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What Does Christopher Hitchens Know About Islam?
By richards1052 / August 4, 2007
Christopher Hitchens has one of the most beguiling presences I've ever encountered in a media figure. He has that booming tenor that reminds one of Dylan Thomas reciting his mellifluous poetry. I hear he has a similar penchant for the 'hard stuff' as well. The words and ideas flow out of Hitchens mouth smooth as honey. Their power is almost magnetic. The high-toned English accent doesn't hurt either.
But when you step back and really examine what he's saying it's pretty much all bilge. Well, OK, maybe not all. But so much of it is that you feel that smooth, suave delivery is a betrayal or deception of sorts.
So how much does Christopher Hitchens really know about Islam? Apparently, not terribly much. He participated in a panel discussion on Warren Olney's To the Point. Towards the end of the discussion, he responded to a Muslim scholar's claim that Islam derives from the word for "peace." Here is what Hitchens said (audio):
Islam, by the way, does not mean "peace." It means "surrender," "prostration."
As even a Jew who knows any Hebrew can tell you, Islam certainly does derive from the word salaam or shalom in Hebrew. As Svend White, an Islamic studies specialist who writes Akram's Razor tells me:
…One can spin this *somewhat* by emphasizing the fact that the type of "peace" is a kind of surrender…
What is misleading about Hitchens' statement is he neglects that "Islam" connotes the peaceful "surrender" of a believer to the will of God, but not the "surrender" of a non-believer before the force or power of Islam. Such peaceful surrender, which some see as the essence of faith, is a feature of many of the world's religions. Hitchens is spinning Islam as a religion of violence and domination. So it's convenient to distort the religion's name as well. We see here the power of a guileful ideologue used to stir the pot of intolerance and Muslim-bashing.
Few will argue that there are not serious issues that need to be addressed between Islam and other world religions and that some Muslims defame their own religion by claiming to embody it as they kill the innocent. But Hitchens is merely a provocateur, rather than someone willing to engage in a serious dialogue on the subject.
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Hi Adam
I would be curious as to where you got that 30,000 number from, as well as precisely what that entails.
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL0539153420070805
The figure is widely accepted, even if the Turkish state’s view of who is to blame is not.
I shall come back to your qualitative distinctions when I am less busy.
Meryl:
I did not accuse him of libel–not that I necessarily put it past him given his general M.O., but that’s neither here nor there–I referred to libel while discussing him. You may not understand this distinction, but it is real. I referred to the nature of the suit that the commenter had mentioned and then described him as one of a number of people who I consider to grossly misrepresent the facts.
I’m not interested in playing this game, where the heckler cuts & pastes all these selective facts, trite arguments, and sensationalist claims from their preferred propaganda site may be and the other person wastes inordinate amounts of time breaking down each tautological argument into its premises and explaining how these premises are trite and biased.
It sounds like this might be news to you, so allow me to point out that the most insidious and dangerous propaganda is generally composed not of outright lies, but rather half truths, misrepresented facts, carefully camouflaged prejudice, and arbitrary speculative leaps. It’s fairly straightforward to dismantle this stuff, but it’s enormously time-consuming. And I have better things to do.
Think what you like. I sure won’t lose much sleep over the opinion of people who can’t see how biased (and therefore potentially unreliable) Spencer’s attacks are. I’m not here to teach people the principles of logic and cannons of evidence.
Maher,
Maher,
Mr. Spencer:
The point of my initial comment on libel was that since it is as you say a very serious matter, CAIR (or any other organization, whatever its political persuasion) has a right to avail itself of the law to protect itself from defamation. I assume that CAIR’s suit arises out of their belief that your involvement in that event would have led to their illegal defamation. While I obviously have my own concerns about your objectivity, I can’t judge the merits of that contention for a variety of reasons (e.g., I’m not a lawyer, nor have I studied all the particulars), but I certainly support their right to defend themselves against illegal actions against them.
There are two sides to every story, as the old saying goes, and I wished to point out that CAIR has made some arguments concerning a serious issue that appear credible enough to at least get a hearing at court and therefore need to be addressed, whatever one thinks about their ultimate merit. The comment to which I responded presented the CAIR case as self-evident example case of censorship (or, depending how you interpret it, perhaps bullying). Given your antagonistic relationship with CAIR, the case seems a little more complex than that to me, even if one feels their suit is ultimately unjustified.
Speaking more generally, I most certainly did not intend accuse you of libel. These comments were composed on the fly–hence the profusion of typos–and consequently not exactly worded with legal precision. (Nor should they be expected to be, given the conventions of the medium.)
The two broader points I intended to make concering CAIR, and which I stand by, are:
1) I consider your analysis of CAIR extremely biased and your evidence inconclusive for a host of reasons.
2) I believe there are dark forces in American politics today that use sensationalistic and conspiracy theory-ridden attacks against CAIR as a means to silent dissent and whip prejudice against Muslim Americans. Even if conclusive evidence eventually emerges in the future proving CAIR guilty of your charges, the way CAIR has been so thoroughly demonized on questionable proof should be, I think, very troubling to anybody who takes civil liberties seriously.
It’s ironic, because I have my share of disagreements with CAIR. The problem is that demagogic tactics being increasingly used against CAIR not only stoke hate and fear at a time when dialog is desperately needed, but ultimately put all our basic civil rights at risk.
re: alleged Hamas links
I am neither a CAIR insider nor an intelligence expert, so I can only judge by the evidence I have before me in the public domain.
Assuming these links to be true, I am concerned as well, but do not see it to be quite as straightforward as you evidently do. Like many societies in throes of conflict, the Palestinian territories aren’t exactly teeming with choices in terms of employment, political movements, or civic society organizations. Whatever we may think of it, Hamas is a major player within Palestinian society and plays a complex, multi-faceted role. Not everything it does is terrorism-related, and I wouldn’t be surprised if in some circumstances it might be the “only game in town” for an aspiring political activist.
Therefore, I’d want to know more about what the individuals in question actually did. Did they involved in social service, administration, or a military arm? Simply stating someone was once “linked” at some point in the past isn’t enough, if we really interested in getting at the truth and committed to discerning moderates from extremists.
Meryl:
I’m sharing my view of his arguments and am not inclined to writing a legal brief at the moment. You’re certainly welcome to your opinion.
Ah, the ever handy “unindicted co-conspirator” charge. What exactly does that mean? It means that the evidence was so paltry that they haven’t even been charged–even in this increasingly hostile and paranoid political climate–much less convicted.
In other words, they’re innocent until proven guilty.
It wouldn’t be the first time political agendas or prejudices tainted the legal system in a time of conflict and it won’t be the last.
Gregory:
Thanks for sharing those very interesting observations. As you might expect, I have similar concerns about his objectivity and rigor. Luckily for him, rigor and objectivity aren’t what sells books on Islam these days.
Adam:
We may end up with some differing conclusions, but I don’t have a problem with these sentiments. I feel no need to idealize previous generations of Muslims and treat them as somehow immune to the passions, vices and influences with which all cultures have struggled.
Gaps between ideal and practice are hardly unique to Muslims, as any even-handed examination of Western history shows. The lofty ideals of the Enlightenment didn’t prevent the brutality and institutionalized racism of Colonialism. And African-Americans remained second-class citizens for nearly 2 centuries after the Declaration of Independence had established the equality of men.
As Stan Lee used to say, ‘Nuff said.
"Broken links"
Yes, the Gordon Brown show is correct. Just click on "Listen" & you can hear the show. The Hitchens conversation begins somewhere in the middle of the program so you'll have to navigate through the file till you get to it.
"'jihad' means "internal struggle of the soul" or some such anodyne formulation that doesn't include suicide bombers."
No, jihad has both meanings. Have you never heard of a word that could have one spiritual & one material meaning?
"Can you name the ideology?"
He's a convert from leftism to neoconservatism. Baaley teshuvah usually go to extremes attempting to prove their allegiance to their new found faith. This is perfectly true of Hitch, I'm afraid.
"You combine being a reckless writer"
From you, I take that as the highest compliment. I only appear 'reckless' to those whose politics makes them much more reckless to the safety of the world.
"have the Kurds en mass (outside of some, but few incidents) turned to terrorism and violence? "
I'm generally pretty supportive of Kurdish culture & its resistance to its various oppressors, but haven't you left out the PKK, which has engaged in serious acts of terror against Turkey for yrs if not decades?
"Excusing the barbarism that exists in the Muslim world…"
No one here is "excusing" barbarism in the Muslim world. We're just demanding that all those who attack Islam as a religion of war, hate & domination recognize that it's not JUST those things; and that virtually all of the world's religions (including Judaism, btw) have engaged in violence & at times even genocide against their perceived opponents.
I don’t disagree with you, Adam, but draw quite different conclusions from the evidence.
My point isn’t that violence is acceptable but that we can’t explain Muslim violence with these airy theories that reduce complex problems and conflicts to monocausal explanations–my all time favorite: “They hate freedom!”–or pseudo-scholarly theories about people’s behavior being the result of their “culture” (which is basically what Hitchens is building towards; the same old “culture of death” claptrap).
All people, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, good or bad, are the products of a complex mix of factors.
Also, religious traditions are complex, ever-changing collections of beliefs. You don’t give insight into a sprawling, diverse, 1400 year old tradition essence with this kind of dime-store pycho-babble.
Most importantly, what’s good for the goose must also be applied to the gander. These days, many critics of Islam have revived cheap polemical tactics that were justly discarded in polite company and which just as much to other religious traditions and cultures.
It must also be said that you cannot selectively condemn violence. You can’t only condemn the violence of the weak, the ignorant or the un-telegenic. THAT is a form of a violence, in my book. Unfortunately, I think many American leaders are guilty of just that today. In the process, they do their part to beget yet more yet worse violence.
Meanwhile, people who are among the most guilty of ensuring that this vicious circle continues–i.e., the warmongering zealots like Hitchens–preach about Muslims need to embrace non-violence.
The etymology of the term Islam does mean submission to Allah, just as the Prophet was purported to have been the first person to do. Though, of course, there is a relation to the word salaam, as the idea is that peace can only truly be acheived through submission to the will of Allah.Â
The links to the Hitchens debate send to a “Gordon Borwn visits Camp David” article?
But Hitchens is merely a provocateur, rather than someone willing to engage in a serious dialogue on the subject.
Well, Rich. It seems you like to read, but you are not really up do date with the world. In fact, most shows (the ones that probably informed your knowledge of Hitchens) were having Hitchens on to debate a man of God and arguing about defense. Par contra, my show invited Hitchens and fellow humanist Edd Doerr, former president of the American Humanist Association to debate what it means to be an atheist in a pluralist democracy. You decide to point out (like many commentators) a seemingly mild, and not particularly divisive point from his book, then, you encourage interfaith-interested Jews to hate him more. Later, you mention in your profile that you are a blogger aimed at Tikkun Olam -literally, to repair the world- yet you spend the entire column taking digs at a writer you could never stand toe-to-toe with and encouraging the audience to hate his point-of-view! What does one have to do with the other?
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