An email I received:
“I came across this
“What’s Worse than Violent Jihadists?”
I’m guessing it’d make you rather uncomfortable, despite your agreeing with every word.
It seems to me, despite being perfectly accurate, to encourage an unhealthy approach
toward Muslims, in large part because of what it omits.
On the other hand, perhaps it offers a way to distinguish between “Muslims we can trust” and “Muslims we can’t”? I offer that as a possibility, but I don’t find it likely.
If I’m right, I find that interesting and worth talking about. In any case, I’m curious about response from Muslims. ”
So, Muslims, what do you think?
Willow 11:59 pm on July 2, 2008 Permalink |
My thoughts? Whatev. Five Muslims in a room can’t even agree about beard length, eating habits or birth control. So getting real consensus about a guy who claims to be the Mahdi? No way. Not in this or any lifetime. The previous “mahdis” (in Sudan and Algeria) were anticolonial leaders with religious window dressing–enough to give the British and the French serious trouble, but not to mobilize Muslims on a global scale. They were highly local phenomena–no one in Iran or Indonesia or Iraq seriously considered either one to be the real mahdi.
This age is far too cynical for a real messiah.
aziz 3:52 pm on July 3, 2008 Permalink |
the author is a kook. He’s trying to play a little game of scary muslim threat one-upmanship (I’ll see you a Saudi and a Democrat, and raise you a Mahdi!)
The gist of the argument is what? That if a Mahdi were to declare, then some small fraction of the already small fraction of violent jihadi muslims woudl become mahdists, and thus be even more violent?
in general, the threat from any violent group is going to be T = N x A x R, where R = resources, A = technology amplifiers, and N = actual numbers of people willing to act. We worry rightly about nukes because even if R and N are small, A is gigantic. But mahdists are going to be low-R, low-N and low-A.
Matt 4:04 pm on July 4, 2008 Permalink |
I’m the writer of the original email. Thanks for your responses, though I disagree with the thrust. I’m afraid there are too many examples in history of apocalyptic messianism and related movements (Islam in particular and religion in general have no monopoly) leading to trouble -usually just suicidal, but often enough murderous- for me to really dismiss such a threat on those grounds.
Though “scary muslim threat one-upsmanship” is a good way to describe the tone of the article and what I don’t like about it. I’ll try to think about fractiousness and heterogeneity, but my first impulse is that this often radicalizes small groups.