Luttwak and Islam
Clark Hoyt, the public editor of the New York Times, has responded to a controversial op-ed piece by Edward Luttwak. Luttwak’s core claim is that Barack Obama, whose father was a Muslim, but who himself is a Christian, could be considered an apostate by some Muslims and therefore a target for execution. Moreover, “most citizens of the Islamic world would be horrified by the fact of Senator Obama’s conversion to Christianity once it became widely known — as it would, no doubt, should he win the White House. This would compromise the ability of governments in Muslim nations to cooperate with the United States in the fight against terrorism.”
Luttwak’s piece struck me, when I read it, as rather feverish: certainly it’s possible that some people could respond in the way Luttwak suggests, but is it likely that the dominos would all fall in the way he imagines? And of course Luttwak’s claims were enormously controversial, which is why the public editor got involved, and why he thinks that either Luttwak should have “softened” his language or some alternative views should have been presented.
Yglesias calls Hoyt’s column a devastating rebuttal, but I don’t think it amounts to that; as far as I can tell all Hoyt has done is muddy the waters further. His approach to the problem was to interview “five Islamic scholars, at five American universities, recommended by a variety of sources as experts in the field.” He reports that “all of them said that Luttwak’s interpretation of Islamic law was wrong.”
But in fact — as Hoyt’s own quotations from the scholars show — they don’t all say that he’s wrong. Rather, they say things like this: “Whether (apostasy) is punishable by death or not, there are different opinions.” “The majority opinion among Islamic jurists is that the law of apostasy can apply only to individuals who knowingly decide to be Muslims and later renege.” The experts only say that the views Luttwak — whom I think everyone must agree was painting with a very broad brush indeed — attributes to Muslims in general are not held universally or not held by a majority of the world’s Muslims.
Hoyt concludes that “All the scholars argued that Luttwak had a rigid, simplistic view of Islam that failed to take into account its many strains and the subtleties of its religious law, which is separate from the secular laws in almost all Islamic nations.” (That last point Luttwak himself acknowledges: “no government is likely to allow the prosecution of a President Obama — not even those of Iran and Saudi Arabia, the only two countries where Islamic religious courts dominate over secular law.”) But wouldn’t you expect that Muslim scholars teaching at major American universities would insist on the complexity and the adaptability of Islam, would emphasize that the religion is “evolving,” as one of them puts it? After all, radical Islamist scholars would scarcely be likely to apply for jobs at Michigan or UCLA, much less get them. Isn’t the legitimate question not what a group of American professors think about Luttwak’s claims but rather what Muslim scholars abroad think, or better yet influential religious leaders — especially in the Arab world, which Luttwak sees as the likely flashpoint for anger at Obama?
Let me be clear: I am not defending Luttwak’s article. I don’t know enough about the subject to have a clearly formed opinion. But Hoyt’s column, and the views of his chosen experts, don’t help one bit in clarifying matters. Before, I had merely thought of Luttwak’s essay as an exercise in excitability, but now I’m really curious about the substance of his claims.
Razib Khan has had some thoughts on this:
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2008/05/president-apostate.php
— Thursday · Jun 1, 09:13 PM · #
i had a response to lutwakk here
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2008/05/president-apostate.php
let me note that apostasy in islamic law is often viewed as analogous to treason, not heresy or what not. in other words, apostasy laws exist to maintain the coherency of the ‘islamic nation,’ as opposed to safeguarding someone’s soul (yes, that’s simplistic, but i think that that distinction is an important one).
— razib · Jun 1, 09:42 PM · #
I don’t get it, Alan. You were inclined to disregard the article… then someone wrote a rebuttal more or less confirming what you thought… so now you think there might be something to the article after all?
razib’s post is very sensible. If Carlos Menem pulled it off, there’s no reason Obama can’t.
Right now, there are Clinton supporters who say that they prefer McCain to Obama; so, surely there will be some Muslims who say that Obama needs to be boiled in oil or God knows what. But it doesn’t seem like it will be a widely held or powerful position.
— Elvis Elvisberg · Jun 1, 10:42 PM · #
This entire issue seems like a distraction from the more substantive question of which candidate would do a better job of reducing Muslim resentment towards the United States. Consider two points:
1.) The Muslims most likely to view Obama as an apostate and call for his assassination are probably already predisposed towards terrorism and religious fundamentalism.
2.) The vast majority of religiously faithful Muslims who aren’t irredeemable extremists are probably unwilling to endorse the assassination of a foreign leader based on an obscure religious tenet if his substantive policies are more attractive than the most likely alternative.
Given the visibility of the Iraq occupation in the Muslim world and McCain and Obama’s obvious differences on the issue, I find it hard to imagine fringe charges of apostasy playing a huge role in Muslim perceptions of the United States. At worst, it seems like a justification for beefing up Obama’s personal security if he becomes president.
— Will · Jun 2, 12:43 AM · #
This nicely begs the question:
“But wouldn’t you expect that Muslim scholars teaching at major American universities would insist on the complexity and the adaptability of Islam, would emphasize that the religion is “evolving,” as one of them puts it? After all, radical Islamist scholars would scarcely be likely to apply for jobs at Michigan or UCLA, much less get them.”
— berger · Jun 2, 03:54 AM · #
Speaking of strains and subtleties, wouldn’t a lot depend on whether he allows Israel to continue to exist? Or agrees to take a step or two back in supporting it?
— The Reticulator · Jun 2, 05:33 AM · #
Sorry I didn’t see Razib’s post before I wrote this.
Elvis, the problem was that the rebuttal really didn’t confirm what I thought. It claimed to, but in fact didn’t amount to much. Thus my piqued curiosity.
— Alan Jacobs · Jun 2, 01:45 PM · #
alan,
i don’t know what your specific issues are, but it strikes me that the rejoinder to luttwak hews strongly to the letter of his falsity but not the spirit of it. e.g., scholars who say that luttwak’s assertion is wrong in that the majority of jurists reject it (i.e., it is not a universal belief), or scholars who claims that it only applies within the muslim world (i.e., that particular injunction isn’t universally applied), or scholars who claiming that the legal principle is evolving (i.e., luttwak has an out of date perception).
in short, many of those who are linking to this article in the new york times are talking as if luttwak was slandering muslims out of thin air due to pure ignorance. but i think the responses make it clear that it wasn’t pure ignorance, but partial ignorance and lack of nuance & subtly. there is a rational non-bigoted reason that people like luttwak would make the errors he would make.
myself, i’ve inquired into these laws cuz i am an apostate more directly than obama. i was never much of a believer, but i went through the motions in mosque as a child and was raised in a muslim family. but i’m currently a rather professing public atheist, and i make it clear that i am an atheist to any muslim who assumes i’m muslim because of my name. and i can tell you from personal experience that muslims from the muslim world are generally not comfortable with the idea of someone from a muslim background cheerfully admitting to atheism in public as if that’s OK….
— razib · Jun 2, 05:51 PM · #
I think that what Alan’s objecting to is specifically the practice of refuting some claim about the way Islam is practiced by quoting Islamic scholars who appear to be talking more about Islamic ideals than facts on the ground.
It smacks of denying the possibility that the USA would invade Iraq by quoting five Methodist pastors who say that Christians are commanded to love their enemies. Christianity is a religion of peace!
If you want to rebutt Luttwak, you need to be asking sociologists, Are there really Muslims who might get riled up about Obama being an apostate? How many? How influential are they? In which countries?
And, of course, no matter what the answer, it would be stupid and cowardly not to elect Obama because we’re afraid of such people. Next they’ll be telling us we can’t vote for Hilary because some Muslims would be offended that she doesn’t wear a head covering.
— Michael · Jun 2, 06:23 PM · #
Wow, that’s very interesting indeed, Razib. Thanks for the insights.
And let me take this opportunity to associate myself with Michael’s remarks. Ditto.
— Alan Jacobs · Jun 2, 06:54 PM · #
“Are there really Muslims who might get riled up about Obama being an apostate? How many? How influential are they? In which countries?”
the issue is the muslims who would get riled up about obama are already the ones who would get riled up about the president of the united states. IOW, on the margins it probably doesn’t matter. contrarily, my own personal impression is that the majority of muslims are intrigued by obama’s family background of islam.
— razib · Jun 2, 07:01 PM · #
My completely baseless guess is:
1) Most muslims would like to see President Obama, and the “apostate” issue will be largely good by showing the muslim world a successful quasi-apostate or whatever Obama is. It’s a little like sending Condi Rice to deal with heads of state in countries where women can’t even show their faces – the mere existence of Obama may be somewhat liberalizing.
2) If muslim extremists get mad enough at the US during an Obama administration, we might see some fatwas punishing Obama for being an apostate, but my guess is that the people who get mad at that would be just as mad at President McCain, if not more, for being a “crusader” or whatever.
— J Mann · Jun 2, 07:06 PM · #
Luttwak is technically correct: there are Muslims who might brand Obama an apostate and pronounce a death sentence. They’re called takfiri. They’re Muslims who give themselves the ability to call anyone apostate, including other Muslims, for not adhering to their particular brand of Islam.
It’s not much of a point, though: these are the same violent jihadis that would kill Obama for being President of the United States.
— James F. Elliott · Jun 3, 12:46 AM · #
What’s distasteful about the article, to my mind, is not that it is 180 degrees wrong on a point of Islamic law (and I’ll admit it seems more like 163 degrees wrong). Rather, what’s distasteful is a major newspaper recklessly endangering the life of a presidential candidate.
The New York Times lent its megaphone to a political actor so that he could leverage the views of foreign extremists for partisan gain. The editors of the Times were surely aware that Edward Luttwak is a military historian with a right wing bent, not a scholar qualified to hold forth on eclectic topics in Islamic law. Further, when they read the piece, the editors of the Times surely gathered that it offered a rationale for taking the life of a president or presidential candidate that was based on an eclectic topic of Islamic law.
Those observations alone lead to the conclusion that the Luttwak article is the inflammatory speculation of a non-expert . . . more than enough for me not to publish it on my blog, much less an op-ed page read by hundreds of thousands of people around the world, but leave that aside. Shouldn’t the Times at least have inquired whether Luttwak was offering a view accepted by the majority of experts or embraced by the majority of Muslims? They manifestly did not so inquire. And if they had, the evidence suggests both answers would have been negative: This is a view of Islamic law embraced by a tiny minority of violent extremists.
It seems to me the evidence is overwhelming that the Times acted improperly and recklessly. They knew Luttwak’s credentials. They knew the substance of his argument. Nevertheless, they didn’t inquire as to its truth or popularity, and they didn’t apparently consider whether whatever Luttwak’s views added to the discussion was worth the danger to Senator Obama and the legitimizing of dubious, amateur claims. There are obvious risks to publishing something like this; the Times disregarded those risks.
Here’s an admittedly imperfect analogy: Suppose Australia was somewhat likely to elect a dark-skinned Aboriginal prime minister running on the Labor Party ticket. Further suppose that a military bureaucrat from the National Party (a man with no credentials in American sociology) penned an op-ed in a major newspaper suggesting that if an aboriginal were elected President of Australia and traveled to the United States, he might be murdered by the Klan or another extremist Christian group. If all that happened, Australian scholars of American sociology might well hem and haw about how the Klan et al don’t operate on a strict dogma and they might have some animosity toward a dark-skinned foreign leader but that would surely be bizarre and certainly a traditional, majoritarian, or likely result. Such waffling is understandable; it’s difficult to make categorical statements about the views of whole populations or the likely behavior of extremists. That wouldn’t make the op-ed any more correct nor the decision to publish it any more defensible.
— southpaw · Jun 3, 08:11 AM · #
What Luttwak really did get wrong was the entire premise of the article: that Obama would be considered to have ever been a Muslim in the first place. There’s no warrant for that at all. Having an absent Muslim father hardly cuts it. Islam isn’t something you inherit through the male line.
I agree that the scholars’ comments about apostasy maybe not being a capital crime sound like special pleading from Western-friendly sources, but if Luttwak got the premise of the column wrong, then the fact that other bits are debatable is irrelevant – Hoyt’s column is still a ‘devastating rebuttal’.
@razib: I’m not a Muslim or an apostate (just a born-and-bred atheist), but I have had contact with British Muslims over this issue, and my impression is that ‘converting’ to atheism is a much bigger deal than converting to another religion. Does that chime with what you know?
— Ovid · Jun 3, 11:44 AM · #