Reflections Upon a Recent Encounter with "Christ-Centered" Arrogance and Islamophobia
"...when deep inside you there is a loaded gun, how can you have God?"
--Kabir
It never ceases to amaze me how people who have absolutely no training in my area of scholarly specialization feel free--no, entitled--to wax learnedly about matters of which they know less than nothing. Half-truths, bigotry, theology passed-off as social science, hoary canards...
Wow. I've heard it all. Or at least a lot of it.
But in the past few days I was treated to an exceptional display of hate-speech proffered as historical evidence. The culprit in this case will remain anonymous and I will omit any description here of the aggressive posture he assumed during our private conversation--a tactic that I assume was designed to intimidate me, since he had neither logical argument nor evidence at his command to support his position. But, man, was he creepy. Elmer Gantry with a Ph.D.
I have discovered, to my chagrin, that I possess an uncanny ability to "out" Islamophobes. I am not at all certain how I acquired this peculiar talent. I suspect that, given my obvious Anglo ancestry and ethnicity, my educational attainments and intellect, I arouse certain expectations in people. Those who walk around with a loaded gun in their hearts assume that, after I recite all of the polite qualifications and disclaimers about Islam and Muslims that the present climate of political correctness is deemed to require, I will naturally fall in line and do my "duty" and ratify the prevailing cultural consensus that Islam is somehow, at bottom, defective as a moral tradition.
The nature of this defect--obvious to some people--is that Islamic tradition predisposes a certain percentage of its adherents to violence. The flip-side of this presumption is that Christianity predisposes a certain percentage of its adherents to meekness and non-violence.
When I decline to ratify either of these views--but particularly the former--I am frequently greeted with reactions that range from annoyance to petulance. And when, on the contrary, I affirm Islam as deserving serious consideration as a religious and moral tradition--on par with any other--the petulance can occasionally explode into rage.
As an historian of religion, I am precluded from adopting any predispositional view. The weight of historical evidence demolishes any claim that Islam (or any other religion) predisposes its adherents to violence or non-violence. But if, for the sake of argument, I were to adopt a predispositionalist view, I would have to couple it--for the sake of intellectual honesty--with the opinion that the tradition in question is a failure: because no one can predict that any given individual will exhibit violent or non-violent behavior in a given set of circumstances on the basis of her or his confessional affiliation.
To affirm otherwise is simply to attempt to pass-off theology as social science. My advice to any and all who wish to traffic in such a scurrile pastime: don't go there. Intellectual integrity is a terrible thing to waste.
--Kabir
It never ceases to amaze me how people who have absolutely no training in my area of scholarly specialization feel free--no, entitled--to wax learnedly about matters of which they know less than nothing. Half-truths, bigotry, theology passed-off as social science, hoary canards...
Wow. I've heard it all. Or at least a lot of it.
But in the past few days I was treated to an exceptional display of hate-speech proffered as historical evidence. The culprit in this case will remain anonymous and I will omit any description here of the aggressive posture he assumed during our private conversation--a tactic that I assume was designed to intimidate me, since he had neither logical argument nor evidence at his command to support his position. But, man, was he creepy. Elmer Gantry with a Ph.D.
I have discovered, to my chagrin, that I possess an uncanny ability to "out" Islamophobes. I am not at all certain how I acquired this peculiar talent. I suspect that, given my obvious Anglo ancestry and ethnicity, my educational attainments and intellect, I arouse certain expectations in people. Those who walk around with a loaded gun in their hearts assume that, after I recite all of the polite qualifications and disclaimers about Islam and Muslims that the present climate of political correctness is deemed to require, I will naturally fall in line and do my "duty" and ratify the prevailing cultural consensus that Islam is somehow, at bottom, defective as a moral tradition.
The nature of this defect--obvious to some people--is that Islamic tradition predisposes a certain percentage of its adherents to violence. The flip-side of this presumption is that Christianity predisposes a certain percentage of its adherents to meekness and non-violence.
When I decline to ratify either of these views--but particularly the former--I am frequently greeted with reactions that range from annoyance to petulance. And when, on the contrary, I affirm Islam as deserving serious consideration as a religious and moral tradition--on par with any other--the petulance can occasionally explode into rage.
As an historian of religion, I am precluded from adopting any predispositional view. The weight of historical evidence demolishes any claim that Islam (or any other religion) predisposes its adherents to violence or non-violence. But if, for the sake of argument, I were to adopt a predispositionalist view, I would have to couple it--for the sake of intellectual honesty--with the opinion that the tradition in question is a failure: because no one can predict that any given individual will exhibit violent or non-violent behavior in a given set of circumstances on the basis of her or his confessional affiliation.
To affirm otherwise is simply to attempt to pass-off theology as social science. My advice to any and all who wish to traffic in such a scurrile pastime: don't go there. Intellectual integrity is a terrible thing to waste.
posted by Sidi Hamid Benengeli | 1:54 PM
2 Comments:
That's pretty funny. So give us the dirt. Who was this guy, what were the circumstances and what did he say? No fair to bait and depart. No fair, no fair.
Good manners prevent me from publicly exposing this individual for the creep that he is. What I will say is that his words were not as offensive as his actions: during the course of our conversation, he attempted to intimidate me by leaning forward in his chair (we were both seated) until his face was about six inches from mine; he fixed an angry, unblinking glare upon me as I spoke. He would then lean back in his chair and speak ex cathedra of matters of which he had no knowledge and then return to his aggressive, intimidation stance when I would reply. This went on for about 20 minutes. When, finally, I suggested that it was rather bad form on his part to presume to inform me about matters in which I specialize--and he does not--he is not even in my field, he leaped to his feet and ushered me out of the room.
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