"Islam...is not moderate:" Islam must modernize [or else be marginalized]!

Orson, all of the people of Muslim faith that I've known personally have been very honorable, thoughtful, and spiritual individuals. No matter what you say, I'm not going to believe that my personal evaluation of them was wrong or clouded by "liberal-guilt".

 

Re: YOU PEOPLE DO NOT GET IT!

I don't know how my name got into this, since I've only made two posts to this thread. Here's the complete text of my first post:

Is there a kind of immoderation that holds true of Wahhabiya legalists on one hand, and the more antinomian sort of Sufi mystics, the Ismaili esoterists or the millions of Javanese Abangans on the other?

It seems to me that there are a lot of different kinds of Islam out there, and that it's hard to generalize across them. (Just as it's hard to fit Christian fundies and Unitarians into one stereotype.)

Sorry. I'm in no mood quite yet to be led around by the nose or to be told to hate on command.

I'd still like to know what "Islam" is, and what kind of response to it that you want from me.

I'm critical of some things that some self-avowed Muslims do, but I'm supportive of other things that others do. I can say the same thing abut Christianity (I detest the inquision but like Thomas Merton) or about any religion.

My argument isn't with your sources. It's with you. I think that you are over-generalizing and I think that you are trying to define an entire community by the behavior of its most objectionable adherents.

That's why my second post made the analogy of how militant newsgroup atheists often portray Christianity. They treat Christianity as if it is identical to the most anti-intellectual and intolerant sort of fundamentalism. They don't want to know about anything else and denounce whatever deviates from their caricature as being essentially non-Christian. (In doing that, we have the bizarre spectacle of atheists wielding Biblical proof-texts in a totally fundamentalist manner as if they were streetcorner evangelists.)

Bottom line: I'm completely willing to criticise some things that some Muslims do. But I'm not willing to make them all into monsters. I'm definitely not going to hate a billion people on command, just because somebody on some newsgroup tells me that I must.

 

Why? There's nothing in your posts that suggest any sympathy towards Muslims of any kind, American or otherwise--just a lot of frightening rhetoric about how Something Should be Done about "Islam" (i.e., Muslims). If (as I suspect) you aren't really a raving Islamophobe at heart, you really should pay more attention to how your posts sound.


Cheers,

 

Tom Head asserts that while my claims might apply to the Arab minority within Islam, what about the majority outside it? Perhaps then he can the self-described “moderate” Muslim, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, an anti-democrat who specializes in anti-Semitic rants—this, from a Muslim dominated nation without any Jews!

From The Age, Austrailia (February 25 2003):

“Bali victims 'collateral' casualties: Mahathir”
“Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad today compared the victims of the Bali bombings to ‘collateral’ casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“He slammed Israel and Western nations for causing a global upsurge in terrorism, saying religious extremists were only reacting to ‘blatant double standards’ in the treatment of Palestinians and Iraq.

"’If the innocent people who died in the attack on Afghanistan and those who have been dying from lack of food and medical care in Iraq are considered collaterals, are the 3,000 who died in New York and the 200 in Bali also just collaterals whose deaths are necessary for operations to succeed?’ Mahathir asked. ...

"’If we think back, there was no systematic campaign of terror outside Europe until the Europeans and the Jews created a Jewish state out of Palestinian land,’ Mahathir told delegates in his opening speech.

”’The blatant double standards is what infuriates Muslims, infuriates them to the extent of launching their own terror attacks,’ Mahathir said. "If Iraq is linked to al-Qaida, is it not more logical to link the expropriation of Palestinian land and the persecution and oppression of Palestinians with Sept. 11?’”
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/02/25/1046064014156.html
(And this is “one of Asia's most respected and outspoken statesmen!”)

However, I expect Tom—consistent with like-minded leftleaning panderers, some of whom I personally count as my friends—will reply that ‘this is legitimate difference of opinion.’

The next question I put to them--and thus, now, to Tom--is “Why the double standard? Why do these anti-Semitic screeds get a pass, while Orson’s considered evaluations of Muslims is “Islamophobic” (as Tom calls me above) or unrepresentative, instead of just realistic and consistent with the weight of the evidence?

The fact is that such adverse judgments as I have made of about the beliefs of a large segment of humanity bring me no pleasure. On the contrary, as a child of the Enlightenment, I want to think and believe the best of humanity, and these opinions of mine have brought me periods of depression because of the insights into the grim future they entail and my helplessness to change it. Thus, I have abstained from sharing them for over a year in this forum I believe we are in a race between anti-western Islamo-fascist nuclear terrorism (which is the intent revealed by Al-Qai’da in Afghanistan) and the hopeful capacity of Muslims to modernize Islam to be consistent with rest of the world's basic standards of tolerance and civility )and I grant you, Iam making large assumptions about what hese are, but smoe are obvious: democacy. for example.

Sometimes there really is an 800 pound gorilla in the living room that no one wants to talk about (thanks to PC follies)--yet honesty requires acknowledging and discussing it despite our cultural and intellectual elite's oversolicitude.

Over and over again Muslims say they want the fruits and toys of modernity, yet simultaneously insist that the intolerant, imperialist, xenophobic, narcissistic doctrines of Islam remain unexamined and must be retained if not expanded. Don’t the PC minded (such as Tom), have something in common with this uncritical mind-set?

Sometimes being adult requires pointing out the fact that you can’t have your incompatible double standards! You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

Or can Tom point out how I’m failing to be adult in all this?

--Orson
PS Another example of Mahatir’s anti-Semitism?
The Malaysian Prime Minister says the Morocco attacks are Israel’s fault.
“Malaysian Prime Minister Mahatir Muhammad said Saturday that last night's series of terrorist suicide bombing attacks in Casablanca were a direct result of Muslim anger at the ‘aggressive policies of Israel against the Palestinians.’” (Jerusalem Post May 17, 2003)

 

Re: Re: YOU PEOPLE DO NOT GET IT!

Bill--

There is little if anything that I object to in what you say above; perhaps I was simpky careless by including you (above) as another critic!

Certainly Bill’s complaint about atheists was true about the American Atheists group the late Madeline Murray O’Hare )sp?)led. I can only assume that it’s also true about the web groups he cites. Likewise, I agree with what Bill says about Islam.

But the fact that generalizations about either (ie, Islam or Atheists) can be perilous, just as Tom Head repeatedly implores, does not mean that no generalizations are warranted. Indeed, the failure to acknowledge reasonable general observations is the very hallmark of unreasonableness.

To wit, since its inception in 1980, I have episodically subscribed to the semi-scholarly quarterly, Free Inquiry. They publish academic worthies from science like E. O. Wilson and Richard Dawson, and from philosophy Peter Singer, Mario Bunge, and my old professor, Anthony Flew. This heavy lifting is lightened by popular worthies such as Wendy Kaminer, Nat Hentoff, and the late comic Steve Allen. International secular humanism and its opponents are also well-covered there, http://www.secularhumanism.org/

Therefore, to illuminate and further justify my foregoing post, and to disabuse my opponent(s), I present two excerpts pertinent to this thread’s topic—does Islam need reform?—and why is the very possibility that it does so controversial?

Christopher Hitchens
Free Inquiry magazine, Fall, 2002

“[E]ven in America, still protected by its First Amendment, there is a tendency to assume that anti-Muslim and anti-Arab feeling is the same [which Tom implies],…even though Islam advertises itself as a universal religion. One unhappy consequence of this is that secular and liberal critics often watch what they say, thus leaving the field to fundamentalist Christians, who often attack Islam in the most scabrous and abusive terms. The next stage is, rather depressingly, a counter-attack by aggrieved American Muslim organizations [such as in the CAIR discussion above] which, rather than exposing the absurd theology of the Christian loons, claim that it is by definition 'hurtful' or 'offensive' to attack any religion at all.

“Thus, under the cover of [ideological] pluralism a number of dogmatic orthodoxies [about Islam] acquire an undeserved respect and protection….[from crticism such as those that Orson engages in above].

“[For example], I was taken aback in a recent public debate on the aftermath of September 11 when, in answer to a question from the floor, I said that, if the Qur'an was the word of God, it had been dictated on a very bad day. An audible shock passed through a distinctly "Left" and "liberal" audience. And I was promptly accused of "insulting a billion and a half Muslims": a charge as absurd as it was flattering.

“Islam makes very large claims for itself. It claims direct divine revelation and inspiration and, depending on which sura or hadith you emphasize, it appears to warrant or at least countenance global proselytism. Its adherents can hardly complain if these tenets are subjected to close scrutiny and even to vivid disagreement.

[continued below]

 

Philosopher Paul Kurtz continues this line of enquiry in a previous issue of Free Inquiry, Winter, 2002.

“In an editorial that I wrote in FREE INQUIRY (Spring 1993) ‘Has a Third World War with Islam Begun?” I pointed to the many flash points that had then erupted: Iraq, Iran, Somalia, the Sudan, Kashmir, India, Bosnia, Palestine, Lebanon, Israel, Algeria, Pakistan, Egypt, and Turkey. Since 1993 many other conflicts have broken out in other parts of the world, from Nigeria to Kosovo, Chechenya, Indonesia, the Philippines and elsewhere—led in no small part by Muslim fundamentalist terrorists who have sought to establish Muslim theocracies based on sharia law.

“Islamic fundamentalism has become an expansionist force all over the globe; Muslim militants are on the march. This is not to deny that some of the 48 Muslim countries are moderate, and indeed would like, if it were possible, to develop secular regimes; but they are apprehensive of the fundamentalists among their own people. Unfortunately, the basic tenets of Islam can be interpreted to support terrorism. For example, criticism of Islam is forbidden, and is punishable by death, as in the fatwas issued against Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasrin. Islam also condemns blasphemy. Dr. Younus Shaikh (a humanist) has been sentenced to death earlier this year by a Pakistani court for blasphemy (he said he doubted that the parents of Mohammed were Muslims since they died when he was very young). And there are hundreds of other cases of blasphemy. The most dreadful crime in Islam is unbelief, and especially apostasy for former Muslims, again punishable by death. The jihad (or holy war) can be launched whenever Islam is threatened. The young Muslim men who slammed airplanes into the Trade Towers, killing thousands of innocent civilians, did so in the name of Allah. Martyrdom is justified, they believed, if it will defend the faith against infidels, and each of the murderers of innocent thousands will be rewarded by an eternity in paradise with 72 virgins (this apparently has its source in the Hadith).

“Are these interpretations correct, and can they be justified on textual grounds? I think that a case can be made that they are; but if so, we need to engage in a full-scale inquiry and dialogue with our Muslim colleagues and friends….

“Many Muslims have denied that Islam is a religion of violence or compulsion. If so, then they should renounce the traditions referenced above and the fatwas against dissenters, critics, blasphemers, and unbelievers. After all, Christians and Jews reject or ignore many Biblical passages which ordain death for witches, homosexuals, bastards, adulterers, etc. Why not the same Reformation for modern-day Islam? ***Why not bring Islam into the modern world [of engaged criticism and public scrutiny]?***

“Whether the advocates of “religious correctness” like it or not, a debate about the true meaning of Islam has opened up. Islam, in my view, needs its own Reformation; it needs to respect the right to engage in Koranic criticism and to question its foundations, without fear of death or destruction, rights now accepted throughout the democratic world.”
------------------------------------------

Now, as you cam see, my critical perspective on contemporary trends in Islam has authoritative respectability—unless anyone wishes to accuse the above named worthies, Hitchens and Kurtz, of hysterical vituperation. Otherwise, if some of us—Tom Head in particular—can get beyond egregious defensiveness (or counter-defensiveness, which is how I see it), perhaps we can have a continuing discussion of some productivity. But who among my opponent(s) is willing to bend themselves to the task?


--Orson

PS It appears the theme of the criticism of Islam at Free Inquiry--“Why Critical Scrutiny of Islam Is an Utmost Necessity:
Can reason blunt fanaticism?:”
by Syed Kamran Mirza--continues here:
http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/mirza_22_2.htm