A few days ago, a problematic albeit typical editorial in the NYU student newspaper featured the rantings of a students concerned that the greatest threat to the West was a homogenous menace known as Islamic fundamentalism.
These kinds of articles are a dime a dozen these days, maybe all the more so because we are in an election cycle and such topics unfortunately have a habit of saturating the media while not contributing an iota of enlightenment to our general understanding of the issues involved. An NYU student wrote a rebuttal, but I offer some advice, which I reproduce below, in case one is ever in a situation where one has to respond to these general types of articles and arguments.
Because it seems we must always be prepared to write back to nonsense.
Islam Writes Back
Firstly, be especially chary of any argument that says, "such and such terrorist group attacked country X, but not Y." While I think this is a valid argument and an especially illuminating one, it can be rhetorically dangerous because it invites the suggestion, however remote, that a certain population deserved what happened to it. The tone must emphasize our absolute and total opposition to evil and to murder and to attacks upon the innocent, no matter the origins of those attacks or the rhetoric used to justify them (modern warfare is terroristic in nature, and promotes terror as a tool for "accelerating" war -- reducing losses on "our" side while indifferent to the harm caused the other's innocents). Putting this first and foremost is especially powerful and useful: Muslims oppose all violence against innocents.
Secondly, be certain to emphasize the casual and in fact intellectually lazy if not stupid use of the word "terror". No writer who rants and raves about how Islam is supposedly on the verge of conquering the West has ever shown himself or herself capable of defining terror, let alone Islam or the West. This is their weakest point. Their inability to use language coherently, and their obvious incapability for thinking consistently needs to be called out. They throw around definitions in such a way that should embarrass any NYU faculty member.
Thirdly, point out how many Muslims live in democracies. The largest Muslim nation in the world by population is a democracy. Many Muslims live in democracies or states that are failed democracies but nonetheless aspire to democratic status, such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, India; there are also active Muslim democracies in Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, Mali and Senegal. This is in fact part of the above point: what defines Islam? What defines the Muslim world? What defines the West? Simply pointing out that half of the worlds Muslims live in democracies is sufficient to completely crush any such argument of a uniform West and a uniform Muslim world.
Fourthly, be sure to throw in some economics and some figures and facts to really shed light on the silliness of arguments that pretend the West is under siege from the Islamic world. This is especially aggravating when smaller minds presume to tell us that we have not faced a threat so great since Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Nazi Germany was the most powerful military and largest economy arguably of its time, at least the most sophisticated. Nazi Germany was able to conquer most of Europe and drive deep into Russia in the span of a few years; the United States could never have defeated Nazi Germany alone. Neither England nor France nor America could likely have defeated Germany without the help and sacrifice of the Soviet Union.
And we are supposed to imagine that somehow countries like Iran or Pakistan represents similar types of threats to the world. Are we using drugs? The total annual military budget of Pakistan, which arguably has the most sophisticated military in the Muslim world -- and is the only nuclear power in the Muslim world -- is round about the same as the Harvard University's endowment ($20-30 billion). Put another way, Harvard could spend its endowment and in one year equal the military of Pakistan. Now, that is obviously a silly example but its silliness points to reality. Extremist groups threaten the Muslim world far more than they do the West, because as they tactically realize their insignificance and relative backwardness, they will necessarily turn their anger and rage and violence towards their fellow citizens -- because it is technologically and strategically impossible for them to sustain any sort of attack on the West.
In other words, they are simply too weak to cause serious or long-term harm to the West.
You made some excellent, excellent points. The WSN published my reply, but that was before I could update it with your suggestions.
Posted by: Sulayman | 01 February 2008 at 12:46 AM