Karen Armstrong and response the ISIS beheadings

I’ve been horrified by the news and sights of ISIS beheading innocent people for their terrorist reasons, and I’ve been despairing over our western response. All the time I’ve been rereading Karen Armstrong’s Islam: A Short History.

I am a firm disciple of nonviolence, both as a Christian, a Sufi, and a follower of the nonviolence of Martin Luther King. Yet I fantasize about violent retaliation against extremist fundamentalists like ISIS, and feel pleasure at the thoughts. I accept that as a natural response, and my despair is over not that, but over the ignorance displayed in the responses of our government and many talking heads.

ISIS’ response, at almost every point, is against the revelation of the Quran given to Mohammed, bless his name. ISIS is not motivated by religious beliefs or conflict, but by a natural, although irrational response to the denial of their culture that marked our colonialism of the Middle East, and the oppression that has caused. For the past 400 years Western Europe has moved into, often invading, their lands so that our economic system will continue to have and control the markets for resources and consumers we need to continue the profit. In many cases we have invaded very viable, relatively high, successful, stable, and peaceful societies, finding that they don’t use the legal forms that we employ to legitimize our legal controls. We declared that lack of Western forms the absence of any governmental system, and substituted our governments for theirs.

An interesting story of local history: The Spokane Tribe at one time had a large farm that grew grain for the miners in the area. The major holdings were at the confluence of the Spokane and Little Spokane rivers just beyond present Nine Mile. One fall about 150 years ago, the tribe decided to take a long weekend and attend a pow wow over in Coeur d’Alene. They all packed up and went visiting. The local Europeans went out to their farm, dismantled all the buildings and rebuilt them, filing in the local court in town deeds of homesteading. When the rightful owners returned they found their homes and barns had been destroyed. In the resulting court battle over ownership the tribe said they all knew the boundaries and ownerships, and all in the tribe could verbally state them exactly. The judge asked for paper verification, which the tribe, having only oral verifications, could not provide. There was also problems with their communal ownership, for Europeans were requiring individual or corporate ownership. Guess who won, and guess how the members of the tribe felt?

Hopeless! As if they were in Gaza.

It is this clash of cultures, and the hopelessness we cause in others, many whom then turn terrorist. Both cultures are at source democratic. We accent Of the people, by the people, and for the people. Islam states it as Of the people, by Allah, for the people. A good rule insures the use of just and peaceful means to the benefit of all relatively equally. Unlike we westerners, that use the vote as the demarcation of democracy.

Also, Islamic cultures closely identify religion and the state. Their whole history has been marked with a working out of the social forms that are to be employed. They, up to the time of colonialism, were successful in that meld, not perfect, but successful. Although there are some exceptions, their answer worked usually for several generations, benefiting all citizens, no matter what religion one belonged to.

So the West moves in, with our hubris , imposing our forms, dislocating their cultures. No wonder there is violence. It took us a couple of thousand years to develop our ways. How can we expect them to abandon their ways, which have worked as well for them as ours have for us, and adopt our ways all within the time it takes to change a regime?
I suggest we first try to understand Muslim culture and history before we send troops. We can start by reading Karen Armstrong’s Islam: A Short History.