The Questioning Christian

Muslim extremists’ narrative of grievance may be an evolutionary side effect of altruistic punishment

Islamic extremism is just one of countless movements that “create[] a collective identity by appealing to a set of common grievances and create[] a master narrative of suffering and oppression.” [1]   It’s possible that this tendency to frame the world in terms of a narrative of grievance is something of an evolutionary side effect of an otherwise-useful trait.

The trait:  Natural selection appears to have hard-wired us to seek to punish unfairness, even at a cost to ourselves, because doing so tends to promote group fitness.  This is often called altruistic punishment. 

The side-effect:  Consciously or not, movements that cast their sales pitches in terms of ‘the unfairness of it all’ are making a smart move, because it so often works.

(It’s not unlike sugary cereal manufacturers who discovered that they could increase sales by positioning their wares on the lower shelves, that is, at eye level for kids riding in their parents’ shopping carts.)

Our willingness to punish unfairness may partially explain why we can be so quick to buy into narratives in which —

1. the members of our group (whatever that might be) are entitled to certain things;
2. when we don’t get those supposed entitlements, it’s not merely the luck of the draw, a poor choice of parents, a consequence of past decisions, etc.  No — it’s unfair, a distortion of the cosmic fabric, a case of Life Not Being The Way It’s Supposed To Be;
3. our hard-wired response to any perceived unfairness is to identify those at fault and punish them.

Putting it another way: if a hammer is one of your primary tools, an awful lot of things can start to look like nails. 

This might also help to explain why anger at Those At Fault often seems more emotionally satisfying than the hard work of facing the facts about the things we don’t like and trying to do something constructive about them.

Related post:

• Good News, Bad News: Sin as Evolutionary Side Effect?

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[1] Reza Aslan in an interview in the Houston Chronicle (emphasis added).  Aslan is author of No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam (2005) and the just-published How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror.  It’s not hard to think of other examples of group identities that are built on, or reinforced by, a narrative of grievance; think of extremists in, for example, North Korea; Serbia; the political parties of various countries; the Episcopal Church; etc., etc.  (And I’m not even going to mention some other obvious examples from history.)

Evolution in action: In crowded Gaza, the West-subsidized high birth rate helps select for aggression

Today's WSJ (Europe) contains a thought-provoking piece by Gunnar Heinsohn about the ongoing 'youth bulge' in Gaza, fed by a six-babies-per-woman average birth rate that is subsidized by the West. We can conjecture that this results in at least a modest selection bias in favor of aggressive males, who — assuming they survive to sire children — seem likely to sire more children on the whole than passive or timid ones. (This is a questionable assumption, of course; some women may have a stronger preference for men who are likely to be around to help raise the kids than for those who are likely to get themselves killed.)

Excerpt:

In such "youth bulge" countries, young men tend to eliminate each other or get killed in aggressive wars until a balance is reached between their ambitions and the number of acceptable positions available in their society.

The reason for Gaza's endless youth bulge is that a large majority of its population does not have to provide for its offspring. Most babies are fed, clothed, vaccinated and educated by UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. ... [@para;]

The Hamas-Fatah truce of June 2007 allowed the Islamists again to direct all their energy on attacking Israel. The West pays for food, schools, medicine and housing, while Muslim nations help out with the military hardware. Unrestrained by such necessities as having to earn a living, the young have plenty of time on their hands for digging tunnels, smuggling, assembling missiles and firing 4,500 of them at Israel since 2006. ... [¶]

... By generously supporting UNRWA's budget, the West assists a rate of population increase that is 10 times higher than in their own countries. Much is being said about Iran waging a proxy war against Israel by supporting Hezbollah and Hamas. One may argue that by fueling Gaza's untenable population explosion, the West unintentionally finances a war by proxy against the Jews of Israel.

If we seriously want to avoid another generation of war in Gaza, we must have the courage to tell the Gazans that they will have to start looking after their children themselves, without UNRWA's help. This would force Palestinians to focus on building an economy instead of freeing them up to wage war. Of course, every baby lured into the world by our money up to now would still have our assistance.

(Bold-faced emphasis added.)

Heinsohn's diagnosis seems very plausible, but his prescription is more than a bit lacking.  He does not explain how exactly we are suppose to induce Gazans to reduce their birth rate, while simultaneously continuing to provide assistance for "every baby lured into the world by our money up to now[.]" (Tom Evslin has a couple of observations on that score.)

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Related post:

• Evolution in action: Did Muslim four-wives rule select for aggressive males?

Evolution in action: Did Muslim four-wives rule select for aggressive males?

Yesterday's news prominently featured an Israeli air strike in Gaza that killed leading Hamas militant Nizar Rayan, all four of his wives, and 9 or 10 of his 12 children. I wonder if the Muslim approval of polygyny, allowing men to have up to four wives if necessary for humanitarian reasons, may help explain why Islamic militants seem to be some of the most aggressive on the planet. I would think that, other things being equal:

• The men most prone to seek multiple wives would tend to be the assertive and even aggressive ones. (This premise intuitively makes sense, but that's all the more reason to give it careful scrutiny before making any significant bets on my reasoning here.)

• Every time a polygynist takes an additional wife, his action has a double-whammy effect on the makeup of the next generation's population:  It reduces the number of women available to bear the children of more-passive men, and it increases the number of women who will bear the children of assertive ones.

• Thus, in a society that allowed multiple wives, over time we would expect more descendants of assertive men, and fewer descendants of passive ones, than we would expect in a monogamous culture.

Assuming intuitively that assertiveness is at least partially determined by heredity (another assumption requiring critical scrutiny), this gives us a clue about how a society might eventually look after X generations of polygyny. 

The above analysis is pretty simplistic, of course. It doesn't take into account other factors that doubtless contribute to the hyper-aggressiveness of Islamic militants, such as overcrowding in Palestinian 'refugee camps' and the inability of many Islamic societies to generate the kind of widespread economic progress that is comparatively common in the West.  (The latter may itself be due in part to a population prone to aggressiveness.) Nor does it take into account the increased likelihood that aggressive males might die violently before fathering as many children as they might have in a normal lifespan.

 But I do suspect it there may be something to it.

Muslim graveyard refuses to bury Mumbai terrorists

Good:

A Muslim graveyard in Mumbai said Monday it would not bury the dead gunmen, with an official saying they are not true followers of the Islamic faith.

"People who committed this heinous crime cannot be called Muslim," said Hanif Nalkhande, a trustee of the influential Jama Masjid Trust, which runs the 7.5-acre (three-hectare) Badakabrastan graveyard in downtown Mumbai. "Islam does not permit this sort of barbaric crime."

While some Muslim scholars disagreed with the decision — saying Islam requires a proper burial for every Muslim — the city's other Muslim graveyards are likely to go along because of the authority of the Jama Masjid trust.

In a West Wing episode just after 9/11, Aaron Sorkin pointed out that Islamic extremism is to Islam as the KKK is to Christianity.  Shamefully, the U.S. stepped up and dealt with the KKK only after their barbarous deeds had brought about worldwide pressure.  Nominally-Muslim terrorists have no shortage of barbarous deeds of their own to their name. It's past time for the rest of the Islamic world to start dealing with the problem, because it's likely they're the only ones who can.

Muslim scholars reach out to Christians

I'm late to the party on this one, but if you haven't done so already, you need to read the exchange of letters between Muslim and Christian clergy and scholars:

• A Common Word Between Us and You, by the Muslim scholars, emphasized that the three Abrahamic faiths share a common ground in (what Christians call) the Great Commandment and Summary of the Law: Love God above all, and love your neighbor as yourself.

The Muslims take note of Jesus' remark that "he who is not against us is on our side" (Mark 9.40; Luke 9.50); they ask that Christians consider Muslims to be with them, not against them.

(With reference to Jesus' apparently-contrary saying in Matthew, the Muslims quote an 11th century Greek Orthodox scholar as arguing that in context, Jesus was referring to Beelzebub and other demons when he said that "He who is not [Greek: The one not being] with me is against me, and he who does not gather [Greek: the one not gathering] with me scatters abroad" (see Matt. 12.26-30).)

• Loving God and Neighbor Together: A Christian Response to 'A Common Word Between Us and You "receive[s] the open letter as a Muslim hand of conviviality and cooperation extended to Christians world-wide. In this response we extend our own Christian hand in return, so that together with all other human beings we may live in peace and justice as we seek to love God and our neighbors." 

The Episcopal Cafe has more about A Common Word, as well as about A Christian Response and about the positive responses by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the president of the Lutheran World Federation.

Sure, Jews and Muslims Can Celebrate Christmas

Jews and Muslims wouldn't have the same theological basis as Christians for celebrating the birth of Jesus.  But is that really so important? 

Whatever else Jesus was or was not, he certainly was one of Israel's greatest prophets.   Surely the Abrahamic faiths (and perhaps others as well) can agree that, in some sense, God was at work in Jesus' birth.

We should focus on that common ground we share, instead of on the theological speculations that we allow to divide us. 

Christmas should be an occasion for all theists to celebrate God's work, in fellowship with each other.

So, Cindy Chupack, don't feel one bit guilty about putting up a Christmas tree in your Jewish home, in praise of the Creator.

Microcredit pioneer wins Nobel Peace Prize — and puts Episcopalian- and Anglican combatants to shame

Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen (”Rural”) Bank just won the Nobel Peace Prize for pioneering the concept of "microcredit."  This is where a group of poor people borrows a tiny amount of money to help them finance a small business.  The idea is to help the poor become entrepreneurs and earn their way out of poverty.   Reportedly, Grameen Bank has been extremely successful, making billions of dollars of microloans with an astonishingly-high repayment rate.  Other microcredit initiatives have been modeled on the same basic idea, including that of the Christian group World Vision.

Muhammad Yunus's first name suggests that he's of Muslim origin.  As have other non-Christians, he would seem to exemplify following the Great Commandment and Summary of the Law.  (Recall that according to the Gospels, Jesus said that following the Great Commandment and Summary of the Law is all we need do to gain eternal life.) 

I suspect many of us Christians would be embarrassed to have our discipleship compared with Yunus's.   The Bible-worshipper minority in the Episcopal Church (TEC) in particular, together with their allies in other churches, should be red-faced with mortification.  These folks have implacably refused to accept the prayerful, duly-enacted decisions of two successive General Conventions on issues of sexuality and the church's relationship with other churches.  They reject even the possibility that the church might be responding to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.  They seem incapable of trusting that God will help us eventually sort these things out.  Instead, these bibliolaters have forced TEC to devote enormous resources to internecine fighting.  If Jesus was right in his parable about the last judgment, we may all find ourselves wishing we'd devoted those resources instead to initiatives like that of Yunus.

Here's an excerpt from the Associated Press story about Yunus's Nobel Peace Prize:

Yunus told The Associated Press in a 2004 interview that his ''eureka moment'' came while chatting to a shy woman weaving bamboo stools with calloused fingers.

Sufia Begum was a 21-year-old villager and a mother of three when the economics professor met her in 1974 and asked her how much she earned. She replied that she borrowed about 5 taka (nine cents) from a middleman for the bamboo for each stool.

All but two cents of that went back to the lender.

''I thought to myself, my God, for five takas she has become a slave,'' Yunus said in the interview.

''I couldn't understand how she could be so poor when she was making such beautiful things,'' he said.

The following day, he and his students did a survey in the woman's village, Jobra, and discovered that 43 of the villagers owed a total of 856 taka (about $27).

''I couldn't take it anymore. I put the $27 out there and told them they could liberate themselves,'' he said, and pay him back whenever they could. The idea was to buy their own materials and cut out the middleman.

They all paid him back, day by day, over a year, and his spur-of-the-moment generosity grew into a full-fledged business concept that came to fruition with the founding of Grameen Bank in 1983.

In the years since, the bank says it has lent $5.72 billion to more than six million Bangladeshis.

Worldwide, microcredit financing is estimated to have helped some 17 million people.

''Yunus and Grameen Bank have shown that even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development,'' the Nobel citation said.

It just goes to show:  Anyone can be a "Christian," no matter what his or her particular beliefs. 

Related postings: 

• Indian Muslims Exemplify the Great Commandment, Providing Tsunami Aid to Hindu Neighbors

• "I hate poor people!"

Questions for Khatami - Washington Post

From today's Washington Post:

There is a troubling irony in inviting former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami to speak today at the National Cathedral on the role the Abrahamic faiths can play in shaping peace in the world.  In his own country, Khatami held office as president from 1997 to 2005 while religious minorities -- including Jews, Christians, Sunni and Sufi Muslims, Bahais, dissident Shiite Muslims and Zoroastrians -- faced systematic harassment, discrimination, imprisonment, torture and even execution because of their religious beliefs.  During Khatami's term, Iranian officials persecuted reformers, students, labor activists and journalists for "insulting Islam" and publishing materials deemed to deviate from Islamic standards. [...]

It appears that the cathedral is providing a public platform to an individual who was responsible for implementing and administering policies that resulted in the severe persecution of religious minorities as well as dissident voices within Iran's own Shiite community. Chief among these victimized groups are the very Abrahamic faiths he will discuss in his address.

The National Cathedral is one of America's most significant moral symbols. It is a place where national leaders have been laid to rest, and it is where the nation grieved for the victims of Sept. 11, 2001. [...]  The commission fears that Khatami's address, in its announced format, jeopardizes this important tradition and may ultimately undermine the cathedral's critical national role.

Felice D. Gaer and Nina Shea, Questions for Khatami, Washington Post, Thurs., Sept. 7, 2006, p. A27.  (The authors are respectively the chair and vice chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent federal agency.)

Islamic Revival in Syria Is Led by Women - New York Times

Apparently Syria is shifting from secularism to an Islamic orientation, with women in the vanguard. 

On the one hand, this may be yet another reason for long-term concern for our freedoms. 

On the other hand, maybe, in time, Qur'an-educated Muslim women might start nudging Islamic culture into less-repressive modes of thought and action.

Islamic Revival in Syria Is Led by Women - New York Times.

Indian Muslims Exemplify the Great Commandment, Providing Tsunami Aid to Hindu Neighbors

A piece by Jay Solomon in this morning's Wall Street Journal ($) recounts how a group of Muslims in southern India is providing a wonderful illustration of the universality of the Great Commandment and Summary of the Law.  Despite the sometimes-violent religious differences between India's majority Hindus and minority Muslims, this group of Muslims has been energetically mobilizing to provide tsunami disaster relief to Hindus in neighboring villages:

The village of Parangipettai is perched on a small hill above the Bay of Bengal and thus was spared the wrath of the Dec. 26 tsunami. Its religious facilities have benefited greatly from all the money expatriated Indian Muslim workers in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf have sent home. Parangipettai's shrouded women, bearded young men, and the regular calls to Islamic prayer make the place feel far removed from the majority-Hindu villages that dot Cuddalore district, of which Parangipettai is a part. Cuddalore was badly hit by the tsunami as it struck India's southern coast.

Soon after the tsunami, however, the United Islamic Jamaath's 500 members assumed a key role in uniting Cuddalore's grass-roots relief effort, according to Hindu villagers and local politicians.