Each year, some two million Muslims from around the world make a pilgrimage to the holy site of Mecca. For some in the West, nothing could be scarier than two million Muslims, all dressed in white, touching their heads to the ground and shouting "Allahu Akbar." Reading the usual pundits, you get the idea that Mecca is a breeding ground of Islamic radicalism.
To figure out if this is true, a group of American researchers surveyed more than 1500 Pakistanis who went on the pilgrimage to Mecca in 2006. They discovered that these men had overcome great obstacles to make the trip. It costs arond $2500 to go to Mecca, and that's three times the annual salary of a typical Pakistani. Still, nearly 140,000 Pakistanis applied to go in 2006. Only 80,000 visas were granted by the Saudi government.
Since the Saudis granted their visas based on lottery, the researchers had the clever idea of comparing the attitudes of those who returned from Mecca to those who didn't get to go. They wanted to see if the pilgrimage to Mecca strengthened or undermined Islamic radicalism. Incredibly, the researchers found that the Pakistanis who went to Mecca returned with attitudes more moderate and less sympathetic to Islamic fanaticism and terrorism.
But isn't Mecca dominated by radical clerics who, when they aren't eating or sleeping, lead chants of "Death to America"? This is the propaganda you hear from groups like memri.org that selectively publish material intended to give an exaggerated picture of the influence of the Muslim radicals. In reality, the overriding theme of the visit to Mecca is the traditional theme of universal Muslim brotherhood.
No surprise: pilgrims returning fro Mecca were 25 percent less likely to hold that different tribes or ethnicities could not live in harmony. Remarkably, pilgrims were also more likely to believe that all religions can co-exist. Moreover, the Pakistanis who went to Mecca were less approving of suicide bombings and other such tactics as the Pakistanis who stayed back.
Call this the Mecca effect. I predicted it in my book The Enemy at Home, in which I argued that America can find common ground with traditional believers and not just anti-Muslim activists like Hirsi Ali. The results of the Mecca effet, and the study cited here, are beautifully outlined in a recent article in the online magazine Slate written by Professor Ray Fisman of Columbia University. You can read the article here.
Yes, I know that the Islamophobes will come back with their regularly-recyled quotations from the Koran about "killing all the infidels" and so on. But equally alarming quotations can also be found in the Old Testament. The important thing is to see how those texts have been interpreted and how people have acted upon them. Muslims have had many empires through the centuries: the Ummayad, the Abassid, the Mughal, the Ottoman, and so on. Tens of millions of Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and Christians have lived under Muslim rule. In any Muslim empire was it either policy or practice to systematically kill all the non-Muslims? No.
So we have to learn to think afresh and to take into account real evidence. Prejudice against practicing Muslims and against religious believers in general is rife in certain segments of Western society. But such prejudices should not be the basis of making public policy.
Reader Comments ( Page 5 of 19)
61. Hey Botts,
I'll probably miss you when you back on-line - I'll be out, when you are in or some such thing.
Glad to hear from you -- enjoy the family -
It's graduation weekend and NASCAR has come to my town - (okay that gives my location away big-time)
Oh, well won't catch me anywhere near the track.
Hope to catch up with you real soon. Today's blog - not much controversy - DD must have wanted to watch the race this weekend instead of reading all the bloggin going on.
TJ at 2:26PM on May 30th 2008
62. Thomas, you're such a rightwing nutcase shithead that there really is only one response to the likes of you. Here it is. You know it, you love it, and you can't live without it. My homage to you.....
Thomas Gassett, Thomas Gassett
Takes the blunt but doesn't pass it
Loves to come and ruin our day
Couldn't you find another way?
You rail at people you don't know
And love to let your anger show
You just appear, as if a ghost
And then insult us, more than most
Your life is simple, like your brain
And so you give us all a pain
By telling us just what you think
As if with muddled mind from drink
When you show up, the good times end
I bet you do not have one friend
Your words are as those from a boy
Who has just lost his favorite toy
And because he cannot get his way
He stomps his feet and screams away
He spits and swears and attacks at will
With bloodlust and the urge to kill
He foams and whines and tells us all
That we are nothing; He is all.
He is as angry, scared, and sick
As any christian lunatic
But he is special, there's no doubt
I wish they wouldn't let him out.
Godless Heathen Brian at 2:27PM on May 30th 2008
63. Keep america right piss on every america bashing liberal in sight.
Thomas J Gassett at 2:23PM on May 30th 2008
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Godnazi asshole. May the great bird of happiness peck out your eyes and then eye your pecker.
Godless Heathen Brian at 2:29PM on May 30th 2008
64. Thomas Gassett, Thomas Gassett
Takes the blunt but doesn't pass it
Loves to come and ruin our day
>>>
You are just like your post ... a complete waste of space. Now, go hump someone elses leg, dogboy.
Thomas J Gassett at 2:30PM on May 30th 2008
65. TJG,
Why would you piss on liberals? In your worldview, isn't pissing on people for pleasure a liberal tradition?
Mokele Mbembe at 2:31PM on May 30th 2008
66. Oh, come on. That shit is funny, I don't care who you are.
TJ at 2:32PM on May 30th 2008
67. fanmanaf1
I think Paul O'Neill had much more damming things to say, and not many wanted to listen to him. Some have a hard time in Scott's situation to say what he said, knowing it would cost him dearly, I would guess he spent many hours thinking about how he would be loathed for what he put in his book. He will have a hard time in the future because of what he has said, both by the right, and left, neither trusting him. I am glad the truth was the winner in the end. Look as what happened to Powell, he sold himself out for not exposing Bush, and company, and now he has to live with it knowing he never really came clean.
Jerry Brown at 2:34PM on May 30th 2008
68. It's good to see the old Thomas Gasset back in action!!!!
Tom; I'm assuming you've read Scott McClellan's book?
Ryan Anderson at 2:35PM on May 30th 2008
69. Hey GHB: What's a "dishonest position"? No such thing. Obviously a press sec. has to hold lots of secrets, but that's what they're paid to do. But it's the person, not the position that's dishonest, by choice. I agree the halls of power must be intoxicating and obviously McLellan succumbed to it. I wonder how many salacious stories Stephy, McCurry, Lockart and Myers keep locked in their craniums? Want them all to spill out?
fanmanaf1 at 2:41PM on May 30th 2008
70. wow; this getting a long way from DD's Mecca message.
fanmanaf1 at 2:44PM on May 30th 2008
71. While you are correct that under Moorish rule non Muslims were for the most part tolerated, and Maimonedes, one of the greatest jewish scholars did some of his greatest work in Moorish Spain. However, when the Berbers conquered southern Europe they were much less tolerant and treated Christians and Jews with a much heavier hand. The Chritians under Ferdinand and Isabella were much less tolerant and expelled the Jews from Spain in 1492. Your point about scripture is well taken as Christianity has touted itself as a religion of love and peace yet historically, has perpetrated unspeakable crimes against particularly the Jews based on interpretations of Christian scripture by the likes of Saint Augustine. Current Islamic teachings along with folk antisemitism with a little Julius Streicher mixed in has resulted in hard core anti Jewish feelings which will be hard to overcome even if there is a solution to the Arab israeli conflict.
Eric at 2:49PM on May 30th 2008
72. Want them all to spill out?
fanmanaf1 at 2:41PM on May 30th 2008
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Why yes. Of course. Don't you?
Godless Heathen Brian at 2:56PM on May 30th 2008
73. You are just like your post ... a complete waste of space. Now, go hump someone elses leg, dogboy.
Thomas J Gassett at 2:30PM on May 30th 2008
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But, I wanna hump yours! Since you're my bitch and all.
Godless Heathen Brian at 2:58PM on May 30th 2008
74. Truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
Mokele Mbembe at 2:58PM on May 30th 2008
75. What stupid is actually saying is finally, they can point to someone inside the administration that gives some credence to the mass of lies you stupid liberal pukes chant like some damn Jihadi ... until you believe it. What is it with the ugly Left and their unamerican need to believe the worst in our nation? Keep america right piss on every america bashing liberal in sight.>>>
Wow, unAmerican you say? There is plenty of evidence that Bush is a lying POS. His lies have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, including more than 4000 American soldiers. Scott McClellan is telling us nothing we didn't already know. I guess a right wing evil doer such as yourself just can't handle the truth.
IMO at 3:00PM on May 30th 2008