Ideological mixes

As those who have read my other posts on the subject know, I don't have high hopes for the emergence of "principled conservatives" to present a serious challenge to the dominant religious-authoritarian consensus in today's Republican Party. I think of people like John Dean and Andrew Bacevich as being live versions of the scarce "principled conservative" species. But it is likely to take some crushing defeat on the scale of 1964 to jolt the Grand Old Party into taking such principles as theirs seriously again.

But outside the dark regions of FOX News, OxyContin radio and the Republican Party, one can still encounter corners of the world where various ideologies are mixed together. Or at least co-exist side-by-side.

I was reminded of that today when I got the 2008 catalogue from Prometheus Books. Without researching the exact business set-up, Prometheus is a publishing house associated with Skeptical Inquirer and Free Inquiry magazines. SI focuses on debunking popular pseudoscience. In recent years they've found themselves needing to give a lot of attention to trends like creationism/intelligent design and quack medicine, though they still find plenty of space to debunk haunted houses, sea monsters, Bigfoot and psychic predictions of the future. SI tends to go mild on criticism of religion. FI, on the other hand, is explicitly an atheist journal, the name harking back to the euphemism "freethinker" of a century ago.

Prometheus presents an interesting variety of titles. They have books addressing current scientific issues such as Nanofuture: What's Next for Nanotechnology by Eric Drexler or Glowing Genes: A Revolution in Biotechnology by Marc Zimmer. In current events, they have selections like The Ruses for War: American Internventionism since World War II by John Quigley and The Last Days of Democracy: How Big Media and Power-Hungry Government Are Turning America into a Dictatorship, Elliot Cohen and Bruce Fraser, eds.

In the field of religion, they feature a number of atheist titles in their "Freethought Libarary", most apparently aimed at debunking Christianity. Also, if you happen to be looking for The Encyclopedic Sourcebook of Satanism, they have that, too.

They also have several books on Islam, mostly seemingly of a polemical anti-Islam nature, such as: Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism by Ibn Warraq; The Day of Islam: The Annihilation of America and the Western World by Paul Williams; and, Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation by John Wansbrough. The blurb for the latter reads:

Critiquing the traditional accounts of the origins of Islam as historically unreliable and heavily influenced by religious dogma, Wansbrough suggested radically new interpretations very different from the views of both the Muslim orthodoxy and most Western scholars.

Originally published in 1977, Quranic Studies presents an in-depth textual exegesis of the Quran based on form analysis. Noting the persistent use of monotheistic imagery stemming from Judeo-Christian sources, he interpreted the rise of Islam as the development of what was originally a Judeo-Christian sect. As this sect evolved and differentiated itself from its Judeo-Christian roots, the Quran also evolved and was continuously in flux for over a century. Wansbrough concluded that the canonization of the text that we today call the Quran, and even the emergence of the concept of "Islam," probably did not occur till the end of the eighth century, more than 150 years after the death of Muhammad. (my emphasis)

I don't claim to know how historians and scholars of Islam may have addressed Wansbrough's claims. But it's safe to say that the consensus among even the most secular scholars would not date the concept of Islam to sometime after 782 CE. The Qu'ran was first codified into written for during the caliphate of ‛Uthmān ibn Άffān (644-656). Muhammad died in 632. See John Wansbrough remembered Australian Broadcasting Company 06/26/02 for more on him.

These days, Republican "culture warriors" find it convenient to associate atheists and science advocates with liberalism. But atheists and scientific materialists are also often drawn to libertarian/conservative ideas. Mike Huckabee may identify with creationism, but Dennis Kucinich is a UFO fan and a pal of Shirley MacLaine, who has pushed more esoteric/paranormal causes than most people know exist.

On the other hand, for those who value science, the Republicans' anti-science, Christian fundamentalist turn is alarming.

It is striking to me that their books on Islam tend to look like the kind of thing that advocates of the "clash of civilizations" approach would appreciate. Religions need the challenge of atheism. I mean, if God exists, I'm sure she won't stop existing just because atheists haven't caught on yet.

But it seems to me that atheists often take a "village atheist" approach to debunking religious ideas. And I have to wonder if some of the Prometheus titles on Islam don't tilt in that direction. It's true that Islamic scholars in general do not take what in Western Biblical studies is known as a "historical-critical" approach to the Qu'ran. But some do. It doesn't require someone to stop believing in God or Islam to do so. The Prophet Muhammad claimed to receive the Qu'ranic sayings from the Archangel Gabriel. They circulated in oral form during his time and immediately after his death. But oral recitation of texts was a well-developed skill in Mecca and Medina, and there were professional Qu'ran reciters. The Prophet himself was illiterate. Variations began to develop after a few years, which was a big reason that the caliph ‛Uthmān began the project to create a written version to stablize the text. Whether or not one accepts the story that Gabriel gave the words directly to the Prophet in his visions, in historical terms there is good reason to think that the Qu'ran as we know it substantially reflects the revelations as the Prophet himself recited them.

Also, for a review of another book also published by Prometheus by Paul Williams, the supposed terrorism expert mentioned as an author above, see the rightwing site Newsmax, Author: Al-Qaida Has Nuclear Weapons Inside U.S. by Stewart Stogel 07/14/07. Gee, I wonder if anyone has located those, yet. Maybe they're hidden by the same magical pixie dust that is still concealing Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" that we invaded that country to combat.

Seeing that catalogue reminded me that it pays to be careful in trying to pigeonhole someone into a particular ideological box based on some narrow slice of their opinions.

Tags: conservatism, islam, liberalism, quran, qu'ran, uthman