What the Left & Right don't get about Islam
a religion of peace or violence?: that is not the question
This is the third essay in our series on Islam and postmodernism. Also, check out our interview with on Islam and postliberalism on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube.
This piece is really long and spergy…but I really felt the need to let this all out. Here we go.
The Messy Mainstreaming of Muslims
When I was growing up, I barely knew any Muslims…or rather, I didn’t know if any of the people I knew were Muslim (I later found out that two of my classmates were Muslim). Up until 2001, Islam was not on anyone’s radar in many parts of the US. This was especially the case for people living in neighborhoods devoid of blacks or Arabs, and for those who attended public schools, where the study of world religions is relegated to a short unit in 8th grade Social Studies textbooks.
After 9/11, everything changed. Islam became the bogeyman du jour, and known-Muslims were often subjected to public mockery and violence. Americans’ general lack of religious literacy did not exactly help us to understand the complexities of Islam—let alone its basic teachings. Most thought it was a backward, barbaric religion that encouraged violence.
But it wasn’t for long until the excesses of Islamophobic violence garnered the attention of the identitarian left. They found that Muslims’ newfound ostracization fit the mold of their standard victimization narrative quite well. Just like the blacks and the gays, Muslims are a minority group who—thanks to ignorance, prejudice, and stereotyping—are being unjustly oppressed. The masses must be reeducated to accept Muslims, who are normal people just like you and me.
The struggle with the identitarian left’s adoption of Muslims as one of their protected minority groups was that unlike being black or gay (at least for those who hold to the “Born This Way” narrative), being Muslim is a choice. Furthermore, (unless you’re a race scientist) being black does not entail a certain set of beliefs or behaviors, while being Muslim does.
In order to neutralize this difference and to pass being Muslim off as being a mere identity category, the left had to invent the narrative that Islam is actually a religion of peace that is basically the same as Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism. And that any violence committed in the name of Islam was actually a deviation from the real teachings of Islam, which were about peace and tolerance. A couple of bad apples, motivated not by the teachings of Islam but by their own evil intentions, committed acts of terrible hatred and hid behind the banner of Islam to justify their actions.
Mind you, few of these identitarians ever read the Qur’an or about the history of Islamic jurisprudence—and I highly doubt they’d ever care to do so. And yet it was thanks to these lefties that Islamophobia became stigmatized, and the fact that most Muslims are decent human beings who have no interest in blowing up buildings and just want to live their faith became common sense. Soon, I began seeing Muslims become more open about their faith in public. It became normal to see women wearing hijabs walking down the street. And it was now “totally uncool” to disrespect them (even though it still did happen).
At my university, the Muslim Student Association was one of the most popular clubs; their events attracted many non-Muslim students, most of whom came for the free falafel and shawarma, but many of whom came out of curiosity to learn more about Islam. It soon became cool to say that you have a Muslim friend who is fasting for Ramadan. Some campus lefty girls even started saying that though they aren’t religious, they identified most strongly with Islam. They were convinced that Islam’s teachings about the status of women were more progressive than those of Christianity. In their minds, us oppressed people need to stick together…because intersectionality and all.
But around 2022, Muslims started to feel disillusioned with their newfound allies on the identitarian left. As much as they owed their acceptance into mainstream society to them, many Muslims just could not get down with the identitarian left’s aggressive push for queer and gender ideology—especially in public schools. The fact that Islam is not a neutral identity category but a religion with a specific set of beliefs reared its head.
Since then, Muslims have struggled to find a political home: the liberal left is sympathetic to Muslims as a minority group (and the progressive left is sympathetic to the Palestinian cause), but is hostile to traditional religious/moral beliefs; the Trumpian right’s strong-man ethos and disregard for lifestyle progressivism appeals to many Muslims, but it’s commitment to Israel and flirtation with Christian nationalism and white supremacy is a deal-breaker.
The Left and Right are Metaphysically Challenged
At the end of the day, few liberals or conservatives seem to know very much about Islam (or about world religions, in general). They mostly regurgitate simplistic platitudes that they’ve heard on the news or in a TikTok reel, which are based on lines cherry-picked from the Qur’an out of context.
As we wrote in our introductory post to this series, much of the simplistic statements about Islam being either a religion of violence or a religion of peace comes from (a) a lack of understanding of the relationship between religion and violence and (b) a lack of understanding of the violent impulses within our own human nature. Furthermore, non-Muslims who argue that Islam is a religion of EITHER peace OR of violence are often motivated by some kind of agenda.
But at Cracks in PoMo, we love nuance. We love engaging reality in the totality of its factors. We love acknowledging complex both/ands. We have no qualms with engaging the dimensions of Islam that can veer toward violence, as well as those that can generate peace. We’re all about looking at the full picture. Given cracks in pomo’s based, contrarian, metadiscursive agenda, we are interested in digging past the idiocy in order to get to the (halal) meat of things: What is the true metaphysical essence of Islam? What impact does it have on the soul?
There is a fundamental fallacy in asking whether a religion is peaceful or violent. As William T. Cavanaugh reminds us, all religions are “violent” in some regard—first, because human beings are violent. On a biological level, this is because we are animals born with a defense instinct. On anthropological level, it is because we require violence to protect ourselves and our tribe/society/etc. On a moral level, it is because we are (a) called to defend the vulnerable/that which is righteous (just violence) and (b) tainted by original sin (unjust violence). Secondly, any belief in something absolute risks inciting violence. Thus, no religion will ever eradicate violence (in this earthly realm).
When discussing the relationship between religion and violence, the real question is how that religion—through its metaphysical orientation/spirituality and ethical teachings—channels that violent impulse. And of course, all religions have been used to justify unjust violence. The question here is (a) to what extent can the teachings of said religion be validly used to excuse such violence and (b) how often are acts of unjust violence committed in the name of said religion.
The Left
Before reading on, I suggest you go through what I wrote about Islam and Christianity’s different understandings of God1, mercy,2 and reason,3 and Islam’s bent toward nominalism, fideism, and Dionysian decadence (see excerpts in the footnotes).
Of course, I have a bias here: I believe that Christ is the incarnate son of God, and thus that Christianity is a revealed (and thus, true) religion. I do not believe that Muhammad is a prophet, and therefore I do believe it is a man-made religion. Of course, I believe that there is plenty of Truth in Islam, and that the Holy Spirit may use Islam to bring people into communion with God (baptism by desire, blablabla…Nostra Aetate, blabla, salvation subsists in the Church, yadayada).