One thought on “Video: Glazov on Klavan Discussing: “Jihadist Psychopath””

1. I watched your discussion of Jihadist Psychopath with Klavan on youtube today. You may have noticed that he suddenly cooled to you when you failed to concede that fear of muslims should be restricted to those who follow “extremist islam” and not extend to the followers of “moderate islam”. I’m a daily listener to Klavan podcasts and I recall him expressing the view that those who feared muslims-per-se were guilty of over-simplification. I think he thought you guilty of that and hence cut the interview short. He said you had given him something to “think about.” – a polite way of distancing himself from you.
   I have a theory that the reason he disagrees with you is that you and he have different background assumptions about muslims.
   Coming from a Roman Catholic background you are used to there being religious authorities who define the “mainstream”. This allows one to compile a set of theological propositions that express what catholics are meant to believe. This is how you approach Islam. You define it by the theological propositions extractable from the quran, the sahih ahaddith, the oldest sirahs, and (most importantly in practice) the consensus of Islamic scholars throughout the four primary sunni schools (Hanafi, Shafi’i, Maliki and Hanbali).
   Klavan on the other hand was a secular jew who converted to protestant christianity (he wrote a book about his conversion – “A Great Good Thing”). The protestant model has it that Jesus came to earth to redeem mankind and get a book written about it for everyone to study. Jesus leaves it up to each christian to read the book himself and make up his own mind about what God is saying to him. Protestant christians are very diverse in what they believe. All believe in the bible, but there are great disagreement as to what it means. So the temptation is to define the mainstream not in terms of a set of theological propositions all believe in, but as whatever theological propositions most protestants believe – something that is constantly changing.
   Klavan thinks that Islam works the same way as protestant christianity does. Hence he defines Islam as whatever most (western) muslims (say they) believe. And if most now never think about offensive jihad or think that it was only meant for Muhammed’s time (because they haven’t been shown the theological arguments that prove otherwise), there truly is a form of islam that doesn’t include offensive jihad. This is “moderate islam”. As for who believe in offensive jihad, they are adherents of “extremist islam”.
   I surmise that Islam works neither like Roman Catholicism nor like Protestant Christianity, but more like Eastern Orthodox Christianity. There is no pope saying what all must believe, yet a muslim is not permitted to make up his own mind on theological questions. He must consult someone qualified to issue fatwas. Virtually all who are qualified to issue fatwas believe in “extremist islam”. Furthermore, those qualified to issue fatwas, the imams and the sheiks and the other hardliners believe in enforcing fatwas and their view of islam with violence.
   If that is so, then the fact (if it be a fact) that most western muslims don’t believe in offensive jihad, won’t mean much if one day their leaders inform them that the time has come to kill their non-muslim neighbours. They are likely to follow the theological views of their leaders rather than the views they express now. They are therefore comparable to troops in barracks ready to be mobilised at the command of their leaders – a point famously made by Erdogan: “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers…”
   I would be interested to know whether Nonni Darwish and Aynaz Cyrus agree or disagree with my surmise.

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