Disbelief in Mississippi at How Far ISIS’s Message Can Travel

Parent Cafe
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To me, the central issue is unsolvable. And I mean that. Every religion has its issues.

  1. Judaism has a huge problem with the issue of halakah: those Jews who believe in following the rules (600+) that have been gleaned over the centuries from the root text versus those who to varying degrees don't. This results in schisms over what God wants, desperate arguments over who is entitled to be a Jew, claims by the devout that their study so pleases God that it insulates Jews from harm, blame by the devout that failures of other Jews to be devout enough brought about the Holocaust, denial that Israel can exist, increasing insistence that non-observant Jews follow the codes of the observant, etc. The less observant (of varying degree) Jews believe in a form of Judaism that looks more to substance, that sees God's interest in human affairs differently, etc. Big problem, entirely focused on Jew versus Jew. It comes out in the Israel/Palestine conflict as the hard right and religious settler fringe who see Jews living in Judaea and Samaria as necessary, both to bring about redemption by God and as acts which insulate Jews from God's wrath. Not only are there not that many Jews, but despite fantasies about Jewish world domination the scope of this land obsession essentially reaches to the Jordan River. I think this limitation reflects how old Judaism is and thus how intimately it is linked with specific places rather than to a globe that no one then knew existed.
  2. Christianity's big problem is that it claims - alone of the major religions - to be the exclusive path to God. Two big lines in the theological book of John written decades after Jesus ... but there they are. This has led not only to the Christian need to convert but to the patronizing way Christianity treats other religions: they are lesser because the only path to the Father is through the Son. No matter how many Christian sects exist, there is always this tendency to see Christianity not only as "my religion and thus the best religion" but as the "only true religion". This has been a huge factor in the deaths of many, many millions around the globe. Example: Christian wars between two groups claiming to be the one true religion have killed tens of millions of Christians in Europe, with one of my favorites being a French Bishop's letter describing how in the name of Christ they put the Protestant families on rafts, tethered them in the middle of the river and set them ablaze. (He used nearly the exact words Rudolf Hoss used when "defending" his mass executions at Auschwitz!) Because Christianity is born back to "only", it has great trouble seeing other religions, even other people, as they are rather than as those Christians need them to be. Or as Sartre put it, it is the anti-semite who makes the Jew, meaning he constructs what he thinks the Jew must be even though the Jew is not that way. (It means more generally that even highly educated Christians know almost nothing about a) Judaism and b) how their view of Judaism, Jewish belief and practices is distorted and c) how completely they interpret Jesus et al without reference to their Jewishness.
  3. Islam has two big problems and they connect to make our current mess:

A) First is that the Quran claims repeatedly to be a book without doubt and without ambiguity. No matter how educated, how “Westernized”, many Muslims are drawn to the literal word of material that dates back to the 7th century. By contrast, even the most devout Jews believe in the Oral Law: that along with the Written Law, God handed down Oral Law that we must figure out. (That is what the devout study: not memorization but meaning and what ideas can be gleaned, how much evidence can you find to support your idea, how well does it fit into historical interpretations, etc.) There are of course Christian fundamentalists who believe in the literal word of the Bible and maybe one day they will attain prominence but demanding literalness hasn’t been the main Christian trait (and it’s been a few hundred years since Christian scholars started to examine Biblical origins). I think the difference is that Christianity sees itself as trying to be Christ-like through parables and lessons that attempt to illustrate the ideas of a Christ, while Islam sees itself as devotion to a remote God (who sounds much like the Jewish God) through the literal words of God’s prophet. In other words, Christians treat the guy Jesus as avatar God and Muslims treat the guy Muhammed as the Prophet of the much greater God. It’s really tough to overcome being drawn into the world of the 7th century, especially when there are direct words (as in you need 2 women to testify, etc.) and the examples of the Prophet (who isolated his women and married more than 1) and “hadiths” and lesser sayings attributed to people who knew Muhammed and which are more or less treated as non-Quranic words of the Prophet.

b) Second is that Islam also claims to require, not just think desirable but require, submission of the world to God’s word. It isn’t that Islam is the only - the Quran repeatedly said God loves good Jews & Christians - but a different form of “only” in which the world can have more than one religious belief as long as Islam rules over them. That is actually somewhat of an Old Testament notion: the God we call “God” is often referred to in the Torah in the plural and as one “name” among many and the 2nd Commandment (after I am the Lord your God as #1 in Judaism) literally says you shall have no Gods before me, which is a rather blunt statement that there are others but you must believe in me as the top God. Islam extends this from what the Quran calls “the people of the Book” to all people: Judaism doesn’t care what others believe at all in any way but Islam cares that its God be #1 for everyone, that non-Muslims accept their status under Islam (or be enslaved or killed). As a side note, the horrors visited upon Yazidis and others (Ahmadis in Pakistan, Shia versus Sunni generally) is because they are considered heretics and those are much, much worse than non-believers.

Maybe in some hundreds of years Islam may move past its twin core problems of being drawn deeply into a pre-modern, pre-rational past and of demanding world control but I think it’s just as likely the world moves into that darkness.

The usual disclaimers: I’m talking about groups not you. You may be an observant Jew/Christian/Muslim and feel nothing but love for people and disgust at stupid hatreds and violence. Indeed, I would add that the largest volume of Islamist propaganda is aimed at shaming and threatening other Muslims: they risk being declared heretics for participating in the West, for not actively taking steps to overthrow the West so the reign of Islam may be established, for not working to remove other heretics. This is absolutely on purpose; it aims to cajole some, enough to act whether out of both active devotion or fear of God’s wrath or fear of having their own heads cut off.

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@Lergnom I like that synopsis. I’m a Christian, but I must say the holier-than-thou Christians drive me nuts. That and differences in common theology make it so that I don’t attend church, it’s just more trouble than it’s worth. I’ve read passages of the Koran, and from what I see, the Muslim religion is basically an altered form of Christianity with it’s own varied interpretations and hype. At least some of the passages of the Bible and the Koran are strikingly similar in tone, words, and content. The main difference between the Jewish religion and the Christian religion (besides the traditions and such) is that Christians believe Christ has come already and most practicing Jews don’t.

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@albert69:
It shouldn’t surprise you that the Q’ran has similar things to Christianity, Islam for example uses both books of the bible as sacred text, and they accept Jesus as a major prophet (they don’t believe Christ is the son of God, of course, but they see him as a major voice of God, as is Mohammad, though to them Mohammad is later than Christ and is the last word, much the same way Christians see Jesus as the final word).

Islam has some unique things to it that Christianity and Judaism do not. For one thing, the political is directly in Islam, neither the New Testament or the Hebrew Scripture talk much about politics per se, whereas Islam does. The sense of social justice in Islam is a lot stronger than what Christ taught, and in Christianity and Judaism it is a lot easier to separate the political from the religious, the first amendment would be unthinkable in Islam, because large parts of Islam are about ruling and power, primarily to achieve the social justice Islam wants. Christ said such justice comes from God and from the actions of fellow people, Islam in effect says that Islam is the state to achieve those goals.

I don’t think fundamentalist Christians are ‘minor’ in the US, they are roughly 25-30 million people and politically they are tightly aligned with conservative political forces in the US, they have outsize influence and power in the GOP for example and they are just as backward looking as ISIS is, the only difference is that in the US they are contained by the constitution and also that most people find their views out of touch and weird.

@ucbalumnus:
The reason that the Iraqis and the Khurds and the Turks and the Syrians are fighting them is that ISIS has carved out large parts of their territory for their “Caliphate”, and it a direct threat to them, as it is for Jordan given where they are places, they aren’t fighting ISIS because ISIS is defaming the faith, they are fighting ISIS because ISIS has taken territory for them and is intent on destroying them, that is a very different motivation. Like I wrote in my last post, the Saudis have done nothing, the Kuwaitis, Dubai, Indonesia, all have done basically nothing against ISIS, and that is my point. If ISIS is trashing their faith, if they fear that ISIS is going to make Islam a dirty word to the rest of the world, then they should be acting, but they aren’t. Saying “oh, they aren’t Muslims” is lame, they basically might as well do nothing at all. Muslims make up well over 1 billion people in the world, how is it a group of psychotic thugs has been allowed to do this? If you are going to condemn cartoonists and writers to death for blasphemy, or basically say such things are right when others do it, then to let ISIS run wild is fundamental hypocrisy.

BTW, before I get the usual drivel about how the US claimed to support freedom but supported vicious right wind dictatorships, I am well aware of that, I am a pretty liberal person, I didn’t think what the US did in Iran or what we did in South America and so forth was right, I don’t think killing Allende in Chile was something the US should have been doing, and I am as strong a critic of the hypocrisy of this country as I am of those letting ISIS get away with their stuff (you ought to hear me on what I think of Obama vis a vis the NSA and data mining, the man is the biggest hypocrite and liar on the topic I have ever seen, and he has no excuse, Bush was an idiot who probably couldn’t tell you the meaning of the constitution, Obama taught the damn thing in constitutional law classes, he has no excuse).

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Actually, Turkey does not seem to be particularly aggressive against Daesh (which has made terrorist attacks in Turkey, but has not attempted to conquer Turkish territory, presumably because Turkey is much stronger militarily). The government of Turkey has its own rivalry against the PKK, and seem to be more aggressive at attacking the PKK than Daesh, and seem to want to watch various Kurdish forces and Daesh beat each other up.

Iran seems to be more aggressive at fighting Daesh and supporting others to fight Daesh, but that is because it is friendly to the governments of Iraq and Syria (all of them are Shia, although the whole of Syria is mostly Sunni, formerly ruled by the Shia-based government). The KSA has not exactly been idle, making air strikes against Daesh and monetarily supporting Sunni Syrian rebel groups which fight both Daesh and the Syrian government (the KSA opposes both).

It also does not help that many the forces fighting Daesh are not exactly the most savory types (e.g. Syrian government, al-Qaeda-affiliated Syrian rebels) that many other interested parties would want to support. Or they may have political agendas opposed to the other interested parties (e.g. the Kurdish forces may be looked at suspiciously by the governments of countries which have discontented Kurdish minorities).

Also, any interested party that may send its own military with the capability of destroying Daesh probably remembers the messy and bungled Iraq reconstruction that the US got into and does not want to have to deal with a similar or worse reconstruction task in Syria.

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The Quran is very different from the other religions in its specificity - as mentioned - and its long sections about the nature of God and creation. I think the latter is a significant part of its appeal as “universalist”: the poetic descriptions of nature and the meaning of life speak to people.

The nature of community and the individual in Islam is unlike Christianity but similar to Judaism: the umma is the same as the Jewish community and the requirements of God’s will are obligations of and reflect on both the individual and the community. (I’d also say that Jews are less clan, less riven by tribal differences may be largely a matter of scale and history; there are that many more Muslim clans and tribes and Muslim societies tend to be relatively non-modern.)

Judaism and Christianity are substantially different but Christians generally don’t get that. It’s hard to describe this without hurting feelings. I could but this isn’t the place. The religions are inherently different in their vision of God and creation and the meaning of individual life, etc. Christians tend, to generalize of course, that Judaism is somehow an older version of Christianity but that is Christianity imposing its definition of Judaism on Judaism without much (and sometimes no) reference to actual Judaism.

I’m not sure Islam and Judaism would differ about the union of politics and religion if things were different. The issue is that with the Temple destroyed, we have for 2 millennia (and really since the Babylonian exile and the 1st Temple) been in the rabbinic era and that is decentralized by its nature. That said, take a look at the deal cut during the formation of Israel, a deal that has been causing huge problems for many years (for Israel and Palestine): the religious get the religious areas under their control and they leave the rest to the non-religious. The religious portfolio in the government is powerful, even though it is limited. Islam often operates similarly with Iran being an outlier in its political control by the mullahs. I think the real issue is that Islam requires - or is interpreted as requiring - political control over non-Muslims as a means of establishing the world that God intends. That, as I said, is unique to Islam, as is the 2nd class “dhimmi” status of non-Muslims, etc. Remember, they see that world as the best thing, as what God wants, and so they expect non-Muslims to embrace their place as dhimmi (or die).

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@lergnom:
What you write is correct, and yes with Judaism in the Temple age the faith was of course mixed with politics, and if you read the Hebrew scripture literally, there was a concept of not exactly treating non Jews all that well (for example, if the story of Jericho is true, wiping out a whole town because it was supposed to be willed by God, killing off non Jews as if they didn’t matter. I say if, because there is no consensus on what happened there ,may have been a tribal war between two different groups of Caananites). The whole concept of Jews being God’s “Chosen people” itself has been used to justify abusing those who are non Jews, for example, though from my understanding of Judaism that is not what that means, and from what I have learned of Judaism over the years, from reading and from a couple of Rabbis I talked with, there is not supposed to be any idea that Jews are better than others or that others are second class. Christianity is not supposed to as well, but that doesn’t mean that that hasn’t happened, given what Christians did to non Christians and what they did to each other.

But Islam has very unique things to it that help fuel people like the Mullahs in Iran and ISIS, or for what was happening in Eqypt after Mubharek was overthrown (an Islamic state is what they were heading towards), and it does contain writing that says that the ultimate goal is for Islam to control the world (it isn’t so unique, though, evangelical Christians often believe that for the second coming to happen, that they need to convert others to Christianity, especially the Jews, and in some of their beliefs there is a darker element of potentially wiping out those who don’t convert, to allow the end of times to happen).

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@Lergmom, I disagree with your synopsis of Christianity, at least if you consider Catholics Christians. Yes, Cathollics believe that Catholicism is the one, true faith, but they do not believe that it is the exclusive path to God. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

Now, I’m sure you dislike the last sentence, but nevertheless it’s simply untrue that Catholics think that Catholicism offers the exclusive path to God.

Frankly,I would prefer not to argue religion on this site with you or anyone else, for that matter. IMO, the statement I’ve corrected is not the only error in your summary of Christianity. .But I think the thread should be closed as it, again, IMO, violates CC’s TOSS.

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I had hoped we wouldn’t be talking about specific religious beliefs, but to clarify regarding “chosen”: it very clearly means in Judaism to take on a set of obligations and these obligations - collectively the mitzvot or commandments, meaning the 600+ these days - are what define those Jews as a “holy people”. It is in no way a statement about any other people at all, just that this is the “truth” for this particular group and that “truth” requires a set of duties. While the words have caused many problems for Jews generally, they also represent that core issue in Judaism about the nature of required devotion.

There are many Christian sects that don’t believe they are exclusive. As to Catholicism, what I was taught is that you need to be in a state of grace and that without the sacraments through the Church it is, shall we say, very difficult to be restored to and be maintained in that state. But my point was not intended to be offensive, but rather that Christianity - in certainly most of its sects - believes it is the one true faith or some variant thereof and that this is not true of Judaism and is true of Islam but that Islam also includes the necessity of political control over non-believers which Christianity does not. I think that difference was key in the eventual separation of political and religious in much of the Christian world. In other words, I was trying to talk about why Islam generates terror, not about the nature of your or any other person’s beliefs.

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To run off to join ISIS and be female, one has to be extraordinarily dumb.

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@lergnom:
I just wanted to clarify that I wasn’t saying that the idea of the “Chosen People” in Judaism was about superiority, I know it is not (on top of the things you wrote, it also is a statement that has helped Jews survive the various disasters that have befallen them over their history, the split of the kingdoms, the babylonian exile, the Roman expulsion, being forced out of many countries and places, you name it…) or meant to be, but there have been some Jews who misrepresented it as such, there is a group of the ultra Orthodox in Israel who argue that as the chosen people they have the right to take back all the borders of ancient Israel, for example, but that doesn’t represent the faith, any more than slavery or rape is allowed by Islam or the inquisition or the Ptolemaic version of the heavens had anything to do with Catholic teaching.

@jonri:
What you write is true, but be careful, while Catholicism is supposed to be about the teachings of the church, the formal written teachings, along with scripture, there is also the reality that there is the non formal teachings that in effect become teachings. Put it this way, the Ptolemaic solar system, the idea of the perfect universe, that somehow the teachings of the Ancient Greeks in mathematics was perfect and couldn’t be challenged, were never Catholic teaching, yet going against what the church leaders were promoting in this regards was considered heresy and got people burned at the stake. While official Catholic teaching these days might in fact say that you can achieve the grace of God without the church, in the time of the reformation and the centuries after, the church leaders and priests would not necessarily agree with that (and not to dump on the church, the Calvinists and lutherans were not exactly tolerant of other Christians either, to say the least). Too, the Catholic church officially states that it is the only perfect Christian faith, that other Christian churches, while following Jesus, are necessarily imperfect, which implies that Catholicism is in some ways the only true faith ( put it this way, various protestant churches are enough in alignment that they allow the members of other churches to take communion at their church, recognizing their baptisms as valid, the Catholic Church does not recognize the baptisms of other churches for the purposes of communion, and frowns upon its members taking communion at non Catholic churches). I agree the formal teaching recognizes that you can get to heaven without the grace of the church, but I also think that other teachings and the way the church operates in real life indicates they don’t think it is all that likely for someone outside their faith to get there, so Lergnom is not wrong. Anti semitism is not officially part of church teaching as such, and the last vestiges of sanctioned anti semitism, the idea that Jews were guilty for the death of Christ as a people, was officially ruled out as against church teaching in 1963 or therabouts (Vatican II), yet that does not change the fact that the church, its leaders, clergy and members, often acted as if anti semitism and persecuting the Jews was teaching, ‘unofficial’ teachings and beliefs can be very, very strong.

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I also don’t agree that this thread violates the TOS, hat is happening with ISIS is a valid discussion point, and the religious underpinnings of their actions (or what they claim to be underpinnings) are valid, and in the context of Islam it is also important to note that bad actions using religion as justification happen in the other faiths, and talking both the similarities and differences between the faiths is valid in trying to discuss why this is happening. It would violate the TOS if someone comes out and says things like “this proves Islam is crap” or “The protestants have it wrong, only the Catholic Church has the truth” or whatnot, that is denigrating a faith, rather than attempting to talk about the reality of faith, big difference.

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@musicprnt,

Again, IMO this thread does violate TOSS. Moreover, the explanation you give as to why Protestants can’t receive communion in a Catholic church and why Catholics are usually advised against receiving communion in a Protestant church is just plain wrong. It has nada to do with the validity of anyone’s baptism.

I’m out of this thread, but seriously I think it’s one thing to explain your own faith and quite a different one to attempt to explain someone else’s.

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@musicprnt “I also don’t agree that this thread violates the TOS”. “It would violate the TOS if someone comes out and says things like “this proves Islam is crap” or “The protestants have it wrong, only the Catholic Church has the truth” or whatnot, that is denigrating a faith, rather than attempting to talk about the reality of faith, big difference.”

Really, how about your statement that fundamentalist Christians “are just as backward looking as ISIS is, the only difference is that in the US they are contained by the constitution and also that most people find their views out of touch and weird.”? Almost every post I’ve seen from you takes shots at Christians who are more “conservative” and/or “fundamental”.

First of all, your generalization of a large segment of the population who you obviously don’t agree with is intellectually lazy, serving your purposes. You and others consistently misstate the beliefs and actions of those who you deem to be “too conservative”, “fundamentalist”, “too exclusive” … I’m sure I am missing some.

Secondly, the TOS states " Politics, Religion, etc. Politics, religion, and similar controversial topics should be discussed only as directly applicable to college matters. College Confidential is not a debating society. Hence, “Would a Catholic be comfortable at BYU?” or “What is the political environment at Grinnell?” are fine. “Democrats (or Republicans) are evil!” and other opinions unrelated to the college process are not allowed."

This thread has as much to do with college matters as the 70+ pages on the Duggars and many other topics I’ve seen - none.

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*This is a tough one. I understand the intent was not to “discuss religion” in the sense of making value judgements of certain religions and their practices (with the exception of the violent streak that infects certain religions), but now you can see why we have the prohibition. It is almost impossible to say something about any religion without someone taking reasonable offense and it is down the drain from there. I personally thought @Lergnom was trying to be very neutral and balanced and historical in that post, and the same with @musicprnt. But then before you know it the argument gets specific about certain aspects of the Catholic Church and down the rabbit hole we go. So while I think @jonri is technically right, I am going to leave what is up there so far as it has so much historical context more so than religious commentary, along with the fact that it hasn’t degenerated into acrimony while still presenting another viewpoint on a delicate issue. But it also drifts from the thread topic quickly, which is another reason we try to nip these things in the bud.

So let’s stick to the Mississippi and similar situations in the general sense and stay away from attempted analysis of the “problems” of any of the major (or minor for that matter) religions. For topics such as this one, talking about the problems of radical Islam does not necessitate the analysis of mainstream Islam or other religions; we can take it as a “given” that radical Islam is a perversion of anything and everything reasonable and debate instead why people are attracted to it. Any kind of people, including a high school cheerleader. If that is not possible despite the best intentions, then the thread will have to be closed or many posts deleted/edited. I will try to give it as much rope as possible, but I cannot promise other mods won’t pull the plug faster.*

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@matmaven:
ISIS shares something big with fundamentalist Christians, in that they both read their respective scriptures literally and claim truth from that reading and in both cases, there is serious reason to question whether those beliefs are supported in the faith or whether they created it, and I’ll leave it at that. As far as my comments about conservative Christians go, from a literal standpoint, simply observing their faith, they are backwards looking, in the sense that they believe that ‘traditional religious belief, traditional morality’ that has 'existed for thousands of years" is the way to go, they certainly are not progressive, what I wrote is a statement of fact, like ISIS they are looking backwards to moral positions and beliefs that are of a past age, neither is progressive, that was my point.

As far as college confidential topics being related to college only, really? So the discussions about family issues at weddings, problems with cars, kids dating habits, kids getting into trouble, renovating kitchens, medicare payments, health insurance, health matters, dogs, cats birds, bad neighbors, etc, violate the TOS? The whole point of the parent cafe is to allow parents a place to talk about things that may not have to do with college, it is a community where we can take a time out from GPA’s, SAT’s, admissions process, bad roomates, bureaucratic stupidity and so forth asociated with our kids going to college.

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For some people to be brainwashed it only requires a light rinse.

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This is being taken a bit out of context. I think the point was that the only aspects of religion that would be discussed per the Terms of Service would be simple factual issues like if Whatsamatta U has a Catholic Center, or if a Jewish person would feel out of place at a school in the Bible Belt, etc. Clearly the whole point of the Parent Cafe is for non-college related topics, and they abound and flourish. As far as religion within this particular forum, again it has to be very narrowly focused as it might relate to a topic such as this, and not turn into a Survey of World Religions course, which in turn will only lead to hard feelings, anger, and endless debate.

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I specifically started this thread because the subjects of that article were radicalized while they were in college. Rather than focus on specific religions, maybe we could talk about what underlying psychological or other issues lead otherwise intelligent young people to embrace outlier religious beliefs, be they violent or not. I know families whose students were sucked into all kinds of unhealthy (by the families’ reckonings) religious groups. None chose to join violent extremist groups like ISIS, but they frequently chose to estrange themselves from their families.

It’s easy to vilify students like these two or write them off as “dumb,” but I have tremendous empathy for their parents. It sounds to me like both families are heartbroken over what happened.

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I think it’s a big mistake to attribute this kind of thing to people being “dumb.” I think that discounts the vulnerability of lots of young people, including very smart ones. I was reading recently about Americans who spied for the Soviets during the Cold War–some of these were smart people by normal standards, but they became convinced of an ideology–and they were deceived by their recruiters. This is not a new phenomenon.

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Thank you, @Hunt. I think that’s a really good point about a lot of these “recruits” having been targeted by very sophisticated operatives. What is it about certain students that make them targets of these ideological groups? Is there anything parents can do to prepare their children for this type of danger? Are their “signs” that a particular child might be more vulnerable than average to such overtures?

Also, while we tend to think of “cults” in this country as being religious in nature, there are plenty of secular ones.