medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Dennis Martin wrote...
>We are forbidden, in polite society, to even raise the possiblity that
>there is a religious component >at the heart of Islam-fascism. Of course
>many other factors are involved. But your response is
>reductionistic--denying religion as a central factor, reducing it to
>non-religious factors.
...and so on and so forth.
Such right-wing boilerplate! Yes, to be intellectually honest we must allow
the possibility that Islam is just simply eeeee-vil, since no other religion
has resorted to violence to further its ends, and since, as all neocons
know, all Muslims are crypto-terrorists. I suppose intellectually honest
folk in the 30s had to allow the possibility as well that Jews were
destroying European culture. The crowning irony of course is that this pap
appears on the Medieval Religion list, whose focus is an era in which
Christianity wasn't exactly celebrated for exhibiting the pacifism of its
putative founder.
In case anyone doesn't see the pattern, here's how to argue like a neocon:
1. Browbeat an individual or group for being closed-minded when they won't
allow the most absurd point into serious discussion (e.g. Islam evil,
Christianity good, Christianity lead to democracy, ad nauseam).
2. When someone points out the absurdity of said point, accuse them of
hounding you over to the margins, or out of the debate entirely. This is
most effective when making some highly self-flattering comparison between
yourself and those who saw the nazi threat.
3. Make sure to dress up the absurd point in intellectual/scholarly terms,
and to sound level-headed and rational, and adopt the pose of one simply
trying to be honest and consider all possibilities.
4. If all else fails, keep hitting the nazi-threat/peace-in-our-time button.
Why go through all this trouble? Why, because one of the main sources of
fuel for neocons is this feeling of persecution, which seems to be a source
of great enjoyment to them. Here in the States, one sees the above
techniques being used to advance such elevated topics as the
intellectual/cultural inferiority of non-whites, the invasion of our country
by the dreaded brown hordes, or the merits of Victorian-style capitalism,
with no social safety nets, or the inherent superiority of Christianity
(mainly its white Protestant varieties), etc.
What troubles me about such sublimation is that what lurks behind it is
simple bloodlust, in this case a fervent desire to actually see a clash of
civilizations. The idea seems to be that evil resides squarely on one side,
and that if all we do is crush it (i.e. kill enough of those people), then
we will surely triumph over evil.
Really, such a paltry idea to dress up in such nice-sounding argumentation.
MP
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