Sam Harris challenges Noam Chomsky to a debate via email.

[K. A. Pital]

His "defense of torture" is a pathetic fascist burp, well on par with shitpieces like O'Reilly. Just as the "war of civilizations" nonsense. This actually makes me inclined to think of the 'civilizational' approach to history as nothing but a tool for cryptofascists. Jack motherfucking Bauer...

[Channel72]

Indeed, Asia as a whole is a much larger consumer of Saudi oil than the US

Now. Before it used to be the different: Asia consumed less oil from Saudi Arabia than US and Europe together. And, of course, in the 1979s and 1980s the oil-consuming part of Asia was primarily Japan and South Korea - two US allies, part of the OECD.

I think that also Saudis and Wahhabi-favoring islamists in general were armed by the US and the developed world. Saudi weapons? Almost exclusively American up until the last decade. Pakistan? A British and US creation meant to realize 'divide et empera' in Central Asia and confront India, armed exclusively by the West (not to mention allowing it to ascend to the nuclear club, an unprecended risk). Afghanistan? Ahem... What else? Which insane motherfucker I haven't mentioned yet that was armed by the West? I guess Sukharto. Oh well. Nevermind.

So who was behind the empowerment and spread of radical islam? The surprisingly bad, but quite honest answer would be: first Britain, then the US.

The US has certainly played a huge role in indirectly funding the spread of radical Islam. But the way you word it here really makes a total mockery of things like causality and common-sense/intuitive notions of blame and responsibility.

I mean yeah - the simultaneous ascendancy of the US as an oil-consuming superpower, along with the establishment of the KSA oil state naturally made the US the Saudi's best customer. But there's a significant degree of indirection when you talk about the US being responsible for spreading radical Islam. The Saudis are directly responsible. They poured massive financial resources into establishing a network of radicalized madrassahs throughout the Middle East and Asia. The US didn't ask them to do that. The Saudis, for the most part, directly desire to promote Wahhabi Islam. The US doesn't give a shit - we just want to drive our stupid SUVs everywhere and blast the air conditioner (which is probably inordinately more harmful, actually, than Wahhabi Islam - however, it's not the topic of this discussion).

If we want to have a useful discussion about the current problems facing the Middle East, the role of the Saudis should be the centerpiece of that discussion - not the distraction of the week like ISIS, because the current state of the Middle East is to a large extent shaped by the geopolitical goals of KSA, and one of their primary geopolitical goals has been the strengthening and spreading of a radical form of Sunni Islam.

Yes, I know there's many other issues - like the endless weapons provided to brutal dictators by the US as part of our silly geopolitical chess game with the USSR. But in terms of funding radical Islam, the US is a mere secondary cause - just a stupid, shortsighted consumer. But the Saudis control vast oil reserves for fuck's sake - they don't need the US. Russia, China, - anyone would have been just as good a customer.

This isn't meant to absolve the US of responsibility. The worst crime of the US, by far, is the shortsightedness of the Federal Highway Act and other infrastructural decisions that led to suburban sprawl and massive reliance on oil. But that's pretty orthogonal to the problems facing the Mideast - the Saudis had oil to sell, and the US happened to be the buyer.

Or let me put it this way: Without the US, Saudi Arabia would still be one fucking rich kingdom. And without Saudi Arabia, the US would have still behaved irresponsibly and consumed oil like mad. But - without Saudi Arabia and Wahabbi Islam specifically, the Mideast would probably be a significantly better place today. There may never even have been a Taliban or Al Qaeda without the Saudi Madrassahs that shaped their ideologies. The US didn't force the Saudis to setup a massive network of radical Madrassahs from Yemen to Pakistan. The Saudis did that on their own, and they would have done it regardless of who was buying the oil.

Before the generation that came of age under Saudi Madrassahs, we had the Islam of the Ottoman Empire, and the Islam of the Abbasid Caliphate. Yes - it still included certain radical elements like Jihad, and there was always gender discrimination and rigid, conservative imams around, but it was never as massively insane as the ideologies we see promoted by Al Qaeda, ISIS or the Taliban. That's because before KSA struck oil, Wahabbi Islam was just an obscure, backwater cult out in the desert.

[K. A. Pital]

I take issue with your idea that it would be just as easy for KSA to ascend to these levels of power. First of all, other nations were probably buying as much oil as they could in the 1980s. Russia does not need to consume Saudi oil, it is itself one of the world's largest oil exporters. It would be harder for KSA without political support both to it and other nations spreading Sunni extremism. And of course, not selling it and, say, Pakistan weapons would have also helped.

I agree that ISIS and Taliban are distraction movements (for which the US falls surprisingly easily), and that the Saudis would have been pushing their malevolent and backwards ideology without the US. I simply do not think they would achieve the same levels of success.

Seriously re-assessing the relationship with Saudis is some sort of a taboo for most of Europe and the US, funnily enough, just as Israel remained a holy cow until the very last years of Obama...

That is why I said it is not the Quran, and Harris is just wrong. Like you say yourself, there have been political entities much more benigh in the islamic sphere. It is a matter of a backwards cult getting the financial resources of a regional or even global power and some short-sighted political backing from people whose political strategy is putting the fire out with kerosene.

[Thanas]

His "defense of torture" is a pathetic fascist burp, well on par with shitpieces like O'Reilly. Just as the "war of civilizations" nonsense. This actually makes me inclined to think of the 'civilizational' approach to history as nothing but a tool for cryptofascists. Jack motherfucking Bauer...

Indeed. He strikes me as one of those "got to have a radical opinion on everything" douches. What is worse is that this is the best that can be brough forth as an excuse - if he really believes what he is spouting he is both misinformed and a fascist.

[Pelranius]

Harris's racial profiling argument is spectacularly... well, I'm trying to figure out how he defines "people who obviously aren't jihadists".

[Channel72]

Seriously re-assessing the relationship with Saudis is some sort of a taboo for most of Europe and the US, funnily enough, just as Israel remained a holy cow until the very last years of Obama...

Yeah, that really has to change. And honestly the best way to fight that is to dump as much resources into alternative sources of energy as we can. I like that Obama dumped something like 500 million USD into various green energy startups - too bad most of them failed due to shitty oversight and unclear goals. Most of the American public dislikes buying oil from the Saudis - any politician who promises energy independence gets immediate bonus points. This is in contrast to support for Israel, which is very popular with the public.

Of course, the real problem is that cutting off our relationship with the Saudis means seriously increased gas prices, and no politician can possibly survive that. The real solution is to cut back massively on energy consumption - no more SUVs, no more suburbia, lots of mass transit and life centered around urban centers. Too bad most of the American public is so fucking stupid and stubborn, they'll refuse to vote for anyone who demands they make sacrifices.

That is why I said it is not the Quran, and Harris is just wrong. Like you say yourself, there have been political entities much more benigh in the islamic sphere. It is a matter of a backwards cult getting the financial resources of a regional or even global power and some short-sighted political backing from people whose political strategy is putting the fire out with kerosene.

I don't care to defend Sam Harris. I never read anything he wrote, nor do I know enough of his ideas to defend or criticize him. But I think the Q'ran is at least part of the issue. It's definitely not the major cause, in itself, of radical Islam - but I do at least think it lends itself very easily to radical ideologies. I mean, obviously the Bible does too, but the difference is in the details.

I mean, the OT and NT lend themselves easily to a radical eschatology and sociology - shit like Evangelical Christianity and 7th Day Adventists are the sort of expressions of extremism we see among Christian sects today. They promote a radical sociology based around their "Jesus is coming any second now, seriously!" eschatology. Like Islam, it includes all sorts of discrimination, close-mindedness, and separation from unorthodox ideas. But unlike Islam, it doesn't include the key element of Jihad - the romantic and violent physical fight, on Earth, to defend the faith.

This is, of course, the part where 1,000 SDN posters jump in and point out abortion clinic bombers, and other violent actions by Christians - but that is nowhere near as prevalent or systematic as Jihadi violence. Part of the reason is of course, political and circumstantial. Jihadis currently have more of a reason to fight - they are constantly dealing with foreign interveners, whereas radical Christians usually live in safe, first world nations. (Unless we're talking about shit like the LRA.)

But I think the reason we see less violence from radical Christianity is that the New Testament tends towards an emphasis on eschatology and separation from the world - it emphasizes "spiritual battles" like resisting temptation - fighting against demons until Christ returns to set everything right. The actual political entities of the world aren't as important, since they'll all be destroyed anyway when Christ comes back. There is no physical "Caliphate" that urgently needs to be established. And so radical Christians tend to build a bubble to block ideas they don't like (hence the entire Evangelical sub-culture of Christian bookstores, homeschooling, Christian music, television, etc, - seriously it's a billion-dollar industry at this point). Christians try to suppress or hide from ideas they don't like, but they don't often fight back violently against those things, because the New Testament is missing that key ingredient of Jihad (and most Christians are too comfortable to bother fighting anyway).

Sure, it's possible for some Christian demagogue, like Pope Urban II, to rile up the masses and get "Christian soldiers" to fight - but all that was before Luther and Gutenberg and the worship of the "inerrant" Biblical text itself that forms the backbone of modern American radical Christianity. Ironically, the Old Testament provides a close analogue to Jihad, but again, all that has been "spiritualistized" away in modern evangelical Christianity.

The Koran, however, very clearly lends itself to physical, political violence - more so than the New Testament. Radical Jihadis want to establish a radical state on Earth. Radical Christians believe Jesus will come back and do that for them. So I think the Koran is part of the problem - just not a very big part.

[K. A. Pital]

I think that since Christians efficiently established violent theocracies, and this includes the Protestants with their witch-hunts too, it is not a function of their text that makes them less prone to violence, but the circumstances. Westerners are rich and sheltered; in other days they were more than willing to spill blood to convert or exterminate savages and force pagans to baptise. It is not the few and despised abortion bombists who one needs to fear, but fanatics who could galvanize the masses to seek and destroy things that offend their religious senses - or even people who do so.