Real questions before dumb answers

 

Suzuki Samurai has a few questions for those of you with all your dumb answers …

What would have been the conversation had the gay hating Islamo-fascist blown up the building with a fertiliser bomb? - Crop dusting?

What would it have been if he'd detonated a petrol truck upon crashing through the front door? - Trucks? Petrol? Driving?

And do the anti-gun folk seriously want to disarm themselves in the face of the real prospect of Trump becoming the president? - a man they claim, and I agree, is a fascist?

Lots of simple answers this week, but hardly a decent question being asked. 

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“Admit it: These terrorists are Muslims”

 

Folk constantly demand that Muslims admit that these terrorists are Muslim. So I fully expect them to cheer self-described “counter-extremist” Muslim Maajid Nawaz from the Quilliam Foundation who, in what he calls “a plea to my fellow Muslims and liberals,” demands precisely that.

A puerile response by some of my fellow Muslims is to ask “why should we apologize for something that has nothing to do with us.” But this entirely misses the point.
    Just as we Muslims expect solidarity from wider society against anti-Muslim bigotry and racism, likewise we must reciprocate solidarity toward victims of Islamist extremism. Just as we encourage others to actively denounce racism wherever they see it, so too must we actively denounce Islamist theocratic views wherever we find them.
    Enough with the special pleading. Enough with the denial. Enough with the obfuscation
    The killer of Orlando was a homophobic Muslim extremist, inspired by an ideological take on my own religion, Islam. In just the first seven days of this holy month of Ramadan, various jihadists have carried out attacks in Tel Aviv, Baghdad, Damascus, Idlib, Beirut, Orlando, and now Paris.
    This global jihadist insurgency threatens every corner of the world and has killed more Muslims than members any other faith. So why pretend it does not exist? Why shy away from calling it by name? …
    It is time that we liberals took the fabled red pill and accepted reality. Just as this clearly has something to do with outdated gun laws, and just as those laws need reform, this also has something to do with Islam, which also needs reform today. No other stance makes any sense.

If Islam is ever going to reform itself from within, which the civilised world so desperately demands it do, it needs more like Nawaz who accept reality, and argue boldly for that reform.

Read: Admit It: These Terrorists Are Muslims – Maajid Nawaz, DAILY BEAST

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Our First Instincts Make Bad Permanent Policies

 

While We Grieve, We Must Wait to Act

Guest post by Ilya Somin

Sunday's horrible mass shooting (and likely terrorist attack) at a gay night club in Orlando naturally generates strong emotional reactions. It is entirely understandable for us to feel anger, fear, and sorrow. But it is also important to remember that such emotions are a poor guide to public policy.

Strong emotional reactions to dramatic events exacerbate the effects of two already serious flaws in our political discourse. First, much of the public is ignorant about public policy issues, frequently forming opinions without serious consideration of the evidence. Such ignorance is not necessarily a sign of stupidity or bad moral character, but can be a result of rational behaviour by individual citizens. Nonetheless, if you know very little about terrorism, gun control, radical Islamism, and so on, your immediate emotional reactions to a terrorist attack are unlikely to be a good guide to policy. Anger and sorrow are not substitutes for knowledge.

Unfortunately, however, in the aftermath of a terrible tragedy, there is an even stronger instinct than usual to just “do something” that feels good in reaction to the event instead of carefully considering our options, or at least acknowledging the limitations of our insight. At such times, politicians have incentives to cater to angry, but poorly-informed public opinion, often with harmful results.

Second, most people have a strong tendency to evaluate political events in a highly biased manner. Instead of acting as truth-seekers and weighing new evidence objectively, we often react to events as “political fans,” overvaluing any new information that seems to reinforce our preexisting views, while ignoring or dismissing anything that cuts the other way. Often people reinterpret inconvenient evidence in ways that support their views, even if it actually does not, a process known to experts as “confirmation bias.” Such bias is particularly strong in an era of high political polarisation, where we also have strong partisan bias in favour of our own party’s ideas, and against those associated with the opposition.

Not surprisingly, strong emotional reactions to a recent tragedy exacerbate these and other biases, and make us even less objective in our thinking than we would be otherwise. If your reaction to the Orlando attack is a strong emotional feeling that it reinforces whatever you previously believed about terrorism, radical Islamism, gun control, or immigration, there is a strong chance that you are engaging in confirmation bias rather than objectively considering the evidence. That does not mean your reaction is automatically wrong. But it does mean you should not have too much confidence in its reliability as a guide to policy.

There is a long history of dubious and counterproductive policies enacted as a consequence of knee-jerk emotional reactions to high-profile tragedies. Examples include such cases as Megan’s Law (enacted in the aftermath of public outrage against high-profile cases of sexual predation against children) and the “zero tolerance” policies adopted in many schools in the aftermath of the 1999 Columbine shootings, which have done little to reduce crime, and much to harm school children. High-profile terrorist attacks also often generate counterproductive knee-jerk reactions that harm innocent people without doing much to prevent future terrorism.

We would be wise to learn from these errors.

It is right and understandable that we feel strong emotions at a time like this. But we should do all we can to prevent them from clouding our judgment. That will not by itself tell us what, if any, new policies we should adopt. But it could improve the process by which we decide.

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Ilya Somin is Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law.
He blogs at the Volokh Conspiracy.
This post previously appeared at the Volokh Conspiracy & FEE.

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Quote of the Day: On religious faith

“Fact is, religious faith, which encodes the highest aspirations of human race, is now, in our country, the servant of lowest instincts, and God is the creature of evil."
~ Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
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We’ve got to do something about Islam’s war on the west

 

More murder, more hand-wringing, but still no end to the horror. And yet, argues Yaron Brook, “Horrific events today can be prevented. But to do so means identifying the enemy and defeating them. Victory is possible.” If only the response weren’’ self-crippled from the start.

Winning would not mean blow-hard blather, white-washing Islam, or hand-wringing evasion – the three most popular responses today that help the self-cripppling.

One must [for example] speak out against all acts of hatred and violence towards homosexuals…well, unless such acts are committed by Muslims … 

"In which case,” says Amy Peikoff this morning. “you call for gun control."

Victory would begin with acknowledging the west is at war, and then identifying and naming the enemy.

We cannot target the enemy that is attacking us—much less defeat it—if we are unable or unwilling to specify who and what it is. We must name the enemy. We must name it accurately. And we must demand that our governments and politicians name it accurately.
    Our enemy in this war is: Islamic regimes that have in any way sponsored or supported attacks against the West, and jihadist groups that have planned or executed such attacks. The enemy regimes are primarily those in Iran and Saudi Arabia; and the jihadist groups include Hezbollah, Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, and Islamic State (aka Daesh).²
    Importantly, although Islam is a philosophic and cultural enemy of the West—in that it opposes every principle of Western civilization and calls for the murder of those who refuse to submit to “Allah”—Islam is not our military enemy.
    Islam is a religion—a body of ideas—and, militarily speaking, one cannot be at war with ideas. What would one bomb?
    The relationship between Islam and our current military enemy is essentially of the same kind as the relationship between Nazism and Nazi Germany or Shinto and Imperialist Japan in World War II. Nazism is an ideology, a body of ideas; Nazi Germany was a state ruled by a regime that was motivated by its leaders’ and supporters’ acceptance of those ideas. Shinto is a religion; Imperialist Japan was a state ruled by a regime that was motivated by its leaders’ and supporters’ acceptance of that religion. Likewise, Islam is a religion; various states, regimes, and groups today are motivated by their leaders’ and supporters’ and members’ acceptance of that religion.
    Islam motivates our military enemy. And this is an important fact. But Islam has not attacked the West; Islamic regimes and jihadist groups have. Islam cannot be eliminated; Islamic regimes and jihadist groups can. Our military enemy today is not Islam but the regimes and groups that embrace that religion, take it seriously, and thus seek to kill us in the name of their alleged God.
    Grasping this distinction is vital, because naming our enemy accurately is crucial to winning the war. If we misname the enemy, calling it “Islam” or “Radical Islam”—or, worse, “terrorism” or “extremism” or the like—then we won’t know specifically where to deploy our forces, whom or what to bomb, or what winning this war means (more on this below).
    Additionally, if we accept the notion that our military enemy is “Islam,” we might come to think that in order to win the war we must kill every self-described Muslim on the planet, which would be a moral atrocity (to put it mildly).
    Although all jihadists are Muslim, not all self-described Muslims take Islam seriously enough to engage in, materially support, or encourage jihad. And unless a Muslim does so, he cannot properly be regarded as our military enemy.
    Like the vast majority of today’s Jews and Christians, many of today’s Muslims refrain from acting in accordance with the murderous or otherwise rights-violating tenets of their religion. This does not absolve unserious, non-rights-violating Muslims of any and all responsibility for jihad, but it does limit their responsibility to a sub-legal, sub-political level.
    Just as we do not and should not hold all Jews and Christians legally or politically responsible for assaults or murders committed in accordance with their religious scriptures, so we should not hold all Muslims legally or politically responsible for assaults or murders committed in accordance with theirs.
    Merely believing in a religion that calls for rights violations does not, in and of itself, violate rights. To violate rights, one must initiate physical force against people, either directly—by, for instance, hitting, stabbing, or shooting them—or indirectly—by, for instance, materially supporting those who commit such acts, or encouraging or inciting others to commit such acts.
    If a Muslim in any way materially supports, encourages, or incites jihad—if he provides jihadists with weapons, shelter, information, or the like; or if he calls for aggression against Westerners—he is, by that fact, an agent of the enemy and should be treated accordingly. But if he merely “believes in” the tenets of Islam and does not practice the rights-violating tenets of the religion, he cannot properly be held legally or politically responsible for practicing them. We recognize this fact in regard to other religionists and religions, and we morally must recognize it in regard to Muslims and Islam as well.³
    Our military enemy in this war is Muslims who engage in jihad, or materially support jihad, or encourage or incite jihad. These are the Muslims of which the Islamic regimes and jihadist groups are comprised. And these are the Muslims, regimes, and groups we must eliminate.

As I said, that would just be a beginning.

It begins, to remind you, in recognising and acknowledging that “our enemy in this war is: Islamic regimes that have in any way sponsored or supported attacks against the West, and jihadist groups that have planned or executed such attacks.”

That means, and let’s be very clear about two things. 1. The war is with Islamic regimes and jihadist groups, not with immigrants as such. (The murderer’s family had been in America thirty years; he a citizen, not an immigrant.) 2. The war is with Islamic regimes and jihadist groups, not with every Muslim who follows Islam -- every Muslim being better behaved than their prophet being an ally in that war. So it doesn’t mean “banning Muslims,” whatever that would mean, it means making allies of every Muslim who is as opposed to jihadists as we are. As one American Muslim reminded folk this morning.

American Muslims are responsible for identifying and turning in over 90% of the lone wolves who would have committed terrorist attacks on this beautiful land of hours over the course of the past 15 years.
    We love this country and in order for us to show our love we need to start being looked at as the last line of defense and not the enemy.

So forget the blowhard blather. Let’s actually get smart.

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