaborate on what I said.
One
question concerns my statement that, as a non-Muslim, it is not for me
to say whether the terrorists’ conception of jihad is or is not
consistent with Islam. As Mr. Mirvish acknowledges, the point was
appropriate for the context. As someone with a limited knowledge
of Islam, speaking to a largely Muslim audience, on a platform where
most of the other speakers were Muslim scholars and activists, I wanted
to make it clear that I did not presume to instruct them on the tenets
of their own religion. More importantly, I was there to present a
philosophical analysis of the terrorists’ ideology, so I needed to put
aside all questions of religious interpretation.
But
I did not mean to assert the universal claim that “only a Muslim can
truly know Islam.” I entirely agree with Mr. Mirvish that one does not
have to accept the religion to have an informed judgment about its
doctrines, history, and culture. Believers do have the advantage of an
inside perspective acquired from years of sermons and services,
explicit instruction, talking with fellow believers, and living in a
culture where the religion is a constant point of reference. I doubt
that an outsider can fully understand that perspective merely by study.
Nevertheless, for the issues that concern us here, the relevant
information is available in many forms—from countless primers in the
faith to the vast scholarly literature—to anyone who wishes to seek it
out. In the same way, as he points out, one does not have to be a
socialist to understand the theory and history of socialism, nor an
Objectivist to understand our philosophy. In these and other cases,
what matters is an understanding of the principles, not agreement with
them.
What
then is the meaning and role of jihad in Islam? That is the other
question Mr. Mirvish raises, and here I would disagree with him, at
least in part.
Let
us start by putting the issue in a philosophical context. To the extent
that a culture subordinates reason to faith and subordinates the
individual to a higher power (whether social or divine), those premises
will tend to produce superstition rather than science, duty and
sacrifice rather than the pursuit of happiness, stagnation rather than
progress—and violence and oppression rather than freedom and trade.
Those philosophical truths apply to all religions as well as to
nonreligious ideologies like communism. As Mr. Mirvish argues, they
would lead us to expect that societies accepting such doctrines would
be oppressive, and that is indeed what we find when we look at the
history of communism, and of Islam—and, for that matter, of
Christianity. But one can’t deduce historical fact from philosophy. To
understand how the philosophical patterns have played out in any
society or civilization, we need to look at the forms those patterns
took in its history. In the case of Islam and its concept of jihad,
that is not a simple task.
The
term is usually translated as “struggle,” and some scholars have
claimed that it refers to the inner struggle for spiritual
self-improvement, a viewpoint associated with the Sufi movement. But
Daniel Pipes, Bernard Lewis, and other scholars argue that jihad always
referred primarily to military struggle—waging war to defend and expand
the regions under Islamic rule. As far as I can tell, as a non-expert,
this traditional view is correct. It also seems clear that religious
zeal to spread the faith was an important motive for the Arab armies
that conquered all of North Africa and the Middle East in the first
century after Muhammad, and, in later periods, for the Turkish Muslims
who expanded east into
Between
the periods of expansion by conquest, on the other hand, there were
long stretches of relative stability during which, according to some
historians, the concept of jihad receded into the background. Nor did
Islam spread exclusively by the sword. Along the shores of the Indian
Ocean, from eastern Africa to
In
terms of doctrine, as far as I know, none of the major sects considered
jihad one of the pillars of the faith. And that makes logical sense.
Before one can adopt a commandment to spread the faith (whether by
military or by peaceful means), there must be some prior conception of
the faith to be spread. The essential core of Islam is its
metaphysics—the belief in a personal God, life after death—and its
ethics. The core ethical commandments, the “five pillars,” are
obligations imposed on individuals regarding their own actions—the
profession of faith, daily prayer, giving to the poor, the Ramadan
fast, and pilgrimage to Mecca—with the ultimate goal, as in
Christianity, being individual salvation in the life to come. The
social ethic, including jihad, is important, but less fundamental.
Mr.
Mirvish cites the claim of Robert Spencer and other writers that the
Islamist conception of jihad put forward by bin Laden is not an
extremist aberration, but is fully in keeping with Islamic doctrine and
historical practice. I do not find this view convincing myself, and
readers should know that many if not most scholars reject it, for
several reasons: (1) Jihad was classically conceived as a political
obligation on the part of the community to provide enough soldiers for
war, whereas Islamists regard it as a religious obligation for each
individual. (2) Jihad originally meant war against non-Muslim infidels,
whereas Islamists call for jihad against rulers in Muslim countries
whom they consider insufficiently pure. There is some historical
precedent for this view but it is not the main tradition. (3) Islamic
law (sharia) imposed restrictions on the conduct of war, including
rules against killing civilians and destroying property—i.e., against
the very tactics that define terrorism.
At
the same time, there is much evidence that Islamists draw on leftist
ideas imported from the West. The thinkers and activists who developed
Islamist theory were influenced by twentieth century totalitarian
movements, especially Marxism. That influence is reflected in their
hostility to capitalism, in their belief in an Islamic revolution led
by a “vanguard,” and in their portrayal of poverty and stagnation in
Muslim countries as the product of victimization. In this respect, as I
said in my remarks at the rally, the Islamist ideology “is
actually a modern one. It has more in common with fundamentalist
movements in other religions, and with secular totalitarian ideologies
like Marxism, than with any historic school of Islamic thought.” I have made this case at greater length elsewhere, as have a number of other, more knowledgeable writers.
We
have to keep in mind, however, that Islam is not a philosophical
system. It is a religion, founded on a sacred text. Like the sacred
texts of other religions, the Quran is
an assortment of stories, parables, moral injunctions, descriptions of
God and paradise, warnings of judgment day, and other material. It is
often elliptical, metaphorical, ambiguous, and self-contradictory. The
followers of Muhammad had to interpret the text, and rival
interpretations were inevitable. Religious scholars imposed some degree
of doctrinal coherence, but they also disagreed on many points of
controversy, including the meaning and practice of jihad.
For
that reason, I think there are diminishing returns in the effort to
identify which doctrines are truly part of Islam. Beyond a certain
point, there is no determinate answer to questions about which articles
of faith are essential to the religion or about which interpretation of
individual doctrines is correct. Beyond a certain point, in other
words, the content of Islam is a function of what Muslims choose to
believe.
As
a religion, Islam rests on faith in the existence of a supernatural
being and in a story of how his commands were revealed to
mankind; its whole superstructure of systemization rests on a
foundation of arbitrary belief. It therefore has no rational way to
exclude Islamist fanaticism from the spectrum of belief by proving it
false, any more than mainstream Christians can prove that
fundamentalists misrepresent Christianity.
By
the same token, nothing prevents Muslims from moving in the direction
of a more liberal doctrine that is more open to reason, science,
progress, individualism, and a secular society. As an Objectivist, I
don’t think they can complete that journey without leaving the religion
behind altogether. But I see no reason why Islam cannot make some sort
of peace with modernity in the same way, and to the same extent, that
Christianity has.