Almost two weeks ago in response to the controversy over Sam Harris and Islamophobia, I hastily
wrote about my thoughts on Harris' fear of Muslims and why it seems irrational. Since that time I've continued to immerse myself in arguments by both Harris and those who argue against his theses. I've taken the time to read Harris' book
The End of Faith, Robert Pape's
Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, and a number of recently written articles on the subject. Also, since my initial writing, the Boston Marathon was bombed bringing the subject of terrorism to the forefront of our news-media coverage. It strikes me that a rational understanding of terrorism is both necessary and important in the 21st century especially if we aim to stop such terrible acts from becoming more and more common. We must begin by dispelling the myths behind terrorism and appreciate the complexity of such issues in order to create real solutions to the problem of terrorism.
Harris' book The End of Faith begins by creating a scenario of a man on a bus who blows up himself, the rest of the passengers on the bus, and inflicts further damage on the streets. His parents feel "great pride" and the neighbors gather to celebrate his accomplishment of killing innocent civilians. Then Harris asks "
Why is it so easy, then, so trivially easy—you-could-almost-bet-your-life-on it easy—to guess the young man's religion?" What this scenario leaves out is where this attack is taking place which matters especially when guessing the religion of the attacker. For example, if this story was told in Sri-Lanka, or perhaps even the UK in the 80's, the guesses very well could have been either Hindu or Irish Catholic. Whatever the case, the suggestion that Islam must be behind terrorism is a dangerous proposition, as demonstrated in the aftermath of the Boston bombings when the
Washington Post incorrectly claimed that police had a Saudi suspect under guard in a Boston hospital. Now, in the case of the Boston attacks, news reports have claimed that the older of the two Tsarnaev brothers was a radical Muslim, but is it logical to assume that he was, before such evidence had been produced?
Certainly analysis of data and statistical information on the nature of terrorist attacks shed some light on the situation. An
article from 2010 at loonwatch.com goes into detail showing FBI statistics on terrorist attacks in the US from 1980-2005. The graph below shows the likely hood of an attack being motivated by Islamic extremism.
That's right 6% of terrorist attacks are committed by Islamic extremists. Why then is it so easy to guess the religion of the attacker? The obvious answer is the over hyped and over inflated connection between Islam and terrorism in the post 9/11 world. After such a dramatic event, it is easy to see why the connections have been made, and coverage of Boston has refreshed that memory with a week of news reports that create a culture of fear within the US public. Meanwhile, it's keeping people glued to the news channels which increases their ratings and their profit margins. So is this guess on religion based on statistical knowledge and projections, or the all too common inference that Islam is the cause of terrorism? Usually in the scientific world we base our hypotheses off of any relevant data we can collect on the subject, but we seem to have a clear departure from any reasoned or scientific view of terrorism and Islam. However, we should follow Harris' further arguments on the subject to ascertain if this is actually the case.
After the first chapter provides a basic introduction of the arguments contained in the book, chapter 2 launches us straight into a well written and conceived analysis on the nature of belief, how beliefs can affect behavior, and how beliefs not based in evidence can even harm us, amongst other things. Outside of a few minor points, I agree with and applaud the work in this chapter. Chapter 3, "
In the Shadow of God" is also illuminating on the subject of how religion can and has played a negative role in society over the years and I agree with much of it as well. It's when he launches into the next chapter "
The Problem with Islam" that I depart nearly completely from the views held by Harris. While I may not have the space to critique every false argument made by Harris in this chapter I hope to elucidate what I believe to be the most important and most erroneous arguments.
Before callously stating that we are at war with Islam, Harris contends that the views of most commentators on Muslim violence can be ignored, including Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Palestine, collusion of western powers with corrupt dictatorships, and the endemic poverty in the region. He reasons these claims can be laid to rest because there have been and still are groups that are exploited and live in generally poor circumstances beyond those in the "Muslim world" yet they have not resorted to terrorism. Instead he focuses on the doctrine of Jihad found in the Koran and tries to establish the imperialistic ambitions of Islam as a whole, explaining that Islam is a religion of conquest with only some Muslims having overlooked the "
militancy of their religion." Harris uses a quote by Bernard Lewis from
The Crisis of Islam which states "
the presumption is that the duty of jihad will continue, interrupted only by truces, until all the world either adopts the Muslim faith or submits to Muslim rule." He goes on to cite passage after passage from the Koran and Hadiths on Jihad. His basic argument is that Islam is the primary cause of suicide bombings and Islamic terrorism.
We should analyze these claims though using evidence to see how they hold up. The idea that we can merely ignore what most commentators have said about the roots of Muslim violence because others who are exploited and poor do not commit such acts is false. This argument clearly demonstrates a lack of understanding of the nature of suicide bombings. While Harris cites Tibetans as a prime example of exploitation not leading to any attacks, we should note that this is a logical fallacy. Further, suicide attacks are nearly all part of organized campaigns which have always targeted democracies, or more precisely states with democratic elections. His argument is essentially that if exploitation and occupation cause suicide terrorism, then all areas that experience exploitation and occupation would use suicide terrorism, and since this in not the case, exploitation and occupation do not cause terrorism. So what causes some exploited people to resort to terrorism and not others? Robert Pape in his thorough case study of terrorism, has analyzed every case of suicide bombing from 1980-2003 - 315 total attacks. He argues that terrorism is a tactic of coercion to achieve nationalistic goals, which as stated, all target democracies. So in the Tibetan example, putting aside belief systems, what strategic logic would attacking civilians or other targets in a non-democratic state have? Would it be likely to bend the resolve of a totalitarian regime?
Pape again has insights to these questions stating:
"Suicide terrorism is more likely to be employed against states with democratic political systems than against authoritarian governments, for three reasons. First, democracies are often thought to be especially vulnerable to coercive punishment. Domestic critics and international rivals, as well as terrorists, often view democracies as “soft,” usually on the grounds that their publics have low thresholds of cost tolerance and high ability to affect state policy... Second, suicide terrorism is a tool of the weak, which means that, regardless of how much punishment the terrorists inflict, the target state almost always has the capacity to retaliate with far more extreme punishment or even by exterminating the terrorists’ community. Accordingly, suicide terrorists must not only have high interests at stake, they must also be confident that their opponent will be at least somewhat restrained. Democracies are widely perceived as less likely to harm civilians, and no democratic regime has committed genocide in the twentieth century... Finally, suicide attacks may also be harder to organize or publicize in authoritarian police states, although these possibilities are weakened by the fact that weak authoritarian states are also not targets."
So we can move on. Robert Pape goes to great lengths to establish the real motives of suicide terrorism in
Dying to Win writing that: "
First, although religious motives may matter and although Islamic groups receive the most attention in Western media, modern suicide terrorism is not limited to Islamic fundamentalism. As shown in Table 1, the explicitly anti-religious Tamil Tigers have committed 76 of the 315 suicide attacks, more than any other group; they are responsible for the spectacular bombing of the World Trade Center in Colombo in 1997 and the assassinations of two heads of state, Rajiv Gandhi of India and Ranasinghe Premadasa of Sri Lanka.
Even among Muslims, secular groups account for over a third of suicide attacks. The Kurdish PKK, which has used suicide bombers as part of its strategy to achieve Kurdish autonomy, is guided by the secular Marxist-Leninist ideology of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, rather than by Islam. Even in the conflicts most characterized by Islamic fundamentalism, groups with secular ideologies account for an important number of suicide attacks. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Marxist-Leninist group, and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, with allegiance to Yasser Arafat’s socialist Fatah movement, together account for thirty-one of ninety-two suicide attacks against Israel, while communist and socialist groups, such as the secular Lebanese National Resistance Front, the Lebanese Communist Party, and the Syrian National Socialist Party, account for twenty-seven of thirty-six suicide attacks in Lebanon in the 1980s."
While Harris has argued against Pape's thesis - that terrorism is best understood in terms of nationalistically motivated political coercion- in his
response to controversy, he tackled very little of the abundant evidence presented by Pape that had to do with Islamic terrorism. Harris wrote:
"I would have made it clear to Pape that I have never argued (and would never argue) that all conflicts are attributable to religion or that all suicide bombing is the product of Islam. I am well aware, for instance, that the Tamil Tigers were avowedly secular. Even in this case, however, it seems only decent to recall that they learned the tactic of suicide bombing from Hezbollah and eventually developed their own quasi-religious cult of martyr worship. One can’t really argue that they were a group of classically rational actors. And even here, in this most secular of cases, always used to exculpate Islam, we find the divisive role of religion—because it seems unreasonable to believe that a civil war would have erupted in Sri Lanka if the Tamils, who are nominal Hindus, had been Sinhalese Buddhists, like the government they were fighting. Again, nothing turns on this point, because I admit that not all terrorism need be religiously inspired."
Pape again and again notes the fact that in nearly every case, religious difference is a contributing factor that leads to pursuing the tactic of suicide terrorism. This obviously has to do with religion being a primary factor in how a person identifies themselves and can then be used to identify the "other", especially when political grievances are at the top of the list. It seems only fair to note that Harris, on the one hand, is saying that we can put all the political exploitation to the side because there is "
no shortage of educated and prosperous men and women, suffering little more than their infatuation with Koranic eschatology, who are eager to murder infidels for God's sake." Then on the other hand he says, "
not all terrorism need be religiously inspired." So when suicide bombings are done by Muslims, they are evidently religiously motivated, but when done by others they can be and are secular. Even if we except this there's still further evidence refuting such claims. Glenn Greenwald
wrote this week about the motives of terrorism giving example after example of the stated motives of terrorists. The main themes are overtly political rather than theological. If that's not enough evidence of nationalistic and political views being the primary concern, then perhaps we can
refer to the most famous terrorist in the world, Osama bin Laden.
"
It should not be hidden from you that the people of Islam had suffered from aggression, iniquity and injustice imposed on them by the Zionist-Crusaders alliance and their collaborators; to the extent that the Muslims blood became the cheapest and their wealth as loot in the hands of the enemies... The presence of the USA Crusader military forces on land, sea and air of the states of the Islamic Gulf is the greatest danger threatening the largest oil reserve in the world. The existence of these forces in the area will provoke the people of the country and induces aggression on their religion, feelings and prides and push them to take up armed struggle against the invaders occupying the land; therefore spread of the fighting in the region will expose the oil wealth to the danger of being burned up... It is out of date and no longer acceptable to claim that the presence of the crusaders is necessity and only a temporary measures to protect the land of the two Holy Places. Especially when the civil and the military infrastructures of Iraq were savagely destroyed showing the depth of the Zionist-Crusaders hatred to the Muslims and their children, and the rejection of the idea of replacing the crusaders forces by an Islamic force composed of the sons of the country and other Muslim people."
While Harris contests that the claims Bin Laden made were "
primarily theological" he ignores Pape's already stated argument of why this is not the case. Pape writes: "
Further, if religious, social, or economic grievances were primary, then al-Qaeda should have been interested in combating three enemies—the United States, Europe, and Israel—with more or less equal weight and with little regard for the target states’ military policies. However, al-Qaeda’s timing and choice of targets shows that religious and ideological factors are not the forces driving the strategic logic of this suicide terrorist campaign.
The United States has been exporting cultural values that are anathema to Islamic fundamentalism for several decades, but bin Laden and the al-Qaeda organization did not turn toward attacking the United States until after 1990, when the United States sent troops to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Bahrain." This becomes even more important when you consider that attacks against Europe and Australia only happened after they stationed troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. In fact, Bin Laden
offered a truce if they would remove their troops.
Pape continues on the same subject later in the book in chapter 7 stating, "
Examination of al-Qaeda’s pool of suicide terrorists—the seventy-one individuals who actually killed themselves on missions for al-Qaeda from 1995 to 2003—shows that the presence of American military forces for combat operations on the homeland territory of the suicide terrorists is stronger than Islamic fundamentalism in predicting whether individuals from that country will become al-Qaeda suicide terrorists. Islamic fundamentalism may play a modest role in recruiting militants, since al-Qaeda suicide terrorists are twice as likely to come from Muslim countries with Islamic fundamentalist populations compared to Muslim countries with tiny or no Islamic fundamentalist populations. However, al-Qaeda suicide terrorists are ten times more likely to come from Muslim countries where there is an American military presence for combat operations than from other Muslim countries. Further, al-Qaeda suicide terrorists are twenty times more likely to come from Muslim countries with both American military presence for combat operations and Islamic fundamentalist populations compared to other Muslim countries.
Overall, this means that American military policy in the Persian Gulf was most likely the pivotal factor leading to September 11. Although Islamic fundamentalism mattered, the stationing of tens of thousands of American combat troops on the Arabian Peninsula from 1990 to 2001 probably made al-Qaeda suicide attacks against Americans, including the horrible crimes committed on September 11, 2001, from ten to twenty times more likely."
For further evidence simply read Pape's books as the examples are too numerous to use. Continuing on in Harris'
The End of Faith he tries to convince the reader that Islam is inherently imperialistic. This is a claim which historically and doctrinally can be supported to a degree, but in the modern era it doesn't hold water. Since Harris is essentially arguing that Islam poses a unique threat beyond other religions, it would do well to note that in the US, all our presidents in recent memory have publicly stated a belief in the Christian god, and the US indeed is the largest empire on earth. Remember, t
he US has 761 military bases worldwide and spends more on our military than the next
13 highest military spending countries do. After he argues for their imperialistic attributes he then tries to explain why the problem isn't just Islamic extremists, but that moderates have accepted this strategy of suicide bombings as well. His strategy seems simple enough, portray the attacks as motivated by religion rather than blowback from western foreign policy. Note his recent twitter post from April 19th 2013
Everything is on the table when it comes to putting down the notion that our foreign policy might actually bear much of the blame when it comes to the root causes of terrorism. We should note that the
Washington Post has cited an anonymous government source which has stated that the Boston bombings were motivated by US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. What evidence does Harris produce to make these claims of religious motivation?
Harris points to a
2002 poll done by the Pew Research Center that asked the question "
Some people think that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets are justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies. Other people believe that, no matter what the reason, this kind of violence is never justified. Do you personally feel that this kind of violence is often justified to defend Islam, sometimes justified, rarely justified, or never justified?" While the number of respondents in many countries in the middle east seems alarmingly high, this also seems to be a loaded question when the purpose is to establish Islam as a greater threat than other religions. First, Muslims, as Harris demonstrates, are commanded to defend their religion. Second, although we don't have polls to verify the responses of Christians in the US, does anyone doubt the number of Christians would be significantly lower than the average number of Muslims that support such violence, specifically if they believed Christianity to be under attack, and that the attack was being done by a foreign country which had been occupying the US and controlling its geopolitics for years? Finally, what was the response to the attacks against the US on 9/11? As I documented in my
first posting on this subject the vast majority of Americans supported invading Iraq and Afghanistan even though the case against Iraq was completely based on faith in the US rather than real evidence of any threat. I also noted 93% of Muslims condemned the September 11th attacks. Is it really that astonishing that people who identify as Muslims would use heinous forms of violence if they felt the religion they identify with was under attack?
This brings up another of Harris' arguments. Harris calls Chomsky's failure to recognize the moral difference between us and them a "
masterpiece of moral blindness." Although he agrees to an extent with Chomsky's argument that the US is itself a leading terrorist state, he tries to elucidate the moral failing by making the comparison between those who intentionally kill civilians in an attempt to produce maximum damage (the terrorists), and those who unintentionally kill civilians (the US and Israel) which we call collateral damage. After explaining that if we in the US had perfect weapons we would not need to nor would we kill any innocent people, but we would simply target "the bad guys." He even goes on to say that: "
Chomsky might object that to knowingly place the life of a child in
jeopardy is unacceptable in any case, but clearly this is not a principle we can follow. The makers of roller coasters know, for instance, that despite rigorous safety precautions, sometime, somewhere, a child will be killed by one of their contraptions. Makers of automobiles know this as well. So do makers of hockey sticks, baseball bats, plastic bags, swimming pools, chain-link fences, or nearly anything else that could conceivably contribute to the death of a child. There is a reason we do not refer to the inevitable deaths of children on our ski slopes as "skiing atrocities." But you would not know this from reading Chomsky. For him, intentions do not seem to matter."
This last analogy actually obfuscates the ethics of war and collateral damage more than it does to clarify these ethics, which is the opposite function of an analogy; his perfect weapons hypothetical does the same. Even though Harris admits in his writings that the consequences of war - collateral damage, or in the case of Iraq killing over 100,000 civilians - are well known before we engage in them, he has the audacity to compare this to manufactures of common goods which may unintentionally harm people. First, people who make consumer goods while influenced by profit, are primarily making a good that is well intentioned in its use and that in and of itself is a far cry from war. There is no evidence to suggest the war Iraq was anything but the opposite of well intentioned. It is a
well established fact that Donald Rumsfeld on the very day of the 9/11 attack, tried to use the attack as a justification for attacking Iraq. Further,
David Frum has stated Chalabi and Cheney "
spent long hours together, contemplating the possibilities of a Western-oriented Iraq: an additional source of oil, an alternative to U.S. dependency on an unstable-looking Saudi Arabia." There is absolutely no comparison to be made between these two types of "collateral damage" unless we turn a blind eye to the imperial motivations for such a war.
Perhaps a better analogy for Harris would be to imagine a police officer on a busy NY street receives a call that a notorious murderer is only a block away and with traffic at a stand still he decides to callously drive on a sidewalk full of pedestrians at a speed which injures and kills well over ten times the amount of people the murder did to capture the criminal. The police officer may not have intended to kill so many, but he would obviously have known the implications of his actions beforehand. This is why almost anywhere in the world the police officer would be tried as a criminal, and it's the same reason why
officials in the Bush administration including Bush himself have travel restrictions for fear of being taken before an international criminal court. However, my police officer analogy wouldn't do for Iraq -although it arguably would in Afghanistan - simply because even to capture a criminal could be seen as a well intentioned motive. While a certain amount of subjectivity always exists in examining the motives of others for any action, there is far too much evidence making the case that Iraq was simply a war of aggression that used cluster munitions - which pose an unnecessary and unacceptable risk to civilians and we should note every manufacturer of consumer goods is liable for unacceptable risks - and destroyed civilian infrastructure.
More directly to the point, if we can imagine ourselves in possession of the perfect weapons pursuing a different strategy than a war with collateral damage amounting to far more than the damage terrorists ever inflicted, we should be able to imagine what the terrorists would do with such weapons. Would they pursue a different strategy as well, perhaps targeting the US military and its bases and destroying the western presence in their homeland, or would they simply continue to kill innocent civilians? This is one of the main points of terrorism as a strategy. It is constantly used by the "underdog" in terms of military capability. Even Japan didn't resort to suicide Kamikaze attacks until they were becoming overwhelmed by stronger US military forces. Harris' arguments seem all but paper thin and framed not by rational thinking, but by assumptions of western moral clarity and rightness against what he seems to view as the tribal and barbaric "Muslim world."
This becomes more clear after reading his next chapter - I'd like to note he spends 45 pages on Islam and only 17 on "western civilization"- where his problems with the US, and to some extent Europe, seems to stem more from religious rejection of science and contemporary social issues. He fails to mention the true religion of the US, which seems to be globalized hegemonic capitalism supported by doctrines of economic growth, and often poorly evidenced claims of the righteousness of the western world. While Harris is busy writing and speaking to condemn Islam as a "
cult of death," he simultaneously is preaching the goodness of science and civilization. This system of industrialized capitalism, which has brought about more scientific revolution than any other period in history, is also destroying the very earth we live on.
Carbon emissions alone threaten to disrupt the earth's environment in ways that surely are a greater threat than Islam could ever pose. The
earth's temperature is projected to rise 4-11 degrees by the end of the century and every
degree centigrade the temperature increases is likely to reduce grain yields by 10%. Meanwhile, our ecological systems are already nearing destruction with
Ninety percent of all large predatory fish – including tuna, sharks, swordfish, cod and halibut – gone, and
more plastic than plankton exists in our oceans. While science is obviously not the root cause of these issues, it's important that we note science is merely a process of inquiry with testable results. If we fail to pose the right questions, science can actually hinder our understanding of the world in some ways. If anything is a cult of death, it is the industrialized system that is destroying our planet and there's no doubt that scientific knowledge has led us not just to greater understanding, but to further exploiting our universe and shaping it to our desires. Indeed, scientific knowledge is often used not merely for understanding nature and its phenomena, but an attempt to control nature with what is shaping up to be mankind's greatest threat. Science has helped us create weapons beyond past imagination as well as cures for diseases, but has it given us the moral clarity to deal with such inventions?
While ecological and environmental issues are not scientific problems, but moral problems, more and more people are slipping into a type of scientific millenarianism in which they believe scientific and modern technological advances are just around the corner to save us. More people are accepting the doctrine of scientific achievement bringing us a better world for tomorrow with electric cars -
never-mind that nearly half our electricity comes from coal - and space colonization. Harris himself proclaims such images stating that: "
Two hundred years from now, when we are a thriving global civilization beginning to colonize space, something about us will have changed: it must have; otherwise, we would have killed ourselves ten times over before this day ever dawned." While Harris alludes to this change being the end of faith and that technology has created a world where single persons can inflict great damage, he leads us to believe that having aspiring martyrs as neighbors poses the greatest threat. This will be of little importance even a few generations from now. Future generations will likely care little about our religious conflicts, or the deities we worshipped, much like we care little about the pagan deities of ancient times, but they will care more deeply than we can imagine about the condition of their air, their water, and the general environmental destruction of the earth we will be leaving them. We cannot solve moral and ethical problems merely by ridding the earth of religion or accepting science as the path to all knowledge, and as much as I like to see belief systems without evidence challenged, I cannot support ending faith unless we are to simultaneously critique and challenge our own belief systems. We can meditate for our own spiritual enlightenment and try to metaphysically become one with everything as much as we want, but the real truth is that we need to take informed actions in the real world to connect with nature as more than just a controller of nature, but part of a living system that industrial civilization is destroying.
So when we look back at the motivations of what causes people to commit terrible acts of violence and injustice I've discussed, I hope we can take a good look in the mirror. Not just to realize the failings of our own countries foreign policy and the blowback it has created, but our own belief systems and the actions they are responsible for in all arenas, specifically our irrational belief in a system that is currently destroying the very world we live on. Furthermore, the one thing Harris and Islamic terrorists have in common is both believe the US is at war with Islam. This is a dangerous notion as it is the root cause of Islamic terrorism, as well as a justification of US foreign policy which despite Harris' dubious "moral clarity" has been waging an aggressive war that has killed far more than terrorism. I encourage all interested in the subject to read Pape's work, and to take seriously what those who attack us give as their motives.
Epilogue: If you remain unconvinced that Islam is not the primary cause of terrorism or that the US and Harris have an irrational fear of Islam I encourage you to read the articles below, as well as the linked articles in
my first post on the Harris controversy.
http://www.juancole.com/2013/04/terrorism-other-religions.html
http://video.msnbc.msn.com/all-in-/51653064#51653064
http://www.loonwatch.com/2010/01/not-all-terrorists-are-muslims/
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/01/06/muslim.radicalization.study/
http://bigwhiteogre.blogspot.ca/2013/04/harris-vs-greenwald-and-hussain.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/22/richard-dawkins-islamophobic?CMP=twt_gu
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/qasim-rashid/do-you-even-hear-muslims-when-we-condemn-violence_b_3125564.html
This is doing exactly what Harris says he has never done. The link points to an article suggesting that Greenwald supported the Iraq war because of something he wrote in the preface to his first book. I've already written about this so I'll repeat what I've previously written on the subject. "This claim that Greenwald supported the Iraq war by writing in the preface of his first book explaining his apathy towards politics and "coming of age" in political terms - that uses a quote that merely states he gave Bush the benefit of the doubt in his handling on the war on terror- is a mischaracterization of enormous proportions. If you'd read the book you'd know it is anything but a source of support for the Iraq war nor does it give support for Bush's policies."
