Why do Muslims get offended?
Why do some Muslims get offended when people criticize their Prophet’s actions or make fun of him? I think answering this question needs a broader look at why anybody gets offended for anything.
I think getting offended is related to expecting respect. If a person is disrespected, then he gets offended.
One problem with this way of thinking is that people are often wrong in their interpretations of other people’s actions and intentions. It’s because we’re all fallible. And a lot of people are not familiar with the idea of checking for other possible interpretations and critically questioning them as a means of avoiding "jumping to conclusions.”
Now when somebody gets offended, he thinks he's been disrespected, and it’s possible he misinterpreted. So this raises the question: Why did he get offended even before checking his interpretation for accuracy? I mean, why jump to conclusions? In other words, why act on a theory that you haven’t even checked for accuracy? The ‘theory' is his interpretation, and 'checking for accuracy’ means brainstorming other possible interpretations and criticizing them with the goal of ruling out all but one — the correct interpretation.
One common first interpretation that people make is that someone wants to hurt them, or to make them lose in some way. But this is a bad way to think about people’s actions because some people don’t want to hurt anyone or make anyone lose anything. So that means that assuming that there is malicious intent is a mistake because it ignores all the cases where there isn’t malicious intent.
This way of thinking, of assuming that there is always malicious intent, sees human interactions as necessarily win/lose. But this is a mistake. It’s entirely possible, and desirable, for any human interaction to be win/win, for everybody to get what they want and nobody loses anything they want. There is no law of nature preventing it from happening.
So the better way to think about human interactions is as win/win situations, where the people involved share the same primary goal, of everybody winning.
Now it is true that sometimes a person is trying to make you lose something, or otherwise hurt you, so it’s important to try to look out for this as a means of protecting yourself from harm.
Criticism doesn't mean personal attacks
One common misinterpretation people make is to treat a criticism of an idea or an action as a personal attack. A criticism is an explanation of a flaw in an idea. Criticizing the idea does not make the holder of the idea lose anything. In fact, criticism helps a person go from wrong to right. It helps him change his mind. It helps him find the truth, which is a great thing. So why perceive it as an attack? The person loses nothing. He only stands to gain.
So consider a situation where you're presented with a criticism of your idea. If you agree with it, you stand to gain the truth, and if you disagree with it you stand to lose nothing. So with criticism, you have everything to gain and nothing to lose. So giving criticism is win/win.
Some common responses people make to criticism is to say "that hurt my feelings," "I'm offended by that," and "that's insulting!" These people respond in this way as a means of communicating that the other person is wrong. But that's not a valid argument -- it's not objective. A person's feelings can't be used to judge the truth. What's needed is an explanation, one that doesn't depend on a person's feelings. More importantly, if the truth hurts your feelings, why don't you change your feelings instead of expecting me to hide the truth?
And personal attacks are not criticism
Now some people mistake personal attacks for criticism. But calling somebody stupid because he believes an idea does not constitute a criticism. It’s not an explanation of a flaw in an idea. It’s an attack on the holder of the idea. And it’s designed for only one thing, to hurt. People who make personal attacks instead of arguments see interactions as win/lose. And this is where the idea of respect comes in. The personal attacks are about disrespecting the person. But why would anybody want to do that? What’s the point? What problem does it solve?
People who see the world as a series of win/lose situations also see the world in terms of status. They think that everybody has a certain amount of status, and getting more is something they want. So when they disrespect another person, they are increasing their own status while necessarily decreasing the other person’s status, hence win/lose.
The rest of us, who see the world as a series of win/win situations, see the world in terms of truth. We are truth-seekers instead of status-seekers.
Truth-seeking vs Status-seeking
To get a better understanding of the difference between truth-seeking and status-seeking, let's consider how they differ in the way they work. Status-based thinking means judging ideas by figuring out how much status the ideas have. Alternatively, truth-based thinking means judging ideas by merit.
To be clear, people who have the truth/merit-based philosophy still might get offended, but it’s because they haven't yet resolved the conflicts between their philosophy and their attitude. He has triggers and habits that he created before he learned his advanced philosophy and it’s going to take a serious and sustained effort to fix them, to integrate his reason with this emotion, to integrate his mind.[1]
The status-based attitude is one that is shared by many cultures. In gang culture, individuals each have an amount of status that they intend to keep. For this reason, if a gang member perceives that somebody has disrespected him, he sees this as his status being decreased while the other guy’s status increased. And in an effort to regain his status, he may retaliate with physical violence. Another example of this is tribal cultures. In tribes, and this is true for gangs too, an individual’s status is partly determined by how much status his tribe has. For this reason, if a tribesman perceives that somebody has disrespected a member of his tribe, he sees this as his own status being decreased because he sees his tribe’s status as being decreased.
What's interesting about the status-based-respect idea is that it denies that respect has to be earned. A person thinking like this may be in the wrong, and know it, and still demand to be treated as though he is in the right. Street thugs do it when they violently demand respect. Authoritative parents do it when they say 'Don't argue with me' to their kids. Some girlfriends do it when they expect their boyfriends to side with them in social situations even when they are in the wrong.
Another example of the status-based attitude is when somebody gets offended for thinking that a family member of his has been disrespected. They see it as their status being lowered since their family name’s status has been lowered.
Now imagine a person with a status-seeking attitude who thinks that the king of his tribe (like Prophet Mohamed) has been disrespected. He would find this more offensive than anything else.
Static ideas means static political ideas
The status-based attitude rears it’s ugly head in people’s politics too. These people align themselves politically by their tribal origin (status), rather than by their ideas (merit). It’s ugly because it’s not based on the truth. And because it means the person is unwilling to consider changing his mind about his politics -- because you can’t change your tribal origin.
Judging ideas by status means that if you find out that you’re wrong, you’re going to deny it and claim that you’re right, and demand respect too. This way of thinking means no possibility of changing your political affiliation even if you were given devastating criticism of your political ideas.
Rational people
Alternatively, judging ideas by merit means that if you find out that you’re wrong, you’re willing to change your mind. This way of thinking means the possibility of changing your political affiliation.
Another way to describe the truth-seeking attitude is to describe the people who have it, rational people. As Elliot Temple said:
Rational people are systems of ideas that can temporarily remove any one idea in the system without losing identity. We can remain functional without any one idea. This means we can update or replace it. And in fact we can often change a lot of ideas at once (how many depends in part on which).
To criticize one idea is not to criticize my rationality, or my ability to create knowledge, or my ability to make progress. It doesn't criticize what makes me human, nor anything permanent about me. So I have no reason to mind it. Either I will decide it is correct, and change (and if I don't understand how to change, then no one has reason to fault me for not changing yet), or decide it is incorrect and learn something from considering it.
The way ideas die in our place is that we change ourselves, while retaining our identity (i.e., we don't die), but the idea gets abandoned and does die.
So a rational person sees criticism as win/win because it's part of his truth-seeking attitude. So when he gets quality criticism of his ideas, actions, or feelings, he doesn't interpret it as a personal attack and instead he tries to find out if the criticism is correct in order to try to extract value from it. He sees criticism as a good thing because he knows that criticism leads to further evolution of his knowledge. He sees criticism as necessary to improve himself. So he willingly seeks it out and enjoys thinking about it.
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[1] For more on how to integrate your mind, consider reading these essays:
- Emotions, by Elliot Temple [link:
http://fallibleideas.com/emotions]
- Psycho-epistemology, by Elliot Temple [link:
http://curi.us/1257-xvi]
- Psycho-epistemology, by me [link:
http://ramirustom.blogspot.com/2012/09/psychology.html]
Topic: Why do Muslims get offended?