(last
updated: Oct 13, 2008)
| Fred James Hill and Nicholas Awde |
In this history of the Islamic world, Hill and Awde present a consise
and well organized account of the rise and spread of Islam. In the best
western tradition most of the relevant facts are presented.
Unfortunately, a more recent western tradition is to uncritically
praise other cultures and denigrate our own, and that is the theme of
this book.
After a good introduction to the economic and religious situation of
Arabia, the book examines the life of Mohammed. In the text we get a
single sentance glossing over Mohammed's many wives near the end of his
life, but in a sidebar titled "The Family of the Prophet" we are
given details of his eleven wives and two concubines, including Aisha
who was married at age six but "only
later consummated when in 623/624
she came of age." Doing the math, that would be
at age ten. The
information is there, but you have to dig a little to get the full
picture.
In the account of Mohammed's exile from Mecca to Yathrib (now Medina)
we learn that he was "invited
to act as a mediator in the complex
disputes that had arisen in the city amongst the Arabs and three Jewish
tribes". Later we are told that "the discovery of a plot in
support of the
Meccans amongst the Jewish Qurayza tribe [not in Medina] led to a major
Muslim assault on
the Jews back in Medina." Placing the facts the book
presents in
chronological order, Mohammed was invited into Medina by his Arab
supporters in 622, and by 627 two of the three Jewish tribes had been
exiled and the third one was slaughtered. Of course, as a part of a
long tradition, this is blamed on the Jews. Again, careful reading is
required to understand the nature of what really happened.
Although the book is generally good for providing the relevant
information, the account of Mohammed's conquest of Mecca in 630 talks
about the low number of fatalities involved, but it leaves out
any mention of the Treaty of Hudaybiyya signed less than two years
earlier promising ten years of peace. Given that Mohammed's rule is
held to be an ideal example of the Islamic state, this attitude of
respect for peace treaties should be kept in mind.
After describing the rapid conquest of a large part of the world by the
Arab armies, the book goes into loving detail about the cultural
achievements under Islam, in contrast to the ignorance of Europe. But
perhaps this is because the Christian and Persian territories conquered
by the Arabs were already more advanced than Europe. While the Islamic
conquest provided the stability and unity that permitted civilization
to flourish, there is no discussion about whether Islam itself actually
made much contribution, or was it accomplished by the conquered
populations in spite of Islam. The two examples of great Islamic
architecture are given as the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and the
Great Mosque at Damascus. These may be fine buildings, but it should be
noted that they were constructed in the centers of the Jewish and
Christian religions (as Syria was at the time), and served as symbols
of
the Muslim subjegation of those religions.
A chapter is devoted to Al-Andalus, (aka Spain), where we
learn of the achievements of cities such as Cordoba and Seville, again
in contrast to the ignorance of Europe.
Describing the loss of Spain to the Christians, we read "While church
bells rang across Christian Europe, Muslims were left reeling in shock.
The unthinkable had happened - eight centuries of unparalleded Islamic
civilization in Spain had been brought to an end. It would leave a
permanent sense of loss among the Muslims, one that is still keenly
felt today." No such sympathy for Christians is expressed
in the description of the
conquest of Constantinople by the Muslims, which had an even longer
history of cultural achievement. In the chapter on India, Islam is
described as "blossoming" over the sub-continent. I doubt that the
local Hindu population thought of it that way.
The nineteenth century saw the establishment of European domination
over the Islamic world. Naturally, the authors can find nothing good to
say about these events. For example, we are told that "Colonial powers
also established a tight grip over key sectors just as
banking, communications, (railways, ports, roads), and valuable natural
resources, such as oil, and it was European investors who reaped the
greatest rewards." Maybe that was because it was the
Europeans who
created those sectors in the first place. In particular, the charging
of interest is prohibitted under Sharia, so Muslim banking was not
exactly flourishing before colonialization. This kind of statement
reveals
a preconceived belief about the evils of western imperialism, as
opposed to an honest attempt to determine what the costs and benefits
of the colonial period really were. The authors say "Of course, western
law had not simply been imposed where previously there had been chaos -
Muslim populations already had there own well established systems of
law." But they do not ask if those systems were truly
beneficial for
the people (as opposed to the religious establishment), or instead were
responsible for the undeveloped state of their society.
When describing the fate of Islam in 20th century Russia, the authors
lament that "Sharia law
was undermined", "The
Soviets attacked
traditions such as the wearing of veils and polygamy - all of which
were banned", and add "The
damage to religious life was immense." Of
course, no mention is made of the benefit to Muslim women from these
reforms. Religious ideology matters more than people to these authors.
Later
we are told that the six republics spawned from the Sovied
Union
have "proudly reclaimed
their Muslim heritage" and are not as radical
as the West had feared. Could that be because the Muslim religious
establishment was (and still is) suppressed? Every moderate Muslim
country must suppress Islam to some extent if it wishes to remain
moderate. The best example is Turkey,
which under Kemal Ataturk in 1922 "created
a new political and legal
system within a distinctly secular state. His reforms took the
religious elements out of government and education, gave equal rights
to women..." In other words, less Islam, more progress.
There is much to be learned about Islamic history from this book, but
it should not be the only book you read to get a balanced understanding
of this subject. For an account that looks at Muslim military
conquest rather than cultural achievement there is Paul
Fregosi's Jihad
in the West. But for a more critical and evenhanded
history I recommend Bernard Lewis, The
Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years. It
is referenced often enough in this book, why not read the real thing?
Ibn Warraq begins the book with the statement that Western scholars
have totally failed in their duties as intellectuals.
They have betrayed their calling by abandoning their critical faculties
when it comes to Islam. Some have even abandoned any attempt
to achieve objective truth.
He identifies two main reasons: a need to see another culture as
superior to bolster criticism of one's own culture, or a need to
defend a religion with common roots with one's own. He traces
the history of apology for Islam, begining as a variant
of the "noble savage" of the sixteenth century. Praise for
Islam was contrasted with intolerance and dogma of
Christianity in general, and the Roman Catholic church in particular.
He points out those authors did not know Arabic, and had to rely on
dubious secondary sources, as they did not understand Islam at all.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries there was a new generation of
apologists for Islam who had a much better knowledge of the subect.
These were devout Christians who realized that to be consistent they
had to concede religious insight to Mohammed. Islam was a sister
religion, it and Christianity stood or fell together, both threatened
by the rise of secular ideas in the West.
He distinguishes three forms of Islam: Islam as the Prophet taught it,
as contained in the Koran; Islam as developed by theologians through
the traditions (Hadith), including Sharia (Islamic law); and Islam as
actually practiced by Muslims in history. Islamic civilization often
reached magnificent heights in spite of the first two forms of Islam,
and not because of them. The creative achievements usually came from
outside of Islam, and the leading thinkers were often not Muslims, and
those that were were often critical or even hostile to many of the
teachings of Islam.
There are three types of response to criticism of Islam from
westerners: "Those
still left
with a robust sense of right and wrong take a negative view.
The apologists such as Montgomery Watt remind one of Lord
Acton's dictum
"Every villain is
followed by a sophist with a sponge."
Finally
there are the moral relativists who argue we cannot judge the life of
Mohammed by modern standards. Moral relativism is self-contradictory,
because ultimately nothing can be said. In practice moral relativism is
selectivly applied - Mohammed gets off while George Bush is
condemned.
In the chapter "The Origins of Islam" Warraq examines the Muslim claim
that the Koran was dictated to Mohammed by the angel
Gabriel. This chapter shows that "Islam is not an
invention, but a concoction; there is nothing novel about it except the
genius of Mohammed in mixing old ingredients into a new panacea for
human ills and forcing it down by means of the sword." The
main source
for Islam is Judaism, and in its early days there was not much to
distinguish them. All the major characters in the Jewish scriptures
appear in the Koran. After the Jews failed to accept Mohammed as a
prophet, Islam became more oriented towards Arabic culture. Islam also
draws from Christianity, but it does not always get it right. The
Virgin Mary is confused with Miriam, the sister of Moses, and the
trinity is said to consist of God, Jesus and Mary. Parts of the Koran
appear similar to Zoroastrianism, the much more ancient religion of the
Persians But in particular, this supposedly pure monotheistic religion
takes a lot of its content from the pagan Arabic religion that
preceeded it. The most obvious is the pilgramage to Mecca, a "fragment
of incomprehensible heathenism taken up undigested into Islam."
In "The Problem of Sources" he calls into question some of the
basic historical beliefs about Islam. Muslim tradition has it that the
Koran was compiled in the years after
Mohammed's death, from "pieces
of papyrus, flat stones, palm leaves,
shoulder blades and ribs of animals, pieces of leather and wooden
boards, as well as from the hearts of men."
But this
is called
into question, as evidence is presented that the Koran did not assume
its present form until centuries later. It is suggested that Islam did
not become distinct from Judaism until after the conquest of Palestine,
and that Mecca was not where it actually originated. The Hadith is a
collection of sayings and doings attributed to Mohammed, but these were
compiled during the centuries after his death, and evidence is given
that many of them were contructed to defend a political point of view.
But after raising all these questions, the rest of the book proceeds as
if the history presented by Muslims is essentially accurate. After all,
what matters more that what actually happened is what Muslims believe
happened, as that is what their behavior is based apon.
The Koran is supposed to be the infallible word of God, sent to
Mohammed in perfect, pure Arabic. In fact the Koran was not written
down until after Mohammed's death, and there were many different
versions. It took several hundred years for a standard version to
appear. There is also evidence that some verses were dropped and others
added. There are also many contradictory verses in the Koran. For
example, drinking wine is prohibitted in 2.219
(written in the Medina
period), but 16.67
(written before that in the Mecca period) approves
of its use. Islam deals with this using the principle of abrogation, -
the later verse abrogates the earlier one.
Muhammed's life can be divided into two periods, the Meccan period and
the Medinan period. In Mecca, Muhammed could be seen a
religiously motivated sincere seeker after truth. In Medina, Muhammed
becomes motivated by power and worldly ambitions. When he arrived
there, Medina was inhabited by several Jewish tribes, plus a number of
Arab tribes. The tribes were divided into two conflicting clans, with
some of the Jewish tribes allied to each side. Mohammed tried to unify
the tribes under his leadership. To support himself, he sent out
raiding parties to attack Meccan caravans. After several failures, he
succeeded by attacking
during the pagan holy month. This offended many in Medina, but as
usual, he received a revelation (2.217)
to justify this. He then
consolidated his power by a series of assassinations of his opponents.
Finally, he attacked the Jewish tribes one by one, and five years after
he arrived in Medina all the Jews had been masacred or driven into
exile.
6. The Totalitarian Nature of Islam
Criticism of the book here.
http://www.reviewcentre.com/reviews32953.html
According to the jacket cover, the intention of this book is to "strip
away centuries of distortion and myth to present a balanced view of the
man whose religion continues to dramatically affect the course of
history." Her idea of "balance" is to unquestioningly
assume
that Muhammad was indeed directly instructed by God, and that every
action he took was righteously guided. Beyond that, she often takes a
critical view of some of the Islamic mythology. To her credit, she does
not hide the more unpleasant events that occured during Muhammad's
career, but she does go to enormous lengths to justify these actions.
Before
the biography actually begins, the introduction and first chapter seek
to convince us that the western view of Islam was distorted by the
centuries of conflict with it.
"This
hostility [to Islam] is understandable, because until the rise of the
Soviet
Union in our own century, no polity or ideology posed such a
continuous challenge to the West as Islam. Islam had quickly overrun
much of the Christian world of the Middle East as well as the great
Church of North Africa, which had been of curcial importance to the
Church of Rome... This fear made it impossible for Western
Christians to be rational or objective about the Muslim faith."
She provides many examples of how European writers presented a
simplistic and inaccurate picture of Islam. The conclusion we
are
supposed to reach is that any modern criticism of Islam is rooted in
that ignorance, and thus should be dismissed as irrational and biased.
This is then followed by the usual Blame the West rhetoric.
"The
problem has been compounded by the fact that, for the first time in
Islamic history, Muslims have begun to cultivate a passionate hatred
of the West. In part this is due to European and American behaviour in
the Islamic world. It is a mistake to imagine that Islam is an
inherently violdent or fanatical faith, as is sometimes
suggested....Indeed, when Muslims first encountered the colonial West
during the eighteenth century many were impressed by its modern
civilisztion and tried to emulate it. But in recent years this initial
enthusiasm has given way to bitter resentment."
In
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the West was aggressively
attacking Islam, Muslims were most receptive to western values. It is
only after colonialism ended, and the west began transferring large
amounts of cash to Arab states in return for the oil that westerners
found and produced, that the passionate
hatred of the West was developed. Clearly this hatred is not inspired
by Western strength or agression, but rather by the perceived weakness
and vulnerability of
the West.
This book was published not long after Salman
Rushdie wrote The
Satanic
Verses, and she responds to this work several times in her
book. In the first chapter, Muhammad the Enemy, she says,
It
has been difficult for
Western people to understand the violent Muslim reaction to Salman
Rushdie's fictional portrait of Muhammad in The Satanic Verses. It
seemed incredible that a
novel could inspire such murderous hatred, a reaction which was
regarded as proof of the incurable intolerance of Islam. It was
particularly disturbing for people in Britain to learn that the Muslim
communities in their own cities lived according to different,
apparently alien values and were ready to defend them to the death. But
there were also uncomfortable reminders of the Western past in this
tragic affair. When British people watched the Muslims of Bradford
burning the novel, did they relate this to the bonfires of books that
had blazed in Christian Europe over the centuries? In 1242, for
example, King Louis IX of France, a canonised saint of the Roman
Catholic Church, condemned the Jewish Talmud as a vicious attack on the
person of Christ.
I
am sure the British people would be equally horrified by those events
in the
thirteenth century if they were occuring now. They are, or should be,
rightfully disturbed that the horrific values of that time are being
re-imposed upon them. But this Muslim behavior is excused by
the
idea that they are confused and disoriented by western society. She
devotes several pages to the actions of a group of Christian martyrs in
Cordova, a part of Muslim Spain. As a newly conquered people they
obviously had some resentment or their rulers. These people would
publicly
denounce Muhammad with the intention of getting themselves executed by
the Muslim authorities. While they may have been as fanatical as some
of today's Muslim jihadists (who, by the way, were not conquered but
chose to live in the West), a key difference she fails to mention is
that the Christians killed only themselves, they did not die trying to
take as many civilians as possible with them. If you
believe that medieval Europe was a utopia of religious tolerance, then
these chapters may help to dispel that notion. But comparing
Christianity and Islam one thousand years ago serves only to distract
us from the much less favorable comparison of those two cultures today.
Perhaps
one advantage of the author's sympathy for Islam is insight into what
motivates people to follow that religion. She notes that most western
people are not impressed when they encounter the Qu'ran. This is partly
a problem of translation. She notes that,
The
most beautiful lines of Shakespeare frequently sound banal in another
language because little of the poetry can be conveyed in a foreign
idiom; and Arabic is a language that is especially difficult to
translate. If this is true of ordinary Arabic, it is double true of
the Qu'ran which is written in highly complex, dense and allusive
language. Even Arabs how speak English fluently have said that when
they read the Qu'ran in an English translation, they feel that they are
reading an entirely different book.
In
addition, the Arabic in the Qu'ran is rather different than the
language spoken by modern Arabs fourteen hundred years later. Think of
how different the language of Chaucer is to modern English. And many
Muslims are not native Arab speakers in the first place.
The idea here is that people are responding more to the form than the
content. "Muslims still find the Qu'ran
profoundly moving. They say when
they listen to it they feel envoloped in a divine dimension of
sound."
Or, as she puts it a little more poetically,
The
fragmentary, incoherent verses - especially of the earlier suras -
demonstrate human language crushed under the weight of the divine Word:
it also reveals an in-coherence in the individual. In order to discover
the inner, symbolic meaning of the Qu'ran, the Muslim must integrate
his or her life. Reading or listening to the Qu'ran is not a cerebral
experience to get information or to receive a clear directive, but a
spiritual discipline. Naturally a Western person will have a
completely different experience. Not only is the beauty of the Arabic
inaccessible in translation, but it demands an approach that is
foreign to many of us. To confine oneself to a cerebral external
reading without being nudged by the quality of the Arabic to look for
the ineffable that lies beyond speech is likely to be a desolating
experiance, particularly if the reading is undertaken in a hostile
spirit for from a vantage point of imagined superiority.
In
other words, if you look at the content of the Qu'ran objectviely, the
incoherence is obvious, but the message of a religion of peace is not
so evident. But the content, both of the Qu'ran itself and the life of
Muhammad, definitely makes its way into the lives of the believers.
The third chapter is about the concept of Jahiliyah,
the state of ignorance in Arabia before the arrival of Islam. Arabia
was a tribal society, with the tribes constantly in conflict. However,
it was not anarchy, there were rules and customs that were followed to
limit the intensity of the conflict. Armstrong describes the concept of
Muruwah,
meaning "courage in
battle,
patience and endurance in suffering, and a dedication to the chivalrous
duties of avenging wrong done to the tribe, protecting its weaker
members and defying the strong."
Mecca, where Muhammad
was born, was a commercial settlement occupied by the tribe of Quraysh,
centred around the Ka'aba, the holiest shrine in the Arabic pagan
religion. The land within a 20 mile radius was considered sacred, where
all violence and fighting was forbidden. The newly urbanised
population, some of whom became much wealthier than others, led to
divisions that the tribal ethic they inherited was not well suited to
handle. This created a disaffected subgroup that was receptive to the
message Muhammad was to preach.
A
major theme of the book is how immoral pre-Muslim Arabia was, and how
much better things were after Muhammad. But the historical facts that
she herself presents do not alway support that idea. We have the
chivalry and
limited warfare of the Muruwah described
above, as well as the sacred ground around the Ka'aba where all
fighting was forbidden. As well, much is made of the great improvement
of the rights of women that Muhammed
achieved, which might not seem impressive when compared to the 20th
century West, but are contrasted with pre-Islamic times when women were
supposedly
nothing but property. As a women, you might think that Karen Armstrong
would take more interest in Khadija, Muhammad's first wife. She was a
rich, successful and well educated merchant who first hired Muhammed
to lead a trading expedition to Syria for her before marrying him. This
is not entirely consistent with women having no rights or status.
Later, after Muhammad had conquered Mecca, we learn that Hind, the wife
of the Meccan leader Abu Sufyan, "was
beside herself with rage. Seizing Abu Sufyan by his moustaches, she
cried to the people: 'Kill this fat greasy bladder full of lard! What a
rotten protector of his people!'"
No consequences of this action are reported, other than that her advice
was not taken. Other than Muhammad's wives after his death, there are
almost no examples of independant women in Islamic history.
By
all accounts, Muhammad was sympathetic towards women. This goes beyond
taking a large number of them as wives and concubines for his personal
pleasure or for forging alliances through family ties. He apparently
had a much more respectful attutude than many of his contemporaries, in
particular the four men who became the next four Caliphs (rulers) after
Muhammad. He outlawed practices such as leaving baby girls to die, and
gave women limited rights of inheritance. Being worth half
a man is better than being worth nothing at all. But Islam has not
served women as well as perhaps Muhammad wanted it to. One reason could
be that his message was watered down or modified by his successors.
Another problem is that Muhammad is considered by Muslims to have led a
perfect life, and his example and Qu'ranic teachings must be followed
without question. But the Qu'ran is an evolving response to changing
events, so statements pertaining to a particular situation have become
universal commands. For example, Armstrong explains that the hijab,
or veil, was introduced to protect the modesty of his wives in the
crowded situation they found themselves in Medina. Veiling and
secluding womon became common only a few generations after Muhammad.
The
life of Muhammad consists of two distinct phases. During his time in
Mecca he can be compared with Jesus. Muhammad preached to a mostly unreceptive
population, and he was in a monogamous marriage with Khadija. However,
after he migrated to Medina (the Hijra,
in 622) his career is more comparable to that of Alexander the Great or
Napoleon. He began by conducting raids (ghazu)
againts Meccan caravans. One successful raid was conducted during the
holy month when all fighting was prohibitted. The people of Medina were
horrified, and Muhammad was forced to repudiate it. Here is one of many
examples when Muhammad's ethics were less than those of the existing
Arabic
culture. Then a series of battles were fought against the Meccans and
their allies (624-627), which eventually led to the Treaty of
Hudaybiyah (628), where
the Muslims were permitted access once a year to the Ka'aba in Mecca in
return for a truce for ten years. But little more than a year later,
some tribal skirmishes initiated by both sides gave Muhammad an excuse
to break the treaty and conquer Mecca (630).
The
apologetics go into high gear when describing the massacre of the
Qurayzah, one of the Jewish tribes living in Medina, after a battle
with the Meccans with whom they were accused of collaborating. Seven
hundred men were tied together in groups
and beheaded, and dumped in a trench dug in the market. Their
wives and children were sold into slavery, and their property was
divided among the Muslims. "It is probably impossible for us
to
dissociate this story from Nazi atrocities..." we are
told. Or from the present day
Palestinian attitude toward Israel, I might add. But "it
is not correct to judge the incident by twentieth-century standards.
This was a very primitive society - far more primitive than the Jewish
society in which Jesus had lived and promulgated his gospel of mercy
and love some 600 years earlier." But other
parts of the
book give many examples of the ethics of this pre-Muslim Arab society,
such as the ban of fighting in the holy months, the sanctuary around
the Ka'aba, the concept of limited vendetta rather than massacre. It
appears that it was Muhammad who had the primitive ethics.
There are times when spin turns into outright falsification.
For example,
"The
Qu'ran teaches that war is always abominable. Muslims must never open
hositilities, for the only just war is a war of self-defense, but, once
they have undertaken a war, Muslims must fight with absolute commitment
in order to bring the fighting to an end as soon as possible. If the
enemy proposes a truce or shows an inclination toward peace, Muslims
are commanded by the Qu'ran to end hostilities immediately, provided
the terms of peace are not immoral or dishonourable."
Two
Qu'ranic verses are given as reference for these statements. The first
is Sura 2:19
And
slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places
whence they drove you out, for persecution is worse than slaughter.
And fight not with them at the Inviolable Place of Worship until they
first
attack you there, but if they attack you (there) then slay them. Such
is
the reward of disbelievers.
Clearly this only forbids starting fighing in only one place, the holy
Mosque. Anywhere else, slay them wherever you find them. The second
reference is Sura 8:61, which I will quote starting one verse earlier.
Against them make ready your
strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to
strike terror into (the hearts of) the
enemies, of Allah and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not
know,
but whom Allah doth know. Whatever ye shall spend in the cause of
Allah, shall
be repaid unto you, and ye shall not be treated unjustly.
But if the enemy incline towards peace, do thou (also) incline towards
peace, and trust in Allah: for He is One that heareth and
knoweth all things.
Starting with Muhammad himself, the Muslims initiated a large number of
wars of conquest, and conquered a large part of the world. The terms of
peace always included political submission to Islam, but usually not
forced
conversion.
Twice in the book
she justifies the murder of president Anwar Sadat of Egypt by
extremists for the crime of making peace with Israel, on the basis that
his rule was "unjust" and "unIslamic". While explaining to the reader
how moderate Islam is supposed to be, in practice she takes the side of
the extremist Muslim Brotherhood that carried out the murder. An
attempt to project her political beliefs onto Islam can be seen in
this paragraph:
Western
scholars [correctly]
tell us that it is mistaken to see Muhammad as a
socialist. They point out that he never criticised capitalism, which
had, after all, done great things for the Quraysh, and that he did not
attept to abolish poverty altogether, which would have been an
impossible task in seventh-century Arabia. Muhammad may not
have
conformed to all the recent concepts of socialism, as it has evolved in
the West, but in a deeper sense [ie. in Armstrong's imagination] he was
certainly socialist and this has left an indelible impression on the
ethos of Islam. True, he did not condemn wealth and possessions as
Jesus did: Muslims were not commanded to give away everything that they
had.
Private ownership of capital, permitted in Islam, is
not socialism. Islam advocates charity as a religious duty, but that is
a far as it goes. One could make a better argument that
Christianity is socialism, but again the lack of concern that Jesus had
for material posessions is not socialism either.
Notes:
p44
"Part of the Western problem is that for centuries Muhammed has been
seen as the antithesis of the religious spirit and as the enemy of
decent civilisation. Instead, perhaps, we should try to see him
as a man of the spirit, who managed to bring peace and civilisation to
his people."
2. Muhammad, the man of Al-Llah
p 48 "We
know practically nothing about Muhammad's early life before he began to
receive the revelations at the age of forty. Inevitably pious legends
developed about Muhammad's birth, childhood and youth and these are
duly
recorded, but there is nothing more solid to go on.
p49
:"Muslims still find the Qu'ran profoundly moving. They
say when
they listen to it they feel envoloped in a divine dimension of
sound..."
p49 "Even Arabs who speak English fluently have said that
when they read the Qu'ran in an English translation, they fell that
they are reading from an entirely different book. I shall frequently
quote from the Qu'ran, but the reader must not expect to be as
overwhelmed by the words as were the first Muslims.
p50 "The power
of the Qu'ran can be seen from the fact that many peoples within the
Islamic empire abandoned their own languages to adopt the sacred tongue
of the holy book.
p51 We know more about Muhammad than
Jesus. "The Qu'ran refers to special problems that Muhammad encountered
while his religion was still a struggling little sect" The
Christian gospels "had no interest in Jesus' earthly life but
concetrated almost entirely on the spirtual meaning of his death and
resurrection. "Very few of the actual words of Christ have
been
recoreded."
p 52 ".he lived in a violent and dangerous
society and sometimes adopted methods which those of use who have been
fortunate enough to live in a safer [ie. Western] world will find
disturbing.
3 Jahiliyah, Arabia before Islam
p57 "At the beginning of the seventh century, the Arabs of central
Arabia were surrounded by deviant forms of Christiainity..."
"The Arabs felt inferior, both religiously and politically."
tribal nature, vendetta
The Ka'aba was a shrine to al Lah, the high god of the Arabs.
The land around it was a sanctuary
p65 "spiritual malaise and restlessness in Arabia".
Quraysh settled in Mecca, made it a commercial success. Newly urbanised
population, some rich, caused divisions.
4 Revelation
"We know very little about Muhammad's life." But she then recounts lots
of stories.
Muhammad's family fell on hard times, orphaned twice. 595 married
Khadija.. At 40 he had "revelations", helped by Khadija.
5. The Warner
Muhammad's preaching in Mecca is not well received by rich and
powerful, attracted young and slaves. divided families
successful until 616 when he insisted on one god
p107
"When he forbade his converts to worship the Banat al-Llah, he
discovered that he lost most of his supporters overnight and that the
Qu'ran was about to split the tribe of Quraysh."
6. The Satanic Verses
The
Quraysh were upset by Muhammad's insistence they give up their gods.
According to the Muslim historians Ibn Sa'd and al
Tabari,
"Muhammad felt inspired to utter two verses which declared that the
three godesses al-Lat, al-Uzza and Manat could be revered as
intermediaries between God and man.
p111 "Many of Rushdie's most
eloquent supporters declared that 'Islam' was a religion that vetoed
scholarship and artistic freedo, even though the early Muslims founded
a major civilisation of great beauty and established a rationalistic
philosphic tradition which was an inspiration to scholars in the
medieval West"
Other prophets have made "satanic" errors as well.
Shaitan
is not the absolute evil as in Christiainity, but merely a fallen
angel. "We should bear this linguistic distinction in mind when we hear
some Muslims today refer to America as the 'Great Satan'."
p126
"At one level one can say that Muhammad had discovered an entirely new
literary form, which some people were ready for but which others found
shocking and disturbing. It was so new and so powerful in its effect
that its very existence seemed a miracle."
p127 "The
fragmentary, incoherent verses - especially of the earlier suras -
demonstrate human language crushed under the weight of the divine Word:
it also reveals an in-coherence in the individual. In order to discover
the inner, symbolic meaning of the Qu'ran, the Muslim must integrate
his or her life. Reading or listening to the Qu'ran is not a cerebral
experience to get information or to receive a clear directive, but a
spiritual discipline.
Naturally a Western person will have a
completely different experience. Not only is the beauty of the Arabic
inaccessible in translation, but it demands an approach that is
foreign to many of us. To confine oneself to a cerebral external
reading without being nudged by the quality of the Arabic to look for
the ineffable that lies beyond speech is likely to be a desolating
experiance, particularly if the reading is undertaken in a hostile
spirit for from a vantage point of imagined superiority.
p131
"Muhammad did not know the chronology in which the
scriputural
prophets appeared: he seems, for example, to have thought that Mariam,
the mother of Jesus, was the same as Mariam, the sister of Moses in the
Jewish scriptures." But the Koran was supposed to have been
dictated to him by God.
7. Holy War
p207
- The massacre of the Qurayzah - 700 men were tied together in groups
and beheaded, and dumped in a trench dug in the market. There
wives and children were sold into slavery, and their property was
divided among the Muslims. "It is probably impossible for us
to
dissociate this story from Nazi atrocities..."
Or from the
Palestinian attitude toward Israel.
p.242 His wife Hind
was beside herself with rage. Seizing Abu Sufyan by his moustches, she
cried to the people: 'Kill this fat greasy bladder full of lard! What a
rotten protector of his people!'
The
thesis of this book is "today there are two great threats facing
the survival of the modern liberal West. The first is exaggerated
confidence in the power of reson; the second is its profound
underestimation of the forces of fanaticism."
Harris argues that we are a long way from the victory of reason, also
known as the end of history. "We are not even confronting a mere clash
of civilizations. Instead we are facing the crash of civilization as we
know it." The modern liberal West is an exceptional condition
of
history, not the normal state and not necessarily the inevitable
outcome.
Tribal behavior is the historical norm. A population that acts based on
reason, his "rational actor", is a recent achveement which was made
possible by universal education. But the rational actor is also an
individualist, putting his own interests first. This results in the
attitude Harris chooses to call "carpe diem", maybe better known as
hedonsim, in which the short term interests of today's pleasures take
precedence over the consequences in the future.
Islamic fanaticism must be seen for what it is: a formidable weapon in
the struggle for cultural survival. It has served as a powerful defense
mechanism that has successfully thwarted all attempts by rival
cultures to conquer, dominate, or even influence Islam. Muslim
fanaticism should not be seen as a relic of the past to be set aside in
the enivitanle progress toward modernization, but as a potent weapon in
the struggle for cultural survival and supremacy - as good a weapon now
as in the past.
One could criticize this book for casting all Muslims as fanatics. In
reality this is no more true than all westerners being hedonists. The
book is valid to the extent that these attitudes do actually represent
those populations. While no attempt is made to quantify these
attitudes, it is at least fair to observe that these trends are
increasingly true in both socieites.
The French Revolution receives a lot of attention for its role of the
originator of many of the beliefs of western culture, and also as a
classic example of reason leading to an even more extreme version of
the fanaticism it was supposedly trying to oppose. In particular, the
motivation for the Iraq war is shown as being much the same as the
radicals of the
French Revolution: to establish reason as ruling ethos around the
world. The results are similar - chaos. The Left does not acknowldege
this, instead it demonizes Bush as an evil imperialist because it
cannot accept that the other side has taken over the ideals that the
Left itself used to have.
Also of interest is the description of Napoleon's attempt to impose the
superior values of the French Revolution on the "corrupt and
imbecillic" Bourbon monarchy ruliing Spain. The rights of man and
freedom of conscience were to replace absolutism and the infamous
Spanish Inquisition. But the Spanish people rose up and demanded the
restoration of the monarchy. The question is asked: which side should
we of the liberal west be on - a liberal state imposed by force, or the
despotism that resulted from the self-determination of the Spanish
people? This is much the same issue as the motivation for the Iraq war.
p. 41
The differrence between Noam Chomsky and Paul Wolfowitz is largely
illusionary. Both agreed that you could not really blame the
terrorists, since they were merely the victims of an evil system. - for
Chomsky, American imperialism, for Wolfowitz the corrupt and despotic
regimes of the Middle East. Both agreed that if you could only topple
the existing iniquitous system, terrorsim would disappear. Thus, both
were revolutionaries, eager to overthrow the status quo - the only
difference was the status quo they wanted to overthrow.
p. 80
Just as hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue, so ideology is the
homage self-interest pays to reason.
| Philip Carl Saltzman, 2008 |
The
thesis of this book is that traditional Arab society is based on
"balanced
opposition" between tribal groups. Loyalty is always to the
group
closest to yourself, groups being tribes based on kinship. You defend
your tribe against the neighboring tribe, but when attacked by
outsiders you unite with the tribe you were formerly fighting against.
Balanced
opposition is decentralized, in that no central organization is
required. It is democratic, kin that decision making is collective. It
is egalitarian, in thajt there is no ascribed status, rank or hierarchy
into which people are born. Everybody is a member of a nested set of
kin groups. These groups are vested with responsibility ofr the defense
of each and every one of itks members and responsibility for the harm
each and every one of its members do to outsiders. If there is a
conforntation, groups face other groups of a corresponding size: family
vs. family, lineage vs. lineage, clan vs. clan, tribe vs. tribe, sect
vs. sect, Arabs vs. non-Arab Muslims, and finally the Islamic community
(the umma)
vs. the infidels.
Arab
society is based on much the same individual freedom, egailitarianism
and responsibility as the West. The difference is the tribal
orientation as opposed to the western orientation toward rule of law.
The Middle East has at
its core many of the values that are presently
believed to be essential characteristics of the modern western world:
egalitarianism, individualism, pluralish, competitiveness, personal
initiative, social mobility, freedom; but these are set within a
distincive historical [or cultural] context based on chivalric honor,
female seclusion, and patrilineality and that also favored invidious
distinctions between men and women, whites and blacks, tribesman and
peasants, nobles and commoners, freedmen and slaves, and particularly
between Muslims and infidels.
This
book goes into great detail about the functioning of tribal societies,
which is the topic of the author's research. Islam is mentioned only in
passing until we reach chapter five, where suddenly the historical
record of Islam comes under a sustained attack. Much
detail is given of the brutality of the Muslim conquests and the
repression of non-Muslims. While this is a necessary correction to
simplistic notions of Islamic peacefulness and tolerance, I think the
author paints too uniform a picture of a complex history. There were
intervals in Islamic
history with relatively tolerant societies with advanced learning and
culture (under religiously moderate rulers), along with intolerance and
religious extremism he describes. This is best illustrated in the
example he gives of the reaction to a Jewish official in the Muslim
government of Grenada (in Spain). He describes the five thousand Jews
that were slaughtered after this event, but does not mention the
relatively moderate regime that appointed the official in the first
place, which had just been overthrown by a more fundamentalist group.
He
then lists the reasons for the uncompromising Arab rejection of the
state of Israel. In increasing order of importance, he cites conflict
over the physical land and resources, the use of the conflict by Arab
rulers distract their subjects from internal problems, balanced
opposition, and the Arab concept of honor. Balanced Opposition means
that Arabs must always unite to fight the non-Arab presence in their
territory, no matter what conflicts are happening between themselves.
Honor is about the fact the God intended Muslims to rule non-Muslims.
Arabs can never forget the humiliation of being defeated by the
infidel, especially when so few Jews can hold off so many Arabs.
The
last chapter, "Root Causes", examines the prospects for Middle Eastern
countries. What appear on the surface to be nation states will continue
to have conflict between the central state apparatus and the tribal
groups on the periphery. The tribal orientation of the population makes
it very difficult for meaningful change to occur. The author is not
very optimistic on this point.
Iraq
is a good example of a supposed nation state that was really more of a
collection of tribes held together by the brutality of Saddam Hussein.
Even in the cities much of the population arrived from outlying tribes
and tribal ways are still strong. The results of the American invasion
should have been predictable. The support the Americans expected from
the population never appeared, because the tribal ethic compels people
to fight the foreign invader no matter what they think of the more
closely related ruling tribe that is oppressing them. After the fall of
Saddam, Iraq fractured along tribal lines. Recent American success has
been a result of adapting to the tribal reality. When the local tribes
felt threatened by the foreign Al Qaeda fighters they fought back, and
accepted aid from the Americans to accomplish that goal.
This well written book by a qualified historian covers the
history of the Crusades starting from the first Crusade of
1096
to the siege of Vienna by the Ottoman Turks in 1529. He seeks to dispel
the modern notion that the Crusades were about European imperialism
ruthlessly attacking the civilized and peaceful Muslim states of the
East, causing them irreparable harm and teaching them the value of
violent conquest. He reminds us that the people of Medieval Europe
simply did not think
the way we do today. Christianity was central to their lives, and for
them the Crusades were a just and noble calling that preoccupied them
for centuries. He also disputes the notion that the crusades were
carried out by Europe's castoffs who were only in it for personal gain.
In fact, many of the crusaders were the leading lords of the day, those
with the most to lose. Participating in a crusade could cost many times
the lord's annual income, and great financial sacrifice was required,
not to mention risk to life.
During the time before the first crusade, Arab Jerusalem was tolerant
to Christian pilgrims
because it was their major source of income. After Jeruslam was taken
from the Arabs by the Seljuk Turks, oppression of Christians became
much worse, with churches destroyed, clergy murdered, and pilgrims
seized. It was the reaction to this which triggered the crusades. It
was also Arab resentment of their loss that contributed to disunity on
the Muslim side.
The First Crusade managed to acheive its goal of conquering Jerusalem,
in spite of the odds against it. As with most of the other crusades, it
was a tale of internal rivalry and conflict on both the Christian and
Muslim sides. It seems that the side that had the least internal
conflict at the time would prevail. Madden also challenges the
conception that the conquest of Jerusalem was an unusually violent
affair.
By the standards of the time, adhered
to by both Chrisians
and Muslims, the crusaders would have been justified in putting the
eintire population of Jerusalem to the sword. Despine later highly
exaggerated reports, however, that is not what happened. It is true
thay many of jthe inhabitants, both Muslims and Jews, were killed in
the initial fray. Yet many were also allowed to purchase their freedom
or were simply expelled from the city. Later stories of the streets of
Jerusalem coursing with knee-high rivers of blood were never meant to
be taken seriously. Medieval people knew such a thing to be an
impossibility. Modern people, unfortunately, often do not.
During the time in which Christians occupied the holy land there was
some tendency for the westerners to adopt some aspects of Muslim
culture, although there was little religious interaction between either
side. A muslim writer is quoted as saying that some of the Franks (as
they called the westerners) had taken to living like Muslims, there
were differences:
The Franks are without any vestige of a
sense of honor and
jealousy. If one of them goes along the street with his wife and meets
a friend, this man will take the woman's hand and lead here aside to
talk, while the husband stands by waiting until she has finished her
conversation. If she takes too long about it he leaves her with the
other man and goes on his way.
It was during the crusades that the major Christian military orders
were created, to combine faith with the necessity of defending it with
force. These were the Knights Templar and the Knights of the Hospital
of St. John, or Hospitallers. These orders played a major role in
European history for many centuries ,and are still with us today in a
more peaceful form.
The Fourth Crusade is a story of unintended
consequences. The city of Venice construced a fleet for the crusaders,
expecting to be compensated. The crusaders turned up in far fewer
numbers than expected and could not afford to pay. The solution was for
the crusaders to attack the city of Zara which had rebelled against the
Venetians. Then they were enticed by an exiled prince of Constantinople
to travel to that city and restore his "rightful" rule, which would
meet little resistance. Of course this did not happen, and the
crusaders found themselves in a desperate situation. Although greatly
outnumbered, the mercenary soldiers of Constantinople had little will
to fight, and the Christians ended up conquering the city. Although the
city tried to peacefully surrender, the Christians brutally sacked the
city, causing it permanent damage. Resentment of this event still lives
on today.
Not all of the crusades took place in the middle east.
Some of them attacked local Jewish populations, or pagans on the
fringes of Europe. Of more interest is the crusade against the
so-called Cathar heresy. A large population in southwestern France
adopted this belief system, similar in some ways to Zoroastrianism in
Iran. Followers led a pious life, in contrast to the corrupt and
decadent Catholic clergy. Part of the response was the set up the
Domincan religious order, which actually lived according to the
principles they preached. But the main response was a military crusade
which ultimately resulted in the large scale massacre of the heretics.
After
the main crusades the Turks gradually became more of a military threat,
occupying large parts of eastern Europe. One effect of this was to
distract the Catholic leadership from the rise of Protestantism in
Europe. It is suggested that without this the protestents would have
met the same fate as the Cathars. In turn, the religious division of
Europe weakened their ability to confront the Turks with a united
front. Martin Luther and the Turkish sultan were in effect allies,
although neither had any sympathy for the other.
Madden finishes the book with a discussion of the legacy of the
Crusades, both in the West and for Muslims. He says
It is one of the most remarkable events
in history that the
Latin West, an internally divided region seemingly on the brink of
conquest by a powerful empire, suddenly burst forth with amazing new
energy, neutralizing its enemies and expanding across the globe.
Amazingly, the specter of advancing Muslim armies, which for centuries
had posed such danger, no longer constituted a serious threat. Indeed,
as the gase of Europeans spanned new global horizons, they soon forgot
that such a threat had existed at all. The Muslim world was no longer
viewed as a dread enemy, but simply one more backward culture. From
that perspective the medieval crusades seemed distant and unnecessary -
a discarded artifact from the childhood of a civilization.
He then follows the evolution of western thought on the crusades, from
Sir Walter Scott's romantic novel The
Talisman, which glorified both sides, to historian Steven
Runciman's History of
the Crusades, which concluded that "the Holy War itself
was nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God,
which is the sin against the Holy Ghost." Even more modern
accounts simply retell the distortions of this past viewpoint rather
than look at the historical facts. Even more surprising is the Muslim
viewpoint.
It is commonly said that memories in the Middle East are
long, that although the crusades may have been forgotten in the West,
they were still vividly remembered where they happened. This is false.
The simple fact is taht the crusades were virtuall unknown in the
Muslim world even a century ago. The term for the crusades, harb
al-salib, was only introduced into the Arab language in the
mid-nineteenth century. The first Arabic history of the crusades was
not written until 1899.
Although the crusades were of monumental importance to Europeans, they
were very minor thing to the Muslim world, no different than many other
wars fought against various infidels. Even the name of Saladin was
forgotten, perhaps not surprising because he was an ethnic Kurd not
popular with Arabs. The prominent place of the crusades in Muslim
ideology today is a "constructed memory", taught to them by Europeans
in the nineteenth century. It may be convenient to blame western
imperialism for the decline of the Muslim empire, but it does not fit
the facts.
This
book begins with an investigation by paleontologist Peter Ward of
the cause of the
major mass extinctions that have afflicted the earth many times in the
past. The extinction question has been dominated in recent decades by
hypothesis that the end-Cretaceous extinction was caused by a massive
meteorite strike. After this was established to be fact, the search was
on for the evidence of the impacts that caused all the other mass
extinctions. In the first six excellent chapters Ward presents the
detective story, in which he plays a part, of how convincing evidence
for impact was never found and other hypotheses came to be considered.
The patterm to many extinctions that Ward
has discovered is best described in
his own words:
First, the world warms
over short intervals of time because of a sudden
increase in carbon dioxide and methane, caused initially by the
formation of vast volcanic provinces called flood basalts. The warmer
world affects the ocean circulation systems and disrupts the position
of the conveyor currents. Bottom waters begin to have warm, low-oxygen
water dumped into them. Warming continues, and the decrease of
equator-to-pole temperature differences reduces ocean winds and surface
currents to a near standstill. Mixing of oxygenated surface waters with
the deeper, and volumetrically increasing, low-oxygen bottom waters
decreases, causing ever shallower water to change from oxygenated to
anoxic. Finally, the bottom water is at depths where light can
penetrate, and the combination of low oxygen and light allows green
sulfur bacteria to expand in numbers and fill the low-oxygen shallows.
They live amid other bacteria that produce toxic amounts of hydrogen
sulfide, and the flux of this gas into the atmosphere is as much as
2,000 times what it is today. The gas rises into the high atmosphere,
where it breaks down the ozone layer, and the subsequent increase in
ultraviolet radiation from the sun kills much of the photosynthetic
green plant phytoplankton. On its way up into the sky, the hydrogen
sulfide also kills some plant and animal life, and the combination of
high heat and hydrogen sulfide creates a mass extinction on land. These
are the greenhouse extinctions.
Ward identifies three different states of the ocean through time. The
well mixed ocean of today, with animal life at all levels, is only
present during the geologically short
periods when there is permanent ice at the poles. The temperature
difference between the equator and the poles is required drive the
ocean circulation that oxygenates the deep ocean. In warmer times the
temperature difference is less, ocean is more stratified, and the
bottom layers are anoxic with little
non-bacterial life. Throughout the long pre-Cambrian era the oceans
were in a third state called a Canfield ocean, which is
dominated by sulfur metabolizing bacteria. Ward's hypothesis is that
the Canfield oceans return in response to greenhouse warming and cause
mass extinctions. This leads to the question of whether the present
greenhouse warming will
eventually lead to the same result.
One problem with understanding global warming is that the time scales
involved are beyond normal human experience. Climate modellers may talk
of a 50 year "sweet spot" where results are not affected much by
emissions secenarios, but the implication that any changes we make
today will not be felt for half a century is not something mentioned
very often at events like Live Earth concerts. At the same time, what
we do
over the course of the next 50 years will profoundly affect the next
century that follows it.
Another problem is people think of global warming in terms of their
local (terrestrial) weather. Three degrees of warming means you get the
climate a few hundred miles to the south. That may not seem to be a big
deal if you live in Washington DC and look at the climate of South
Carolina or Georgia. It might be of more concern to live in Oregon and
look at Baha California. Still, the major effects of global warming
will be on the ice caps and the oceans. Melting ice caps could lead to
sea level rises of tens of meters over the timescale of a few hundred
years. Ward is introducing the idea that on a timescale of thousands of
years
we may be causing the conditions that produced previous mass
extinctions, with a dead ocean releasing hydrogen sufide gas. But is
this a
credible hypothesis?
Chapter six ends with the words "This should thus be the end of the
book." Indeed, it should have been. The rest of the book is an
attempt, in his words, to bridge the "canyon" that
exists between the scientists who study the present climate and
paleontologists who have studied the mass extinctions of the more
distant past. Unfortunately his lack of expertise in modern climate
science clearly shows in the increasingly incoherent last three
chapters. Perhaps we were warned of this in the book's introduction,
which ends with "Thus
this book, words tumbling out powered by rage and
sorrow but mostly fear..." That might be fine if it were
followed up
with the careful editing required for a book about science, but it was
not.
Chapter seven gives a reasonable description of the cycle of ice ages
we are presently in, and their connection to the set of ocean currents
that has a large influence on climate. Chapter eight is when the book
starts to fall apart. He uncritically presents the ideas of William
Ruddiman that agriculture 8000 years ago raised
greenhouse gas levels and prevented an ice age from starting over
northern Canada, but fails to mention that many climate scientists do
not accept this hypothesis. He also claims that Jared Diamond's two
books are about how climate
changes civilization, when in fact Diamond pays little
attention
to
climate. He also shows confusion about future carbon dioxide levels,
stating "Even
if we stayed at a rise of 80 parts per million over
the next century, by the
year 3000 the atmosphere would have a carbon dioxide level of
450 parts per million." This is nonsense, as
shown by his
prediction on the next page of 1000 ppm by the year 2100, itself a
plausible but very high end estimate. His lack of understanding about
the greenhouse effect is demonstrated by the statement on page 165
"Because the heat budget
of the Earth is complicated by the effects of
the oceans, land, and especially currents (water and air),
there
is not
a linear relationship between carbon dioxide rise and global
temperature." The logarithmic relationship between a
greenhouse gas
concentration and its radiative effects is determined more by
atmospheric
physics rather than the convection effects he describes.
Chapter nine begins with a return to the style of the first part of the
book, with an investigation into the climate of the warm Eocene period
50 million years ago. But after a few pages, we then get a world tour
of the mind altering drugs used by people who live in warm climates,
followed by a mish mash of global warming information and
misinformation. On page 173 we are told there was "absolutely
no
ice at the poles," which is not true but implies a sea level 78 meters
higher than today. On page 180 we are told sea level will rise by 60
meters if all the ice caps melt (close), but there was a 25 meter rise
in the Eocene (actually closer to 50 meters). On the next page we have
a 25 foot increase from melting all ice caps! I am sure he would give
one of his students a D- if they submitted work as sloppy as this.
At this point one may wonder if anyone reviewed this work before
publication. But in the final chapter he identifies the reviewers as
climatologist David Battisti and geochemist Eric Steig, both from the
University of Washington, as is Ward himself. So were the reviewers
careless, or did Ward simply not listen? For example, several times he
suggests that shutting down the Atlantic current will
cause significant cooling in Europe. This is an old idea that climate
scientists no longer believe. In particular, David
Battisti published a paper Is
the Gulf
Stream responsible for Europe’s mild winters? which
shows that, contrary to popular belief, stopping the Gulf Stream would
make little difference to European climate.
The book does not explain why it is that rising greenhouse gas levels
lead to ocean anoxia events, rather simply warmer global temperatures
that lead to a lower temperature difference between the tropics and
poles. That is clearly shown in this
graph from his book.
He claims the ocean anoxia process was in progress during the Paleocene
Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) fifty million years ago, and
is responsible for the mass extinctions there. The papers I have read
attribute it to ocean acidification. The difference should be clear,
acidification kills shellfish while anoxia kills everything. PETM
Carbon is isotropically light, so it must have an organic origin, not
volcanic as Ward suggest.
David Battisti, of the University of Washington, is quoted as saying
CO2 levels will reach
800 ppm by 2100 and 1100 ppm by 2200, which will take us
to Eocene conditions. Greenland melts in 300 years,
Antarctica in
1,000.
He introduces the idea that global warming could produce a new cloud
layer, higher than today,
completly covering high latitudes. This is supposed to explain why
polar climates were
relatively warm in the past when carbon dioxide levels were much higher
than today. It is not clear where this idea comes from.
Other errors and misconceptions in the text:
- The refers
to climate models as "global circulation models", which is a logical
name, but in fact they are called "general circulation models". A minor
point, but it indicates someone not familiar with the field.
- The mathematician Milutan Milankovitch, who developed the
theory that
variations in the Earth's orbit cause the ice ages, was Serbian, not
Russian as Ward states more than once.
- When
referring to the Deccan Traps, which are the results of a massive flood
basalt eruptions 65 million years ago, he casually wonders where the
therm 'step' came from. Ten seconds with a search engine reveals that
trap is a Sanskrit word meaning 'step'.
- Ward
claims the carbon dioxide emissions from flood basalt events triggered
global warming that led to mass extinctions. Increases in atmospheric
pCO2 due to Deccan
Traps CO2
emissions
would have been less than 75 ppm, leading to a predicted global warming
of less than 1 C over several hundred thousand years. It is concluded
that the direct climate effects of CO2
emissions from the Deccan
eruptions would have been too weak to be an important factor in the
end-Cretaceous mass extinctions. [reference]
It is unfortunate this distinguished scientist and author of many
excellent groundbreaking scientific books has produced a work so
hysterical and full of errors. Perhaps the reason can be found his
personal accounts of field investigation that usually make his books
such a pleasure to read. This time a recurring theme is that he is not
able to perform the physical feats that he used to do in the past. The
frustration may have made its way into the text.
A summary of the book can be found in this Ward
article in Scientific American
Returning to the original topic, there is one prominent book published
this year that was left out: Cool It - The Skeptical Environmentalist's
Guide to Global Warming, by Bjorn Lomborg. In his own words,
the argument in this book is:
1. Global warming is
real and man-made. It will have a serious impact on humans
and the environment toward the end of this century.
2. Statements about the strong,
ominous and immediate consequences of global warming are often wildly
exaggerated, and thus unlikely to lead to good policy.
3. We need simpler,
smarter, and more efficient solutions for global warming
rather than excessive if well intentioned efforts. Large and expensive
CO2 cuts made now will have only a small and insignificant impact far
into the future.
4. Many other issues are
more important than global warming.
We need to get our perspective back. There are many more pressing
problems in the world, such as hunger, poverty and disease. By
addressing them, we can help more people, at a lower cost, with a much
higher chance of success than by pursuing drastic climate policies at a
cost of billions of dollars.
Lomborg presents a framework for analyzing climate change as
one of many problems to be solved. Spending money reducing greenhouse
emissions today will reduce the negative impact of those emissions in
the future. But there is an optimum amount of money that should be
spent, after which the amount spent will exceed any
benefits. This comes as a welcome relief to the single issue approach
in most other books on this topic. Given this reasonable approach to
the problem, the
reader may tend to trust Lomborg when he answers the
question what
is the optimum effort to combat global warming. Unfortunately this
trust is betrayed by a
systematic distortion of the issues involving climate change.
The book starts with looking at the issues of the impact of climate
change on polar bears, and heat deaths to humans from heat waves such
as the one in Europe in 2003. Admittedly these straw dogs were first
raised by environmentalists and the ignorant media, but Lomborg rides
them hard throughout the book. You get the idea that the main problem
with global warming is that more people will die of heat stroke. But
don't worry, even more people will no longer die from the cold. Polar
bears are cute, and it is sad when old people die from the heat, but
the real issue with global warming is the ability of humanity to feed
itself. This gets only cursory coverage. Instead there is a consistent
pattern of distorting information from authoritative sources.
For example, on page 60 we are told "In its 2007 report, the UN
estimates that sea
levels will rise about a foot over the rest of the century." He does
not mention that this estimate explicitly excludes melting from ice
caps, which is so uncertain they want to consider it separately than
the other much better understood contributors to sea level rise. There
is good evidence that melting ice caps will contribute many meters of
sea level rise, what is uncertain is whether that will take place over
tens, hundreds, or thousands of years.
On page 36 we are told that the optimum strategy to deal with climate
change is a carbon tax starting at two dollars per ton, rising to 27
dollars by the end of the century. He then quotes the two dollars
figure throughout the rest of the book. The references for these pages
all point to a 2006 study by economist William Nordhaus. But
the Nordhaus
2007
paper (on page 18) states that the optimum carbon tax rate should start
at $27 per ton and rise between 2 and 3 percent in real terms each
year, reaching $90 per ton in 2050 and $200 per ton in 2100. This is
more than an order of magnitude higher than Lomborg claims.
This book should not be lightly dismissed, because its logical approach
to the problem will be appreciated by people of good will who cannot
recognize the distortion in the details. The type of hysterical
denunciation of Lomborg often seen in these pages will only reinforce
how much more reasonable and balanced he seems to be. Branding him as a
"denialist" is patently false, as point one from his book demonstrates.
Instead, it would be better to embrace his approach, but correct the
many errors and come up with a more realistic solution to this problem.
A good start would be to steer people away from this flawed work, and
instead consider the similar economic approach taken by Nordhaus that
is more careful with the facts of climate change.
When
trying to remedy an injustice, the normal sequence of events is to
investigate the problem to uncover the truth, then if an injustice
actually occured an apology is due, possibly followed by compensation
for the victims. When it comes to the native residential school issue
we have followed the reverse order. First we paid compensation, then an
apology was issued, and soon we are going to have a "Truth and
Reconcilliation" commision to investigate what happened. One may
suspect that the verdict has already been determined, and all the
commission will do is provide a forum for stories that support that
verdict. Truth, on the other hand, is about looking at all the
available information before coming to a conclusion. These are the
questions a commision that was actually interested in the truth would
ask:
Who
was responsible for the residential school system, and what was their
motivation? Were they out to "assimilate" the natives to get rid of
them, or was this a well
intentioned attempt to improve the lives of native children that had
unintended consequences. We should ask what were the conditions for
native children on the reserves at the time. How many were living in
extreme poverty, ignored or abused by alcoholic parents? Without the
benefit of today's moral relativism, how were people back then supposed
to know they had no right to make any judgement about a different
culture?
What
were the actual conditions in
the residential schools? We have all heard the horror stories, but how
representitive of the entire system are they? How many of these schools
had a serious abuse problem, and how many students were affected?. It
is misleading
to implicitly compare a residential school eighty years ago with a
modern Waldorf kindergarten. How did the average residential school
compare with a boarding school for non-native people during the same
time period? Discipline was much stricter back then, especially in a
boarding school, and sexual abuse was not talked about. How was even
the worst abuse of natives much different than the widespread sexual
abuse at institutions like the orphanage at Mount Cashel?
A genuine search for the
truth will ask the question if the residential schools were in fact a
net benefit for the native children in spite of the abuse they
suffered. The answer may well be no, but the question should be asked
and answered based on the most complete data available, not just
the stories of a self selected group of individuals with a financial
interest in the outcome.
If the residential school system is so responsible for the plight
of native people today, are native individuals and groups that were not
part of the system any better off? Either this basic question has not
been asked, or someone is not very interested in telling us the answer.
If there is little difference, then the case against residential
schools falls apart except for individual instances of abuse.
Residential schools are simply being used as a convenient scapegoat,
both by those seeking financial compensation and those looking for
something to pin the blame on to avoid difficult questions with
unpleasant answers. The truth is that whenever a primitive tribal
culture encounters a more advanced society, the tribal culture is
either assimilated or lives in poverty. It makes little difference
whether the tribes are persecuted, put in residential schools, or given
welfare. Tribal culture is simply not able to participate in an
industrial society, and fairy tales about a wonderful mythic past do
nothing to change that fact.
And speaking of the unintended consequences of well
meaning actions, we should enquire into the actual results of the
compensation payments made to former students at these schools. Did
their lives improve in any way? Or are native graveyards filling up
with people who drank themselves to death because they could not handle
the sudden unearned income? Maybe there is a better way to spend the
money that
will actually benefit native people.
