Thread: Anti-Arab/Muslim sentiment in the United States

Where did my reply go? I wrote like three paragraphs in response to this big Syme post.

Fuck!

Well, anyway. My point was that I wasn't managing to ask the right things, and was therefore appearing stupider than I was. My point was that I doubt there'd be a land rights issue over Israel/Palestine because nobody would be fighting over it, nobody would have been unjustly or otherwisely relocated for any reason I can see. You say "Jewish nationalism" would have emerged -- WHAT Jewish nationalism?! I said "without religion". The Jewish nation is founded on a religion -- it's barely even an extension thereof. I'm not saying "without the religion aspect there's nothing worth fighting over", I was saying that byproducts, direct and indirect, of religion have led to there being reasons for violence in the Middle East. Of course I know most of the Mid East isn't holy -- I was being cute. There's oil in other parts of the world that don't see war, is what I'm saying. Yes, oil is a major reason e'rybody's all worked up.

By the way, Coq, I think nationalism and religion are similarly dangerous. But whatever.

Syme, another question for you. No doubt you are at least cursorily knowledgeable about Scientology (as you are everything else ). Do you think the violence committed by its (believing) followers is independent of that religious belief and religious pressure?

Originally Posted by gwahir

You say "Jewish nationalism" would have emerged--

Well, actually what I said was that the Zionist movement which led to the creation of Israel was a largely secular movement, based on secular Jewish nationalism. On the question of whether this secular Jewish nationalism would have emerged at all in the absence of the Jewish religion, I didn't state an opinion one way or the other. I left that question unanswered, because I can't answer it with any confidence. So no, I don't say that secular Jewish nationalism would have emerged without religion. I don't know whether it would have or not. I say only that the people responsible for the creation of Israel WERE largely secular Jewish nationalists.

Originally Posted by gwahir

--WHAT Jewish nationalism?!

Surely you know that the Zionist movement had a huge secular wing which didn't care too much about Jewish religious ideas as they pertain to the establishment of a Jewish state in Israel, and drew it's ideas about Israel from non-religious thought and Jewish ethnic/national identity? Revisionist Zionism? Labor Zionism?

Originally Posted by gwahir

I said "without religion". The Jewish nation is founded on a religion -- it's barely even an extension thereof.

Well, the secular Zionists who played a huge role in the creation of the Israeli state would disagree with you. To them, the Jewish nation is NOT founded on the Jewish religion, it's founded on Jewish historical ethnic/national identity. Again, this brings us to the question of whether this identity, secular as it, would have emerged without the Jewish religion. That's a question I haven't given an answer to, contrary to your accusations. But Jewish national identity is, or can be, quite discrete from Jewish religious identity. Certainly it has been so in the minds of many of the people responsible for creating the state of Israel. Secular Jewish nationalists base their Jewish nationalism not on religion, but on the fact that Jews are a people, an ethnic group, with a shared language and culture and history.

That sort of shared background has been more than enough basis for numerous other groups to construct national identities independent of any religious identity, which is probably the closest I will come to a definitive statement about whether Jewish nationalism could have emerged in the absence of the Jewish religion,

Originally Posted by gwahir

Syme, another question for you. No doubt you are at least cursorily knowledgeable about Scientology (as you are everything else ). Do you think the violence committed by its (believing) followers is independent of that religious belief and religious pressure?

Actually, I know very little about Scientology; I really don't have the interest to read about it, or pay attention when it pops up in the news. I would, however, say that any violence committed by it's followers is going to fit the same profile as other religious violence: The individuals carrying out the acts (at the 'sharp end', so to speak) may have spiritual motivations in their heads, but the reasons for the emergence of the phenomenon in the first place will be non-religious.

This question makes me suspect that you have somewhat misunderstood what I'm saying about religious violence. I don't deny that when an individual carries out an act of religious violence, they are sometimes being earnestly motivated by ideas that were placed in their head by religious teachings and religious pressure. This can be true when a Muslim suicide bomber blows himself up on a bus because he thinks that his reward will be Paradise, and it can be true when a Scientologist wing-nut commits whatever acts of violence Scientologist wing-nuts commit. I'm not necessarily saying that every individual who commits an act of religious violence is actually, in his own head, personally and knowingly driven by a non-religious motive. What I'm saying is that the factors that give rise to the phenomenon of religious violence, on a broad or collective level, are not rooted in the religions themselves. Non-religious sociological factors are what cause the emergence of religious groups which encourage people to commit violence. The actual individuals at the 'sharp end' may well be quite credulous towards the violent creed of their religious group, if they are predisposed towards such credulity for some reason (desperation and resentment in the case of a suicide bomber, and I suspect mental issues in the case of people who commit violence in the name of Scientology).