Religion
In reply to the discussion: Religion Was Not the Reason For the Paris Attacks [View all]Igel
(35,435 posts)It's maybe not what we think, so it's not what we think.
Some mass murderers have various other reasons.
We don't know what this guy was thinking, so for all the information we do have we don't have any. Arguments ex silencio are facile when you're wearing earplugs.
Then there's the whole racial thing. The guy was "Muslim" by race. Now, traditional Muslim thought places them all in the same ummah or "race" ("ethnicity," if you will). But there is no good stereotypical drawing of a Muslim. There are Arabs, Persians, Pakistanis, Albanians, Malians, Tunisians. But they have as much in common as Jews and Swedes, and you wouldn't say, "Oh, look--a stereotype of a Jew" looking a a caricature of Breivik. Sorry, Coulibaly, you've just been transmogrified into a Saudi by those who are culturally aware and sensitive and smarter than those who can just look at a picture. See? It's just not convincing once you get past nice sounding words and stop to think what the words mean. In fact, it starts looking pretty damned foolish and simple-minded.
Esp. when one thinks that it's not just the "race" that's stereotyped but their symbols. I mean, I'm mostly Irish and should be offended to tears if anybody caricatures an Irish deity, right? They're Irish, I'm Irish. It's automatic. Except for the fact that for it to be a symbol that I take to heart it has to be something I take to heart. An attack on the symbol has to be an attack on me. If I don't think of an Irish deity as being "mine", screw it. It's silly. Same for Mary the mother of Jesus: If I'm not a believer, really, I'm not going to be offended if you glue elephant dung to a picture of the virgin Mary. Pick any woman you're portraying as Caucasian and it's a matter of extreme indifference, unless it's a woman that I personally care about.
No, just as we need to accept that all Muslims are Arabs, all Arabs are heavily invested in adoration of Muhammed. Druse, Xians, Yazidi. This Mark guy is looking really far off the mark, but he's making his point: Let's defend Islam because we don't want to create any more anti-Islamic fervor. It might not be Islam at the core of things, it might be Western neuroses attributed to the killers. "They're bad because they're like us" is as valid an argument.
In a number of instances--none that Mark S. notices, of course--such killings by apparent reprobates are to reclaim honor, but not as he present it. It's honor sought in religion, honor before god--what we'd call "atonement" in more benighted times. Because of defilement that must be undone through acts of extreme virtue that produce atonement. Zealots die hard. And it's especially nasty when your zealotry involves a kind of Kingdom of God on Earth that you have to defend, a righteous natio (sic) to defend as an acti of righteousness. Something that we haven't had in Western thinking for centuries (apart, oddly, from some Soviet and Nazi rhetoric). Then you get a politico-religious toxic brew in which the secular see only the political.
Or those obsessed with social equality and discrimination see only a reflex against social inequality and discrimination. As though the three were immiscible. They're as immiscible as water and alcohol. (Which reminds me: There's a margarita waiting for me. Ciao.)