So, wait a second, Kerry is saying that a putatively false linking of Islam to the violence done in its name might offend the Islamist sensibilities of Muslims and therefore hinder our ability to combat a 'violent extremism' engendered amongst Muslims that apparently noted theologian Kerry claims has nothing at all to do with Islam? I see. Clear as mud.
Progressives are people who will without blinking an eye lampoon fundamentalist Christians or ridicule the Pope's stance on birth control etc etc and not for a second think that they're insulting or besmirching all Christians or all Catholics - but suddenly when it comes to Islam no negative opinions can be countenanced because that would be an offense to all Muslims. The very fact that you have to contort yourself into such illogical word games and manufacture some special safe zone unpolluted by free speech in order to ostensibly 'protect' Muslims is a near perfect demonstration of the fact that obviously there's a problem with Islam - you can argue about what the problem is - an inherent incompatibility with values we in the West view as central to modernity is where I'd start - but whatever, point is if you have to jump through so many absurdly illogical hoops and engage in such abstruse word games in an attempt to rationalize a belief you hold as true then that belief probably ain't true.
Again, I get that there's a practical side to this 'cultural sensitivity' - that without the willing cooperation of Muslim countries you can't fight the extremism therewith engendered - still, to me that's fighting a war with one hand tied behind your back, that's fighting a war that makes little sense. It's the same misguided illogic that doomed the invasion of Iraq and the practice of COIN in Afghanistan - this refusal to acknowledge that you're in these countries because the prevailing culture was dysfunctional and gave rise to a menace - if your goal isn't to change that culture, to address the roots of the dysfunction, then what are you fighting for? And how do you expect to win? Nazism wasn't an aberration of German culture - it was a natural, albeit extreme byproduct of German nationalism as it existed at the time and had existed for several hundred years - tell me how you were going to defeat it without laying bare and attacking the root cause? I'd argue that all extremist behaviour is a natural outgrowth of a precondition that in and of itself may not be dangerously extreme but given the right circumstances can germinate into something that is - for Germany the right circumstances were its nationalist pathology running up against the humiliation and poverty brought on by the Treaty of Versailles and Hitler's clever leveraging of this dynamic against the perceived threats of communism and impure non-Aryan elements degrading the culture.
For those who want to argue that extremism is an aberration of some hermetically sealed 'true' version of Islam I'd simply say look at Turkey, supposed poster child of a progressive Muslim country, and see what devout Islamist Erdogan is doing to it - and with the consent of devout Turkish Muslims who obviously see democracy, true democracy and all that comes with it as a threat. This is not aberrant behavior - indeed it's expected behavior given the history of Muslim countries. For Islam there's a pronounced antipathy for and fear of the modern world as expressed through the attributes of Western culture - you marry the parochialism born out of that fear to the political machinations embraced by Islamists and you've got yourself a problem - and the right circumstances for the rise of extremist ideologies.
[I should add that I find it astoundingly myopic and remarkably hypocritical that the left would never think of excusing examples of Western 'extremism' as mere aberrations having little to do with a prevailing culture - no, things like slavery and colonialism etc etc are all original sins and endemic to the evil doings of a white y chromosome capitalist driven culture - but when it comes to Islamist extremism that's just an aberration and has nothing to do with a prevailing culture. You can't have it both ways - but that's just another example of the left living in denial of any facts that do not fit their narrative. Of course the depredations of colonialism and the extreme behavior it often exhibited were a natural extension of a culture that prevailed at the time - but here's the key: the fact that we evolved out of that behavior was also an extension of that culture. To argue that the same rules of exegesis do not apply when it comes to analyzing the culture of the Muslim world and the dysfunction and extremism that roil it today is a hypocritical absurdity]
Progressives are people who will without blinking an eye lampoon fundamentalist Christians or ridicule the Pope's stance on birth control etc etc and not for a second think that they're insulting or besmirching all Christians or all Catholics - but suddenly when it comes to Islam no negative opinions can be countenanced because that would be an offense to all Muslims. The very fact that you have to contort yourself into such illogical word games and manufacture some special safe zone unpolluted by free speech in order to ostensibly 'protect' Muslims is a near perfect demonstration of the fact that obviously there's a problem with Islam - you can argue about what the problem is - an inherent incompatibility with values we in the West view as central to modernity is where I'd start - but whatever, point is if you have to jump through so many absurdly illogical hoops and engage in such abstruse word games in an attempt to rationalize a belief you hold as true then that belief probably ain't true.
Again, I get that there's a practical side to this 'cultural sensitivity' - that without the willing cooperation of Muslim countries you can't fight the extremism therewith engendered - still, to me that's fighting a war with one hand tied behind your back, that's fighting a war that makes little sense. It's the same misguided illogic that doomed the invasion of Iraq and the practice of COIN in Afghanistan - this refusal to acknowledge that you're in these countries because the prevailing culture was dysfunctional and gave rise to a menace - if your goal isn't to change that culture, to address the roots of the dysfunction, then what are you fighting for? And how do you expect to win? Nazism wasn't an aberration of German culture - it was a natural, albeit extreme byproduct of German nationalism as it existed at the time and had existed for several hundred years - tell me how you were going to defeat it without laying bare and attacking the root cause? I'd argue that all extremist behaviour is a natural outgrowth of a precondition that in and of itself may not be dangerously extreme but given the right circumstances can germinate into something that is - for Germany the right circumstances were its nationalist pathology running up against the humiliation and poverty brought on by the Treaty of Versailles and Hitler's clever leveraging of this dynamic against the perceived threats of communism and impure non-Aryan elements degrading the culture.
For those who want to argue that extremism is an aberration of some hermetically sealed 'true' version of Islam I'd simply say look at Turkey, supposed poster child of a progressive Muslim country, and see what devout Islamist Erdogan is doing to it - and with the consent of devout Turkish Muslims who obviously see democracy, true democracy and all that comes with it as a threat. This is not aberrant behavior - indeed it's expected behavior given the history of Muslim countries. For Islam there's a pronounced antipathy for and fear of the modern world as expressed through the attributes of Western culture - you marry the parochialism born out of that fear to the political machinations embraced by Islamists and you've got yourself a problem - and the right circumstances for the rise of extremist ideologies.
[I should add that I find it astoundingly myopic and remarkably hypocritical that the left would never think of excusing examples of Western 'extremism' as mere aberrations having little to do with a prevailing culture - no, things like slavery and colonialism etc etc are all original sins and endemic to the evil doings of a white y chromosome capitalist driven culture - but when it comes to Islamist extremism that's just an aberration and has nothing to do with a prevailing culture. You can't have it both ways - but that's just another example of the left living in denial of any facts that do not fit their narrative. Of course the depredations of colonialism and the extreme behavior it often exhibited were a natural extension of a culture that prevailed at the time - but here's the key: the fact that we evolved out of that behavior was also an extension of that culture. To argue that the same rules of exegesis do not apply when it comes to analyzing the culture of the Muslim world and the dysfunction and extremism that roil it today is a hypocritical absurdity]
