Words fail us: Islamist ideology, not madness, fuels terror

We have seen yet another massacre of innocents by Islamist terrorists in Russia, this time a truly horrendous one. At least 139 people died on March 22 at the Crocus City Hall music venue in Krasnogorsk, Moscow. Though spectacular in scope, the attack was hardly an isolated incident. Every few months we see an attack of this nature, whether by explosion or bullet or knife.

Any sane person must ask: Why is this happening? What is making people do this, not just as a single event, but again and again and again?

The holy time of Ramadan is a time for Islamists to celebrate their religion. And this is how they do it.

But this is not the only remarkable thing here. The West’s reaction to such killings is inexplicable. The rote condemnation of murder fades soon after the memorial flowers and memorial teddy bears have been ritually deposited. The abiding reaction from the establishment media and elite is, astonishingly, not outrage at the atrocity, but rather a fear that the response will incite anti-Muslim bigotry. This is not Islam, we are told. It’s just a few madmen, perverting their faith. The real danger is that the “right wing” will turn on Muslims in an orgy of Islamophobia.

A strange reaction indeed. Where does it come from?

How we see and hear the world

Among the most useful things science has taught us is that what we perceive as reality is often not reality at all. We don’t view the world as it truly is. Instead, we view the world through the refracting glasses of our experience. This is what teaches us to view the world in a particular way, to come to conclusions, even to choose a particular ideology as “correct.”

To say this is, in our modern relativistic understanding, would seem to state the obvious. The problem is there are far more mental manipulations of the world than we realize. And some of these are truly startling.

One of these comes from language. A child at the start of his acquisition of language can perceive any sound used by any human language, no matter the tongue being used by his parents. If this were not true, some human languages would not be learnable by children.

But here is the interesting fact: A child as he learns a particular language must learn what not to hear. If in a language two sounds never distinguish words, the child learns to hear the sounds as “the same,” even though in other languages they do differentiate words and thus there must not be treated as “the same.”

This is why linguists distinguish between “phonemes” and “sounds.” Phonemes are classes of sound that are distinctive in a particular language and understood by its speakers as such. Sounds (more accurately “phonetic segments”) are just that: any spoken sound.

Thus, part of learning to function as a speaker is learning to ignore what does not fit the language you have learned. You must not hear what is actually said; you must perceive a psychological illusion instead.

It’s easy enough to say this is just an oddity of language. But it isn’t. This is how humans work. We build mental constructs of how the world is by our experience, then extrapolate these out when we encounter situations that do not match our own. And we exclude whatever does not fit. We even see colors as the same when they are not.

A failure of comprehension

Probably the best social example of this is in religion. It’s a very rare human being who can follow more than one of these at a time. Religion is rather like a language spoken by monolingual native speakers. They have learned it, perhaps believe it, and thus, when they encounter another religion, the only way they can interpret it is in terms of their own faith.

But they are completely oblivious to the fact that they are dealing with a system that, while it may have analogs to their own religion, will in other ways be entirely different.

Consider now the question of Islamists and Islam itself. Both Christianity and Judaism have had their murderous periods in the past. But the modern versions of these religions are much bleached of their grimmer past.

Modern mainstream Christianity is dominated not by a Lord of hosts, but by the ideal of a forgiving, loving Christ and unending compassion. Most Western Jews belong to Judaism’s reformed version, in which tikkun olam — repairing or improving the world — is paramount. And both religions have as their base the Ten Commandments, in which “thou shalt not murder” is a prime directive. These make violence either inconceivable or abhorrent.

These are the only religions elite Westerners know. They are, essentially, monolingual in these.

And, naturally, like native speakers who can’t distinguish the distinctive sounds of a foreign language, we cannot conceive of a foreign religion that is not equally pacifist and just like ours. Isn’t this what all religions are? Look at how pacific even an Asian religion like Buddhism is! It’s not religion that’s causing the murderousness of Islamist terrorists! It’s madmen! Islam is not to blame!

Unfortunately, there is abundant evidence that this is not true.

A deadly holy month

Consider the subject of Ramadan.

I doubt there are many who would disagree that Ramadan is the most important festival in the Muslim year. This is the time that Muslims fast and pray. It is a very holy time to them.

It’s also the time when the most murderous Islamist terrorist attacks occur, so much so that there has long been a site that keeps track of attacks during this festival and the number of dead, which is high.

Consider this from a Christian or Jewish point of view. What would a member of either of these two religions say if a group of their co-religionists decided to launch attacks every Easter or Yom Kippur, attacks designed for one purpose only: to kill as many of those they call unbelievers as possible? Inconceivable, isn’t it?

But Islamists do this all the time. The holy time of Ramadan is a time to celebrate their religion. And this is how they do it.

Surely, though, our media say, this is not a result of Islamic belief. Islam orders people not to kill, doesn’t it? Quran 5:32 after all says:

That is why We ordained for the Children of Israel that whoever takes a life — unless as a punishment for murder or mischief in the land — it will be as if they killed all of humanity; and whoever saves a life, it will be as if they saved all of humanity.

Unfortunately, the very next verse, Quran 5:33 says the following:

Indeed, the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and spread mischief in the land is death, crucifixion, cutting off their hands and feet on opposite sides, or exile from the land.

Now it becomes clear. Killing is bad unless it’s people who oppose Islam. Then it’s fine.

You won’t find anything like this in the New Testament. And even Jews, who don’t accept those books, reject the more bellicose parts of the Old Testament, as do Christians.

If Christians and Jews can reject parts of the Bible, surely Muslims can, and do, too.

Well, no. That’s a non-Muslim way of thinking. Muslims cannot reject any part of the Quran. Unlike the Bible, it was literally dictated by God via the angel Gabriel. The best you can do is what is called “abrogation,” where one verse is superseded by another. We don’t have anything like this in Western religions, but it’s essential in Islam, which is a religion produced by one political leader in one lifetime and contains therefore politically expedient pronouncements that were later no longer useful.

But even this is not helpful to those who want to excuse Islam from the acts of Islamists. Famously, Quran 2:256 states there should be “no compulsion in religion.” But this was said early in Muhammad’s career, when he was weak. Once he became strong, the admonition went by the board, and Quran 9:5 and Quran 9:29 abrogate it.

With abrogation of the earlier verse, you’re allowed to forcibly convert people and to kill them if they won’t acquiesce.

Blind to reality

Just as learning a language teaches us to interpret another language’s sounds as if they were our own, so our religions in the West teach us to act as if Islam were just like Christianity. But it isn’t. Islam is just different. And its message is clear: Unbelievers deserve death, and force is acceptable to make them submit.

We can only conclude that Islamists are not madmen. They are instead just devout Muslims.

So why do so many in the West refuse to believe this?

The answer, I assert, is simple. Just as knowledge of a language blinds us to distinctions that don’t exist in our language, so our intimacy with Western religions blinds us to what Islam really is. We can only see Islam as a copy of our pacifist Western religions. And it isn’t.