Ask yourself this: all these fundamentalist terrorists we talk about, where and why do they appear? It isn’t like they magically sprung up from nowhere.

Religious fundamentalism is not, for either Muslims or Christians, an old phenomenon — certainly not the religious fundamentalism that Christian Dominionists or their counterparts in Islam subscribe to. Much of it is a reaction to modernity, but the point is it’s a relatively recent phenomenon. Religious fundamentalists were simply not an issue in the Muslim world (politically speaking) until the 50s and 60s at least. Just look at who was running the show in Egypt, or Jordan, or Algeria, or Iran, or anywhere else besides the Saudi kingdom and the Gulf states.

What happened? Let’s be clear: many of these groups took root as a direct result of policies in the US that were specifically designed to make damned sure that the oil kept flowing and that there would never be any hope that these countries would be democratically governed.

Don’t believe this? Let’s look at who was on the “enemies list” and the “friends list” of the US. Libya, Iraq and Syria, while ruled by dictators, were the most advanced in terms of the position of women, for instance. So was Lebanon. Meanwhile, where does the aid money go? To Saudi Arabia. How long does anyone here think the Saudi monarchy would have lasted without millions in military aid? The Saudi military isn’t for fighting other people, it’s for keeping their own population under control. The same is true of the other Gulf states.

In Iran, the US installed a dictator who destroyed the non-religious political opposition. Well, gee willickers, what the hell do you expect to happen when people get tired of him? The religious parties were the only game in town. The Shah wasn’t magically whisked into power, and neither was the Ayatollah.

This pattern gets repeated again and again. Every single time a democratic government has threatened to appear, OUR tax dollars and sometimes OUR soldiers are there to make sure it doesn’t happen.
The US gave aid to Mubarak for decades, and didn’t abandon him until he was almost taken off by a mob and given the Mussolini treatment. And when it was clear that Mubarak was done our government — relatively quietly this time — took steps to ensure that it was the Muslim Brotherhood who came out on top. The leaders of the movement to out Mubarak came from the textile workers unions, but they were sidelined. Funny, that.

When the choice has been between supporting a democratic government and supporting right-wing dictators — who make religious extremists possible– the US government has chosen the latter every goddamned time. Musharraf in Pakistan was the same thing: our BFF was going after secular opposition. He went after the trade unions.

Why do this? Because the religious extremists aren’t an existential threat. They just aren’t. There is simply no possibility that acts of terrorism are going to cause the US to collapse. I live in New York City and love the place, but you could put a hydrogen bomb in Manhattan, destroy the city, and the US would still recover. And there is no possibility whatsoever that a bunch of religiously minded Muslim troops are going to occupy the country or bomb every US city the way we did the Iraqis.

On the other hand, secular parties that question the US economic hegemony are a threat to powerful people here. Religious extremist dictators — heck any dictator — can be bought. It’s a lot harder to do that with a democratic government in place.

It’s easy to make a narrow criticism of religion, but let’s take a wee bit of responsibility for visiting a chain of horrors on many regions where religious extremists appear. Because we — not the Saudis, not the Russians, not the Chinese — created the conditions that allow them to thrive, or even supported those movements (Mujahedin, anyone?)

In fact, let’s look at Afghanistan ca. 1970: a society in which women had the ability to enter professions, literacy was rising, and a country that was i reasonable shape. Who did we support? A bunch of guys who thought women are property. Then the Taliban’s rise to power is treated as some mysterious “Islamic” phenomenon. Oh yeah, the country was destroyed in the process.

All this is to say that when talking about whether Islam is uniquely bad, well, it’s like saying that conditions in Afghanistan or Iraq, say, have nothing to do with the fact that we bombed them. “Hey, those people can’t seem to set up non-extremist governments” well holy crap, we managed to drive into exile or kill a big chunk of their intellectuals and political class. But that can’t possibly have anything to do with it. We destroyed their industrial base, and sold what was left to American and British companies. But no, it’s messed up because, Islam! Ancient hatreds!

Try a little alternate history: what if we’d let Mossadegh alone, and let the Iranians keep some of the oil profits? What if we’d opted to not install the Hashemite kings as rulers of Jordan, the Saudis as rulers of Arabia, and keep Mubarak afloat? What if we’d decided that maybe, indirectly supporting the Christian Phalangists in Lebanon wasn’t such a good idea? Maybe not taking steps to destroy the democratic government of Pakistan in the 60s and 70s or said Musharraf was the Best Guy Ever? Allowed the results of the elections in Algeria to stand?

I submit that most of the major Islamic fundamentalist movements would have had little political traction. When there are more options to oppose the staus quo that don’t involve a mosque, then duh, people will go there, since most folks aren’t religious extremists. (That’s why we call them extremists).

One last thing: the biggest irony of discussions like this is that one guy who called for democratic elections in Saudi Arabia was none other than Osama bin Laden. Really. That’s who was demanding more democracy.

This kind of discussion is common even in secular treatments of the history of Christianity. If I said that Christian Dominionist movements’ rise had nothing to do with economic conditions and policies in the South and Midwest (farm subsidy policy, for instance, or the efforts of right-wing folks like the Koch brothers, or backlash against the Civil Rights Act) you’d all say I was an idiot. It would be equally stupid i I said that Sarah Palin was elected because Christians are just like that and quoted something from the Bible to make the point. But Sarah Palin and right-wing political philosophy aren’t necessarily fundamental to Christianity.

Or: if the Russians said “why are the Chechens attacking theaters in Moscow, what did we ever do to them? There must be some fundamental problem with Chechen culture” everyone here would laugh and say, “You can’t be serious.”

Yet many atheists won’t take the same tack with discussing Islam viz. the US — it’s this magical mystery tour where everything springs out of inscrutable nowhere. It treats the Qu’ran as some kind of magical code book, as though religion were the absolute defining characteristic of people’s lives. Um, I’ve been to Turkey, to Jordan, to Morocco. Had a few conversations with Berbers, Druze, Circassians and Bedouins. That just isn’t the way they live.

Sorry for the rant. It’s just been bugging me for a long while.

I will still have to disagree. “Muslim communities are anti-woman” is not only a generalisation that ignores subsets, but it is a factually incorrect statement.

There are Muslim communities that are not anti-woman. Therefore the statement is false. The same applies for being anti-LGBT for example.

“Some Muslim communties are anti-woman” is at least a true statement, albeit not very useful. It elides an assessment to whether this is above any baseline standard level of anti-woman in the relevant society. I offered the statement because clearly you wanted to say something, but personally I would still not use it.

“Islamic theocracies tend to be repressive to women” is also probably true, and more justifiable and specific, but again elides a comparison between theocracies. Christian theocracies tend to do pretty badly also (it is a terrible comparison, but the most obvious Christian theocracy, the Vatican, has under 50 women residents. It is hard to find out if they are citizens, but that means less than 10% of the population are women. And none in positions of power. How is that for anti-woman?).

There are somewhat theocratic Christian nations in sub-Saharan Africa and in Eastern Europe. The Lord’s Resistance Army immediately springs to mind as a particularly heinous brand of Christianity that is militaristic and theocratic (Kony is the voice of God, apparently), as well as terrible for women.

It gets even harder though as the description of “theocracy” includes things like “practices religious law”. This is custom made for Islam, because Sharia is considered religious law, where common law which is built on Christian principles over generations is not. Plenty of countries outlaw adultery, or abortion, or divorce, all from a Christian perspective. But because we call it “the law” rather than “Christian law”, apparently it is not theocratic.

Anyway, just trying to express the difficulty of those blanket statements. Even specific statements about limited groups of Muslims often suggest that it is worse than for other non-Muslim groups, particularly to Westerners as we are primed by our media representations to expect the worst from Islamic people.

As you say in your own piece, you don’t know enough information to imply they are worse. Without the information, such generalisations are exactly what your piece is against, IMO.

Here’s some more information for you:

At a press conference about the TRC, the TRC head commissioner stated that even though the UN defines genocide in the terms of what happened in Canada, that doesn’t mean that genocide has happened here.

My jaw dropped. Seems pretty clear to me who is juggling priorities (and with whom) there.

The government set out the budget and timeline for it. The commission is serving the government as much as it is serving the survivors (too many of whom committed suicide after being visited by the commission to relive that history).

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was created as a direct result of a court settlement agreement derived from a class-action lawsuit against the Canadian government and Churches. It was estimated that approximately 80,000 former students of Indian Residential Schools were living at the time of the settlement. It is inaccurate to call the Commission a “government-implemented program”.

Like you say, people are complicated and cannot normally be pigeon-holed into narrow categories. But religion (or more broadly, dogmatism and authoritarianism) appears to be the rationale for some of the most abhorrent behavior we’ve seen recently and in the more distant past. Thus, why is a critique of a religion at risk for calls of bigotry? Critiquing religion is “New” Atheism’s bread and butter. And as you admit, adherents of the religion of Islam are currently causing more suffering to more people than any other religion’s adherents, possibly across the board, but if not, at least in certain domains like the treatment of women, apostates and atheists, and in the legal sphere, where Islamic Law is the law of the land in far too many countries, all of whom have non-Muslim populations left to deal with Sharia. There are vestiges of Christianity in many countries’ legal systems, and sometimes they have teeth, but there are hundreds of millions of Muslims who want to see Sharia in their country (if it’s not already there); Christian Dominionists really don’t hold a candle to this.

Harris is an incoherent dingbat on this subject (exceptionally low-hanging fruit), prone to irrationality. How can one identify, with accuracy and precision, every Muslim? At best, racial and behavioral cues can point one to a subset of devout, Arabic Muslims; so terrorists start recruiting Caucasians (like Chechnyans) or South Asian Muslims (Malaysians, perhaps). Stupid idea. But he is absolutely correct in his assertion that we should be more concerned, as atheists, with Islam, while still holding all other irrational dogmas to the flame. When half a million Bangladeshi Muslims call for our summary execution (or at least that of our Bangladeshi brethren), the comments of lunatic American evangelicals on the very fringe of their religion who hold the same beliefs are perhaps to be taken as less threatening (though no less idiotic, abhorrent and insane).

There is real Islamophobia. Truth be told, every single one of the Muslims I have met has been polite, hardworking, and congenial. And yet many have suffered at the hands of Caucasians who assume they hold beliefs they do not, who have a stereotypical idea of what a Muslim is and who hate all who fall under that umbrella. I even know a Lebanese Christian who gets hurt by Islamophobia, much like the Indian you mention who was persecuted and eventually murdered because he “was a Muslim or a Hindu” (because there’s really no difference, right?). But we need to co-exist in this world with people who are using their (interpretation of their) religion to justify calling for our deaths, raping girls who don’t dress how they say they should, or who aspire to step beyond their station, and at the extreme, blowing themselves up in a martyr’s death, killing innocents. Removing religion’s control over all societies is one of the steps that must be taken as globalisation increases.

So yes, I basically agree with what you have written, Brian. But especially, I agree with your “people are complicated” assertion. We must be careful to distinguish between those who demonstrably hold ideas we are fighting against, from the nameless masses who pollsters assert a segment of whom (for example, 85% in the apostasy death penalty question) also say they hold those ideas. The former we can attack with all the gusto we can manage, but for the latter, we should be careful only to attack the specific subgroups within the wider, diverse community that hold those ideas. Stereotyping is bad, m’kay?