Defining Muslims: Comic book realities

Apologies to Lichtenstein

Religions are attempts to realize mankind’s spiritual inclinations, and as such they tend to reflect the varied, and even contradictory, characteristics of the people who create them. Because of this they are all so easily manipulable by people who want to find justification for a particular reading in which it is impossible to claim that any religion Truly Is any way in particular.

It’s true that some religions make it easier than others to find justifications for violence, but that won’t stop those who want to find permission from their God to kill their neighbor. Equally, those who want to find evidence that their God wants them to get along with their neighbor will find ample reasons to think so.

The difference has less to do with the religion people practice than it does with their situation in the world. People who feel safe and prosperous will tend to interpret their religion in ways that encourage peaceful coexistence. People who find themselves under the bootheel of an oppressor (or at least think they are) will decide their god wants them to fight back. This is true no matter what religion somebody professes.

Given the circumstances in the world today, it’s not strange to wonder if Muslims might be more violent than the rest of us. After 9/11, I wondered myself if Islam might have some inherent propensity toward violence. I worried we might be up against an enemy that was bent on our destruction for reasons that preclude diplomacy. That lasted about 30 seconds. Then I remembered how easily I’ve seen every religion I’ve ever heard of bent and shaped around particular political and social agendas, and realized the violence we see from young male Muslims has more to do with economic and social realities than it does with the tenets of Islam.

Currently most of the Muslim world is on the outside looking in on the modern Western World Success Story. If the situations were reversed, you can be sure young male Christians would comb their scriptures for evidence that Jesus wanted them to reclaim their proper place in the world through any means necessary. While it might be easier for Muslims to find what they want to hear in this way from Islamic texts (being that Christianity is a religion based on the principle that you turn the other cheek when an enemy strikes), people will find whatever their situations encourage them to want to hear from their own religion. Angry Young Christians would find all the justification they needed to fight back against a world that they felt had shut them out of prosperity so unfairly.

But what I’m concerned with these days are practical matters, like keeping Americans from getting blown up by pissed off Jihadis. So what’s the best way for Americans to approach Muslims about their religion? When the vast majority of Muslims in the world openly reject violence, and claim their religion has been hijacked by people improperly interpreting the texts, are we going to tell them they are misreading their own religion? Are we going to tell them it’s pointless to try to fight against those who read Islam the way Bin Laden does (and people like Michelle Malkin do), because their religion truly does require them to violently overthrow infidels and if they don’t understand that they are wrong?

It behooves those of us concerned that we might get blown up by jihadis to encourage those Muslims who reject violence to stand up to those who don’t. The only way to do that is to assume they are the ones properly interpreting their religion. Otherwise you’re taking Bin Laden’s side in the dispute.

What possible reason could we have for joining the Islamist extremists in saying Islam requires its adherents to take over the planet? Some people claim this is just an objective reading of its texts, but there is no such thing. Religions are just what their practitioners say they are, and how they express them through the way they choose to live. If the majority of Muslims say their religion is peaceful, and they live it that way, what would be the point of telling them they’re wrong?

The legions of right wing bloggers who pounced on the Pew poll of American Muslims last week either don’t understand they’re helping the bad guys, or they want to help precipitate war. They interpret Islam in a way that makes it inevitable that we slug it out for control with them. Either they’re bigots on par with Hitler, or they’re just ignorant of the practical effects of what they’re claiming, as they chant to watch their God throw down with Allah. Talk about comic book realities.

Still, I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they really don’t understand that religions are whatever their practitioners make out of them, and that they can’t claim a religion Truly Is some way or another, especially if it means inevitable war. But the sad fact is many of them seem like people who would know this, so it’s hard not to think they’re just warmongering bigots.

Mike Moss is a freelance writer living in the Pacific Northwest.