Hi JD,

Quote Originally Posted by JD View Post
My follow up question is this: Isn't it very often the case that for internal conflict there is often few overt distinguisig characteristics between freinds and enemies and the dnager comes not when this is recognised but when this is ignored and people are treated as a homogenous group. I use the war in Vietnam as an example. I am concerned that the 'war on terror' is morphing in peoplels minds into the 'war on Islam', in both the west and east. This has a historical precendent in the cold war where 'communism' became byword not for all persons giving equally in a society but instead for totalitarianism and repression. By using the phrase civil war in Islam, it immediately recognises that there are at least two sides and Islam is not a homogenous enemy.
I suspect that the GWOT is, indeed, morphing into a War on Islam in many people's minds. Calling it a civil war may change some perceptions, and I think that it might be advantageous, but one of the problems I see with calling it that is identifying the players (back to my last post) and the basic propositions. Let me go off on what might seem a tangent.

WARNING: The following post contains many broad generalizations

Most Westerners tend to be "orthopraxic" (orthodoxy is determined by what you do, not what you believe, i.e. going to church is "good") if they are religious at all. With some notable exceptions, mainly in North America, we don't have much of an integrated "practice" with a tradition of study and experience (the major exceptions are the various evangelical and charismatic movements, plus the Eastern Orthodox churches in Christianity). Even worse, there is very little mysticism integrated into our practices. What this means is, that for most people, "religion" is a matter of choice not "reality". The same is not true for most Muslims: religion is "reality" and not "choice".

How this situation came about is worth a couple of dissertations in and of itself, but I would put the key to it in the shattering of the ecclesiam in the wars of religion which ended with the Peace of Westphalia and the rise of the modern nation state. The core theological position s one that goes something like this: no one can "know" the mind of God, therefore any interpretation of God's will will be inherently flawed and biased. As a result, "Good" may be found in any religious tradition. BTW, this position is actually held within Islam but in a radically different form - it's why it is quite possible to have competing and contradictory schools of sharia which recognize each other as valid. What is missing from most of them, however, is the devolution of responsibility for this position to the individual.

The second thing that is different is that Islam has not gone through the equivalent of the West's Wars of Religion. The Sunni - Shiite split is closer, in institutional terms, to Christianity's split between the Orthodox and Catholic branches of Christianity. What we are seeing now is, to my mind, closer to the opening shots of the reformation (for example, I tend to view AQ as an analog of the fraticelli - their positions, actions and tactics are quite similar). In effect, this is not so much a "civil war" with clearly defined sides as it is a religious fracturing and an attempt to reconstruct the ulama along variant lines. In Christianity, this was fought out using black powder weapons and cold steel in a limited geographic area. In Islam, it is being fought out using modern weapons globally.

So, here are the problems with labeling it a civil war as I see them:
  1. For some people, it will help but I suspect that the world view of most non-Muslims in the West is so radically different from most Muslims, that the issues involved will be incomprehensible.
  2. Calling it a civil war detracts isolates the "problem" as being solely within Islam. As I mentioned earlier, the mind set (actually, I should be using the term weltanscuung from phenomenology - think of it as a basic perceptual stance towards "reality) is actually shared by a number of non-Islamic groups. Calling it a civil war in Islam may well lead to an "Us good, Them bad" mentality in popular culture.
  3. Most of "our" religious practice / belief is radically different from "theirs". This means that our "experiential knowledge" of "reality" is radically different. By way of example, try explaining "red to someone who is colour blind.
At the same time, for the past 40+ years in the West, we have seen the rise of new religious movements and revitalization movements in Christianity, Judaism, etc. Indeed, before 9/11, Islam was the fastest growing religion in North America. Why? Because all of the movements fill a perceived need in giving people "meaning" in a life increasingly dominated by spiritual nihilism, shopping malls and consumerism. This sets up a situation where there are a lot of potential problems.

What I believe we have to do at the symbolic level is to reinforce groups and belief systems that will support the position of "religious doubt" and oppose groups that do not support this position.

Marc

ps. Sorry it's a bit rambling, but I'm trying to do three things at once