Glenn Greenwald offers a mirror for those of us who worry about the elements of theocratic expansionism which are enough a part of the Koran and early Islamic history to be considered potentially dangerous forms of the religion itself on its own terms (and not just of its appropriation by political agents):

I’m always amazed when I receive e-mails from people telling me that I fail to understand how Islam is a uniquely violent, supremely expansionist culture that is intrinsically menacing.  The United States is a country with a massive military and nuclear stockpile, that invaded and has occupied two Muslim countries for almost a full decade, that regularly bombs and drones several others, that currently is threatening to attack one of the largest Muslim countries in the world, that imposed a sanctions regime that killed hundreds of thousands of Muslim children, thatslaughters innocent people on a virtually daily basis, that has interfered in and controlled countries around the world since at least the middle of the last century, that has spent decades arming and protecting every Israeli war with its Muslim neighbors and enabling a four-decade-long brutal occupation, and that erected a worldwide regime of torture, abduction and lawless detention, much of which still endures.  Those are just facts.

But if we all agree to sit around and point over there – hey, can you believe those primitive Muslims and how violent and extremist they are — the reality of what we do in the world will fade blissfully away.  Even better, it will be transformed from violent aggression into justified self-defense, and then we’ll not only free ourselves of guilt, but feel proud and noble because of it.  As is true with all cultures, there are obviously demented, psychopathic, violent extremists among Muslims.  And there’s no shortage of such extremists in our own culture either. One would think we’d be more interested in the extremists among us, but by obsessively focusing on Them, we are able to blind ourselves to the pathologies that drive our own actions.  And that self-cleansing, self-justifying benefit — which requires the preservation of the Muslim-as-Threat mythology — is probably more valuable than all the specific, pragmatic benefits described above.  All this over a “menace” (Terrorism) that killed a grand total of 25 noncombatant Americans last year (McClatchy:  ”undoubtedly more American citizens died overseas from traffic accidents or intestinal illnesses than from terrorism“).

Whatever one’s concerns about literalism, theocracy, fundamentalism, and the ways that each of these can take genuinely religious expressions (and not just “false” religious expressions), there is as much or more danger in blithely accepting one’s own (religiously or secularly) motivated state’s uncontrollably aggressive, self-righteous, jingoistic militarism.  And while America’s own penchant for violence does not make Wahabist Islam any less a genuinely religious, genuinely authoritarian, genuinely dangerous force against freedom of thought and practice in the world, there is wisdom for all of us to heed the advice to always be checking our own eyes for large planks of wood before taking the specks or even outright twigs from others’ eyes.

In sum, yes, Islam is not innocent of everything wicked done in its name.  But neither are we Americans innocent of everything wicked done in ours.

Your Thoughts?