…for who is and is not a “moderate“:
It isn’t the snarky first part of this statement that is interesting; that’s banal, and while revealing in its own way, it’s de rigeur for the sort of people we’re talking about to on the one hand demand no one reach conclusions on the basis of necessarily limited information when it comes to them and their mascots, but who feel free themselves to rush to entirely unsupported conclusions regarding their opponents and targets, and express them in the snarkiest way possible, all the while holding the self-conception that they’re stalwarts defending civil discourse. Of course, one commenter doesn’t control anything, any more than I “create the narrative” (If only!). But this comment will be a useful example for how those who do set the terms of debate do so, and a facet of the mindset behind it.
Be that as it may, the truly interesting part is the expressed definition of what qualifies as a “moderate Muslim.” Alchemist expressed what I suspect a lot of people on that side of things believe, without fully articulating it even in their own minds: For them a “moderate Muslim” is simply anyone who isn’t trying, either directly or indirectly, to kill them.
This truly does reflect having two standards, however. In normal discourse, this isn’t generally the standard for moderation: David Duke isn’t considered moderate just because he himself never engaged in a lynching and had learned how to express himself in such a way that it’s virtually impossible to find a statement where he openly and clearly encourages violence or terror. Yet people can get in trouble with the widely-respected SPLC for example,simply sharing a stage with him in a debate. We understand he’s not “moderate” in spite of the suit and tie, and the carefully couched statements.
Rauf is no moderate in my book. But then, I think that moderation is overrated. Goldwater had it right when he said that extremism in defense of liberty was no vice.
Sharpton would say that Goldwater quote explains the Tea Party’s violent tendencies. Well he did say that, and said that the Tea Party were the people that were sicing their dogs on people during the civil rights protests.
Well, Wodun, then I would tell Sharpton that him being a collectivist, he’s one of the people who set up the concentration camps and the killing fields, and slaughtered the kulaks under Stalin and the “bourgeoisie” under Mao. Take that, Reverend Al. Tu quoque, baby!
A possible distinction of a moderate religion (or political movement) might be one for which the most fundamental beliefs are subject to ongoing internal debate. That is, a religion for which the door to reformation is always held open.
reformation can go either way.
I would propose that the term “moderate” is simply insufficiently descriptive of religious or social behavior to be of any real use. It is possible to form the accurate opposite of such a term. That is, “scriptural literalist.” The demand in most ME religions that “unbelievers” be done away with is contained in only a few pieces of their scriptures, compared to the whole corpus.
Most of those in *any* religious group that does *not* assault people outside that group are people willing to select from their scriptures the behavioral guidance useful to the individual in their environment. Almost all of those that *do* assault others outside their religious group do so when hanging on to a literal interpretation of one or a few parts of quite extensive scriptural literature.
IMHO, during the last 300 years, the debate between atheist humanists and the religious allowed the extremists of both sides to attempt to exclude from religion anyone who was *not* a scriptural literalist. This made for a logical fallacy, “exclusion of the middle” which was useful to *both* sets of extremists. Once the image of religion proper was one of scriptural literalism, then people had to pick between that, and atheist humanisim. This chivvied many in the middle into one camp or the other. Break this mold, and the potential for tolerance grows by orders of magnitude.
In fact, the majority of people in any widespread religion in industrial society around the world, find it necessary to select the specific portion of their scripture they want to apply at this moment, just to prosper each day in a society networked around the globe. The ones assaulting others outside their religion are almost always from that population of those insisting that a large portion of their scriptural corpus is *always*applied*at*every*moment*.
If we can get people to stop using “moderate”, and “extremist”, and start using “scriptural literalist” and “scriptural selectivist” as descriptive terms, then more useful debate will ensue, IMHO.
reformation can go either way.
And sometimes it should – after thorough debate.
If we can get people to stop using “moderate”, and “extremist”, and start using “scriptural literalist” and “scriptural selectivist” as descriptive terms, then more useful debate will ensue, IMHO.
Heretic!!! 🙂
An absolute interpretation of any religion invariably leads to contradiction, many practitioners seem quite aware of this. Unfortunately so many believers focus so hard upon absolute truths that they never stop to think what it is that actually calls them to a given religion. Religion has obviously been far more successful than atheism for good reason.
However going beyond literal interpretation is not for everyone. One of the primary duties of religious hierarchies is to do the heavy thinking and condense the religion down into a simple set of beliefs that can serve the congregation well. A great deal of responsibility comes with such simplification and leadership – this can easily go pear shaped.
In some regards I think religions have become the victims of their own over simplifications. They have lost their foundation of rigorous debate and started to believe their own BS. Woe betide the preacher who stands up and pulls the rug out from under the congregation by saying actually it is a little bit more complicated than that…
People are generally not the people you see. They are the people behind what you see. Evil people have something to hide and are better at it than people that don’t practice hiding things.
If you’re a member of a belief that demand world conquest and members are willing to give their lives killing for that belief; I’m not going to trust you without overwhelming evidence.
Then if you show support for evil… games over.
I’m reminded of satirist Mark Russell’s explanation of the Iran-Contra scandal back in the ’80s:
“The White House people were trying to make contact with Iranian moderates. Iranian moderates … they’re the ones who take hostages, but don’t eat them.”