There’s one thing I know. People learn how to hate those different from them: the other. I know this because my parents did an exemplary job of raising me without prejudice. It wasn’t until I reached high school that I first heard many of the stereotypes most kids my age had accepted as truths about different ethnic or racial groups. They’d tell a joke, and I wouldn’t get it because it relied on a shared understanding that all the people within this group were cheap or all the people within that group were stupid, or whatever.
I was shocked to hear an African American teacher I had explain some of the stereotypes she had to live with. “Where do they get that stuff?” I thought. Slowly I realized, because I had not been, that other people were deliberately taught these things. I had certainly met plenty of African Americans, or Greeks, or Scottish, or Polish, etc, but I didn’t associate their race or ethnicity with a particular set of personality traits or habits, because no one had taught me to do so. I accepted each person as a blank slate—someone who would reveal their character to me through their actions.
Much later I realized my parents do associate certain traits/habits to people within different groups. They are just as prejudiced as the average person in our hometown. I was surprised to learn this, but actually very impressed that they had been so careful about not passing those prejudices along to their children.
I thought about this while reading an op-ed piece in The New York Times by Waleed Ziad:
How the Holy Warriors Learned to Hate
I’ve gone rounds and round with folks who want to discuss the War on Terror as a religious war. I’ve been insisting all the while that we’re dealing not with a clash of civilizations or ideologies, but rather a clash of social classes and a thirst for power.
In as much as this involves Afghanistan and Pakistan, Waleed Ziad agrees:
[C]ontrary to popular theories, the fight against militant religious groups in South Asia is not a clash of age-old civilizations or a conflict between traditionalism and modernism. Rather, it is a more recent story of political ineptitude and corruption, and of a postcolonial class struggle between the disenfranchised poor and these countries’ elites.
It’s also a clash that initially had little-to-nothing to do with hatred of the West:
Throughout the 20th century, the leaders of these groups desperately tried to enter the [local] political mainstream by jumping onto any ideological bandwagon, but none ever secured more than a handful of National Assembly seats. When India was partitioned in 1947, the major Deobandi party in Pakistan, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, began to call for “Islamization” (a mysterious term no one quite knew how to define at the time).
The party initially demanded new laws — based on false scriptural readings — covering superfluous issues like women’s dress, and bans on interest and popular entertainment. In the 1950’s, its catch phrase was “Islamic Constitutionalism”; by the 1960’s, it was “Islamic Democracy”; and in the early 1970’s “Islamic Socialism.” By the end of that decade, it was back to “Islamic Democracy.” In any case, no slogan translated into a mass following. The leadership engaged in occasional diatribes against rivals religious sects or alcohol, but foreign politics and militancy barely entered the ideological equation.
It was only in the late 1970’s that it shifted. And why?
The turning point was the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The West and its allies decided the best resistance to Moscow would come through presenting the war as a religious struggle. While Pakistani religious leaders had little political power, they did have considerable influence over the madrasas in Pakistan’s northwestern frontier region and in Afghanistan. Even the most benign found this to be an opportunity to finally win recognition (and a fortune), and they set up their own militant subsidiaries. Madrasas were converted overnight into training grounds for mujahedeen. In exchange for political power and global recognition, these impoverished students readily became cannon fodder in Afghanistan.
Of course, the eventual Soviet withdrawal meant an end to all that Western attention and money. The mujahedeen needed a new cause. International events — including the Persian Gulf war and the Palestinian intifada — provided one: hatred of America. An ethnic Pashtun militia, which metamorphosed into the Taliban, provided a rallying point for the unemployed mujahedeen. The rest is history.
So now we have a new generation of disenfrancised youth who, for political reasons, were taught to hate the West, intentionally prompting a war characterized and promoted as a religious conflict where none, per se, had existed until after Western powers intereferred.
Fortunately, the solution is found in the source of the problem. People are taught to hate. People can be NOT taught to hate.
A first step should be working with Afghanistan and Pakistan to move the focus of the madrasas away from holy war. Equally important is providing more Western money for new schools to provide functional education, coupled with real economic opportunities for graduates. Education and jobs, not rooting out some faux-religious doctrine, are the means by which the disenfranchised may be brought back into the fold.
Considering the vast populations of the underclasses in these countries, changing their lot may take longer than war, but it would be cheaper and is the only long-term solution. And in doing so, America would be seen not as an occupier but as a purveyor of prosperity, winning the hearts and minds of generations to come.
Interesting article, and a good point. Obviously we can’t leave things like this to human nature. What sort of differences would this perspective have on setting things up systemically to limit insular groups teaching hatred. It’s hard enough to do here, let alone in fractious, poverty-strewn regions where government control is often tenuous and rarely positive.
The Islamic Republic of Iran which existed before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
The nearly-theocratic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Pakistan and India had fought a few religious-based wars after partition but before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Egypt had serious problems with Islamists in the 1960s and 1970s culminating with the assassination of Sadat in 1981 (before the Soviet withdrawal which allegedly caused the Afghanistan resistance to look for other people to fight.)
There were strong elements of Islamism in the anti-British and anti-French movements. These had strong anti-Western elements in the 1950s and earlier.
I think the thesis that Islamism wasn’t a very strong force (or strong anti-Western force) until the US whipped it up is pretty much non-historical.
Anyway, I’m willing to believe that people can be taught to hate less. But not under the current governments of Middle Eastern countries.
what a great post. one of the things that most astonishes me about my own society is the fear/hatred of ‘the other’. my family is a prime example: whether it’s the person on the next suburban tract house, the person who works for the other company, the other sports team, the other state, the other country, it is something to be feared or hated or mistrusted first. And yet there are those of us who love or are intrigued by the other first, we don’t feel automatically threatened by that which is different from us as we know intuitively that they are us and we are them. It seems so simple to me and yet it’s the source of so much of our collective anxiety and self-made problems. When we didn’t have the Soviet Union to be our nemesis we just turned on each other inwardly. And now that we have terrorists to hate in their place we now hate inwardly and outwardly. Something’s got to give. Can we go on like this as a nation becoming more polarized while committing ourselves to endeavors that inspire the rest of the world to fear and mistrust us? What are we spiraling towards?
You know, wilfred, those attitudes are neither unique to the United States (or Western culture generally), nor a bad thing in and of themselves. “Fear of the other” is, in Darwinian terms, a sensible adaptive strategy — it keeps you from being killed, hurt or cheated by those inclined to take advantage of you. It’s programmed into our brains, and we haven’t lived as organized, liberal socities long enough for the human race to have evolved strategies and traits to replace them. It doesn’t mean we can’t overcome them, but we need to be aware of them as parts of ourselves, and not attribute them to nebulous and risible ideas about “culture,” as if culture was not the product of the people who live in it.
Hate, and violence, and suspicion, and stereotyping, are not learned behaviors. They’re intrinsic. They’re part of us. We deny this at our peril.
I’m pretty sure I don’t hate terrorists because the Soviet Union isn’t around. It has more to do with the fact they KEEP intentionally killing innocent people.
Hi Phil. First i was speaking about what i know, which is my own culture. Secondly i don’t know if i believe that those things you mentioned are intrinsic and not learned, it may be a combination. I’m not and have never been violent. We are all capable of everything but most humans go through life without killing, maiming or harming another physically. Culture may be the product of those who live in it but cultures vary widely.
Phil, fear of the other may be “programmed into our brains” but hatred is not. Besides, hatred is an emotion, hostility is a behavior.
If we were programmed to “hate” the “other,” we would hate all others naturally…not the select ones we do now because of nurturing. We would hate tall people if we were short, fat people if we were thin, dark people if we were fair, old people if we were young, dumb people if we were smart, etc., etc., etc.
Hatred differs from fear in that it presumes there are reasons for it. It’s not visceral. I hate someone because I believe X to be true about them. They are X and that is unacceptable to me.
Imagine you’re walking along the highway and a stranger approaches. He looks different and strange. You may fear this strange-looking stranger, but you have no reason to hate him at this point.
Edward, point taken on “fear” vs. “hatred,” and I agree when phrased that way.
wilfred, whether you believe those things are intrinsic are not is irrelevant to whether it is true. Every single human, regardless of culture or time period, is capable of fear, anger, and violence. Whether any given individual succumbs to them is a function of that individual’s own mind — we have adapative traits for fear and violence, but we also have them for compassion and understanding. We also are constrained by social mores and laws. Surely you’ve felt fear and anger, even if you’ve never acted out on them.
As far as cultures varying wildly . . . not so much. Cultures are generally more alike than they are different. (cf. Murdock’s list of cultural universals.) Which is unsurprising, since they’re all made up of homo sapiens, which all share the same set of innate traits and modules, subject to individual variation and the environment in which people live.
I know this is all tangential to the main point of the post, but the “Blank Slate” and “Noble Savage” fallacies are pet peeves of mine.
” He looks different and strange. You may fear this strange-looking stranger, but you have no reason to hate him at this point.”
Indeed, ethnic or societal hatred comes around via an unholy mixture of familiarity and unfamiliarity. If this strange-looking person looks nothing like anyone you’ve seen before, you can’t hate him, as Edward illustrates. There’s just no reason to. If, on the other hand, he shares features with someone you think has done you wrong. . . maybe he’s black. . maybe he’s reading the Bible. . he becomes a part of something you’ve met and hate, even though you’ve never met him before.
Of course, the reflex to assign people to abstract groups is also a survival instinct. Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to identiy danger quickly enough in the world we evolved in. . although I’m not sure those same instincts are still necessary in modern life.
The important thing is knowing when you’re doing it, and making a conscious decision to let it happen or let it go. And not assigning it moral value just because it’s instinctual.
Blue, first of all, sorry to hear you hate these people as i don’t. i don’t like what they are doing but i don’t like anyone who commits atrocities, on their and our side. i also don’t believe they woke up one morning and said, let’s just kill these people. it’s a complex situation and it happened because of a variety of reasons, bad foreign policy and culture clash etc. and just killing them back solves nothing. there is blood on all our hands. we need to solve these problems at their root causes if possible. And maybe you don’t always need an enemy but sadly, plenty of people need them, that’s just their mentality.
maybe he’s reading the Bible
LOL
I involuntarily snorted a guffaw when I read that…it’s funny because it’s true.
Orwell’s “5 minute hate” in 1984 (written in 1949) has lots to say how basic (perhaps innate) emotions can be readily turned into emotional hatred and aggressive hostility.
This isn’t just parents. Social groups can have even more influence (especially in pre-teens and teens).
Let’s also not forget that hatred and fear can be combatted and overcome. Turning the social pressure (and personal committment) in the other direction really works.
Well it seems obvious Waleed Ziad is an economist consultant and not a historian.
To discount Islam’s recorded history of Jihad seems to be ignoring atleast part of the problem.
Are we really being attacked by the muslim underclass? The Arab street? I don’t think so. Must we remind ourselves that Bin Laden is wealthy and the mullahs of Iran are wealthy and the 9/11 hijackers were atleast considered middle class?
I’ll grant that every conflict is political and related to power. That much makes sense to me. But to discount the clash of civilizations leaves out a big portion of the problem and to blame Western interference just seems like we are ignoring history and sticking our head in the sand.
Just an example:
Muhammad bin Qasim [695-715 AD]
After Muhammad bin Qasim had reduced some forts in Sindh, he wrote to Hajjaj, his uncle and governor of Iraq: “The forts of Siwistan and Sisam have been already taken. The nephew of Dahir, his warriors, and principal officers have been despatched, and the infidels converted to Islam or destroyed. Instead of idol temples, mosques and other places of worship have been built, pulpits have been erected, the Khutba is read, the call to prayers is raised, so that devotions are performed at the stated hours.
I could cite so many more examples before we even make it to the crusades to point to the continuous class of civilizations and jihad.
Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to identiy danger quickly enough in the world we evolved in. . although I’m not sure those same instincts are still necessary in modern life.
Their necessity depends on where you travel I’d say.
Wilfred,
I’m sorry to hear that you don’t hate terrorists. But, you are right in saying that they didn’t wake up one morning and say let’s kill these people. They woke up and planned it first one morning and then on another acted on their plan because they thought it was a good one.
I disagree with the statement that their is blood on all our hands. We may make mistakes and even do bad things, but as a culture we work to correct them. It is not a part of our culture to wantonly kill civilians or blow up innocent people. There is a small few in our culture that may do these things, but we put them in jail if we can.
There is a vast difference between us and terrorists. It saddens me that so many in our country can’t see that. We fix our problems, while they bless their own actions.
I just watched Madonna in an interview last night talk about how she would just leave Iraq right now because she doens’t believe in resovling conflict that way. She is a hypocrite!!! I have seen her own personal security force. They don’t look like the friendly type. I am willing to bet that if I went to her home and tried to confront her in a non-violent but persistent way I would face the full wrath and violence of her security force or the police.
Wilfred,
My point about Madonna is that I bet one would face your hatred if they threatened you personally. I could be wrong, but there are very few real pacifists out there. You may be an exception. If you are I recommend you travel to the middle east and try and convert them to your cause first.
“There is a vast difference between us and terrorists. It saddens me that so many in our country can’t see that”
Blue, you continue to erect this straw man in various posts. If you’d be so kind, could you direct me to an example of ‘so many’ in our country who ‘don’t see that?’. Even one would do for now.
Sidereal,
It’s not a straw man its my perception of many in this country.
Turn on CNN… then watch
or from this very thread:
To me that is equating us with the terrorists!
So there that’s one… I could go on all night, but I have to leave.
Sidereal,
It’s not a straw man its my perception of many in this country.
Turn on CNN… then watch
or from this very thread:
To me that is equating us with the terrorists!
So there that’s one… I could go on all night, but I have to leave.
Then we maintain very different definitions of the word ‘equate’, and I’ll leave it at that.
Blue, i guess i’m lucky you didn’t tell me to ‘love it or leave it’, you just recommend that i go to iraq. i recommend no one going there, especially our soldiers. and i’m no pacifist, although i certainly lean that way (as opposed to the the alternative!). and as for the ‘no blood on our hands’ i’m afraid you see things a little one-sided. those of us opposed to our Occupation of Iraq want to remove our leaders because their irresponsible actions have caused the deaths of tens of thousands. And since when was Iraq about terrorism blue? and if you are equating Saddam being a horrible dictator to terrorism, why were we supporting him in the Reagan/Bush years while he was carrying out the worst of his policies?
The phrase “clash of civilizations” is a serviceable one, but it has been overused. I am one of those people who believe that wars (most of them at any rate) are at base religious conflicts; that is, confrontations between different visions about creation and the moral order of the world.
Christendom and Islam are not reconcilable: ever have they been in a state of war. Sometimes it has been outright bloodshed on the field of battle; other times it has been a colder, stare-at-each-other-across-the-barricades kind of thing. But there has never been any rapprochement between these two great moral visions and civilizations.
Let us not forget that an enormous portion of the land now controlled by Islam was once Christian. Let us not forget that the Janissaries lay seige to Vienna as recently as 1683, while Spain (and a good portion of France) was held by Muslims well into the modern age.
The motive in calling this a religious war is not propagandistic; it is desire to call things by their right name. A thing so ancient as the confrontation between Islam and Christendom cannot be explained by reference only to the last 30 or 40 years. As an anonymous commenter noted above, all wars include their superficial political elements, but these, I think, are generally the preserve of the aristocrats and plutocrats whose business it is to act as if they are conducting a war.
As Chesterton wrote, “Whatever starts wars, the thing that sustains wars is something in the soul; that is something akin to religion.” He went on to explain that startling statement:
But our comprehension of the idea of religion has been blurred by many years of secularist muddleheadedness. “If we say it is a difference of religion, people will drift into dreary bickerings about sects and dogmas. We will pity them and say it is a difference about death and daylight; a difference that does really come like a dark shadow between our eyes and the day. Men can think of this difference even at the point of death; for it is a difference about the meaning of life.”
Anyway, my point is that it does us little good, I fear, to argue that the conflict which most Americans only became aware of on September 11, hinged on the blunders of the cold war. It is idle to talk about teaching people not to hate a vision of the world which is irreconcilable with their own.
Christendom and Islam are not reconcilable: ever have they been in a state of war.
Er, what? That’s great oratory, but it seems strikingly short on both logic and historicity. The fact that Christianity and Islam have been at loggerheads since the latter’s inception does not preclude their potential reconciliation (and indeed, such reconciliation seems quite plausible in the United States alone). And the fact that Christianity and Islam have been at loggerheads does not imply — nor, I believe, does the historical record justify — that “Christendom” (what, en masse?) has “ever been in a state of war” with Islam (again, en masse?), unless you’re willing to bend the phrase “state of war” almost to its breaking point. The alternative, I suppose, is that you’re trying to argue that they’re both such monoliths that wars between any Christian nation and any Islamic nation necessarily count as a “conflict of civilizations”, regardless of other factors… essentially arguing that conflicts between Christian and Islamic polities are somehow special in a way that internecine conflicts are not.
Let us not forget that the Janissaries lay seige to Vienna as recently as 1683, while Spain (and a good portion of France) was held by Muslims well into the modern age.
The Reconquista ended in 1492, which is not generally considered to be “well into the modern age”. In addition, Muslim control of France is much sketchier than one might think: for example, I’ve been informed by my half-sister the medievalist that, contra the epic poetry, Charlemagne wasn’t fighting the “Moors” = Muslims at Poitiers; he was actually fighting a rebel contingent of Basques.
As an anonymous commenter noted above, all wars include their superficial political elements, but these, I think, are generally the preserve of the aristocrats and plutocrats whose business it is to act as if they are conducting a war.
A rather bold and unjustified claim. Can you support it?
Anyway, my point is that it does us little good, I fear, to argue that the conflict which most Americans only became aware of on September 11, hinged on the blunders of the cold war.
Even assuming arguendo that this conflict of which you speak truly exists, you’ve rather overlooked the fact that one can ascribe a causal relationship between this particular manifestation of “the conflict” and the blunders of the cold war.
It is idle to talk about teaching people not to hate a vision of the world which is irreconcilable with their own.
This is slightly different than your prior claim, but it’s close enough for the duration. What proof, then, have you of this statement? How do you support your claims of irreconcilability? More pointedly, how do you justify your implicit claims of the immutability of the antagonistic concepts underlying “Christendom” and “Islam”?
Anarch,
I guess logically what you say is accurate… there is a possibility that they can be reconciled.
But from experience in the past and even today in the U.S. that isn’t happening.
Whether it is the state being sued for Driver’s Liscence photos, preaching hate in Mosque in West Virginia, arresting U.S. moslems before they commit terrorists acts… the lists goes on and on. The two aren’t being reconciled, not even in the U.S.
I would ask that you provide a little proof that they are being reconciled. Practical every day proof. Becasue I can give you violent practical proof of how they aren’t.
I think you are taking his practical explanation of what is going on in the real world and trying to prove him wrong on a technicality.
I am one of those people who believe that wars (most of them at any rate) are at base religious conflicts;
I suspect that’s because you try to view everything through a religious lense, Paul, and so find ways to account for aspects of a conflict within that context. I, on the other hand, try to view everything through a secular lense, believing that God neither approves of war (at all) nor takes sides. There’s not enough time to go into why I believe that, but you don’t have enough time to convince me otherwise, so let’s leave it at that.
Christendom and Islam are not reconcilable
That totally depends on whether one places more value on one’s religion or one’s fellow human beings. Should humans evolve to the point that they place more value on helping and cohabitating with each other (something I’m convinced God actually wants from us) than on a particular set of guidelines or practices for worshipping Him, there’s no reason any religions cannot be reconcilable.
Beside, I’m a Christian in love with a Muslim. I know the two are reconcilable on a one-to-one basis. It’s a matter of where your place your priorities.
Actually, Waleed Ziad does also happen to be a historian. In reference to the above Mohammad bin Qasim quote, this was Waleed Ziad ‘s response: “It seems that this gentleman is referring to an oftquoted secondary (actually tertiary) source which omits the basic facts the Mohammad bin Qasim established one of the most succesful mutlireligious polities in early medieval Sindh. Henry Cousens summarizes the material in the major extant primary sources (Chach namah, Tuhfat ul Kiram, etc.), in which he relates Hajjaj’s actual response to Qasim’s letter (of which the above is a poorly misquoted segment), which was actually in reference to a request by the Hindu priesthood of Sindh to guarantee certain priveleges and to allow the building of temples and freedom of worship: ‘ “I have received my dear cousin Muhammad Qasim’s letter, and have become acquainted with its contents. With regards to the request of the chiefs of Brahmanabad about the building of Budh temples, and toleration in religious matters, I do not see what further rights we have over them beyond the usual tax. Because, after they hae become zimmis (protected people) we have no right whatever to interfere with their lives or their property. Do therefore permit them to build the temples of those they worship. Noone is prohibited from, or punished for following his own religion, and let noone prevent them from doing so, so that they may be happy in their homes” Cousens states that “Muhammad, therefore, allowed the people to follow their own customs in every way so as the usual taxes were paid.”
Waleed Ziad also goes on to say that “It should also be pointed out that from Qasim’s initial arrival in Sindh, the major Hindu rulers of Lower Sindh, Jasen and Mokah, allied themselves with him and joined him on his campaings against, among others, Raja Dahir.”