site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

11
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Most Muslims are not Arab, and also empirically the Arab population grows. The population of the Arab world grows at the same time that they export Arabs overseas and despite its increasing development which is significant.

Religious warfare which involved political claims occurred. That’s like the Shia vs Sunni proxy war in Syria and Iraq, which is as political as it is religious. But there was nothing like your typical Muslim “because your congregation is liberalizing I will commit an attack” ideology. That’s novel to Islam. Protestants didn’t blow up a building when someone started teaching girls how to read.

Calvinists insist that good works do not purchase salvation but are instead a product of salvation, but in practice this is a purely semantic distinction

I don’t think you understand how orthopraxic Islam is. Calvinists don’t define hierarchies of good works versus bad works with their commensurate rewards in heaven. Calvinists don’t cling to authoritative transmissions of Jesus which make mandatory thousands of small actions and make commendable certain other actions. As an example, in Islam they legislate the direction of your pointer finger in prayer, every syllable of the Quranic reading, the upkeep of your beard. You are comparing apples to orangutans. In Calvinism, the question is “do you believe and do you behave morally according to my view”. In Islam, it’s “do you believe according to this long list and do you do these long lists of actions.” The five obligatory prayers where every syllable and movement must be precise is an example of this sort of legalism. The Muslims who do not follow legalism are called Quranists and they are not even a percent of global Islam. There’s no Muslim sola scriptura movement of note, which secularization used to desacralize.

also empirically the Arab population grows

More and more slowly, as they become more prosperous, like other ethnic groups:

https://www.prb.org/resources/fertility-declining-in-the-middle-east-and-north-africa/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/806110/fertility-rate-in-the-arab-world/

Primarily, Arab birth rates are high because most Arabs are still poor. They are about half that of the DRC, where most people are even poorer than most Arabs.

But there was nothing like your typical Muslim “because your congregation is liberalizing I will commit an attack” ideology. That’s novel to Islam. Protestants didn’t blow up a building when someone started teaching girls how to read.

They didn't have suicide belts yet but angry mobs of Catholics/Protestants going around attacking each other and destroying buildings for religious reasons were extremely common during the Wars of Religion.

Catholicism is even more legalistic than Protestantism and it isn't doing much better. So is your argument that Islam is just far enough on the hyper-legalism spectrum that it will manage to endure?