What Happens When a Warrior Culture Meets a Cooperative, Tolerant, Peaceloving Culture?

In the fascinating book, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (which has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam) the author, Jared Diamond writes:

On the Chatham Islands, 500 miles east of New Zealand, centuries of independence came to a brutal end for the Moriori people in December 1835. On November 19 of that year, a ship carrying 500 Maori armed with guns, clubs, and axes arrived, followed on December 5 by a shipload of 400 more Maori. Groups of Maori began to walk through Moriori settlements, announcing that the Moriori were now their slaves, and killing those who objected. An organized resistance by the Moriori could still then have defeated the Maori, who were outnumbered two to one. However, the Moriori had a tradition of resolving disputes peacefully. They decided in a council meeting not to fight back but to offer peace, friendship, and a division of resources.

Before the Moriori could deliver that offer, the Maori attacked en masse. Over the course of the next few days, they killed hundreds of Moriori, cooked and ate many of the bodies, and enslaved all the others, killing most of them too over the next few years as it suited their whim. A Moriori survivor recalled, "[The Maori] commenced to kill us like sheep...[We] were terrified, fled to the bush, concealed ourselves in holes underground, and in any place to escape our enemies. It was of no avail; we were discovered and killed — men, women, and children indiscriminately." A Maori conqueror explained, "We took possession...in accordance with our customs and we caught all the people. Not one escaped. Some ran away from us, these we killed, and others we killed — but what of that? It was in accordance with our custom."

The moral to this story? It doesn't matter how tolerant you are when you're the target of someone with different values. You and your culture's tolerance and cooperativeness will not win over someone who sees those as merely weakness.

What is the best response to an aggressive culture with intolerant, uncooperative values? Find out here: Does Niceness Work With Everybody?

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More About "Whose Side Am I On?"

A COUPLE WEEKS ago, I wrote about a comment we got from a Muslim wondering if Citizen Warrior is just a very clever Muslim (Whose Side Am I On?). On Jihad Watch a few days ago, Robert Spencer wrote about the same phenomenon. Someone wrote to him and said:

"I can't understand whether you're a kafir trying to make people hate Islam with your commentaries or whether you're a Muslim trying to make people read the Quraan."

Using his inimitable sarcasm, Spencer's comment was, "This latest Hate Mailer, who writes in from Syria, is not as certain as the last one about my cleverly hidden secret identity."

I've been meaning to do a follow-up on my own article on the subject, because I've thought more about it. I think one of the reasons the article, Basic Principles of Islam, confused the Muslim commenter (about where my loyalties lie) is because the article is "value neutral." Most non-Muslims who write about Islam (and who know a lot about it) are very clearly against it. Their disdain for Islam comes through loud and clear in every sentence.

But I didn't do that in the article that got the comment. In fact, I specifically designed that whole website (Inquiry Into Islam) as a value-neutral educational site because the same things that raise the hackles of a Muslim would also raise the hackles of multiculturalists.

In other words, the article has no edge to it. It's just the facts. I personally feel that any non-Muslim who reads it needs no convincing from me. The straight information speaks for itself to those of us who share the values of freedom and equality. But what happens when a Muslim from Iran or Syria finds Inquiry Into Islam? What do they make of it? They can see that the information is being presented without any negative judgment. It might very well confuse them. Whose side am I on?

In Muslim countries you can speak openly about, say, the subjugation of women, and you can do it with no feeling of remorse or embarrassment, as I've seen on television programs created and shown in the Middle East, with experts arguing about just how much you can beat your wife, for example. There is no hint of shame about the topic, no embarrassment that their religious doctrines are misogynistic. Those of us who grew up believing in the principles of freedom and equality instinctively assume Muslims should be ashamed of these principles. How could they not be embarrassed about their own backward (to our way of thinking) beliefs? But they clearly are not.

To get outside this topic to see it plainly, let's look at Buddhism. You could speak about the teachings of Buddhism and just lay it out: "These are the teachings of Buddhism." And the person reading it might assume you are a Buddhist.

Or you could write about Buddhism with some disdain permeating your writing. In which case, a Buddhist might take exception to what you wrote, even if what you wrote was accurate. That may be what we are dealing with in educating non-Muslims about Islam.

When most of us write about Islam it's with ridicule or a clear tone of rejection. And a Muslim will take exception to what we write, even though we're saying things that are true. You see this all the time. Non-Muslims are speaking about Islam, but clearly not liking it, not agreeing with it — against it — and Muslims read it and object to what was said, even though it was true. They'll say, "You're taking it out of context" or "That's not the way we mean it."

A Buddhist might do exactly the same thing if you were saying some of the principles of Buddhism with an edge. One Buddhist teaching, for example, is to try to refrain from harming other living things. And if you said it like that, no Buddhists would have any objection. But if you said it in a way that added a negative value judgment to it, they might take exception to it, even if what you said was technically accurate.

For example, if you say they don't believe in good nutrition (and I think a case could be made that many vegetarians don't eat enough protein to be healthy), a Buddhist might say, "That's not what we believe" or "You took that precept out of context."

But the point is, a Buddhist or a Muslim will believe in the precepts of their own religion, and will try to defend them. And they won't feel those precepts are bad. And when people like us imply that they're bad, they take great offense to us and argue passionately. And if we present the facts without judgment, they think we are secret, very clever Muslims.

Let's look at it another way. Before the Allies began the invasion of Normandy, they gave the Germans the impression they were going to land somewhere else. The Germans knew a big invasion was coming, but they didn't know where. The Allies deliberately misled the Germans into thinking the invasion would take place further north. The Nazis moved some of their military resources to that place, which made Normandy a safer place to land.

Assuming you are from one of the Allied countries, let me ask you: Do you feel embarrassed that people on your side employed deception? Does it bother you? Probably not. If somebody criticized the deception, you might well defend the action. In war, deception is a legitimate tactic. Not many people think of it as "cheating."

In the same way, I think if Muslims know Islamic doctrine and believe in it they don't have any problem with it. More than that, they think it's the truth. They think it's right. They think it is ordained by the Almighty. So of course an expression of it — of the facts and principles of the truth as they see it — would not be anything to be embarrassed about. They wouldn't feel it is cheating or wrong or bad.

And if it was presented without any negative judgment, a Muslim might very well assume someone who is explaining their doctrine so clearly and unapologetically must be a Muslim.

The reason I think this topic is important is that many of the non-Muslims we talk to lower their voices in case any Muslims are nearby and might be angry about what you're saying. They don't understand that Muslims are quite proud of their teachings. To explain their teachings is not insulting. It is not an indictment. It is just the facts. And a nearby Muslim overhearing your conversation might think you are a Muslim trying to convert a Kafir!

And I think you can explain some of this and make it clear that their assumption (that you are being insulting to Muslims or indicting them) would itself be insulting to a Muslim! Their assumption is the insulting, un-multiculturalist faux pas. Get that across and you will have laid the groundwork for a new openness to the facts in their minds.

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The Value and Limits of Tolerance

IN AN ARTICLE on PinkNeck.com entitled, We Need Less Tolerance, Not More, she makes some good points about tolerance:
YESTERDAY the president of the United States spoke to us saying the answer was: We need to be even more tolerant. Though he did not mention the mosque at Ground Zero (or the 30,000 who showed up to protest it) we all knew what he was talking about. More tolerance? Really. Seems to me it's time to start being far less tolerant.
We in the free world keep tolerating the Nation of Islam even though Sharia law subjugates and enslaves all their women. Sharia law says it's okay to stone them to death or kill them to protect the male's honor. How about we in the free world start standing up to this and saying it's not okay to treat women like this, even if it is your religious law? A woman's rights trump religious law.
The rights of little girls trump Sharia law. Why should free people tolerate a barbaric religion that still practices brutal rituals of virginity worship that cut out a little girl's source of pleasure, her clitoris, and sew her lips shut to insure her purity to some future man? What kind of people have we become that we tolerate that form of genital mutilation, one every eleven seconds, saying it's okay because their religious beliefs say it's right? It's not right! It's horrible. It's brutal. It's dangerous. And it robs women of their right to pleasure and wholeness. Who says that must be tolerated any longer? Tolerance of evil is a crime against every little girl who has had her genitals cut out.
We give the countries of Islam equal vote and equal rights in the United Nations while they don't give the women in their countries equal voice or equal freedoms or equal rights? We say their form of government is just as valid as ours when it clearly is not. We continue to tolerate what is arguably the most intolerant form of religion on this planet, a "religion of peace" that has murdered over 270,000,000 human beings who refused to convert or submit, so they were simply killed in the name of Allah. That's more death than all other forms of religion or governments in the history of man! They make Hitler look tame. And we're supposed to continue to be tolerant of their religious law when their Sharia law condones the death of those who don't believe in Islam? This kind of tolerance is political suicide.
I think we should stop tolerating the beheading of little Christian girls. No religion has the right to kill little girls of another religion. Why are we in the free world tolerating that?!

Why are we tolerating Sharia law when Sharia law says it's okay to kill someone who doesn't want to be a Muslim any more? Freedom of religion means you have the freedom and the right to leave if you want. Why do we tolerate a religion that enslaves its members under penalty of death?
Why do we keep tolerating the Nation of Islam pushing their anti-blasphemy laws through the United Nations making it a death sentence to criticize anything whatsoever about any religion, specifically Islam? Several Islamic countries have already installed anti-blasphemy laws. That means no one there can say a word against Mohammad, the Quran, Muslims, or Sharia law or they will be killed.
I believe in free speech (can you tell? ;]) and I think it's high time for the free world to be way less tolerant of a religion/government as it attacks our freedom of speech. I have the right in this country to say I think it's wrong to kill little girls for any reason! Sharia law would take that right away from me. Why should I tolerate a form of government, Sharia law, as it infiltrates us seeking to destroy our democracy? I say we should be extremely intolerant of the creeping Sharia influence.
Why should free people tolerate Sharia law when Sharia law and Islam won't even tolerate a cartoon? One hundred and eighty people were murdered because Islam could not, would not, tolerate a silly drawing of their prophet. Why do we continue to tolerate their violent intolerance of our freedoms?
This is a clash — not of civilizations, because stoning women to death is clearly not in any way a civilized thing to do — but a clash between our freedoms and Sharia law. This is a clash between free countries where women have equality and countries where male dominance has enslaved their women.
The free world needs to become completely intolerant of any religious intolerance.

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