In the news today (Feb 8) the body of an elderly Syrian archeologist has been found. He was beheaded by extremists for not telling them where “idolatrous” treasures were hidden. I suspect that while the destruction of pre-Muslim stone pillars was for ideology, the pursuit of treasure was for a more worldly reason.
As it happens, my own city, in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, has sent several extremists to Syria to uphold a new caliphate. And to behead people. And to have innocent Arab women and girls as sex slaves and wives. If a “radicalized” young man reads the above about ISIL members having worldly motivations, would he believe it? And believe that young male fighters had a vested interest in slavery? Probably no and yes.
I won’t quote any holy scriptures, but I will post quotes for non-radicals who want to “plant seeds” to help a friend to eventually see the light.
Now, my Muslim neighbours will be the first to tell you “Islam means peace.” Still, I don’t expect a radical to convert to “peace” overnight. Every year young students in university get hot under the collar before they agree that certain cherished beliefs of our Canadian society might… be… wrong. For a time, one may go around believing two things simultaneously: Which is fine by me. I mean, scientists can hold two separate beliefs, while they “wait and see.”
For example, in my youth at first we believed light was waves, like radio waves, and then we thought light was particles. Then we gave up deciding which was true, and believed in wavicles.
The trick is not to be too certain. As Bertrand Russell, a Nobel prize-winning (for literature) mathematician said in an interview (footnote, p.14) “I think nobody should be certain of anything. If you’re certain, you’re certainly wrong, because nothing deserves certainty, and so one ought always to hold all one’s beliefs with a certain element of doubt and one ought to be able to act vigorously in spite of the doubt.” Entering university can be a culture shock for high school know-it-alls.
Someone asked, “Lord Russell, what do you mean by taboo morality?” He replied, “Well, I mean the sort of morality that consists in giving a set of rules mainly as to things you must not do, without giving any reasons for those rules. Sometimes reasons cannot be found, other times they can, but in any case the rules are considered absolute and these things you must not do.” (51) In Russell’s day it was very immoral to give human rights to X, or to practise birth control within a marriage. In my day, students struggled with… (I forget, off hand) I suspect if Russell had a Hindu wife they would both go to BurgerKing, if Muslim, they would pray fewer than five times a day.
I would guess that radicals, even after the violent Arab spring, don’t believe in the “separation of church (mosque) and state.” The reality? Even in the theocracy of Iran, the Ayatollah upholds the infamous Evin torture prison. Again, a Russell quote: “I think the most important thing that is wrong in (communism) is the belief in benevolent despotism. A belief which is really ancient and existed in all sorts of communities, but has always proved itself wrong, because when you take a benevolent man and make him a despot, his despotism survives but his benevolence rather fades away. .… Whereas it seems to me that everybody—with very few exceptions—misuses power, and therefore the important thing is to spread power as evenly as you can and not give immense power to some small clique.” (45)
Maybe radicals think (insert your country of choice) is a Muslim wonderland, just as in my day young radicals believed Russia was a “workers paradise,” even as their exasperated fathers said, “Nobody is trying to get over the Berlin Wall to escape to the east!”
Russell answered about nationalism: “I wrote a book in which I was talking about nationalism, and I said, “There is, of course, one nation which has all the supreme virtues that every nation arrogates to itself. That one is the one to which my reader belongs.” And I got a letter from a Pole saying, “I’m so glad you recognize the superiority of Poland.” (84)
Someone pursued the question of nationalist governments, “Take the Middle East since the end of the last war….Arab nationalism…Now is that good or bad?” Russell answered, “… I think insofar as it involves raising the self-respect of Arabs and making Arabs think they are capable of great achievements—in all that it’s good. But insofar as it involves hatred of people who are not Arabs, for example, the people of Israel, it can’t be considered good.”
Someone wondered how do you keep national feelings, once aroused for worthy causes, from slopping over into unworthy causes. Russell answered, “Simply through unifying the governments…. England and Scotland went to war with each other for centuries—for centuries—and it was universally held on each side of he Border that it was proper to hate the people on the other side of the Border. And then from a pure dynastic accident the governments were unified, and this hatred ceased.”
“You mean they happened to have the same king?”
“Yes.”
“By mistake?”
“Yes.”
…
…
Sean Crawford, open to British comments, having an Irish first name, a Scottish last name, and an English sea captain ancestor,
Northeast of the Crows nest pass
February
2021
Footnotes:
~I only quoted from up to page (88) There are further chapters including (but not limited to) Fanaticism and Tolerance, The H-Bomb, and The Possible Future of Mankind.
~Yes dammit, I know the word “include” means “not limited to” but I am only copying how everyone else is writing just now. Although I think Lord Russell would tell me not to.
~As for “Islam means peace,” an Australian bloke, a Muslim, has a politically involved blog from early in the war on terror.
The quotations are from television interviews in the spring of 1959. Russell was born in Victorian times, which I think (as in next week’s Cute Time and Space essay) gave him good perspective. The quoted book is Bertrand Russell Speaks His Mind, Avon books, The World Publishing Company, 1960.
