We would even be happy to encourage and facilitate a conversation with members of the Muslim community for him, if he so desires. It would be a good learning experience for all of us.

To take steps toward honoring this declaration I have reached out to Davi Barker of The Muslim Agorist and Muslims for Liberty. Barker is an a writer, an artist and an activist of significant skill and purchase in libertarian and agorist circles. I even had the privilege of meeting and talking with Barker at the 2013 New Hampshire Liberty Forum.

Before our site was taken down I emailed Barker some of the cruel comments coming out of the S4SS UGent group to get his perspective and experience dealing with this kind of hyperbole and bigotry. I also tapped the Students for a Stateless Society (S4SS) contributors and coordinators group for questions that they think individuals might want to ask regarding Islam and its intersection, if any, with anarchism or libertarianism. I want to thank Barker for his time and participating in this discussion.

When we initially approached the S4SS UGent group’s point of contact to explain what was going on and why a number of their discussions had begun to take on an Islamophobic focus complete with racist epithets.

They responded simply with, “Discussion on the NAP [Non-aggression principle] and how to deal with people ‘from certain cultures’ … the general conclusion was: seek and destroy.”

Barker would like to inform them that,

The answer [to how to deal with people] is, exactly the way you deal with people from your culture who engage in aggressive, rights violating behavior. The culture of origin has no bearing on the NAP, in fact the NAP precludes conceptualizing people as their culture. People are individuals. To regard cultures for their crimes instead of individuals for their crimes is collectivist thinking, what Ben Stone calls right-wing socialism. If an individual commits aggression his culture of origin is irrelevant, and his guilt in no way transfers to others in his culture who have not committed such an act.

Our interlocutor, “No culture wholly cohesive enough [to warrant categorical violence?] Have you ever heard of Afghanistan and Saudi-Arabia?”

Barker, from experience, explains, “

Yes, in fact, I have traveled there. I just recently returned from a month long trip to Saudi-Arabia, and I did not find a cohesive culture. I found the proliferation of western modes of dress and music common among the young, and displeased elders who preferred traditional modes. I found those who defended the prevailing order, and others who felt the monarchy was a tool of western powers they’d rather see cast off. I found some proselytizing the extremist Wahhabi doctrine, passing out free books about their movement’s founder, and I found others completely rejecting this doctrine and blaming it for most of the woes of their country. I found a whole host of cultural customs, some pleasant and others shocking, and also many frustrated and embarrassed by those customs. Anyone, especially an anarchist, who believes that there is a cohesive culture within the arbitrary boundaries defined by a state, has obviously never traveled there.

And, finally, charming as always, “When it comes to nazis, communists, and islamofascists, it is us or them, there is no margin of negotiation.”

Barker concludes,

As much as I hate to go to bat for nazis and communists, this is still not true, even for them. I have had neo-nazi and communist friends in my life, and even they were individuals, capable of reason, capable of moral agency, and capable of negotiation. They were in short, individuals first, and ideological labels second. And regardless of what your state subsidized text books told you about history, the same was true for every citizen and soldier in Nazi Germany. They were individually accountable for their crimes, not collectively.

The S4SS contributors were very interested to talk to Barker. I pulled together some of their questions for him:

1. How does your religion and your politics relate, if at all?”

Before I converted to Islam I was a socialist. A Marxist by osmosis, being from California. When I converted I mistakenly believed that Islam was a monolithic religion. One of the aspects of it that appealed to me was that the scripture, the Quran, has been preserved in it’s original language, and there are not sectarian divides over different translations. I quickly learned that having all Muslims agree on one book did not mean all Muslims agreed on one interpretation, and being new to the religion it became important to me to consider all available interpretations and to have a method of discerning between them. This process of investigation, searching for the interpretation which seemed most consistent to me, forced me to also question my political beliefs. To discern a political philosophy which was not only consistent with my new creed, but also internally consistent. This criterion lead me to reject socialism, and embrace property rights, and ultimately reject statism, and embrace voluntaryism. The Quranic verse, “There shall be no coercion in this way of life” is one that many Muslims try to mitigate through various interpretations, but I take it as a radical and inviolable axiom by which all interpretations must be measured.

2. Since 9/11, anti-Muslim bigotry has fueled both state violence and individual violence. How can libertarians ally with Muslims against this violence and hatred?

Many Muslim organizations focus on social outreach, sensitivity workshops, and interfaith work in an effort to combat anti-Muslim bigotry by demystifying Islam for non-Muslims. In the mainstream culture this has proven highly effective, and studies have shown that the majority of Americans have never actually met a Muslim, and having met just one Muslim face to face correlates dramatically with a rejection of stereotypes, propaganda and bigotry against Muslims. However, in my experience libertarians reject these things whether they’ve ever met a Muslim or not, because libertarianism, as an individualist philosophy, automatically rejects collectivist claims made about anyone. Libertarians, at least those who have fully internalized individualist thinking, are already inoculated against bigotry. So, partnering with Muslims to organize social events is an effective method, but even just spreading the message the liberty itself is an effective strategy against violence and hatred.

3. What are some common misconceptions about the Muslim religion that libertarians should know?

One of the biggest misconceptions we face in America is that Islam is somehow foreign to American society. In reality, Islam has been in America since its inception, mostly through the slave trade. Some historical sources suggest that Andalusian Muslims arrived in North America long before Columbus, and that many who traveled to the new world hired Muslim navigators from Spain. Most African slaves were brought to North America from West Africa, which is mostly Muslim. The statistics are impossible to guess, but there is evidence that many slaves were running clandestine schools to teach their children Arabic and preserve some of their Islamic heritage. The first recorded conversion to Islam in America was in 1888 by Alexander Russell Webb while he was operating as a Consul to the Muslim world.

4. Do you use your faith to explain the morality of anarchism or libertarianism? If so, how?

Yes. There are a number of ways to do this. First, it’s important to point out that Muhammad was born in a tribal anarchy, and never established a State as we would define it. It’s perhaps easier to make this argument as a Christian because Jesus was in direct conflict with Rome, and never came to power. Muhammad had conflicts with the Byzantine and Persian empires, but Arabia was a polycentric clan structure, so his primary conflict was with the dominant clan. Once he came to power Muhammad served as an arbiter, but he never claimed the authority to legislate those who did not explicitly consent to his leadership. Those who did not convert, and that sense did not consent, formed their own legal systems. And even when he was asked to serve as arbiter in disputes between non-Muslims he judged according to their laws, not Islamic law. So, he never established a monopoly on violence, but lived among competing judiciaries. Second, there are a number of good quotes from him, as in “The greatest jihad is to speak the truth in the face of a tyrant.” And finally, it’s pretty easy to call upon various periods of Islamic history where the State was weak or non existent and science and philosophy thrived in the Muslim world. Early libertarian writer Rose Wilder Lane has a book titled “Islam and the Discover of Freedom” which catalogs much of this history and describes how many of the philosophical underpinnings of libertarianism, such as the separation of faith and reason, the primacy of freedom of conscience, and many aspects of natural law theory came to Europe through interaction is Muslims in Turkey and Spain.

If you are interested in finding out more about Davi Barker’s work and faith, please check out his articles, interviews and art on his site – The Muslim Agorist.

Apparently he’s never read the Bible. The list of things in Leviticus that call for death by stoning would take out not only gays and lesbians, but most everybody else as well. Then there’s that wonderful stuff about dashing out the brains of Philistine babies and exterminating the entire population of Canaan. Yet most Christians, outside of Fred Phelps’s bunch, don’t advocate this kind of stuff. And many Christians from the mainline denominations openly condemn it.

So it’s obvious that the actual content of sacred texts means a lot less than the cultural evolution of their adherents. The texts themselves, arguably, are more the products than the sources of authoritarian culture.

In a college Middle Eastern history class, I read a historian (I can’t for the life of me track him down) who posited an “Irano-Mediterranean Oikoumene” with a shared culture of machismo and patriarchal domination of women. St. Paul’s admonition to women to cover their heads in church was entirely in keeping with this culture in Greece. In the classical Greece of Socrates, women commonly appeared in public in something very like a hijab; Aristophanes’ “Assembly of Women,” and the tradition that Socrates’ wife Xanthippe publicly henpecked him, were both considered especially comical against this cultural backdrop.

Most conservative cultural traditions concerning women in contemporary Islam are not mentioned in the Quran, but were found in the preexisting culture of the pagan Arabs. And many misogynistic pagan traditions that Islam condemned, like the exposure of female infants, reemerged among the Bedouin after Muhammad’s time. Muhammad himself was quite liberal toward women in his personal life, compared both to the preexisting pagan culture and later “Islamic” culture, with some women figuring prominently in the early Muslim community at Medina.

Islam was arguably evolving past its cultural authoritarianism earlier than Christianity. At its height, the medieval Islamic civilization was far more liberal and forward-looking than Christian Europe at the same time. This was brought to an end by the Mongol conquest of the Middle East. The Islamic world was set back by centuries, becoming pessimistic, authoritarian and inward-looking, and adopting a reactionary attitude toward Europe’s subsequent cultural progress.

Western imperialism played a similar role in the colonial world. Colonial regimes atomized or perverted local social institutions (as an example of perversion, look at what Hastings’ Permanent Settlement in Bengal, and similar policies later for all of India, did to property relations within the village commune). They decimated social capital and uprooted local institutions that might have provided the basis for evolution of a more liberal society. They deliberately drew colonial boundaries that cut across natural ethnic lines, promoting ethnic hostility as part of a divide-and-rule strategy (much of the Hutu-Tutsi hostility in Rwanda is traceable to such policies under Belgian rule). Much as in Russia, an authoritarian state led to the corruption and atrophy of civil society; and when that authoritarian state withdrew from the scene, it left a vacuum to be filled by military juntas and kleptocrats.

The bipolar superpower dynamic also contributed to greater political authoritarianism in much of the post-colonial Third World. Left-wing nationalist regimes, in the face of Western economic blockades, subversion and outright invasion, adopted garrison state cultures and developed closer ties with the Soviet bloc.

Take Cuba, for example. Although Castro had studied Marx and had a nondescript Marxist politics, he’d also studied the New Deal in prison and saw it as a model for post-revolutionary Cuban development. His 26 July Movement avoided close ties with the pro-Soviet and doctrinaire Marxist-Leninist PSP. After the Revolution, the new regime liquidated the PSP and pursued a fairly liberal economic agenda consisting of land reform and the encouragement of urban cooperatives. Orthodox Marxist-Leninists like Che Guevara formed a distinct subgroup within the 26 July Movement. Only after a full-blown US campaign of destabilization did Castro proclaim himself a Marxist-Leninist and align Cuba with the Soviet bloc.

In South Vietnam, Noam Chomsky has argued, the NLF (“Viet Cong”), while certainly engaging in authoritarian activities, was also a grass-roots populist movement with close ties to the local peasantry, engaged in many of the same kinds of local economic development and self-help activities as the Black Panthers in Oakland. The counter-insurgency campaign in the South eviscerated the NLF and the civil society it was embedded in, leaving a hollow shell for the North Vietnamese Army and the official Marxist-Leninists in Hanoi to take over.

In a sense these were both victories for the United States. The US government arguably has a conscious interest in promoting this kind of authoritarianism. From the standpoint of the American ruling elite, it was far preferable to have the anti-American Third World dominated by authoritarian regimes subject to discipline by the white male three-piece-suited bureaucrats in Moscow (the kind of people Nixon and Kissinger were quite sympatico with), than a liberal anti-American regime providing the demonstration effect of successful economic development outside the global capitalist system.

King says that moderate leadership must emerge from the Muslim community. Yet no leaders of American Muslim organizations were invited to the hearings to speak for themselves. If actual Muslim civil society leaders were included, it might be harder to frame them all as secret terrorists. Yet prejudice does have a powerful ability to negate reason: The belief that certain people are secret murderers is often difficult to discard even with overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

But moderation in the defense of liberty and pursuit of justice is no virtue. The use of a word like “moderate” to contrast with “radical” is another language trick employed by those invested in the status quo. A radical is by definition someone who wants to make major change. If the advocates of religiously-motivated murder were instead labeled “intolerant,” “theocrat,” or “fundamentalist” in contrast to “tolerant” or “peaceable” Muslims, that would suggest a different type of conflict.

But this government show is not really about the safety of the entire public. It’s about finding an “other” to point to for derision.

King says that backing down would mean giving in to that nebulous boogeyman called “political correctness.” In 2004, King said that 85% of American mosques are controlled by “extremists” who constitute “an enemy living amongst us.” Yet he has continued to hold political office, suggesting that he is doing something correct. What would be politically incorrect in the sense of “something we’re not supposed to talk about” would be to examine the contribution that bigotry made to the two major wars the US is currently stuck in, wars that were apparently the “correct” political thing to do.

People who seriously look for the motivations of terrorists are accused by the post-9/11 politically correct of making excuses for terrorism. Does the alienation and vulnerability to recruiters that terrorists suffer from reveal a problem with Islam or a problem with broader society? Does rage against the United States reveal issues with Islam or issues with foreign policy and prejudice? An honest look at these questions will do more to protect life and liberty than any accusations against the scapegoat of the hour.

Of course, “terrorism” is itself a loaded term that tends to emphasize the tyranny of non-state actors and ignore the terror and tyranny inflicted by states.

In light of the citizen’s subordinate position to the state which seeks to expand its power, cooperation with authorities should never be unconditional. If sharing information will likely save an innocent life, then it is prudent to share information.

But if government agents are snooping around to flex their muscles and scope out their opposition, safeguarding a hold on power while pretending to safeguard the lives that power threatens, there is no reason to cooperate or pretend that they’re acting in the interests of public safety. Their statements should also never be taken at face value. This is especially relevant when one considers the frequent law enforcement misdeeds highlighted by websites like Gangsters in Blue and CopBlock.

A free society, unladen with paranoia about harmless differences, allows individuals to safeguard themselves and their communities in ways that authoritarian interference can only disrupt. A country that does not attack and occupy lands to project power and control resources will motivate fewer potential terrorists. The solution is liberty, which will not be granted by congressional committees.

Those most upset about the religious center are neoconservatives. Would the neocons agree if Democrats accused all Christians of endorsing violence and aggression because a few refuse to condemn the murders innocent gay men like Matthew Shepard for their peaceful sexual and gender preferences?

President Obama came out on August 13th to correctly explain that America’s respect for freedom of religion “must be unshakable.”

Both the Holy Bible and the Quran at times endorse forms of violent retribution for now liberalized behaviors, but most modern followers of these faiths have discarded or theologized their way around textual support for such outmoded forms of “justice.” Using inductive logic from scripture to paint all Muslims or all Christians the same color due to the actions of the fringe is treacherous.

Unless one takes a consistent anti-theistic objection to all creeds with (often rejected) canonized anti-liberal positions, these monolithic and simplistic views of religious demographics tend to miss all nuance and feed individual moral virtue into the sausage grinder without making society any more peaceful or free. In addition, one can only assume that this scandal will end in yet another law to expand the power of the state over us all. In other words, no good can come of politicizing any of these engagements.

Politicians are driving another incredibly boring wedge between people to distract them from the major issues. The longer we talk about whether Muslims have basic individual property rights, as well as whether queer people can marry each other in the context of Prop 8, the more we think of each other as members of groups instead of as individuals, and the less time there is to talk about the state’s murder of people abroad and its criminal mercantilist manipulations of the economy and intrusions into our personal lives.