Logic, History and Islam

I recently saw this video in my facebook feed.



I wasn't comfortable enough with the friend to dive into a discussion about it with her on Facebook and to be honest, I'm not confident enough with the subject matter to have a competent opinion from which to defend. But that won't stop me from taking the argument on from my blog, so here goes.

First of all, read the wikipedia entry about the speaker. She's definitely legitimate. Her passion comes from experience and she knows more about this topic than I do, that's for sure. But before reading anything about her, watched the video. And through it, alarms kept ringing in my head with words like "no", "stupid", "bad logic".

You see she speaks with emotional passion, energy, and rhetorical flourish, so it's understandable that she gets the applause and the facebook shares. But there's danger there. In their book , Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise talk about how to study history during the logic phase and they make the following point:

Creating a time line teaches the student to trace chronological connections; outlining trains the student to look past rhetorical smoke and mirrors in order to find the "bare bones" argument of a speech or essay; the use of primary sources teaches the student to interpret the material himself instead of relying on "experts"; organizing information into divisions of the history notebook helps the student to classify similar events and historical trends together.

The point about outlining is important here.  So, let me apply it now. What were Brigitte Gabriel's main point and what were arguments she was making to prove it. Unfortunately the clip is taken out of context so this will be a fragmented analysis.

First, the questioner makes the point that it's erroneous to paint all 1.8 billion worldwide followers of Islam as bad. Further, there are 8 million Muslim Americans in this country and not one on of them sit in this particular panel. This leads her to ask, how can you expect to win and end an ideological war with weapons, when it seems more appropriate and effective to win an ideological war by taking on the ideology. Ms. Gabriel responds:

1. She denies anyone on this panel mentioned anything about Muslims. Rather they want to know why four Americans died in Benghazi and who will be held accountable for that.
2. She then pivots to the religion itself (since the questioner brought it up). She sites the statistic that 15-20% of Muslims are radical.
3. Then because that's true, that means 300 million people are dedicated to the destruction of western civilization.
4. The reason why we should worry is because that also means that there are 300 million people who are either currently killing or want to kill.
5. She sites other examples in history that we should consider. 
1. The Nazis drove the agenda in Germany and as a result 60 million people died.
2. Most Russians were peaceful, yet the Russians killed 20 million people.
3. Most Chinese people were peaceful, yet the Chinese people killed 70 million people.
4. Pre-WWII Japanese were peaceful, yet the Japanese killed 12 million people across SE Asia.
5. It took 19 radical hijakers to bring America to its knees.

Ok, I'll attack the logic by simply diving into these points with further questions:

1. Where did the 15-20% statistic come from? What actually constitutes a radical Muslim. Do all 15-20% of them really want to destroy western civilization and are they all brutal murderers?
2. For those who are classified as radical Muslisms, is their religion the predominant factor driving their radicalism. Or are their other more important drivers - say, the region where they live, it's history, culture and whether they are or recently have experienced war.
3. If their religion is the primary driver, can we expect to enter a random mosque anywhere in the world and encounter 20% of the congregation as possible murderers? If not, why not?
4. Since most predominantly Islamic countries are in the Middle East and in portions of Africa, what could we learn about its history that may teach us some lessons about what's driving the wars that seem to dominate these regions in recent history? 
5.  She brings up Russian, German, Chinese and Japanese examples to further her point. How do these examples compare and contrast with the terrorism we're seeing in the world today? 
6. Could it be, to use one example, the problems were not the Russians, but the Russian leadership (Stalin), his control of the government and its military? What drove Stalin to massacre his own citizens and how are those motivations relevant to the problems facing the Middle East? 
7. What of fascism and Hitler? It's interesting that Fascism in Germany and Communism in Russia both took off only after the catastrophic first world war that destroyed Europe. How is that fact relevant then and today?

These are not easy questions and I don't have easy answers. But what I know for sure, is this video snippet was not helpful to the discussion at all. And that is why, while listening, I kept thinking, "stupid", "bad", "no"... I don't deny Ms. Gabriel's passion and I know she's experienced some stuff that I hope I nor my children ever have to. And I'm sure she has smarter arguments to back up her opinions than this. Let's dig into those instead.

The Primary Election

Fortunately for me, since I'm a registered democrat, I only have to figure out the Tempe City Council and the Superintendent of Public Instruction. The rest are running unopposed (or simply nobody is running). There are a a couple of more candidates on the ballet, but I'm only listing those that have a contended primary race. A couple of points:

1. Really nobody should be voting in an early ballot. Why rob yourself time to figure out the candidates - unless you know for sure ahead of time, but who does?
2. Really everyone should be voting in the primary. Some key electoral decisions are happening here and those choices are gone in the general election.

Get informed and vote.

Position	My Pick	Arizona Republic's Opinion	Brief Explanation
Republic Primary CD 9	Neither	Neither	Wendy Rogers is extreme and incompetent and Andrew Walters is just incompetent. Kirsten Sinema has been gifted the race this year - strange.
Republican Governor	Scott Smith	Doug Ducey	I didn't like Ducey in his run for treasure and I still feel that way. The Arizona Republic thinks he did a great job as treasurer and likely that's the case. He's just a bit too conservative, red-meat for my taste. Meanwhile, Scott Smith was effective as Mesa mayor - which actually is a much better forum to prepare for governor and he's a more moderate voice.
Republican Attorney General>	Mark Brnovich	Mark Brnovich	Anybody but Tom Horne
Republican Secretary of State	Michele Regan	Michele Regan	Regan seems like the best of the bunch for this position. Pierce is getting some questionable funding and Cardon is too extreme.
Republican Treasurer	Hugh Hallman	Hugh Hallman	I liked Hallman as Tempe mayor. The other candidates do not have the right temperament for the job.
Democratic Superintendent of Public Instruction	David Garcia	David Garcia	The Republican candidates are terrible. This will be a true test to see if voters are awake if they continue to elect Huppenthal for this position. Both Democratic candidates have deep education experience. Garcia seems to have more relevant experience for this particular position.
Republican Arizona Corporation Commision	Undecided	Lucy Mason and Tom Forese
Tempe City Council	Undecided	Shana Ellis, Dick Foreman, and David Schapira	I like the AZ Republican picks, but I also like Lauren Kuby and I'm sorry to say but I simply don't know enough about Robin Arredondo-Savage to have an opinion. This one needs a bit more careful study before I decide.

Some Thoughts on History

About six months ago, the LDS stake I belong to organized its fiftieth anniversary since its organization. I've actually been a member of this stake for quite a long time beginning when I first moved here after college graduation. We were not sure we were going to attend, but our newly called stake president visited our ward and strongly encouraged it and so we did. Dragging our four young children a long with us for, if my memory serves me correctly, a two hour presentation that mostly involved a survey of every stake president that served in the stake since its inception. It covered slightly more ground than this, but that was mostly it.

Now, this was interesting, and there was something to be learned from it and it would have been much more challenging to do this differently. But obviously, the stake is much, much more than its president and most of my experience within the stake involves much more my relationships with individual members than with those who lead it.

But if you look at the history of anything, you will mostly find that history to be dominated by the leaders of the relevant institutions. Study world history, and you'll mainly be studying kings, monarchs, dictators, and presidents. Study state history, and you'll be learning about mayors and governors with some other notables mixed in. The point here is that the least notable you are the more likely you will be forgotten, which is actually a very depressing thing to consider.

This is one reason why I think family history is so powerful. Family history is the art of giving life to your own ancestors, no matter how obscure they were to the world at large, they definitely have a preeminent role in your own personal existence and largely had a more interesting life than you realize.

But let me make an even bigger claim. In learning about the life of the obscure, the neglected or the forgotten, you will actually get a better sense of history than in the far more common study of the elite. Even more controversially, the famous and the elite take a far too prominent claim on the course of history than they really should. In other words, individual people, no matter how powerful their position may have been, have far less control over world events then our history books would have us believe.

I will make a far too feeble attempt to prove this hypothesis here, but let me at least provide a couple of pieces of evidence to provide at least some reason for this claim:

First, for some time, I've been wading my way through the book The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914. One of the themes of the book as I've been able to make sense of it, was that this massive century affecting war actually came about out of an array of contradictory forces that no one individual could control. And the result of those forces led the world into a war that nobody had the power to stop. I'm over-simplifying a bit. But the point is that it was cultural forces that were created primarily from individual members of mostly European countries that pushed the world into war and leadership were powerless at best or unwilling at worst to stop it.

But then, you could point to World War II as having a single bad actor - Adolph Hitler - who was principally responsible. There may be some truth to this. But anti-semitism was rampant in Europe at this time and Germany was punished harshly after World War I. Some may say that Hitler simply took advantage of the forces already set forth and if not him, than someone else may have kicked off the second world war with all of the atrocities that occurred along with it. What I'm saying is that world leaders get their power from the large number of people who hand it to them.

Another example, from American History. Recently I listened to this podcast with Danielle Allen author of a recently published book, Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality. In the interview she makes the point that this country was based on the principle of both freedom and equality. That all of us, every single one of us is responsible to make sure the government is created to provide opportunities for all, "laying on its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

I think we make this mistake often, paying the CEO's of companies more money than they could possibly hope to spend while forgetting about the contributions of the folks within the company who have a role in executing the vision but in many ways even creating the vision of the company. Apple was never just Steve Jobs.

Recently, I began another attempt to read Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy. I'm interested in it because I am interested in those who tend to be marginalized and obscured in our society and by history. And this was especially prevalent in 19th century England. I've read the first three chapters which describes the central character of the book, Jude. In chapter two, he's given the job of scaring crows away from the corn fields, something he ends up not doing well:

He sounded the clacker till his arm ached, and at length his heart grew sympathetic with the birds' thwarted desires. They seemed, like himself, to be living in a world which did not want them. Why should he frighten them away? They took upon them more and more the aspect of gentle friends and pensioners - the only friends he could claim as being in the least degree interested in him, for his aunt had often told him that she was not. He ceased his rattling, and they alighted anew.

They (the crows) stayed and ate, inky spots on the nut-brown soil, and Jude enjoyed their appetite. A magic thread of fellow-feeling united his own life with theirs. Puny and sorry as those lives were, they much resembled his own.

The problem here is that it's really hard to get into the lives of the obscure. They typically are not writing memoirs, nobody is writing their biographies, movies are not being made about them. Fiction is where you can learn about them, perhaps. And that is what I'm doing here.

But really, it's not that hard to get into the lives of the obscure because in the end, it seems like most of use at times feel this way (or will eventually). Feeling forgotten, alone, or neglected is likely a part of the human condition and something we will all have to endure at some time or another.

It's too bad we fail to recognize the contribution of the masses because in the end, they likely have far more to do with the course of our world than we realize.