November, 2001
I would like to talk about the rational implications of a certain relatively common meme.
This is the meme that people who fail to perform certain acts, or say certain words, will continue to exist for an infinitely-prolonged period of time after death in a state of physical and mental agony.
If you have not encountered this meme before, I suggest you read “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”, by James Joyce.
Interesting things happen when you introduce infinity into any calculation. With moral calculations, the renormalisation problem is especially acute.
Most people of my acquaintance who are infected with this meme apparently solve the problem by ignoring it. They say they believe it with their mouths and never allow the words they speak to percolate into their brains at all. Most of them have never made any visible effort to convince me, for instance, to perform the acts or say the words they believe will save me from this fate. I have always been offended by this, as it suggests they have no strong feeling one way or another whether I am tortured eternally.
They may, however, be consciously following the renormalisation strategy of fatalism. If God decides who lives and who dies, free-will is an illusion, and no human act can save or condemn, then they are let off the hook, and don’t need to act on their meme. This strategy was splendidly elaborated and proudly proclaimed by the Protestant Reformers as their chief contribution to the well-being of Christendom, though it has been present there from the beginning, and is also very strong in Dar-al-Islam.
The strategy of fatalism is a good one, since it saves the rest of us from the rational consequences of a meme that says there is such a thing as Hell and that human actions can play any part in deciding who goes there and who doesn’t. Let us consider those rational consequences, hmmm?
First of all, and pretty obvious, people who go around convincing people not to do the things your meme bundle says are required to avoid Hell should be removed from the picture. This is why preaching Christianity is a crime in so much of the Muslim world. This is why Ferdinand and Isabella expelled the Jews and Muslims from Spain. This explains the witty advice of the Archbishop of Beziers to the crusaders against the Cathars: “Kill them all, let God sort them out.” Even people who were very strong on fatalism, like Jean Calvin, burnt the odd heretic just in case.
Of course, if you really care, you will torture the heretics until they confess and repent, so they can be saved too. Every version of this meme has ended up here, no matter how strongly it has been bundled with statements like ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ and ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’
Now, for a slightly more extreme example.
Lots of people are being born all the time. A relatively small number of these perform the right acts or say the right words prescribed by the particular strain of the meme. The total number of people who are condemned to infinite suffering is increasing all the time. If you are a very very good person who is infected by this meme, therefore, and you are kept awake at night worrying about all the innocent children – most versions of this meme have some form of innocent children – growing up, dying, and being condemned to infinite suffering, you will strive to do the logical, rational, and humane thing.
Kill them. Kill them all. Now. Stop this infinite horror, save the children, save the future generations who would suffer from ever being born at all. Destroy the world.
A finite amount of suffering inflicted in this life – divided by an infinite amount of suffering inflicted in a future one = 0.
The world hasn’t been destroyed yet, for a few good reasons.
(1) We haven’t had weapons that could destroy the world for all that long
(2) There aren’t very many very very good people around. To go through with destroying the world, you need to believe implicitly, at the very core of your worldview, in the existence of Hell, and it would take a Hell of a lot of courage to carry out an act that would (most memes agree) send you there, too, no matter how many innocents you saved.
(3) This meme is usually bundled together with some other memes. For instance, on the Fundamentalist Christian fringe, it is also believed that Jesus will return next Friday, or before the end of the Third Test at the latest, and put an end to the whole show anyway. Among us Catholics, where fatalism is weaker, those who express this meme most strongly are also those with the strongest obedience to the Church hierarchy. So until the Pope decides destroying the world is a good idea, we are safe.
Which brings us to Osama-bin-Laden. He is not a bad man. He has spent tens of millions of dollars on schools and hospitals and food for hungry people. He has abandoned a life of luxury to live in a hole in the ground and be chased from place to place like an animal. He has given himself over to be hated by billions of people. Osama bin-Laden is not insane. He is most probably a much better man than 99.9% of us. He has all the makings of a Saint. But he is infected with this particular meme.
Any activist, non-fatalist Muslim, anyone who is into building schools and hospitals and feeding the hungry, is in particular danger of going over the edge. All religions are not created equal, much though the secular world would like to think so. There is no Muslim second coming. There is no Muslim Pope. Heretic removal goes right back to the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. And there is no second hurdle to get over – all Muslims are saved, no matter what they do. For Muslim sinners, Hell is finite; there is no need to terrify Muslim schoolboys with homilies on the physical and mental torments that await them should they stray (see James Joyce again). It is very easy to reach a certain conclusion:
Anything that protects Muslims from apostasy is permissible.
And that is, I think, as far as Osama bin-Laden has thought things out. I don’t think we are in danger of Osama bin-Laden destroying the world. It is not that he is not evil or insane enough; he is not good enough, not quite good enough to be kept awake at night by the suffering of the world. He is kept awake at night by the suffering of millions of starving Iraqi children. If more of us were, the world would be a better place.
Now, let’s have a look at the first speech Osama bin-Laden released , shortly after the bombing of Afghanistan began. An important thing to remember is that it is primarily addressed to the Muslim world; we infidels do not really intrude on his world view except as cardboard cutouts. It is like I found growing up Catholic, if you are surrounded by the One True religion you do not notice the others much. To begin:
Here is America struck by God Almighty in one of its vital organs, so that its greatest buildings are destroyed. Grace and gratitude to God.
America has been filled with horror from north to south and east to west, and thanks be to God that what America is tasting now is only a copy of what we have tasted. Our Islamic nation has been tasting the same for more than 80 years, of humiliation and disgrace, its sons killed and their blood spilled, its sanctities desecrated.
Now Osama is exultant that the Great Satan is being punished for its evil acts, but is also thankful that America has been struck with only a weak copy of what Muslims have suffered. He is exultant because he sees this as the first step towards making a difference, a first step towards saving Dar-al-Islam from the poison memes of the West.
God has blessed a group of vanguard Muslims, the forefront of Islam, to destroy America. May God bless them and allot them a supreme place in heaven, for He is the only one capable and entitled to do so. When those who have stood in defence of their weak children, their brothers and sisters in Palestine and other Muslim nations, the whole world went into an uproar, the infidels followed by the hypocrites.
We in the West are of course the infidels, and the hypocrites are all the Muslim governments that have rushed to the side of the United States.
A million innocent children are dying at this time as we speak, killed in Iraq without any guilt. We hear no denunciation, we hear no edict from the hereditary rulers.
The Saudi government is especially targeted here (the ‘hereditary rulers’) – they are happy to support the United States but have done nothing when so many more have died because of sanctions in Iraq.
In these days, Israeli tanks rampage across Palestine, in Ramallah, Rafah and Beit Jala and many other parts of the land of Islam, and we do not hear anyone raising his voice or reacting. But when the sword fell upon America after 80 years, hypocrisy raised its head up high bemoaning those killers who toyed with the blood, honour, and sanctities of Muslims.
The least that can be said about those hypocrites is that they are apostates who followed the wrong path. They backed the butcher against the victim, the oppressor against the innocent child. I seek refuge in God against them and I ask Him to let us see them in what they deserve.
Again, this is addressed to Muslims; Osama doesn’t care anything for the West, and what its leaders think or do about Palestine. The Arab League has done nothing since the current crisis erupted in late 2000. Muslim leaders have given no military aid to the Palestinian Authority; they have even cut, rather than expanded, their humanitarian aid. They have offered only the most perfunctory condemnations of any Israeli act. But they were quick to condemn the killers of those who had their hands on the levers of American military and economic world hegemony, the machine that pumps the poison of paganism into the Muslim world. The picture of these Muslim leaders is bitter and scathing; ‘what they deserve’ is most likely a euphemism for ‘Hell’.
Every Muslim after this event [should fight for their religion], after the senior officials in the United States of America starting with the head of international infidels, Bush and his staff who went on a display of vanity with their men and horses, those who turned even the countries that believe in Islam against us – the group that resorted to God, the Almighty, the group that refuses to be subdued in its religion.
‘Display of vanity with their men and horses’ – this seems to me to be a reference to Pharoah’s army, which was cast down in the Red Sea. A reminder that long before, great armies with impressive vehicles and weapons have been cast down by the power of God.
They have been telling the world falsehoods that they are fighting terrorism. In a nation at the far end of the world, Japan, hundreds of thousands, young and old, were killed and [they say] this is not a world crime. To them it is not a clear issue. A million children in Iraq, to them this is not a clear issue.
The question is, if the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified, if sanctions on Iraq are justified, why is not the attack of September 11th a legitimate act of war? Dropping a bomb on civilians in Hamburg, Tokyo, Tripoli, or Basra is an act of state-sponsored terrorism. There is absolutely no difference except that these acts were done by men who could dilute the responsibility among themselves and hid behind a faceless bureaucracy, the other was done by a few brave men.
Osama bin Laden did not set out to kill civilians; he did not bomb discotheques or buses, like the young men sent out with ‘peace partner’ Yasser Arafat’s blessing, but the buildings where the greatest concentration of people directly involved with the U.S. military and the U.S. financial juggernaut were to be found. You do not have to be Noam Chomsky to believe that the Pentagon has killed its millions, but Wall Street its tens of millions. 20 000 children died last year in the country my mother was born because it needed to service its foreign debt.
Of course it is evident that the passengers on the hijacked planes were more innocent, but by definition anyone innocent dying in a jihad is a shahid, or sanctified martyr. I believe would have been easy to insure the salvation of those aboard the planes by getting them to recite "There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is the Prophet of Allah." I hope that this was done.
But when a few more than 10 were killed in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam, Afghanistan and Iraq were bombed, and hypocrisy stood behind the head of international infidels, the modern world’s symbol of paganism, America, and its allies.
This is ugly. It is ugly because he does not count the hundreds of African victims; perhaps he is doing so because from the American point of view only dead Americans count – which may be unfortunately true.
It is also important to note that Osama does not see this as a war with the Nazarenes, but with the Pagans. The image he has of the United States is a pagan nation, the chief herald of godlessness. This would be less the case if Muslim countries had less severe prohibitions against preaching Christianity – if he could have seen the Benny Hinn show in Saudi Arabia, for instance - for in fact the United States is the least godless nation of the West.
I tell them that these events have divided the world into two camps, the camp of the faithful and the camp of infidels. May God shield us and you from them. Every Muslim must rise to defend his religion. The wind of change is blowing to remove evil from the Peninsula of Muhammad.
As to America, I say to it and its people a few words: I swear to God that America will not live in peace before peace reigns in Palestine, and before all the army of infidels depart the land of Muhammad, peace be upon him.
Again, his concerns are local rather than global; we in the West can go to Hell, as long as we keep our hands off of Dar-al-Islam. He is not good enough to destroy the world.
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