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Reader Corey pointed us to this poll which shows us that (among other things) Americans are twice as prone to consider a terrorist (who claims a religion) to be “of that religion” if they are Muslim, than if they are Christian.
(The wording, for the record, is this: “When people claim to be Muslim and commit acts of violence in the name of Islam, do you believe they really are Muslim, or not?”)
Wanted to discuss something about the question in general.
It’s of course being asked because as of late, every terror attack has been followed by a lot of running around making lots of noise in order to show that the person claimed either one religion or another at the root of their attacks.
The framing of the question is unhelpful because answering either a definitive “yes” or “no” just doesn’t make sense: can anyone say that any given action (with perhaps a few religiously-prescribed rituals) is representative of that religion or not? Christianity and Islam are massive and diverse, with huge disagreement between different sects and practitioners as to what is and isn’t the official or correct way of practicing the religion.
So when a terrorist claims to be representing a religion, and we’re asked to determine whether their claim is “accurate,” by what basis can we even answer such a question with a “yes” or “no?”
Does it require a certain number of religious leaders of a certain rank to prescribe an action for it to become “of that religion?” Or a certain number of people believing it? Or a certain line in a particular religious text?
Perhaps more importantly, why do we feel like we as citizens need to have a clear answer to that question? If we thought one way or the other, would it change how we approached policy?
Edited 12/2/2015 at 19:02 in order to clarify/narrow purpose and framing.
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Sharing a religion with someone who did something heinous is very likely to cause someone to disbelieve they are actual adherents to that faith (whatever the religion)
The question mostly shows the christian-based faith's dominance in the US. So I agree there's a good chance it isn't helpful
Well, when policies are being proposed about how the government should interact with people based on their religion, yes, I think it is clearly making a difference as to how people judge those policies. "Let in no Syrian Refugees" vs. "Let in only Christian Syrian Refugees" vs. "Let in 10,000 Syrian Refugees without checking their religion," for instance are all policy choices currently being discussed and proposed. Whether it should change anything about which policy we pick is different from whether it is changing things about what policy voters are supporting, and a 20% swing in voter support is clearly significant.
And really, if "Muslim" actually means "member of a religion that supports using terrorist attacks against America to force it to adopt Islamic Law," that is worth treating differently than if it means "member of a religion that preaches peace among the People of the Book." So I don't think it's just arguing semantics.
So I think your first and third points aren't actually very strong. I agree some with the second, to the extent it's arguing that the term Muslim is actually broad enough that it's a silly thing to base policy on, but I think it misses the point that people are making decisions based on this silly thing, and that it's worth understanding how the decisions are actually being made, not just how we think decisions should be made.
All fair points, definitely.
But this question about whether who commit terrorists acts are actually members of the religion or not have nothing to do with the policy questions at hand. Declaring that anyone who commits a terrorist attack isn't actually a Muslim doesn't actually make it any safer to admit people claiming to be Muslims to the US. Any policy about preventing people from coming to this country based on religion in order to be implemented will need to have some test for whether or not somebody trying to get in is a member of the religion. The real question then becomes does the test correctly screen out terrorists (also how many non-terrorists it prevents from entering). This is an empirical question that has almost nothing to do with whether we consider committing terrorist acts to exclude you from being counted as a member of a religion unless your test for admitting people can directly measure intent to commit attacks (and if it could, why not just use that test rather than a religious one).
This isn't to say that asking people what their religion is doesn't tell you anything about their propensity to commit terrorist acts, but that only measures their claimed religion, not whether they are actually a member of the religion (to the degree that having a distinction makes sense).
Then again, I think that the real reason we are having this debate in the first place has nothing to do with any policy questions. The real reason why this question is relevant is that people want to smear all Muslims/Christians with guilt by association for members of their religion that commit terrorist attacks. One defense against this sort of thing of course is the "oh people who commit terrorist attacks aren't real members of my religion" argument. Personally, I think this is kind of silly.
Yeah, I think these discussions often appear like the purpose is to discuss a fact, when really their purpose is to ascribe a religion with positive or negative connotations.
So for example, "Is a violent person who claims to be christian, actually a christian?" is a question that you can only answer if you define what a christian is - and that's up to the person asking the question to do. Once you give a definition (e.g. "A christian is someone who attends a christian church service once a week"), then it becomes trivial to answer the question asked.
In popular discussions, this doesn't happen. It seems that people say "no, that person's not a real christian" because they want to load the word "christian" with positive affect, not because they want to make a factual statement about the world. Similarly, the people saying "yes, that's what a real christian is" are comfortable with the word "christian" taking on some less pleasant connotations, and perhaps might even want this to happen. None of these people are discussing facts until they have an agreed-upon definition of what a christian is.
Personally it would be difficult for me to even answer the Research Institute's survey question, because they haven't defined what a muslim is.
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