Elon Musk’s video drew everyone out. Everyone. And as you read the replies, you discover just how deep the ignorance goes. Leave aside the antisemites, the people who want Musk to believe there’s a global Jewish conspiracy behind it all, because Epstein or something. They’re drawing millions of views in the replies, which, you know, kinda fits this moment. But the interesting replies are not the rabid ones, they’re the earnestly confused and ignorant ones. People look at catastrophically self-destructive Palestinian ideological factions like Hamas and ask themselves a simple question: “What would make me behave this way?” Since they don’t actually know the first thing about Hamas’s ideology, about the century-old Sunni discourse that created it, about Hamas’s understanding of Islam and history and redemption - they answer with the only explanation immediately available to them: Israel must just be bad enough to make a society’s self-immolation a rational act. Even if you think Israel is awful, that’s a bad explanation for Hamas’s strategy. Or for the obsession with Israel by people who ignore or outright forgive, you know, Putin and Saudi and Assad and Xi and everyone else. Israel is special in Islamist discourse. Its destruction is so important that’s it’s worth destroying Gaza, Lebanon, etc., to get it done. Why? Because it represents something specific in their worldview, a specific sort of challenge to Islam’s understanding of itself and its destiny. If you know that specific story, its ideological origins and power, then none of this is mysterious. Hamas are rational. I mean, yes, they’re bent on the mass-murder of everyone’s children and on burning everything to the ground in the name of Islam’s restoration and ultimate triumph, but in the terms set by their intellectual world, that’s totally rational. And if you don’t know those terms or those ideas, then none of it makes sense. You can’t see what they see and can’t understand why they make the choices they make. So you fill the gaps with your own emotional and political world. It’s an anti-Israel position born of ignorant but honest projection. And it’s everywhere you look, on left and right, on X and CNN, in NGOs and governments. Maybe it’s time for Westerners to actually learn something about Islam, the good and the bad, the history of the religion and the many visions of the future that now compete for dominance in Muslim societies. Muslims, dear Westerners, are people. And like all people, if you want to understand them, you’ll have to journey into their mental world. It’s not hard to do. But the journey begins, like all journeys, with acknowledgement of your own ignorance. https://bird.makeup/@elonmusk/1877435581250122002
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