The Open Mind and the Problem of Islam—Part Two

In Part One, I presented the dynamic of the open mind vs. the closed mind with regard to the Problem of Islam.

Unfortunately, it’s not so simple, and furthermore it lends itself to an infelicitous division of Mankind into those who “get it” and those who don’t.

One of the complications enters in our capsulization of the ‘open mind’ when we wrote:

“...he holds various interpretations of the general field of data out there, interpretations based on the data as well as loosely based on interpretive models that remain flexible to modification as new data comes in.”

For the sake of brevity, simplicity and rhetorical value, I glided by a little bump in the road when I wrote that—the little bump being the open mind’s “interpretive models”. The way I described it, I made it sound like a wonderfully flexible operation, smooth and untroubled. Potential problems arise, however, insofar as the interpretive models which the open mind uses

a) vary in quality

b) are often difficult to disentangle from higher-order templates and paradigms

c) are necessary in order to process data.

Let’s take the last one first: When I wrote that description, I made it sound like the free and breezy open mind can take or leave his ‘flexible’ interpretive models. This would be to give an erroneous impression. All thought, above the most simplex and animalistic, requires an interpretive model of some kind. You cannot think and navigate among the world’s daily complexities without utilizing interpretive models.

Secondly—and this clarification will involve both (a) and (b)—the free and breezy open mind cannot just flit around like a butterfly choosing to alight on now this interpretive model, now that interpretive model, sampling them like paper plates of cuisine at a food fair. He may think he can do this, but he would be mistaken (and that much less truly ‘open’—for openness is as much about an awareness of limitations and imperfection as it is about having a flexible facility with rational thinking). The reason he cannot do this is because interpretive models are not pretty rocks or seashells one stumbles across in one’s pleasant morning walk, nor do they fall from the sky, pristinely whole and ready-made for use. No, interpretive models grow in history and societies, and cannot be free of complex entanglements with other interpretive models, as well as various templates, paradigms, and mythology. And this growth in history and societies is part of the same complex, rich, entangled process by which the individual open mind in question also comes of age and undergoes the lifelong formation of his mind (a formation that does not cease until death).

I am, in my description above, erring on the opposite side now—I am exaggerating the complexity just a little. But the principle still stands: the open mind is not all that different from the closed mind in certain respects, particularly with respect to the constraints and limitations which the complexity of human knowledge imposes. This is the long way of saying that the interpretive model which the open mind utilizes is not that much different from the rigid template to which the closed mind is beholden.

Of course, the open mind is different by degree: a little more flexibility, a little more ability to modify the model, or to jettison it altogether and search for a new model, a little more connection (and attention) to the raw data behind the interpretive filters, and so forth. And some open minds will be more open than others. But no open mind is perfect, and none can escape the limitations and constraints which the complexity of the fields and processes of human knowledge impose.

An oft-repeated sentiment is that ‘changing your mind’ is automatically a good thing. Not necessarily. Change by itself is not necessarily a good thing: it all depends what one is leaving behind and what one is embracing during the process. On the other hand, the changing of a mind is a sine qua non for an open mind as it navigates a life of thought amid the world’s complexities.

With the Problem of Islam in this first decade of the 21st century, it is unlikely that more than a tiny handful of Westerners born in the late 20th century will have always had the bent to subject Islam and the behaviors of Muslims to rational scrutiny, followed by criticism and condemnation where appropriate. The vast majority of such Westerners will have come to a rational appraisal of Islam and Muslims after a process of a change of mind. And this process is intimately bound up with the ability to move from one interpretive model to another, or even to combine that navigation with a degree of personal, even idiosyncratic—not to mention creative—modelling of new interpretations. The vast majority of these Westerners who have felt the necessity to move from a naive ignorance of Islam to one of rational appraisal have been embarking upon an odyssey of movement away from the dominant template of PC Multiculturalism, which has held them in thrall as much as most everyone else in the West.

As far as the Problem of Islam is concerned, the adventure of the open mind has been a movement away from a template, toward an interpretive model that is still a work in progress, still open-ended, to some extent still a pastiche of numerous models—but not so open-ended that it precludes certain non-negotiable tenets, such as (to take one example out of a turban) that it is utterly wrong and depraved for a 54-year-old man to have sex with an 8-year-old girl, as Mohammed is believed by Muslims to have done with one of his wives, Aisha.

When I contrast the ‘interpretive model’ of the open mind with the ‘rigid template’ of the closed mind, I am somewhat casually employing poetic locutions. I may or may not wish to categorically distinguish a model from a template. It might be useful to do so, with the chief distinction being, precisely, the rigidity of the latter and its ability to be used as a digestive machine that does the thinking for the human who has adopted it for that precise purpose. Again, though, the two are not utterly different: the ‘interpretive model’ of the open mind also involves the function of digestion and thinking on auto-pilot for its user. If it didn’t, the individual with the open mind could not get anything done, since the sheer amount and complexity of the fields of data out there would be impossible to deal with, without some degree of packaging, organizing, and putting this or that thought process on auto-pilot. The difference is that the open mind tries to remain aware of this situation, and is ready to take human control of the switches in order to re-immerse himself into the dynamic and live process of attending to reality and adopting a position, and then actions, on the basis of that.

Not all individuals who have changed their mind to now condemn Islam are necessarily operating as open minds; but that, we would insist, is not the fault of the search for truth and goodness that motivates us Jihadwatchers to embark upon the life of the open mind and its relatively flexible epistemological techniques, as we challenge the dominant template that seems to govern the thoughts, opinions, feelings and actions of most Westerners with regard to Islam.

I will close with a return to the simple picture: when I describe the open mind and its epistemological techniques, it does not necessarily mean it is rocket science. Consider an individual who, at time A (let us say 1992), does not think there is any Problem of Islam. It is now 2006 and fourteen years have passed. This individual attends to the following data:

1) a steady increase in the number of terrorist attacks

2) that number of terrorist attacks is also occurring all over the globe, not just in a couple of locations

3) the vast majority, over 90%, of those terrorist attacks, are perpetrated by Muslims who themselves say they are doing it for traditional Islamic values

4) the Muslim perpetrators do not arise from a limited geographical distribution, but in fact come from many different locations around the globe (including the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Iraq, Jordan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Sudan, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, as well as various parts of the Western world where Muslims have immigrated), and also come from different socioeconomic backgrounds (many have been university students and middle-class)

5) more and more information has come to light about the False Moderate (the Muslims we thought were moderate, but turn out in one way or another to support violent jihad and human rights-violating Sharia law) and about the Muslims who do not condemn the "extremists" at all or who, at best, only feign to condemn them in disingenuous ways

6) and finally, there is more and more information that indicates the Muslim terrorists are part of large criss-crossing webs of support—not only political, clerical and institutional, but also from many sectors of the mainstream Muslim populace.

The individual with the open mind as he has assimilated all this data over the past fourteen years will have become increasingly dissatisfied with the dominant PC Multiculturalist template that rigidly and stubbornly stays the same, continually insisting that there is no Problem of Islam and that all these disturbing data reflect only an “extremist minority” who have “hijacked” the “great religion of peace, Islam” and who do not reflect the “moderate majority” of Muslims. As the years pass, the individual with the open mind will fish around for other interpretive models that seem to match the data more rationally.

This has been my process, and it seems to have been the process of most Jihadwatchers to date. The rational conclusion we have come to is that the source of the problem with all these disturbing data is Islam itself. Are we perfect? Do we have all the answers? Of course not. And not only that, our enterprise still suffers from a lack of coordination and a lack of unanimity, as well as the indulgence of pet ‘hobbyhorses’ and the disparate and distracting cultivation of untenable subtopics (e.g., the idea that Jews and Christians are like ‘ivory and ebony’ and always have and always will work in perfect harmony, which is puerile balderdash easily refuted by history and, furthermore, is an unnecessarily childish exaggeration, since Jews and Christians can work together with maturity and mutual respect on this Problem of Islam without the need to fudge the facts of their history of tensions).

Nevertheless, we Jihadwatchers are together pursuing a fascinating and important—if at times blood-curdling and tragic—adventure of the mind as we grapple with the specter of an Islam Redivivus that offends and endangers our common decency as it progresses and flourishes in the modern Western framework.