Epicurus and Islam

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This is the first in a new series of posts titled, Epicurus and Modern Philosophy. Robert has done an excellent job of covering the issues of the day. But given that Epicurus was a philosopher, I wanted to write a series of posts on the biggest ideas affecting the modern world- from a Epicurean perspective, of course. These will be political philosophies, economic models, or merely teachings from wise people. But today, I thought I’d start with a religion, and given that the nature of Islam is so contentious in today’s political and national security debates, I believe I should start with it first. For the most part, these posts will run every fortnight, with a more usual post on the weeks when a Modern Philosophy post is not due. Finally, I’d add that next week’s post will also be different, because I’ll be covering a emotional, yet quintessentially Epicurean issue, so look out for that!

There’s a certain tendency on much of the political Right to ascribe the primary cause of terrorism to Islamic doctrine. For these anti-Islam conservatives, the violence contained in the Qur’an, the Hadith, as well as in the Prophet Muhammad’s life, proves that Islam itself must take responsibility for the actions of its extremist adherents. They argue for explicitly anti-Islam policies, such as state-enforced monoculturalism, restrictions on immigration and even travel for Muslims, and in some extreme cases, deportation for the Muslims already living in the West- all in the name of national security.

Having taken international relations modules (amongst other things) at Exeter University for two years now, I have spoken to no academic or professor who shares this view. The consensus amongst international relations scholars is that parts of the political Right overemphasise Islamic theology when explaining why Jihadi terrorism occurs. For instance, why is Jihadi terrorism such a modern phenomenon despite the fact that Islam has existed for hundreds of years? Rather, political and socioeconomic factors- the increase in anti-Western sentiment, nationalism, poverty, and disillusionment with peace as an ineffective means of political reform- are far more effective at explaining terrorism. The question of whether Islam itself is a religion of peace is neither here nor there. The fact is that most Muslims are peaceful people, and deserve the right to be presumed innocent as much as anyone else. Any attempts to curb the rights of the civilian Muslim population as part of a counter-terrorism strategy are likely to be ineffective as best; they are likely to reinforce the impression that Western policymakers are prejudice against Muslims, fuelling a violent backlash amongst a small minority.

However, just because most Muslims are peaceful and have as much of a right to migrate as everyone else, doesn’t mean that Islam is Epicurean or even liberal. Fundamentally, Islam is about submitting oneself to God, a perfect supernatural being. The God of Islam demands absolute obedience, with the threat of hell for those who resist his will. This leaves little room for individual discretion when making moral decisions- if its God’s will, it must be done. So if you were a Muslim, you couldn’t decide for yourself that sex outside marriage may not be so bad. If God forbids it, it cannot be done. I personally find this a frightening way of thinking. It places faith in the infallibility of the divine above the reasoning of the individual, thus robbing the individual of the right to make decisions for themselves and take responsibility for them. Having the obedience to rules be at the heart of a belief system makes the life of the individual unfree. This is reflected in wider society: Islamic societies and cultures tend to be authoritarian and patriarchal, with those who command and those who are commanded.

Now Islam is far from unique in demanding full obedience to the supernatural: Christianity and Judaism do too, and even polytheisms encourage their followers to obey the gods, though the reward and punishment system tends to be far more sophisticated than the heaven/hell afterlife. Equally, the socially conservative (by Western standards) values of Islam are largely shared by Orthodox Jews, practising Catholics or dedicated Hindus. My frustration with the debate concerning Islam is that there are many on the political Left who claim that this isn’t the case: that virtually all Muslims are Western-style liberals who love feminism and gay rights. That simply isn’t the case at all. For instance, all beaches in Spain are currently clothing optional- you can enter any of them completely naked legally, should you choose to. Now suppose there was a very large influx of Muslim immigrants into Spain, so that Muslims were now the majority religious group. Would that law permitting such widespread nudity survive? I have my doubts. Again, the same could be said for many other conservative religious groups.

The point is that for too long, much of the Left believes the Islamic world can be just as liberal as the West, given time and enough of our money. This is a delusional fantasy, as recently shown by Turkey’s (albeit narrow) embrace of an executive presidency led by an authoritarian strongman, Recep Erdogan. The reason why the West has become more liberal is because Christianity has declined, and the Christians that remain have largely compromised and secularised their religion to the point where it would be longer recognisable to the Christianity our forefathers practised even just a century ago. The only way for the Islamic world to become as liberal as the West in its social attitudes and political practises, is if Islam reduces in its popularity and influence on public policy. But that isn’t going to happen. Unlike in the West, the Islamic world is not becoming more secular- much of it is actually becoming more Islamic. And unlike Christianity, Islam has no major tradition of secularism anyway. From its founding, Islam has been used as a political ideology as well as a religion. Conversely, most Christians see at least some value in secularism. Jesus saw a clear distinction between church and state, as evident by his desire not to get involved in political affairs. Most Muslims will always want Islam to play a prominent role in government, even if they don’t necessarily support an Iranian-style theocracy. The desire for Western-style secular government is scarce amongst Muslims, especially those living outside the Western world.

In conclusion, the point of this post was not to dissuade Muslims from adhering to their religion. I have a great respect for the Islamic world and its people. I don’t believe it is inherently prone to violence, and its rich history and culture shows that there is hope for what is currently a troubled region. Going forward, I am hopeful that Islam will make a success of itself. But I don’t accept the absurd logic of Western liberals, that Islam will be a success on the West’s terms. The Islamic world is not the West, and can take pride in that. We have different ways of thinking: the West is very much based on individualism, which Muslims understandably reject as being antithetical to God’s will and a harmonious society. Therefore, we should stop pretending we share the same values, and work to build a better world with our differences in mind.

Military extravagance

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Some while ago, in the Washington Post, Walter Pincus, an expert on the American military and a prominent critic, raised once again the scandal of the long-standing  division of command in the military, something even Eisenhower couldn’t overcome.  The rivalry between the three arms of the military is such that they constantly duplicate each other’s efforts.  If one gets a fancy new plane the others want something similar (but bigger and faster).  This costs the taxpayer untold amounts of money.  Each arm of the services its own elaborate management and intelligence arms.  And yet no one will point out the great untold story: these armchair generals are lousy at winning wars!  Aside from the first Gulf War, can you remember a case where the US actually won a war?  Certainly not Iraq or Afghanistan.  But if you say so you are in danger of being considered unpatriotic.  Unpatriotic?  Actually, patriotism is ensuring that you have good soldiers, sailors and airmen capable of strategic and tactical thought, fast on their feet and original of mind, not bureaucrats waiting for buggin’s turn. Patriotism is about doing the job and at a reasonable cost. And now Trump wants to increase the military budget?

Epicurus seems to have despised both politicians and the military, such as it was. He lived at a time of constant war and was disillusioned with the uselessness of it and the incompetence of military types. The awe and respect afforded to top generals in the US, despite their collective track record, is remarkable. Perhaps it’s because most civilian leaders are even less worthy of respect. But one day the public will wake up to what a huge waste of money and resources the overfunded military really is.

Is this Putin’s real agenda?

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Scott Pruit, US Environmental Protection Agency chief, made headlines for his recent denial that anthropogenic carbon dioxide is the primary control knob for Earth’s climate. Of course, the truth is that growth in CO2 emissions is the main contributor to the climate change we see. Without emissions abatement it seems inevitable that pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere will be catastrophic for most, if not all, nations.

Pruitt’s appointment makes that reshaping less likely. This is not about the science. It is not about economic priority setting nor conflicting values. It is not about a desire for small government, the primacy of individual freedom or myopic belief in capitalism. The only fact that matters is that solving the climate issue means killing the fossil fuel industry – arguably the most influential on the planet.

Zero-carbon technology is now cheaper and easier to install. Renewables promise individual freedom through energy self-sufficiency. The world economy is at a crucial inflection point, and the US is well placed to ride the storm and capitalise on the next economic revolution. But vested interests dominate the landscape and US policy could delay the revolution.

The Russian economy is, on the other hand, a basket case. Apart from oil and gas, it produces little anyone wants to buy. Clean energy is likely to put its economy in a death spiral.

Serious questions have been asked about the role of Russia, the world’s fifth largest greenhouse gas emitter and the largest oil producer, in the election of Donald Trump. Perhaps it’s time to expend more effort asking why it wanted him in power.
(The above, edited, article, by Owen Gaffney, appeared the New Scientist under the headline “Putin’s real prize?”)

Trump might (have) genuinely wanted a reset with Russia, and it suited him to have the Russians interfering with the election, undermining Hillary. Putin, for his part, as the article above suggests, wants a climate change denier in the White House. Protecting his oil revenue is his biggest objective, even though Trump said he wanted to reduce energy prices by promoting fracking, which is hardly in Russia’s short-term interests. The financial stakes are huge, not only for Russia, but also for the Americans, mostly of Republican persuasion, who have financially fed off the largesse of the oil industry and have sublimated their better instincts and their morality in favour of accepting jobs and cash from Exxon and others. It’s a sordid story, illustrating why Epicurus warned us against too close an involvement with politics. Meanwhile, what were those Trump supporters doing talking on the phone to the Russians, overheard by most of the West’s secret services?

Syria: the implications for British and American politics.

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Given the comprehensive case against NATO intervention in Syria, as made yesterday, the response from the both the British political establishment and the electorate has been appalling. The government has failed to condemn America’s actions, preferring to curry favour with the Trump administration in the hope of a good trade deal post-Brexit. The Liberal Democrats, who bravely opposed the intervention in Iraq, now rally behind the call to war, ignoring Trump’s anti-liberal nationalism, bellicose rhetoric, and support for Brexit. UKIP, which like Trump, previously had an isolationist foreign policy, remains dubiously silent.

The only prominent voice of sanity vis a vis Syria is Jeremy Corbyn. Now the ideology and leadership qualities of Corbyn leave much to be desired. Under his tenure, Labour has slumped in the polls, and is widely perceived to be irrelevant in the post-Brexit political order. During the referendum campaign, the Labour leadership’s contribution to the Remain cause was lacklustre, in which real conviction and zeal for the European cause was conspicuously absent. Corbyn fails to make a convincing case for his brand of democratic socialism, preferring to rally against ‘austerity’ without prescribing a credible alternative, adding to his perception as overly spendthrift and fiscally irresponsible. He has failed to see off the threat of Scottish nationalism- a key promise of his. Even on foreign policy, his closeness with Hamas, Hezbollah and Sinn Fein are worrying at best. His frequent appearances on Russian and Iranian state TV, where he fails to condemn the human rights abuses committed by those nations, betrays an anti-Western bias common amongst the socialist left. This gives needless credibility to his right-wing critics, who view him as unpatriotic and anti-British.

Corbyn can be relied upon to oppose any Western intervention, because his socialist ideology views such interventions as expression of post-colonial oppression, in which the former imperial powers seek to enrich themselves at the expense of the developing world. Now that isn’t necessarily always the case: the interventions in Kosovo and Sierra Leone were successful in preventing more killings, and in the case of Rwanda, genocide occurred due to lack of intervention. Nor is the Marxist paradigm of post-colonialism entirely accurate in the case of Syria: it would be disingenuous to suggest that NATO members don’t care about the immorality of Assad’s crimes, and are only proposing intervention to increase their influence in the region. Nevertheless, Corbyn’s anti-war views ought to be commended in his instance, even if they aren’t entirely for the right reasons. This is partly because they run contrary to public opinion, which is generally supportive of some sort of intervention, even if regime change is still opposed by a majority. One of the reasons why Corbyn was elected Labour leader was because he was viewed as a man of principle, even if his principles weren’t always agreeable. This was juxtaposed to his opponents: Kendall, Cooper and Burnham all seemed to be spewing out politically correct inoffensiveness, talking a good talk on making Labour electable and helping the poor, without ever challenging popular misconceptions or outlining a programme of real change. For many on the Left, Trump’s bombing on Syria has reminded them why they supported Corbyn, even if they have grown more sceptical of him over time.

Like the British public, the American public is generally supportive of some sort of intervention, without supporting regime change. What distinguishes America from Britain is that the anti-war movement has energised the Democratic Party against Trump, whereas the British left remain hopelessly divided. Comedians, civil rights activists, journalists, Democratic politicians and ordinary protestors have all eloquently spoken out against Trump’s foreign policy. They do not necessarily share Corbyn’s aversion to all Western interventions, but rightly regard Trump’s actions as short-sighted and likely to lead to more violence in the long term. The American Left will reap the rewards of this opposition. When it becomes apparent to a majority of Americans that Assad is no closer to being ousted from power, the Democrats will be swept into office. Having said that, they can only fully capitalise on anti-war sentiment if they repeat the 2008 primary, selecting an anti-war candidate. Nominating someone with similar foreign policies to Hillary Clinton would be a tactical error.

The response from the American left is not the only reason to be more optimistic about anti-war opposition in America than in Britain. As president, Trump has far more control over foreign than domestic affairs. Therefore, foreign policies ought to have greater bearing on Americans’ view of him than the British people’s view of Theresa May. The British people are also distracted by Brexit, which involves not only the complicated Article 50 process, but an economy which has already worsened (primarily in the form of inflation, the devaluation of the pound, and many major banks’ deciding to move jobs overseas) and will probably continue to do so. Despite Trump, the outlook for the American economy is more bullish, which means foreign policy will play a greater role in the public debate. If the anti-war movement is to succeed in Britain, it must put its differences aside and unite under Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour. This won’t guarantee electorate success, or even make it much more likely. But it will provide a coherent narrative, forcing the interventionists to defend themselves more vigourously. It also makes the nomination of another Syrian non-interventionist more likely once Corbyn resigns, following Labour’s all but inevitable defeat in 2020.

 

Syria: Why intervention is not the answer.

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The ongoing civil war in Syria is a mess, in which there is no obvious solution to. The Western consensus is that the intentional killing of innocent civilians by the Assad regime without impunity, is a state of affairs that cannot be allowed to continue. Assad has repeatedly denied his citizens basic human rights. The civil war started when he refused the popular outcry for democracy, preferring to shoot at unarmed protestors; the backlash led to the civil war we see today.  As a direct result of Assad’s actions, thousands of people have been killed and millions forced to seek refuge in foreign countries. The latest use of chemical weapons against civilians is but a small aspect of this tragic tale.

The immorality of the Assad regime, and Russia and Iran’s choice to support it, is indisputable. The only question is what the West ought to do about it. For Trump, as well as a broad range of figures from the internationalist left to the neoconservative right, the answer is direct military action, with the intention of reducing the number of civilians murdered by the Syrian army. Very few people would suggest overthrowing the Assad regime altogether, because that would be a prolonged and costly war, which would bring us into direct confrontation with Russia, a nuclear power. But the interventionists argue Syria is an instance where the international community has a Responsibility to Protect (R2P) Syrian civilians from slaughter. At the very least, humanitarian concerns ought to take precedence over traditional notions of state sovereignty or our national interests.

To an extent, the interventionists have a point. Assad’s deliberate killings of his own people certainly give NATO a right to intervene. State sovereignty can be violated to prevent genocide or human rights abuses on a large scale. The interventionists are right to be concerned about Russia and Iran extending their influence via the entrenchment of the Assad regime. They are also right that Russia and Assad are more concerned with defeating the rebels and the Kurds, than defeating ISIS. The priority for Russia and Assad is to wipe out any liberal opposition, thereby reducing the probability of a NATO intervention by making their only opponents the Al-Nusra Front (a terrorist group with Al-Qaeda origins) and ISIS. Most of the Russian bombings have been directed at the Free Syrian Army, not those normally deemed ‘terrorists.’ To complicate things even further, Turkey, a NATO member, continues its battle against the Kurds, who want to use some of what is currently Turkish land to create an independent Kurdish state. But the rest of NATO sees the Kurds as a key ally against both Assad and ISIS.

But despite the interventionists’ largely correct description of current events, they are mistaken in their policy prescriptions. For a start, Trump is merely acting on impulse. He has no proper understanding of the region, nor a long term vision of its future. At least with the Iraq War (an intervention Trump repeatedly criticises despite having supported it at the time), Bush wanted to create a democratic Iraq, because he believed Hussein was the biggest obstacle to democracy in the Middle East, and of course Hussein had committed human rights abuses on a similar scale to Assad. But Trump promised an ‘American First’ foreign policy, in which potential interventions would be considered based on the consequences for US interests. Now he has broken his campaign promise, instead justifying the bombing of the airfield on the basis that innocent children are being killed by Assad. This also breaks the promise to normalise relations with Russia (which was never workable given that Trump is opposed to the Iran deal, Iran being a key Russian ally.) To be fair to Trump, he isn’t the only president to have campaigned on a policy of non-intervention, only to have broken it upon entering office: Reagan, Clinton and Bush behaved likewise. But for interventionists to praise Trump for the bombings, when there is clearly no long term strategy, is the height of foolishness. Unless NATO fully commits to overthrowing Assad, intervention will only prolong the conflict, resulting in more civilian deaths and refugees.

There are two things NATO can do. The first is to develop a better refugee policy. Overall, its clear that Syria will remain a war-zone for the foreseeable future. So the question of refugees will not go away. Its also clear that Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey are already hosting more than their fair share of refugees, given how poor those countries are. As nice as it would be to make the wealthy Gulf States take in more people, we can’t force them, so Europe and North America must step up to the challenge. To ensure the wellbeing of both the host states and the refugees themselves, refugee policy must be increasingly made on a supranational basis, with the EU, the US and Canada co-operating for their mutual benefit. Refugees must be resettled according to where there is affordable housing, where local infrastructure can cope, and where the local economy can support them. Having each country decide for themselves how many refugees to take and where to put them, does not ensure this at all. Overall, the number of refugees living in the West ought to increase for the time being. But the important thing is to guarantee that every country takes their fair share so no locality is overburdened.  It goes without saying that refugees ought to be vetted, but they already are, contrary to Republican conventional wisdom. Humanitarian assistance to refugee camps in Syria and Jordan needs to be increased, given that not everyone can move to the West.

NATO must also come to terms with the fact that relations with Russia and Iran will not be normalised as long as they continue to support the Assad regime. Those like Trump that would like to ‘get on with everybody’ are simply living in an alternative reality. Although the Iran deal may be the best solution to a nuclear Iran in the short term, the idea suggested by paleoconservatives, of an alliance with the Islamic Republic, is simply preposterous. When Israel talks of Iranian funded terrorists, such as Hamas, Hezbollah or insurgencies in Iraq, we ought to listen. As for Russia, the EU and the US must continue sanctions as long as Russia continues to support Assad, and Russian-backed militias continue to undermine the Ukrainian government. As Margaret Thatcher used to say, ‘this is no time to go wobbly.’

I’m going to follow up this article tomorrow, with a piece on the implications of the civil war on British and American domestic politics. I have to confess, I’m not an expert on the Middle East, so feel free to correct on any factual errors I may have inadvertently made. I’m also going to start a new series next Monday, so look out for that.