Generalizations: Nazis, Muslims, and Nicholas Kristof

Generalizations are the currency of scholarly debate and decision-making. For instance, one study, attempting to measure the impact of pornography on rape, observed:

• Victimization rates for rape in the United States demonstrate an inverse relationship between pornography consumption and rape rates.

While there has been an array of anecdotal evidence that the rapist first used porn before raping, generalizations based on this kind of study are quite germane. Another study found that:

• A preschooler living with one biological parent and one step-parent was forty times more likely to be sexually abused than one living with two natural parents.

From this study and others like it, we can generalize that preschoolers are safer with two biological parents.

To claim that there is something the matter with making generalizations is to silence debate and inquiry. Even more fundamentally, such a proscription starves and blinds the mind. However, this is just the thing that multi-cultural (religious pluralistic) dogma is doing. It claims that, since we lack any absolute standards, we cannot judge other cultures, religions, or ideologies.

Others assert that we cannot make generalizations about the people who ascribe to a given ideology. However, while it is true that every Nazi might have believed differently in some respects, it would be wrong-headed to conclude that we should not speak about Nazis in general. Why:

1. The majority still shared many beliefs.
2. The evils of Nazism were almost universally experienced in every nation Nazis entered.
3. Even though they only represented a minority of the German people, their violent tactics were able to commandeer the entire nation.
4. To refuse to make generalizations about Nazi Germany would have defused, de-motivated, and de-focused the Allied effort to stop this horrible evil.

We need generalizations, but we must use them wisely. However, columnist Nicholas Kristof argues against the use of such generalizations. In essence, he claims that all religions are basically without behavioral distinctives, and therefore, we cannot make such generalizations about them:

• Beware of generalizations about any faith because they sometimes amount to the religious equivalent of racial profiling. Hinduism contained both Gandhi and the fanatic who assassinated him. The Dalai Lama today is an extraordinary humanitarian, but the fifth Dalai Lama in 1660 ordered children massacred “like eggs smashed against rocks.” Christianity encompassed the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and also the 13th century papal legate who in France ordered the massacre of 20,000 Cathar men, women and children for heresy, reportedly saying: Kill them all; God will know his own.

There were also Nazis who performed heroic and noble acts, but does this mean that we cannot make any generalizations about Nazism? However, Kristof claims that:

• The caricature of Islam as a violent and intolerant religion is horrendously incomplete.

Should we also apply such a conclusion to Nazism because there were good people fighting under the Nazi flag? Instead clarity requires us to distinguish between “Nazis” and “Nazism,” and to examine the overall thrust of Nazism.

Likewise, we need to recognize that there are good and peaceable Muslims like the small-minority Sufis. However, they do not reflect the ideology and overall trust of Islam as German individuals, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, did not reflect the Nazi ideology.

How then should we make generalizations about Nazism? By focusing on their ideology, interpretation of this ideology, and impact! What can we safely say about Islam? For one thing, it is a religion of world domination under Shariah Law and the Islamic Caliphate. Ibn Khaldun, the 15th century Tunisian historian, wrote:

• In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and the obligation to convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force... The other religious groups did not have a universal mission, and the holy war was not a religious duty for them, save only for purposes of defense... Islam is under obligation to gain power over other nations.

Here’s some of the Koranic basis for this teaching:

• “Make war on them until idolatry is no more and Allah’s religion (Islam) reigns supreme, (Koran 8:37)

• “When the Sacred Months are over, kill those who ascribe partners [like Jesus] to God wheresoever ye find them; seize them, encompass them, and ambush them; then if they repent and observe prayer and pay the alms, let them go their way’.” (Koran 4:5)

• “…kill the disbelievers wherever we find them” (Koran 2:191) and “murder them and treat them harshly” (Koran 9:123), and “Strike off the heads of the disbelievers” (Koran 8:12, cp. 8:60).

Kristof and others admit that there are many violent verses in the Koran but claim that these are little different from the Bible. Therefore, we shouldn’t denigrate the Koran and the Sayings of Mohammad because of the many violent admonitions in the Koran and Hadiths.

However, it doesn’t seem matter how many times the secularists, like Kristof, are told that the violent verses of the Hebrew Scriptures do not apply to us today, they refuse to drop their equation likening Koran to the Bible. But what does the average Muslim believe about the violent teachings of their holy books? Recent surveys provide the answer:

• Polling data released (April 24, 2007) in a rigorously conducted face-to-face University of Maryland/ WorldPublicOpinion.org interview survey of 4384 Muslims conducted between December 9, 2006 and February 15, 2007—1000 Moroccans, 1000 Egyptians, 1243 Pakistanis, and 1141 Indonesians—reveal that 65.2% of those interviewed-almost 2/3, hardly a “fringe minority”-desired this outcome (i.e., “To unify all Islamic countries into a single Islamic state or Caliphate”), including 49% of “moderate” Indonesian Muslims. The internal validity of these data about the present longing for a Caliphate is strongly suggested by a concordant result: 65.5% of this Muslim sample approved the proposition “To require a strict application of Sharia law in every Islamic country.”

This "strict application of Sharia law" is not only utterly incompatible with Western liberties and protections; it rejects them! Sharia subjugates everyone, regardless of religion, to Islamic law. Forget about equality or freedom of religion!

And how about the Muslims the USA had liberated from Sadam Hussein and the Taliban? Would they also seek to subjugate their liberators?

•  The Pew Research Forum report, “The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society,” released April 30, 2013, confirms the broad appeal of the totalitarian Sharia, across Islamdom. Specifically, 91% of Iraqi Muslims and 99% of Afghan Muslims supported making Sharia the official state law of their respective societies, after both nations were liberated at the expense of much priceless U.S. blood, and great U.S. treasure.

In the face of such findings, Kristof responds:

• Let’s not feed Islamophobic bigotry by highlighting only the horrors while neglecting the diversity of a religion with 1.6 billion adherents — including many who are champions of tolerance, modernity and human rights. The great divide is not between faiths, but one between intolerant zealots of any tradition and the large numbers of decent, peaceful believers likewise found in each tradition.

Truly, there is diversity within the Islamic community. However, the “moderates” seem to be irrelevant in the face of the great and violence-prone Islamic masses. The proof of this is ubiquitous. Everywhere, in Islamic nations, non-Muslims live in subjection and fear. If there was but Islamic country where non-Muslims live as equals beside Muslims, we might have cause for hope. If there could be found in any nation a sizable Islamic community that is willing to adopt Western values, allowing non-Muslims to live as equals, or where Muslims are not attempting to institute and impose Shariah laws, we might have hope.

However, these findings tell us that Muslims interpret their holy writings in just the way these writings seem to speak – as commands to bring the world under Islam, and, if necessary, with the most extreme forms of violence.

We cannot blind our eyes to these generalizations. One European recently admitted to me:

• Well, we now know that we have a big problem, but what can we do? Everyone is still too comfortable. We can still live with the occasional outbursts of violence and intimidation.

Comfort can kill! However, Kristof and the secularists are still in denial mode.

Koran Burning, Apologies, Confrontation and Free Speech

In this age of Islamic violence, our right to free speech is undergoing reconsideration. George Stephanopoulos lamented the fact that Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer thought that Koran burning might be added as an exception to free speech – like crying fire in a crowded theatre:

• But Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer told me on “GMA” that he’s not prepared to conclude that — in the internet age — the First Amendment condones Koran burning. 

However, the court has protected free speech in the past, even when offensive and encouraged criminal behavior, according to Charles Lane of the Washington Post:

• Over time, the court developed today's standard, which allows even the advocacy of illegal conduct unless it is both intended, and likely, to incite "imminent lawless action." Indeed, in 1949 the court allowed a Chicago demagogue to make a racist speech in a packed theater, even though police said it would cause an opposing crowd outside to riot: "A function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute," the court opined. "It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger." And, of course, in 1989 the court upheld a constitutional right to burn the American flag, despite arguments by proponents of a ban that flag-burning might trigger riots by offended patriots. 

We live in an age when just about everyone is offended by one word or another. If offense became a basis to disqualify speech, then there would remain little to say apart from, “It’s a nice day today!”

Free speech is the grease of a democratic society. Without it, no society can remain robust, dynamic, and accountable to its citizens. We sometimes need to hear unpleasant ideas. So where does Koran burning fit into this picture, especially in view of the fact that innocent people are murdered because of this.

Should the prevention of such offenses be the goal of Christian love or would this “love” enable unacceptable behavior?

Sometimes, love must be expressed as a “tough love” – a love that requires dialogue and confrontation rather than placation. If my son refused to ever do the dishes but demonstrated that instead he was willing to joyfully do any other chore that I might require of him, I might be insensitive to push for confrontation and “tough love.” Perhaps he merely has a strong aversion to dishes for some inexplicable reason, while he demonstrates a willingness to cooperate in a hundred other ways. I think, in this case, wisdom would require that I indulge him.

However, this is not the case with Koran burning. If the burning of Korans was only the offense, I would argue for indulgence. However, there seems to be an endless list of unpardonable offenses. This intolerance is partly fueled by the Koran, which forbids any form of criticism of Islam:

• [Surah 33:57-58] Those who insult God and His Messenger will be rejected by God in this world and the next—He has prepared a humiliating punishment for them—and those who undeservedly insult believing men and women will bear the guilt of slander and obvious sin. (Haleem)

• [Surah 33:59-61] Prophet, tell your wives, your daughters, and women believers to make their outer garment hang low over them, so as to be recognized and not insulted. God is most forgiving, most merciful. If the hypocrites, the sick of heart, and those who spread lies in the city [Medina] do not desist, We shall arouse you [Prophet] against them, and then they will only be your neighbors in this city for a short while. They will be rejected wherever they are found, and then seized and killed. (Haleem)

Consistent with the above surahs, James Arlandson recounts one of the sayings of Mohammad through which he okayed his followers to kill someone taunting him:

• “Angered by the poems and now able to strike back after the Battle of Badr, Muhammad had had enough. He asked, "Who would rid me of [Kab]?" Five Muslims volunteered, one of whom was Kab’s foster-brother named Abu Naila. They informed him, "O apostle of God [Muhammad], we shall have to tell lies." He answered, "Say what you like, for you are free in the matter." (Arlandson, 5)

Instead of indulgence, confrontation is required. Questions need to be asked. Are Muslims willing to be part of a Western democracy where their beliefs will be questioned and subjected to criticism? Will they retaliate violently? Do they even believe in democracy or merely the imposition of Shariah Law, making everyone else second class citizens?

If we believe in free speech and its necessity for a healthy society and transparent relationships, then we need to ask these questions. We don’t need to burn Korans, but I think that there are many valid concerns that are being buried out of fear, hoping that they will just disappear.